The Emergence of Open Courses: Understanding Open Education by drawing on the Open Source Case

The Emergence of Open Course Scenarios

Understanding Open Education

by drawing on the Open Source Case

D4PL workshop Knowledge Café 1OSS 2009, 5th International Conference on Open Source Systems

June 6th 2009, Skövde – Sweden

Andreas Meiszner, Rüdiger Glott, Ioannis Stamelos, Sulayman K. Sowe

The changing landscape of education: The changing landscape of education:

what happened so far?what happened so far?

•• Despite all of the potential the Web 2.0 provides Despite all of the potential the Web 2.0 provides higher education still has adapted very higher education still has adapted very little little in response to them with graduate education often not employing in response to them with graduate education often not employing the power of new the power of new media in visionary or effective waysmedia in visionary or effective ways

•• Higher education structures are Higher education structures are still largelystill largely ‘‘analogueanalogue’’, , ‘‘closedclosed’’, , ‘‘tetheredtethered’’, , ‘‘isolatedisolated’’, , ‘‘genericgeneric’’ and and ‘‘made for consumptionmade for consumption’’

•• This is in sharp contrast to the learning environments the Web This is in sharp contrast to the learning environments the Web 2.0 provides, which are 2.0 provides, which are ‘‘digitaldigital’’, , ‘‘openopen’’, , ‘‘mobilemobile’’, , ‘‘connectedconnected’’, , ‘‘personalpersonal’’ and and ‘‘driven by participationdriven by participation’’

Students are inside a classroom (tethered to a place), using textbooks and handouts (printed materials), they must pay tuition and register to attend (the experience is closed), talking during class or working with others outside of class is generally discouraged (each student is isolated though surrounded by peers), each student receives exactly the same instruction as each of her classmates (the information presented is generic), and students are students and do not participate in the teaching process (they are consumers). (Wiley 2006)

The recent past

Learning as a finished and delivered product to be consumed Learning as a finished and delivered product to be consumed

A myriad of closed systemsA myriad of closed systems

•• A vast and constant move towards the use of online resources foA vast and constant move towards the use of online resources fostering a change stering a change from from ‘‘analogueanalogue’’ to to ‘‘digitaldigital’’ and from and from ‘‘tetheredtethered’’ to to ‘‘mobilemobile’’ ......

•• The remaining four desirable characteristics The remaining four desirable characteristics ‘‘openopen’’, , ‘‘connectedconnected’’, , ‘‘personalpersonal’’ and and ‘‘driven driven by participationby participation’’ are more and more addressed...are more and more addressed...

•• The start of the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement markeThe start of the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement marked a tipping point d a tipping point towards towards ‘‘opennessopenness’’ in the sense of in the sense of ‘‘OpenOpen’’ and and ‘‘FreeFree’’......

…… Though the OER movement still follows very much the traditionalThough the OER movement still follows very much the traditional models (static, models (static, made for consumption, teacher/learner separation, made for consumption, teacher/learner separation, ……))

What happened further in between than and now?

The Open Educational Resource movement

•• Emergence of a further type of openness where Emergence of a further type of openness where formally enrolled students engage formally enrolled students engage with their peerswith their peers at the Web 2.0, at the Web 2.0,

•• with more and more open course scenarios arising,with more and more open course scenarios arising,

•• resulting to an ever resulting to an ever blurring border between the formal and the informalblurring border between the formal and the informal,,

•• where where students from different institutions, free learners outside of fstudents from different institutions, free learners outside of formal ormal education and practitioners come togethereducation and practitioners come together..

•• The current emergence of Open Courses The current emergence of Open Courses couldcould mark a tipping point towards an mark a tipping point towards an educational commons...educational commons...

So, where are we NOW?

The emergence of Free / Open Course Scenarios



And where do we head from here?And where do we head from here?

Open Course Scenarios versus Open Source Software ProjectsOpen Course Scenarios versus Open Source Software Projects

––

analogies & deviationsanalogies & deviations

Do we know which the desirable supportive organizational models Do we know which the desirable supportive organizational models for Free / for Free / Open educational scenarios and courses are?Open educational scenarios and courses are?

Could the Open Source Case provide some insights for those?Could the Open Source Case provide some insights for those?

The open source case – desirable characteristics

• A greater range of inputs – not just from the educator, but from all contributors so the collective is the source of knowledge, not one individual• A more personalized learning experience – learners can gather the elements of knowledge they require – but skip what they know already.• Greater sharing of knowledge – in higher education much of the previous input is lost, whereas in FLOSS the dialogue, resources, and outputs remain as learning resources => CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT & EVOLUTIONARY GROWTH.• Peer production – active engagement in producing something with a set of peers is a powerful motivational and educational driving force.• Real activities – engaging in legitimate activities that are not restricted to an artificial university setting also provides valuable experience.• Peer support – a large support network provided voluntarily by peers in a collaborative manner nearly 24/7.• The sum is bigger than its parts – all the individual actions and activities add a value to the course from which future cohorts of students would gain.

Open course scenarios & Open Source: Analogies



Open course scenarios & Open Source: Deviations

Traditional educational characteristics we might want to preserve

• Educator input – to provide students with guidance and support.• Structure – learners approaching a new subject area value a certain level of structure and focus offered.• Learning objectives – to set out for students what they should be able to learn through the experience.• Assessment – some form of formal assessment and the possibility to obtain a degree or certification• Face2face interaction with others – students as well as educators.

Towards supportive models for Open Course Scenarios:Towards supportive models for Open Course Scenarios:

inside, outside or hybrid approach inside, outside or hybrid approach

Open Educational Scenarios: ‘inside approach’

• The inside approach takes principles found in open source communities and applies them within a (higher) education context. • Including an evolutionary growth of the course and its environment. • Current students would build upon the work of earlier students developing course and content further year by year, • Therefore improving content quality and richness and providing regular feedback. • Such feedback might refer to course structure, material, processes and tools. • The inside approach thus takes the sort of characteristics and tools found in open source as its inspiration. • An institution or course might also decide to ‘open up’ their virtual learning environments to fellow universities or the general public to view what is going on within the environment or allow those outside groups to participate and engage at this environment

Limitations of the ‘inside approach’

• The outside world remains largely or totally disconnected, depending on the degree of openness (e.g. open to view, open to participate, etc.). • ‘Community building’ and ‘evolutionary growth’ is per-se limited within a given institution that only involves the own student population, and usually even further limited due to

• (a) a 100% student turnover per semester / course and • (b) a comparatively small number of potential community member (formally enrolled students of a course).

• Students are kept within the institutions learning environment preventing their ‘semi-structured’ engagement and collaboration within the wider web.• Limited opportunities of ‘best of breed’, as the wider web might provide better technological solutions or already established and mature communities for respective study fields.

Open Educational Scenarios: ‘outside approach’

• The outside approach might take traditional education as the starting point by providing theoretical information and then sends the students ‘outside’ to find well established communities, such as the open source ones, to work within those communities and to apply and deepen their theoretical knowledge.• Students are sent into already well established and mature environments to engage at and collaborate within those communities on pre-defined tasks.• Students are provided with an initial academic background and then required to choose and engage within a real world project. • This gives students real experience and allows collaborating with others.• This approach can be realized whenever there is an external ‘real’ community that is operating on principles such as e.g. common for open source, or also Wikipedia. • The outside approach might be the least complex and almost cost neutral; and therefore relatively easy to implement.

Limitations of the ‘outside approach’• The results of this collaborative learning and knowledge production remains within the outside community and…• Therefore likely will be lost for future students. • The outside approach does not provide next year students (newbies) with an easy access as no former learners, nor the resources they created, are present at the institutional level to facilitate the newbie entrance.• The outside approach does not foster an evolutionary growth and continuous improvement of the institutional / course environment.

Open Educational Scenarios: ‘hybrid approach’• A hybrid approach combines components of the inside and outside approach. • Activities occurring in a broader ecosystem consisting of various spaces that are open for everyone combining students, informal learners, tutors, experts, organizations, etc, allowing learners to engage in a real community (outside approach).• It allows a continuous evaluation (by educators, students and the wider world) of what ‘the best of both worlds’ is and how the transferred elements actually suit in their respective new environments. • A hybrid approach could also be a response to challenges such as a 100% student turnover per semester as (a) not all participating students should start at the same time and (b) free learners outside of formal education and practitioners are not bound to any course schedule. • A hybrid approach likely includes a number of environments where students engage at in a ‘semi-structured’ way and where guidance and support is provided through technologies (e.g. RSS, suggested contents, etc.) and humans (e.g. educators, knowledge brokers, community support, etc.).

Open Questions on Supportive Models:

• How to allow for a continuity and evolutionary growth of learning resources, spaces and tools, communities involved (internal and / or external ones), or the transactive group memory?

• How to keep learning resources (initial ones as well as those leveraged into the course by the students), artifacts created by students and underlying discourse within a context and structure that would allow future cohorts of students to re-experience, build on and improve what others did?

• How to easily allow for a ‘re-seeding’ and to organize, formalize and generalize the created knowledge, including structures and processes?

Forges, Modularity and Learning Projects as a supportive mean?Forges, Modularity and Learning Projects as a supportive mean?

Forges, Modularity and Learning Projects as a potential solution?

Small students driven learning projects at which learners engage (to a certain degree) within areas of their personal interest; individually or together with other learners as a group work, therefore:• contributing to the overall development of the learning environment.• providing a potential bridge between ‘static’ content on the one hand and learning processes and activities (discourse) on the other hand that might allow a similar type of ‘re-experience’ as in open source. • allowing an open source type engagement, where content is often taken forward and backward, contextualized, adapted, translated, re-mixed, embedded into processes or feed into new products by individuals. Those individuals act for example as knowledge brokers allowing content to be dynamic and causing it to continuously change. • allowing learners to become an active participant in the respective study field, to acquire subject matter skills through practice, and providing the potential of gaining key and soft skills as a result of their activities and engagement.


“Learning project” tasks:1 Define objectives of this learning project (what do we want to show)2 Develop your own roadmap, communication and collaboration channels (or use the

ones provided)3 Review existing content at the web relevant to this project, this should be in

accordance to your objectives4 Debate pro’s and con’s of the retrieved information5 Analyze your findings, summarize them & 6 Present the outcomes 7 Evaluate your work and discuss it within your group as well as with the other

groups

The result of your learning project should be preferably understandable for “others”outside of your project group – please keep this in mind once developing it!!!


Forges, Modularity and Learning Projects – initial trials

Forges, Modularity and Learning Projects – self organized learning projects and spaces (I)

Forges, Modularity and Learning Projects – self organized learning projects and spaces (II)

Forges, Modularity and Learning Projects – self organized learning projects and spaces (III)

Forges, Modularity and Learning Projects – self organized learning projects and spaces (IV)

StudentsStudents’’ voices voices on their learning experienceon their learning experience

“At the beginning it started really small, but as time went on the NetGeners.Net website and courses grew in size.”

“More and more material was added and discussions intensified.”“At the beginning we didn’t know each other,

but with time, our confidence and trust grew and we were able to talk more freely. And frequently scheduled chats also helped us to know each other”

“We participated in a learning project named "DWTDI". During our research we have learned how to collaborate from distance using web technologies, as two of us were in Sweden, one in England and one in Greece.”

“Furthermore, we have learned how to merge our separate work using open source technologies like wikis in order to introduce a common result.”“We strongly believe that this project helped all of us to improve our ability in English and our knowledge about the tasks that are included in the project.”

“I've learned a lot of things. To be honest I didn't even know what exactly copyleft was when the project started; but I learned about it along the way and figured out some details about copyright.”

“We liked the NetGeners experience because it was different from formal education and because we had the freedom to choose our tasks and project methods.”

“The "find out yourself" aspect NetGeners provides stimulates to search and actually learn about something, while in higher education students are mostly supposed to read books and just learn them by heart, rendering the knowledge useless since most things are forgotten along the way.”

“The NetGeners.Net experience was very different: learning is done - not received; more flexible, more possibilities to choose the theme and the way how to develop it; dynamics of the roles with no clear separation of teacher/learner.”

“We believe that the NetGeners project had some unique features. First of all, the group participants could totally take the responsibility of their project, content and organisation and could make decisions about the future tasks or chats on their own.”

“We were not obliged to use the NetGeners official places (e.g. the NetGeners' web pages and Wiki) to upload our stuff and we could make decisions all together!”

“It's not about what I learned, but about how I learned it. The same knowledge might be obtained through open source communities or traditional learning environments (actually the whole learning process is identical with open source in my opinion), but in traditional learning environments it is not as interesting.”

•“In formal classes you're bombed with information which you have to cope with, at NetGeners.Net it was easier to do so and I think we have learnt better than in formal education.”

Open (?!?) Questions on Supportive Models:

• How to allow for a continuity and evolutionary growth of learning resources, spaces and tools, communities involved (internal and / or external ones), or the transactivegroup memory?

• How to keep learning resources (initial ones as well as those leveraged into the course by the students), artifacts created by students and underlying discourse within a context and structure that would allow future cohorts of students to re-experience, build on and improve what others did?

• How to easily allow for a ‘re-seeding’ and to organize, formalize and generalize the created knowledge, including structures and processes?

Thank you for your attention!

Andreas Meiszner ([email protected]) Institute of Educational TechnologyThe Open University, UK

Rüdiger Glott ([email protected]) Sulayman K. Sowe ([email protected]) UNU-MERITMaastricht, The Netherlands

Ioannis Stamelos ([email protected])Department of InformaticsAristotle UniversityThessaloniki, Greece

mailto:[email protected]


