Talk:Going naked - Openism and freedom in academia

Feel free to discuss here or in the Responses section.

Gatekeeper function

Academic institutions are currently charged/trusted with a public gatekeeper function. They give recognition (degrees, etc.) to people who have completed a certain course of study and/or passed examinations which then qualify graduates for future employment responsibilities. I can foresee "openism" leading to a more apprenticeship/guild based approach to employment. Do you see the demise of the ladder of academic awards to be replaced by public/social usefulness?--Harkey 16:05, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi Harkey, Thanks for the question/comments. Some thoughts: At least in Australia, we are about to see significant deregulation of the tertiary sector such that the definition and funding of "universities" will be freed up. This will foster relations between universities and vocational education providers (which have traditionally been more job skills focused). However the "gatekeeper" function is probably what largely keeps universities in business - i.e., having a good reputation and granting degrees (its the largest export industry in Australia) - so I imagine universities will be keen to retain this business model. But the part of university funding which comes from governments seems likely to increase the public/social usefulness requirements, although it remains to be seen how the metrics for this evolve. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 21:19, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

The video

Thanks for adding the video. Will you note down the steps on the page Session recording? I notice that it is significantly out of synch however.. I think this happens during the compression stages. Did you keep the files at each step? Has the syncing problem only happened once it is embedded in the wiki, or did it happen steps back in the process? II notice that the Youtube versions are good.. --Leighblackall 21:33, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

This .ogv seems to work/not work very much depending on browser/system - in Firefox 3.5 on WinXP its good, but in IE8, Google Chrome etc. it doesn't play very well at all. Maybe the problem was SuperC conversion - maybe its MediaWiki, I'm not sure. I've documented the generic steps: Screencasting#Method 2. Camstudio -> SuperC -> Commons/Youtube. Seems that .ogv video needs experimentation/testing. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:15, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Learning about Open Academia

I blogged about this topic some today. Wikibooks' blog, Wikimedia's tech blog, some recent events, and Leigh's blog got me a bit motivated to work on a learning blog myself. -- darklama  16:57, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Tx for blogging your initial thoughts (and for the discussion posting). We ran an open academia in practice workshop yesterday - which was as much focused on practical "how to" for university teaching staff as this "going naked" session focused on theory. I'm finding this to be an interesting way of approaching academia conversations locally: theory and practice. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 22:56, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

I should have said more probably. The page does a good job of speaking for itself, and I had already on the page itself commented on it. Yesterday on IRC there was a lengthy discussion that could be said to be related to this very subject. I may due a part II related to the ideas discussed. -- darklama  23:32, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

I have done a follow up blog entry about the workshop for open academia in practice. I also briefly mention the idea that was discussed on IRC. -- darklama  21:13, 31 March 2010 (UTC)