Hepburn Shaw Open Thinking

Slide 1: Free and Open Source Software: Tools for Open Thinking Gary Hepburn & Michael Shaw Open Acadia Acadia University

Slide 2: Interests  Online learning environments  Instructional design  Open source software

Slide 3: Premise  Technology supported learning environments should be controlled as much as possible by the human participants (e.g., teachers, instructional designers, students)

Slide 4: Actor-Network Theory (ANT)  social theory used widely in science and technology studies  associated with Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, John Law and others  describes systems (technologies, social processes, etc.) in terms of relations between humans and non- human—the network  all elements of the network should be described in the same terms—generalized symmetry

Slide 5: Some Terms  Actors  Actor-network  Translation  problematization  obigatory passage point  interessement  enrolment  Inscription

Slide 6: Course Development Process faculty academic unit faculty student Institution online instructional course designer budget

Slide 7: Making the Course (comm.) Dev. s/w faculty video audio instructional online LMS designer course graphics presentation budget

Slide 8: Making the Course (big ticket) Dev. s/w faculty instructional Comprehensive online LMS designer Development course Suite Richard Thaler Anomalous behaviors budget Loss averse Sunken cost

Slide 9: Making the Course (FOSS) Dev. s/w faculty video video video audio audio audio instructional online LMS designer course graphics graphics graphics presentation presentation presentation budget

Slide 10: Commercial Software Concepts/Ideas Sales Development Software programmers & engineers Underlying Technology Corporate & Market Influences

Slide 11: Main Points  Our software choices can constrain our ability to control the online learning experiences we create, especially in smaller or medium institutions.  There is a need to maintain a critical role as we choose and use technologies.  Open source software can assist in ensuring that control of the learning process rests with the human participants.

Slide 12: Contact gary.hepburn@acadiau.ca michael.shaw@acadiau.ca