Your post has inadvertently made me realise how many holes there were in mine – I’ll try and rectify that with a follow-up post today at some stage

First off “walled gardens” was not the term I should have used, since it wasn’t really what I meant.

For the record, via Wikipedia:

“A walled garden, with regards to media content, refers to a closed set or exclusive set of information services provided for users (a method of creating a monopoly or securing an information system).”

Certainly walled gardens exist in academia – just think of the LMS for example – but what I had actually intended to discuss was the notion of heavy branding and ownership over the ideas and the words.

At least in higher education these days, the sector is highly competitive, with each uni seeking to set themselves apart and above their counterparts to gain more appeal in the eyes of prospective students, funding bodies, etc. So couching research and innovation as something that is closely tied back to the institution as opposed to part of a sector-wide exploratory endeavour, is seen as the better option.

In saying this though I realise that this argument (at least for the moment) is just an opinion of mine that needs to be properly supported by evidence. Hopefully I’ll manage to find some In the meantime take it with a grain of salt…

I’m an open source sympathiser and believe that anything that can be made publicly available, should be; and that this should be done without strings attached. Certainly there will be instances where transparency isn’t appropriate; but the rest of the time I think sharing of information is really important.

This does raise the question of the purpose of an institution then – and I’ll need to ponder this further. As you said, what are people paying for if not a unique experience at the institution.

Your point about not everyone having internet access is another really important topic to be discussed as well, and I don’t believe I’ve seen any mention of it in CCK08 so far. If one of the core tenets of Connectivism is that people seek to “extend our humanity through technology”, but some people have less access to technology than others, what are the implications of this. And equally importantly, how do you design learning pathways that consider inequities like this?

I’ll give this some thought on the way in to work – for now I’ve gotta dash. Thanks for pointing out the holes in my argument

Cheers,

Mike