How WP Can Save Academic Freedom and Cure the Crises in Higher Education

Higher Education is facing many threats and challenges, including cost increases, demands for greater accessibility, and an increasingly part-time (adjunct) faculty. In recent years publishers such as Pearson, established closed-source tech firms such as Blackboard, and VC-funded edtech startups have tried to “disrupt” higher education via MOOC’s, pre-packaged courses, and other supposed “innovations”. The effect has been to suck-up all the available tech resources in higher education and actually raise costs to students. The most serious threat is to academic freedom, though, as these closed-source, walled-garden technologies substitute a single corporate voice for the voices of existing faculty, limiting the diversity of voices that students hear. There is an alternative though. WordPress and the GPL together are the dynamic super hero duo that can help higher education meet its challenges, reduce costs, and increase accessibility. In the process, WP and GPL can help increase academic freedom and help a new generation of students find their own voices and become publishers. My own experiences in teaching using WordPress and the experiences of a too-limited number of highly innovative schools such as Washington State, CUNY, UMW, and Penn State, show how WordPress and GPL can give voice and time to faculty. They can also help students find their voices and become writers/publishers themselves. My talk will cover four parts:

  1. What’s Happening: Quick Survey of some of the more exciting WordPress applications and directions in higher ed teaching.
  2. The Threats: The challenge to faculty, academic freedom, and students from closed-source, controlled-copyright edtech solutions.
  3. WP and GPL, the Dynamic Duo: How the WordPress Philosophy and the GPL can counter those threats.
  4. What We Really Need Now: The directions of development and evangelism of WordPress needed to achieve these goals. Higher ed, and faculty at non-elite schools (the majority of faculty nationwide) have some needs for future WordPress evolution and implementation. I hope to help developers understand these opportunities.

About Brian Richards

I am the creator of [WPSessions.com](http://wpsessions.com/) and began using WordPress in 2007. In 2011 I started leading and training development teams and really started to come alive. Through WPSessions, I've had the privilege of organizing dozens of WordPress events, producing more than 400 presentations and hosting speakers from all over the globe. Since discovering WordPress, I’ve had the opportunity to work with many amazing WordPress agencies and experts. These relationships have allowed me to help develop sites for Cornell University, Microsoft, Disney, TIME, YMCA, and numerous others. My real passion is for self-directed learning and helping others develop skills and workflows to better solve important and complicated problems. I can’t resist helping good people do great things!