Hi Sarah, Challenging and important questions. A couple of thoughts.
1. Technically WE authors who license their content as CC-BY (as in the case of Otago Polytechnic and others who choose this license) and CC-BY-SA do not give up their intellectual property rights -- a free content license does not sacrifice IP. In the contrary it protects the the rights of those educators who take a vocational decision to live out the core values of education -- namely to share knowledge freely. 2. In my experience -- people have many reasons why they choose not to collaborate. That's fine, and we respect their choices. Our community is about sharing and collaborating because we know that working together we will achieve more than we can by working alone. In your example is better to find out now that some colleagues may feel uncomfortable with collaborating -- than a year later down the track. Strategically you are now in a stronger position. In the future funders will start asking -- why should I fund this closed project when I can fund an open project that will achieve a greater return on investment. Their is an emerging wave on funders that collectively subscribe to the notions of "open philanthropy". 3. There is of course the ethical question relating to research grants from government sources --- this is public money and we should be asking whether it is ethical or not to lock down the outputs of research behind full copyright especially when funded from tax monies. I'd recommend that you start a project page in WE to document your thoughts and ideas for a potential project. Make a clear statement that this is an open project which subscribes to the values of the WE community. This way the community can see what you are trying to achieve. WE will help you to connect with professionals that share your ideas and want to collaborate on free content. In this way, you wont shut out your colleagues from Pakistan because they will always be free to join at a later stage. However, at the same time you don't compromise your core values as an educator. I will personally try to connect you with other Midwives in the Commonwealth. My sense is that an open project like this, is more likely to achieve successful funding than a closed one -- particularly in primary health care. Cheers Wayne On Mon, 2008-05-26 at 23:43 -0700, Sarah Stewart wrote: > Hello everyone > > My name is Sarah Stewart (http://sarah-stewart.blogspot.com). I am a > senior lecturer in midwifery at Otago Polytechnic, Dunedin, New > Zealand and a colleague of Leigh Blackall. I am a new member of this > community and am enjoying learning all about wikieducator. > > I have recently been in communication with a midwifery educator in > Pakistan and we are keen to collaborate on several e-learning projects > together. I have suggested that we develop these projects on > wikieudcator so that we have access to the wider education community > for support and ideas. However, she is reluctant to do that. There is > a lot of competition in the area that she works in, especially when it > comes to applying for research funding. She does not want to make the > details of the projects public for fear of people using her ideas and > beating her to the funding. Obviously, I have to respect that > standpoint. However, I feel it is really important that we document > the development of this project, as it is an illustration of social > networking and international collaboration that will benefit a > particular professional group. > > My question to this group is: how can I utilize wikieducator to > record the the development of this project and make use of the > expertise available via wikieducator, yet honor the wishes of the team > in Pakistan for 'secrecy'? Or is that such a stupid question because > the answer is obviously 'you can't!'. > > I'd be really grateful for your views and any advice on where to go > from here. > > Thank you, Sarah > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator, go to: http://www.wikieducator.org To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
