Smarthistory: The Blog

The University of Illinois, Springfield, is running a Massively Open Online Course – a MOOC (organized by Ray Schroeder). If you’ve never heard of a MOOC, read Marc Parry’s article in the Wired Campus blog. This MOOC is  “devoted to examining the state of online education and where e-learning is heading.”

What I’ve been wondering for a while (and even commented on a blog post on elearnspace, but my comment wasn’t posted), is why the the presenters are so overwhelmingly male.

Here’s the list:

Ray Schroeder (UIS) Moderator
Bruce Chaloux (SREB)
Bob Hansen (UPCEA)
Witt Salley (MoDLA)
Karen Swan (UIS) Moderator
Phil Ice (APUS)
Ben Arbaugh (UWOSH)
Michael Cheney (UIS) Moderator
Alexandra Pickett (SUNY)
Bethany Bovard (NMSU)
Nic Bongers (Oakland U.)
Glenda Morgan (UIUC) Moderator
David Middleton (Seton Hall U.)
Patricia McGee (U. Texas San Antonio)
Cable Green (Creative Commons)
Larry Ragan (PSU World Campus)
Jeff Newell (IL Com College Board)
Shari McCurdy Smith (UIS) Moderator
George Siemens (Athabasca)
Jason Rhode (NIU)
Shari McCurdy Smith (UIS) Moderator
Karen Vignare (MSU)
Linda C. Smith (UIUC)
Curt Bonk (IU)
Bruce Chaloux (SREB)
Seb Schmoller (ALT UK)

By my count, that’s 7 women to 18 men.

Geez and I thought education was woman’s work…

Today marks the mid-point of our crowdsourcing experiment in fundraising on Kickstarter and we thought that was a good opportunity for an update.

We are hearing from new teachers nearly every week who are adopting Smarthistory.org and in the past 31 days (January 13 to February 12), our site has been visited 81,684 times by people in 154 countries. This map shows the percentage of new visitors around the world during the past month (darker = a higher percentage). Free and open education works thanks to our generous supporters.

Google Analytics map showing the percentage of new visitors to Smarthistory.org 1/13/11-2/12/11

As of a few minutes ago, 197 amazing people have pledged to Smarthistory and with 22 days to go, we only need to raise an additional $1,028 to make our goal. Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing platform, so this project is driving us a little crazy, and we look forward to breathing again when we cross the goal threshold.

The Smarthistory.org Kickstarter campaign launched one week ago and we wanted to offer an update to our amazing contributors and a little kick for our supporters who have not yet given.

First, a huge THANK YOU to all that share our vision for open educational resources (OERs) and for Smarthistory. We see a very bright future for education where problems with access diminish thanks to extremely high quality OERs. In our own field, we see a future where art museums, libraries, colleges and universities no longer produce content primarily for their own students and visitors but instead develop systems where resources are pooled to create more comprehensive resources for a much larger audience of learners.

In the meantime there is our little project, Smarthistory. We are already reaching across institutional boundaries to create historical narratives and hope the crowd-sourced funding model that Kickstarter has pioneered will be the engine for our growth. Maybe, if we are successful, other OERs will take this path.

Our focus now has to be meeting our $10,000 goal since Kickstarter is an all or nothing structure. We have had an amazing week and have already raised $4,455 toward our goal, but if we only raise, for example $9,000, the project doesn’t fund and Smarthistory get nothing.

Most of those reading this have already given and so this is preaching to the choir, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t end with an appeal, please encourage your friends and colleagues to watch our video and support the free and open education that Smarthistory.org offers. Thank you.

Two good friends of mine started up a project called SmartHistory (smarthistory.org), that just may be the most “open” organization I know of.

“Smarthistory.org is a free and open, not-for-profit, art history textbook. We use multimedia to deliver unscripted conversations between art historians about the history of art. We are seeking contributors—especially for canonical non-Western material and other survey topics not yet covered. We welcome comments, feedback and corrections.” The site has won some pretty impressive accolades:

- Webby Award: Best Education Website
- PC Magazine, Top 100 Websites
- Gold Award, AVICOM, International Council of Museums (ICOM)
- Mindshare Award, for history, 2nd place
- Exploratorium, Ten Cool Websites
- Communication Arts magazine webpick of the week

In addition to several articles:

- The Chronicle of Higher Education: ‘Smarthistory’ Rethinks the Art-History Textbook Online
- The Huffington Post: Smarthistory
- EdTech Digest: Taking a Close Look at Smarthistory
- Communication Arts: Webpick of the Week
- 2010 Horizon Report

I think this project embodies many of the attributes I think are necessary to Open,

- reuse: their work is available through the Open Educational Resources Commons and Creative Commons licensed.

- collaboration: decision-making is influenced by and emerges from the community

- self-organization: they accept content from anyone on anything (open participation), and anyone can take on any role (open organization)

- transparency: all of their activities are exposed, e.g. projects and funding, (open access)

- openness: the direction for development is based on the interests and activities of the contributors and community

What is interesting, is that Smarthistory is eating their own open dog food with financing too. They have recently started up a Kickstarter campaign (http://kck.st/hhRyA6) to raise money for ongoing production/support costs. I like the idea of this approach, which to me resembles a meritocracy–where value (in this case an Art History text) is directly determined by the community (i.e. Art educators, students and institutions). Ideally (and I mean, “in an ideal manner”), if an open project can mature through the contribution of content, code, intellectual property, etc., why can’t it mature through donations? This allows me, a non-art historian without content to contribute, who does not have the time/skill to support their production, to be a “developer.” I think this is much different than seeking partners and sponsorships, who may direct development away from the interests of the community. Smarthistory adheres to the philosophy that the value/relevance/quality of the project is directly determined by the commitment of the community. For me I am wondering if this level of openness should be something I include in my own definition.

Patrick

P.S. you can become a developer to at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/360446359/smarthistory-art-history-conversation

Patrick Masson
Chief Technology Officer, UMassOnline

Originally posted on the Openness listserv at Educause