Beyond the Open Educational Resource move – towards Open and Participatory Learning Ecosystems

Slide 1:                       FLOSS-like approaches in educational settings & The NetGeners.Net pilot course FLOSSCom project team & NetGeners.Net participants Moderated & presented by Andreas Meiszner FKFT Free Knowledge, Free Technology Education for a free information society First International Conference, Barcelona July 15th to 17th 2008

Slide 2: Agenda Part 1 Introduction: The NetGeners.Net pilot course Part 2 NetGeners.Net first course round – brief overview Part 3 Open Debate: FLOSS-like approaches in educational settings - Opportunities and Limitations

Slide 3: Part 1 Introduction: The NetG eners.Net pilot cours e

Slide 4: The NetGeners.Net Course The ne(x)t generation learner - Skills you need in lifelong learning knowledge and information societies NetGeners.Net is a pilot course in the light of free and open education! ✔ ✔ The course is free: ✔ free to attend without any charge, ✔ free of cost for books or other materials, ✔ free for anyone independently of prior education; and ✔ free in terms of your personal time commitment that you decide to dedicate to it (Though we would like you to spend on a minimum 2 hours per week). The only thing you will need is a PC and internet access.

Slide 5: The NetGeners.Net Course Objectives of the course? The objective of this course is for you to become a knowledgeable ne(x)t generation learner that: Is able to update their skills and knowledge self-dependently within a lifelong ● learning context Knows how to take full advantage of the web to support your own learning, to ● collaborate with others and use the tools required to do so Is capable to find sources at the web and to critically evaluate and analyse them ● Is aware about available free online and desktop software solutions that facilitate ● learning, knowledge exchange and collaboration Knows how to find online communities, to engage in them for personal support, ● and to and understands the way they function Has the today's required soft skills; like to communicate, collaborate and engage ● in discussions with others, defend your own work and thoughts and present them, know how to manage a project, or how to resolve conflicts

Slide 6: The NetGeners.Net Course Aspects considered designing the NetGeners.Net pilot • Existence of a great range of inputs with dynamic content from manifold resources  Sharing of knowledge and peer production with users being active creators  Personalized learning experience with engagement in personally meaningful activities  Real activities with a wide range of possible activities to engage at around the core product (e.g. think about Firefox Add-Ons)  Peer support where support and learning resources are closely connected  Open learning environment with open and transparent structures that allows users to adapt them and a continuous “evolution”  Self-studying and learning from what others did are pre-dominant forms of learning, plus gaining soft skills “on the fly”

Slide 7: The NetGeners.Net Course About NetGeners.Net & learning projects For those of you that are familiar with the open source movement, you might think about the NetGeners.Net site as being aimed to be something like Sourceforge and the small learning projects as being aimed to be something like an open source project. Or you might think about the NetGeners.Net site as being something like an open source project and the small learning projects as being something like an module / extension / add-on for this open source project NetGeners.Net is supposed to be ONE course on ICT literacy, which consists of SEVERAL small learning projects that EACH addresses a particular field of ICT literacy. A learning project should tangle one aspect relevant to learning at the web and cover one or more of the following 5 areas: Content, People and Communities, Tools, Soft Skills, or Legal Aspects.

Slide 8: The NetGeners.Net Course Activities and tasks: Engage in personally meaningful activities by working in one or more learning ● projects within their area of interest to create solutions to problems ● Establish (or join) project teams and team roles, including work assignments and roadmaps ● Search for and engage with available online content and communities ● Re-experience how others learn at the web ● Create materials themselves and share them ● Integrate their contributions into the NetGener.Net course so future learner would be able to build on them ● Use a broad range of collaborative technologies ● Present their project results, learn from the presentation of others and discuss those results Participants are asked to take on an ACTIVE role that will include try and error attempts, experimenting and taking a risk of not completing a learning project 100% as they might have liked.

Slide 9: The NetGeners.Net Course The NetGeners.Net Course site (1/2) ...joomla with extensions...

Slide 10: The NetGeners.Net Course NetGeners.Net Course site (2/2) ... mediawiki, blast chat, wordpress, SMF forum ...

Slide 11: The NetGeners.Net Course NetGeners.Net Spaces & Tools Just to show some of the possible spaces & tools to be used:

Slide 12: Part 2 NetGeners.Net first course round – brief overview March/April to July 2008

Slide 13: Part 2 Some facts: 1 pilot course consisting of individual learning projects ● ● Involving 9 actively participating students at bachelor, master and postgraduate level ● Coming from Greece & Spain and being located in Argentina, Greece, Spain, Sweden & the UK ● With 3 running learning projects - 2 in English, 1 in Spanish

Slide 14: Part 2 Established spaces (1/4) Netgeners: Wiki, forum, chat Plus freenode, jabber, google groups...

Slide 15: Part 2 Established spaces (2/4) ...wikidot...

Slide 16: Part 2 Established spaces (3/4) ...wordpress...

Slide 17: Part 2 Established spaces (4/4) ...pbwiki...

Slide 18: Part 2 Small scale pilot, but good visibility

Slide 19: Part 3 P anel D is cuss ion: Voices on FLO S S , Higher E ducation & NetG eners .Net

Slide 20: Part 3 From the FLOSS approaches the following would also be des ira ble: Open and inclusive ethos: everyone can participate, no charges, no ● deadlines, life long membership. ● Up to date and dynamic content; everyone can add, edit and update the content. ● Materials are usually the product of many authors with many contributions from people other than authors. ● Frequent releases and updates where product features and community structures are the result of a continuous re- negotiation/reflection process within a continuous development cycle. ● Prior learning outcomes and processes are systematically available through mailing lists, forums, commented code and further instructional materials (re-use). ● A large support network; provided voluntarily by the community member in a collaborative manner nearly 24/7. ● Free Riders (lurker) welcome paradox – the more the better ● New ICT solutions are adapted early by the community for the sake of their usefulness, but not for the sake of using technology.

Slide 21: Part 3 There are thus a number of practices from higher education to be reta ined. These include: Educator input – although the educator may no longer be the main ● source of information, they still have an important role to play in offering guidance. Structure – learners approaching a new subject area value the ● structure and focus offered by a course, and so a means of providing this reassurance within the looser community based model would need to be found. Learning objectives – it would still be important to set out for students ● what they should be able to learn through the experience. Assessment – some form of formal assessment would probably still be ● required, although the nature of this is likely to change significantly from traditional forms such as the exam.

Slide 22: Part 3 Some questions: How could a FLOSS-like approach be implemented? ● What would the learning outcomes be? ● How would it be assessed? ● _______________________________________________________ We propose three modes of thinking about how FLOSS-like approaches can be implemented in higher education: FLOSS-inside refers to the practice of taking the principles of the ● FLOSS community and applying them within an educational context FLOSS-outside refers to the practice of working with students in ● higher education and giving them experience of a real FLOSS like community external to the university FLOSS-hybrid seeks to mix both approaches ●

Slide 23: Part 3 FLOSS-hybrid model

Slide 24: Thank you for your attention! Contact: A.Meiszner@open.ac.uk And finally...be invited to join: The discussion on future Free / Open educational approaches at ● http://www.netgeners.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=30&Itemi The 2nd course round of the NetGeners.Net pilot, starting in September 2008 at ● www.netgeners.net For further information on the FLOSSCom project see: www.flosscom.net