Landing : Athabascau University

Creative Commons Open Sharing Spirit in Business of Education Jungle

Just some small questions in the spirit of open sharing...

What ever happened to diversity of applications in education?

While educational institutions rush to monocultures, where is the will to explore, invent, and experiment with alternative applications, in particular the plethora of open source software?

AU leadership has dived into Microsoft adoption as if it is the only choice. Other areas of the institute cling to commercialware, thereby giving up any knowledge to the proprietary algorithms that create the output.

As a student, I am forced to save all my assignments in Microsoft format rather than ODF. None of the references in any course, I have ever taken thus far, are available as a Zotero data file.

My question is this...in particular for the incumbent to the managerial position -  Digital Transformation Architect (http://athabascau.acquiretm.com/job_details_clean.aspx?ID=1329) - if AU cannot accomodate such a universal open source format from LibreOffice, then where are you planning to go with your open LMS? to Blackboard, D2L, or another enterprise commercialware?

Sincerely,

A confused student.

Comments

  • Steve Swettenham February 1, 2018 - 2:51pm

    The arguments against open source applications as equal or more costly than commercialware are pitiful fake news. Any computing application/hardware can be misappropriated to financial ruin.