A2K2 Working groups page
From A2K Wiki
Note: This page can only be edited if you are logged in. contact us to create a login .
Working Groups, Strategy Sessions, and more
We are pleased to announce that there will be smaller rooms available all day Friday and Saturday, and Sunday afternoon of the conference for those participants who are interested in organizing public working groups, private strategy sessions, or other movement-building meetings. As room space is limited, we are asking that those who would like to organize such meetings send room requests to katherine [dot] mcdaniel [at] yale.edu, please use the subject title: A2K2 room request.
For public working groups: Please also send Katherine a brief description of the working group, along with an links to resources, which might be useful to participants. Katherine will post this information along with the date, time, and room number of the meeting on the working group page of the A2K2 wiki (http://research.yale.edu/isp/a2k/wiki/index.php/A2K2_Working_groups_page#Public_Working_Groups). We encourage those who are interested in attending these meetings to add their names to the participant lists.
For private strategy sessions: Katherine will send you a room, date, and time confirmation, but no information will be posted. Organizers will be responsible for disseminating the information to invitees.
Public Working Groups
Title: Public Service Development of ICT’s
Facilitator: Steve Anderson, Simon Fraser School of Communication
Location: Saturday, April 28 12:15-1:30, Room 112
One tactic we can use in our effort to create a knowledge commons is to move ICT’s to non-profit, public service control. While regulatory bodies at the local, state, national and supranational level remain key sites for public intervention, directly developing a public services communications system is an additional powerful instrument that can be used to open access to knowledge. One of the major barriers to this effort is developing sustainable, accessible funding mechanisms. Relying on private or public sector support remains problematic for many reasons. Manifesting an open non-profit public service communications system requires a commitment from public service organizations and institutions to develop it with their own resources.
Steve Anderson will lead a discussion on strategies we can use to develop non-profit, public service oriented ICT’s. Steve will advance his Public Service Media Trust (PSMT) funding model. PSMT’s is a new funding mechanism that can be used for the development of democratically controlled ICT’s. A PSMT is a funding body financed by government, labour, citizens, foundations, institutions (churches, universities), and NGO’s. James Curran and others who have put forth the creation of public trusts have conceived of single national public trusts primarily funded through the state. In contrast, Steve Anderson advocates for a decentralized network of community PSMT’s set up to provide service to particular geographical regions. Each PSMT would have its own board made up of different sponsors including several spaces for directors elected by citizen members. The end result might look something like the board of governor’s set up for the Norwegian public broadcasting system where governors are chosen from a diverse range of political and social groups. Due to structural shifts that are taking place (globalization), we can now pursue what Pieterse calls "novel mixed forms of cooperation". We can and should take advantage of our new social environment by developing public service media trusts supported by a diverse group of structures integrated together by their common interest in a an open and accessible communications system.
Participants
- Add your name here!
Title: Reviving the Apprenticeship Model in Education, Or… How OpenCourseWare Can Contribute to a Reformation in Higher Education Pedagogies
Facilitators: Nick Bartine, Joseph Hardin – University of Michigan OCW
Location: Saturday, April 28 11:00-12:00, Room 111
The OpenCourseWare movement has not accelerated as quickly as many of us had hoped. The high costs of supporting an institution-wide OCW effort are blocking efforts to unlock the huge educational resources currently locked up in thousands of universities and colleges. MIT has perfected one specific approach to creating a viable OpenCourseWare (OCW) system that involves top-down visioning, implementation and management, and a cost per course around $10-20,000. We at the University of Michigan believe that a sustainable OCW system can emerge with a focused, distributed combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches. An OCW initiative at a large, public institution like Michigan is constrained both by funding concerns and sheer scale of course offerings (over 5000 a year). Ongoing empirical analysis and creative thinking will be necessary to attain the level of success demonstrated by MIT's project. How does Michigan (and similar institutions) build a scalable, adoptable, and, most importantly, sustainable OCW system at a cost-efficient operating level? What are the unique challenges the adopters of a collaborative, bottom-up philosophy encounter?
Members from the University of Michigan OCW Exploratory Team will lead a discussion focused on strategies for creating a hybrid centrally-supported and grassroots, sustainable OCW system. We will advance a model based upon student involvement as OCW co-producers that may offer the key to sustainability. A number of questions prompt consideration and discussion: What happens when we encourage, support and integrate student efforts into the larger effort to create an OCW environment? What incentives do students have to participate in such a project? How can the OCW process facilitate greater interaction between faculty and the students they teach, and how might this phenomenon catalyze new relationships and champion collaborative apprenticeships at the earliest possible instance? Can OCW be a key to refocusing faculties on mentoring and not just the production of course materials? An evolving educational paradigm of participatory pedagogy is an exciting development that informs a contemporary vision of multi-directional learning. Students can play an integral part in shaping how faculty view their own contributions to academia, not only in how they approach teaching itself, but how educational material is created and shared. The implications and opportunities presented by OCW systems inform our ever-changing approach to the transformation of higher education, and the creation of a globally available set of quality educational content.
Participants
- add your name here!
Open Access and Overlay Services: Evaluating technology, establishing market value and developing business models
Facilitator: Chris Armbruster, Executive Director, Research Network 1989 (http://www.cee-socialscience.net/1989/), chris.armbruster (at) eui.eu
Location: Sunday, April 29, from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM, Room 110
Description:
This is a call for collaboration with the aim of building a transcontinental team to tackle the most pressing question for OA: How to enhance certification services (peer review) and build navigation service while reinforcing open access to research articles and data? And how to do this in a timely manner before 'content holders' seeking to maximise their monopoly rents lock us into a closed access solution?
As my work will reveal, I am influenced by the initiators and drivers behind the 'Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities' and collaborate with some of the pioneers of OA in the social and cultural sciences, especially across Europe. I also have a working relationship with the Director of the Max Planck Digital Library.
Ever since the Royal Society and Henry Oldenbourg published the Philosophical Transactions in 1665, scholarly communication has been organised through the peer-reviewed printed journal. In the Gutenberg Galaxy of printed books and journals, peer review was a ‘labour of love’ and the printing and distribution the cost factor. In the www galaxy, electronic distribution is cheap but certification is expensive. Technology and economics favour the severance of certification (peer review) from distribution (electronic). Indeed, pioneer services such as ArXiV, RePEc and SSRN have demonstrated that electronic distribution may be organised in a cost-efficient manner that is free to both authors and readers (Armbruster 2006).
Industry experts estimate average first copy costs for the traditional ‘Oldenbourg model’ at $3500-4000 per article (STM and ALPSP 2006) while arXiv, RePEC and SSRN report first copy costs of ca. $5 per article.
Overlay services exist in a complementary relationship to the increasing salience of open access in scientific publishing and data provision. These new digital overlay services encompass certification (as staged and possibly interactive peer review – improved quality), literature and data awareness services (for structured reading and usage – increased efficiency) and new software tools (e.g. for text mining – enhanced scope with structurally new ways of handling publications and data).
A precedent is the legislation to free up the re-use public sector information by new commercial players (Directive 2003/98/EC). Estimates of market value range from €10 to 48 billion, with a mean value of €27 billion, corresponding to approximately 0.25% of total aggregated GDP (MEPSIR 2006). Economic modelling of the potential impact of the open access is under way. Assuming that open access delivers a maximum increase in accessibility and efficiency (i.e. 10%), a first estimate of the rate of return (based on the Solow-Swan growth model and assuming a rate of return to R&D from 25% to 75%) would be for France $2.0-6.2bn, Germany $3.0-9.2bn, Italy $0.9-2.7bn, the UK $1.7-5.3bn and the whole of the OECD $37-111bn (Houghton and Sheehan 2006, in USDPPP). Open Access and Overlay Services Full Description
participants:
- Interested in participating in this working group? Add yourself here!
A2K@IGF Dynamic Coalition Meeting 28 April:
Facilitators: Robin Gross, IP Justice Executive Director < robin(at)ipjustice.org >
Description: We have reservations at a popular pizza/nightclub spot in New Haven called Bar (http://www.barnightclub.com/) at 7 p.m. Saturday night. We will meet by the Wall Street exit of the law school and walk to Bar together at 6:45 p.m.
A2K@IGF Dynamic Coalition Website:
http://www.a2k-igf.org/
Join the A2K@IGF Dynamic Coalition Mailing List for more info: http://mailman.ipjustice.org/listinfo/a2k-igf
participants:
- Interested in participating in this working group? Add yourself here!
A2K VidSpace: Screenings and Interviews
Location and Time: Room 113, throughout the conference.
Facilitator: Sasha Costanza-Chock, Indymedia Video Distribution Network.
Description: The A2K movement, like every movement, is built not only of policy battles and formal coalitions but also in the realm of imagery, discourse, propaganda and counterpropaganda. The VidSpace will be devoted all weekend to screening, discussing, recording and uploading video by, for, against, from, or about the A2K movement. When no organized use of the space is taking place, videos from www.thought-thieves.org will be looping. At other times scheduled screenings or conversations will take place, as well as video interviews with conference participants. All interviews will be made available online for remix and incorporation into a larger collaborative documentary process.
participants:
- Want to screen your video at a particular time, or want to see a screening of a particular work? Make a note here!
- Want to be interviewed at a particular time? Add yourself here.
