Can universities embrace open knowledge?

As we walk through its corridors, we feel a sense of awe —perhaps because we feel tiny in front of a university’s accumulated wisdom. And its size, age and history truly overwhelm us.

But there is a professor in the US who believes those mighty institutions would die in a decade from now. Of course, they won’t exactly crumble into dust.

He says the universities would still make their money, given that their logos on students’ certificates is enough to land them in well-paid jobs. But a university’s power doesn’t come merely from becoming a ‘saleable commodity’ in a globalised world; its power is its knowledge and the fact that it has been inaccessible to so many has inadvertently contributed to its strength.

David Wiley, professor of psychology and instructional technology at Brigham Young University, Utah (United States) believes that it is about to change. If universities were reservoirs of knowledge, technology is about to drain it across the globe. The same globalisation that gives universities access to overseas students would make it redundant through technology.

And why not? After all it isn’t uncommon today for students to download lectures into their iPods and listen or share the textbook with friends by putting them up on a file sharing site.

They can open YouTube and listen to top professors delivering their lectures in the classrooms of MIT or UC Berkley. And if they chance upon one of David Wiley’s online classes, there is even the guarantee of free participation in the class. What more, they can clarify their doubts live like his other students and blog their homework for the whole world to read.

Combined study on Skype

Forget about the ‘personal contact’ traditional classrooms have been offering. Today, you may network with other students on Facebook or Twitter and can even do ‘combined study’ on Skype. All these services are for free.

As Wiley’s movement towards creating open content catches up with several institutions, teachers can sign up to the licensing agreement, download textbooks that makes sense to them and can tailor them to suit their classes.

Of course, there are several relevant subjects to choose from. Take instructional technology itself, which Wiley has been specialising in. To the best of the knowledge, we don’t find this subject on offer anywhere else in the world.

Given how such a subject would transform the way teaching and learning can be done in India, creating experts of our own would help schools and colleges adopt technology effectively in their curriculum. And if our institutions are willing to participate in open knowledge movement, surely they would find themselves at the cutting edge of knowledge creation in the world. But the question is, how many are ready and how soon?