Learning mash-ups
The idea
Open and social learning is an emerging trend. The provision of online open educational resources and sense making technologies such as knowledge mapping software is enabling informal learning to happen in new ways. For example, OpenLearn content from The Open University is published in an open source virtual learning environment, under a Creative Commons license. This should free things up for people to innovate with new ways of remixing and delivering educational content, that will encourage new ways of learning. My idea is to create widget(s) that mash-up data sources and deliver the content in new ways, to encourage new communities of learners to form.
What social need does it address?
Financial support for informal learning is always under threat. The aim of open educational resources is to open up access to education for all. It also aims to provide educators with the resources to reduce the costs of course development, allowing them to spend more time supporting their students and innovating. Yet the focus is often on the content and less on the tools to help people make the most of the free learning resources out there. Building tools to deliver content in new and interactive ways can help inspire learners and educators and help fill the hole left by cuts in spending on informal learning.
What’s new about it?
Most of the tool development has happened within a small academic community. This would be the first time we would be opening this challenge to others in the social innovation community who can bring the benefit of outside experience, knowledge and inspiration.
What inspired you?
I work in open educational resources and recently they have been criticised for being a document dump. I want the community to come together to prove that publishing under open licenses really does enable freedom for others to experiment and come up with innovative educational solutions. Also we are very interested in the environment so could team up with the Ecodemia idea.
Idea submitted by Laura Dewis
Laura is a web and open content communications manager.
So we were thinking that there are loads of universities now beginning to give free access to their course materials (opencourseware/ open educational resources), but the people who access them don’t get support from tutors because that is too expensive for the universities to supply for free. We’re interested in how people form learning communities and support each other. Could we create a widget where people could declare what open educational resources they had completed, so newbies could contact them for advice, linking newbies with mentors in a global community of learners. Or linking study buddies by subject interest (there are apps that make connections between opencourseware materials and provide this data in an accessible form). Learners could reward mentors with points to give them social status perhaps.
Another problem is how learners understand whether the open educational resources are right for their level of knowledge/ ability. Students applying to universities go through all sorts of checks whereas those accessing free courses have minimal guidelines to go on ( eg this is introductory level and should take you 4 hours). Can we connect learners together to help them make sense of whether the materials will be right for them – a community diagnostic tool if you like? So you can see how long it took everyone with a degree to complete this study unit, to help you work out how long it will take you if you also have a degree. This would also be useful feedback for producers of opencourseware. Such a tool might also allow people to enter emoticons for how they feel as they go through a course. This information could be retrived by people as they went through the course. How were people feeling at this point in the course? 90% felt terrible
This might help reassure the independent learner that everyone had a tough time during this part of the course. Users could add thoughts in short text messages “I feel on top of things because I’ve studied for 30 mins every day this week” which could build up a support system by the community.
Hi Laura,
I really liked your proposal! Too bad it was not chosen. However I’d be really interested in helping you develop this further as I’ve been thinking about how to best make learning documents and info related to a field of study accessible and fun to work with.
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Let me know if you’d be interested to discuss those things in more detail! Skype would be b.e.n.f.o.i.t. (without the dots