Building a sustainable WE OER Textbook initiative

[Wayne]

Hi Randy,

Your earlier post on "free tuition at a community college in the US" has got me thinking again about building a sustainable OER Textbook initiative. WikiEducator is uniquely positioned to pioneer a peer-collaboration approach for OER textbook development and distribution.  Apology for the long post -- but this is important stuff and WE would appreciate thoughts and advice from the community.
One positive aspect of the global economic crisis is that this will force institutions to focus on the benefits of the OER model -- both economically and pedagogically.

Clearly the OER textbook initiative has the potential to improve efficiencies in the sector. Notwithstanding tomorrow's promise for OER textbooks -- the uptake thus far has been disappointing :-(. We don't have any mainstream examples of sustainable success with OER Textbooks -- However, there are a few promising projects and pieces of the puzzle coming together, for instance:

1) Otago Polytechnic's Anatomy and Physiology for Animals text on Wikibooks. (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Anatomy_and_Physiology_of_Animals ) There is an option for learners to purchase a bound printed version from lulu.com.
2) You've already mentioned the OER Handbook for Educators on WE  --- which is also available for purchase on lulu.com
3) Flat world knowledge (http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/minisite/ )
4) Athabasca University Press -- which is now an open access publisher (http://www.aupress.ca/)
5) The Free High School Science Text project (http://www.fhsst.org/)
6) Pedia Press, a German print-on-demand publisher who developed the open source engine we use to produce pdfs on WE
7) The Connexions project have implemented technology to download pdfs and the option to order print versions of texts.

It seems to me that we need to work on building a sustainable eco-system for OER textbooks to become a main stream feature of the educational landscape. WikiEducator.  Questions we'll need to answer:

1) What are the elements or components of a sustainable OER textbook model?
2) Using a peer collaboration approach for content development -- are their unique processes we need to implement to ensure success (when compared to classical publishing models)?
3) How do we promote and foster relationships with the publishing industry (particularly with regards to benefiting from existing distribution channels and overcoming the challenge that restrictive all rights reserved licensing does not necessarily restrict market share).
4) Will WE need to adapt and refine its current ideas regarding the development of our Quality Assurance and review framework?
5) What are the technical implications for a successful WE OER Textbook initiative -- for example, should we provide customised exports for a range of print-on-demand companies?
6) What are the incentives for academics and teachers to participate -- What can WE do to ensure participation?

These are generic questions that are being addressed in various forums ---  However, I'm wondering if there are any unique answers to these questions from a WE perspective.

I'm planning to establish a national OER Textbook initiative in New Zealand as a prototype -- well commence with more detailed planning and implementation on July 2009.  Are there other countries that would join us in a project like this?

Would appreciate thoughts and feedback -- this will help us with our strategic planning.

Cheers
Wayne

[Maria Droujkova]

I'd like to ask a naive question: why use the "genre" of textbook at all? Isn't the very genre a bit... outdated?

A definition from Wikipedia: "A textbook is a manual of instruction or a standard book in any branch of study. They are produced according to the demand of educational institutions."

A standard implies something long-term (permanent?), constant, closed. The demands are also centralized.

Do textbooks allow per-student customization, semi-automated in smart social ways (at least as well as Amazon does for book recommendations)? Daily or hourly, dynamic changes of content based on who creates what in the world? User-generated content in general? Interactivity? Sound and video? No and no and no. And the question is, if we get "all that" from other places, what is the place of a textbook, then - if any?

I see two somewhat modern parts in Wayne's list of generic questions: peer collaboration and print-on-demand.


--
Cheers,
MariaD

Make math your own, to make your own math.

naturalmath.com: a sketch of a social math site
groups.google.com/group/naturalmath: a mailing list about math maker activities
groups.google.com/group/multiplicationstudy the family multiplication study

[Leigh Blackall]

Why would we use Wikieducator to develop "text books"?

Seems to me that Wikibooks is already established as the platform for this.

Perhaps your proposal isn't to specifically use Wikieducator but to use multiple platforms. But it does sound as though it will be a Wikieducator focus...

--
--
Leigh Blackall
+64(0)21736539
skype - leigh_blackall
SL - Leroy Goalpost
http://learnonline.wordpress.com
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Leighblackall

[Alex P. Real]

Hi Maria,

 

I agree on the limitations of traditional textbooks, but I can’t help wondering about quality criteria within user-generated contents. Where’s the balance and who/how decides about it? I may appear “dated” but have some causes for concern:

1.       I’ve recently started developing OER and some materials are real crap despite how rich in media they can be.

2.       Not everything  is online. May seem idiotic but I’m having trouble to find materials by seminal authors (Sociology, Anthropology).

3.       Not every student has the appropriate background to decide on his/her study materials or priorities. You can’t understand post-modern theories without reading some “old bores”.

4.       Mistaking form with content, does pretty mean good? Same way “old school” may argue pretty can´t be good.

5.       Not every student has access to a PC and Internet access or enough bandwidth to stream videos. And, again, depending on the subject audio/video can be more demanding than reading, so not necessarily ideal for everything.

 

Print on demand is great if No. needed are low or you really  reduce costs printing locally, otherwise it can be more expensive than traditional printing. PDF of course provides access, nice stepping stone.  

 

Sorry if blunt, this is giving me some hard time. Right now I don’t even care for centralization (lol), if it’s good there’s always mashups.

 

Cheers,

 

Alex

[Wayne]

Hi Maria,

I see what you're saying about the notion of "textbook" being outdated in the traditional sense. However, I suspect that the concept of "textbook" would mean different things to different people. To some people it may refer to very traditional texts, to others it may refer to self-instructional materials that incorporate in-text activities, yet others may use the term to incorporate multimedia components as we're observing many publishers are doing by distributing CD-ROM multimedia or supporting websites with multimedia activities and social interactions in support of the textbooks.

For example, I am a distance educator (DE) and in my first academic position at a single-mode distance education university we used to make a very clear distinction between:

1) DE study guides (self-instructional texts which included both learner-content interactions and teacher-student interactions using simulated communication  strategies in print form) and
2) classical text books --- (which did not include learning interactions).

That was twenty years ago! Increasingly we observed traditional textbook publishers incorporating many of the instructional strategies which were previously associated with the pedagogy of asynchronous learning. In other words -- we observed a convergence between face-to-face and distance learning pedagogy in the humble text book.

Similarly -- the kind of "text" I see emerging from a peer collaboration environment like a wiki has a number of advantages:

1)  More easily updated -- at one level the "text" is updated with every edit
2)  More customisable -- it would be a relatively simple process to customise local copies by changing activities for the context
3)  More cost efficient --- thinking back to my own student days where I was forced to buy prescribed texts, and the lecturer only covered a few of the chapters
4) More autonomy and freedom for academics and educators to collaborate on learning materials outside of the dictates determined by the economic decisions of publishers.

I have a few interesting ideas pertaining to sound and video -- but more about this in a later post :-)

Cheers
Wayne

[Wayne]

Hi Alex,

Good suggestions and thoughts in your post. Thanks for this - much appreciated.

Yeah -- we'll need to think carefully about quality and how this should unfold as a process within community and user-generated texts. We've made a humble start with WE's QA and review project, see:

http://www.wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:Quality_Assurance_and_Review

and

http://www.wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:Quality_Assurance_Framework/Featured_Works

Technically -- it should be possible to assign more traditional peer review rights for openly authored content. For example, Publisher X or Institution Y may assign peer reviewers for a predetermined collection in WikiEducator.  The published version would be based on the version that is peer reviewed by those assigned.

Personally I don't see these "newer" methods replacing authentic texts --- In many disciplines there is a canon that learners must engage with. You can't study Victorian literature without reading the corresponding cannon. Similarly as you point out -- learning about post-structuralist and post-modern philosophy requires an understanding of enlightenment.  

Good point about form versus content --- however in my earlier post I refered to the convergence of Distance Education pedagogy and face-to-face pedagogy in the "text" -- here we see a diffusion of form and content, where many pedagogical elements (form) are diffused/embedded in the content.

Working in the developing world,  I too am very concerned about global student access to 24/7 connectivity.  At the same time I think WE can do a lot to address this challenge. For example -- where text's included rich media (eg audio or video), we could customise the pdf export feature to generate an ISO CDROM image of the rich media and automatically reference the activity properly in the text. For example: Video Activity 1: View video XX on your CDROM and consider the questions which follow .....

Costs of printing versus the size of the print run are an important issue, particularly when offset printing approaches are used. However, there have been significant advances in industrial scale digital printing where on reasonably sized print runs in the region of 2000 --- 3000 it is in fact cheaper to produce using digital print technologies than standard offset printing using good old ink and plates.  The power of digital printing is that the marginal cost for one copy is the same as a print run of 1500.  Thinking back to my days when I was responsible for the Central Planning Unit at the University of South Africa, which at the time operated the largest printing press in the Southern Hemisphere -- the majority of courses had print runs lower than the economic break even for offset printing, not too mention the challenges of storage.

The neat thing with this emerging wiki model -- is that the final print technology can be determined by the size of the print run. So we can utilise both digital and offset printing approaches.

Thanks again Alex -- this is very useful input.

Cheers
Wayne 

[Barbara Dieu]

Maria and Alex...both of you make sense to me and as we say in French
"Apparement nous ne sommes pas sortis de l'auberge".
While education is fascinating for all the enlightenment, discussion, possibilities, perspectives and brainstorming, we need focus (I, of all people, asking for it..ironical..anyway).
Tomorrow I will be participating in an OER workshop here at USP (University of Sao Paulo).
http://wiki.stoa.usp.br/OER-Workshop
Promise to report back with the nuance of the local culture :-)
Warm regards from Brazil,
Bee



--
Barbara Dieu
http://barbaradieu.com
http://beespace.net

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Leigh,

Good question --- Why not use Wikibooks as an established platform?

First off -- WikiEducator is not in competition with any of the
freedom culture projects, including all the projects hosted by the
Wikimedia Foundation. Rather, we are working collaboratively with all
the OER content developers in the world. Hopefully in the near future
-- assuming the discussions and pending decisions regarding WMF's
migration to a CC-BY-SA license -- we'll see more remixing and mash-
ups among our respective projects.

WE already has an established history of both meaningful and
successful collaborations with WMF. A good example is the Mediawiki
Collections extension which produces pdf collections. The Commonwealth
of Learning co-invested in the development of this open source
technology as a collaboration between WE and WMF. In fact, Wikibooks
launched the beta test of the wiki to odt export before WikiEducator!
Any work which WikiEducator will be doing in the future to refine the
Mediawiki software and or develop new extensions that better serve the
needs of educators will be released under the GPL --- so our work does
not have an exclusive WE focus.

As active members of the open source and OER community we encourage
and support the essential freedoms -- and that includes the freedom
for educators to host their content developments with those projects
which best meet their needs.

That said, there are reasons why educators may choose to host with
WikiEducator -- for example:

1) WikiEducator is a community of educators rather than a general
public wiki -- 73% of our registered users are teachers. lecturers and
trainers working in the formal education sector. As educators are
needs are more focused on educational priorities within the day-to-day
operation of educational institutions which are not necessarily the
same as those of a general public project
2) WikiEducator is better positioned to respond to the unique
institutional requirements associated with traditional peer review,
which would be more difficult to implement in a project like Wikibooks
3) We are better positioned to prioritise the development of Mediawiki
extensions for the needs of educators. For example, WE makes extensive
use of structured pages and WE has implemented an extension which
enables us to easily change the display title on a wiki page -- see
for example:
http://www.wikieducator.org/Template:MyTitle. Flagged Revisions is a
Mediawiki extension that shows considerable promise in assisting with
peer review of content -- (See: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FlaggedRevs
). However, in both examples we cannot expect or request the WMF to
refine these technology features for the specific requirements of
educators.
4) In building a sustainable eco-system for published OERs -- we will
need to engage and negotiate with the academic publishing industry --
it is unlikely and unreasonable to expect that the WMF will prioritise
these kinds of arrangements in their operations.
5) WE does not make an arbitrary distinction among the form of
educational "content". We include a range of forms, including
"textbooks", research papers, learning activities, handouts etc. In
the case of WMF projects, if you're developing an encyclopaedia
article -- that goes to Wikipedia, If you're developing a book -- that
goes to Wikibooks etc. There are benefits to having a focused
educational project which host multiple forms of educational
resources.

Given my experience in the academy -- I do see numerous benefits for
WikiEducator having a clear focus on building a sustainable eco-system
for educational "texts".

Cheers
Wayne

On Dec 3, 1:26 pm, "Leigh Blackall" <leighblack...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Why would we use Wikieducator to develop "text books"?
>
> Seems to me that Wikibooks is already established as the platform for this.
>
> Perhaps your proposal isn't to specifically use Wikieducator but to use
> multiple platforms. But it does sound as though it will be a Wikieducator
> focus...
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 7:38 AM, Maria Droujkova <droujk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'd like to ask a naive question: why use the "genre" of textbook at all?
> > Isn't the very genre a bit... outdated?
>

> > A definition from Wikipedia: "A *textbook* is a manual of instruction or a

[Leigh Blackall]

Well, it may not be competition, but it is duplication.

If we were to focus this energy into Wikibooks, then the success stories would go to Wikibooks and help it to strengthen and grow - such as Otago's Anatomy and Physiology of Animals and soon 2 more texts. I've always considered Wikieducator to be something quite different to text books, and that Wikibooks had that well covered. I still hope to see Wikieducator and Wikiversity join some way...

Anyway, its your project and you'll take it were you need to with this feedback. I appreciate the effort you've gone to in explaining why Wikied again.. I seem to bring this question up at least twice a year, and your answer seems to get more detailed while remaining essentially the same :)

But you're right, the licenses will solve the first problem between the two, the next problem is the use of templates...

Regards
Leigh

[jkelly952]

Age over grade level is the common ground.

To question one: what are the elements or components of a sustainable
OER textbook
model? Identify your audience and what is expected of them.
Historically a 5 year old (Kindergarten level in the United States) is
expected to deal with 25 mathematical concepts (within WE refer to
http://www.wikieducator.org/K-12math.info_(English_-_Espa%C3%B1ol_%E2%80%93_Fran%C3%A7ais
) To develop OER textbook materials you should be looking at the
learner’s age and what historically are the key content items for that
age level. There are more consistences if you look at subject content
by age level, rather than by grade level. You also reduce the teacher
training requirements by understanding historically what content has
been used.

Jim Kelly

On Dec 3, 9:42 am, Wayne <wmackint...@col.org> wrote:
> Hi Randy,
>
> Your earlier post on "free tuition at a community college in the US" has
> got me thinking again about building a sustainable OER Textbook
> initiative. WikiEducator is uniquely positioned to pioneer a
> peer-collaboration approach for OER textbook development and
> distribution.  Apology for the long post -- but this is important stuff
> and WE would appreciate thoughts and advice from the community.
>
> One positive aspect of the global economic crisis is that this will
> force institutions to focus on the benefits of the OER model -- both
> economically and pedagogically.
>
> Clearly the OER textbook initiative has the potential to improve
> efficiencies in the sector. Notwithstanding tomorrow's promise for OER
> textbooks -- the uptake thus far has been disappointing :-(. We don't
> have any mainstream examples of sustainable success with OER Textbooks
> -- However, there are a few promising projects and pieces of the puzzle
> coming together, for instance:
>
> 1) Otago Polytechnic's Anatomy and Physiology for Animals text on
> Wikibooks.

> (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Anatomy_and_Physiology_of_Animals) There

[Leigh Blackall]

I might add that wikijunior is another established project that would be a more appropriate platform for writing text books for children up to the age of 12.

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Leigh,

I think one of the biggest challenges facing OERs -- particularly with
regards to the peer collaboration model are the technical silos which
exist between and among projects. As OER projects, there should have a
technical environment that enables all the OER projects, WMF,
WikiEducator, Connexions and appropriately licensed OCW projects to
mix and match content. We still have a ways to go before the technical
issues are resolved.

We need to spend a lot more time figuring out how we can promote
seamless integration and interoperability among free content
projects. RSS is a great way to remix small bits of stuff together --
but it's not ideal for large content chunks and users who have very
limited bandwidth. For example -- try loading our RSS eLearning blog
feed on a slow dialup connection :-( -- http://www.wikieducator.org/ELearning_Blogfeed

Answering the question of the best fit for content from a pedagogical
perspective is not a simple distinction. (See for example the
discussions over time between Wikibooks and Wikiversity regarding the
distinction between content allocations between these projects.) In
asynchronous learning environments their is a blending between content
(i.e. what to teach) and form (how to teach it) thus making it more
difficult to decide, for instance, whether this is a Wikibooks of
Wikiversity related project.

Moreover -- I think that education has a far more interesting and
exciting challenge regarding OERs, and that's what I call the
reusability paradox. Education is contextually bounded -- and the more
pedagogy you build into a resource, the less reusable it becomes in
different contexts.

I'm very keen for WikiEducator to start pushing the envelope in
finding workable solutions to these challenges. It would be great to
see WikiEducators around the world putting our forward looking
disposition into action -- by implementing technical and educational
innovations for the future. I see the OER "texbook" initiative as an
exiting opportunity.

Frankly -- I don't care where the content resides -- but I go care
about the priorities of educators and how we collectively can add
value into making the world a better place.

Cheers
Wayne






On Dec 3, 9:17 pm, "Leigh Blackall" <leighblack...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, it may not be competition, but it is duplication.
>
> If we were to focus this energy into Wikibooks, then the success stories
> would go to Wikibooks and help it to strengthen and grow - such as Otago's
> Anatomy and Physiology of Animals and soon 2 more texts. I've always
> considered Wikieducator to be something quite different to text books, and
> that Wikibooks had that well covered. I still hope to see Wikieducator and
> Wikiversity join some way...
>
> Anyway, its your project and you'll take it were you need to with this
> feedback. I appreciate the effort you've gone to in explaining why Wikied
> again.. I seem to bring this question up at least twice a year, and your
> answer seems to get more detailed while remaining essentially the same :)
>
> But you're right, the licenses will solve the first problem between the two,
> the next problem is the use of templates...
>
> Regards
> Leigh
>

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Jim,

That's a good point and raises the question of instructional/learning
design in the development process.

We've been experimenting with a few approaches regarding how best to
implement distributed learning design in a wiki environment ---
Clearly this is part of the puzzle we must solve.

Appreciate the inputs --- thanks.

Wayne

On Dec 4, 9:23 am, jkelly952 <jkelly...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Age over grade level is the common ground.
>
> To question one: what are the elements or components of a sustainable
> OER textbook
> model? Identify your audience and what is expected of them.
> Historically a 5 year old (Kindergarten level in the United States) is

> expected to deal with 25 mathematical concepts (within WE refer tohttp://www.wikieducator.org/K-12math.info_(English_-_Espa%C3%B1ol_%E2...

[Leigh Blackall]

well, if we didn't force the issue of interoperability and simply used the existing platforms, then resources could be used more efficiently. The reason it should matter is because Wikibooks and Wikijunior has an established community around writing books. Wikieducator has a different community with different expertise. Teachers writing text books is well known to be a bad idea. Writers are specialists in their field, as are teachers in their filed of curriculum design.

As for instructional design... this is the very reason I personally would appose the idea of using Wikieducator to develop text books, because we would see pedagogical templates and "activities" frustrating the information. IMO pedagogical activity should be kept separate from text books so as to allow teachers and learners the freedom to design their own processes around the content. This was Teemu Leinonen's argument back when we were discussing the development of the OER Handbooks.

"that's what I call the reusability paradox".. actually, that would be David Wiley 2001

--
--
Leigh Blackall
+64(0)21736539
skype - leigh_blackall

[Wayne]

On Fri, 2008-12-05 at 16:41 +1300, Leigh Blackall wrote:

As for instructional design... this is the very reason I personally would appose the idea of using Wikieducator to develop text books, because we would see pedagogical templates and "activities" frustrating the information. IMO pedagogical activity should be kept separate from text books so as to allow teachers and learners the freedom to design their own processes around the content. This was Teemu Leinonen's argument back when we were discussing the development of the OER Handbooks.

Leigh, the experience, research and published literature from Open Distance Learning field does not support these propositions -- Here you may want to consult the work of Derek Rowntree, Lockwood and others. There is pretty conclusive research evidence supporting the integration of learning activities in asynchronous learning texts.

BTW -- Like David, I was researching and writing about pedagogical re-usability in the 90's -- and although I hate to admit this, I was engaged in the early days of Computer Assisted Learning and our mistaken premises around congruence theory that computers were the panacea to matching learning styles with teaching styles. The big mistake we were making with that early research fad was the fact that teaching/learning is not simply a dyadic relationship -- we were forgetting about the demands of the learning task (content) and the huge potential associated with Metalearning.

In this regard  -- I rather like Ronald Reagan's philosophy  ---  "There is no limit to the good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit"

Cheers
Wayne

[Jim Tittsler]

A bit of topic drift... but on a technical point rather than policy:

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 16:41, Leigh Blackall <leighb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> As for instructional design... this is the very reason I personally would
> appose the idea of using Wikieducator to develop text books, because we
> would see pedagogical templates and "activities" frustrating the
> information. IMO pedagogical activity should be kept separate from text
> books so as to allow teachers and learners the freedom to design their own
> processes around the content. This was Teemu Leinonen's argument back when
> we were discussing the development of the OER Handbooks.

Don't overlook the fact that since they are in fact templates, it is
easy to excise them when printing or making a content package. MUCH
better than if there was simple activity wikitext within the page(s).

[Wayne]

Hi Jim,

That's a good point --- and certainly not off topic :-). With evolving web technologies we have far greater opportunities for manipulating output formats -- not too mention the convergence of technology and pedagogy.

The untapped potential of the template approach is quite exciting!  Specifying "instructional devices" (iDevices) as templates means that we can specify alternate behaviours for different outputs. For example:

1)  Educators who don't want to include iDevices in a printed text, could excise these from the output -- as you have pointed out.
2) We can create alternate behaviours for online interactions and print-based texts. For example, in the case of a multiple choice item, we could provide online feedback for correct / incorrect answers (eg javascript hide/show). For the printed versions, we could specify that the instructor feedback on MCQ's should be printed at the end of the chapter.
3) As I mentioned in an earlier post -- with regards to rich media we could automate the generation of a CDROM image to accompany the printed text.

I'm sure there are many alternatives we'll discover as we move forward.

Cheers
Wayne

[Wayne]

Hi Maria,

On Fri, 2008-12-05 at 07:29 -0500, Maria Droujkova wrote:

Wayne,

What are more names to look up on the subject, especially metalearning and teaching/learning in communities of practice including "community objects" in relationships? This is extremely useful, and I need to educate myself better. From all I know, separating instructional design from curriculum development is a dangerous idea originating in the "assembly line" mentality. Intuitively, content and activity developers (in the plural) should work together in a coherent community of practice which includes learners as active participants.

It's never easy to suggest a list of readings that adequately cover an area of research interest like open distance learning.  What to include? -- inevitably the readings you leave off the list are more important than those included ;-).  Rather than attempting to provide a comprehensive or authoritative list -- I think, that there are two aspects for WikiEducator to consider as we work towards building a sustainable model for OER instructional texts using a peer collaboration model.

1.  There is a lot we can learn from the distance education experience regarding the design and incorporation of integrated learning activities

This thread is about instructional texts and the relationship between content and form as expressed in the process of learning design. Much of the research on instructional text was pre-Web (gee hard to believe that most of us actually lived in that time --- the Web is only 5000 days old!  see: Kevin Kelly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J132shgIiuY&feature=related ).  In the pre web days the dominant mass communication technology used by distance educators / learners was the printed text.  The challenge for distance educators was how do you teach effectively when the learner is separated from the teaching in time, place and pace.  I've already mentioned the work of Derek Rowntree and Fred Lockwood but would also consider taking a look at Borje Holmberg's postulates around guided didactic conversation and the relationships between simulated and real lecturer-student interactions.

Michael Moore's work on transactional distance provides an insightful analysis of the relationships between structure and dialogue regarding teaching-learning interactions in asynchronous learning environments.

Peter Johansson has done a lot of work on instructional texts from a Psychology perspective. With regards to the Metalearning research of the 1980s and 1990s the work of John B Biggs is a good starting point. Biggs' work provides a research base confirming that the design of appropriate learning activities and  assessment strategies can promote deep learning. What's interesting with this research is the evidence that "low ability" learners using deep learning strategies can achieve learning outputs which compare favourably with "high ability" learners -- hence making a strong case for the incorporation of well-designed and engaging learning activities in asynchronous materials.

You make a very good point regarding the risks of separating learning design from content development -- referencing communities of practice. In the distance education world -- the large single-mode distance education providers pioneered and implemented what we call the "Course Team" approach. These DE institutions constituted professional development teams comprising subject matter experts, learning designers, multimedia professionals, graphic designers and editors who worked collaboratively in developing the learning materials.  The wiki environment provides us with the opportunity to constitute distributed course development teams --- and I'm hope that the WikiEducator community can develop and refine processes to replicate this model for OER using social software. We piloted the approach with the development of the OER Handbook. The primary author was based in the US, we commissioned a critical content reviewer who was based in South Africa, our graphic designer we located in New Zealand and I tried to assist with some learning design here in Vancouver. We learned about processes for managing a distributed course team -- and we will use these experiences to refine and develop wiki specific tools for more effective collaboration. 

Sure -- in many respects this is dated research -- but the advantage is that we're not starting from scratch :-)

2. It is both plausible and conceivable that OER peer collaboration might result in emergent pedagogies that are structurally different from what has gone before

In this regard, I'd recommend that you consult the work of Otto Peters on the industrialisation of teaching. Using a pedagogical, historical and sociological analysis, Peter's has argued that the pedagogy of distance education (DE) is structurally different from the pedagogy associated with face-to-face teaching.  He suggests that DE is a consequence of the industrialisation of society.  If the knowledge society is structurally different from industrialised society -- the open question we could ask is whether we will see a "new" pedagogy emerging which is structurally different from both agrarian and industrial approaches?

Fascinating stuff ....

Cheers
Wayne

[Leigh Blackall]

Is anyone else having the experience in this thread where responses are being made to posts not made in the thread?

For example, Wayne is responding to Maria here, but as far as I can tell, Maria has only made one post to this thread, and the quote Wayne includes in his reply is not in that post...

[Leigh Blackall]

Wayne says:

If the knowledge society is structurally different from industrialised society -- the open question we could ask is whether we will see a "new" pedagogy emerging which is structurally different from both agrarian and industrial approaches?

Obviously we are seeing that. Benkler's Wealth of Networks, Siemens Connectivism, Downes' Connected Knowledge but more importantly in my view, Illich's Learning Webs idea for Bolivia, cited in his book Deschooling Society - predating ODL, ignoring "instructional design", and predicting post industrial society enabled by networked communications. Illich was interested in networked communications empowering subsistance living.

[Maria Droujkova]

I emailed the letter Wayne included here off-list, because I was not sure it would be of general interest, or if he had time to respond at all. An answer of that detail is definitely of general interest, that's probably why Wayne replied to the whole list. Thanks for the references, Wayne! Much appreciated.

[Maria Droujkova]

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 2:57 PM, Leigh Blackall <leighb...@gmail.com> wrote:

Wayne says:

If the knowledge society is structurally different from industrialised society -- the open question we could ask is whether we will see a "new" pedagogy emerging which is structurally different from both agrarian and industrial approaches?

Obviously we are seeing that. Benkler's Wealth of Networks, Siemens Connectivism, Downes' Connected Knowledge but more importantly in my view, Illich's Learning Webs idea for Bolivia, cited in his book Deschooling Society - predating ODL, ignoring "instructional design", and predicting post industrial society enabled by networked communications. Illich was interested in networked communications empowering subsistance living.

I'd like to include communities and webs of homeschoolers into this list. Homeschoolers are probably one of the highest-networked populations; they (or I should say "we") are socially active in general, and exploring new pedagogical approaches in particular.

[Wayne]

Hi Leigh

On Sat, 2008-12-06 at 08:57 +1300, Leigh Blackall wrote:

Illich's Learning Webs idea for Bolivia, cited in his book Deschooling Society - predating ODL, ignoring "instructional design", and predicting post industrial society enabled by networked communications. Illich was interested in networked communications empowering subsistance living.

Illich's Deschooling Society is a seminal text and is a highly recommended read for those dabbling in the future of OER.

On a minor historical technicality ;-)  Illich's Deschooling Society did not predate the practice, research and publication in the field of DE/ODL.  I believe Deschooling Society was published in 1971.   Their are published references on DE dating back to 1728. However mainstream DE research as a field of research endeavour started appearing in the literature in the early 1950's.  This followed the inception of the world's first single-mode distance education university which began teaching in 1946 --- (The University of South Africa).  The detail of the actual dates is not too relevant -- but rather the era in which these publications emerged.

Deschooling Society was published shortly after the peak of industrialisation after the second world war. DE/ODL is in fact a consequence of the industrialisation of society. DE delivery was not possible before the invention of the printing press and universal postal services. It's also interesting to note that Illich's text was published shortly after the student revolts of the 1960s and should be read within this context.

Illich was not the only author commenting or "predicting" on the emergence of post-industrial society. For example, Daniel Bell's text on "The Coming of Post-industrial Society" published around the same time. The notion of "post-industrial" society was a pretty topical issue of the time.  The Fordist versus Post-Fordist debate has been well documented in the DE literature  (including for example: Raggart, Rumble, Farnes, Edwards etc.)

Discontinuity theory is a contested concept in sociological terms ---  Is post-industrial society fundamentally different from industrial society, or is it more of the same? Personally -- I buy into the theory of discontinuity which would argue that the networked world is structurally different, but at the same time I err on the side of caution with regards to how OER is unfloding on our planet. I see many promising projects (WikiEducator included) - but there is still lots of work for us to do before OER becomes the default approach to education.

Its going to be up to us to turn tommorrow's promise for OER into today's reality!

It's fun being a pioneer!

Cheers
Wayne

[Leigh Blackall]

I'm not convinced we are pioneers at all. Illich is significant to me not for hi Deschooling Society, but for his vision of learning webs. As he describes it (in chapter 6 I think), Bolivia was rolling out OER in the form of television. The cost of television back then meant that Bolivia could afford 1 tv per 5000 Bolivians. Illich proposed a networked communication through audio cassette recordings. At the time, he proposed that Bolivia could afford 1 cassette recorder per 5 Bolivians
with enough money left over to set up a postal service to facilitate the exchange of audio recordings being sent in by farmers and kids. He was talking about audio blogging, where today the cost of achieving what Illich envisioned is greatly reduced for us in the wealthy economies, but still impossible for your average Bolivian I guess. Even with OLPCs the difficulty of using a cassette recorder and postal service compared to an OLPC is laughable.

Illich was talking about networked learning, without the middle man. Our OER efforts, and especially the production of text books with "learning design" interwoven is more broadcast, middle man OER like Bolivia's TV idea, distance learning, and to some extent the OLPCs.. nothing new at all. The only thing "new" in it is the copyright and the technology.. and seeing your historical reference predates modern history Wayne, even our new approach to copyright is nothing new.

Peter Rawsthorne and James Neill have been talking about student generated content initiaties on Wikieducator for quite some time, and in many regards this is similar to networked learning accept that it tends to focus on a demographic we call students, that is typically made up in crude class systems like K12 and everything in between - leaving out the contributions that someone outside that class might have to offer - such as traditional, subsistance, local even mystical.

I'd hazard a guess that the funding is easily geared towards text books. They are tangible and have established processes and protocols. But this doesn't make it a good idea. A text book with "learning designed" in it, over powers so much of what might be otherwise possible. A straight text with a range of culturally appropriate "learning design" held seperately would be far more scalable and versatile. Especially with strong learning networks around each text. Strong networks like in Wikibooks and blogs for example, or any number of offline networks

Better would be a straight text with a learning network to go with it. In the poorer countries this is obviously not through the Internet and computers, but the ideas and models we have through the Internet could inform new approaches to radio, newspaper, telephone, and postal services.. even distance learning.

[Wayne]

Hi Leigh

In practical terms -- can you describe the teaching-learning system you envisage in terms of the functions of teaching and elements of the system. I'm not sure that I understand what you are talking about.

Cheers
Wayne

[Leigh Blackall]

This thread is about your text book proposal right?

So, do you want me to explain this in practical terms relating to text books? Or do you want me to post a manifesto?

[Maria Droujkova]

I'd like to describe a system we have started to develop in the family multiplication study. The "reusable objects" there are "small" according to "The reusability paradox": http://web.archive.org/web/20041019162710/http://rclt.usu.edu/whitepapers/paradox.html Each object (or, to using the "discover the multiplication planet" metaphor of the study - not a Lego metaphor, hehe - a "multiplication planet site") is a very brief, skeletal description of a project or activity. The only requirement of an activity design is that it should invite each participant to create, build, invent and in general author their own mathematics. A few examples of the current multiplication planet sites: spirolaterals (sequences, order, rotation can be investigated and designed), snowflakes (folding, reflection, rotation, contents of each segment), mirror books (an art project about symmetry and 2d transformations), design your own multiplication war game (coming up with buff cards and other game rules). This is the study's mailing list: http://www.groups.google.com/group/multiplicationstudy

Participating families select an activity per week, then describe how it went for them. Some families design their own, throw in design ideas, or request a design: "something about World War II" or "whatever we can do without writing" or "something to help us memorize." Parents describe themselves and their kids - as an aside, you'd be surprised how little age correlates with requested level of activities. Technically, after the study runs for a while, you can collect activity descriptions, edit comments that go with them, and publish a sort of "multiplication text." However, even if we exclude the idea that the community designs new activities every week, one goal of the study is to help future participants plan their own travel routes on the multiplication planet, based on how previous people selected activity sequences. I can't see a book providing such a service, because it involves software analyzing a database. I envision somebody following a friends' path, for example, or finding a family with similar philosophy and structure and following their steps, or going from the Snowflake activity to the Mirror book activity because both deal with symmetry and there are strong topic connections that a lot of people followed before. I'd like to see something like Amazon's book suggestions: "people like you read these books" - except on activity-to-activity basis. It's too early in the study to tell, but intuitively, it feels like the social aspects of the system won't be easy, or possible, to capture in a book format. A book may be a nice souvenir of the past of the study, but it won't provide the services participation in that community provides.

This last paragraph is dreaming, brainstorming and wild speculation - please take it as such. A claim: history and story (narrative) help us understand and reify past activities for the purposes of planning the future and dealing with the present. A constructivist claim: "In the beginning was the deed" - to learn, do. A novice, in addition or instead of "catching up" on the (dead, reified) past through narratives, can be active in creating her own actions and adventures in active and adventurous current communities of practice. This requires tools that support action directly - both authoring action and social community action. A wiki can be such a tool, a book - ?

--
Cheers,
MariaD

Make math your own, to make your own math.

naturalmath.com: a sketch of a social math site
groups.google.com/group/naturalmath: a mailing list about math maker activities
groups.google.com/group/multiplicationstudy the family multiplication study

[Wayne]

Hi Maria,

That's a fascinating project. 

Do you have any links to any examples of the activities families develop?  Do the families produce resources/handouts that are used in the learning activities? What tools do families use to generate and share the activities?

I quickly scanned the list on google groups -- but admit due to time constraints, I could easily have missed references to the examples :-(.

As you suggest -- a wiki is a powerful tool to combine community activity and engagement with both the creation and use of activities.  If you're interested -- shall we try a pilot?

Cheers
Wayne

[Randy Fisher]

Hi Guys,

This is such a fascinating discussion...

Is there any way to package this - and use it as the basis of some learning materials for a course on something.... :-)

It's just such great dialogue.... I'm wondering how we can give it more life than simply in the google group..

- Randy

--
________________
Randy Fisher - Change Management & Collaboration, Human Performance & Engagement, Sustainable Communities & Organizations

* Engaging People in Teams, Communities and Organizations....and WikiEducator!

+ 1 604.684.2275
wiki...@gmail.com

http://www.wikieducator.org
http://www.wikieducator.org/Community_Media
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Randyfisher

* Cool WikiEducator Video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc9-CNlIqsY

* Can You Do the Wiki-Wiki? http://www.wikieducator.org/Wiki_Wiki

Skype: wikirandy

[Maria Droujkova]

Wayne,

We are just on the third weekly "run" (to use an agile development term) and doing things largely by email and on a blog now. You can look at the first sketches of activities here: http://www.naturalmath.com/index.php?option=com_jd-wp&Itemid=88888917&cat=8

At the first run, families answered three questions about themselves and I put together a list of fourteen activity starters - enough for everybody. People wrote questions, answers and comments, and made up one more activity that week (and I added one more description). At the second run, five more activities came up from discussions; some of them are being tried and tested, one will be added to the collection today. The stories parents tell about their adaptation of activities make me emotional to tears. Here is the functionality list for the multiplication planet, being developed now:

- "Blogo-wiki": For each activity, a separate wiki page, WISYWIG-editable by every study participant, accepting rich html, with wiki-style version control and a blog-like comment structure (with individual participant comments) with sevearl types of comments - implemented.
- The ability for the admin to transfer comments from the google group and old blog, marking them by the participant's name (to move the content we have so far) - implemented, migrating the content now
- Uploading pictures to go with activity story comments
- A map of the planet, with each "site" linked to the blogo-wiki activity description (Google Maps would be swell for that, but well)
- Each participant registering for the next week's run by selecting an activity from the map or leaving a "registration" type comment under the activity
- The history of "visited sites" by participant - a trek on the map linking his or her blogo-wiki comments of the "report" type left by that participant.
- The ability for every participant to send "activity recommendations" to another participant, and to see each participants' recommendation list (recommendations are a type of activity comments).

I was considering using WE for it, but I don't think the list of features matches the funcionality. I may be wrong about that. So far, it calls for flash (the map metaphor component) and php and Joomla, because that's the site's platform. I think the structure, once developed, will be useful for others, and I will be happy to talk to people who'd like to adapt it to their needs and help them. This may involve pilots of something similar on WE, if I can figure out features. I have several other studies like that in mind for the future: math metaphors for families with toddlers, algebraic thinking for 4-7 year olds, and then algebra and calculus topics for teens and adults. I mentioned it here as an example of an educational system not based on textbook/curriculum/course metaphors. Sorry if it got too far off topic.

MariaD

[Maria Droujkova]

I think we could package parts of it as "small learning objects" for people to develop further. I see several so far:
1 - roles of textbooks and comparison to other entities
2 - content and instructional design as two dimensions of learning
3 - emergent pedagogies structurally different from each other (a taxonomy of pedagogies?)
4 - specifically, learning webs and communities of practice vs. "pedagogies of hierarchical organizations" (industrial models)

For myself, I see the following uses for the four objects:
1, 2 - flamebait and brainstorm facilitation tools (use to start word-based communities, events and entities, possibly to form reading lists of articles together)
3 - can develop into a tool for choosing pedagogies for my projects
4 - directly applies to my current "community of practice" projects as a framework

On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 2:44 PM, Randy Fisher <wiki...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Guys,

This is such a fascinating discussion...

Is there any way to package this - and use it as the basis of some learning materials for a course on something.... :-)

It's just such great dialogue.... I'm wondering how we can give it more life than simply in the google group..

- Randy

[Wayne]

Hi Maria,

This is a great project and I must compliment you on how you're succeeding in building a social network around Math activities.  Do keep us @ WikiEducator informed of your progress --- I'd love to experiment with tweaking your model for our wiki environment and possibly expand this to other subjects.

On the technical side -- It looks like you're building a highly customised site with very specific features.  As your site evolves, I do think the approach you're using will be useful to others including WE.  The Mediawiki software we use for WikiEducator is very powerful and quite flexible. So for example, we do have the ability to include flash objects -- you can take a look at these prototype lessons developed by Rob incorporating flash simulations:

http://www.wikieducator.org/Masses_and_Springs/Hooke%27s_Law/Simulation or
http://www.wikieducator.org/Magnifier/Simulation

However at the same time -- its more difficult for us to customise software for for specific projects, and we need to think creatively about how we can achieve similar results. Do keep us posted :-)

[valerie]

Maria - Dream on...

This is the sort of thing that I have been working on as well.

With my very WikiEducator-centric view, I think that wikipages might
be part of the process. Paths, sequences, study guides, or some such
designation could be created to include activities and links to other
learning objects - just as you suggest. These could be created by
instructors for their own use, by learners as a product of their own
learning and discovery and/or as a collaboration by a community of
practice. Because they live in WE they could be tagged to indicate
that they are intended / available for aggregating.

If this were a perfect world.. the aggregates would be helpful as
recommendations or referrals. Then there could be some "magic" that
does all the things you suggest - customize the display to the
learner's selections and specification

Finding and using these great resources is really important and
interesting.

Thanks for the wonderful ideas and comments.

..vt

On Dec 6, 3:33 am, "Maria Droujkova" <droujk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd like to describe a system we have started to develop in the family

> multiplication study. The "reusable objects" there are "small" according to...

[Maria Droujkova]

Valerie,

What's a good starting point or two to familiarize myself with your work in similar directions? I search WE for you and found... quite a lot of things you are involved in!

We should have about half of the features I described in beta early in January. The "magic" is in capturing past human action and "serving up" the aggregated knowledge contained therein, automatically.

Happy holidays,
MariaD

[NELLIE DEUTSCH]

Happy holidays, everyone.
Talk about Magic reminds me of my collaborative project with teachers and students in Italy called the Magic Flying Carpet. 
Warm wishes,
Nellie Deutsch
Doctoral Student
Educational Leadership
Curriculum and Instruction
http://www.wikieducator.org/EL4C19
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Nelliemuller
skype:nelliedeutschmuller

[valerie]

Maria

That is wonderful to hear that you are moving forward so quickly.
Please let us know when you are ready to let us see your beta version.

Is there a format for the information that can facilitate "capturing
the past human action" ? Rather than just going back and gathering
information automatically, it might be interesting and useful to also
have a format to guide mentors and learners recording the
information.

I have my students research a topic and provide the information to the
class. Is there some place or format where they can record their work
that could help your capturing process?

..Valerie

[Barbara Dieu]

I have recently been to a short presentation of The Connexions project (funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation) from  Rice University.
http://cnx.org
I saw some of the mashed-up books and collage material that was produced by the teachers and was quite impressed. The platform looks quite user-friendly as well.
Are you familiar with their work in the OER field?

Warm regards from Brazil and have a wonderful holiday time :-)
Bee

--
Barbara Dieu
http://barbaradieu.com
http://beespace.net

[Maria Droujkova]

Valerie,

We can move forward relatively quickly because we have a dedicated software team on the project - my husband and I have a software company, so we can draw on the expertise and experience. Still, I always want to move faster!!! You know how it is... At least we will have a beautiful front page and site design in a couple of days. This took forever because I kept tweaking things around in sketches.

You pose an excellent question - a research problem, even. I guess if I were to situate it, it would turn into, "How do we build the semantic web (web 3.0) out of our stuff?" Or maybe it's too broad?

Little RLOs from Natural Math, every one of them, are about users creating something. For the Family Multiplication Study in particular, we are building a structure where there is a "creation hub" (multiplication planet site, named by an activity, such as snowflakes, patterns in the multiplication table, your own number systems, your own board or computer games and so on) and then individual creations around each hub, kinda like settlers building houses and barns and such to form a village. I think the information of how each "settler family" moved among hubs is useful too, so we are going to capture those journeys.

People, naturally, describe what information and tools they used - manipulatives, sites, books and so on. I posed the condition that when people cite a non-open (or non-Creative Commons) source, they describe the relevant part enough for others to be able to do the activity without buying the source. But a family story can't all be about the information the family found somewhere: it has to be about what they built using the information.

Valerie, I would like to know more about your project! Are your students authoring? I guess it's a philosophical question, because assembling information in novel ways (citing, mashing, linking) is considered a form of authoring by many. Yet I am going for a pretty direct definition of "authoring" here: users creating their own definitions, making up their own math operations, posing their own problems, coming up with their own patterns, building their own systems and so on. If we go by "Bloom's Digital Taxonomy" - I am chasing the top two levels (creating and evaluating).

Looking forward to learning more about your work,
MariaD

[Maria Droujkova]

Barbara,

I think I am missing something there... The content I can get is all pdfs, which is kind of limiting for representations (text and pictures). Also, some pages have no content at all, other than an ad for a web site, like this algebra page: http://cnx.org/content/m16260/latest/

What am I doing wrong? Can you please point me to one or two of these good mashed-up things you mentioned?

Cheers,
MariaD

[Barbara Dieu]

Hi Maria,

I just participated in a presentation where the general lines of the project were introduced and we were shown some examples of what they are doing and mashed-up books using a collection of material and modules from different authors inside the platform.

>The content I can get is all pdfs

Here is an example of a book
http://cnx.org/content/m16026/latest/
You can find the content online in html (the pages can be printed), downloadable for free as a pdf or zip file or you can order a printed version for a fee.

>Also, some pages have no content at all, other than an ad for a web site.
I suppose they must be in construction

You'd  have to log into their platform to see how it works in practice to build, find and combine these resources. Here are some short tutorials.
http://cnx.org/help/authorguide
http://cnx.org/help/ModuleInMinutes

The FAQ are clear
http://cnx.org/help/faq

The navigation on the Plone platform looks visually clean.

OERs were also discussed at the Berlin Online Educa, where different models were presented. I find it interesting to be able to compare them to Wikieducator - after all, we can all learn with what others are doing in the field.
http://www.icwe.net/oeb_special/news109.php

Warm regards from Brazil,
Bee
[presently working on Bloom's Revised Taxonomy and spending way too much time on trying to get the tables right.
http://wikieducator.org/Bloom%27s_revised_taxonomy]

[Wayne]

Hi Barbara,

Connexions is an impressive project in the OER field. They are one of but a few international OER projects that use a content license (CC-BY) which meets the requirements of the free cultural works definition.  As such I'm very keen to explore collaborations with Connexions, particularly in the area of re-mixing content between our respective projects.

There are minor differences in the process and design approaches used by our respective projects. WikiEducator is founded on the wiki-model of peer collaboration whereas Connexions' processes are more akin to the "producer-consumer" model of OER content development. Both approaches have their respective advantages and disadvantages. 

Consequently I would be very keen to explore how our respective technologies could work with each other in building a sustainable OER ecosystem. Based on your experiences --- do you have any thoughts on how we might progress this?

Cheers
Wayne

[Barbara Dieu]

Hello Wayne,

As I mentioned to Maria, the presentation on Connections was the first
I attended. It was short (I made a post about it:
http://beespace.net/oer-at-stoa/) and I have not had the opportunity
to test the platform to see how it works myself so have no experience
in that domain. I was attracted though by the apparent facility of
combining different contributed bits and pieces to create your own,
something which seems to be more difficult in the wiki, where you
create all from scratch and it remains (in my limited view) a bit
static.

>WikiEducator is founded on the wiki-model of peer collaboration whereas Connexions' processes are more akin to the "producer-consumer" model of OER content development. Both approaches have their respective advantages and disadvantages.

Why do you mean by peer as opposed to producer-consumer and what would
be the advantages and disadvantages of each, as you see it?

Warm regards,

[Wayne]

Hi Bee,

Responses in text below.

On Tue, 2008-12-30 at 16:42 -0200, Barbara Dieu wrote:

I was attracted though by the apparent facility of
combining different contributed bits and pieces to create your own,
something which seems to be more difficult in the wiki, where you
create all from scratch and it remains (in my limited view) a bit
static.

Technically the collection feature in WikiEducator enables users to reuse existing collections and/or recreate customised collections.  Also, I think that there are considerable opportunities for us to improve reusability through design. For example, identifying the educational elements with a high probability for customisation (eg activities) as discrete objects in the materials, for instance pedagogical templates or individual subsections. In this way we can reduce the time and effort required for reuse and customisation.  With this model -- different teachers can then easily build customised collections for their teaching.  I do agree that we will need to refine the user interface for making it easier to build customised collections in WE.

This is something I'd be keen for us to focus on in the new year.  So any thoughts on how we can improve the ability to customise and reuse resources is most welcome. We can build these recommendations into the technical development specifications.  If all goes well -- we should be able to raise the funding necessary for these refinements :-).

>WikiEducator is founded on the wiki-model of peer collaboration  whereas Connexions' processes are more akin to the "producer-consumer" model of OER content development. Both approaches have their respective advantages and disadvantages.

Why do you mean by peer as opposed to producer-consumer and what would
be the advantages and disadvantages of each, as you see it?

Towards the end of 2007, Ken Udas from the World Campus at PSU, Chris Geith from MSU Global and myself had a bash at distinguishing these approaches:

http://www.wikieducator.org/Internationalising_online_programs/OER_producer-consumer_and_co-production_models

I think the table attempting to compare these approaches needs some refinement and improvement ;-) -- but is nonetheless is a starting point to think about these differences. 

I think that the mass-collaboration approach which underpins peer-production models has greater potential for leveraging the benefits of self-organising OER systems (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization ) -- What's interesting about self-organising systems is the fact that its difficult to predict future benefits -- they emerge over time. Also, self-organising systems are also more responsive and can adapt more easily to changing needs. I also have a strong sense that the emerging approaches will be more aligned with the principles of mass-customisation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_customization ) as opposed to the more traditional model of mass-standardisation we have become accustomed to in the classical academic publishing model.

In reality -- its still very early days in the world of  mass collaboration and peer-production OER models in education.  There is still lots that we need to learn.  That's what I find so exciting with projects like WikiEducator -- we're making the future happen!

Cheers
Wayne

[Barbara Dieu]

Thanks for the links and explanation...for the time being, I am
experimenting...and will share with you my findings and impressions.

> That's what I find so exciting with projects like WikiEducator -- we're making the future happen!

So do I. A toast to 2009 and the years to come! May new forms of
peer-production and collaboration emerge!

Warm regards and off to the coast to spend New Year by the sea with my
feet in the water as required by our local mores and lores :-)
Check last year's pic
http://flickr.com/photos/bee/340747926/

[Randy Fisher]

Hi Leigh,

I'm just catching up on emails, posts, etc.

I am interested in your post, as it relates to reaching the 'last mile
of development'. You outline a very workable hybrid of technology and
smart-thinking to achieve a specific objective. These insights are
very valuable, as local ingenuity coupled with necessity and use of
available resources and technologies seems to deal with many of the
last-mile problems that often plague development projects.

What would you call this....?

I think it would be cool to develop a page of these types of locally
devised solutions.... what do you think?

- Randy

> >http://learnonline.wordpress.com<http://console.mxlogic.com/redir/?b9EVjhuphpdIL6zBYQsCzAQsLCM0p_X65o7...>
> >http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Leighblackall<http://console.mxlogic.com/redir/?1pd7aqbPab9JBUQsLCzAQsCzBYS02ciaOZ1...>

[Maria Droujkova]

Technically the collection feature in WikiEducator enables users to reuse existing collections and/or recreate customised collections.  Also, I think that there are considerable opportunities for us to improve reusability through design. For example, identifying the educational elements with a high probability for customisation (eg activities) as discrete objects in the materials, for instance pedagogical templates or individual subsections. In this way we can reduce the time and effort required for reuse and customisation.  With this model -- different teachers can then easily build customised collections for their teaching.  I do agree that we will need to refine the user interface for making it easier to build customised collections in WE.

This is something I'd be keen for us to focus on in the new year.  So any thoughts on how we can improve the ability to customise and reuse resources is most welcome. We can build these recommendations into the technical development specifications.  If all goes well -- we should be able to raise the funding necessary for these refinements :-).

Some pedagogical approaches, formats and styles are more inviting to customization than others. It has to do with several ideas and directions. For example, in math, posing closed-ended questions ("What is 2+2?") does not typically invite customization. Applications, on the other hand, invite high level of customization. The unit study approach always calls for some customization. I expect the issue of customization in general to be related to such field-specific pedagogical ideas.

>WikiEducator is founded on the wiki-model of peer collaboration  whereas Connexions' processes are more akin to the "producer-consumer" model of OER content development. Both approaches have their respective advantages and disadvantages.

Why do you mean by peer as opposed to producer-consumer and what would
be the advantages and disadvantages of each, as you see it?

Towards the end of 2007, Ken Udas from the World Campus at PSU, Chris Geith from MSU Global and myself had a bash at distinguishing these approaches:

http://www.wikieducator.org/Internationalising_online_programs/OER_producer-consumer_and_co-production_models

I think the table attempting to compare these approaches needs some refinement and improvement ;-) -- but is nonetheless is a starting point to think about these differences. 

I think that the mass-collaboration approach which underpins peer-production models has greater potential for leveraging the benefits of self-organising OER systems (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization ) -- What's interesting about self-organising systems is the fact that its difficult to predict future benefits -- they emerge over time. Also, self-organising systems are also more responsive and can adapt more easily to changing needs. I also have a strong sense that the emerging approaches will be more aligned with the principles of mass-customisation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_customization ) as opposed to the more traditional model of mass-standardisation we have become accustomed to in the classical academic publishing model.

Wayne, I would like to thank you for putting together this vocabulary for discussing the topic. It is quite helpful in thinking about my project specifically, and more general issues, too. In the spirit of refinement, where would "learners as co-creators of content" fit? At a first glance, it seems to belong in the co-production models, but maybe it's a separate dimension altogether. ossibilities:
producer-consumer-learner vs. co-production-learning vs. co-production together with learners, as an integral part of the learning process.

Just like blogging and other social web tools are removing the separation in time between writing and publishing, 3.0 (to give a loose collective name to the processes happening now) can remove the separation in time between producing curriculum and using/learning/teaching it, and some of the separation in roles between producers, consumers (teachers) and their "subjects" (students).

[Maria Droujkova]

Barbara,

Thank you for the overview. It was helpful in exploring the system. If I were to compare it to others, Squidoo comes to mind, out of all things. I am trying to decide what value does the system add to justify hosting information in it. For example, I like hosting my pictures on Flickr, compared to a random site, because of picture notes, pretty slide shows and other widgets I can embed, powerful managing tools and a robust community. I think of the process of aggregating pieces in some uniform format (like Flickr picture objects, or snx's RLOs), vs. the process of being able to mash together pieces from random sites, in random formats. It's a tough choice :-)

[Randy Fisher]

Hi Maria,

I'd like to bring in a perspective that's a bit different, yet related. Your email touches on aspects of it.

Recently, I finished a Masters paper for my Masters program in organisation management and development, on educators' motivations in collaborative wiki spaces (er, WikiEducator).

http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Randyfisher/MP
and
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Randyfisher/MP/Final_Paper

I experienced some collaboration with others - offline, and online (in sharing sections of the paper with them, and getting feedback).

I also experienced greater collaboration with myself, and much higher productivity than I've experienced before.

I set up a template, with easy access to pages I knew that I wanted to add content to. As I did my research and thinking, I just added content to the pages.

At the same time, I was facilitating an L4C course - and redesigning it, to make it more interactive and fluid - http://www.wikieducator.org/Learning4Content/Workshops/Community_Media - I took my insights from my MA project, and applied them (immediately to the revision, then getting feedback from my learners both on the wiki, and in the Google Group, I was able to write my paper in a more informed way....It was an amazing experience, and Part II is coming up this January-April.

While doing this, I didn't think of the various roles I was playing - but whether actually having multiple roles involved, or a single person doing multiple roles, it was an incredible experience....And, best of all, my project work is available, if someone wants to use it for some other (unintended) purpose, or simply build it into a collection and put some learning activities around it - and publish it.

- Randy

--
________________
Randy Fisher
Change/Transition Management; Performance, Collaboration & Engagement; Sustainable Communities & Organizations

+ 1 604.684.2275
wiki...@gmail.com

http://www.wikieducator.org - Member, WikiEducator Community Council
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Randyfisher

[Wayne]

On Tue, 2008-12-30 at 19:52 -0500, Maria Droujkova wrote:

In the spirit of refinement, where would "learners as co-creators of content" fit? At a first glance, it seems to belong in the co-production models, but maybe it's a separate dimension altogether. possibilities:

producer-consumer-learner vs. co-production-learning vs. co-production together with learners, as an integral part of the learning process.

Hi Maria --- that's a very good question.  In WikiEducator, two examples come to mind where learners are actively engaged in co-producing learning materials. Apology for the long-winded response -- but this is a fascinating discussion.

1) Biology in elementary schools is a project at St Michael's College where student teachers produce OER lessons  (http://www.wikieducator.org/Biology_in_elementary_schools) and are graded on their work as part of the course;
2) Ruth Lawson, a lecturer at Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand is developing learning activities on WikiEducator based on her OER text on the Anatomy and Physiology of Animals on Wikibooks (see: http://www.wikieducator.org/The_Anatomy_and_Physiology_of_Animals). Ruth reports that students assist in refening and improving the activities on WikiEducator.

So one classification option under the co-production model could be based on two points of a continuum:

a) OERs  produced solely by learners, and
b) OER produced solely by teachers

The middle ground of this continuum would represent OER co-produced by teachers and learners.

Thinking out loud here -- do we need a discrete category for learner generated OER? Or does the co-production model subsume the continuum of learner engagement as co-producers.

Another interesting angle in the co-production model is the idea that learners become teachers, and teachers become learners.  I think there is wisdom in the old adage that if you want to learn something --- teach it. Also teachers (or subject matter experts) developing content in the wiki become learners in the sense that through collaboration they are exposed to experiential learning with reference to learning design, multimedia design and visual design.

mmmm --- clearly our typology and our evolving classification framework needs some refinement :-). Thanks for your reflections.

Cheers
Wayne

[Wayne]

On Tue, 2008-12-30 at 17:05 -0800, Randy Fisher wrote:

I also experienced greater collaboration with myself, and much higher productivity than I've experienced before.

Hey Randy -- the notion of "greater collaboration with myself" is very powerful (albeit somewhat of a paradox :-) . Could you expand on this a little?

I'm also intrigued by your experiences that the wiki approach has contributed to higher productivity.  How does the open wiki model contribute to increased productivity -- when compared, say to other technology approaches?

These are important insights ..... can't wait to learn more from your experiences.

Cheers
Wayne

[Maria Droujkova]

Here is the next iteration.

I am thinking of three frameworks in relation to this discussion. First is "communities of practice" (Lave and others): tools for the community, in this case learning objects, have to be co-developed by all community members, with newbies (apprentices) engaged in "legitimate peripheral participation" as they are willing and able. Second, there is revised Bloom's taxonomy (hello, Bee!): authoring and remixing learning objects are Creating- and Evaluating-level activities. Third, there is a taxonomy of user power over representations I've been sketching for the last few years.

On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 8:58 PM, Wayne <wmack...@col.org> wrote:

On Tue, 2008-12-30 at 19:52 -0500, Maria Droujkova wrote:

In the spirit of refinement, where would "learners as co-creators of content" fit? At a first glance, it seems to belong in the co-production models, but maybe it's a separate dimension altogether. possibilities:

producer-consumer-learner vs. co-production-learning vs. co-production together with learners, as an integral part of the learning process.

Hi Maria --- that's a very good question.  In WikiEducator, two examples come to mind where learners are actively engaged in co-producing learning materials. Apology for the long-winded response -- but this is a fascinating discussion.

1) Biology in elementary schools is a project at St Michael's College where student teachers produce OER lessons  (http://www.wikieducator.org/Biology_in_elementary_schools) and are graded on their work as part of the course;
2) Ruth Lawson, a lecturer at Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand is developing learning activities on WikiEducator based on her OER text on the Anatomy and Physiology of Animals on Wikibooks (see: http://www.wikieducator.org/The_Anatomy_and_Physiology_of_Animals). Ruth reports that students assist in refening and improving the activities on WikiEducator.

So one classification option under the co-production model could be based on two points of a continuum:

a) OERs  produced solely by learners, and
b) OER produced solely by teachers

The middle ground of this continuum would represent OER co-produced by teachers and learners.

There are many groups potentially playing active roles in the co-production. From my projects, the list, organized by the people's primary goals as they join communities of practice, includes: learners of math, teachers of math, friend and family helpers (e.g. homeschool parents of kids learning math, or parent/community volunteers in classrooms), coaches/consultants (working with the first three), curriculum developers, software developers for math and community software, network and community leaders/organizers, and researchers studying all these people.

Because I am weak at visualizing eight-dimensional gradients, I suggest using a windrose-like diagram (a radar chart) of participation in co-creation of learning objects. It's easy to adapt to as many player group as each project needs. I am attaching a couple of hypothetical examples to this email.

A simpler way is to say, "every participant is occasionally a co-producer."
 

Thinking out loud here -- do we need a discrete category for learner generated OER? Or does the co-production model subsume the continuum of learner engagement as co-producers.

I am struggling with "learner" as a separate role, too.

Another interesting angle in the co-production model is the idea that learners become teachers, and teachers become learners.  I think there is wisdom in the old adage that if you want to learn something --- teach it. Also teachers (or subject matter experts) developing content in the wiki become learners in the sense that through collaboration they are exposed to experiential learning with reference to learning design, multimedia design and visual design.

Every participant in a community of practice is learning. At least it's true of the communities we consider here. I think it might be better to do away with a separate "learner" role altogether. I do not know how to call child members of my math clubs, or adults I am frequently helping to figure out math for their art, craft or business projects, or younger family members in the Family Multiplication Study, but if you ask them who they are, "learner" probably won't be a label they choose to describe their community roles. I will ask math club people after the holiday break. It would be interesting to see how they describe themselves.

Cheers,
MariaD

[Derek Chirnside]

Dabbling only in this discussion: at this stage.

I know I stumbled upon this site at some stage:
Connexions: http://cnx.org/

I quote:

Connexions is:

a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. Anyone may view or contribute:

• authors create and collaborate
• instructors rapidly build and share custom collections
• learners find and explore content

And: from the founder, http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_baraniuk_on_open_source_learning.html

I quote:

About this talk

Rice University professor Richard Baraniuk explains the vision behind Connexions, his open-source, online education system. It cuts out the textbook, allowing teachers to share and modify course materials freely, anywhere in the world.

- Derek

[valerie]

Hi Maria

Yes, my students are authoring learning materials - mostly as
collaborative research projects
http://www.wikieducator.org/DeAnza_College/CIS2/Fall_2008
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Vtaylor/CIS2_Summer_2008

I would very much like to have access to some tools that would allow
them to build out materials around hubs in a way that isn't linear
wiki pages, but rather some more complex network / hub representation.
The idea being that these could be combined with the work of others.
Then anyone interested in the topic would be guided around the
learning space by these connections.

Another use would be to enter the space with a specific link, then be
able to see the connections and follow paths that went off from
there.

The general purpose Google search can do this sort of. If there is a
link to a specific site in a page, you could search for other pages
that contained that link. However, it doesn't address the idea that
students are finding these paths as they learn and are the best source
of this information. Capturing this information and then leveraging
that in combination with many students' paths is important and
interesting.

Wishing you the best for 2009
..Valerie

[valerie]

Hi Maria

I had another thought. As I "learn" something by searching for, and
learning from web sites, I tag these and leave notes to myself in
Delicious. http://delicious.com

Over time I have built a learning path or sequence. If these are
"harvested" and combined with the work of others, there would be a
pretty powerful recommender network. Because there is a time stamp on
each tagged entry, there is also some directional information - the
material is more complex or detailed as time goes on, as I learn more
about the topic. There may be some back-tracking if I find I need more
background, but the relationships are still important.

http://delicious.com/byxbee <<-- me

For example - see my trail for FOC08 or CKK08
These track my progress through these courses. Others also tagged
their finds for these courses. Some of the sites are common (and
"stronger") while some are unique to each participant.

There are lots of delicious provided scripts that can pull the
entries. For example
https://secure.delicious.com/settings/
http://delicious.com/help/linkrolls - this dynamically generates a
slick little script for grabbing entries for a specific tag.

I hope this is clear enough to give you the idea. I'll try explaining
it better if this isn't clear.

Best
..Valerie

[valerie]

Hi Derek

I think one significant "feature" of Connexions is the captured in the
quote you quoted

> open-source, online education system. It cuts out the
> textbook

Implicitly, the OERs a big - full courses, textbook replacements, open
textbooks. That's fine, and for many instructors and institutions this
is a huge benefit.

I started working with OERs in 2000 when the current thinking was "the
smaller, the better" - more flexibility, more opportunity for reuse
and customized collection and redistribution. Eventually, it became
clear that some OER adopters needed bigger, more complete lessons and
even whole courses - but not everyone.

Like buying a computers - some folks just want to purchase something
that works to enable/support what they want to do. Others want/need
various level of customization to make it "just right" and are
prepared to put in the time and money to get this.

The OER space covers a vast spectrum of creators and users
(instructors and learners). There is plenty of opportunity for
everyone to be successful. Finding your way around is somewhat
confusing as the tools are not well established, yet. Are you looking
for the plug-and-play version? Or are you prepared to shop around and
fiddle with the parts until it is just the way you want it?

This is why I think Maria's work is so interesting. They may be onto
providing some of the tools that will significantly improve locating
(and using) OERs. This is very exciting and greatly needed IMHO.

It's all here somewhere. Finding it is the first challenge. :o)

..Valerie


On Jan 2, 5:12 am, "Derek Chirnside" <derek.chirns...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dabbling only in this discussion: at this stage.

[Maria Droujkova]

On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 6:39 PM, valerie <vta...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Maria

Yes, my students are authoring learning materials - mostly as
collaborative research projects
http://www.wikieducator.org/DeAnza_College/CIS2/Fall_2008
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Vtaylor/CIS2_Summer_2008

I would very much like to have access to some tools that would allow
them to build out materials around hubs in a way that isn't linear
wiki pages, but rather some more complex network / hub representation.

I think the wiki structure, in and of itself, is quite wonderful for complex networks. The parent-child page creation promotes it, for example. Wikis are frequently used as an example of the structure contrasting with hierarchical, taxonomic ones. Ironically, a lot of people are drawn to simplistic structures in wiki authoring, due to psychological reasons. It makes the cognitive load lighter, basically, and wikis don't always have other tools for lowering cognitive loads in non-linear structures.

What I am trying to say: let's figure out how to integrate WE with some of the tools we at Natural Math are building for helping communities navigate non-linear reusable learning object structures. The "planet mapping" specifically can be of use. I probably need to be talking with techie people about it. "Planet" can be a metaphor for a navigation/authoring system helping people aggregate and create wiki pages. Several people mentioned a need. This is very much in the early brainstorming stage.

 

The idea being that these could be combined with the work of others.
Then anyone interested in the topic would be guided around the
learning space by these connections.

Another use would be to enter the space with a specific link, then be
able to see the connections and follow paths that went off from
there.

The general purpose Google search can do this sort of. If there is a
link to a specific site in a page, you could search for other pages
that contained that link. However, it doesn't address the idea that
students are finding these paths as they learn and are the best source
of this information. Capturing this information and then leveraging
that in combination with many students' paths is important and
interesting.

I think the idea is similar to "semantic web" ideas: not a top-down static link farm, not a completely history-free search, but an integration of the two, through the community's actions of capturing their "paths." Many people are working on this now.

Wishing you the best for 2009
..Valerie

--

--
Cheers,
MariaD

Make math your own, to make your own math.

http://www.naturalmath.com social math site
http://www.phenixsolutions.com empowering our innovations

[john stampe]

Belated Happy New Year to all.

As many of you are interested in using video, I'll share this article I just ran across about doing screen video capture in Linux:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9124180

Especially note the program WinFF (an open source program).

Regards,
John

[valerie]

Hi Maria

I love wikis for all the reasons you state. And WE makes a great
repository for educational content of all levels and authorship.

Tools for learning by personalizing or customizing finding and using
the content could be better.

I think we are looking to solve the same problem (what). Anything your
techies can do to provide solutions (how) would be great. If you have
ideas to bounce around and want comments and feedback, please let me
know. We can also work on examples of usage.

Also - look at Kartoo
http://www.kartoo.com/en_index.htm
Another representation of information links about a topic

..Valerie

On Jan 7, 11:04 am, "Maria Droujkova" <droujk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 6:39 PM, valerie <vtay...@gmail.com> wrote: