5.1 Wikieducator: memoirs, myths, misrepresentations and the magic  (Page 13/21)

This is not the same type of openness as an open wiki and in some ways nor can it be given the context of quality assured credentialing frameworks etc. Within the courseware we also have flash based objects, audio and video rendered in flash. I know this won’t fit with your philosophies on openness as proprietary tools may be necessary to edit the content.

In our defense:

• We’re not using any NC restrictions. Commercial entities can repurpose this stuff.
• We’ve designed the materials as OERS, i.e high granularity, learning objects have XML engines to be more easily editable etc. This is as opposed to the trend to put up legacy courseware, call it open and then say you have an OER project when the materials are ill-suited for wider sharing and input.
• We’ve focused on high quality learning design so that there will be uptake amongst the tertiary education sector.
• The goal is to reduce barriers to entry and get better quality courses online for overall less investment at a system wide level. On that I’m a pragmatist and will use the best tools available proprietary or otherwise. There’s shades of grey here. In my experience there’s many open source projects and OER projects that aren’t all that open anyway. But this isn’t the final model, it’s all a learning curve. A wiki environment and more extensive use of RSS are on the drawing board!

Now about that beer, coming your way in a few weeks ;-)

8. wayne mackintosh - april 5th, 2007 at 11:51 pm

Hey Richard,

This virtual environments are weird - I didn’t connect this discussion with your short visit to Canada soon. No worries - I’ll buy you that beer, and if its “Free beer” I’ll buy you another :-) .

You guy’s are doing pioneering work - that Kiwi No.8 Wire experimentation we were talking about. The rest of us are going to learn from your experiences - and I know from your work on the NZOSVLE that your experiences will be refactored back into the community - like this discussion.

The nut we still haven’t cracked in the free content movement is the value proposition at the individual educator level. The “costs” of remixing in terms of time, ego (psychological ownership) etc. must be less than the real and perceived benefits. So in other words the benefits of mixing bits and pieces of free content must be more than the temptation to create my own resource from scratch. I don’t think we have got this right yet (our wiki approach included).

The value of show casing is that we can visualise undiscovered potential. So go for it. I do think modularity helps overcome the pedagogical structure challenge. At the same time there is an inverse relationship between reusability and the “amount” of learning design we embed in our resources. The more learning design - the less reusable they become in other contexts. This is not a rebuttal against learning design - but a recognition that learning is always contextually bound. Its a tough challenge - but we’ve got to get smarter.

I like your house kitset example. It emphasizes modularity and some freedom of choice. The analogy breaks down if you want to build a boat. (Sorry - I come from Auckland, although the sailing would be better in Wellington given the wind you have down in your neck of the woods!)