OpenContent has made significant progress in expanding and extending the reach of educational material. One challenge that remains is to better understand and facilitate the uptake of this content. Using a variety of software tools and technologies, most notably from the broad area of social software, experiments in creating viral communities and content will be undertaken, largely by leveraging existing assets. Some of the existing material may be augmented when appropriate with other approaches. These experiments will partner with the nascent OER portal.
The initial focus will be in the content areas of music and physics. Music units have proven to be some of the most popular “classes” in the OpenContent collection (specifically at Connexions), and hence have a good possibility for viral approaches. The PI is a practicing musician, and is active in online distribution, remix, and other applicable technologies/sociologies. Physics has a high availability of content and important possible K-12 applications. The PI is well versed in the hard sciences, especially in online distribution, having been a chemistry professor from 1995 until 2000 (working with physics faculty on various technology/pedagogy issues), and an early integrator of web technologies into science curriculum.
The approach will be to first connect with current content providers and aggregators to gain a better understanding of successes and failures. Then a set of online experiments mixing content with appropriate tools will be undertaken to better understand the particular dynamics. A conference/workshop, portal site, and white papers will be deliverables to disseminate the work.
The USC Annenberg Center for Communication is an independent organized research unit focused on interdisciplinary work in the field of digital communications, broadly defined. Over the past few years the Center has focused a significant amount of work in the area of social software and is now recognized as a leader in the application of those technologies in academia. In addition, the Center’s other associated projects including the NetPublics research cohort, Institute for Multimedia Literacy, and Labyrinth Project provide considerable breadth and depth in the areas of digital content creation and dissemination. As managing director for the past five years, the PI has been involved in varying degrees on all of these endeavors, but particularly in social software (having presented at major conferences on the work) and NetPublics (as co-founder of the effort).
Perhaps most notable are two projects at the Center under the direction of Bob Stein. The first is a software development effort funded by the Mellon Foundation ($1.4M) to create next-generation digital document creation tools. The PI has been active throughout this project as a collaborator helping with conception, design, and execution of the software, particularly in areas of network/social use and interface design. The second is the Institute for the Future of the Book, funded by the MacArthur Foundation ($0.5M). This project is looking at digital content, particularly the evolution of books. The PI has been involved in various aspect of this work as well. In addition, the new executive director of the Center has indicated that the “future of content” and the “future of the delivery of content” are two growing areas of interest for the Center.
OpenContent has made great strides in providing digital content to a broad student constituency. There is still considerable work to be done in the dissemination and uptake of these materials, especially with regards to building learning communities around the assets. Leveraging expertise and capabilities in a variety of social software tools along with deep content knowledge, a number of experiments into how material can be made viral are proposed.
At this point efforts have resulted in a growing wealth of rich content in a variety of subject areas. One remaining challenge lies in looking at ways to facilitate the uptake, and perhaps more importantly, build “communities of learners.” The explosion in social software (weblogs, wikis, and BBS) use in the mainstream bodes well for educational opportunities. However most commercial solutions have met with varying levels of success, and in general suffer from their proprietary nature. Open source solutions are improving (most notably Sakai), but there is still much work to be done. From a technology standpoint these solutions are becoming robust and powerful. From a social standpoint there are still numerous challenges.
Now that there is a critical mass of content available, a survey of the current efforts needs to take place. In particular, the failures need to be discussed and understood, along with the successes. Too often reports on funded work focus almost entirely on the positive (for obvious reasons), but the more important data almost always lies in the failures. Bringing together this information from the current providers (MIT, CMU, Utah State, Rice, DeAnza) will hopefully provide insight into variations on current themes, along with different directions to pursue.
With this background information a series of small-scale experiments in marrying existing content with social network tools (weblogs, wikis, Flickr, del.ico.us, IM, etc) will be undertaken to probe “soft spots” in the community-building educational process. Collaboration and connection with the Open Education Resources (OER) portal will further expand the possible experiments. Results from this work (delivered via a conference/workshop, white papers, and portal site(s)) can lead to broader work that leverages existing infrastructure and content, thus extending and expanding the reach of Hewlett investments.
Main outcomes involve:
Increased contact with material (numbers of users)
Increased engagement with material (depth of use)
Increased community of learners (connection of users)
These will be measured by server logs, test and/or surveys of users, and monitoring community tools. The community tools are by their nature designed for comment and collaboration, and hence useful for evaluation purposes.
Primary obstacles include the inherent limitations in asynchronous online communication, along with the need to change social practices in the users. Traditional educational models fall short in an online arena, in part because of the expectations of the learner. In addition, other challenges are found in the creation of the course content. Often direct “ports” of standard lecture materials are not sufficient to support online learning. There may need to be some augmentation with ancillary technologies/approaches (e.g. podcasting) to explore alternative models.
Portal Development: An existing effort coordinated by the Institute for Studies of Knowledge Management (ISKE) involves the creation of a portal designed to aggregate and disseminate content from the Open Educational Resources project (OER). The PI will serve on the advisory board of this group, and has already begun collaborating with the developers on the design and implementation of the beta version. This portal will be an integral part of the viral and community experiments that will follow, and will undergo iterative development informed by the social network/social software experiments and vice versa.
Initial meetings with current OpenContent units will take place not only to asses the existing content, but more importantly to identify willing partners to undertake the enhanced community OpenContent work. Once a critical mass of partners are identified, work will begin to create tools that help virulize the material and enable communities of learners to assemble and thrive.
Especially critical are discussions with the Connexions group, particularly what approaches have worked and which have failed. Talks with MIT will focus on the possibility of adding community aspects to certain courses, and the prospect of both coalescing materials into integrated units as well as breaking materials out into modules. Information from CMU on their OLI work and feedback, as well as Utah State and their Open Learning Support work will figure in the mix. Finally, Foothill-DeAnza provides the critical community college angle on the OpenContent framework.
Following survey and assessment of successes and failures, along with a broader and deeper understanding of not only the current material available, but also local plans and trajectories, a series of experiments will be designed involving suitable social software tools in concert with selected content. Preliminary plans are to focus on music and physics, but this could change depending on the results of the survey work. One thrust will be to create various “test beds” for aggregation, distribution, and repurposing of the content. The social phenomenon of “remix” provides various models both behavioral and technological that help inform the design of the experiment. In addition, consideration of the content with an eye towards reformulation and distribution to K-12 will be employed.
The results of both the initial assessment work and the resulting experiments will be aggregated and disseminated in white paper(s) and via the OER portal, as well as a project portal site. The portal site for the project will “practice what it preaches”, utilizing various social software tools for distribution and collaboration. The results will be collected and made available on wikis, and the creation of the white paper will take place in a network environment (with suitable access controls). Thus the dissemination of the results is in fact a further continuation of the “experiments”, bringing the project full circle. The PI has used these tools effectively with other groups for similar purposes (specifically, grant, paper, and book authoring as well as project management), and as such is confident of their capabilities for this work. The portal also serves as a vehicle for evaluation and comment.
A conference and workshop on the topic of social networks, social software, and peer-to-peer networks as they relate to OpenContent will be held in the fall of ‘06. This workshop will bring together principals from the various OpenContent stakeholders as well as practitioners in the fields. The results of this workshop will be a more informed community on both sides of the content world, and will be described in a white paper(s) and web portal. The portal will tie in with other efforts (such as the OER portal), and serve as an aggregation point for resources in the field.
Personnel:
Todd Richmond (PI)
Research assistants– semester and summer support (part-time)
Programmer – short-term projects
Expertise:
NetPublics research cohort at ACC available for consultation, along with new incoming fellows.
Significant content and technology expertise through ties at the School of Cinema-Television, Annenberg School for Communication and Viterbi School of Engineering.
Robust technical infrastructure including fully functional and independent ISP (www.annenberg.edu).
Participants from partner institutions.
Evaluation will take place in three phases, following the natural workflow of the project. These include:
1. Input and evaluation of the initial survey report based on data gathering
2. Input and evaluation of preliminary experimental design
3. Input and evaluation of results of experimental practice
The input and evaluation will be gathered from a variety of sources including research fellows at ACC as well as outside entities. In addition, academic partners will be solicited for comment, both from inside the OpenContent community as well as other schools.
Many of the same tools used for the experiments will be used in the evaluation phase. By their nature, social software tools gather comments, so they are somewhat unique in that the vehicle for collaboration also provides evaluation mechanisms. These will be exploited as appropriate. In addition publications will be public (again, as appropriate) and available for viewing, comment, and supplementation by the community
1. We are approaching a tipping point with regards to digital education, and OpenContent should play a lead role. Critical to this is understanding how to enhance learning communities around the material.
2. The maturation of social software and increased use in academia provide important capabilities to extend the reach of OpenContent. These tools are still evolving though, and need rich materials to help inform their further development.
3. Higher education (and by extension, K-12) in the United States is at a crossroads, as the old models are being seriously challenged. In addition the economic and social well being of the country is in jeopardy due to international competition. It is critical that we work to move the nation towards a culture of lifelong learners. OpenContent can help make this possible.
]]>3. Higher education (and by extension, K-12) in the United States is at a crossroads, as the old models are being seriously challenged. In addition the economic and social well being of the country is in jeopardy due to international competition. It is critical that we work to move the nation towards a culture of lifelong learners. OpenContent can help make this possible.
1. Input and evaluation of the initial survey report based on data gathering
2. Input and evaluation of preliminary experimental design
3. Input and evaluation of results of experimental practice
Many of the same tools used for the experiments will be used in the evaluation phase. By their nature, social software tools gather comments, so they are somewhat unique in that the vehicle for collaboration also provides evaluation mechanisms. These will be exploited as appropriate. In addition publications will be public (again, as appropriate) and available for viewing, comment, and supplementation by the community
Todd Richmond (PI) – 40% effort
Research assistant – semester and summer support (part-time)
Programmer – short-term projects
NetPublics research cohort at ACC available for consultation, along with new incoming fellows.
Significant content and technology expertise through ties at the School of Cinema-Television, Annenberg School for Communication and Viterbi School of Engineering.
Robust technical infrastructure including fully functional and independent ISP (www.annenberg.edu).
Participants from partner institutions.
Especially critical are discussions with the Connexions group, particularly what approaches have worked and which have failed. Talks with MIT will focus on the possibility of adding community aspects to certain courses, and the prospect of both coalescing materials into integrated units as well as breaking materials out into modules. Information from CMU on their OLI work and feedback, as well as Utah State and their Open Learning Support work will figure in the mix. Finally, Foothill-DeAnza provides the critical community college angle on the OpenContent framework.
Following survey and assessment of successes and failures, along with a broader and deeper understanding of not only the current material available, but also local plans and trajectories, a series of experiments will be designed involving suitable social software tools in concert with selected content. Preliminary plans are to focus on music and physics, but this could change depending on the results of the survey work. One thrust will be to create various “test beds” for aggregation, distribution, and repurposing of the content. The social phenomenon of “remix” provides various models both behavioral and technological that help inform the design of the experiment. In addition, consideration of the content with an eye towards reformulation and distribution to K-12 will be employed.
The results of both the initial assessment work and the resulting experiments will be aggregated and disseminated in white paper(s) and via the OER portal, as well as a project portal site. The portal site for the project will “practice what it preaches”, utilizing various social software tools for distribution and collaboration. The results will be collected and made available on wikis, and the creation of the white paper will take place in a network environment (with suitable access controls). Thus the dissemination of the results is in fact a further continuation of the “experiments”, bringing the project full circle. The PI has used these tools effectively with other groups for similar purposes (specifically, grant, paper, and book authoring as well as project management), and as such is confident of their capabilities for this work. The portal also serves as a vehicle for evaluation and comment.
A conference and workshop on the topic of social networks, social software, and peer-to-peer networks as they relate to OpenContent will be held in the fall of ‘06. This workshop will bring together principals from the various OpenContent stakeholders as well as practitioners in the fields. The results of this workshop will be a more informed community on both sides of the content world, and will be described in a white paper(s) and web portal. The portal will tie in with other efforts (such as the OER portal), and serve as an aggregation point for resources in the field.
Increased contact with material (numbers of users)
Increased engagement with material (depth of use)
Increased community of learners (connection of users)
Primary obstacles include the inherent limitations in asynchronous online communication, along with the need to change social practices in the users. Traditional educational models fall short in an online arena, in part because of the expectations of the learner. In addition, other challenges are found in the creation of the course content. Often direct “ports” of standard lecture materials are not sufficient to support online learning. There may need to be some augmentation with ancillary technologies/approaches (e.g. podcasting) to explore alternative models.
]]>Now that there is a critical mass of content available, a survey of the current efforts needs to take place. In particular, the failures need to be discussed and understood, along with the successes. Too often reports on funded work focus almost entirely on the positive (for obvious reasons), but the more important data almost always lies in the failures. Bringing together this information from the current providers (MIT, CMU, Utah State, Rice, DeAnza) will hopefully provide insight into variations on current themes, along with different directions to pursue.
With this background information a series of small-scale experiments in marrying existing content with social network tools (weblogs, wikis, Flickr, del.ico.us, IM, etc) will be undertaken to probe “soft spots” in the community-building educational process. Collaboration and connection with the Open Education Resources (OER) portal will further expand the possible experiments. Results from this work (delivered via a conference/workshop, white papers, and portal site(s)) can lead to broader work that leverages existing infrastructure and content, thus extending and expanding the reach of Hewlett investments.
The approach will be to first connect with current content providers and aggregators to gain a better understanding of successes and failures. Then a set of online experiments mixing content with appropriate tools will be undertaken to better understand the particular dynamics. A conference/workshop, portal site, and white papers will be deliverables to disseminate the work.
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