8.1 Learning design and open source teaching  (Page 6/18)

James, although you are not a lawyer, you are a psychologist and I would like your thoughts on this phenomena. Let’s just assume that most of our colleagues who contribute to “Open Source Teaching” by contributing learning designs or content to the commons are doing so for the “public good.” Let’s also assume that our colleagues would like the impact that their contribution has on “Open Source Teaching” (and the common good) to be the greatest possible. Furthermore let’s assume that the more frequently used the contributions are the greater the impact and public good. Why would it matter if the impact is magnified by commercial use? It seems to me that if somebody adds some value to the creation and then uses a market mechanism to propagate the benefit, while also respecting the Share Alike component of the license, the impact of “Open Source Teaching” will be greatest and our colleagues’ interests are met.

This is sort of a long-winded way of indicating that my observations point to less of a problem with commercial organizations making money on Open Source Teaching resources, than having those resources not being used very much and their value being under realized. The NC restriction might not be at the root of this, in fact, I would guess that right now there are other issues around the culture of western education and technology standards, that are equally important issues, but I think that the NC restriction is a potential barrier in that it makes the license more complex and potentially confusing. It seems to me that “Commercial” use is a term that has some ambiguity and might not get to the nub of what folks are concerned about and why they decided to contribute to the public good in the first place.

5. james dalziel - may17th, 2007 at 7:59 pm

Hi Ken,

Many thanks for these thoughts. I think the issues of adoption of Learning Design (your last point) and licensing for open content are mostly separate at the moment, so I’ll take each in turn in separate posts. Listed below are some reflections on the reasons for the slow adoption of Learning Design to date:

(1) A typical Course Management System (CMS) is mostly used to support existing practice, rather than transform the pedagogy of a course. Typical real world CMS use (ie, announcements, email, calendar, course documents and slides) seems to me to be “e-admin” for learning, rather than actual “e-learning”. These “e-admin” components are helpful contributions towards an efficient course, but they are quite different to the introduction of online scenarios for problem-based learning or role plays (as examples of more transformational pedagogical approaches). So while Learning Design systems may be strong in their support for transformational pedagogies, the reality is that current CMS use is mostly not in this direction to date. When innovative work is done in a CMS, it is mostly “single-learner” content (eg, rich multimedia courseware), rather than collaborative sequences of activities.

(2) Following on from (1), a problem that I now see regularly is that instructors who have used a current CMS have narrowed their view of what might be possible for online learning to just the feature set of their current CMS. This is pragmatic and understandable, but I’ve noticed that some of the people I would most expect to grasp the benefits of Learning Design are actually most resistant, either because they now think of e-learning only through the lens of their current CMS, or they don’t want to consider a different approach. What’s interesting about this problem is that I find it more prevalent in universities (where CMS use is widespread) than in K-12 (where CMSs are now being adopted more, but not as widely or as quickly as in universities). I’ve seen a number of cases where K-12 teachers have used LAMS, and then later been introduced to a typical CMS for the first time, and been dumbfounded at the “lack of features” in the CMS to support sequences of collaborative learning. I don’t see the problem as one of a natural evolution from “basic” use of a CMS to “advanced” use of a Learning Design approach; rather, it seems that the initial tools you use for e-learning affect the way you perceive future tools with different assumptions.