I’m so delighted with this topic and format. Thanks to you all for engaging in discussion on this, to my mind, essential but poorly understood paradigm - reusability. Big shout out to Werner for such amazing work and a fantastic example use case.
I read the reusability paradox several times with great interest. So interesting to flashback to “learning objects”. Let me make a couple of remarks about the argument David originally laid out. I found myself questioning some aspects of the logic. Is it really true that a large learning resource is less reusable than a small one? I’m not so sure it is. Here’s a corollary. What is more reusable a car or a steering wheel. A car is an assembly of smaller parts and I’d argue that cars as a whole are more reusable than the deconstructed parts. Look at the size of the used car market. Certainly it has higher “value” as a whole unit than uncoupled into parts. Learning resources are similar. A course is designed as a complete thing like a car. While it is possible to de-constuct it into parts it’s integrity and value are greater when kept together.
David asserts that open licensing introduces a new problem in that not everyone has the time, resources, and technical expertise necessary to engage in the significant amount of revising and remixing necessary to tailor a larger resource to a specific context. The same is true of cars thats why we have mechanics. And this issue has in my view had little impact on the reusability of cars.
I find the issues being raised about the visibility of instructional design really quite fascinating. Is instructional design similar to the engineering of a car that assembles the parts into a fully functional whole? Does revision and localization really result in degradation or destruction of instructional design? As Alan points out I question whether upstream instructional design is really sound and superior. And let me suggest something else - I think most faculty and teachers see themselves and their interactions with the leaerners as the instructional design. It is not necessarily a tangible visible thing embedded in the resource. Continuing with my car analogy hen someone buys a used car and customizes it for their own use (soups it up, custom paint job, etc.) are they degrading it? I don’t think so.
And finally I really like Mackiwg’s push for a move from sharing to learn to learning to share. One thing I discovered in my work supporting open education during my time at BCcampus is that faculty are more comfortable sharing and reusing a smaller learning resource than a larger resource. Oh my did I just undo my earlier arguments? I don’t really think so. It’s just that it takes time to build a culture of sharing and that culture is in direct opposition to societal norms that commodify resources into things bought and sold.