This document summarizes a conference agenda on learning opportunities in free/libre and open source software (FLOSS). It begins by comparing characteristics of traditional education versus FLOSS-based learning. Part 2 presents a case study of the "Students' Knowledge Base" wiki at Budapest University of Technology and Economics. This wiki allows students to generate and share educational resources. It has grown significantly with over 500 regular users and 890 monthly edits. The conclusion evaluates the wiki against requirements for open participatory learning environments, finding it successful due to interest from the student community. Lessons include that pre-existing interest in a field can generate participation without extra effort.

1.
Learning opportunities in FLOSS
Rüdiger Glott (UNU-Merit)
Philipp Schmidt (UWC)
FKFT Free Knowledge, Free Technology
Education for a free information society
First International Conference, Barcelona July 15th to 17th 2008

2. Agenda
Part 1 Characteristics of learning in traditional learning environments
and in FLOSS
Part 2 Example: “Students' Knowledge Base”
Part 3 Conclusions

3. Part 1
Characteristics of learning in traditional learning environments
and in FLOSS

4. Characteristics of learning in traditional learning
environments and in FLOSS
Stylised Characteristics of Learning in Traditional
Educational Settings
✔Roles of teachers and learners are fixed
✔Static content (more or less)
✔ Definition and changes of content depend on teachers
✔ Content is organised in form of fixed curricula
✔ Re-usage of content rather by teachers than by learners
✔ Exclusive access (performance tests, financial capacities, etc.)
✔ Limited set of learning resources (books, readers, specified websites, ...)
✔ Learners are consumers (passive)
✔ Learners must show performance (no lurkers!)
✔ Performance is continuously measured across all themes / disciplines
✔ Support and learning resources are often disconnected
✔ Support is mainly provided by teachers
✔ Opaque and hierarchical structures
✔ Top-down knowledge transfer
✔ Slow adoption of new educational technologies

5. Characteristics of learning in traditional learning
environments and in FLOSS
Stylised Characteristics of Learning in FLOSS
✔ Dynamic roles of teachers and learners
✔ Dynamic content (regular revisions and updates)
✔ Definition and changes of content depend on community
✔ Re-usage of content through teachers and learners
✔ Open access (no performance tests, no charges, etc.)
✔ Broad set of learning resources
✔ Learners are also producers (active)
✔ Learners need not to show performance (lurkers are welcome!)
✔ Performance can (but does not need to) be measured
✔ Performance counts rather theme-specific than in general
✔ Support and learning resources are connected
✔ Support is provided by teachers and learners
✔ Open and transparent structures foster discussions between equals
✔ Discursive knowledge transfer
✔ Fast adoption of new educational technologies

6. Characteristics of learning in traditional learning
environments and in FLOSS
Requirements from Open Participatory Learning
Environments (OPLE)
• Interest must be generated
● Content must be generated / collected, structured and provided
● Technical and organisational maintenance must be provided (technical
infrastructure, changes, links, communication, ...)
● A (large enough) community must be established
● A support network must be established within the community
● Quality assurance must be provided
● Visibility (of good contributions) must be secured (incentives)

7. Part 2
Example: “Students' Knowledge Base”

8. Example: “Students' Knowledge Base”
Brief Overview
• Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME)
• Student Wiki of Open Educational Resources (http://wiki.sch.bme.hu)
• Provides learning materials for Electrical Engineering and Informatics Faculty
• Including:
✔FAQ
✔Forum
✔Manuals
✔Mailing
✔Wiki

9. Example: “Students' Knowledge Base”
Establishment
● Project started as an intranet site (set up by 4-5 students living at the
Schoenherz Dormitory of the Budapest University of Technology and
Economics)
● Original motivation: hobby of informatics students, with the objective to
save the other students some time by providing a centralised server for all
materials that is part of their curriculum
● Students in the dormitory were already sharing and exchanging materials
regularly, the wiki simply provided a new and more convenient way of
doing that
● Creators started setting up those courses first that they took themselves
● Next step: Lecturers were informed about the wiki and reviewed it, then
started uploading materials themselves
● First few months: site was only accessible within the dormitory, access to
the site was opened up to the public after this initial phase
●Created without requiring funding from University

10. Example: “Students' Knowledge Base”
Current Status (February 2008)
● 5980 pages of content
● receives on average 1.2 million hits per month
● 2628 registered users
● more than 500 users are regularly logged on
● 890 changes to the content per month
● Materials are reviewed by the community and get corrected if something
is wrong
● Reputation / visibility: no formal assessment; participants gain reputation
from participation - the wiki provides the name of the user who created a
particular page
● Official position of the faculty with respect to the site is mostly positive
● Problem: Knowledge Base cannot grow without funding

11. Part 3
Conclusions

12. Conclusions
Requirements from OPLE - Revisited
• Interest must be generated => No
● Content must be generated / collected, structured and provided => Yes
● Technical and organisational maintenance must be provided (technical
infrastructure, changes, links, communication, ...) => Yes
● A (large enough) community must be established => No
● A support network must be established within the community => No
● Quality assurance must be provided => Yes
● Visibility (of good contributions) must be secured (incentives) => Yes

13. Conclusions
Lessons Learnt
• No need to generate interest if OPLE is created within a field of latent interest
● Traditional learning environments provide such fields
● A (large enough) community is inherent to such fields
● Support networks are likely to evolve in a self-organised way in such fields
●Quality assurance is eased in such fields because the community is easy to
overlook and its members are familiar with the content
●Visibility (of good contributions) can easily be provided because community
members know each other
● Expansion within University is difficult if volunteers with IT skills and
infrastructure are missing in other departments and if there is no funding
●Alternative: Expanding by connecting different departments with similar
Knowledge Bases across Universities (Problem: Organisational coherence)

14. Thank you for your attention!
Contact:
Rüdiger Glott glott@merit.unu.edu / r.glott@merit.unimaas.nl
Philipp Schmidt phi.schmidt@gmail.com
For further information on the FLOSSCom project see: www.flosscom.net