As some of you know I recently did a permaculture course and I believe some permaculture principles could be applied to sustainability in OER, since one definition for permaculture is “growing food sustainably.” The analogy would be “growing learning resources sustainably.”

I believe this is what is being achieved in Edward Gehringer’s student-generated wiki text book model , presented at the Educause online conference some weeks back (see http://www.personal.psu.edu/asg102/blogs/portfolio/2011/02/crowdsourcing-a-textbook-via-a.html.

Two permaculture principles that come to mind regarding OER are,  do it yourself (DIY), and, stacking functions (e.g. planning for “killing two birds with one stone”).  Both of these  and other permaculture principles would seem to apply to sustainable models for learning resource creation and maintenance.

The “DIY” aspect is the intelligent and equitable use of supervised student labour.  I believe equity is achieved through a completely transparent evaluation and review system. A multi-stage review process is used that involves students, academics and external experts.

The “stacking function” aspect is achieved through the intensive student-student, student-instructor and student-content interaction that is required in the process, which also then has a powerful pedagogic benefits in addition to creating and maintaining the resource.

The academic would need to be ready, willing and able to take on supervisory and possibly curatorial functions, rather than to serve primarily as content expert.

The institution would need to support participating academics by rewarding the ongoing supervision of a text book more than activities academics are otherwise rewarded for, i.e. research, publishing, teaching, administration and other. Impossible of course.

However in Cuba, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent loss of Soviet-supplied chemical fertilizers and pesticides, agriculture reverted in order to survive to traditional (organic and labour-intensive) methods. Ironically this has now resulted in agro-tourism and food security and other benefits. Arguably one of these has been the rise in social stature of the heretofore lowly farmer. In feudal Japan also the peasant was a protected class, since society depends on food production. Maybe institutions in the near future will be obliged to adopt such radical changes, starting in the institution’s own back yard.

A further role for institutions would be to coordinate production across discipline areas and negotiate sharing of resources among cooperating institutions.  This would be an exciting way of collaborating, INHO.

The “community garden” approach, once established, would be extremely economical ; not dependent on outside funding; focused; high quality; pedagogically powerful; creating synergies at all levels; and would add to the brand of participating institutions.

If you need some assurance that miracles are possible through the application of permaculture principles, check out “Greening the Desert” (Part I): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzTHjlueqFI

Regards,

Michael