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The Cathedral and The Bazaar

Sunday 26th October, 2014 19:03 / Leave a comment

The following is my first attempt to adapt the infamous free and open source software (FOSS) essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar to the context of learning resource and curriculum development, in other words Creative Commons curricula and resources.

Every good learning resource, strategy, technique, etc. starts by scratching a curriculum developer’s itch.
Good curriculum developers know what to write/develop. Great ones know what to re-write and re-use.
Plan to throw one version of a resource, strategy, technique, etc. away; you will anyhow.
If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you.
To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you.
Treating learners as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid curriculum improvement and effective trouble-shooting.
Share ideas and resources early and share them often. Listen to your learners.
Given a large enough learner- and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterised quickly and the solution obvious to someone.
If you treat your learners as if they’re your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.
The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your learners and colleagues. Sometimes the latter is better.
Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.
A “fit for purpose” curriculum or learning resource is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away. (Attributed to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
Any tool, technology, technique, strategy, or resource should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great one lends itself to uses you never expected.
Provided a curriculum development coordinator has a communications medium at least as good as the Internet, and knows how to lead without coercion, many heads are inevitably better than one.
When you lose interest in a curriculum or learning resource, your last duty is to hand it off to a competent successor.

Reference

Raymond, E. S., (1999). The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, O’Reilly Media. Retrieved from: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/

The maturing of the MOOC: literature review of massive open online courses and other forms of online distance learning

Sunday 14th September, 2014 17:14 / Leave a comment

From Open Education Europa (European Commission)…

“The maturing of the MOOC: literature review of massive open online courses and other forms of online distance learning

This survey of MOOC and ODL literature aims to capture the state of knowledge and opinion about MOOCs and ODL, how they are evolving, and to identify issues that are important, whether consensual or controversial.

Since the first MOOCs began being offered, scepticism about their business model, or lack thereof, and sustainability has been rampant. A report released this past summer from the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, The maturing of the MOOC: literature review of massive open online courses and other forms of online distance learning (ODL), noted: “The burning issue in the MOOCosphere is the search for business models – and all the associated sub-issues of scale, sustainability, monetisation, accreditation for MOOC learning and openness…”

The doubt was fuelled by the likes of a much-cited statistic suggesting that many MOOCs have an average completion rate as low as 7%. As Time Magazine notes, “Advocates say that’s because there are no admissions requirements and the courses are free; they compare it to borrowing a book from the library and browsing it casually or returning it unread.” MOOC have also weathered critiques along the following themes: MOOC proponents’ altruistic claim of “educating the world” is a misnomer: MOOCs are really about trying to open a world market, with students seen as statistics more than individual learners; MOOCs are an easy opportunity to cut labour costs by firing existing faculty members and/or hiring poorly trained but cheap course administrators; They are the opposite of customised and do not factor in the location or cultural context of students.

More moderately, there seemed to be an emerging sense this year that perhaps MOOCs’ value might simply end up being their function as a “recruitment vehicle” for credit-bearing courses – a way to have students try out an educational brand and then sign on for the real thing at a proper campus.”

Read the report here.

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Your Logical Fallacy Is…

Monday 8th September, 2014 12:00 / Leave a comment

This is one of my favourite web resources. I regularly commit a number of these logical fallacies. How about you? (Click on the image to view the site)

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