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 For our purposes, the OPLI is the set of organizational practices, technical infrastructure, and social norms that collectively provide for the smooth operation of high-quality open learning in distributed, distance-independent ways. All three are objects of design and engineering; the creation of a successful infrastructure will fail if any one is ignored.

Other excellent resources for informing the design of the OPLI initiative are the papers, presentations, and diverse community of experts who came together at the National Academies Washington in January for two days of shared learning at the Designing Cyberinfrastructure for Collaboration and Innovation conference. The website includes a large number of relevant resources already and will be augmented as the final papers are available. The talks that were mostly highly relevant to an OPLI, were:
 * Infrastructure for Knowledge and Innovation
 * Designing the Virtual Organization
 * Technology-Enabled Knowledge
 * The Ecology and Design of “Open”
 * Between Public and Private: Bridges, Fences, and New Terrain
 * Pooling and Integration
 * Architecting the Knowledge Commons
 * Standards Development under Pressure
 * Aligning Patents and Knowledge

So what is the Open Participatory Learning Infrastructure that we are promoting as a platform on which the world can build what we have called learning ecosystems or cultures of learning? The ecosystem analogy may be the most vivid. In science an ecosystem is defined as a dynamic system in which living organisms interact with one another and with their environment. These interactions can be very complex and take many forms. Organisms prey on one another; compete for nutrients; have parasitic or symbiotic relationships; wax and wane; prosper and decline. And an ecosystem is never static; it’s in a state of perpetual ferment. Learning on an OPLI platform should similarly always be in a state of perpetual ferment.