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tim mcnamara

On OER - Beyond Definitions | iterating toward openness - 1 views

  • “open educational resources” is a highly context-mediated construct.
  • From a grant or contract compliance standpoint, the operational definition of open educational resources is often collapsed to:Open educational resource, (n). Any artifact that is either (1) licensed under an open copyright license or (2) in the public domain.
  • “In the public domain” means that, while the nature of the artifact qualifies it for copyright protection, the artifact is not subject to copyright restrictions.
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  • defining an “open educational resource” in terms of copyright status is that the definition implies that all OER belong to the universe of copyrightable things. This explicitly precludes ideas, concepts, methods, people, places, events, and other non-copyrightable entities from being OER. (This helps us avoid some of the nonsense that went on with “learning object” definitions.)
  • onsequently, every community, individual, or institution’s ideal OER will be different, and it is important that we pause and acknowledge this.
  • Below, I work from the position that “an ideal OER would help every person in the world attain all the education they desire.” In this specific context, I believe the ideal OER would have three characteristics. It would: 1. Be always, immediately, and freely accessible by every person in the world 2. Grant the user the legal permissions necessary to engage in each and every possible usage of the resource with no restrictions whatsoever 3. Effectively support the educational goals of the user
  • The notion of access, and whether or not a specific OER is accessible, is highly context-dependent.
  • If a digital artifact released under a CC BY license is posted on a public website it would qualify as an open educational resource for everyone with internet access. However, if a teacher downloaded a copy of the OER and placed it inside a learning management system it would suddenly cease to be an open educational resource – even though the resource hadn’t changed.
  • Note, however, that a student with access to the high school library and enrolled in the class using the LMS still has access to these materials, so those copies of the resources simultaneously are OER to her while they are not an OER for others.
  • some definitions limit OER to “high-quality” materials. However quality, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
  • it is meaningless to talk about OER being “high quality” without simultaneous reference to the user
    • tim mcnamara
       
      Context is critical in defining and determining OER
  • much of what makes an OER ideal is context specific
  • ideal to whom, for what purpose, to be accessed in what way, to be used in what fashion, etc
Allan Quartly

Teaching in Social and Technological Networks « Connectivism - 6 views

  • How can we achieve clear outcomes through distributed means?
  • How can we achieve learning targets when the educator is no longer able to control the actions of learners?
  • A curatorial teacher acknowledges the autonomy of learners, yet understands the frustration of exploring unknown territories without a map.
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  • A curator is an expert learner. Instead of dispensing knowledge, he creates spaces in which knowledge can be created, explored, and connected.
  • Learning is an eliminative process. By determining what doesn’t belong, a learner develops and focuses his understanding of a topic. The teacher assists in the process by providing one stream of filtered information. The student is then faced with making nuanced selections based on the multiple information streams he encounters. The singular filter of the teacher has morphed into numerous information streams, each filtered according to different perspectives and world views.
  • Course content is similarly fragmented. The textbook is now augmented with YouTube videos, online articles, simulations, Second Life builds, virtual museums, Diigo content trails, StumpleUpon reflections, and so on.
  • Fragmentation of content and conversation is about to disrupt this well-ordered view of learning. Educators and universities are beginning to realize that they no longer have the control they once (thought they) did.
  • However, in order for education to work within the larger structure of integrated societal systems, clear outcomes are still needed.
  • How can we achieve clear outcomes through distributed means? How can we achieve learning targets when the educator is no longer able to control the actions of learners?
  • Thoughts, ideas, or messages that the teacher amplifies will generally have a greater probability of being seen by course participants.
  • Each RT amplifies the message much like an electronic amplifier increases the amplitude of audio or video transmitters.
  • A curatorial teacher acknowledges the autonomy of learners, yet understands the frustration of exploring unknown territories without a map. A curator is an expert learner. Instead of dispensing knowledge, he creates spaces in which knowledge can be created, explored, and connected.
  • In CCK08/09, Stephen and I produced a daily newsletter where we highlighted discussions, concepts, and resources that we felt were important. As the course progressed, many students stated they found this to be a valuable resource -a centering point of sorts.
  • Today’s social web is no different – we find our way through active exploration. Designers can aid the wayfinding process through consistency of design and functionality across various tools, but ultimately, it is the responsibility of the individual to click/fail/recoup and continue.
  • Fortunately, the experience of wayfinding is now augmented by social systems. Social structures are filters. As a learner grows (and prunes) her personal networks, she also develops an effective means to filter abundance. The network becomes a cognitive agent in this instance – helping the learner to make sense of complex subject areas by relying not only on her own reading and resource exploration, but by permitting her social network to filter resources and draw attention to important topics. In order for these networks to work effectively, learners must be conscious of the need for diversity and should include nodes that offer critical or antagonistic perspectives on all topic areas. Sensemaking in complex environments is a social process.
  • After all, why should we do the heavy cognitive work when technology is uniquely suited to analyzing and generating patterns?
  • I’d like a learning system that functions along the lines of RescueTime – actively monitoring what I’m doing – but then offers suggestions of what I should (or could) be doing additionally. Or a system that is aware of my email exchanges over the last several years and can provide relevant information based on the development of my thinking and work. With the rise of social media, and with it the attention organizations pay to how their brand is being represented, monitoring services such as Viral Heat are promising. Imagine a course where the fragmented conversations and content are analyzed (monitored) through a similar service. Instead of creating a structure of the course in advance of the students starting (the current model), course structure emerges through numerous fragmented interactions. “Intelligence” is applied after the content and interactions start, not before. This is basically what Google did for the web – instead of fully defined and meta-described resources in a database, organized according to subject areas (i.e. Yahoo at the time), intelligence was applied at the point of search. Aggregation should do the same – reveal the content and conversation structure of the course as it unfolds, rather than defining it in advance.
  • Filtering resources is an important educator role, but as noted already, effective filtering can be done through a combination of wayfinding, social sensemaking, and aggregation. But expertise still matters. Educators often have years or decades of experience in a field. As such, they are familiar with many of the concepts, pitfalls, confusions, and distractions that learners are likely to encounter. As should be evident by now, the educator is an important agent in networked learning. Instead of being the sole or dominant filter of information, he now shares this task with other methods and individuals.
  • By determining what doesn’t belong, a learner develops and focuses his understanding of a topic. The teacher assists in the process by providing one stream of filtered information. The student is then faced with making nuanced selections based on the multiple information streams he encounters. The singular filter of the teacher has morphed into numerous information streams, each filtered according to different perspectives and world views.
  • Given that coherence and lucidity are key to understanding our world, how do educators teach in networks? For educators, control is being replaced with influence. Instead of controlling a classroom, a teacher now influences or shapes a network.
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    Unpacking the role of the teacher in connectivism
tim mcnamara

1.1. Connecting learning objects to instructional design theory: A definition, a metaph... - 9 views

  • The purpose of this chapter is to introduce an instructional technology concept known commonly as the “learning object.” First a review of the literature is presented as groundwork for a working definition of the term “learning object.” A brief discussion of instructional design theory is followed by an attempt to connect the learning objects approach to existing instructional design theory, and the general lack of such connective efforts is contrasted with the financial and technical activity generated by the learning objects notion.
  • What is a learning object?
  • An instructional technology called “learning objects” (LTSC, 2000a) currently leads other candidates for the position of technology of choice in the next generation of instructional design, development, and delivery, due to its potential for reusability, generativity, adaptability, and scalability (Hodgins, 2000; Urdan & Weggen, 2000; Gibbons, Nelson, & Richards, 2000).
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  • grounded in the object-oriented paradigm of computer science.
  • build small (relative to the size of an entire course) instructional components that can be reused a number of times in different learning contexts
  • Moreover, those who incorporate learning objects can collaborate on and benefit immediately from new versions. These are significant differences between learning objects and other instructional media that have existed previously.
  • Supporting the notion of small, reusable chunks of instructional media, Reigeluth and Nelson (1997) suggest that when teachers first gain access to instructional materials, they often break the materials down into their constituent parts.
  • if instructors received instructional resources as individual components, this initial step of decomposition could be bypassed
  • The Learning Technology Standards Committee chose the term “learning objects” (possibly from Wayne Hodgins’ 1994 use of the term in the title of the CedMA working group called “Learning Architectures, API’s, and Learning Objects”)
  • provided a working definition
  • Learning Objects are defined here as any entity, digital or non-digital, which can be used, re-used or referenced during technology supported learning. Examples of technology-supported learning include computer-based training systems, interactive learning environments, intelligent computer-aided instruction systems, distance learning systems, and collaborative learning environments. Examples of Learning Objects include multimedia content, instructional content, learning objectives, instructional software and software tools, and persons, organizations, or events referenced during technology supported learning (LOM, 2000).
  • The proliferation of definitions for the term “learning object” makes communication confusing and difficult.
  • It would seem that there are almost as many definitions of the term as there are people employing it.
  • In addition to the various definitions of the term “learning object,” other terms that imply the general intention to take an object-oriented approach to computer-assisted instruction confuse the issue further.
  • Depressingly, while each of these is something different, they all conform to the Learning Technology Standards Committee’s  “learning object” definition. An in depth discussion of the precise meanings of each of these terms would not add to the main point of this discussion: the field is still struggling to come to grips with the question, “What is a learning object?”
  • At the same time, the creation of yet another term only seems to add to the confusion. While the creation of a satisfactory definition of the term learning object will probably consume the better part of the author’s career, a working definition must be presented before the discussion can proceed.
  • Therefore, this chapter will define a learning object as “any digital resource that can be reused to support learning.”
  • This definition includes anything that can be delivered across the network on demand, be it large or small.
  • This definition of learning object, “any digital resource that can be reused to support learning,” is proposed for two reasons.
  • The definition adopted for this chapter emphasizes the purposeful use (by either an instructional designer, an instructor, or a student) of these objects to support learning
  • Second, the proposed definition is based on the LTSC definition (and defines a proper subset of learning objects as defined by the LTSC), making issues of compatibility of learning object as defined within this chapter and learning object as defined by the LTSC explicit
  • With that compatibility made explicit, the proposed definition differs from the LTSC definition in two important ways.
  • First, the definition explicitly rejects non-digital
  • The definition also drops the phrase "technology supported" which is now implicit, because all learning objects are digital.
  • Second, the phrase "to support" has been substituted in place of "during" in the LTSC definition. Use of an object "during" learning doesn't connect its use to learning
  • First, the definition is sufficiently narrow to define a reasonably homogeneous set of things: reusable digital resources. At the same time, the definition is broad enough to include the estimated 15 terabytes of information available on the publicly accessible Internet (Internet Newsroom, 1999).
  • Armed with a working definition of the term learning object, the discussion of the instructional use of learning objects can proceed.
  • Instructional design theory and learning objects
  • Reigeluth
  • [I]nstructional design theories are design oriented, they describe methods of instruction and the situations in which those methods should be used, the methods can be broken into simpler component methods, and the methods are probabilistic. (p. 7).s11 {margin-left:0; line-height:2.400000; text-indent:36;}
  • Because the very definition of “theory” in some fields is “descriptive,” design theories are commonly confused with other types of theories that they are not, including learning theory and curriculum theory (Reigeluth, 1999a).
  • The following discussion takes a step in this direction, by recasting two of the largest issues in the learning objects area – combination and granularity – in instructional design terms
  • Combination
  • there is astonishingly little conversation around the instructional design implications of learning objects.
  • item (d) in the Learning Objects Metadata Working Group’s PAR (LOM, 2000) reads as follows:
  • To enable computer agents to automatically and dynamically compose personalized lessons for an individual learner
  • at this point a brief discussion of metadata, the focus of the Learning Object Metadata Working Group’s efforts, is necessary.
  • Metadata, literally “data about data,” is descriptive information about a resource
  • he Learning Objects Metadata Working Group is working to create metadata for learning objects (such as Title, Author, Version, Format, etc.) so that people and computers will be able to find objects by searching
  • ​The problem with 7(d) arose when people began to actually consider what it meant for a computer to “automatically and dynamically compose personalized lessons.”
  • his meant taking individual learning objects and combining them in a way that made instructional sense, or in instructional design terminology, “sequencing” the learning objects.
  • The problem was that no instructional design information was included in the metadata specified by the current version of the Learning Objects Metadata Working Group standard.
  • ​The lack of instructional design discussion at this standards-setting level of conversation about learning objects is disturbing, because it might indicate a trend.
  • Once technology or software that does not support an instructionally-grounded approach to learning object sequencing is completed and shipped to the average teacher, why would he or she respond any differently
  • Wiley (1999) called this “the new CAI – ‘Clip Art Instruction’” (p. 6).
  • Discussion of the problem of combining learning objects in terms of “sequencing” leads to another connection between learning objects and instructional design theory.
  • Granularity
  • The most difficult problem facing the designers of learning objects is that of “granularity” (Wiley, et al., 1999).
  • How big should a learning object be?
  • Reuse is the core of the learning object notion, as generativity, adaptivity, and other –ivities are all facilitated by the property of reuse.
  • designating every individual graphic and paragraph of text within a curriculum a “learning object” can be prohibitively expensive
  •  
    Chapter 1
markuos morley

iterating toward openness - 2 views

  • One of the areas ripest for innovation is alternative certification of informal learning. Hence, the recent excitement about badges. Badges have incredible potential for providing a viable alternative to the traditional system of credits most universities are tied to by accreditors. It seems to me that there is a critical need for someone to demonstrate that badges are a viable alternative to the traditional accreditation process.
  • However, because the gold standard for learning credentials is acceptability by employers, any meaningful badges demonstration project will have to operate in this space.
  • We want to create a collection of badges that a top employer, like Google, will publicly recognize as “equivalent experience.” This goes straight for the jugular, demonstrating that badges are a viable alternative to formal university education.
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  • The bolded items above really represent one version (and certainly not the only one) of the complete package – open content, open learning support, and open badges that help you demonstrate competence to an employer.
  • • Combine these and other business models to generate enough revenue so that (1) the marking service can be free in addition to all the badge related materials being openly licensed and (2) employers will respect and recognize the badges resulting from the process.
  • - An initial list of OER (e.g., OLI courses) and Q/A services (e.g., StackOverflow.com or OpenStudy) which will help individuals develop the skills necessary to obtain the badges
  • If a digital artifact released under a CC BY license is posted on a public website it would qualify as an open educational resource for everyone with internet access. However, if a teacher downloaded a copy of the OER and placed it inside a learning management system it would suddenly cease to be an open educational resource – even though the resource hadn’t changed.
  • The efficacy ideal is not realizable in practice. Intuitively we would want the ideal OER to support the educational goals of every user, and some definitions limit OER to “high-quality” materials. However quality, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. A resource considered very high quality by an English speaking undergraduate might be very low quality for an English speaking primary school student or a Spanish speaking undergraduate.
  • While everyone wants the OER they use to be high quality for them, it is meaningless to talk about OER being “high quality” without simultaneous reference to the user.
  •  
    David Wiley's Blog
anonymous

Corporate Leadership Council - Human Resources - 1 views

  •  
    CLC Human Resources
Rob Parsons

A Pedagogy of Abundance : The Digital Scholar: How Technology Is Transforming Scholarly... - 0 views

  • If we use this perspective to examine education we can consider how education may shift as a result of abundance. Traditionally in education expertise is analogous to talent in the music industry – it is the core element of scarcity in the model. In any one subject there are relatively few experts (compared with the level of knowledge in the general population). Learners represent the ‘demand’ in this model, so when access to the experts is via physical interaction, for example, by means of a lecture, then the model of supply and demand necessitates that the learners come to the place where the experts are located. It also makes sense to group these experts together, around other costly resources such as books and laboratories. The modern university is in this sense a solution to the economics of scarcity.
  • As a result, a ‘pedagogy of scarcity’ developed, which is based around a one-to- many model to make the best use of the scarce resource (the expert). This is embodied in the lecture, which despite its detractors is still a very efficient means of conveying certain types of learning content. An instructivist pedagogy then can be seen as a direct consequence of the demands of scarcity.
  • It may be that we do not require new pedagogies to accommodate these assumptions as Conole (2008) points out: Recent thinking in learning theory has shifted to emphasise the benefit of social and situated learning as opposed to behaviourist, outcomes-based, individual learning. What is striking is that a mapping to the technologies shows that recent trends in the use of technologies, the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 echoes this; Web 2.0 tools very much emphasise the collective and the network.
    • Rob Parsons
       
      Though i think it is true that students learn collaboratively, and always have done, they don't act as if they do (any more than teachers act as if they do, and quite often less). Perhaps our students still come from experiences that value authority and, whatever is said, do not value constructivism and collaboration.
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  • Any pedagogy of abundance would then, I suggest, be based on the following assumptions:
  • Jonassen (1991) describes it thus: Constructivism … claims that reality is constructed by the knower based upon mental activity. Humans are perceivers and interpreters who construct their own reality through engaging in those mental activities … What the mind produces are mental models that explain to the knower what he or she has perceived … We all conceive of the external reality somewhat differently, based on our unique set of experiences with the world.
  • Given that it has a loose definition, it is hard to pin down a constructivist approach exactly. Mayer (2004) suggests that such discovery-based approaches are less effective than guided ones, arguing that the ‘debate about discovery has been replayed many times in education but each time, the evidence has favoured a guided approach to learning’.
    • Rob Parsons
       
      Interesting, because my immediate reaction was that there's no contradiction between guided learning and constructivism. Just don't expect that your students will always go where you guide them.
  • When Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2006) claim, with some justification, that ‘the epistemology of a discipline should not be confused with a pedagogy for teaching/learning it’ that only highlights that the epistemology of a discipline is now being constructed by all, so learning how to participate in this is as significant as learning the subject matter of the discipline itself.
  • However, the number of successful open source communities is relatively small compared with the number of unsuccessful ones, and thus the rather tenuous success factors for generating and sustaining an effective community may prove to be a barrier across all subject areas. Where they thrive, however, it offers a significant model which higher education can learn much from in terms of motivation and retention (Meiszner 2010).
  • Abundance does not apply to all aspects of learning; indeed the opposite may be true, for example, an individual's attention is not abundant and is time limited. The abundance of content puts increasing pressure on this scarce resource, and so finding effective ways of dealing with this may be the key element in any pedagogy. However, I would contend that the abundance of content and connections is as fundamental shift in education as any we are likely to encounter, and there has, to date, been little attempt to really place this at the centre of a model of teaching.
    • Rob Parsons
       
      Agreed. Great conclusion. At the moment, if I had to single out one key point Martin makes, it is this.
Allan Quartly

OER Commons - 7 views

  •  
    The OER Commons page with heaps of resources
Allan Quartly

Five critiques of the Open Educational Resources movement | jeremyknox.net - 5 views

  • One of the most noticeable effects of the privileging of learning in the OER movement is the lack of consideration with regards to pedagogy and the place of the teacher.
  • Given that movements such as OER are not advocates of chaotic, unpredictable learning, but in fact appear to desire similar outcomes to those achieved by organised education, we might contend that reasoned thinking must play some part the structuring of the OER project.  Therefore, it is not the concept of negative liberty itself that is problematic, but rather the premise that its realisation will achieve predefined goals; that an expected order will somehow emerge from unrestrained action.
Robert Maxwell

CALIBRATED PEER REVIEW - 2 views

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    Calibrated Peer Review (CPR)™ is a free Web-based program that enables frequent writing assignments even in large classes with limited instructional resources.
Rob Parsons

Openness in Education : The Digital Scholar: How Technology Is Transforming Scholarly P... - 3 views

  • Anderson (2009) suggests a number of activities that characterise the open scholars, including that they create, use and contribute open educational resources, self-archive,
  • From my own experience I would propose the following set of characteristics and suggest that open scholars are likely to adopt these.
  • Leslie (2008) comments on the ease of this everyday sharing, compared with the complexity inherent in many institutional approaches:
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  • citation levels of articles that are published online versus those that are in closed access journals. Hajjem, Harnad and Gingras (2005) compared 1,307,038 articles across a range of disciplines and found that open access articles have a higher citation impact of between 36 and 172 per cent. So publishing in an online, open manner aids in the traditional measures of citation.
    • Rob Parsons
       
      Openness as a working method, and openness as a movement, with a definable set of values.
  • This section will look at the most concrete realisation of the open education movement, namely that of open education resources. In particular I want to revisit the notion of granularity and how changes in this, afforded by new technologies, are changing scholarly behaviour.
  • Zittrain (2008) terms ‘generativity’, which he defines as ‘a system's capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences’. Little OERs are high in generativity because they can easily be used in different contexts, whereas the context is embedded within big OERs, which in turn means they are better at meeting a specific learning aim.
  • Big OER projects have a variety of models of funding, and Wiley highlights three of these demonstrating a range of centralisation: a centralised team funded by donors and grants (such as MIT), linking it into teaching responsibilities (as practised at Utah State University) and a decentralised collaborative authoring approach (e.g. Rice Connexions, http://cnx.org).
  • The reasons for this are varied, including technical complexity and motivation. One other reason which the OpenLearn team suggest is that the ‘content provided on the site was of high quality and so discouraged alteration’.
    • Rob Parsons
       
      I wonder how much of a barrier the final integration of the material is - in a well structured object internal integration is high so the cost rises of extracting part or repurposing even the whole.
Lone Guldbrandt Tønnesen

David Wiley ~ #change11 - 2 views

  • I worked on “learning objects,” which can be characterized as educational materials designed with the understanding that they will be reused in a broad variety of contexts
  • humans are too “expensive
  • the “reusability paradox.
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  • – a great resource that is essentially impossible to reuse, or a really poor resource that you can easily reuse
  • an interest in providing teachers real-time suggestions about the best way to use their next 10 minutes, are relatively new areas for me.
  • • Online Self-Organizing Social Systems. http://opencontent.org/docs/ososs.pdf
  • I would like to invite students to reflect on the practical impact on people they would like to their educational technology / educational research work to have.
anonymous

The Information Diet | Tools for going on an Information Diet - 4 views

  • Make Twitter something you have to check, not something that’s pushed at you.
  • If you’re an Outlook user, turn its desktop alerts off
anonymous

Beyond Competence: It's the Journey to Mastery That Counts - 5 views

  • all learners, at all levels, collaborate; but how they do it, the degree to which they do it, and the relative importance of the collaboration shifts with their increasing know-how. Bottom line: as people move up the mastery ladder and their capabilities grow, predominant learning strategies change.
  • as learners become more competent and experienced, and especially as they approach master/expert levels, learning embraces much more of a “pull” strategy, where learners take what they need from the repositories of knowledge, tools, and advice available to them. How they navigate these resources is increasingly a decision they make.
  • . Putting too little structure on entry-level learners may make learning more difficult, confusing, and demoralizing for them.
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  • Putting too much structure on advanced-level learners may make learning boring, frustrating, inefficient, and off-target for them.
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    as people strive to move up the ladder they get better at their jobs. As they do, they exhibit increasing performance fluency, agility, and ability to share knowledge. Fluency refers to the smoothness with which they perform their jobs. The lack of hesitancy and the ease at which they perform tasks all improve as workers move up the mastery ladder. Agility, the ability to adapt and react to new situations, to "shift on the fly" based on new information, also increases as people go through the four phases. And as people get more expertise and experience, they become better at sharing it with others through collaboration, coaching, mentoring, and teaching.
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