Free Software in higher education

Recently, universities have became aware of possibilities to use the free software in education. Experiences of the use of free software in higher education needs to be documented and disseminated to make it more easy to use free software in different learning environments.

Traditional practices of software procurement, use, implementation and administration in higher educational institutions are problematic because of costly licensing policies, ineffective user training and poor user involvement in software development and adaption processes. Proprietary software licensing policies are also encouraging software piracy and hindering peoples creativity and innovation.

In this article we describe an action research framework for introduction, use and evaluation of free software in higher education institutions in Tanzania and Norway, based on Lewin's action research model (Baskerville & Myers, 2004). The actions we have proposed might imply changes in infrastructure (hardware, communication networks), management of information systems and learning environment at both universities. The evaluation of this action research framework can also include comparative aspects based on the conceptualization. The action research framework includes analysis and fact finding, conceptualization, planning and implementation of action, as well as evaluation, reflection and learning.

A work on finding traces of different groups / actants at two universities (one tanzanian and one norwegian) relevant to creation of communities that might focus on requirements, selection, implementation and customization of free software is in progress as a part of the analysis and fact finding. Representatives from groups like managers, lecturers, researchers, students (both master and bachelor) are potential community members.

At this point some informal interviews of faculty members and students at the tanzanian university has been done to discover familiarity of the actors with the concept of free software and to define requirements for functionalities based on the percieved needs of lecturers and researchers. Student experiences with the free software related courses at a norwegian university is documented based on course evaluation (two courses about free software). The current situation of free software assets at the universities has also been investigated.

Conceptualization will be implemented based on the documented experiences of the community members (including all three authors of this proposal). Authors are writing diaries and collecting other documents created in the action research process (like description of the infrastructure or software assets used at universities). As a general framework, we suggest to use the Gabriel Tarde's approach to the practical social research, where he describes all learning (adoption of practices) as a process consisting of the three phases, - repetition, opposition and adoption (Tarde, 1889). Effects from those three phases can be described in a setting of communities of practice (Wenger et al., 2002).

Regarding the planning of the actions, we will introduce changes in the infrastructure, management practices and learning environment. The main changes planned are to (1) install free software (mainly required from lecturers and students) in existing infrastructures both in Tanzania and Norway, (2) involve the managers into the process and getting an acept from those to make free software gradually (and modulary) available to the lecturers and students, (3) test the free software on students and lecturers.

To implement the action we will establish communities of practice and facilitate those so that they are able to create a creative and learning environment. Where necessary, we will use a discourse and try to obtain consensus about the baseline of use of free software in higher education. In the evaluation part we will evaluate our conceptual model and interpret it as neutrally as possible (not be able to be neutral is considered as one of the main drawbacks of action research). This paper will provide some conclusion about an added value for individuals at the universities that use free software.

Experiments "Experiment implies the idea of a variation or disturbance that an investigator brings into the conditions of natural phenomenon ..." (Bernard, 1865). Our action research approach can also be described by series of experiments, - changes of infrastructure, variations in management of information systems and innovation of learning environment. One could argue if an organization like an educational institution can be considered as a natural phenomenen. It is usually defined as a social phenomenon and this distinction between natural and social is common in comtemporary scientific tradition. Latour (2002) mentions that Gabriel Tarde formulated for more than a century ago that the nature and society divide is irrelevant for understanding the world of human interactions. So, an university can be considered as a natural phenomenon, but it remains to show how it potentially originates from natural human activities. "European Commission (2003) claims that universities have a unique role to play in the knowledge societies and this role refers to the combination of three activities by universities (i.e. human activities) which are functional for the knowledge society: the production of knowledge (research), the transmission of knowledge (education), and the additional training and regional development." (Simons and Masschelein, 2007). African universities have other challenges, but to legitemize themselves in a global world they are forced to follow the same basic principles.

The research and (higher-)education, in the information intensive society, which is enabled by information and communication technologies, are not longer only the university domain. Communities, like those producing free and open source software, are also strong contributors to the knowledge society. One of the mantras of the free and open source software communities is "an absolute commitment to the open sharing of information", and is not very different to basic principle of production of scientific material. In addition, the communities plays also a great role in (online) training and can, both directly and indirectly contribute to the regional development, like for example in the Spanish district of Extremadura (Broersma, 2006). Some african universities has also partly adopted free and open source software (OSA, 2007).

The first experiment, - changes in infrastructure at a norwegian university, has been a lingering process. At the beginning of 1990s, the most of the software at the universities in Norway, used in research and education, was UNIX-based. At the end of 1990s, the most of the UNIX-based software were replaced by Microsoft Windows applications (software). Impractical software purchasing procedures and costly licensing policies hindered a development of flexible learning environments, especially for the information technology and information systems students. At the particular norwegian university a computer lab with computers with Linux operationg system installed, was made available for students at 2004. The university's IT-service in cooperation with several representatives from faculty staff has now (2008) established a virtual server pool running Linux operating system and is offering the students and researchers different services, - both customization of existing free and open source software modules and development of own software. The software modules available at the universities servers are subversion, drupal, moodle, mediawiki, ruby on rails, python, perl and general LAMP (Linux Apache MySql PHP) environment.

The implementation (repetition) of similar experiment is just started at an african university. Informal interview results shows that the lecturers and students are interested in different services offered by information systems department at the university. Among others, the software modules for mathematics, statistics, project management, relational database management systems and learning management were mentioned.

The biggest challenge is communication between the IT-department and the representatives from the various faculties at both universities (norwegian and african). To establish an infrastructure that is flexible and at the same time cost-effective is difficult. That leads to the other experiment, - introduction of variations in the management of information systems as a whole.

The approach we will suggest is based on adoption of free and open source modules and gradually aquiring competence about those modules in a direct collaboration between the two universities and involvement of actors from the free and open source communities. We have established communications to the Skolelinux project and Moodle global communities.

The third experiment is to actually use the implemented policies (Management Information Systems related) and software modules (infrastructure) in research and education. At the norwegian university the students have already adopted several free and open source software modules. At the african university the process is just starting.

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