Open source course collaboration

Re: Open source course collaboration

by Don Hinkelman -
Number of replies: 9
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Hi Matt,

Those open courseware packages look great. I took a look at the MIT stuff and it seems very deep, although you have to install Python to get it to work.

I suspect the problem with all of these open courseware is that they are their own format. Not moodle-ized. Actually, I consider Moodle 2.2 now the global standard, not SCORM, not CC, not IMS.

Using a Community Hub can help teachers share immediately-usable courses on their own site. The Open Courseware will be useful after someone spends 20-100 hours converting the course to a Moodle 2.x course and puts it on a Hub.

Another tool that I forgot to mention, that goes with the Hub, is the Sharing Cart. The new 2.2 version moves individual course items from course to course, almost like drag-and-drop. So you can make a repository of sharable courses on your site, and teachers can come and grab whatever pieces they like.

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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Open source course collaboration

by Matt Bury -
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Hi Don,

I agree that more effective curriculum development goes beyond SCORM, etc. A lot of the course ware I've seen is just pages of text and images anyway and would be easy to copy and paste into a variety of LMS' and backed up in their respective formats.

I think the UK's OU offers Open Courseware in Moodle format (backed up courses) but I can't find the link.

Does anyone have a link?

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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Open source course collaboration

by Stuart Mealor -

I agree with the comments around format. I think Moodle courses do have the capability of becoming a global standard, just because of the number of them (although these are quite different to the aims and capabilities of SCORM).

We started http://www.freemoodle.org last year, and it would allow any teacher to Moodle-ise (is that a word?) open couresware into a Moodle format, with no restrictions on who can access it - and the Teacher is able to Backup and move the course to other site whenever they wish - or publish/share the course as they wish.

If you read the reason behind the site being launched, and the aims, you will see that we are really hoping FreeMoodle.org can become a really useful facility to compliment the wider open courseware philosophy.

Stu.

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In reply to Stuart Mealor

Re: Open source course collaboration

by Matt Bury -
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Hi Tim,

Thanks for the link. Is there any kind of index of open courseware on the OU site?

Hi Stuart,

That sounds like a great idea. I bet there's a fair amount of converting going on on an ad-hoc basis, i.e. different people doing the same conversions over and over. It wouldn't be too difficult for a few people to convert existing courseware from other formats to Moodle and have them up and running on a collective Moodle, like freemoodle.org, so that teachers and organisations can review them in situ, with a backup file (snapshot) that can be downloaded. I reckon that this could increase the dissemination of open courseware and uptake of Moodle substantially.


Since Moodle doesn't have a versioning system, AFAIK, I guess we'd need other collaborative platforms so that content and curriculum developers could work together. Wikis sound like a good idea but perhaps someone with more experience of collaborative courseware development could steer us in the most productive direction, not forgetting that many courseware developers will be new to Moodle, wikis, versioning, etc.

What do people here think about indexing courseware according to learners' needs, i.e. age/level, topics, etc., so that, for example, a teacher with a class of 14 year-olds studying journalism and the theory of history could find what he/she needs easily?

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In reply to Matt Bury

OpenCourseWare in collaboration

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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I believe that the new term for "open source course" is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCourseWare and changed the subject accordingly.

IMO the new subthread http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=121877#p843622 has earned the state of a full thread, considering the break of over two and half years since the last post in the old thread.
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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Open source course collaboration

by Glenys Hanson -

Hi Matt,

Here's a list of All Units - Learning Space on the OU site.

An impressively huge list and though many courses still seem very much in the "transmission mode" there are more interactive exercises than when I last looked a few years ago. Maybe I missed the more exciting ones.

Cheers,

Glenys

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In reply to Glenys Hanson

Re: Open source course collaboration

by Matt Bury -
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Thanks Glenys!

Yes, I've looked at some of them in the past and those from other universities. I have to agree that they're pretty much "page-turners" with occasional quizzes.

If these courses were online in an editable form, i.e. a live Moodle (freemoodle?), learning and teaching professionals could apply their knowledge and experience and collaboratively develop the courses into something more, well, collaborative. Anybody interested in applying Vygotski's ZPD to courseware development?

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Open source course collaboration

by Glenys Hanson -

Hi Matt,

Well, the OU courses are published under a Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0" so it's presumably OK to take the content and transform it into a more collaborative, interactive course if the source is acknowledged. I don't think it was CC a few yours ago when I was desperate for content to turn into exercises.

Don't tempt me, Matt, I have other things planned for this coming year...

Cheers,

Glenys

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In reply to Glenys Hanson

Re: Open source course collaboration

by Tim Hunt -
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I am pretty sure openlearn has always been CC.

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