At the UK Moodle moot last month I was interested to hear
both Jason Cole and Martin D talk about sharing content between Moodle
installations across institutional boundaries. At the 05 UK
Moot some of you heard me talk about learning objects and my somewhat cynical
view of them (e.g. metadata issues, neatly covered, if somewhat
negatively, in Metacrap).
The topics have some interesting similarities and since I gave that talk I have
come across another case study:
I have been involved in the tail end of a Uni project with 2 UK and 2 US
partners, it was about generating Geography learning objects that were shared
between the institutions (using differing VLEs), the idea was that by sharing
content we could avoid writing the same material 4 times over. The
technical challenges of getting content into the separate VLEs were easy to
solve; for part of the project we published content on a public server (but not
publicised) and the Unis linked to that from within their own VLEs. It’s
a clutchy solution, you lose student log information but it 'just
worked'.
However, the human and institutional challenges were more difficult to
solve. For example, the legal agreements about who owned what (and our institutions
insisted on them) took an incredibly long time to sort out. In my
experience Unis don't think a course's value is to do with the social
interactions of students and tutors, they view the value as being to do
with the content.
So I love the idea of the OS source ethos being used to build content sharing
communities, Jason and Martin had interesting visions of how to bring this
forward but I worry that they are both focusing on the technical
challenges. In my experience of the Uni market the technical challenge is
easy to solve, the institutional barriers are the ones we need to address.
Interested to hear people's reactions,
Rich
Great post, Rich. Your metacrap link is a gem that will be a reusable learning object for me
That brings me to my point. I think that much of the project work on reusable learning objects takes an institutional focus, with all the baggage that you describe. Also 'objects' lack context and when we share them in OS (and other communities) we can tap into that context via dialogue.
If you want to get theoretical about it, it's the old tension (see Wenger) between reification and participation. We'd love to just take someone's lesson plan (or 'learning design') as is but really it means a lot more when we talk to them about it.
Another common feature of reusable learning objects projects is that they have 'communities of practice' because they are a 'good thing' but they don't really work because they are more about serving the 'repository' than the 'community' members. Ask teachers how they share - with their mates not with institutions!!
Well- that's enough single quotes for one day - RANT OVER!
If you want to get theoretical about it, it's the old tension (see Wenger) between reification and participation. We'd love to just take someone's lesson plan (or 'learning design') as is but really it means a lot more when we talk to them about it.
Another common feature of reusable learning objects projects is that they have 'communities of practice' because they are a 'good thing' but they don't really work because they are more about serving the 'repository' than the 'community' members. Ask teachers how they share - with their mates not with institutions!!
Well- that's enough single quotes for one day - RANT OVER!
You think that the problem is across institutions - I see the problem
WITHIN institutions. There is too much of the Gollum-like
reactions of "My precious" and "Mine, all mine". Only when
teachers/lecturers understand the "Open" philosophy will progress be
made.
Saddened, ageing hippie....
Dave Berry
Saddened, ageing hippie....
Dave Berry
So, do you think it is individuals who are being precious about what they own or institutions claiming ownership? or a bit of both?
I think that it is easy to denigrate people who refuse to share but probably more productive to understand why they do and don't share - how sharing 'works'. (Please don't interpret this as being against Open source and Open content).
BTW, my post didn't say the problem was across institutions rather than within institutions.
I think that it is easy to denigrate people who refuse to share but probably more productive to understand why they do and don't share - how sharing 'works'. (Please don't interpret this as being against Open source and Open content).
BTW, my post didn't say the problem was across institutions rather than within institutions.
I recognise the issue in Dave's post above, but I think this is often masking other issues such as lack of confidence and fear of criticism by peers.
Thanks for coming back at me everyone. Interesting views all round. I think my main point was that the problem with sharing is not a technical 'can this be done' - because it can. The real problems are the 'why should we do this' questions the users ask. It seems to me no one disagrees with this point.
"So, do you think it is individuals who are being precious about what they own or institutions claiming ownership? or a bit of both?"
Both but obviously it varies between institutions.
"You think that the problem is across institutions - I see the problem WITHIN institutions."
Yes, by the 'across institutions' I meant the ability to share, it applies equally to sharing within institutions.
Rich
"So, do you think it is individuals who are being precious about what they own or institutions claiming ownership? or a bit of both?"
Both but obviously it varies between institutions.
"You think that the problem is across institutions - I see the problem WITHIN institutions."
Yes, by the 'across institutions' I meant the ability to share, it applies equally to sharing within institutions.
Rich
I agree Ray. People will share (not in the strict technical non-copy sense described by John Ilsner) when they feel comfortable and trust each other, and that can and does happen in an OS community (though not universally ). My point about context is an additional issue though. Sharing learning objects in a repository or local library can get over some of the technical problems, and community trust can ease the problems Ray describes but we do have different contexts for using learning objects and 'learning designs'. How do we evaluate an LO or LD and find an appropriate way of using it? We can use structured searches of repositories and study the meta-data, or we can hear about how it worked in practice from someone whose opinion we value. I think we can learn a lot from the broad range of uses of social software like Blogs and online communities, especially ones like flickr.com and delicious. Someone uploads a funny image to flickr.com or video to google videos, and then it spreads like a virus though personal links via email lists, blogs,etc.
I wonder if elgg.net will present some good opportunities for an educational version of this.
I wonder if elgg.net will present some good opportunities for an educational version of this.
I agree with David that the problem exists within institutions, but not only for sociological reasons. There are technical reasons why, even with Moodle, sharing is difficult or impossible. Moodle does not have any way that I am aware of for teachers to share activities, such as quizzes. Let me hasten to add: Copying is not sharing. "When you make a copy, you have two versions" (I forget who said that). Sharing is defined as "the joint use of a resource." If I use import or backup/restore, I get tons of extra stuff from you in addition to the one quiz I wanted, and now it's all MINE, ALL MINE! (whether I wanted it that way or not).
Hey Richard,
I'm glad someone was actually listening!
I think the key is to get it out of an institutional context and into the hands of individuals, whether they are associated with a university or not. A true open source ethos means anyone can participate at the level they choose and people can self-select for stuff they want to work on.
My vision is similar to wikibooks (www.wikibooks.org) or Project Gutenberg, but with a more fine grained level of participation. Imagine a system where you indicate you are an expert in programming, interested in koala bears, and can take decent photographs. Everytime you visited the site, it would give you small tasks which you might be interested in volunteering to perform (proofread this page, write a few quiz questions on when to use strings vs other data types, find or take a picture of a transmission). Or you could just dive in and work on that brilliant chapter and simulation about object oriented programming in PHP5.
It becomes truly open once it's out of institutional hands. We all have something to learn and we all have something to teach.
Jason
I'm glad someone was actually listening!
I think the key is to get it out of an institutional context and into the hands of individuals, whether they are associated with a university or not. A true open source ethos means anyone can participate at the level they choose and people can self-select for stuff they want to work on.
My vision is similar to wikibooks (www.wikibooks.org) or Project Gutenberg, but with a more fine grained level of participation. Imagine a system where you indicate you are an expert in programming, interested in koala bears, and can take decent photographs. Everytime you visited the site, it would give you small tasks which you might be interested in volunteering to perform (proofread this page, write a few quiz questions on when to use strings vs other data types, find or take a picture of a transmission). Or you could just dive in and work on that brilliant chapter and simulation about object oriented programming in PHP5.
It becomes truly open once it's out of institutional hands. We all have something to learn and we all have something to teach.
Jason
That sounds really interesting. Where would the proposed tasks come from?