David Hawkridge

Editorial: Out of this world

As guest editors, we have called this editorial Out of This World because, for many readers, that is what ‘3-D MUVEs’ may seem like! The awkward acronym does not help. Fortunately, Nick Rushby, esteemed editor of this Journal, is open to new ideas. He readily agreed to our proposal for a special issue on the use in higher education of three-dimensional multi-user virtual environments (3-D MUVEs), sometimes called immersive virtual worlds. We decided to write a longer guest editorial than is usual in the British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET) in order to provide an overview, given that 3-D MUVEs are new to many for educational purposes.

Curriculum, intellectual property rights and open educational resources in British universities—and beyond

Is the curriculum in British universities being influenced by decisions about ownership of intellectual property rights (IPR) in ‘open educational resources’ (OERs) that are available online under Creative Commons licenses, free of charge? This paper provides the context for, describes and analyses three significant examples in British higher education where OERs are being created for use by academics and learners on campus or at a distance. OpenLearn and iTunes U, two of the British examples, are drawn from the Open University of the United Kingdom, which teaches over 200,000 undergraduate and graduate students almost entirely at a distance. The third example, OTTER, is at the University of Leicester, a campus university in England with about 7,000 distance learners. Both universities depend on government funding, student fees, research and entrepreneurial income. All three examples are funded indirectly by the British government, though OpenLearn has received substantial US foundation support as well. In presenting these examples, the questions arise of whether the projects are supply- or demand-driven, and of whether they are altruistic or not. Debate over intellectual property rights has influenced creation of the OERs and vice versa, but from these three examples it seems doubtful whether, as yet, OERs and IPR have significantly influenced British universities’ curriculum. The paper ends with discussion of how OERs created in British universities are influencing teaching and learning in other countries, as globalisation advances.

Utopian Universities: a technicist’s dream

Following a brief introduction, our paper is in four main sections. First, we lay out the points on which we agree with James Mazoué’s views expressed in ‘The Deconstructed Campus’. Second, we offer a critique of his views. Third, we consider evidence-based research opportunities for building universities that may incorporate ideas along the lines Mazoué proposes. Fourth, we summarise foreseeable barriers to creating such institutions. Thus our first and second sections are a direct response to Mazoué, while the third and fourth go beyond what he has written. We conclude that Mazoué’s arguments can only be sustained by adopting a technicist’s view, by seeking to control reality. We assert that a technicist is a utopian. Our view is that higher education must be modernised, to improve students’ learning, but through evolution rather than revolution.