Institutional and Pedagogical Criteria for Productive Open Source Learning Environments

1
Institutional and Pedagogical Criteria
forProductive Open Source Learning Environments

• Lillian Buus and Brian Møller Svendsen
• CSCL SIG, Lausanne, October 7-9, 2004.

2
Institutional and Pedagogical Criteria
forProductive Open Source Learning Environments

• Cost of system adoption
• Implementation
• Maintainability
• Further development

3
Institutional and Pedagogical Criteria
forProductive Open Source Learning Environments

• Implementation
• Activity of the community
• Documentation of the system
• Training of end-users (level of usability)
• Requirements in hardware and software (server
  side and client side)

4
Institutional and Pedagogical Criteria
forProductive Open Source Learning Environments

• Maintainability
• Activity of the community
• Reliability of the system
• Support

5
Institutional and Pedagogical Criteria
forProductive Open Source Learning Environments

• Further development
• Activity of the community
• Access to code and (usable) code specifications
• Modular system architecture
• Compatibility with existing systems in the
  organisation
• Support

6
Pedagogical considerations
7
Identifying the learning rationale and
pedagogical activities

• Is the system supposed to deliver content in a
  highly controlled manner and incorporate
  assessments of how well the students have
  appropriated the subject matter?
• Is the system to support individual students
  dealing with problems within a certain topic?
• Is the system to support groups in their
  construction of a project report taking departure
  in a self-selected problem of interest?
• Should the system support engagement in
  real-world practices and reflections on learning
  trajectories of the students?

8
Problem Oriented Project Pedagogy (POPP)

• Didactical principles
• problem formulation
• enquiry of exemplary problems
• participant control
• joined projects
• interdisciplinary approach
• action learning
• Long time collaboration - 1/2 year

9
A graphical representation and characteristics of
POPP

• A semester consists of both course work and
  project work (50/50)
• The students define their own projects within a
  thematic framework e.g. Cultural Analysis
• Problem formulation and problem setting (enquiry)
• Exemplary and interdisciplinary
• Participants control
• Project based
• Action learning
• Long time collaboration all semester - ½ a year

10
VLE mediating POPP

• How does the VLE support negotiation of meaning
  through participation and reification?
• How is mutual dependency in the community of
  practice handled?
• How is production and sharing of resources
  supported?
• Does the VLE support structural flexibility,
  communicative flexibility and role-flexibility?