I gave this talk at Västra Götalandsregionen in Göteborg on June 14, 2012. In times when knowledge is becoming obsolete faster and faster a four years' university student enrolled for a technical degree might face that half of what has been learned during the first year will be out of date by the third year of study. Educational settings will need to adapt to new structures and models to keep the pace. Education at large struggles to update their courses within shorter and shorter cycles or to develop new ones, with lessons still being largely given like 100 years ago. Higher education – but also continuing education – should keep an eye on the learning opportunities the web provides, especially in contexts where practical experience is considered equally or even more important than “theoretical” education at school or university. Understanding web success cases like e.g. Open Source Software communities can help educational organizations to adapt themselves to the new realities. OSS relies on self-directed learning, and this kind of learning is increasingly important in times of rapid pace of change where most of our skills that we learn today will be obsolete within few years.

2. Some Frequent Questions
How should online learning activities be
designed to promote collaborative
knowledge creation?
What skills do learners need to develop to
participate in collaborative knowledge
creation?
What role(s) teachers may play to promote
those skills?

5. NOW:
This is acceptable if we
believe that the existing
model is the best there can
be (Weller, 2009)
Marisa Ponti

6. BUT
There are many issues both
in education and society
that the traditional
classroom model struggles
to address
Marisa Ponti

7. • Limited curricula
• Nnn
• Personalization of learning
• Need for modes of learning
alternative to higher
education
• Growing appreciation of
learning in informal and
nonformal settings

8. • Competitiveness require
local ecosystems
• Nnn supporting innovation and
productivity
• Need for educated
workforce with competitive
skills
• Ecosystems need to
provide support for
continuous learning

9. • Nnn
• Support for self-directed
learning driven by people’s
desire or need to
understand something

10. Warning
It is unlikely that the current methods of
teaching and learning
will suffice to prepare
students for the lives that they will
lead in the twenty-first century
(Seely-Brown & Adler, 2008)
Marisa Ponti

11. Source: http://www.internettime.com/2009/02/elearning-is-not-the-answer/

12. Push Learning vs. Pull Learning:
Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0
Source: http://www.sizlopedia.com/2007/08/18/web-10-vs-web-20-the-visual-
difference/

13. An Example of Self-Directed
Learning
Open Source Software (OSS)
communities, e.g.:
- Linux
- Apache
- Mozilla
Marisa Ponti

14. Some Characteristics of OSS
Communities
• Open source participants engage in personally
meaningful activities
• Designing software helps create solutions to ill-
structured problems
• Communities rely heavily on shared external
representations
• Collaborative technologies are used extensively
• Contributions are incremental and continuously
integrated
(Scharff, 2002)

15. QUESTION
How applicable is this
model to education?
Marisa Ponti

16. OSS Outside Software Development: P2PU
p2pu.mp4
http://vimeo.com/36737642

17. Learning the Lesson from OSS
• All the materials are free and open
licensed
• Courses can be revised and remixed
• Volunteers can get involved in every
aspects of a learning project
• Participants are all learners and teachers
• Peer-learning instead of top-down
instruction

18. Courses
as seeds
Source: http://awaytogarden.com/20-top-seed-and-seed-starting-faqs

19. Source: alteration of http://www.moby.com/journal/2012-04-04/destroyed-remixed.html

20. A New Relation Between Teachers and
Learners

21. Warning: This Approach May not
Suit Everyone

22. References
• Scharff, E. (2002). Applying open source principles to collaborative
learning environments. In Proceedings of the Conference on
Computer Support for Collaborative Learning: Foundations for a
CSCL Community – CSCL 2002 (pp. 499-500), January 7-11,
Boulder CO.
• Seely-Brown, J. & Adler P. (2008). Minds on fire. EDUCAUSE
Review, 43(1), 16–32. Retrieved from
http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0811.pdf
• Weller, M. (2009). Using learning environments as a metaphor for
educational change. On the Horizon, 17(3), 181–189.

23. License
This work is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.