About the FLOW Syllabus

Last modified by Stefano Maffulli on 2023/02/17 01:53

About the FLOW Syllabus

Learning Outcomes: This opening session communicates the objectives of the FLOW Syllabus, how to use it, and how to participate in its further evolution through the OSI Working Group on Management Education.  Participants will also become more familiar with requirements for the effective management of open learning intiatives generally, including open access journals. 

Introductory Presentation on the FLOW Syllabus

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ODP format, PDF format

The FLOW Syllabus

A curated collection for learning about the Free/Libre/Open Wealth of ideas
To advance professional competencies relating to Free/Libre/Open Works.
Join us in doing things the Free/Libre/Open Way,
And help spread the Free/Libre/Open Wave,
Throughout the Free/Libre/Open World.
 

Don't "dumb-it-down". Focus. Pay attention to detail.

  • The FLOW Syllabus is a thoughtfully curated guide to the domains of community knowledge that will help anyone involved in creating, maintaining or deploying Free/Libre/Open Works (FLOW) to:
    • Understand ways to optimize business value through FLOW licensing, contracting methods and management approaches, as well as inter-organizational governance principles and processes;
    • Improve business risk management by advancing the capability of makers and users to understand the field, and to determine what is ethically and legally "in" and "out" of bounds;
    • Enable more effective communication amongst FLOW makers, users and their colleagues, including their lawyer(s), on a variety of topics, informed by a principled and pragmatic perspective on intellectual capital management.
  • We do not "dumb-it-down"! We bring frequently-misunderstood distinctions into sharp focus. We pay excruciating attention to detail and nuance, where submerged rocks and erratic currents might otherwise scuttle beautiful projects. Think of The FLOW Syllabus as a nautical chart to help educators and their clients steer clear of hazards, move into safer channels, and catch the best currents. Because in business, finance and law, just as in source code, details do matter.
  • The FLOW Syllabus is for educators whose role is to help their clients gain an advanced understanding of the strategies, processes and methods to optimize value, to control costs, and to manage risk through effective coordination, resourcing and governance of free/libre/open works. 
  • The FLOW Syllabus IS:
    • A secondary source, a compilation of external learning assets that our editors consider to offer the clearest, most useful freely-available web-based information to explain or illustrate the free/libre/open way (ethics, methods, processes, governance, HR management, strategy, security, law or financing);
    • A structured guide to learning assets that anticipates the need to associate information, learning objectives and assessment (both formative and summative), but that also supports anyone's unstructured ad hoc learning.
  • The FLOW Syllabus IS NOT:
    • A primary source, except where particular concepts or methods are briefly explained here due to lack of a suitable external source at this time.  Your further recommendations are welcome, of course.
    • A course or a curriculum in and of itself. Instead these resources are optimized for adaptation by educators (including self-educators) into the learning plans or curricula that they design.
  • Other excellent curated collections:
  • For more information see The Communication Strategy of the FLOW Syllabus

Who is The FLOW Syllabus For?

  • YOU might be a:
    • Student, employee, contractor, manager or executive. Any type. Any sector;
    • Programmer, systems architect, or systems administrator engaged directly in IT;
    • Lawyer, accountant, engineer or other type of licensed advisor for whom errors and omissions are critical;
    • Professional or academic educator creating onsite or online learning services for any of the above.
    • Project or portfolio manager in a commercial, governmental, academic, or civil society organization, or in an informal community.

Who Offers Training Based on The FLOW Syllabus?

  • As is consistent with the free/libre/open way, it's an open competitive market. What are YOUR criteria?
  • Contributors to the FLOW Syllabus are familiar with its substance, and some of them offer train-the-trainer and client-centred training services, commercially and through academic fora. 
  • Many of the links included in the FLOW Syllabus point to particular learning assets that are produced and shared by organizations that offer excellent training services. Some of them are very specialized, and others cover a wide spectrum of topics. Use the syllabus as a guide to available services. 
  • Here we also list Courses, Curricula, Training and Coaching About FLOW for Managers
  • Contact the OSI's General Manager to discuss your organization's objectives, and for referrals to respected authorities in the global multi-cultural multi-lingual multi-disciplinary free/libre/open 24X7 community of practice.

How to Participate in the OSI-EDU-WG

Call for Participation in OSI's Working Group on Management Education (OSI-EDU-WG): Let's work together to strengthen the quality of management amongst free/libre/open projects and portfolios, and amongst their governing organizations. We invite your collaboration towards improving the FLOW Syllabus. The OSI-EDU-WG meets online at http://osi.bigbluebutton.org/osi/ every Tuesday at 21:00 GMT (which is Wednesday 6am Brisbane, Australia; and Tuesday 4 pm in NYC). Contact the Chair, Joseph Potvin to discuss: <jpotvin@opman.ca>.
 — The Educators Committee meets on the first Tuesday of each month
 — The Lawyers Committee meets on the second Tuesday of each month
 — The Technologists Committee meets on the third Tuesday of each month
 — The Project & Organizational Managers Committee meets on the fourth Tuesday of each month

  • In addition to involvement in the Working Committees, there are other ways you may participate in the refinement and extension of this resource.
    • The FLOW Syllabus is presented on a wiki so that it can be improved through open direct participation. You are welcome to register on this site to help advance these pages. The OSI Management Education Working Group (OSI-EDU-WG) reserves the right to revise or reverse any changes.
    • Please contact the Working Group Chair  or any of the Working Committee Coordinators with your suggestions or concerns. Joseph Potvin, can be reached at jpotvin@opman.ca and 18195935983.

General Disclaimer

  1. The information provided in the FLOW Syllabus is intended to strengthen the self-directed or coached learning of individuals and teams. The contributors hope to assist more effective communication between you and your colleagues, including your lawyer(s), on a variety of topics associated with the intellectual capital management of free/libre/open works. Therefore we emphasize that the contributors provide no advice, but do aspire to strengthen capacity amongst people in the FLOW producer and  user community to make insightful decisions.
  2. Laws and regulations govern the provision of "legal advice" in each jurisdiction. Neither the syllabus contributors nor your course facilitator (if you have one) serve in any way as proxies or substitutes for your organization's lawyer(s). So at risk of sounding over-the-top defensive right off the bat: TINLA: This is not legal advice.
  3. Nothing represented in the syllabus can be assumed to represent views of a particular individual or organization, even when an organization hosts or delivers an instance of the content or of training based upon it.

Re-Usability

Use, Re-Use, Refine, Adapt, Re-Post, Redistribute

Free/Libre and/or Free/Gratis

External Works

  • All external works referred to in The FLOW Syllabus retain their original copyright status and terms of distribution.
  • All external works linked to in the FLOW Syllabus are free/libre and/or free/gratis, available with no obstacles to the flow of insight. Limited excerpts from articles, books and other media which are published or distributed under restrictive terms are reproduced within the bounds of fair use. Original sources for ideas and their expression are referenced. Please report any apparent oversights.
  • We deliberately expose the URLs for all external links, in order to facilitate your quick reference to original sources.

Internal Works

  •  All works that become an integral part of the FLOW Syllabus are made available under the most recent versions of both the CC-BY1 and GNU-FDL2 licenses. Use it under either of these, as you prefer. 
  • If you have never actually read those licenses, please take a few minutes to do so. 

Modularity, Extensibility, Flexibility

  • The FLOW Syllabus is maintained like core code in free/libre/open software, for reuse, updates and derivative works.
  • Use of the syllabus creates a natural incentive for routine updates, improvements and extensions.
  • Any user can build a learning program from the modular elements and sequences organized around topics, integrated through conceptual threads that run through the FLOW Syllabus.  It is up to the learner and teacher to follow routes of interest and identify new trajectories. Personalized content, activities and outcomes can be integrated seamlessly;
  • Modules within the FLOW Syllabus can be adapted to extend or supplement any pre-existing formal course of study with formal evaluations and credentials/certificates;
  • The approach is socializable. Educators can create, supply and promote their own affinity-based custom “packages” or "profiles" of The FLOW Syllabus, based on their preferred modules, learning sequences and extensions.
  • The content presented on the complete "long page" view can also be accessed via the separate wiki pages on which each module is maintained. For the individual session pages click on "View this topic only" above each main title.

Creative Audacity + Performance Rigor

The overall concept for this syllabus is inspired by the attitudes of:

  1. ^ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
  2. ^ http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
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