Open access and courses

Open access and courses

由Frances Bell發表於
Number of replies: 3

Stimulated by thining about Dick Heller's People's-uni, I wondered if anyone had any workaraounds for using Moodle for Open access resources but 'private' courses.  I suppose you could put the resources in an public global glossary then link to them from within courses.

Any ideas or suggestions?

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In reply to Frances Bell

Re: Open access and courses

由A. T. Wyatt發表於
It might be instructive to look at the other open source curriculum repositories.

I have been investigating Connexions, originally started at Rice University which is near me.

I think that *I* personally would like to find modules or units of coursework rather than whole courses. It would mean more discrete items available (and thus to keep up with), but as an instructor you could mix and match to your heart's content! I don't think I would ever use an entire course without significant modification, so it would be nice to chose from a set of building blocks to help create what I want.

This is the philosophy that underlies connexions. There are "authors" who create, "instructors" who set up collections of content to use with students, and "students" who can simply learn with the publicly available materials. I see the moodle repository modules as being contributed by "authors" but probably downloaded as archives and restored and imported into courses on local instances of moodle.

So I think that before one could think about distribution methods, first one would have to determine what kinds of content would be hosted and delivered and what you want people to be able to do with it. If you were to have downloadable learning modules, I think you would need three things: 1) a way for people to preview content (implies searchability, which implies categories and tagging), 2) a way for people to upload content (which implies tagging and a lot of storage space), 3) a way for people to download content (maybe not so hard!). (That sounds overly simple, but it could get complicated if you are talking about something like Connexions). A moodle glossary might work for that, but I think it might be too simple. If the project were successful, you would be looking at thousands of modules from every subject area, children through life-long learning. While you would not get that big for a long time, you would at least have to have a scalable design.

Or maybe that is not what you meant at all? I am probably still thinking of the conversation in using moodle about "stellar" courses that might be contributed as examples for demonstration.
atw
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In reply to A. T. Wyatt

Re: Open access and courses

由Alexandre Enkerli發表於
Such a project could pave the way for Open Access alternatives to "monolithic" textbooks. 微笑
Apart from cost, mainstream textbooks are often problematic because they are written by authors whose areas of specialization aren't coextensive with the textbook's material. So, some chapters ("learning modules" as A.T. appropriately puts it) received less attention than others.
Modular design would also make learning material easier to update. Instead of changing the whole "book," you can change one section at a time.
This does go well with Rice's CNX but it might be useful to think about the links between course material and learning strategies.
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In reply to Alexandre Enkerli

Re: Open access and courses

由A. T. Wyatt發表於
As you probably know (but I will repeat here as another example), "custom textbooks" are sold by publishers. It works just as you say--a series of chapters are put together, along with some custom content provided by the instructor--and the book is made available to your students.

I always skip chapters of conventional text books, and I don't think I would ever be able to teach someone else's course! So I like this idea of modules very much.

atw
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