Artefact 3
With MDDE 610 Assignment 2, we were given the opportunity to write a paper that reflects our own specific priorities and interests within the current distance education technologies. I was interested in the idea of user created open access learning materials by utilizing collaborative writing tools (e.g. wikis). This assignment, presented here as Artefact 3, allowed me to discover Connexions, the web-based curricular content authoring and publishing technology that I believe has a growing potential for writing and distributing free-of-charge learning materials. Artefact 3 was also the inspiration for my course-based research in MDDE 701 (see Artefact 5).
The artefact file can be downloaded from the "File(s) to Download" section.
Open Textbook
My rationale for choosing the topic of openness for this assignment was simple: How could we tap into the latent energy contained in the educational communities around the world and utilize information and communication technologies (ICT) to produce free-of-charge textbooks?
On pages 4 and 5, I discussed Richardson's (2008) ideas of openness in the context of authoring learning materials: (1) inquiry, (2) co-creation, (3) sharing, and (4) reuse. I then presented the four key characteristics of Connexions on pages 10 and 11: (1) Workgroup: A shared online space for members to author content collaboratively, (2) CNXML: A mark-up language for creating and editing modules on the Internet, (3) Lenses: A peer-review mechanism for content quality control, and (4) Intellectual Property: A Creative Commons license for all content created in Connexions.
In Artefact 3, I used screen capturing to illustrate a typical workflow and created a collection (i.e. part of a textbook). This collection demonstrated how quickly one could compile a few modules to assemble and publish a textbook in Connexions.
A major effort in Artefact 3 was the analysis and evaluation of various features of this web-based technology. By uncovering Connexions’ ideological and technological dimensions (e.g. user friendly copyright scheme, decentralized distribution of textbooks, open source software, CNXML mark-up language, and so forth) and linking it to open educational resources movement of which it is a part, I was able to integrate several MDE coursework into an amalgamated vision of open textbooks (see @work section on this page).
My professor gave the assignment an A grade and the following overall comment, quoted here with his permission1:
"This is a very good review of the open resources movement, well written and readable. There is another aspect of open materials that is not generally emphasized, either in this paper or in the literature as a whole – the lack of quality assurance from which materials often suffer, and which may lead to problems with the movement in future (as Wikipedia has been criticized for lack of QA). But this does not detract from the good grade given to this paper."
1: Permission to use this graded assignment as artefact was received by email on 20/10/2010.
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Assembling a Textbook
Reflections on ICTs and Connexions
About ten years ago I made a discovery and that discovery profoundly changed my view on how I thought the world operated: The discovery was the Linux computer operating system and open source software (OSS) movement through several books most notably Just for Fun (Torvalds and Diamond, 2001) and The Cathedral and the Bazaar (Raymond, 1999). I was convinced that the collective power of connected individuals around the world and the global infrastructure of the Internet had the potential to change the ways the world functioned. Fast forwarding to recent years in the MDE program, I had two déjà vu moments similar to my discovery of OSS movement. The first one occurred when I began reading The Wealth of Networks by Benkler (2006) and the second when I wrote about Connexions in the MDDE 610 second assignment. The former guided me in various coursework and the latter made it clear to me that a critical mass2 to sustain a collaborative open textbook writing exist in the Connexions community.
MDDE 610 was a very special course because it allowed me to revisit some of the concepts related to ICTs and their positive impact to distance education. I have seen through MDDE 610 as well as other MDE courses that a significant aspect of ICT for me was the synchronous connectivity to course members via Elluminate, the web-conferencing application. I found that these synchronous sessions add a sense of proximity by reducing the level of student’s isolation from one another. I have a special appreciation for Elluminate, which I often expressed on the course forums such as the one entitled “Web-conferencing is a necessity for DE learners”.
Of the many significant educational products of ICT in the most global sense is probably the Moodle learning management system (LMS). As in my experience in the realm of LMSs, I am often impressed by what OSS Moodle offers as compared to proprietary LMSs that I have had experience in the past 8 years. I am therefore encouraged to work with OSS applications and I was certainly excited when Mahara, the e-portfolio platform, was introduced just before I began developing this portfolio.
Artefact 3 was valuable in allowing me to discuss a topic of personal interest. Studying Connexions website through this assignment revealed Connexions' similarities to Linux; both capitalized on the ICTs by connecting a large number of like-minded individuals from around the world and created a network of book authors and software programmers, respectively.
Through this assignment, I also became fully aware of an important limitation of traditional textbooks. The conventional textbooks are distributed in read-only format and unless an electronic copy or companion website is available, they lack interactive features. Books authored with Connexions on the other hand could easily incorporate multimedia items.
By rereading Artefact 3 during the development of this e-portfolio, I also realized that I did not discuss the limitations of Connexions beyond the Challenges section on Page 13. In addition to the lack of quality concerns for the content created in wikipedia-like environments (as indicated by my professor), I think, one major drawback of Connexions is also one of its main strengths. As described in Artefact 3, Connexions is a community made up of loosely connected individuals forming a network. Networks of this kind are generally in a constant state of chaos (Benkler, 2006; Raymond, 1999) and their dynamics are considered to be inherently unstable and unpredictable. Connexions at present does not appear to lack any cohesion and seem well supported (see footer at http://cnx.org/); however, the two limitations of Connexions certainly make for interesting research questions: How effective is the Lenses quality assurance mechanism? What are the individual roles of cohesive forces holding Connexions united?
Before Artefact 3 I thought I had daydreamt openness for education (see Artefact 6). After discovering Connexions though, I recognized the way in which innovation occurs: part daydream, part technology and part discipline. I therefore began to write my own open textbook in Connexions and made this blog posting at Athabasca Landing.
2: The term critical mass is defined as “the point at which enough individuals in a system have adopted an innovation such that the innovation's further rate of adoption becomes self sustaining” (Rogers, 2003, p. 474).
@work | An Open Textbook in Progress
Being a long time OSS user and now a member of Connexions community, I advocate the virtues of OSS and open textbook, and take a tangible step towards writing and sharing a book entitled "Engineering Computation with Spreadsheets".
The hidden hands of Driscoll (2005), Neuman (2006) and Norusis (2009) are leading me in the design of this book. Inspired by Driscoll, I employ concept maps and scenarios in the opening section of the chapters. I follow Neuman’s footsteps to structure the chapters and I try to emulate Norusis’s friendly narrative style in writing this open textbook.
Related Competencies
Primary Competency: 3. Communication Technologies and Networking including 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5
Secondary Competencies: 4. Communication & Interpersonal Skills including 4.1
File(s) to Download
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Download MDDE610_Assignment2_Annotated.pdf
MDDE610_Assignment2_Annotated.pdf Details
- Saturday, 09 April 2011 [5.4MB]Artefact 3, User-created Open Access Learning Materials: Assembling an Open Textbook.
Bibliography
Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of Learning for Instruction. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
Neuman, W. (2006). Social Research Methods. Toronto: Pearson.
Norusis, M. (2009). SPSS 16.0 Guide to data analysis. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc.
Raymond, E. S. (1999). The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Sebastopol: O'Reilly Media.
Richardson, C. R. (2008). Open Educational Knowledge: More than Opening the Classroom Door. In T. Iiyoshi, & V. Kumar (Eds.), Opening Up Education (pp. 279-287). Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations (5th ed.). New York: Free Press.
Torvalds, L., & Diamond, D. (2001). Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
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Artefact 3 | Open Textbook by Serhat Beyenir is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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