I was dizzy with excitement and inspiration from today’s live class meeting of Intro to Open Ed course, and so with lots to mull over I chose to walk back the University Mall in Orem where my car was parked. The weather has begun to warm here in central Utah, and I had music (The National) and a book (Kaku’s Hyperspace) to ease the trip, but half-way there I wimped out and grabbed the next bus.
Discussion with Russ Osguthorpe of BYU’s Center for Teaching and Learning
Russ to class: Why and how should BYU CTL open the many digital learning objects and materials created over the years?
Dr. Wiley notes we will tackle this as the guild Challenge 1. (JMS: Initial thoughts: if it’s open licensed and open sourced the increasing momentum of the open ed movement might drive usage if the task or cost of structuring and organizing the mass of learning objects is too high, consider flat, unstructured with folksonomic metadata [e.g. anyone can search; registered users can tag].)
Scale of higher cost of development. Royalty pay-off of quality content through publisher, e.g. Virtual ChemLab is high-quality, in-demand, and proprietary. Pearson carries and distributes, pays royalties to BYU.
(JMS: Could we, should we balance commercialization and openness? It’s not necessarily an either-or proposition–an open resource could be commercialized by the CC-license holder. But, anecdotes aside, does that approach damage or impact revenues? See RIAA–regardless of the validity of RIAA’s inflexible, exploitative posturing for copyright holders, the fact remains that illegal sharing [undocumented migratory openness?] has critically injured recording industry revenue stream.
(But does the thrivancy of illegal sharing of RIAA IP bolster arguments against the commercial model, and even prophecy the demise of commercial viability of digitizable materials?)
Some projects merit commercialization by providing significant benefit to creator. Reach is farther. Millions of dollars, millions of users.
Other projects may have an audience-impact potential that outweights commercial benefits, e.g. the philanthropic effects of providing introductory vocational.
Need this to be part of every new project process, e.g. starts with the faculty member to opt-in opt-out.
(JMS: Excited by commercialization. Should I try to sell, partnering with UVU, before giving it up for free? It would good to have authentic, first-hand experience on both sides of the argument.)
CTL Show and Tell
Preview of BYU’s Syllabus Builder
Syllabus Builder is similar to an LMS syllabus creator, but far more robust, extensive, and reusable. Draws information re. instructor, classes from campus information system (at BYU this is “AIM”). Some of the pages and prompts:
- Would you like to load in your syllabus from last semester?
- Choose course (from AIM load assignment)
- Choose section
- Import which instructor details and then edit details
- Text & materials (same as before?) ISBNs. (JMS: Link to somewhere, maybe hook in using existing API, eg. Amazon.com, Netflix, choosing from drop-down)
- Grading Scale
- Grading policies
- Participation requirements & policies
- Assignment descriptions
- Learning outcomes
- Plans to pull in program outcomes from wiki (JMS: With UVU wikilearn we too could create a program outcomes page for each program)
- Prereqs (JMS: is this stored in UVU Banner?)
- what days/weeks does it meet?
- Drag and drop calendar/schedule of assignments. (JMS: This could be a Moodle add-on to update assignments etc.)
- Bring in service entities contact info from campus (e.g. Writing Lab, Library) (JMS: could UVU bring this in from Banner? Or the CMS? Or the phonebook?)
- Bring in standard, required policies etc. (JMS: We already do this in our template. Recall the failed Yoshi syllabus template project)
When complete, exports to a separate live server (JMS: e.g. desource.uvu.edu). Can save as HTML or link to “live” page.
(DW: Faculty need to add hyperlinks. Also, Copyright/CC/PD status of the syllabus should be a drop-down. Warn that anyone can see it.)
(JMS: Notes for Ken: SYLLABI are stored as generated PHP files. Default must be “latest” with archives of old based on dates. Brought into course by hardlink. Updated by the professor or course managers.
And what about a LESSON BUILDER?)
Questions
Q: Is this going to be open source?
A: Yes.
Q: If so, when can I get my hands on source code?
A: Don’t know. (But I have e-mail of Tonya Tripp who may put me on a mailing list)
Q: Is AIM homegrown?
Preview of Mid-Semester Student Survey
CTL has gathered evidence that a mid-semester student survey helps improve teaching. Two most important questions: What was most helpful to your learning? What one thing could improve teaching? Open-ended and scaled questions. E-mail goes out to students (drawing, presumably, from SIS–AIM). Sends when the red button is clicked.
(JMS: Could be scheduled with cron)
Preview of iFlipper
Downloads AIM class roll with pictures to make flashcards of students, with algorithm to calculate which are missed the most. Flashcards for everything and anything! (JMS: If Ken wants an iTouch he can earn one by corrabolating with BYU…)
Mentioned a BYU campus-wide content management.
(JMS: All amazing stuff. But most amazing because it may well be open source. Note: invite someone from CTL to present Syllabus Builder et al. at TTIX.)
Looking Ahead toChallenge 1
Propose a solution for CTL (JMS: UVU) to go open with produced digital learning materials and objects.
Challenge 1 is bumped up and begins after next week.
- 2 Comments
- Posted in IPT692R, education
