Design

So far the response to the redesign of the Introduction to Open Education course has been great (already coverage in the Chronicle and the syllabus has been online less than a week). There’s been good critical feedback as well; the newly revised syllabus has a completely revamped Grading section based on Lynn Taylor’s comments (for those of you who don’t know Lynn, he’s the Director of the Open High School of Utah and you’ll be getting to know him well in the years to come). ...

Winter semester I’m teaching a new version of the Introduction to Open Education course here at BYU. I’m as excited for this course as I’ve ever been for any - partly because the course has been completely redesigned as a massively multiplayer role-playing game. From the Syllabus: Instructional design faculty are frequently criticized for delivering information about innovative new pedagogical methods to their students in the form of traditional lectures - for talking the talk but failing to walking the walk. Setting positive examples is important for people in every field to do. ...

I probably would not have named this the ‘Wiley Wiki Design’, but when someone like Leigh names something after you, how do you refuse? =) I’ve been meaning to write a little about this design I’ve been using for the last several years and how it has evolved, but recent proddings by Leigh, Teemu, and Bron have finally gotten me off the virtual starting line. Since Fall 2004 I’ve been running my courses in the open via the wiki at OpenContent (course listing). In the theme of this blog, Iterating Toward Openness, these courses started “basically open” and have become more “completely open” (note more completely open, not actually completely open). What I mean is that the original courses had their syllabus and course content out from behind a password with permissions for people to edit. I was disappointed that, even when you put it in a wiki, students still don’t feel empowered to edit your syllabus. They had little trouble editing the online textbook I wrote for the course, though, which was great. And they all wrote their homework assignments on publicly readable blogs. In one of these early classes Stephen ran one of my student’s assignments in OLDaily, which brought the broader community into the conversation those students were having. Strangely enough, the next week all the students’ writing was longer and more thoughtful. Funny what the pressures of peer review will do… So we might say that these first iterations, the 2004-2006 period, were open in terms of their content and discussions, but only students at USU could really participate in the classes. ...

As part of our recent application to establish a UNESCO Chair in Open Education at Utah State University, we’re creating an emphasis in Open Education in our PhD in Instructional Technology here. The emphasis is simply a sequence of electives that students will be able to choose from that will provide them with a stronger foundation in open education. I believe this will be something really special, and will help us attract even more passion and great talent into the department and the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning, as well as enrolling students from outside our department. ...

I recently challenged students in one of my classes to build some educational materials primarily from existing, openly licensed materials. The results are in and the work is crazy / excellent / inspiring: Learn about how to use wikis and blogs in education at wikiblogedu.org. (Don’t forget to pick up a Rick Noblenski t-shirt afterwards). Learn how to prepare for and carry off an effective job interview at Interviewing Basics. Learn how to find or make clean water after a natural disaster at the Open Water Project. ...

Great quote from a short piece called Innovative User Interfaces: Whether building the killer app or defining a new market, the message should be clear: innovate only where necessary, avoid being overly creative, and be aware of the technical limitations facing your product. Corporations that successfully balance innovation with standard, usable feature-sets will set themselves apart from the pack and greatly increase their survival rate.