Why is the workshop stressing open, nonproprietary and extensible enabling technologies?
The success of The Workshop depends upon its ability to create an organizational framework and structures within which its Founding Partners can work cooperatively and collaboratively to build and sustain open “communities of practice.” The success of these communities will depend upon their capacity to foster open discussions among Founding Partner representatives. These discussions must be sufficiently honest, robust and extensible to enable these representatives to negotiate around, through, under and over the complex lattice of routines, rituals, conventions, stories and histories that characterize their institutions. One test of these discussions is how well they do in yielding shared assumptions, shared definitions and shared understandings of the challenges facing Higher Education, vis-à-vis teaching, learning and technology in the post-Internet age.These discussions must also lead to concrete, joint actions designed to translate the promise of the Internet and the Web into tran