iBerry

Although a truly Open Global Education Network (OGEN) is not yet a reality, it is useful in clarifying aims and objectives to consider what exists of its beginnings in the present and what the future could or should bring. At present, the 'Open Global Education' part of OGEN is mainly represented by Open Courseware (OCW) and, no doubt, this is a good foundation. Certainly, the popularity of today's OCW, in spite of its shortcomings, points to a huge global demand for inexpensive Higher Education by many people with different needs, expectations and backgrounds. Other desirable parts of the educational process such as expert tuition, interaction among students or learning assessment are not nearly so well supported by any sort of infrastructure that could be called open, or free of the usual geographical and political constraints imposed by current systems of Higher Education.

The 'Network' part seems the weakest bit of OGEN at the present time. Nodes, such as university OCW websites, often hyperlink from their courseware to other nodes (websites) but usually only to casually reference supporting material rather than to incorporate essential content from a different node as part of a main thread. Ideally, OGEN would draw the best content from whichever network node was appropriate, provide the best (human) expert tuition available whenever the user needed it and maintain connection with a manageable (by the user) group of fellow students for whatever level of interaction he or she was comfortable with. The user would be then be presented with a personalized and seamless educational experience with no awkward leaps back and forth from one walled-garden to another along with jarring changes of style and presentation. Of course the devil is in the detail but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility to customize such a service for a given user or even automate it using some sort of intelligent agent (an 'edubot'?). The network would require aggregation of open educational and other resources on a scale not yet approached and also a herculean effort to manage and maintain but, provided standards were open and adhered to, much of the the effort could be distributed over a large network of nodes, many of which would be specialist in nature according to the particular interests and expertise of those involved.

Can we move from the embryonic edu-nets of today to something far more open and universal like OGEN? The present chaotic state of flux, where different models for e-learning and other associated functions are proposed, tried, tested, abandoned if found wanting, is an exciting and productive evolutionary process but survival of the fittest can lead to a number of scenarios – including that of a single survivor in the shape of a corporate monster! Greater integration and co-operation between educational websites of all shapes, sizes and functions must surely offer the best chance of strengthening edu-net connections (beyond today's simple hyperlinking, RSS and the like) and fostering a richer multi-way exchange of information and resources between nodes and users. And maybe edu-walled-gardens with their passwords, closed content and privileged access might even fade and die as providers recognise the impossibility of achieving anything like OGEN that is not free and open.