Is Open Source an “Institutional Strategy”?

It is too early to predict what the course of open source will be in higher education. More research is required. Especially in the leverage that is truly afforded by the open source alternatives (including such aspects as what defines a better user experience, not just cost) and how institutions are implementing innovation via open source. That is, are the open source solutions achieving better products than their proprietary counterparts?

If open source leadership is a strategy that goes beyond the IT department, only time and example will tell. Our research to date has uncovered some interesting and potential strategic connections:

1. Potential Amplifier of IT Leverage. In a forthcoming paper [7], Dr. Bill Graves of Sungard Collegis details specific ways in which IT can impact institutional performance. Notable is his argument that technology singularly has the ability to potentially reduce costs while providing new innovation - a requirement of many higher education institutions today. We will only note here that the collaborative open source approach can only enhance both the cost savings and innovation, making it a potentially ideal way to pursue these goals. The open source process combines the opportunity to save costs while achieving innovation through customization.

2. Distributed Innovation as a Core Strategy. Steven Weber identifies a possible motive for adopting open-sourcing as a decision supporting a strategy of distributed innovation [2]. We feel this is an attractive idea for higher education. What it means is that open source is embraced as a way to leverage the community to achieve innovation faster and at less cost. It also implies, as mentioned early in this article, that participation in open source is much more than lower cost software. It is a strategic commitment to participate in the community.

3. Connecting Higher Education “Users”. Because the applications being addressed by open source involve staff, faculty, and students as users, a commitment to participate in the open source community, which should be driven by users, is a decision that requires leadership at many levels and from many places. This sounds complex organizationally speaking, but the reality of successful open source projects is that the contributors tend to self-select if the collaborative network is large enough. While presenting new challenges, this also presents new opportunities to connect your faculty, staff, and student leaders to others that can help change the world.

4. YOUR Institutional ‘Problem’? Perhaps ‘emphasis’ is a better word here than ‘problem’. We use ‘problem’ to make the point that successful open source initiatives have at their root a problem that needs to be solved and can be better solved through a collaborative effort. This means that your participation in the collaboration is more meaningful if you see the focus of these efforts as something that you need to solve, as opposed to something that you can wait for someone else to solve. So, for example, if you do not see something like an ePortfolio as a solution critically needed to help capture students’ learning experiences more effectively than grades, the corresponding open source initiative is probably not for you. But if it is critical for you, the open source initiative can help create a focal point and rallying cry for what you believe is an important area of institutional emphasis and innovation.

Above we have detailed some of the background, state of adoption and fit with higher education, market segments and vendor strategies, and ways to track progress. If you are not already an A-HEC subscriber but would like to be kept abreast of our future research in open source, please go to http://www.a-hec.org/membership.html and indicate open source in your interest profile.