A Comparative Study Between Floss (free/libre Open Source Software) Communities And Higher Education Institutions (heis)

Work in Progress PhD Thesis Working Title: A Comparative Study Between FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) Communities and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) Extract of Chapters 1, 6 and 7 Author: Andreas Meiszner Institute of Educational Technologies (IET) The Open University, UK Version 090130_1 Contact: [email protected]

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 6 6.1 6.2 6.2.1 6.2.2 6.2.3 6.2.4 6.2.5 6.2.6 6.3 6.3.1 6.3.2 6.3.3 6.3.4 6.3.5 6.3.6 6.4 6.4.1 6.4.2 6.4.3 6.4.4 6.4.5 6.4.6 6.5 6.5.1 6.5.2 6.5.3 6.5.4 6.5.5 6.5.6 6.6 6.7 6.7.1 6.7.2 6.7.3 6.7.4 6.7.5 6.7.6 6.8 6.8.1 6.8.2 7 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.3.1 7.3.2 7.3.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 8 8.1 8.2 8.2.1 8.2.2 8.3 8.4 8.4.1

Recorded conversations & created artifacts FLOSS TYPE CASES WITHIN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS Introduction Case study 1 - University of Washington Bothell, US Course Facts Course Description: Course particularities Similarities to FLOSS case Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case Possible areas of improvement Case study 2 - Utopia Discovery / ADM - Douglas County School District, US Course Facts Course description Course particularities Similarities to FLOSS case Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case Possible areas of improvement Case study 3 - Dept. of Informatics, Aristotle University, Greece Course Facts Course Description: Course particularities Similarities to FLOSS case Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case Possible areas of improvement Case study 4 - OpenEd syllabus, Utah State University, United States Course Facts Course Description: Course particularities Similarities to FLOSS case Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case Possible areas of improvement Case study 5 - Connectivism Course, University of Manitoba, CA (to be done) Case study 6 - St. Cloud State University Minnesota, US Course Facts Course Description: Course particularities Similarities to FLOSS case Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case Possible areas of improvement Conclusion Comparison against key characteristics of FLOSS as a learning environment Comparison against key characteristics of learning in FLOSS POSSIBLE ADOPTION OF FLOSS APPROACHES IN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS Introduction FLOSS key characteristics deemed to be desirable ‘Inside’, ‘Outside’ or ‘Hybrid’ approach Inside approach Outside approach Hybrid approach Involved roles: Educators, students, free learners & practitioners Comparative overview of Inside, Outside and Hybrid approach Questions related to the application of such approaches, in particular the hybrid approach Conclusion SET OF EXPERIMENTAL APPLICATION OF FLOSS TYPE APPROACHES Introduction Development of an experimental FLOSS type learning environment Focus group workshops on adoption possibilities and recommendations Implementation guidelines to be considered The NetGeners.Net trial (04/08 to 07/08) Software Engineering at Aristotle University (10/08 to 02/09) Background

8.5 9 9.1 9.2 9.2.1 9.2.2 9.2.3 9.3 9.4 10 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.3.1 10.3.2 10.4 10.5 10.6 11

Summary RESEARCH FINDINGS Introduction Qualitative findings Stakeholders’ Surveys Observation of learners’ activities Review of artifacts created Quantitative findings Summary CONCLUSIONS Introduction The research findings The contributions of the study The theoretical-methodological contribution The applied contribution The limitations of the study Suggestions for further research Conclusion 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. 1.2.1 The Open Educational Resource (OER) movement The Open Educational Resource (OER) movement has emerged as what might be seen as an alternative to traditional educational environments, aiming at opening the door to the next generation of higher education provision. The current OER movement is tackling maybe one of the most crucial aspects for education: the free and open access to educational resources being released under a commons license and thus the possibility to re-use those resources and to adapt them. (Schmidt & Surman 2007) However, the OER movement appears to largely follow traditional educational paradigms using experts’ production and development models, and seeing the learner as a passive consumer, or at least leaving him with this role. This can be seen for example by the traditional expert production model it applies that results in the fact that content and learning activities / processes (discourse) remain disconnected and therefore not personal (Meiszner, Glott & Sowe, 2008b). Following Wiley’s (2006) 6 characteristics the OER movement therefore addresses a further point relevant to a changing educational landscape: ‘Open’, yet leaving another 3 to be addressed: ‘connected’, ‘personal’ and ‘driven by participation’. 1.2.2 The recent emergence of open courses More recently one can observe a further type of openness within the educational domain that might be broadly characterized as ‘open courses’. Those attempts, unlike the OER case, seem to be mainly driven on an individual educators’ level, but not be strategically addressed at the institutional level. Those open courses apply, intentionally or on purpose, a number of principles that are inherent to the web 2.0 therefore addressing the remaining three points of Wiley’s (2006) 6 characteristics: ‘connected’, ‘personal’ and ‘driven by participation’. Despite the lack of thorough research in this domain and their early stages, those open courses seem to experiment with a range of different educational approaches, tend to promote different levels of openness, incorporate different sets of free and open tools, and - to a varying degree – mix the formal with the informal bringing together the 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. 1.3

Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities as a learning environment and ecosystem Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities are probably the best-known examples of well established and mature learning ecosystems to be found at the Web and there is an ever growing number of research. Such research has been looking at FLOSS from different perspectives, such as community of practice / community of learner perspective (Wenger 1998; Pór 2004, Stürmer 2005), from the software development perspective, (Scacchi 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006a, 2006b), from the knowledge building perspective (Hemetsberger & Reinhardt 2004, 2006; Hemetsberger & Reinhardt 2006; Hemetsberger 2006), a technological community perspective (Pór 2004; Meiszner 2007), or from a conceptual and educational perspective (de Paula et al. 2001; Fischer & Sugimoto 2006, Fischer 2007; Scharff 2002; Staring 2005; Bacon & Dillon 2006). FLOSS communities provide a good example on virtual online learning environments that foster in example collaborative content creation, re-use and peer review and community based support systems. The FLOSS case therefore potentially provides us with insights in how to make use of ICT and the Web 2.0, on the way members create the content, the motivation why they do this and they way they engage with each other on content development and support. The FLOSS model shows how users can become active ‘resource’ creators, how learning processes can be made visible and can benefit other learners, how to successfully establish and maintain user support systems, and ultimately how all of this can be re-used and freely maintained. (Glott et al. 2007, Weller & Meiszner 2008) The FLOSS-type of learning is not radically new and unrelated to the solid pedagogic framework that has been established for new types of learning, as a response to the shortcomings of traditional educational systems. From a pedagogical perspective learning in FLOSS is characterized by self-studying, project-based learning, problembased learning, inquiry-based learning, collaborative learning, reflective practice or social learning. It is not assumed that those pedagogies were deliberately set out, but rather that due to the structure, approach and governance of FLOSS communities certain pedagogies have emerged (Glott et al. 2007, Weller & Meiszner 2008). FLOSS appears not as a contradiction to such pedagogies but in many respects as a best practice case of the implementation of their principles and goals.

The FLOSS case therefore might be a good example on how the 6 desirable characteristics as outlined by Wiley (2006) can be applied within a Web 2.0 educational world. 1.4 Objectives of this work The objective of the work is to examine and understand how FLOSS communities function as a learning environment and ecosystem, to identify and formulate crucial characteristics and to draw up ways on how some of those principles might be leveraged to educational settings. After having thoroughly reviewed FLOSS communities as a learning environment and ecosystem it is than aimed to identify similar cases within formal educational settings and to evaluate how they work out in comparison to the FLOSS cases, to identify the variations between those cases and the FLOSS case and to draw up possible impacts of such variations. With the results obtained of the first two steps it is than intended to develop application models for such a FLOSS type learning ecosystem taking into account the lessons learnt from the similar cases within educational settings. At a fourth step an experimental FLOSS type learning environment will be developed based upon those application models, to be subsequently tested to compare the outcomes of the test against initial assumptions and expectations. For the development of such an experimental learning environment based on FLOSS approaches the Meta-design and its underlying courses as seed process model (de Paula et al. 2001; Fischer & Sugimoto 2006, Fischer 2007) will serve as a generic conceptual framework as detailed at chapter four. 1.5 Research questions The research questions of this work relate to three levels: the theoreticalmethodological, the descriptive-analytical and the applied level Research questions at the theoretical-methodological level include: •

What are the application models of FLOSS type approaches within an educational scenario?

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How does the Meta-design and its underlying courses as seed process model support the initiation of a FLOSS type learning environment?

Research questions at the descriptive-analytical level include: •

Which are the key characteristics of FLOSS communities as a learning environment and learning ecosystem?

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In which way are those key characteristics different to similar cases within educational settings and what might be the impact of those differences?

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Which are the principles of FLOSS communities that have been applied within those FLOSS type approaches and how have they worked out?

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Which are the principles of FLOSS communities that have not been applied within those FLOSS type approaches and what might be the reason or impact?

Research questions at the applied level include: •

What are the requirements for a learning environment that is build upon such FLOSS type approaches?

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How does such an open learning environment works in practice that was (1) built upon the developed application models, that (2) considers and addresses FLOSS type characteristics and that was (3) implemented following the Metadesign and its underlying courses as seed process model?

1.6 Contribution of the work It is hoped that the results of this work will contribute at the three levels: the theoreticalmethodological, the descriptive-analytical and the applied level At the theoretical-methodological level; by developing application models of FLOSS type approaches within an educational scenario and by improving the understanding about the suitability of Meta-design and its underlying courses as seed process model for the implementation of such models. At the descriptive-analytical level; by examining how FLOSS communities work as learning environments through analysis and characterization of the underlying principles, structures and processes. This would be complemented by a review of FLOSS type cases within educational settings to identify and evaluate similar elements and approaches and how they worked out within educational settings. At the applied: level; by building up an experimental open learning environment based upon (1) the developed application models, that (2) considers and addresses FLOSS type characteristics and that was (3) implemented following the Meta-design and its underlying courses as seed process model. 1.7 Research Outline This first chapter provided information about the rationale of the work and the research to be carried out. Chapter 2 will examine how FLOSS communities work as a learning environment and ecosystem. This will be done through an in depth review of the literature and supported by some own data collection on underlying technologies and tools. Chapter 3 is looking on the individual aspect of learning in FLOSS, which is – again – based on an in depth review of the literature. Chapter 4 will cover the conceptual framework for this work, by explaining the functioning, objectives and aims of Meta-design and the courses as seeds process model, which will serve as the fundament for the development and experimental testing of an FLOSS type learning environment (chapter 8). Chapter 5 is detailing the methodological framework of this work and the methodologies selected. At chapter 6 this work will present a number of case studies on approaches at a course level within educational settings that appear to be in some ways similar to FLOSS, including an outline of the characteristics of such cases, the initial lessons learnt, and also in which way they appear to be different to the FLOSS case and what the implications of such differences might be.

Chapter 7 will than draw up application models on how FLOSS type approaches might be applied within an educational scenario and what are the burdens to be overcome. Chapter 8 will provide an overview of a set of experimental applications of FLOSS type approaches. The overall finding of this work will be subject to chapter 9, presenting the main findings; with chapter 10 providing an overall conclusion, recommendations and further research suggestions.

6 FLOSS type cases within educational settings 6.1 Introduction In this section a number of different case studies are provided which demonstrate how FLOSS type approaches have been used on a course level within educational settings, be it intentionally or on purpose1. For each case the similarities and variances to the FLOSS case will be analyzed, followed by their possible impacts. 6.2 Case study 1 - University of Washington Bothell, US 6.2.1 Course Facts Course area: Environmental: History and Globalization; Conservation and Sustainable Development Type of community: Higher education Principle type of user: Student, general audience Course Environment: Wikis (Wikipedia) Raw format cases study & sources URL: http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=17 7&Itemid=116 6.2.2 Course Description: This case study features two courses that were given by Martha Groom2 involving Wikipedia3. The two courses were (Environmental) History and Globalization (BIS303, Autumn 2006) and Conservation and Sustainable Development (BIS 459, Spring 2007). As part of the courses students were given an assignment and supposed to research Wikipedia and write articles for submission. Following Groom, the structure of the traditional term paper can limit its educational value. To make the students’ assignment more meaningful, the students at the two courses published their papers in Wikipedia. The reasoning of using Wikipedia for students’ term paper assignments were driven by the following questions: •

How to make a term paper a larger learning experience (rather than a limited academic exercise)

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How to provide authentic peer review

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How to connect and engage an external community

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How to make a term paper benefit a wider community

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How to motivate students to do their best work

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How to have students think more deeply about the issue of creating knowledge o Go beyond just thinking about the paper topic

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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)

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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

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Students needed extra guidance to create high quality articles in encyclopedia style

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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.”

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“Although I was really scared by this assignment, I really appreciate a chance to write something that might help someone else beyond myself.”

6.2.3 Course particularities Course activities For the first course in autumn 2006 students were given a term paper assignment with the objective to large edit or to write a new Wikipedia article with a minimum of 1500 words. During the second course in spring 2007 the objective was for students to create a wikipedia article or sub-article as a collaborative group work among students. The improvement from the first to the second pilot was a more specific guidance and stricter oversight on selection of projects and to focus on collaborative projects that allowed greater student oversight. 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

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The contribution in question can http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_during_the_Roman_period

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content / information used to write the Wikipedia article consisted of printed literature and web sources, such as BBC5 or Annual Reviews6. Purpose content was used / developed for The reason to let students contribute to Wikipedia was to provide some meaning to the college-level term paper, which typically has an audience of one (the professor) before ending its career in a recycling bin. Groom hoped that assigning students the task of creating a Wikipedia entry would make the effort more meaningful, since students were writing for what might be a wider audience and with the intention of providing a general public benefit. She also suggested that the project would be a good introduction to the academic world, which focuses on the production and dissemination of knowledge. The motivation for letting students engage at wikipedia and contributing to it was: •

Writing a Wikipedia article can be a more sophisticated learning experience:

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Enhances quality of research and writing

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Enhances student understanding of the research process

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Highlights importance of using verifiable and credible sources

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Increases pride in work

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Encourages collaborative model of knowledge creation

Thus with students engaging at Wikipedia they gained a perspective on the value of credible sources, and complete citations. Also peer review became a more purposeful effort; with good critiques being more highly valued than bad ones. The results of the two courses also showed that students invested more in their work, felt greater ownership, and experienced greater returns for their efforts with the result of generally better written Wikipedia contributions than the typical term papers. 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.

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URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk URL: http://www.annualreviews.org 7 Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communal_Wildlife_Conservancies_in_Namibia 6

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.

Image 2 – Example of insufficient quality feedback

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).

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Gralo#Renewable_energy_in_Africa 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 9

Image 3 – Example for students’ as a researcher

Image 4 – Example for students’ as an editor

Image 5 – Example for students as acting as peers

Use of prior learning Due to the nature of the class work (writing a term paper) prior learning outcomes that could be used seemed to be limited to resources created by Wikipedia users that help contributors to learn how to compile a professional Wikipedia article and how to use the involved technology. Additionally, students have to provide a brief review of their ongoing’ discourse at the projects, which potentially could be of use for future learners.

Connection to further content Yes, as common for Wikipedia. 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).

Image 6 – Revision history of students’ contribution

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.

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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 ƒ

History

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Revisions

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Discussion forums

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Creating accounts •

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Restrictions for new accounts

Technology solutions o Students had to complete a tutorial at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial ƒ

Sandbox provides practice spaces

o In-class training session and handouts o One-on-one help •

Copyright

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Referencing

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Linking to internal and external sources

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Finding topics to add to Wikipedia

6.2.4 Similarities to FLOSS case Looking at the similarities to FLOSS case one must take into account the environment these pilots took place at: Wikipedia. Wikipedia itself might be one of the closest examples of a successful FLOSS type project, but maybe not of a FLOSS type learning environment. Similarities to FLOS start with cultural manifestations and go up to the collaborative production process. Therefore we initially will briefly describe the similarities between Wikipedia and the FLOSS model, before looking separately at the pilot courses from Washington Bothell. As for the FLOSS case Wikipedia stands for some freedoms, like: •

Freedom to access information from the commons

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Freedom to analyse and edit the information

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Freedom to co-operate

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Freedom to synthesis new information and contribute it to the commons

The most obvious link between Wikipedia and the FLOSS model might lays in the commons-based peer production (Benkler 2002) model that both follow. Development is tracked through versioning systems allowing users to understand what changed over time and also why it changed, with discussions on changes being displayed at a separate discussion space. Though having some hierarchies in place Wikipedia explicitly invites newcomers to become active participants, a trend that can be also seen at the web at large but also in educational approaches. The case of Washington Bothell shows a blended type of learning environment, with students’ engagement within the classroom and within Wikipedia. This is something one can also find within FLOSS, e.g. the Ubuntu local teams or the Ubuntu developer meetings, where participants meet up not only at the web, but also in the real world. 6.2.5 Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case Unlike FLOSS projects Wikipedia uses a quite centralized and even more basic environment. FLOSS environments13 are on the other hand dispersing environments where members engage at various spaces and that involve a large set of communication and collaboration tools. Wikipedia on the other hands attempts to centralize all communication and collaboration on its wiki space. Though working on a Wikipedia article might take part as a form of collaborative project based work, and might involves some problem solving tasks, it can’t be compared with its FLOSS counterparts. On the one hand FLOSS projects do have typically a roadmap, a feature list that is partly derived from users’ needs and feedback, and established teams that are assigned to a broad range of tasks and sub-projects. On the other hand ‘solving problems’ is a driving force within FLOSS with solved problems being an important learning resource (see also the FLOSS support model), and

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A illustrating presentation on FLOSS environments http://www.slideshare.net/andreasmeiszner/floss-as-a-learning-environment

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provided

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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.

Image 7 – Washington Bothell learning environments

6.2.6 Possible areas of improvement To make students’ projects not only a useful contribution to Wikipedia, but also to help future students within their learning process and to provide them with continuous updated and growing learning resources it could be beneficial to run this course within a more integrate environment (see also inside / outside approach) and to establish a

learning community, which consists of course students, students from other institutions and free learners. Within such an integrated environment it might also be considered to give students the option of building upon existing projects, or if preferred to create their own projects, or to work on project extensions. To foster a certain degree of continuity and growth the usage of a well known and frequented space like Wikipedia, or maybe Wikiversity the educational arm of it, is a good starting point. Due to the large number of visitors and contributors this might also help to bring in ‘old foxes’ (e.g. free learner) into this learning environment and to provide some kind of FLOSS type support and guidance. To bypass the communication limitation of wikis such an integrated environment might also uses additional collaboration spaces, like forums, or web based spaces as provided by Google (e.g. Google groups & docs). Using such tools might also be a way to make learning processes visible and to record them14, so that they are of use for future students. 6.3

Case study 2 - Utopia Discovery / ADM - Douglas County School District, US 6.3.1 Course Facts Course area: Citizenship, social studies, futurology (students create a vision of a future society) Type of community: K12 Principle type of user: K12 student, general audience Course Environment: Web based tools consisting of free / open source software, including wikis, blogs, calendars, forums, tags, guides, manuals, demos & use cases (knowledge base) Raw format cases study & sources URL: http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=17 9&Itemid=116 6.3.2 Course description The Discovery Utopias Project15 course is modelled as an Authentic Learning Environment16 that asks students to create products and learn processes with real purposes and a real audience. Purposes outside of getting a grade and pleasing the teacher increase ownership of learning. Audiences larger than just a singular classroom increase achievement and metacognition. The Six Strings of authentic learning describe Authentic Learning as a Contextual, Connected, Collaborative, Change-Directed, Conversational, and Continuous environment17. This means that teachers (should) create 14

For a illustration on the topic please see also: http://www.slideshare.net/andreasmeiszner/learningresources-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 opensource 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. 6.3.3 Course particularities Course activities Each year, the class creates multiple visions of a perfect society. This is to say that each student creates his own project; expressing and describing his view of how the world should be. At the year 2007 the students are, unlike at prior years, going to create a pluralistic vision of perfection. They will be using a wiki space (image XXX18) to answer all of the great questions of society (What is the role of government, What is the responsibility of the individual, etc.) and come to a collaborative consensus about what a society truly needs in order to run smoothly.

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:

19

•

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.

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

Word processing

Google Documents and Wordpress blogging applications will be used in order to write out and connect concepts. Open Office is also available for more sophisticated applications.

Concept mapping

Bubbl.us, Gliffy, and FreeMind provide both creation and publication of mind maps for organizing ideas.

Spreadsheets Databases

and Google Spreadsheets, Zoho Sheets, and Open Office will be 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. Photo editing

Gimp, Picnik, and Fauxto will be used for editing digital learning artifacts.

Video editing and Jumpcut, ChapterToolMe, and Bubblr will be used to create Multimedia Authoring digital stories and presentations of knowledge. Painting and Drawing

Fauxto and Litha Paint will be used for drawing out simple ideas. Gliffy will be used for creating complex diagrams.

Presentation

Zoho Show, Thinkfree, and Open Office will allow students to create PowerPoint compatible presentations for their learning. They will also use SlideShare in order to share these presentations with the world.

Calendar

Google Calendar will be used to synchronize all assignments and collaborations.

Videoconferencing and Skype will be used to collaborate and create a flat classroom. Videoconferencing Website authoring

Students will create a web-presence through the creation of their Wordpress blogs, Wikispace authoring, and through the use of Google Pages.

Purpose content was used / developed for The course aims to join collaborative and inquiry-based technologies of discourse with the pedagogy of project-based learning, constructivism, and interdisciplinary study to create an authentic learning environment that necessitates student ownership, engagement, and achievement. All content and teaching decisions are made based upon what the ADM outlines as ‘The Six C's of Authentic Learning’, a kind of definition of what makes assignments, assessments, and instruction different in an ADM classroom:

Image 9 – The 6 “C” of the Authentic Learning

•

Contextual (Relevant) - All information that is disseminated, and content that is uncovered has a greater context in the past, present, or future lives of the students.

•

Connected (Hyperlinked) - All concepts are linked to others' ideas, whether they be original source documents, experts in the field, student experts who already have an advanced understanding.

•

Collaborative - Each assignment has the potential for working with others to brainstorm, create, refine, or revise.

•

Change-directed - All knowledge is constantly changing, and so are students understanding and demonstration of knowledge.

•

Conversational - Understanding is created through thoughtful discussion, conversation, and debate.

•

Continuous (Spontaneous) - Students can pursue all of their inspiration for learning. It does not have to wait until they get to the next class or until they get home because they have access to the technology and the freedom of the environment.

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.

Image 10 – Example student’s artifact

20 21

Source: http://g.sheetmusicplus.com/Look-Inside/large/wb-pfm0008.jpg 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. Connection to further content Students’ projects make use of commonly available content23 from the web or content that is created by them24 at web spaces as a part of their project25. Thus content is not limited to pre-designed learning materials, but consists of a broad mixture. A common point of content, however, seems to be the fact that it is digital and commonly available. 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 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 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 23

e.g.:

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 See also: http://academyofdiscovery.wikispaces.com/Accountability#tocAccountability4 30 URL: http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox 29

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. Existent support system Besides support provided by the teacher, the teacher and students also point out existing tools, manuals and support32 and also student to student mentorships and assistance33. 6.3.4 Similarities to FLOSS case The main similarities to the FLOSS case might be seen in the activities students perform, the disperse environments they engage at using a large set of tools, the way students engage with others and the underlying cultural manifestation (openness, collaboration, etc.). 6.3.5 Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case The Discovery Utopia course environment and activities might be illustrated at image XXX.

31

URL: http://www.nwea.org See also: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/Enhancements 33 See also: http://academyofdiscovery.wikispaces.com/Digital+Learner+Mentors 32

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.

Image 14 – FLOSS type learning environment - simplified

All of the courses different online spaces are accessible by the general public, as it is the case in FLOSS. But free learners, or students from other institutions, are not supposed to contribute directly at a given students’ project, though there are some spaces the course wiki to provide feedback34 , or for external participants to start their own

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 6.3.6 Possible areas of improvement As it seemed, students enjoyed this new learning environment36, which is important in terms of providing the right incentives and to motivate students. An open question however is on how to motivate ‘old foxes’ (e.g. free learner) to join into this environment and to provide support and guidance. The ‘itching’ or ‘learning how to improve your product’ seems not to be an incentive within such an education environment, but it is a strong motivation in the FLOSS case. As pointed out by Wilkoff support provider (the ‘old foxes’) can also be other course students that possess already better skills in a given area and that help their peers if required. Within a mixed environment (FLOSS type hybrid approach) there might be the critical mass of skilled students to systematically use such support approaches across the institutional border and to establish a culture where students help students. FLOSS type support systems might also be created by joining established communities37 at the web and to integrate them into the own course. Related to the support aspect it would also be beneficial to make learning processes visible and to record them38, so that they are of use for future students. Following AMD, students’ projects do become part of the course’s learning resources and can be of use for future students. Leveraging this principle to an integrated FLOSS type environment, bringing students from different institutions and free learners together to work individually or collaboratively on projects, should, analogue to FLOSS and Wikipedia, increase the richness and value of the environment and ultimately lead to the emergence of a FLOSS type support system. Within such an integrated learning space it might also be considered to give students the option of building upon existing projects, or if preferred to create their own projects, or to work on project extensions. As noted by Wilkoff, students have different starting points and allowing them to choose from where they want to start would contribute to their learning outcome.

35

See also the guideline at: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/Contribution+Instructions 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 36

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

6.4.2 Course Description: This case study features the Software Engineering course at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. In spring 2005 the course team implemented a revised course framework as a pilot study within the teaching and learning context of the ‘Introduction to Software Engineering’ course (ISE), a course that is lectured for approximately 12.5 weeks – though students can continue their project based works beyond the lecturing duration. ISE is one of the 72 undergraduate courses offered by the department of informatics. The course is compulsory for computer science majors and is offered as a 12-13 weeks course during the 5th semester. The objectives of the course are: •

to provide students with a pragmatic picture of software engineering research and practice,

•

to expose students to the principles software engineering as a laboratory and practical science.

•

to equip students with software engineering knowledge and skills which will enable them to effectively participate and contribute to the information society.

During the course, students have 2hrs/week lectures and 2hrs/week of laboratory work. As part of their assignments students work in small groups, write and execute test plans for their group projects. Topics covered in the course range from software development models and processes, project planning and management, system design, software maintenance, etc, to testing individual programs and complete systems. The subject area for this pilot study is software testing. Courses students would have completed prior to the ISE course are: • • • •

39

Semester 1: C language (Basic Constructs) Semester 2: Advance C language, UNIX Semester 3: C++, Logic and Functional Programming Semester 4: PROLOG, Compilers

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.

Image 15 – Aristotle SE course structure

6.4.3 Course particularities Course activities

40

http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=176&Itemid=116

Source:

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.

Image 16 – Student’s activity illustration

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. Purpose content was used / developed for One of the objectives is to provide students with the opportunity to work on what they considered interesting themselves, and give them real-world experience in dealing with large software projects. Pedagogically, these aims embody project-based learning, constructivism, and collaborative study to create a genuine FLOSS type learning 41

http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=176&Itemid=116 42 URL : http://sourceforge.net

Source :

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.

Model for Involving Students in FLOSS Projects43

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

http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=176&Itemid=116

Source:

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.

Image 17 – Example student’s contribution / interaction44

Contribution The external environments used by Aristotle’s students are – analogue to the FLOSS case – open and editable to all. The internal environments however are reserved for their (Aristotle) own students only. 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. Use of prior learning

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. Connection to further content Yes, within the respective FLOSS communities 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;

Existent support system In terms of human resources; students could rely on course instructor as a resource or support person. Support was usually provided through email exchanges, one-to-one or group meetings. Fellow students and the various FLOSS communities in the students’ projects also provided a further source of support. 6.4.4 Similarities to FLOSS case As this involves participation in real FLOSS communities, using the tools and procedures adopted in those communities, it is obviously very closely aligned with FLOSS principles including active participation, observation, use of technologies, software testing and community monitoring. Furthermore, students are free to choose what projects they wish to work on, when to work (test), how much time they should dedicate to their work.

6.4.5 Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case The course is also part of a lecture series, so students are taught some FLOSS principles which others may have to self-learn. There is a formal assessment element which is usually not part of FLOSS that deploys evaluation systems based on meritocracy. 6.4.6 Possible areas of improvement Though the case is making use of FLOSS and their communities and therefore truly follows FLOSS principles potential areas of improvement relate to students guidance. As students interact within their respective FLOSS environment much of their contributions and lessons learnt will be lost for other students, be it of the same year or for future students. Since students are also working on their projects beyond the lecturing period there theoretically would be the potential to better connect last year students to new students and to increase collaboration between years. The Aristotle case does also not allow ‘outsiders’ to benefit from or access the instructional and learning materials provided by Aristotle’s course team to their students. This is undesirable in at least two ways: first it prevents that course materials on the one hand and processes and artifacts on the other hand (created by Aristotle students and others involved outside the Aristotle course) would be connected and put into a context. Secondly, and as a consequence of this closeness it prevents that course materials would be continuous improved, enriched and complemented by the various stakeholders involved. 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 6.5.2 Course Description: The Open Ed Syllabus is an introductory course into open education. This pilot course is comparable with a 3 credit graduate-level course and free for anyone to attend, but does not offer any formal certificate. The goals of the course are: •

To give a firm grounding in the current state of the field of open education, including related topics like copyright, licensing, and sustainability

•

To help locate open education in the context of mainstream instructional technologies like learning objects

•

To get students thinking, writing, and dialoguing creatively and critically about current practices and possible alternative practices in open education.

The course is a fully virtual course without face to face meetings and uses only asynchronously online communication, but includes optional synchronous ‘social’ meetings. The course is structured in a formal and traditional way with well defined activities that consist of weekly assignments, namely readings and bloggings, and also with well defined roles and structures. Students are supposed to read the weekly assigned materials and to blog answers to preformulated questions, or simply complete assignments for weeks when there are no readings or questions. Bloggings are supposed to demonstrate students’ understanding of the assigned reading material and to include original thoughts and synthesis. 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. An extra point may be awarded when a student draws on and references others student writing effectively. The course started with 53 students, out of which 27 attended the course more or less active and with approximately 20 of them keeping an active blog as requested by the course outline. 6.5.3 Course particularities Course activities The course is structured in a formal and traditional way with well defined activities that consist of weekly assignments, namely readings and bloggings, and also with well defined roles and structures. Students are supposed to read the weekly assigned materials and to blog answers to preformulated questions, or simply complete assignments for weeks when there are no readings or questions. Bloggings are supposed to demonstrate students’ understanding of the assigned reading material and to include original thoughts and synthesis. The initial course outline primarily requires self-studying through reading given materials and to answer given questions through individual students’ bloggings. As a result of a course re-design course activities were enhanced with students also being asked to read through the blogs of other students and to comment on them. Besides those blog peer reviews the current course structure does not foresee any particular type of collaborations between the students. 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. Use of prior learning In theory prior learning outcomes are made available for future learners through the individual students’ bloggings, In practice this might turn to be difficult since students’ blogs are not linked to weekly assignments and therefore one would need to browse through them on a one by one base. Learning processes are not available with the exception of students’ bloggings that might reflect on their individual learning processes. Students’ bloggings provide some connection of content and discourse that could be of use for future learners. Connection to further content The learning materials consist mainly of pre-defined readings (sources), with only some of the assignments pointing to repositories, like OER project websites, that allow for further third sources. 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. Existent support system Support is provided by the teacher, following the traditional educational model. 6.5.4 Similarities to FLOSS case The OpenEd Syllabus case shows some similarities to learning within FLOSS / open source communities. One of the main similarities lies within ‘openness’. This is to say that the course is open to be attended by anyone, with all contents used being freely available, including the students’ blogs. Analogue to FLOSS self-studying is an important form of learning, with ‘learning from what others did’ being at least partially addressed. The course also uses a variety of information spaces, but only a small range of communication and collaboration spaces, namely a wiki and blogs. 6.5.5 Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case The course shows clear borders to FLOSS / open source communities as learning environments. One of the borders is the course structure: The course was designed following a traditional course design approach with classical teacher / student roles, given assignments and traditional assessment. The course does not benefit from students bringing in their prior knowledge by e.g. allowing them to start own activities or projects, or to build teams around those activities or projects. In general communication and collaboration takes place at a low level and peers play a subordinate role. As a consequence of this learning processes remain mostly invisible and learning outcomes are loosely spread over the web and therefore are not easily detectible by future learners. 6.5.6 Possible areas of improvement The maybe two most valuable characteristics of learning in FLOSS, the content richness and commons component, are not really addressed by the course as shown at the contrasting illustrations XXX and XXX below.

Image 18 – OpenEd learning environment

Image 19 – FLOSS type learning environment

During the course and by its end students themselves identified areas of improvement, which included the following: At a discussion45 students requested to have more space for collaborative activities and to review the work of others to comment on it or to learn from it. This goes into the direction of learning in FLOSS, like e.g. learning from what others did, peer reviewing and provision of feedback. Students were also complaining about an information overload and being lost46. This is not a surprise and might be equally true for FLOSS cases; with the difference being perhaps that the FLOSS often benefits from humans acting as information broker that point others to the right resources (see 2.8). Those information seeking and providing activities are e.g. frequently seen at the forums of a respective FLOSS project, though not being limited to it. This type of information brokerage was also discussed between the course students and resulted in suggestions from dividing reading up to a more

45 46

The full text is available at: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/386 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. 6.6

Case study 5 - Connectivism Course, University of Manitoba, CA (to be done) Course area: Education Type of community: Higher education, open educational resource. Principle type of user: Educators, students, general audience Raw format cases study & sources URL:

6.7 Case study 6 - St. Cloud State University Minnesota, US 6.7.1 Course Facts Course area: Introduction to Rhetorical and Analytical Writing (Spring 2008, Fall 2007, Spring 2007, Fall 2006, Spring 2005 and Fall 2005), Writing in the Professions (Spring 2008, Fall 2007 and Spring 2007), Writing for the Web (Spring 2008), Teaching College Writing (Fall 2007), Computers English and Pedagogy (Spring 2007), Advanced Rhetorical Writing (Fall 2006), Computers and English (Fall 2006, Fall 2005), History of Rhetorical Theory (Spring 2006)

Type of community: Higher education Principle type of user: Students, general audience Course Environment: Blogs, forums, wikis – (uses the open source software TikiWiki) 47

Such as the following one established by course participants: http://opened.wetpaint.com/?t=anon See also: http://opened.wetpaint.com/page/Intro2OpenED2007 49 Available from: http://opencontent.org/wiki/index.php?title=Next_year%27s_course_design_suggestion 48

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. 6.7.3 Course particularities Course activities In each course the student is assigned to several projects, sometimes also peer reviewing the projects of the classmates, and has to do other activities such as participating at face to face class discussions, or virtually within the forums and blogs. Regarding the virtual students’ tasks, each student has to make a contribution of a least 500 words to the Tikiwiki site on a weekly base up in four ways: • Creating a Blog Post: Answering to one of the ‘suggested topics’ for the week or inventing a new one; • Creating a Forum Post: Either creating a new topic or responding to an existing one on the forums; • Responding to a Blog Post: Adding a comment to someone else's blog post; • Adding a Comment to a Page: Adding a comment or asking a question about one of the assignment pages on the site.

50

Source: http://mattbarton.net/tikiwiki/tikipagehistory.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. Purpose content was used / developed for The reason for using the wikis, forums and blogs was to evaluate what students have learned from the lecturer’s presentations and readings. Since the wikis, blogs and forums are designed to give the participants an opportunity to share their thoughts and receive feedback; they are a suitable medium for students to apply what they have learned and to put their ideas into their own words. 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. Use of prior learning Once all content is publicly available the students enrolling in a course have access to the projects, forum posts, bloggings, wiki edits and further resources that previous students created. Connection to further content Students’ assignments make use of commonly available content from the web such as Wikipedia articles, wiki books and opinion articles. Thus content is not limited to predesigned learning materials, but consists of a broad mixture. A common point of content, however, seems to be the fact that it is digital and commonly available.

Involves peer-review Students are supposed to act also as peers within some of the courses, like e.g. ‘Introduction to Rhetorical and Analytical Writing’ or ‘Writing in the Professions’. 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%

Image 20 – Students’ grading approach

The ‘Teaching and College Writing’ course on the other hand uses a different grading approach as illustrated at image XXX52, which again is tailored to the activities performed by the students.

51 52

Source: http://mattbarton.net/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=English+191+Syllabus Source: http://mattbarton.net/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=English+332+Syllabus

Final Exam; 10% Blog and Forum Participation; 25%

Individual; 20%

Wiki Work; 30%

Holistic; 10% Discussion Leader (2); 10% Class Presentations (2); 25%

Existent support system Support is provided both in class and on-line and in most of the cases through the lecturer with peer support assuming a subordinated role. Since the courses make intensive use of online resources the Tikiwiki webpage contains a large amount of explanations, comparable to what is commonly referred to as FAQs. As it had become clear that those students not being comfortable with using the virtual space are those not being comfortable with PCs in general, an upfront warning (called ‘BartonCompositionChecklist’) has been placed that informs students prior to their enrollment and assists them to determine whether or not the courses are right for them. 6.7.4 Similarities to FLOSS case The main similarities to the FLOSS case might be seen in the activities students perform, namely the participation in the forums, blogs and wikis, the peer review of the projects, with the result of preserving learning processes and outcomes of students as learning resources for future students, but also the underlying cultural manifestation (openness of the Tikiwiki platform, collaboration, etc.). 6.7.5 Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case Students learning processes at TikiWiki, be it their own publications or commenting on the work of their peers, become part of the learning resources for future students. However, there are some aspects that limit benefits for future students: •

only students enrolled at the course can become active at the environment

•

future students likely won’t be able to advance discussions with earlier students, since they finished their course

•

since the environment is open to enrolled students only there is a 100% community turnover per semester and consequently there is an absence of a truly

community that includes ‘old foxes’, nor does it allow a support system as one can find in FLOSS 6.7.6 Possible areas of improvement To make students’ projects and activities not only a useful contribution to classes, but also to help future students within their learning process and to provide them with continuous updated and growing learning resources it could be beneficial to expand the learning community to students from other institutions and free learners. Moreover, it could be interesting to give students the option of building upon existing projects, or if preferred to create their own projects, or to work on project extensions. 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). 6.8.1

Comparison against key characteristics of FLOSS as a learning environment How do the cases above compare against the key characteristics of FLOSS as outlined at chapters two and three? First characteristic: ‘openness’ or ‘inclusivity’ All of the cases meet somehow the criteria of openness, inclusivity however is not met by ADM and St. Cloud, and truly ‘open’ and ‘inclusive’ are only the cases of Open Ed Syllabus and Manitoba where all instructional and learning materials, as well as spaces are open and accessible to all, including the opportunity of collaboration. Second characteristic: volunteering and volatility with FLOSS participants voluntarily deciding which role(s) they play or which responsibilities to take on. In all of the cases students are expected to fulfil some pre-defined assignments, which is not the case in FLOSS where individuals decide about the roles and tasks they take on; however besides this all of the cases also allow students to take on further roles and responsibilities analogue to FLOSS. Third characteristic: use of large-scale networks and the way they are established and maintained. Only the cases of Washington Bothell and Aristotle make use of large scale networks, as they send out their students into well established communities (Wikipedia and FLOSS). The other four cases do not provide sustainable networks, something challenging to be established within the traditional semester based course structures that

usually result in a 100% community turnover with future cohorts of students being disconnected from earlier ones. Fourth characteristics: content-richness and specialisation. FLOSS communities Analogue to the third characteristic only the cases of Washington Bothell and Aristotle provide their students with a diverse repertoire of learning materials, though all of the cases to some degree make use of content to be freely available at the web. Specialisation takes place, as each of the students is working towards achieving the learning outcomes of their respective courses. However specialisation in FLOSS involves a heterogeneous group where members specialize in a variety of different subjects. In the cases of Washington Bothell and Aristotle students do have regular access to specialists outside of their study field as they are interacting within broader communities. But even in those cases the contact to those experts is not – or at least not systematically – integrated into the courses environment. This is true for two reasons: a technical absence of providing a link between the course environment and the outside environment (Wikipedia or FLOSS) and a human absence of knowledge broker as to be found in FLOSS. Cohorts of students from different years act in isolation and there is an absence of other stakeholders, such as students from fellow universities, practitioners or learner outside of formal education that could bridge the gap to connect those different cohorts. Fifth characteristic: modularity to reduce systemic interdependencies between different files of the same product, allowing a higher level of task partitioning and a lower level of explicit coordination and interaction among programmers. Some type of modularity can be found in all of the cases, at least if translating modularity to the students work on a specific small and manageable task. Modularity in FLOSS on the other side not only provides easy entrance and facilitates collaborative work, but also relates to the fact that the different modules contribute to the overall software project and therefore each of those modules adds a value to it. This is be fully true for the cases of Washington Bothell and Aristotle where students work is adding a value to Wikipedia or the FLOSS projects, potentially true for the cases of ADM and St. Cloud since the students results are systematically available for future cohorts of students (albeit likely disconnected to those earlier students) and unclear for the cases of Open Ed Syllabus and Manitoba, since both of the cases are – in their current form – running for the first time. 6.8.2 Comparison against key characteristics of learning in FLOSS Besides showing a number of differences, there are also similarities to be found within the presented cases, namely: 1. Openness – all courses show some type of openness, with the least open ones (ADM, St. Cloud) only allowing outsiders to observe, at least accept that students interact with the wider virtual world and collaborate (Aristotle, Washington Bothell), or actively seek a collaboration with the wider world (Open Ed Syllabus, Manitoba). This is a fundamental difference to traditional education (Wiley 2006) in which courses are ‘closed’ in that students have to attend, pay or sign up for a course. 2. User generated content – at all of the cases students are supposed to ‘produce’ something that would become available online. Outputs range from fulfilling weekly assignments (Open Ed Syllabus, Manitoba, St. Cloud) to project based works (ADM,

Aristotle, Washington Bothell). Therefore and analogue to the FLOSS case students are allowed to contribute to the creation of the content itself, as in software projects. 3. Contribution to the process – one important aspect of FLOSS communities are the different roles that individuals undertake, such as maintaining forums, testing software, peer review the work of others or to provide support to their peers. Each of the cases above shows such students contributions. 4. Use of technologies – All of the cases use the same type of technologies that are commonly used in FLOSS communities and in the same way, e.g. using forums as a means of discussion but also as a learning resource. But only the case of Aristotle makes use of the full spectrum, which is a result of students’ engagement in FLOSS. 5. Informal learning – learning in FLOSS communities is through access to peers and a community, rather than formal structured support systems. In this respect most of the case studies are not similar because they tend to relate to formal courses. Case study 4 is the closest in that it is not supported formally. The cases above indicate that there appear to be two different ways of applying FLOSS principles, an inside way of creating similar conditions within the course environment and an outside way, by sending out students into well established external environments. Both of the approaches appear to have as well advantages as disadvantages and therefore a blending of both approaches might be desirable as detailed at chapter XXX.

7 Possible adoption of FLOSS approaches in educational settings Some sections of this chapter have been compiled as part of the EU funded FLOSSCom project and sections that include co-authored work are marked as such. 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. 7.2 FLOSS key characteristics deemed to be desirable As has been shown throughout this work, FLOSS characteristics that are seen to be desirable for Higher Education are: •

Openness – most educational courses are ‘closed’. In monetary terms this means that students have to attend, pay or sign up for a course. One way of adopting a FLOSS type approach is to make the content of a course open, and free to access. The wider concept of openness however also includes transparent structures and user engagement.

•

User generated content – another means of embracing FLOSS principles is to allow students to contribute to the creation of the content itself, as in software projects.

•

Peer production – active engagement in producing something with a set of peers is a powerful motivational and educational driving force.

•

Real activities – engaging in legitimate activities that are not restricted to an artificial university setting also provides valuable experience.

•

Contribution to the process – one important aspect of FLOSS communities are the different roles that individuals undertake, such as maintaining forums, testing software, peer review the work of others or to provide support to their peers.

•

Greater sharing of knowledge – in higher education much of the previous input is lost, whereas in FLOSS the dialogue, resources, and outputs remain as learning resources.

•

Peer support – a large support network provided (voluntarily) by peers in a collaborative manner nearly 24/7.

•

A more personalized learning experience – instead of learning objectives that apply to a whole cohort, a FLOSS approach allows learners to gather the elements of knowledge they require.

•

Informal learning – learning in FLOSS communities is through access to peers and a community, rather than formal structured support systems.

•

A greater range of inputs – not just from the educator, but from all contributors so the collective is the source of knowledge, not one individual

•

Use of technologies – using the type of technologies that are adopted in FLOSS communities and in the same way, e.g. using forums as a means of discussion but also as a learning resource.

•

Open learning ecosystem – The sum is bigger than its parts, thus educational models and scenarios should not be limited to students only formally enrolled at a course.

Which of those characteristics might be implemented very likely depends on the context and the objectives of a given higher educational course and the adopted approach: inside, outside or hybrid. 7.3 ‘Inside’, ‘Outside’ or ‘Hybrid’ approach1 There appear to be three different scenarios on the adoption of FLOSS approaches within educational settings; the ‘inside’, the ‘outside’ or the ‘hybrid’ approach. 7.3.1 Inside approach The inside approach refers to the practice of taking the principles found in FLOSS communities and applying them within the higher education context. In line with Fischer’s work (2007), this approach involves mapping the key principles onto education, including an evolutionary growth of the course and its environment. This is to say that current students would build upon the work of earlier students developing course and content further year by year, therefore improving content quality and richness and providing regular feedback. Such feedback might refer to course structure, material, processes and tools. The inside approach thus takes the sort of characteristics and tools found in FLOSS as its inspiration. The ‘meta-design’ and ‘courses as seeds’ process model (Fischer 2007) is one example for a structured attempt of the inside approach aimed at supporting self-directed learners within virtual learning communities by creating socio-technical environments that support new forms of collaborative design. Fischer talks of users creating socio-technical environments and has a continuum of participation ranging from passive consumer to meta-designer. This mirrors some of the roles of engagement in FLOSS communities which range from passive users to core developers.

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. 7.3.2 Outside approach The ‘outside approach’ at which institutions would send out their students into already well established and mature environments to engage at and collaborate within those communities on pre-defined tasks. In contrast to the inside approach, the outside approach might take traditional education as the starting point by providing theoretical information and then sends the students ‘outside’ to find well established

2

http://ocw.mit.edu 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

3

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. 7.3.3 Hybrid approach If we view the inside and the outside approaches as opposite ends of a spectrum, then there is clearly a range of blended, hybrid approaches in the middle, which take components of both elements. Such a ‘hybrid’ approach might be seen as the best option as it allows a continuous evaluation (by educators, students and the wider world) of what ‘the best of both worlds’ is and how the transferred elements actually suit in their respective new environments. One of the underlying assumptions is that using a hybrid approach, as maybe also partly valid for the inside approach, could be a response to challenges such as a 100% student turnover per semester as (a) not all participating students (and educators) should start at the same time and (b) free learners outside of formal education and practitioners are not bound to any course schedule. Perhaps one such model for this hybrid approach is that of an open participatory learning ecosystem, as outlined by Brown & Adler (2008). The concept here is that some of the principles of FLOSS communities are adopted in education (thus it is an inside approach), such as collaboration, use of technologies, peer production. People learn by doing, for example by remixing or remashing content that is viewed by others. However these activities occur in a broader ecosystem that is open for everyone combining students, informal learners, tutors, experts, organizations, etc, and in this manner it is an outside approach since learners are engaged in a real community. Such a hybrid approach likely would include a number of environments where students could engage at in a semi-structured way and where guidance and

support is provided through the use of technologies (e.g. RSS, suggested contents, etc.) and the use of the human factor (e.g. knowledge brokers, community support, etc.). The hybrid approach also has the potential to open new doors for e.g. (a) new revenue models that could be based in assessment of learners outside of formal education against fees and formal recognition of informally acquired skills, (b) the provision of niche courses and faster identification of potential new courses, (c) up to date learning resources and continuous improvement of processes and products, or (d) an evolutionary growing community including the inherent support system. The drawback of the hybrid approach might be that it probably requires the most drastic overhaul of higher educational practices and might be the most complex to implement. 7.4 Involved roles: Educators, students, free learners & practitioners All of the above described three approaches involve educators and formally enrolled students. If the inside approach has been chosen, they might be limited to one HE institution. If the outside approach or the hybrid approach are chosen, educators and enrolled students might involve several HE institutions in a more (hybrid approach) or less (outside approach) unstructured and disconnected way. There are at least two further groups that can be found within the inside, outside or hybrid approaches: ‘free learners’ and ‘practitioners’. ‘Free learners’ are learners outside of formal education that participate with the intentional objective to learn. This group is (1) a consumer at the inside approach, in the ideal case might be allowed to participate, (2) might be active at the outside approach but not connected in a structured way to formally enrolled students and (3) will be active at the hybrid approach and connected to formally enrolled students in a structured way. ‘Practitioners’ on the other hand, can be found at the outside and hybrid approach and are the regular participants of a given community (e.g. a FLOSS community, Wikipedia, or other virtual communities such as Jishka, Yahoo answers, or PhysicsForum) 4. Practitioners and free learners might be the same, depending on their motivation to participate.

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.

Inside HE institutional virtual spaces Outside virtual community space(s)

X

F2F on campus Virtual Learning User Groups

X - of 1 institution X

FLOSS type educational approaches Outside Open Learning Environment / Ecosystem

X X

Static Content

Educator/Student can edit / Free learner can view, might even allow outsiders to participate to some degree Dynamic Content (e.g. Educator/Student can edit / Free learner Discourse) might view, might even allow outsiders to participate to some degree Participation Educator/Student can edit / Free learner likely not, but might even allow outsiders to participate to some degree User generated content Educator/Student - rather small scale – except if allowing outsiders to participate Peer production Educator/Student - rather small peer group – except if allowing outsiders to participate

Hybrid

Interactions X - of 1 institution X

X

X - of various participating institutions X X - self organized learning groups, analogue to e.g. Linux User Groups that meet F2F

Level of Openness Educator/Student & practitioner can view & edit

Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner can view & edit

Educator/Student & practitioner can view & edit

Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner can view & edit

Educator/Student & practitioner can participate

Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner can participate

Characteristics Educator/Student & practitioner - potentially Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner large scale potentially very large scale Educator/Student & practitioner - potentially Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner larger peer groups and / or higher number of potentially high number of peer groups and break down groups in sub-groups working on particular subjects / projects. Sub-groups might consist of formally enrolled students

only, or mixed groups Contribution to the process

Educator/Student - rather limited but very structured

Greater sharing of knowledge

Educator/Student - rather limited – except if allowing outsiders to participate Only if earlier and future students are involved in current students' activities e.g. Earlier students as mentors, future students as lurker

Connection of content & discourse

Peer support

Peer assessment

Educator/Student - rather limited, except if allowing outsiders to participate Educator/Student - rather limited

Real activities

Educator/Student - rather limited

Personalized learning experience

Informal learning

Educator/Student - rather limited / Free learner can ‘consume’ what they are personally interested at – might also be allowed to participate Potentially limited

Use of technologies

Limited to available institutional tools

Educator/Student & practitioners - though the later might assume a dominating role as the student has a fixed entrance and exit date and therefore might be seen rather as a "Newbie" Educator/Student & practitioner - potentially large scale

Educator/Student, free learner & practitioners - though again once "invading" the outside space of established communities (e.g. Wikipedia) practitioners might assume a dominating role

Yes, though based at the web and therefore might be disconnected for future students, or at least requires them to figure out the connection themselves. Again earlier and future students might be involved in current students' activities to allow a connection e.g. Earlier students as mentors, future students as lurker. Students are only "guests" at the outside space and therefore the space is not shaped for their needs Predominantly by practitioners

Yes, since this scenario involves formally enrolled students from various institutions it allows to shape inside space in order to suits students' needs. Students from different institutions will also have different start and end times that might help to assure an equilibrated ratio of students, free learner and practitioners and lead to continuity and evolution.

Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner potentially very large scale

Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner - potential for robust support structure

There might be a peer assessment, either unorganized by practitioners or organized by other students Educator/Student & practitioner - potential for engagement in real activities Educator/Student & practitioner - potential for personalizing the learning experience

Two types of peer assessment: unorganized by practitioners and organized by other students & free learners Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner - potential for engagement in real activities Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner - potential for truly personalized learning experiences

Formal and informal learning - formal learning clearly structured Limited to available tools used by outside community

Formal and informal learning - formal learning more unstructured Large and diverse range of involved tools and spaces, 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 and evolution Speed of learning

Likely rather slow

Scope of learning

Limited, predictable

Unique Selling Points

· Transparency of environments improves quality · Meets social responsibility

Likely fast

Depending on outside community, potentially faster than inside approach Depending on outside community, potentially slower than inside approach Enhanced, fairly predictable

· Real life learning with resulting higher degree of soft skills, key and practical skills · Enhanced employability chances as a result of the points above · Possibility to attract higher number · Opportunity to meet future employer of future students (that might also match better - "know before what they buy")

Utopia Discovery St. Cloud State University

Fast, perpetual beta Depending on the learner and type of support provided for formally enrolled students. Likely slower for newbies, but faster for ICT literate learner Widest, with guaranteed minimum scope for formally enrolled students depending on institutional guidance · Transparency of environments improves quality ·

Meets social responsibility

· Possibility to attracts higher number of future students (that might also match better - "know before 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 None, by now Aristotle 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. •

First characteristic: ‘openness’ or ‘inclusivity’

The cases of Open Ed Syllabus and Manitoba suggest that truly ‘open’ and ‘inclusive’ environments can be achieved and that there are apparently no major issues to be overcome. Therefore to achieve this characteristic seems to be mainly a question of ‘opening up’. Question: none •

Second characteristic: volunteering and volatility with FLOSS participants voluntarily deciding which role(s) they play or which responsibilities to take on.

The cases of Open Ed Syllabus and Manitoba, which attracted a number of volunteering participants, suggest that there are some motivational aspects to participate at such an open learning experience. However, those two cases might not be representative, since the lecturers of the two courses in question are globally well known and therefore it should not be difficult for them to attract a number of volunteers out of a global pool. 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, where the main motivation relates to obtaining a formal degree. 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? Question: How to motivate volunteers to participate at such an open learning environment and which are the motivational factors that realistically can be provided? Secondly, in all of the cases reviewed students are expected to fulfil some pre-defined assignments, which is not the case in FLOSS where individuals decide about the roles and tasks they take on; however besides this all of the cases also allow students to take on further roles and responsibilities analogue to FLOSS. The cases of Open Ed Syllabus and Manitoba, which attracted a number of volunteering participants, followed a traditional educational approach with participants being provided with a pre-defined course format, weekly assignments and clearly identified expectations. Within a FLOSS type scenario however there should be more opportunities for participants to engage and contribute. Question: In which way could a focus on pre-defined assignments be combined with volunteering contributions as it is the case in FLOSS?

•

Third characteristic: use of large-scale networks and the way they are established and maintained.

Only the cases of Washington Bothell and Aristotle made use of large scale networks, as they send out their students into well established communities (Wikipedia and FLOSS). Opening up structures, as seen in the cases of Open Ed Syllabus and Manitoba, can bring together formally enrolled students and the wider world. However, traditional semester based course structures usually resulting in a 100% community turnover are a major challenge to establish large scale networks, in particular for an inside approach. Question: How to set up large scale networks and maintain them over time within semester based course structures? •

Fourth characteristics: content-richness and specialisation. FLOSS communities

The cases of Washington Bothell and Aristotle show how students can enrich learning resources and also how to make use of content that is freely available at the web. But even in those cases the contact to experts of the outside environments is not – or at least not systematically – integrated into the courses environment. This is true for two reasons: a technical absence of providing a link between the course environment and the outside environment (Wikipedia or FLOSS) and a human absence of knowledge broker as to be found in FLOSS. Cohorts of students from different years act in isolation and there is an absence of other stakeholders, such as students from fellow universities, practitioners or learner outside of formal education that could bridge the gap to connect those different cohorts. Question: How to provide the same content richness as in FLOSS? How to make learning processes visible to allow them to become a valuable learning resource itself? How to connect learning resources and learning processes (and associated discourse)? How to integrate outside experts or knowledge broker systematically into the courses inside environment? How to provide opportunities for the different groups as existent in FLOSS with opportunities to participate? •

Fifth characteristic: modularity to reduce systemic interdependencies between different files of the same product, allowing a higher level of task partitioning and a lower level of explicit coordination and interaction among programmers.

All of the cases show a type of modularity if modularity is translated to the students work on a specific small and manageable task. Modularity in FLOSS on the other side not only provides easy entrance and facilitates collaborative work, but also relates to the fact that the different modules contribute to the overall software project and therefore each of those modules adds a value to it. Question: How to create a FLOSS type scenario in which the students’ works would contribute to the overall value of the course?

As might becomes visible the questions above appear to be interrelated and all relate to organizational and motivational aspects and therefore it might not be possible to address one question without considering another. Additionally it should be noted that there are a number of further questions that would need to be considered once moving from an ‘experimental beta’ implementation of a hybrid approach to a ‘production stable’ stage, which relate e.g. to quality assurance, legal aspects or cultural concerns. 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 ‘outsideapproach’ 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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