Page:The battle for open.pdf/16

 of which education is only one aspect. As the Open Knowledge Foundation states, 'We want to see open knowledge being a mainstream concept, and as natural and important to our everyday lives and organisations as green is today' (OKFN n.d).

The focus on education allows the battle for open to be explored in detail across four examples, although many of these intersect with the wider open movement, such as open access to published articles and the release of research data. Unlike some sectors which have had openness rather foisted upon them as a result of the digital ­revolution–for example, the music industry and the arrival of sharing services such as Napster–­higher education has sought to develop open practices in a range of areas.

It is this scope that makes it such a vibrant area of study, encompassing publishing, teaching, technology, individual practices, broadcast and engagement. There is much that is relevant for other sectors here also, where one or more of these topics will be applicable, but rarely the entire range. It is frequently stated that higher education can learn lessons from other sectors that have been impacted by the digital revolution, such as newspapers, but the opposite may be true with regards to openness; other sectors can learn much from what is played out in the openness debate in higher education.

What are the key areas of interest, then, with regards to ­openness and higher education? Each of these will be explored in a chapter of their own, but the main developments are summarised below.

The advent of MOOCs has garnered a lot of attention recently. Originally developed as an experimental method of exploring the possibilities of networked learning, MOOCs became the subject