The VUMA! Portal – An Exercise in Creating Online Communities for South African Higher Education

NDL Butcher

Director

Neil Butcher & Associates

Johannesburg

South Africa

neilshel@icon.co.za

AbstractFOTIM (the Foundation of Tertiary Institutions of the Northern Metropolis) has received funding to develop a portal to serve the collaborative needs of its member institutions, thus enabling them to enhance the learning experience of students while creating a platform for collaboration on academic and support levels. This paper represents a first attempt to gather together the results of the work completed to date. While it is too early yet to assess whether or not the objectives of the Portal, this paper presents lessons learned to date.

The paper notes that it is critical to begin with careful analysis of how the target users are and what the ‘value proposition’ of a Portal such as this will be that encourages them to visit the site and become regular users/contributors. When implementing this value proposition, there is a plethora of readily accessible research on web and Portal design that can be used to fast-track the process of defining appropriate principles to underpin the design of a Portal such as VUMA! however, the advantages of using FOSS web platforms lies predominantly in their openness and not their cheapness.

VUMA! reflects an attempt to harness the potential of Web 2.0 technologies to create inter-institutional communities of practice in South African higher education. Although we are confident that the principles underpinning the design of this Portal are robust, it is not yet possible to tell whether this venture will succeed. However, review of the OER movement and other related Web 2.0 developments indicates a need to take account of several key lessons if one is to avoid the hype and create something of meaningful educational value.

Keywords: web 2.0; portal design; open educational resources; communities of practice; free and open source software.

1 IntroductionFOTIM (the Foundation of Tertiary Institutions of the Northern Metropolis) has received funding to develop a portal to serve the collaborative needs of its member institutions, thus enabling them to enhance the learning experience of students while creating a platform for collaboration on academic and support levels. The Portal has been called VUMA! The development of this portal – underway in 2007 – offers a unique opportunity to develop a theoretical framework for the development of online communities whose organic growth is

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based on underpinning Web 2.0 platforms1. This paper represents a first attempt to gather together the results of the work completed to date. While it is too early yet to assess whether or not the objectives of the Portal, this paper presents lessons learned in the early phases of the project. Further papers will continue to highlight new lessons as these emerge.

The VUMA! Portal is being designed throughout in ways that seek to develop communities of users who contribute content and help to shape the direction and substance of the portal. It will aim to increase the possibilities for individual contribution, and thus involvement and a feeling of ownership, and of communication, allowing collaborative construction of knowledge. It will also be a source of support to develop individual intellectual abilities on all levels of the learning experience of the users. The VUMA! Portal seeks to treat users as creators, as engaged participants in communities of practice. The portal is being created by ‘stitching’ together a series of ‘best-of-breed’ Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) applications.

The opportunity is unique because its location within FOTIM creates potential for mobilizing large-scale, but highly focused communities of users, mobilized around common collaborative interests. In particular, the portal will enable university students to collaborate and share experiences on the challenges of coping with university life, while integrating this collaborative, interactive space with a solid base of high quality materials on related topics sourced from both the FOTIM institutions and around the world. It is hoped that our ‘semi-structured’ deployment of FOSS will facilitate easy growth and re-shaping of the portal experience by this community.

In addition, the portal will also seek to create a similar collaborative space for academics, in this instance focusing on stimulating collaborative efforts in curriculum design and materials development. This comprehensive facility will be developed in partnership with the national Department of Education’s portal, www.thutong.org.za and a host of other projects, including the International Association for Digital Publications (IADP) and the African Virtual University’s Open Education Resource (OER) Portal. It will aim to create a common, integrated space in which the community of FOTIM academics can develop and share educational resources. This will be achieved by building a platform that will integrate project management and resource management functionality. This tool will enable project managers and course developers to manage online content development projects through decentralized project teams via the Internet in a way that will ensure that all information, documentation, and resources generated during development processes are automatically stored in an accessible online resource repository for future use and repurposing.

1 Wikipedia notes that ‘Web 2.0…refers to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users… In the opening talk of the first Web 2.0 conference, Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle summarized key principles they believed characterized Web 2.0 applications:• The Web as a platform • Data as the driving force • Network effects created by an architecture of participation • Innovation in assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from

distributed, independent developers (a kind of "open source" development) • Lightweight business models enabled by content and service syndication • The end of the software adoption cycle ("the perpetual beta") • Software above the level of a single device, leveraging the power of The Long Tail.’WIKIPEDIA (2006) Web 2.0.

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In this way, the portal will test a collaborative approach whereby public higher education institutions are able to work together in areas of common interest while retaining the competitive relationships. This paper seeks to reflect on progress with implementation of the portal, and represents a first effort to share the results of our work with a broader, more academic community.

2 Starting with the UsersThe VUMA! Portal development process began with identification of key target audiences, which was done in consultation with FOTIM members. The VUMA! Portal will focus on presenting a primary/core purpose for each of its core User Groups. All of the services offered by the Portal cluster around these core purposes, which were identified as follows:

Table 1 VUMA! Portal User Groups

User Group Core Purpose

Students

A one-stop point of access and support for learners to enable them to make the most of their university careers and to access what they need to succeed academically and in other elements of their time in higher education.

Prospective Students

A mechanism for supporting prospective students to make the right choices as they consider their options in higher education and future careers (to be implemented in partnership with Higher Education South Africa’s National Information Service for Higher Education).

Parents and Teachers

A source of advice and support on the challenges and pressures facing university students, and the roles that parents and teachers can play in supporting their children or learners.

University StaffThe premiere location for online collaboration amongst university staff in their professional pursuits, supporting and encouraging both formal and informal collaboration.

Phase one of development has focused on students, and phase two will focus on university staff. Workshops have already been held with target student users in order to understand whether or not the chosen focus is appropriate, as well as what additional services students would like to see on the Portal. The results of these discussions have been integrated into implementation plans for the Portal.

3 Design ChoicesThe starting point for construction of the VUMA! Portal was to undertake extensive research into portal design, with a view to ensuring that the Portal builds on the enormous experience gained in recent years in website and design. This research led us to extrapolate the following critical design principles:

3.1 Design SimplicityResearch evidence on usability of portals reveals clearly that users do not appreciate portal designs that are cluttered and make it difficult to locate the key services they require with a minimum of effort. Thus, the design of the VUMA! Portal has attempted to be focused, clean, and simple. We have tried to achieve this by:

• Guiding the user’s eye through the use of few, well-chosen visual elements;

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• Minimizing the use of text, particularly on landing pages and user-specific home pages;

• Eliminating all visual design elements, unless they can be demonstrated to serve a clear and important functional purpose;

• Defining a clear primary goal and purpose for each target group of users;• Using a primary 2-column design for presentation of information, expanded – if

absolutely necessary – to a maximum of 3 columns on identified pages;• Positioning the site centrally within the browser, and leaving surrounding space

empty and white;• Making global navigation devices large, bold, clean, and obvious, setting them apart

from content, differentiating them using colour and shape, and using clear text to make the purpose of each navigation item and link unambiguous;

• Ensuring that all hyperlinks within text are clearly differentiated from normal text;• Avoiding wasted space, particularly unnecessary spacing between elements and

overly large headers/footers;• Facilitate navigation around the Portal by using a ‘breadcrumb’ navigation bar on all

pages that allows users to locate exactly where they are and the path that has been followed to get there.

With this in mind, the VUMA! Logo was also re-designed to ensure that it would integrate successfully into the portal design and serve the primary purposes of the site (particularly attracting students), that it is distinctive and instantly recognizable, and that it reflects the personality and qualities of the portal. The resulting home page design based on this brief is presented below:

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3.2 Database-Driven Portal, Adhering to Open StandardsThe VUMA! Portal is being developed as a database-driven website, in order to facilitate quick and easy development and deployment of new content. During technical design, the following open standards have been identified to underpin the construction and/or use of any database systems. These include:

a) The Dublin Core metadata standard for resources and publications;b) The IEEE Learning Object Model for learning object metadata;c) XML (Extensible Markup Language) to be used for data export purposes;d) RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to be used to allow people to have portal

data ‘fed’ to their web browsers;e) Where required, RDF (Resource Description Framework) schemas to be used for

specialized ontologies, as published on http://www.schemaweb.info/.

The overall portal is designed to adhere to World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards, in order to ensure that the completed system can be displayed on both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox web browsers. To accommodate a broad spectrum of users, the design of the Portal has allowed for users with a maximum screen resolution of 800 x 600.

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3.3 Web 2.0 designIn keeping with web design principles articulated in recent writing about Web 2.0 platforms, the VUMA! Portal has been designed throughout in ways that seek to develop communities of users who contribute content and help to shape the direction and substance of the portal. It aims to increase the possibilities for individual contribution, and thus involvement and a feeling of ownership, and of communication, thus allowing collaborative construction of knowledge. The VUMA! Portal seeks to treat users as creators, as engaged participants in communities of practice. This is reflected in the initial technology choices that we have made.

4 Technology ChoicesAs has been noted, the VUMA! Portal is being developed by ‘stitching’ together existing Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) platforms. There were two reasons for this. First, it was hoped that used of FOSS platforms would reduce the cost of technological development on the Portal, a potential benefit often cited by the FOSS Community as a key reason for using FOSS. Second and more important, though, was that it was expected that use of FOSS platforms would lead to a more open and flexible architecture, which would lend itself better to adaptation and extension by the emerging communities of practice on VUMA!

After a review of different portal/content management systems, an initial choice was made to use a Java-based application called Liferay. Amongst other features, this software was particularly chosen for its adherence to a Java Specification Request standard called JSR 168 – Portlet Specification. LifeRay comes with a range of JSR-168 compliant portlets ‘out-the-box’. However, the main advantage is its ability to ‘hot-deploy’ any other JSR 168 compliant portlets, that is JSR-168 compliant portlets that may have been developed and deployed on other open source/commercial JSR-168 compliant Portal Servers. Theoretically, this dramatically increases the number of potential portlets that can be reused or deployed on LifeRay.

Use of Liferay enabled the development team to have a functional Portal ready for review within six weeks of commencement of the project. However, it quickly became clear that this choice would prove problematic, given the wide range of other FOSS platforms that are not JS-168 compliant, and that are built on PHP platforms. As a result, a decision was taken to migrate the Portal onto Drupal, a PHP-based content management system with a large community of users. Currently, we are systematically integrating into Drupal the following additional applications:

• A wiki facility, to enable organic growth of content in the Portal. A wiki is a web environment that allows visitors to add, remove, edit, and change content, typically without the need for registration. It also allows for linking among any number of pages. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring. It is proposed to use the open source product MediaWiki, which is the wiki software currently running Wikipedia, amongst other sites. This is the clear product leader in its class, and thus is an obvious choice for such functionality. MediaWiki has the best layout and editing tools available in a Wiki format. It also seems to be easily integrated with other PHP based systems. An RSS exporter to MediaWiki will also be integrated. This will allow users to track changes to the Wiki quickly and easily. Deployment of MediaWiki is also being extended to include support for the development of the VUMA! resource management system. In our search for applications that would support resource management on VUMA!, no existing software could be found that served the specific purposes of the Portal. Thus, the system will

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need to be customized within MediaWiki to provide what is needed. This system will not only support the student community, but the academic community as well in the long term. Importantly, as this resource management system will be integrated into MediaWiki, it will be extended as a user-driven facility. We hope to be able to release this module into the MediaWiki community for general development and extension when it is ready.

• Blogging capability to stimulate community interaction. Blog is an abbreviated version of ‘weblog’, which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog is a frequently updated, personal website featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles or other Web sites. VUMA! Will use the FOSS product Wordpress for blogging purposes, again because it is a clear product leader in its class.

• The Facebook software will be integrated with MediaWiki and the resource management system, allowing VUMA! users to share their resources and content with the entire Facebook community, regardless of whether they are VUMA! users or not. Facebook is a very popular website, particularly with student communities.

The decision to use FOSS platforms was an important one, and we believe it will serve the Portal well in the long term, not least because it will serve to ensure that FOTIM always has full ownership of its applications. However, the development of the Portal has yielded some useful cautionary lessons about development of portals using FOSS applications:1) While FOSS applications are available at no cost, this should not be confused with

meaning they are cheap to use. The applications we have used so far have pre-defined functionality, which typically operates in a narrow range. To customize these applications to meet the needs of a specific deployment is an expensive undertaking.

2) Related to the above, we encountered a lot of hype about how easy FOSS applications are to deploy and use. This is simply not true. Even in the better developed applications, documentation is generally quite limited and the limitations of the template-driven approach of several of the applications can be very frustrating at times. Installing multiple FOSS applications on single servers is also a highly problematic undertaking, as there are often software conflicts that take time to resolve.

3) Possibly the most problematic aspect of FOSS platforms is the absence of any significant standardization regarding how applications operate and, most importantly, inter-operate. Interoperability is of particular importance in VUMA!, as there is a need to create a seamless user experience on top of multiple applications, but this requires extensive investment in integration, and the absence of meaningful standards poses a serious problem. Our sense is that this will be the major hurdle that the FOSS ‘Movement’ will need to overcome if it is to entrench its position in providing a meaningful set of alternatives to proprietary applications. In all likelihood, the problem will become significantly worse before it gets better as web technologies are really still in their infancy globally and the proliferation of options is moving faster than the ability of software development communities to agree on robust, flexible standards.

4.1 Student Portal FacilityThe philosophy behind the student portal facility is one of community and collaboration, one which drives students to become active contributors of content instead of passive consumers. The student portal section of the VUMA Portal in the first and second phase of development has focused on creating and maintaining a clean interface that gives students access to the following elements:

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4.1.1 Registration

The VUMA! Portal has a registration facility which requires students to register and hence login if they would like to access features like discussion lists and bogs, or to add content to the portal. It has however been established that, for the registration to be able to work to FOTIM’s advantage, some customization has been required. This customization will enable FOTIM to draw reports from the website on website usage and statistics. It is important to note that all content is available and accessible for viewing without requiring registration. It is only when users would like to actively contribute to or participate in community driven features (blogs, wikis, discussion lists, and so on) that they are required to register. Participation in polls, however, does not require registration.

4.1.2 Student News

This facility allows students to view news uploaded to the news handler. These could be university or other events of relevance to the student communities of the nine universities.

4.1.3 Student Poll

The student poll facility allows students to contribute to polls and suggest ideas for future student polls.

4.1.4 Online Dictionary

This allows students to automatically search Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com from the VUMA! Portal

4.1.5 Varsity Events

This facility allows students to view and submit events to the Events calendar facility.

4.1.6 Varsity Life Content

This section of the site gives students access to a content-rich Wiki interface that focuses on the following topics: Study Skills; Writing Skills; Examinations; Health/Personal; Life Skills; Finance; Work.

A team of writers has been involved in creating basic content that students can access on the VUMA! Portal. This content is being added to on a daily basis. The purpose of this content is not to provide students with heavy reading resources, but to give them basic advice and tips in each of these areas. In each of these topic areas we have also attempted to direct students to other useful resources available on the Internet, such as courses or tutorials, useful websites and tools.

This section of the Student Portal requires ongoing development and input from the nine universities. The VUMA! team has visited six of the nine universities to be introduced to the universities, to meet some of the students, university staff, and other relevant stakeholders within the institutions and to find useful resources in the way of handbooks, guides, examination papers, and other useful resources in the topic areas listed above.

5 A Central Focus on Open Educational Resources (OERs)The VUMA Portal second-phase development includes the deployment of resource sharing functionality. This OER (Open Education Resource) facility will allow users to download resources, upload resources, edit resources for re-upload, and create resources for upload.

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The ResourceLAB will be a basic document library that allows students to upload their lecture notes, essays, theses, and any other documentation relevant to their studies. It is hoped that students will contribute to the library allowing it to grow into a substantial resource facility that can be available to students and academics. It is envisaged that the ResourceLAB facility will become a comprehensive collaborative open educational resource (OER) development and sharing platform.

The OER platform will also cater for academics who develop educational content. The platform will need to be able to assist with the creation of structured educational content and processes in a collaborative environment. It must therefore make accessible collaborative authoring tools that facilitate the creation of structured learning processes. These learning processes are made up of structured learning outcomes (what learners are expected to do), structured activities (what learners will go through to achieve outcomes) assessment processes (feedback mechanism to assess achievement of learning outcomes). These process documents should be able to be created at a programme, course, module and activity level. The documents created must be adaptable to be used in many different learning contexts. All education resources produced in the system will be licensed under the Creative Commons Share-Alike attribute. (for more information go to www.creativecommons.org).

The OER Platform must cater for extensive ‘findability’. It should enable learners and educators to find content and to hyperlink and connect this content to educational process documents and other related resources. The content inside this platform can be made up of any number or variety of resources including PDF files, Word documents, JPEGs, PSD files, PNG files, SWF files, flash, audio and video files, and URLs. These resources do not necessarily need to fall under a Creative Commons Share-alike license. They can represent any number of licences. Conceptual issues associated with this as discussed in the following section.

5.1 Challenges Associated with OER DevelopmentAS we have begun to conceptualize the potential of the OER platform, we have conducted extensive research into the issue of OERs. Although work on the platform is in its infancy, we felt it useful to share at this stage some of the results of that work, as well as reflecting on their implications for VUMA!

The concept of OERs describes educational resources that are freely available for use by educators and learners, without an accompanying need to pay royalties or licence fees. A broad spectrum of licensing frameworks is emerging to govern how OERs are licensed for use, some of which simply allow copying, others which make provision for users to adapt the resources that they use. The power of this concept revolves around three linked possibilities:1. Because OERs remove restrictions around copying resources, they hold potential for

reducing the cost of accessing educational materials. In many systems, royalty payments for text books and other educational materials constitute a significant proportion of the overall cost, while processes of procuring permission to use copyrighted material can also be very time-consuming and expensive (although some commentators have tended to overestimate the extent to which content is a cost driver in education by assuming that free content is almost synonymous with free education).

2. The principle of allowing adaptation of materials provides one mechanism amongst many for constructing roles for learners as active participants in educational processes, who learn best by doing and creating, not by passively reading and absorbing. Content licences that encourage activity and creation by learners through re-use and adaptation

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of that content can make a significant contribution to creating more effective learning environments.

3. Finally, OERs have potential to build capacity in developing countries by providing educators access, at low or no cost, to the means of production to develop their competence in producing educational materials and completing the necessary instructional design to integrate such materials into high quality programmes of learning. Many educational systems are foundering because their employees have become so overwhelmed by administrative tasks that they have lost the time and space to exercise this critical creative capacity, and it will take time and investment to rebuild it. The concept of OERs has potential to facilitate this if the process of developing educational materials is seen as being just as important as – maybe more important than – the final product.

These concepts are central to the notion of a collaborative space for students and academics that will sit at the core of the VUMA! Portal.

Unfortunately, however the concept is being robbed of its transformative power. Predictably, the concept is the subject of significant resistance from organizations whose business models are based on ring-fencing and selling content. This struggle is playing itself out in many industries, not just in education, and is to be expected when new technologies make it possible to do business in new ways. Although many people are confidently predicting the demise of all old forms of information production because of these new social trends, it is likely that there will be winners and losers, with many publishers and other similar agencies reinventing themselves, continuing to provide valuable products and services, and running successful businesses. Chris Andersen’s analysis of the potential of exploiting the ‘long tail’ of consumption demands provides good examples of new business models emerging that reflect this reality (Anderson, 2006).

However, the transformative potential of the concept is also under attack on other, less obvious fronts. The first of these is the tendency, repeated so often throughout history, of actors based in the developed world to adopt powerful concepts and preach their power on behalf of the developing world. So, several accounts describe how OERs will act as the ‘saviour’ of education by producing masses of free education content (usually in the developed world) and then making it available for use in the developing world. Like many well intentioned ‘movements’ that have preceded the OER movement, the history of development tells us that this is likely to have marginal educational impact in the developing world. More problematically, it is undermining the potential to build the capacity of developing world education systems because the bulk of the money being spent to produce OERs is being cornered by these developed world actors. Therefore, it is developing capacity and systems there rather than in the developing world.

For example, the Hewlett Foundations’ recent evaluation report on its OER investments reflects this problem in practice by reporting that only 10% of its investments focused on Africa (all under the line item of ‘capacity building’), at least half of which comprised grants provided to developed world institutions (Atkins et al., 2007). As long as financial resources of this kind are expended predominantly in the developed world, we can expect to make little progress in developing the capacity of developing world education systems to meet the needs of their learners. In this regard, the VUMA! Portal will reflect at least one attempt to reverse this problem by creating a platform designed by and for the developing world.

Another key issue undermining the transformative potential of OERs is an increasingly heated debate around commercialization of ‘free content’. This debate most often finds

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practical expression in arguments about the Creative Commons licensing framework, and whether or not it is a good idea to impose what is described as a ‘non-commercial’ restriction within the licence. The reason that this argument has emerged is that, to many people, the concept of creating a non-commercial restriction seems intuitive in order to prevent unfair exploitation of ‘free’ content. However, as many commentators have eloquently and passionately argued, it turns out that such a restriction can have several unintended consequences in the long term, preventing the ‘mixing’ of content with different licence conditions and creating unforeseen inflexibilities. These commentators go on to observe that the Share-Alike licensing condition in the Creative Commons licensing framework serves effectively the same purpose as a Non-Commercial restriction by requiring derivative works to be released under identical licensing conditions as the original content on which the derivation was based. They also point out that closing down the possibilities for commercial exploitation of derived works may lead to long term problems in sustainability of the emerging educational commons.

Within VUMA!, We have been convinced by the argument that releasing OERs under a licence restricting commercial use of the content creates unnecessary restrictions and should be avoided wherever possible. Thus, the VUMA! Portal is based on a licensing regime which proposes that a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike licence be used (see www.creativecommons.org for more information on what this means). However, it is perplexing to see the vehemence of several of the proponents of this position, leading one to reflect on why they hold their positions as strongly as they do.

It seems that many of these proponents are driven by a well-intentioned desire to see content made ‘free’ (i.e. both costing nothing and freely available for re-use and adaptation without restrictions), mirroring similar debates that have unfolded around Open Source Software. This is a worthwhile cause to a certain extent, but often leads to logical leaps of faith that are not yet sustained by meaningful evidence and that can be educationally problematic. Most notable amongst these is the conviction that making content free to copy, adapt, and exploit commercially in and of itself will lead to better education delivery, particularly in the developing world. Linked to this is another untested assertion that ‘free’ content equates with good educational content. We too hope that free content developed and shared through VUMA! will make a contribution to improving education; however, this thesis needs to be proven through demonstration and good practice, not claimed as fact without evidence. Those who claim educational benefit and quality of OERs as fact without providing supporting evidence undermine the credence of their own argument amongst sceptics of the OER movement (and it is notable how the vast majority of writing in this area is based on hypothetical examples, not actual experience of better learning taking place).

Many powerful educational concepts (amongst them, open learning, distance education, and e-learning) have lost their transformative potential because they became associated with wild claims about the educational impact they would have that were not borne out in practice. Protagonists of the concept of OERs and associated removal of ‘unnecessary’ licensing restrictions that might govern them could usefully seek to prove this potential through demonstration and good practice not rhetoric. More importantly, though, it is critical to acknowledge that making content free is only one aspect of many required to ensure that the quality of education is systematically transformed and improved. This obvious fact is often lost in the debates that have emerged, thus diverting attention away from the critical broader debate about educational transformation that can be catalysed through discussions on OERs.

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Linked to this concern is the point, noted even by several proponents of the argument against non-commercial restrictions, that the emerging dogmatism being exhibited by opponents of non-commercial restrictions serves only to alienate those who are taking the first tentative steps towards freeing up restrictive licences governing their educational content. This line of thinking holds that a spectrum of licences is necessary to allow people and organizations choice in deciding how best to begin contributing to the growing pool of available OERs. Pragmatically, this seems to make sense. If I am designing a course, and can distribute to learners a specific journal article free of charge, but am not permitted to modify its text, this seems preferable to me than not using it at all if I believe it contains something of value. Likewise, there may also be compelling cases for ensuring that, in certain instances, content that is made available for use should not open for modification, for example journal articles or treatises which report on specific research endeavours or capture a particular perspective in time.

However, a degree of ideological determinism seems to have gripped some members of the OER movement, who argue that any restrictions bar those that their community have defined as ‘legitimate’ should be resisted. Apart from the obvious pragmatic problems associated with such extreme positions, the additional problem is that they lead to extended, highly technical debates about fine points of detail in increasingly complex licensing regimes. These often confuse and alienate many otherwise powerful allies. Thus, it is not only the dogmatism of the position that alienates many people, but also the banality of the arguments that are being waged. It would seem to be more logical to create a spectrum of licensing options and then engage constructively to try to persuade those with more conservative approaches to freeing up content about the educational and business merits of less restrictive approaches, rather than rejecting all options bar the ‘right’ one out of hand.

Given this, it is important to consider why the issue of non-commercial restrictions has become such so charged. It is interesting in this context to note that a growing number of proponents of the argument against non-commercial restrictions work in the field of technology, not education. ‘E-learning’ became proselytized by technology carpet-baggers, leading to large-scale wastage of finances on inappropriate technological investments that promised revolutionary change. Massive haemorrhaging of educational finances on poorly conceptualized technology investments continues today, while meaningful systemic examples of technology investments that can be demonstrated to have had a large-scale impact on the quality of learning remain thin on the ground.

Of course, many of the proponents of free content are not selling technologies in this traditional sense, so the obvious commercial rationale would seem not to apply to the ‘non- commercial restrictions’ debate. However, many of these people are seeking to create large-scale online communities of users whose chief characteristic is that they cost next to nothing to maintain. It is important to realize here that, outside education, new business models are underpinning several technology companies who operate in this way. These companies develop business models by ‘monetizing’ online communities and the vast quantities of information they generate and exchange, predominantly by delivering these audiences to advertisers. Some have failed, but there have been some spectacular commercial successes, such as YouTube and MySpace. Importantly, almost all – including Google – focused first on building a community and only worried about ‘monetizing’ it when they had reached a certain critical mass. We should not be so naïve as to believe that similar results are not a possible outcome of OER communities of learners and educators.

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There is no problem per se with this commercialization of Internet audiences, but we remain sceptical of the often excessive educational claims of people building such communities online and the accompanying vehemence with which they argue that these communities can only work if they adhere to specific pre-defined commercial principles. Ultimately and even with the best of intentions, the people building the technological platforms to sustain online OER communities will work to create business models to sustain their technology, not to serve the interests of education (and it is not yet clear that these two interests will always be in alignment, although it is perfectly possible that they may be). While some of the early adherents of these arguments may have the best interests of education at heart, it is worth learning from history and remaining open to the possibility that – until new financial models for sustaining these educational ‘commons’ communities are established – a significant risk exists that those communities might be coopted to serve narrow commercial interests at the expense of education. Equally, we should remain ever vigilant of the reality that consumer societies depend on creating consumers, as well as demand for products through advertising, and this is an increasingly powerful commercial force on the Internet. It would be sad indeed to see the massive educational potential of the Internet, its burgeoning wealth of freely available content, and the emerging collaborative tools of web 2.0 platforms erode in the developing world because we bought into a false commercial argument about the importance of ensuring that educational interactions be kept ‘open for business’ without understanding and defining what type of business we are talking about and how exactly education will benefit. Truly, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Thus, the value of the VUMA! OER Portal will need to be measured, in practical terms, against the extent to which it advances the three objectives that outlined at the beginning of this section of the paper and the principles of operation that govern VUMA’s OER communities will need to be driven by this imperative, rather than by dogma. In the developing world, particularly, we should also be highly sceptical of those in the developed world who purport to speak on our behalf, mostly without any meaningful consultation, about the benefits their work will bring us. Education is a social investment, and should be protected as such if it is truly to fulfil its potential in creating a more equal world. This makes it critical to find practical ways to build business models that will ensure the success of the online educational commons on VUMA! Critically, VUMA’s OER community space will seek to accept that – until this new model is established – we will need to retain open minds and a spirit of compromise in engaging the interests of different parties seeking to open access to educational content.

6 ConclusionAt this stage of VUMA’s development, it is not yet possible to tell whether or not the work we have done will create vibrant, robust communities of practice in South African higher education. The site has only just been launched and marketing has not yet begun in earnest. However, already some key lessons have emerged that are worth sharing. These can be summarized as follows:1) It is critical to begin with careful analysis of how the target users are and what the

‘value proposition’ of a Portal such as this will be that encourages them to visit the site and become regular users/contributors.

2) There is a plethora of readily accessible research on web and Portal design that can be used to fast-track the process of defining appropriate principles to underpin the design of a Portal such as VUMA!

3) The advantages of using FOSS web platforms lies predominantly in their openness and not their cheapness. This openness does indeed justify investment in FOSS platforms, but using them ‘cheaply’ will only be possible if one is prepared to operate within the

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constraints of their pre-defined functionality, which is typically not a viable option. Customization of this functionality can be time-consuming and expensive, particularly in cases where documentation is poor.

4) VUMA! reflects an attempt to harness the potential of Web 2.0 technologies to create inter-institutional communities of practice in South African higher education. Although we are confident that the principles underpinning the design of this Portal are robust, it is not yet possible to tell whether this venture will succeed.

5) Review of the OER movement indicates a need to take account of the following key lessons:a) It will be valuable for South African higher education institutions to play a proactive

role in determining where and how the concept of OERs can benefit education systems in the developing world, rather than leaving this to developed world actors who purport to speak on behalf of the developing world.

b) There are significant risks associated with the carpet-bagging mentality of many technology platform developers operating in this field, particularly regarding the commercial models that they propose that may turn education into another space for marketing consumer goods to learners and educators and thus giving preference to community interactions that facilitate this marketing process. To counteract this, it will be critical to develop solid, educationally based business models for the OER concept.

c) We believe that OER platforms are best supported by flexibility in approaching the challenging issue of licensing, allowing users choice in deciding the terms on which they are willing to make content they have developed available for use by others.

We believe that VUMA! is an interesting and exciting initiative, which is poised to make a significant impact on higher education in South Africa. We hope it will come to be seen as a resource for use by the South African higher education community in general, not just for FOTIM member institutions, and invite all interested parties to work with us to shape its future direction and ensure its success.

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7 References

ANDERSON, C. (2006) The long tail : why the future of business is selling less of more, New York, Hyperion.

ATKINS, D. E., BROWN, J. S. & HAMMOND, A. L. (2007) A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities. Hewlett Foundation.

WIKIPEDIA (2006) Web 2.0.