Forum .LRN Q&A: dotLRN Grants

Great idea. Wouldn't it make sense to collaborate with NGO's that specialize in this area? I think Circuit Riders, Geekcorps or something in this direction might help. AIESEC might be of help as well, due to the fact that they could reach more universities through their network than most other organisations would. I will contact them about it and maybe they can partner with dotLRN movement to get you participating universities and contacts there. This way your grant proposal might gain even more weigth. Furthermore we can have a look at opportunities that spring up within Europe as the EU is funding initiatives in this direction as well. Or where you looking more into the foundation world for support/grants.

This is just great Al!

Here is what I had in mind. SloanSpace (our instantiation of dotLRN) now serves as our common platform for courses (on-campus and distance) and online communities (students, research, alumni, industry partners). There is a lot of flexibility in the platform. It can be used by colleges and universities for basic course management functions but it can also be used as portal system for online collaboration.

dotLRN should have appeal in the developing nations because commercial products are simply too expensive. But free software is not enough. We have to take into account other barriers to adoption. Most institutions in the developing nations cannot afford the hardware, infrastructure, and support costs associated with implementing a platform like dotLRN.

What I envision is that the grant would fund all the costs associated with installing and running dotLRN for one or two years. This would include hardware, some base infrastructure (e.g. internet line charges), compensation to some staff to learn the system and support faculty, compensation for faculty to learn how to use dotLRN, compensation to the project director, etc.

I am thinking of approaching a couple of Foundations initially and also some vendors (e.g. Sun, IBM, Dell) for things like hardware.

Hi,

This talk of grants etc sounds fantastic!

But, as ever the word of gloom and doom ;o) I'd like to suggest that this kind of granting also came with a caveat. Something like a requirement to contribute to the core in return..

We're talking about getting a test effort going for dotLRN at the moment,and that will not be benefiting from any 'grants' so I'm not entirely convinced of the merit of offering it to anyone else. Don't mis-undertand, I can see the idealogical merit of the idea, but I'm not personally a charity and I although I want to see it adopted, perhaps a more focussed way is to concentrate on its quality/*documentation*/delivery first.

I thought dotLRN was intended as a serious OS player in this field, not as a charity effort to help poorer companies/goverments? This sounds like the case. What is to be gained from adoption in these areas? If they can't afford to purchase a box, are they likely to have sufficient resources to help in its continued development? Is not bringing the cost of owenership down more important than subsidising a high-cost deployment?

So, my question is, should the hard work/effort of a voluntary community, be then passed to others *with* subsidy with no consequent reciprocal benefit in kind?

And, surely, if a decent port to Postgres was in place this would remove much of the infrastructure cost issue anyway? For eveyone. And therefore be a more cost effective way of overcoming that problem?

Hi Malte,

I think I am aware of everything your saying, and, I think you've mis-understood what I'm getting at.

I have no objection to people using open source without contributing.. thats part of the point after all.

I was really questioning whether grants to used in this way were the most *effective* way of increasing adoption.

You could argue that if somewhere was too poor to afford even a modest spec PC to run an instance on, then they are hardly likely to have an overwhelming need for such a sophisticated system. I'd suggest if they were in that much financial difficulty then perhaps there are other more pressing things they'd like to receive grants for?

But whatever the details of the issue, my positon was to suggest that if someones got cash to spend, is this the most effective way to increase adoption? And it was a question rather than an answer :o)

And also, I did relate this to the testing effort. We're being asked to look into getting some good testing going for dotLRN. I think this is a good next step, but I just don't go along with the 'pay people to use the software' approach. Surely if anything moves against open source principles its by a product evolving due to financial incentive, not on merit or peer review.
I appreciate all your comments and ideas about the other areas as well, but I doubt very much as to whether what your suggesting would stand up to any serious financial scrutiny. Therefore surely the 'main' gain would be the wider adoption/enhancement of the toolkit, not the potential commercial gain. And hence my point about shouldn't a grant come with conditions? I think you'd find this to be the case in most other circumstances. i.e. if you had a grant to improve a clubs sports faciltities, you would expect them to agree to make some kind of agreement about how those facilities could be used.

I still think it sounded like 'pay people to make them use it'. Which is marketeering, pure and simple, and therefore if I'm being asked to contribute, I just like to understand what it is I'm contributing to :o)

Simon,

We are not talking about uplifting people in penury. One of these days when someone writes the history of the Internet, people will cite the importance of NSF (National Science Foundation) grants in allowing middle-tier colleges and universities to get connected to the NSF-net backbone. I know. I was at a small college with very modest means. We received a very small sum but it made a big difference. The talent and will was there, we just needed a small boost.

Al

That double negative in the previous posting was employed for emphasis. 😉

Hi,
    I have been trying to start a dotLRN project here in Thailand since the beginning of it (OpenACES). Currently I managed to convince a small school here to try it out. We are in an early stage working on the core requirements. My plan is to use the school as a reference to springboard to bigger projects. I can see a lot of potential for dotLRN in this region.

    I'm doing this alone on my spare time at the moment (I have worked on a few ACS and OpenACS projects), and be interested in how the grants can help me.