Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PhD Thesis
Version 090130_1
Contact: A.Meiszner@open.ac.uk
Table of Content
ABSTRACT
1 RESEARCH RATIONALE AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Recent trends: Open Educational Resources & Open courses
1.2.1 The Open Educational Resource (OER) movement
1.2.2 The recent emergence of open courses
1.3 Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities as a learning environment and ecosystem
1.4 Objectives of this work
1.5 Research questions
1.6 Contribution of the work
1.7 Research Outline
2 FLOSS COMMUNITIES AS A LEARNING ENVIRONMENT & ECOSYSTEM
2.1 Introduction
2.2 FLOSS communities and their tools
2.3 Roles and responsibilities of FLOSS community members
2.4 FLOSS from an Educational Perspective
2.4.1 Learning and Knowledge Creation
2.4.2 Re-experience and Re-use
2.5 Learning Resources and Content in FLOSS
2.6 The FLOSS Support System
2.7 Motivations of FLOSS community members
2.8 The role of knowledge broker
2.9 Modularity as a way to reduce complexity
2.10 Summary of key characteristics of FLOSS communities
3 LEARNING IN FLOSS AND ASSOCIATED PEDAGOGIES
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Learning in FLOSS and associated pedagogies
3.3 Self-Studying
3.4 Cooperative learning in a networked environment
3.5 Problem, case, project and inquiry based learning
3.5.1 Problem based learning
3.5.2 Case based learning
3.5.3 Project-based learning
3.5.4 Inquiry based learning
3.6 Reflective practice
3.7 Meritocracy vs. formal assessment
3.8 Learning materials in FLOSS vs. higher education
3.9 FLOSS key characteristics and differences to higher education
3.10 Summary
4 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK: META-DESIGN & COURSES AS SEEDS
4.1 Meta-design
4.2 Courses as seeds
4.3 Lessons learnt from initial pilots at University of Colorado, Boulder – US
4.4 Summary
5 METHODOLOGY
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Research in FLOSS
5.2.1 Quantitative Research Methods
5.2.2 Qualitative Research Methods
5.3 Research workplan & methods
5.4 The research methods
5.4.1 Reflective Practice
5.4.2 Action Research
5.4.3 Participatory Action Research
5.4.4 Case Studies Research
5.5 Data collection Methods
5.5.1 (Focus Group) Interviews
5.5.2 Recorded conversations & created artifacts
6 FLOSS TYPE CASES WITHIN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Case study 1 - University of Washington Bothell, US
6.2.1 Course Facts
6.2.2 Course Description:
6.2.3 Course particularities
6.2.4 Similarities to FLOSS case
6.2.5 Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case
6.2.6 Possible areas of improvement
6.3 Case study 2 - Utopia Discovery / ADM - Douglas County School District, US
6.3.1 Course Facts
6.3.2 Course description
6.3.3 Course particularities
6.3.4 Similarities to FLOSS case
6.3.5 Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case
6.3.6 Possible areas of improvement
6.4 Case study 3 - Dept. of Informatics, Aristotle University, Greece
6.4.1 Course Facts
6.4.2 Course Description:
6.4.3 Course particularities
6.4.4 Similarities to FLOSS case
6.4.5 Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case
6.4.6 Possible areas of improvement
6.5 Case study 4 - OpenEd syllabus, Utah State University, United States
6.5.1 Course Facts
6.5.2 Course Description:
6.5.3 Course particularities
6.5.4 Similarities to FLOSS case
6.5.5 Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case
6.5.6 Possible areas of improvement
6.6 Case study 5 - Connectivism Course, University of Manitoba, CA (to be done)
6.7 Case study 6 - St. Cloud State University Minnesota, US
6.7.1 Course Facts
6.7.2 Course Description:
6.7.3 Course particularities
6.7.4 Similarities to FLOSS case
6.7.5 Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case
6.7.6 Possible areas of improvement
6.8 Conclusion
6.8.1 Comparison against key characteristics of FLOSS as a learning environment
6.8.2 Comparison against key characteristics of learning in FLOSS
7 POSSIBLE ADOPTION OF FLOSS APPROACHES IN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS
7.1 Introduction
7.2 FLOSS key characteristics deemed to be desirable
7.3 ‘Inside’, ‘Outside’ or ‘Hybrid’ approach
7.3.1 Inside approach
7.3.2 Outside approach
7.3.3 Hybrid approach
7.4 Involved roles: Educators, students, free learners & practitioners
7.5 Comparative overview of Inside, Outside and Hybrid approach
7.6 Questions related to the application of such approaches, in particular the hybrid approach
7.7 Conclusion
8 SET OF EXPERIMENTAL APPLICATION OF FLOSS TYPE APPROACHES
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Development of an experimental FLOSS type learning environment
8.2.1 Focus group workshops on adoption possibilities and recommendations
8.2.2 Implementation guidelines to be considered
8.3 The NetGeners.Net trial (04/08 to 07/08)
8.4 Software Engineering at Aristotle University (10/08 to 02/09)
8.4.1 Background
8.5 Summary
9 RESEARCH FINDINGS
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Qualitative findings
9.2.1 Stakeholders’ Surveys
9.2.2 Observation of learners’ activities
9.2.3 Review of artifacts created
9.3 Quantitative findings
9.4 Summary
10 CONCLUSIONS
10.1 Introduction
10.2 The research findings
10.3 The contributions of the study
10.3.1 The theoretical-methodological contribution
10.3.2 The applied contribution
10.4 The limitations of the study
10.5 Suggestions for further research
10.6 Conclusion
11 REFERENCES
1 Research rationale and research questions
1.1 Introduction
Web 2.0 tools and techniques have developed a dynamic of their own, creating many
good examples of how to take advantage of the web to support individual and collective
learning, providing some evidence about the opportunities provided for the educational
landscape.
There is an ever growing number of free and open informal learning spaces where
students and free learner outside of formal educational settings come together unfolding
the opportunity the web provides for collaborative learning and knowledge production.
The Web 2.0 has the potential to blur the boundaries between formal and informal
education, providing all learners with a richer learning experience and additionally
allows for the establishment of continuous and evolutionary growing educational
communities (Bacon & Dillon 2006, Schmidt 2007, Schmidt & Surman 2007, Staring
2005). It allows for new ways of organizing learning embedding students’ activities
within such open participatory learning ecosystems, to make students’ learning
processes and outcomes visible, to connect content and discourse, and to preserve all of
this as learning resources for future learners. This is to say that future learners would be
enabled to benefit from earlier achievements and build upon them, instead of starting
from scratch. Such Web 2.0 ecosystems could allow learners to make use of the
multitude of freely available (through the Internet) good content from e.g. educational
institutions, companies, or individuals brought into these ecosystems by individuals or
institutions as a part of their learning activities and interactions.
The Web 2.0 provides the potential of combining all kinds of channels through which
knowledge can be changed and shared, from pure text to interactive multimedia
applications, allowing participants’ to develop critical thinking and analytical skills on
how to engage within those environments and how to take advantage of the web for
their personal learning needs (Brown & Adler 2008, Weller & Meiszner 2008).
However, despite all of the potential the Web 2.0 provides higher education still has
adapted very little in response to them (Wiley 2006) with graduate education often not
employing “the power of new media in visionary or effective ways” (Derry, S. J., &
Fischer, G. 2007). Albeit a growing number of initiatives at higher educational level
that aims at exploring the opportunities the Web 2.0 provides, at institutional level as
well as on a course level, higher education structures are still largely ‘analogue’,
‘closed’, ‘tethered’, ‘isolated’, ‘generic’ and ‘made for consumption’ (Wiley 2006).
This is in sharp contrast to the learning environments the Web 2.0 provides, which are
‘digital’, ‘open’, ‘mobile’, ‘connected’, ‘personal’ and ‘driven by participation’ (Wiley
2006).
Students are inside a classroom (tethered to a place), using textbooks and handouts (printed
materials), they must pay tuition and register to attend (the experience is closed), talking during
class or working with others outside of class is generally discouraged (each student is isolated
though surrounded by peers), each student receives exactly the same instruction as each of her
classmates (the information presented is generic), and students are students and do not
participate in the teaching process (they are consumers). (Wiley 2006)
On the positive side, a vast and constant move towards online courses is fostering a
change from ‘analogue’ to ‘digital’ and from ‘tethered’ to ‘mobile’ (Wiley 2006), with
the remaining four desirable characteristics ‘open’, ‘connected’, ‘personal’ and ‘driven
by participation’ being more and more addressed as following described.
1.2 Recent trends: Open Educational Resources & Open courses
During the past years there has been a growing trend within traditional education to
‘open up’. The case of MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative1 marked the start of the Open
Educational Resource movement, a movement largely strategically driven on
institutional levels. With this movement good quality tools and educational materials
were made freely available to educators and learners throughout the globe.
More recently one can observe a further type of openness within the educational
domain, an openness where formally enrolled students engage with their peers at the
Web 2.0, resulting to an ever blurring border between the formal and the informal and
providing the potential of taking further advantage of the opportunities the participatory
Web 2.0 provides. Those attempts, unlike the OER case, seem to be more driven by
individuals on a course level, but not be strategically addressed at the institutional level.
1
http://ocw.mit.edu/
different stakeholders to be found at the web. What all of those attempts seem to have in
common however is to experiment in a more unconventional way and with less
traditional educational restrictions with the opportunities the participatory web 2.0
provides.
The emergence of the OER move and the growing number of experimental open
courses might have the potential to develop new educational structures that would meet
all of the 6 characteristics that Wiley (2006)describes, but being still at an initial stage it
might be beneficial to have a closer look at well established and mature learning
systems to be found at the web, to understand how they work and which of their
principles might be taken forward to educational settings, and what the application
scenarios are.
1
The original case studies, including further references and raw information are online available at:
http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=30&Itemid=116
2
See also: http://www.bothell.washington.edu/IAS/faculty/mgroom.xhtml
3
URL: http://wikipedia.org
The result of those two pilot courses showed that with one exception, students in both
courses felt this was a valuable experience, superior to the typical term paper
Regarding the students’ contributions 1 article was deleted within 24 hours of posting,
another 4 articles were deleted after discussion, material merged into existing articles,
and intervention was required for 1 article. Also some discussion comments from
Wikipedia community were delivered rudely, as also sometimes is the case within
FLOSS.
Overall however there was no persistent difficulties in navigating Wikipedia or in
publication to Wikipedia for any student
Not all went out just perfect and some areas of improvement concerned:
• Too much choice led to some poor postings (which were deleted)
• Timing -- Publishing once at the end of course
o May be better to publish in stages
o Posting deadline with at least one week left to course
• Students needed extra guidance to create high quality articles in encyclopedia
style
• More instructor time required to shepherd students through entire process
What students said:
• “This assignment felt so Real! I had not thought that anything I wrote was worth
others reading before, but now I think what I contributed was useful, and I’m
glad other people can gain from my research.”
• “Although I was really scared by this assignment, I really appreciate a chance
to write something that might help someone else beyond myself.”
Involved content
The content consisted of instructional materials, general readings and reviewing one of
the Wikipedia contributions4, that were made as part of the course in autumn 2006, the
4
The contribution in question can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_during_the_Roman_period
content / information used to write the Wikipedia article consisted of printed literature
and web sources, such as BBC5 or Annual Reviews6.
Involved stakeholders
Part of the nature of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit the content from someone else
and so was the case for the contributions of the students.
Getting familiar with the fact that content is being edited on the fly, by people one never
met before, and getting used to constant revisions by regular contributors was a part of
the experience. Students posting material to the site would also learn to stop viewing
their work as ‘sacrosanct.’
But this Wikipedia characteristic of peer editing also led to a further challenge with
some Wikipedia editors didn’t find some of the students’ articles relevant enough to
warrant their own topics; meanwhile other contributions (see image XXX7) were seen to
be of sufficient quality and relevance.
5
URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk
6
URL: http://www.annualreviews.org
7
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communal_Wildlife_Conservancies_in_Namibia
Image 1 – Example of good quality feedback
Some students’ contributions were either deleted or merged (see image XXX 8) with
existing articles. That reality is in part a function of Wikipedia’s vast breadth, which
already covers virtually any topic in which there is sufficient public knowledge.
Inclusivity
Access
As common for Wikipedia all content is publicly available and therefore no one
Contribution
As common for Wikipedia all content can be edited.
Student roles
During the course students were not only acting as learner, but also adopted roles such
as active investigator and researcher (image XXX9) , as editor (image XXX10), or
collaborator with peers (image XXX11).
8
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Gralo#Renewable_energy_in_Africa
9
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:MCoca
10
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_Wildlife_Conservancies_in_Namibia
11
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Bracine
Image 3 – Example for students’ as a researcher
Involves peer-review
Peer review is one of the characteristics of Wikipedia and therefore also student
contributions were reviewed by classmates and others (image XXX12).
Learner assessment
Students work was assessed as well by Wikipedia users, as it was on a class level to
officially grade the students’ work (see also image XXX above).
For the first course in autumn 2006 60% of the course grade was based upon the
students’ work at Wikipedia, and for the second course in spring 2007 40% course
grade.
The students work within Wikipedia was assessed by the criteria as illustrated at the
image below.
12
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Renewable_energy_in_Africa&action=history
Existent support system
Support is provided in class by the teacher and through one-on-one help and through the
Wikipedia community.
Since students seemed to be new to Wikipedia they initially needed extra help shifting
voice from ‘essay’ to ‘encyclopedia entry’. Thus initial support focused on the
following aspects:
• Technology issues
o Requires some wiki markup language
o Understanding Wikipedia components
History
Revisions
Discussion forums
Creating accounts
• Restrictions for new accounts
• Technology solutions
o Students had to complete a tutorial at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial
Sandbox provides practice spaces
o In-class training session and handouts
o One-on-one help
• Copyright
• Referencing
• Linking to internal and external sources
• Finding topics to add to Wikipedia
13
A illustrating presentation on FLOSS environments is provided at:
http://www.slideshare.net/andreasmeiszner/floss-as-a-learning-environment
being an important part for product requirement definition process, which ultimately
leads to a continuous improvement cycle.
Linked to this; a major difference to FLOSS is the availability of a (learner) support
system. Though Wikipedia has a versioning system and discussion pages, much of the
collaborative nature that (usually) forum based FLOSS support system (section 2.6)
characterise is absent in Wikipedia, or takes place outside of this environment and is
therefore ‘lost’. Users at Wikipedia either engage at Wikipedia to retrieve information
or to submit information, but they do not engage with its content as part of their learning
process at Wikipedia as it is the case within FLOSS. Thus the type of re-experience
(section 2.4) of other participants’ learning processes and re-use (section 2.4) of content
that can be seen in FLOSS is not present in the same way at Wikipedia. Comparing
Wikipedia content with FLOSS code only probably leads to the same type of re-use
within both: Wikipedia and FLOSS. However, once looking at e.g. the user support
system, including user postings, user compiled how-to guides, etc, Wikipedia is quite
different to FLOSS
One also does not find, likely to be as a consequence of the foregoing facts, the same
type of motivations (section 2.7) to contribute to Wikipedia, nor is it a common
characteristic that peers helping peers to solve a respective problem.
For the concrete case of the Washington Bothell pilot, the underlying environment and
activities might be illustrated as shown at image XXX.
14
For a illustration on the topic please see also: http://www.slideshare.net/andreasmeiszner/learning-
resources-in-floss
15
URL: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com
16
See also:
http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=161&Itemid=116
17
See also: http://yongesonne.edublogs.org/files/2007/11/authentic-learning.pdf and
http://academyofdiscovery.wikispaces.com/Proposal
activities, assignments, and assessments based upon the idea that all learning can and
should last longer than the course.
The course applies the Academy of Discovery Model (ADM) that is built upon
collaboration and connectivity, all major software and resources are based upon open-
source and Creative-Commons platforms. This means that all of the connections made
with experts, all of the collaboration with classmates, and all of the information
resources can be accessed virtually for free. By teaching students to use and improve
upon existing free resources, the ADM teaches them that learning is an open and
collaborative process.
The Academy of Discovery Model creates a culture of learning that will not fit into the
traditional classroom. The ADM does not assume that by throwing technology at
students, learning will occur. It systematically works to ensure that students own their
learning by making it valuable and relevant to their lives, thus incentivising the learning
process by intrinsic means.
18
Source: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com
Image 8 – Utopia Discovery Course Space
The students are supposed to follow a predefined course outline and:
• Use the discussion tab in order to debate their ideas and the history tab to see the
evolution of their ideas.
• Embed media to show their concepts in different ways.
• Link to one another, creating a web of ideas.
• Add pages explaining their thoughts, coming together and splitting from one
another at times.
• Adhere to the Discovery Blogging Rules19, and the rules set out by themselves
in their perfect societies.
• Transform the Utopia Template into a working society of their own creation
using multiple types of text.
During the course students are supposed to acquire skills within the four following
interdisciplinary principles of ADM, allowing them to pursue learning that they see as
benefiting their own lives:
• Real literacy has a real purpose and a real audience.
• All history has a context.
• Math, logic, and problem-solving are fundamental to every-day experiences.
• Observing and learning about how the world works is a hands-on process.
19
See also : http://discovery0607.wikispaces.com/Discovery+Blogging+Rules
These principles ensure an authentic classroom environment filled with student
ownership and engagement. Instruction focuses upon project-based learning with a
constructivist base, in turn creating a platform for interdisciplinary study and thematic
exploration. Basic skills are more deeply understood because students can see their
relevance, and higher-order thinking skills are enhanced because teachers use the
methods of inquiry.
Involved content
Content consists of instructional materials, freely available content at the web and prior
students’ projects. Content is manifold, has different formats and is built upon
collaboration and connectivity using different tools and environments. This means that
learning resources do also include connections made with experts, collaboration with
classmates, and all of the information resources the web provides.
By teaching students to use and improve upon existing free resources, the ADM teaches
them that learning is an open and collaborative process. Below one can find a list of
open-source, web-based, or creative-commons applications that are used within the
ADM.
Application Notes
Google Documents and Wordpress blogging applications will
Word processing be used in order to write out and connect concepts. Open
Office is also available for more sophisticated applications.
Bubbl.us, Gliffy, and FreeMind provide both creation and
Concept mapping
publication of mind maps for organizing ideas.
Spreadsheets and Google Spreadsheets, Zoho Sheets, and Open Office will be
Databases used for data collection and analysis.
Audacity will be used for editing podcasts and audio field
Audio and Music editing notes. Gcast will be used for recording on-the-fly observations
and reflecting upon the learning process.
Gimp, Picnik, and Fauxto will be used for editing digital
Photo editing
learning artifacts.
Video editing and Jumpcut, ChapterToolMe, and Bubblr will be used to create
Multimedia Authoring digital stories and presentations of knowledge.
Fauxto and Litha Paint will be used for drawing out simple
Painting and Drawing
ideas. Gliffy will be used for creating complex diagrams.
Zoho Show, Thinkfree, and Open Office will allow students to
create PowerPoint compatible presentations for their learning.
Presentation
They will also use SlideShare in order to share these
presentations with the world.
Google Calendar will be used to synchronize all assignments
Calendar
and collaborations.
Videoconferencing and
Skype will be used to collaborate and create a flat classroom.
Videoconferencing
Students will create a web-presence through the creation of
Website authoring their Wordpress blogs, Wikispace authoring, and through the
use of Google Pages.
Involved stakeholders
The course provides a central environment (the wiki) with instructional material and
projects from past years’ students, but also uses the web at large. Content is developed
within the students’ projects by building on existing content from various sources,
involving a broad range of web spaces and technologies as following outlined.
1. Online interactive notebooks
• Students have all notes in the same place.
• Students can add pictures, graphs, and video to their notes.
• Students can hyperlink to other information that gives a greater context to the
text.
• Greater reflection can occur when students can make significant connections
between the four major disciplines.
2. Collaborative note taking
• Students can work together on creating a master set of notes that can be used by
the classroom.
• Because each student will get something different from a classroom session,
they can add their unique knowledge and perspective to the notes.
3. Curriculum Wikis that are edited by students
• All directions, instruction, and resources are easily available and editable online.
• Students can influence the curriculum by making directions more clear or adding
a great new resource for the lesson.
• Lesson plans become both more refined and expansive when students can add
new options that teachers may not have thought of.
4. Thematic strands of curriculum that students could learn all disciplines within.
• Students can see how each discipline affects the others.
• Students won't have to artificially separate events from their context, literature
from the economic concepts that helped to create it.
5. Synchronous and Asynchronous online discussion.
• Students can voice their opinions both at school and at home in audio forums,
discussion boards, video comments, and textual critiques, thus providing an
avenue for all voices to be heard.
6. Online Digital Portfolios.
• Students can take their work with them from year to year.
• They can showcase their best work and receive feedback from peers, teachers,
and other interested parties around the world.
• Each student's body of evidence is unique, and because of this, more clearly
shows their particular interests and skill sets.
Inclusivity
Access
Students’ projects and collaborations are made publicly available at the course wiki
space. However, since students use a broad range of technologies and spaces to display
their content and also for discourses the wiki space is only one of the involved spaces
where content is stored. Presentations might be made available through slideshare, or
chats might be recorded at gabbly. Those contents, if not linked to from the course wiki,
will therefore be difficult to trace by external users and next year’s students and might
appear out of the context if viewed within the external space. E.g. seeing image XXX20
isolated doesn’t show the context it was embedded in at the student's project (image
XXX21). Since content is taken from the commons and released under the commons it
can be accessed and re-used further by the commons.
20
Source: http://g.sheetmusicplus.com/Look-Inside/large/wb-pfm0008.jpg
21
URL to student’s project: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/dude9coolio%27s+Utopia
Image 11 – Example student’s project page
Contribution
Depending on the type of content the group that is supposed to edit it varies. Students’
own projects at the wiki space are supposed to be the work of the respective student,
other areas appear to be designed for course internal participation only, meanwhile
some areas at the wiki space explicitly invite third parties to contribute. However, once
students act out at the web the rights will depend on tools and spaces used, in
accordance with the general particularities of the web.
Student roles
Students take on several roles, depending on their current activities and objectives. On
the one hand students are learner and inquirer that develop their own projects and with
this create new content and gain new knowledge. But students are also peers and
collaborators, both on an internal level, e.g. once adding their individual class notes to
one single wiki space, and on an external level, e.g. once engaging at online forums to
learn using a software or tool.
Students are also supposed to act as internal support provider by using their respective
skills and helping other students that still lack those. In order to circumvent the
unwelcome stress and extra work associated with ICT the ADM harnesses the power of
student passion and expertise. The ADM prescribes a format of student tech support that
allows the students to gain valuable 21st century skills, while providing a vital service
to the classroom. As noted by Wilkoff, who designed ADM, students are much more
likely to learn how to be self-sufficient from a peer than from a teacher; they may let a
teacher fix a problem on their computer, but they will learn how to fix the problem
themselves from a peer. Students are always finding new and more efficient ways of
doing work on a computer, and this knowledge should be shared and cherished among
the teaching staff. In this students can adapt a mentorship role, where both students and
teachers become learners.
Use of prior learning
From the course outline it is understood that students have access to the projects and
resources that last year students created. Thus one can see a (re-)use of prior learning
outcomes, but as it appears not that much of prior learning processes. This is to say that
processes, like e.g. the way of solving a problem or to build something, are not
presented online - like e.g. at a forum or wiki space. However, there are some
indications, like within the course wiki22, that some processes take place online and are
thus recorded. This might also be the case once students engage at the web outside of
the course environment.
Involves peer-review
Students’ are supposed to act also as peers26 within the course environment and might
be reviewed by peers once they act at collaborative web spaces (image XXX27).
22
Source: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/message/list/home
23
Such as e.g.: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/The+American+Age+(II)
24
Such as e.g.: http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/?id=8274
25
Such as e.g.:
http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/Utopia+(We+Think)+Feril_Durza+Table+of+Contents
26
See for example: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/message/list/ed3
27
Source: http://www.slideshare.net/nextmj1/music-and-its-power
Image 12 – Example for student’s project outcome
Learner assessment
During the course students report about their work progress28. In general students are
assessed as defined by ADM through ‘Authentic assessment’29 using Jon Mueller's
‘Authentic assessment definition’30 with assessment being "A form of assessment in
which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful
application of essential knowledge and skills.” (Müller 2008)
This definition demonstrates how ADM uses assessment as a way of furthering the
learning process, rather than detracting from it. ADM utilizes a portfolio system in
which both students and teachers will select the best work to be presented in the online
arena. This type of assessment is based upon two values: change and mastery.
1. Valuing Change:
Because each student comes into the model at a different proficiency level, the
expectations must therefore be different for each student. This model allows teachers
the ability to tailor goals for individual students based upon their needs and then take
the achievement of these goals into consideration in determining their grade.
2. Valuing Mastery:
28
As can be seen for example at: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/message/list/Progress
29
See also: http://academyofdiscovery.wikispaces.com/Accountability#tocAccountability4
30
URL: http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox
Each core discipline will identify certain skills that can be mastered in middle school.
Once each student has demonstrated mastery of the topic, concept, or skill, they will
become certified to teach others. This model allows students to become experts and
mentors for other students, thus fully rendering the classroom environment a place of
apprenticeship learning.
3. Standardized Assessment:
ADM prescribes the same solution for standardized assessment that the NWEA31
(Northwest Evaluation Association) does where assessment should be one that:
• Gives a child the chance for success.
• Students find engaging.
• Respects classroom time.
• Provides useful information.
With this in mind, the ADM will use the MAP test in order to standardize the results of
students learning. Using this assessment (and its corresponding online aggregating and
disaggregating tools) will allow seeing just how much improvement ADM provides
over traditional classroom teaching. It will also allow students to chart their progress in
a more concrete way, thus giving them even further validation of their authentic
learning.
31
URL: http://www.nwea.org
32
See also: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/Enhancements
33
See also: http://academyofdiscovery.wikispaces.com/Digital+Learner+Mentors
Image 13 – Discovery Utopia Course Environment
Comparing the Discovery Utopia case, and ADM in general, with the FLOSS type
inside / outside model (see below) it becomes visible that there are some differences
regarding the actors involved, their roles and the way course and web spaces (the
learning environment) are used.
Project actions and activities of course students are to a certain degree pre-defined. This
is to say that students can’t pick up any project of interest, but need to work on a given
subject with (somewhat) pre-defined activities. Course students can however focus on
areas and tools of interest and do become creative knowledge creators.
34
As for example shown at: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/message/view/home/496473
project35. Free learners and students from other institutions can access all information,
but (as it seems) do not become an integrated part of this community as it would be the
case in FLOSS, or also Wikipedia. This means that there is no systematic integration of
those outside groups, albeit they might interact at the wiki space, or interact once the
course students engage at the web. Consequently there is no sustainable development of
products and processes and no community growth.
Also the type of support system is different to a FLOSS type environment as there is no
integrated army of volunteering support provider, nor ‘old foxes’, or recorded problem
solving processes or other development activities that could act as learning resources.
The content of the course is partly re-used and re-mixed as current students make use of
available online content and last year students’ projects once they develop their projects.
However by starting each year entirely new projects they don’t improve what others did
in the same way one can see it happening within FLOSS or Wikipedia
35
See also the guideline at: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/Contribution+Instructions
36
See also the related blogging at: http://yongesonne.edublogs.org/2007/05/10/safety-vs-panic
37
Such as for example: http://classroom.all-science-fair-projects.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1559
38
As further illustrated at: http://www.slideshare.net/andreasmeiszner/learning-resources-in-floss
6.4 Case study 3 - Dept. of Informatics, Aristotle University, Greece39
6.4.1 Course Facts
Course area: Software engineering
Type of community: Higher education, FLOSS
Principle type of user: Student, FLOSS communities
Course Environment: FLOSS environments
Raw format cases study & sources URL:
http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=17
6&Itemid=116
39
Note: This chapter contains parts that were written together with Sulayman K. Sowe – Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki, Greece. The original case study is available at:
http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=176&Itemid=116
During semesters 1 to 4 students would have acquired certain software development
skills which may be vital to the software testing aspect of the ISE course and the
implementation of our framework.
Students are supposed to learn the difference between testing small programs they write
for themselves and large scale software products that they might deal with when they
graduate. The teaching and learning context focuses on the identification of software
faults and failures, unit and integration testing, function and performance testing,
writing and execution of test plans/cases, etc.
The framework for teaching SE courses in general and software testing in particular has
two aims:
• provide opportunity for the students to work on what they considered interesting
themselves,
• give the students real-world experience in dealing with large software projects.
This concept is seen to help extending the methodology by which SE courses are taught,
and also to guide students towards a meaningful and life-long learning of software
engineering concepts.
Two lecturers were involved in the pilot study. One was responsible for scheduling
FLOSS activities, the other acting as an adviser. The framework shown in Figure 1 is in
three phases. Each phase (see image XXX40) describes a context in which students get
involved in FLOSS projects activities. Their involvement was basic. Students select a
project and download and use the software. Any problems they encounter in the use of
the software are reported to the project's community for action. Their main tasks were to
find and report bugs in their respective projects. These tasks may take the form of
functional, usability, or smoke testing.
40
Source:
http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=176&Itemid=116
Students are supposed to choose a FLOSS project and learn bug reporting and other
procedures. They then test the software using various techniques. They report any bugs
and monitor the progress of these. Students are allowed to work on their projects
anytime and anywhere they felt like following a testing strategy as shown at image
XXX41.
Involved content
At the beginning of the course students are provided instructional and course learning
materials including a guide on how to participate in FLOSS projects. At the end of the
introductory lectures the students are guided to explore sourceforge.net42, a repository
of FLOSS projects to give the students an overview about the existing number and type
of FLOSS projects they might choose from. Besides the instructional and course
learning materials developed by the course team students are expected to make use of
the different types of instructional and learning materials that the FLOSS projects in
particular and the web in general provide.
41
Source :
http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=176&Itemid=116
42
URL : http://sourceforge.net
experience that necessitates learners freedom to learn what they deem fit into their own
worldviews, expediencies, potentials, abilities and skills. The model provided at image
XXX indicates how the FLOSS framework allows the department to send students out
to participate in FLOSS projects. Through the principle of CID (Communication,
Interaction, Dialogue), students engage with the FLOSS community in various projects
and learn software engineering concepts and skills (how to test), communicate with
fellow participants (software developers and users), and learn the essentials of
participating in a distributed software development environment (using bug tracking
systems). The ISE course also benefits from the students’ involvement and helps us
design new and improve existing teaching and learning strategies.
Involved stakeholders
The stakeholders involved are Aristotle students and educators at the one hand and the
wider FLOSS community domain on the other hand. Besides inhouse materials
developed by the course team, students have access to a large and diverse pool of
content that was developed and is shared within the FLOSS communities. Participants
are continuously building on existing content from various sources, involving a broad
range of tools. Students’ contributions themselves become a part of the respective
FLOSS project they are working on, to be later reflected on by the wider community
and further used in case their contributions are found to be useful.
Inclusivity
43
Source:
http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=176&Itemid=116
Access
Students’ testing activities and their engagement with the various FLOSS communities
in their various projects are made publicly available at the various bug tracking systems,
forums, mailing lists (See image XXX for a typical forum contribution). Subsequent
participants the project may benefit from what the students contributed.
Student roles
Student/Learner: Students as learners
Practitioner: Students act e.g. as bug tester, developer, etc.
Peer: Students may choose to test in a project together and peer-review their
participation.
44
Source: http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=3002&highlight
Yes, though the prior learning that is accessible resides within the respective FLOSS
communities, but not within the course learning environment.
Involves peer-review
The first batch of students (2005) only peer reviewed their classmates of the same year.
In subsequent pilot studies the course team assists in identifying students across years
(e.g. those ones that haven’t finished their project yet) who work on similar projects and
software categories to help, exchange ideas and peer review each others work.
Learner assessment
At the end of the pilot study students are evaluated based on the presentations they
made in class, their participation in their respective projects, and their testing activities.
Furthermore, two online surveys are conducted by the course team in order to capture
the students’ opinions and experiences in testing in FLOSS projects.
Students were assessed and graded by using online surveys to gather information on
their perception of the pilot study as well as the FLOSS type learning environment. The
grading was based on their testing activities and presentations they made at various
stages of the implementation of the pilot study. The grading took into account the
following aspects:
• Class presentation (10%). 3 points for each of the presentations made in Phases 1
and 2. And 4 points for the final presentation in Phase 3.
• Project participation (12%). Measured by the number of emails we exchanged
with the student about his project.
• Working with testing tools (13%). How a student used and understood the bug
tracking system or bug database in his project.
• Testing activity (TA) 15%. Measured by four variables;
6.5 Case study 4 - OpenEd syllabus, Utah State University, United States
6.5.1 Course Facts
Course area: INST 7150 Introduction to Open Education, Fall 2007
Type of community: Higher education, open educational resource.
Principle type of user: Educators, students, general audience
Course Environment: Blogs, Wikis
Raw format cases study & sources URL:
http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=178&
Itemid=116
Involved content
All of the content is available online and the majority of it consists of reading materials
like online books and papers, with a minority consisting of videos, OER project
websites and the students’ blogs.
Purpose content was used / developed for
Self-studying is the pre-dominant form of learning, with the main type of contents being
pre-selected materials provided by the lecturer, but later on also included the blog posts
of other students to be peer reviewed.
Involved stakeholders
Most of the content used was developed by subject mater experts like educators or
professional authors and has been selected and provided by the course lecturer, with the
exception of students’ blogs that are used as content sources itself as part of the peer
reviewing process.
Inclusivity
Access
All materials are available online, including students learning outcomes that are made
available at their personal blogs.
Contribution
Besides the students’ bloggings the content used at this course is static. This is to say
that there is no possibility for students to work with the content to either improve it,
update it, to annotate it, or engage with it in any way that would be of benefit for future
students, except their own bloggings that are scattered at the web.
Student roles
The course uses mainly the traditional role model with the teacher on the one side and
the learner on the other, with the role of peers being relatively limited to the review of
students’ bloggings.
Involves peer-review
The course contains some peer reviewing activities with students being expected to
review other students’ bloggings and to reflect on them.
Learner assessment
Following the initial course design the course also includes grading with each weekly
assignment being worth 10 points, for a total of 150 possible points for the course.
Weekly assignments are supposed to be graded according to (1) the degree to which
they completely answer the questions asked, (2) the degree to which they demonstrate
understanding of the assigned reading material, and (3) the degree to which original
thinking is evident in the writing. A review of the course spaces however did not show
any examples of students’ assessments.
45
The full text is available at: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/386
46
For further information see: http://opencontent.org/wiki/index.php?title=MEETINGPOINT
integrated course environment47. However, within the current course form that has a
100% student turnover it would not be possible to apply the concept of information
brokering analogue to the FLOSS case as this would require the existence of an
established community with some ‘old foxes’ that can point newbies into the right
direction.
The discussion also addressed the students’ roles; with some students suggesting to
move to a more pro-active role where students would bring in course materials
themselves and thus contribute to a continuous development of the course48. Again this
is something that can be seen within FLOSS and that ultimately allows the learner to
enter the course at his current knowledge stage, with other students being able to benefit
from more advanced students’ knowledge. A further step into this direction, though not
discussed between the students of the course, would be to allow students to create their
own activities or projects and to form groups around them. This would allow students to
focus on areas that they are interested in, but still being able to learn from what other
students created. It would also allow getting out most of prior students’ experiences and
knowledge, as this is where students would start their activities and projects, with the
outcomes of those activities or projects being available for all other students.
As a result of the reflections on the course the next year's course design suggestions49
included a more collaborative structure and environments, but still using the traditional
assignment model with the disadvantages over the FLOSS model as explained above.
47
Such as the following one established by course participants: http://opened.wetpaint.com/?t=anon
48
See also: http://opened.wetpaint.com/page/Intro2OpenED2007
49
Available from:
http://opencontent.org/wiki/index.php?title=Next_year%27s_course_design_suggestion
6.7.2 Course Description:
The above cited courses are all lectured by Matt Barton, an assistant professor of
English at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota (USA), where he teaches courses in
rhetoric, new media, and computers and writing. All the courses referred to above make
intensive use of Tikiwiki, an open source platform which allows readers to interact with
each other through blogs, forums and wikis. As presented above, in the last few years
Matt Barton has been giving courses for undergraduate or advanced undergraduate and
graduate students namely Introduction to Rhetorical and Analytical Writing (English
191), Writing in the Professions (English 332), Writing for the Web (English 432),
Teaching College Writing (English 656), etc.
Overall there have been no persistent difficulties in using Tikiwiki for any student.
Following Matt Barton the small time investment that students make learning these new
tools will pay off immensely in the long run.
What students said about the courses and the Tikiwiki:50
• "My name is Saurav Pandey and I was in your English 332 MW 3:00pm class. I
just wanted to thank you for a great semester. I really enjoyed your class and
enjoyed doing the projects as well as the blogs and the forums. I think I learned
a lot about writing in the professional world and am confident that this will help
me in the future."
“You are a very strong professor! I thought you did a wonderful job engaging the class
and providing us with the information in a clever way. I really enjoyed the use of your
Tikiwiki page to do our blogs and forums; it was totally different from any other class.
— English 332 Student, Fall 06.
50
Source: http://mattbarton.net/tikiwiki/tiki-
pagehistory.php?page=HomePage&compare=1&oldver=159&newver=178&diff_style=unidiff
Involved content
The content used consists of lecturer’s sources, including presentations, publicly
available third party literature such as wiki books or opinion articles; and students’
contributions within the wikis, blogs and forums.
Involved stakeholders
In all courses each student has to contribute at a minimum 500 words to the Tikiwiki on
a weekly base by creating or answering to a Blog/Forum Post. In some of the courses,
namely ‘Introduction to Rhetorical and Analytical Writing’ the student has also to
submit 5 projects and peer review the projects of classmates. Therefore students are
forced to become active contributors, whether they want to or not.
Inclusivity
Access
As common for Tikiwiki all content of the forums and blogs are publicly available.
Contribution
Despite the fact that all content at Tikiwikiare publicly available , including forums or
blogs postings, only enrolled students and the lecturer can edit it.
Student roles
During the course students are not only acting as learner, but also adopted roles such as
content creators or peer reviewers of the classmates projects.
Learner assessment
The student assessment varies from course to course. For example, at the ‘Introduction
to Rhetorical and Analytical Writing’ course the students’ grade depends on the criteria
a illustrated at image XXX51.
Workshop
Participation; 5%
Forums and
Blogs; 25%
5 Final Copies of
Projects; 50%
8 Peer Reviews;
20%
51
Source: http://mattbarton.net/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=English+191+Syllabus
52
Source: http://mattbarton.net/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=English+332+Syllabus
Final Exam; 10%
Blog and Forum
Participation; 25% Individual; 20%
Holistic; 10%
Discussion Leader
(2); 10%
Class Presentations
(2); 25%
6.8 Conclusion
The case studies presented above demonstrate that there are a number of different
possibilities to apply FLOSS principles that can be found within an educational setting.
This is not astonishing given the fact that FLOSS principles are not to be only found
within FLOSS, but are inherent to the web 2.0 as it has emerged.
The cases above show a deployment of a variety of communication spaces and tools,
being either located within the institution or at the web. Consequently the ownership of
the involved spaces and the possibility to influence their design ranges from possible
(case Aristotle, Washington Bothell) to partially possible (case Open Ed Syllabus,
Manitoba) to almost impossible (case ADM, St. Cloud).
7.1 Introduction
The analysis of the organisation of learning in FLOSS communities and FLOSS as a
learning environment that has been carried out above suggests that FLOSS
communities are indeed worthwhile to be considered as one bests practice case of
informal learning environments; and as a benchmark for other attempts to organise
learning in a more self-organised and opener way than traditional learning
environments. The same analysis has also shown limitations of the FLOSS approach.
Therefore the objective can not be to abandon traditional higher education practices as
we know them and to replace one system (traditional HE) through another (FLOSS
type learning), but instead to find the optimal mix of the best principles of both
systems in order to achieve maximal synergies.
There appear to be three different scenarios on the adoption of FLOSS approaches
within educational settings, with each of them having a different level of complexity
and a different degree of benefits. Before detailing the three different scenarios let us
first recall the FLOSS key characteristics that are deemed to be desirable.
1
This section contains elements of co-authored work initially compiled for:
• Meiszner, A. et al. (2008) “Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS-like) education
transfer report”, FLOSSCom Project. 2008.
• Weller, M. & Meiszner A. (2008) “FLOSSCom Phase 2: Report on the effectiveness of a
FLOSS-like learning community in formal educational settings”, FLOSSCom Project. 2008.
Within the ‘inside approach’ institutions might also decide to ‘open up’ their virtual
learning environments to fellow universities or the general public to view what is
going on within the environment. Within the inside scenario an institution might even
allow those outside groups to participate and engage at this environment, in the case
doing so, this likely would be a first step towards a hybrid approach.
A general limitation of the inside approach is that the outside world remains largely or
totally disconnected, depending on the degree of openness (e.g. open to view, open to
participate, etc.). An example for a semi-open environment is MIT’s Open Course
Ware project2 that is partially open for outside observers, but participation is limited
to formally enrolled students only. Another limitation relates to ‘community building’
and ‘evolutionary growth’, since this is per-se limited within a given institution that
only involves the own student population, and usually even further limited due to (a) a
100% student turnover per semester / course and (b) a comparatively small number of
potential community member (formally enrolled students of a course)3.
Within such an inside attempt likely not all desirable FLOSS characteristics can be
implemented and some key features of traditional higher education, such as a
fundamental distinction between learners and teachers, performers and evaluators,
might be kept. A inside approach is therefore always a compromise between the old
and the new that requires careful planning from those who design and manage the
transfer processes.
This scenario might be relatively moderate to implement since the technology should
be already in place at most higher education institutions, although admittedly
modifications very likely would be necessary. On the down side this approach still
would keep the students of the institution within this learning environment preventing
their semi-structured engagement and collaboration within the wider web. It would
also limit the opportunities of ‘best of breed’, as the wider web might provide better
technological solutions or already established and mature communities for respective
study fields.
Examples for such an inside approach where the cases of ADM and St. Cloud.
2
http://ocw.mit.edu
3
However, as e.g. the case of “Students' Knowledge Base” (http://wiki.sch.bme.hu) at the Budapest
University of Technology and Economics (BME) illustrates, it is not an impossible attempt. The
project started as an intranet site that was set up by 4-5 students living at the Schoenherz Dormitory of
the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. During the first few months the site was only
accessible within the dormitory. Only after this initial phase access to the site was opened up to the
public. Meanwhile (by February 2008), there are 5980 pages of content, the wiki receives on average
1.2 million hits per month, and there are more than 2600 registered users. This all happened without
funding from the university. Source: Glott, R. & Schmidt, P. (2008): Learning Opportunities in
FLOSS. Presentation given at the FKFT Free Knowledge, Free Technology Conference on Education
for a free information society, Barcelona, July 15th to 17th, 2008
communities, such as the FLOSS ones, to work within those communities and to
apply and deepen their theoretical knowledge.
In particular for the area of software engineering this approach might be suitable due
to the existence of a large number of mature FLOSS projects and a myriad of
educational resources. This is seen in the work of the Aristotle University in Greece,
where undergraduate students are sent out in to real FLOSS communities as part of
their degree in software engineering. Students are provided with an initial academic
background in principles of software engineering, testing software and the tools and
approach in FLOSS communities and then required to choose and engage with a real
project. This clearly has benefits in computer science as it gives students real
experience of collaborating with other developers and also of the different types of
role and work required in software development. The outside approach, however, is
not restricted to computer programming. It can be realized whenever there is an
external, ‘real’ community that is operating on FLOSS type principles. The case of
Washington Bothell is a good example for this where students were required to
contribute to actual Wikipedia articles as part of their assignment work, thus gaining
much of the practical experience of collaboration and authenticity experienced by the
software programmers at Thessaloniki.
The outside approach might be the least complex and almost cost neutral; and
therefore relatively easy to implement. One of the drawbacks of the outside approach
however is that the results of students’ collaborative learning and knowledge
production likely would remain within this outside community and therefore would be
lost for future students. This scenario would also not provide next year students
(newbies) with an easy access as no former learners are present at the institutional
level, nor the resources they created, to facilitate the newbie entrance.
4
Jishka is a forum that assists thousands of children and teenagers with schoolwork everyday by
publishing educational content and providing instant-help services for students who need urgent
help (http://www.jiskha.com) / Yahoo answers allows finding and sharing information where
individuals can ask questions on any topic and get answers from real people
(http://answers.yahoo.com). / PhysicsForums is an informal collaboration space where people can
chat about maths, physics and science. The forum went online in 2003 and had 77.203 members
that started 154.509 threads and received 1.341.084 answers by November 2007.
http://www.physicsforums.com. Those are only three randomly picked up examples out of myriads
to be found at the web.
7.5 Comparative overview of Inside, Outside and Hybrid approach
Table 7-1 provides a simplified overview on the implementation scenarios of the inside, outside and hybrid approaches based on a course level
detailing the potential impact of applying those approaches within an educational setting.
Contribution to the Educator/Student - rather limited but Educator/Student & practitioners - though Educator/Student, free learner & practitioners - though
process very structured the later might assume a dominating role as again once "invading" the outside space of established
the student has a fixed entrance and exit date communities (e.g. Wikipedia) practitioners might
and therefore might be seen rather as a assume a dominating role
"Newbie"
Greater sharing of Educator/Student - rather limited – Educator/Student & practitioner - potentially Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner -
knowledge except if allowing outsiders to large scale potentially very large scale
participate
Connection of content Only if earlier and future students are Yes, though based at the web and therefore Yes, since this scenario involves formally enrolled
& discourse involved in current students' activities - might be disconnected for future students, or students from various institutions it allows to shape
e.g. Earlier students as mentors, future at least requires them to figure out the inside space in order to suits students' needs. Students
students as lurker connection themselves. Again earlier and from different institutions will also have different start
future students might be involved in current and end times that might help to assure an equilibrated
students' activities to allow a connection - ratio of students, free learner and practitioners and lead
e.g. Earlier students as mentors, future to continuity and evolution.
students as lurker. Students are only "guests"
at the outside space and therefore the space
is not shaped for their needs
Peer support Educator/Student - rather limited, Predominantly by practitioners Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner - potential
except if allowing outsiders to for robust support structure
participate
Peer assessment Educator/Student - rather limited There might be a peer assessment, either Two types of peer assessment: unorganized by
unorganized by practitioners or organized by practitioners and organized by other students & free
other students learners
Real activities Educator/Student - rather limited Educator/Student & practitioner - potential Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner - potential
for engagement in real activities for engagement in real activities
Personalized learning Educator/Student - rather limited / Free Educator/Student & practitioner - potential Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner - potential
experience learner can ‘consume’ what they are for personalizing the learning experience for truly personalized learning experiences
personally interested at – might also be
allowed to participate
Informal learning Potentially limited Formal and informal learning - formal Formal and informal learning - formal learning more
learning clearly structured unstructured
Use of technologies Limited to available institutional tools Limited to available tools used by outside Large and diverse range of involved tools and spaces,
community based "out" at the web as well as across participating
institutions. Likelihood of having "champ hosts" for
different modules that could be institutional or existing
web communities.
Speed of innovation Likely rather slow Depending on outside community, Fast, perpetual beta
and evolution potentially faster than inside approach
Speed of learning Likely fast Depending on outside community, Depending on the learner and type of support provided
potentially slower than inside approach for formally enrolled students. Likely slower for
newbies, but faster for ICT literate learner
Scope of learning Limited, predictable Enhanced, fairly predictable Widest, with guaranteed minimum scope for formally
enrolled students depending on institutional guidance
Unique Selling Points · Transparency of environments · Real life learning with resulting higher · Transparency of environments improves quality
improves quality degree of soft skills, key and practical skills
· Meets social responsibility · Enhanced employability chances as a · Meets social responsibility
result of the points above
· Possibility to attract higher number · Opportunity to meet future employer · Possibility to attracts higher number of future
of future students (that might also match students (that might also match better - "know before
better - "know before what they buy") what they buy").
· Real life learning with resulting higher degree of
soft skills, key and practical skills
· Enhanced employability chances
· Opportunity to meet future employer
· Allows for new HE business models - e.g. learning
for free as you go, pay for services (f2f classes, formal
assessment, degrees)
· Allows for niche courses and identification of
rising stars at low costs.
Examples
Utopia Discovery Aristotle University None, by now
St. Cloud State University Washington Bothell
Table 0-1 FLOSS type educational approaches
7.6 Questions related to the application of such approaches, in particular
the hybrid approach
There are a number of poosible challenges to be considered related to the application of
a hybrid approach providing in number of unanswered questions.
7.7 Conclusion
The inside approach allows educators to take some of the existing practices found in
FLOSS communities and to employ them within a conventional higher education
setting. Such an inside approach might be ‘closed’ to the outside world, ‘open’ to the
outside world to view, or ‘open’ to the outside world to participate. Inviting the outside
world to participate likely is a first step towards the hybrid approach as the major
cultural and legal challenges should have been already overcome.
The outside approach allows educators to provide students with a real life experience, to
provide them with richer and more up to date learning materials and to gain soft and key
skills ‘on the fly’ through real interactions in the virtual world. This obviously has
benefits in the field of software development, but also in other subject areas as it gives
students experience of real collaboration and accepting feedback. However, the
opportunities for this type of approach may be limited, since it relies on an existing
FLOSS type community to be realised, and these may not be present in every subject
area. Additionally the outside world is not connected to the institutions inside world
resulting in a loss of the created / involved artifacts, lessons learnt, or external expertise
with future students not being able to benefit from those.
It has also been shown that many questions related to the application of a hybrid
approach relate to organizational or motivational aspects, which include:
• The availability of a large number of (volunteering) participants
In the case of FLOSS communities this is characterized by volunteering and volatility,
is probably one of the cornerstones of the efficiency of the FLOSS community as a
learning environment. A crucial question for transferring FLOSS principles to formal
education is how similar networks can be created within formal environments, which
usually have small classes. On the other hand, FLOSS community members have
regular contacts to only 1 to 5 other community members (Glott et al. 2007) and
therefore a question is how to reap similar network effects from small networks in
formal education. Meanwhile the ‘outside approach’ is taking advantage of existing
online communities, the ‘inside approach’ and the hybrid approach will need to
establish structures, incentives and motivations to bring together the different involved
stakeholders and to establish such a community.
• How to allow re-experience?
Within FLOSS much of the learning processes and outcomes are made visible and
therefore allows future learners to learn from what others did and to build upon those
experiences. A project based approach, analogue to development processes in FLOSS,
might provide an answer to this as collaboration and discussions could emerge around
those project works.
• The motivational aspect
As earlier mentioned, motivations to participate at FLOSS are e.g. ‘to learn’, ‘gaining
reputation’ or ‘personal enjoyment’, but also a clear ‘win / win scenario’ between
information seeker and information provider resulting in learning benefits for both sides
(Demaziere et al., 2006). Those motivational aspects might be difficult to transfer to and
apply in formal educational settings. While learning in the FLOSS community is
efficient because ‘project managers’ and ‘community managers’ (and many more roles)
voluntarily assume responsibility for organising work, tasks, content, and
communication, in formal educational settings roles, tasks, and responsibilities are more
pre-determined and rigid (Glott et al. 2007). And even if allowing for such roles within
an educational setting, what would be the motivation to assume such roles?
There are a number of possibilities to provide incentives within formal educational
settings such as rewards for students who voluntarily assume positions, similar to
project or community managers in FLOSS, or to include into the curricula the
obligation of more experienced students to share their knowledge with the less
experienced. Free learners outside of formal education might also be offered a
certification of their learning outcomes against fees, or a virtual credit account that
rewards them for taking on roles such as mentor, facilitator, moderator or tutor. Those
virtual credits than might be used to pay for assessment and certifications. With regards
to incentives for practitioners to participate one possibility would be to involve learner
into concrete project works – e.g. to provide computer science students with the
opportunity to take on some tasks at a respective open source project. Participants of
FLOSS communities are also aware that the skills they learn have a positive value on
the labour market and are able to judge this value realistically. Precondition for
competing with others that have a comparable formal degree is that informally attained
skills in the FLOSS community must be provable (Glott et al. 2007). Peer-reviewing
and recognition within the community is very important in this regard to build up a
repute that can be shown to possible employer. Similar opportunities, as well for
students as for free learner, therefore might be desirable within an educational setting.
Even if addressing all the points above it might still be a challenge to provide an easy
entrance strategy for students from fellow universities or free learners outside of formal
education. This challenge relates to questions such as ‘what are learners supposed to do’
or ‘how to get involved’.
The cases as provided at chapter 6 suggest that the ‘inside approach’ and the ‘outside-
approach’ are viable. Those cases indicate that FLOSS principles can be successfully
leveraged to educational settings to provide students with similar learning resources, or
allowing them to become content creators. The Hybrid model potentially offers the
highest benefits but remains to be explored and will be subject to chapter 8 of this work.
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