Epiphany: Adopting open education

On an extended trip to my family home in August, the rolling landscape and relaxed time with loved ones gave me the mental space I needed to shift perspective on my startup VerdantLearn. In the early hours one morning, awake and restless, I had an epiphany:

I am finally free to follow my heart and release online courses openly

Rather than locking my teaching content behind paywalls or copyright notices, I can make some or all of it available under an open licence for anyone to study and/or teach it, for free! Ever since this realisation, I’m driven to figure out how to make this dream a reality whilst still running a successful business.

This revelation is transforming the way I approach my business. To adopt openness as a core principle for my company raises many questions. For example:

• How risky a decision is this commercially?
• Where else does my value lie if it’s not solely embodied in my learning materials?
• How do I generate an income if I give away learning materials for free?
• Should I worry about commercial exploitation of my work by others?
• How can I incentivize collaborators in the absence of a paywall protecting their IP (Intellectual Property)?

I will attempt to answer some of these questions in future posts. For now, the more I learn, discuss and think about openness, the more strongly I believe that adopting open education principles will bring benefits to my company and my clients, as well as the wider conservation community.

Adopting openness may be a gamble, but at this point in my life I have the luxury of being able to take risks. I grew up in an affluent country, with access to social and financial capital that many lack. I recognise this means I can make choices about my life that are not open to everyone. To ‘give away’ my learning materials openly feels almost a moral imperative - one small way to contribute to rebalancing the injustices of geography, race and class. Rather than picture this as a one-way flow of knowledge from me to learners, I hope and expect that opening up my learning materials for anyone to contribute and re-work will spark a collaborative endeavour, shaping the learning to suit the collective priorities and interests of wildlife conservationists globally.

This won’t be an easy journey, but I never expected that being the founder of a startup would be easy!

What matters most is that by doing this, I believe I will find my ‘tribe’, and we will face any challenges with the energy of our shared conviction