Openlearn

Overview

Guiding Question: Why do course reviews only happen at the end of a course? How can we continually learn from past course experiences?

Vision: What if students and professors could dynamically collaborate on how to best design a course to fit the learning needs of all students?

Knowledge Communities

Students - post-secondary level
Professors - to have an insight into student's learning styles and how to best suit those needs
Administration - this community was thoroughly discussed throughout design process, but ultimately was dropped from design considerations for initial release

Learning Goals

Social community geared at helping students to reflect on learning in post-secondary situations
formally in courses, informally by contact with others
share learning experiences and build knowledge
students can position themselves in contrast to others
students are able to comment on what worked best in a course and why, or what didn't work and how to improve it to learn how they learn best
Students will discover what their best learning style is and how this may change over time
Professors will now be able to receive real-time feedback on the learning styles and preferences of students
End result: courses can be designed before and throughout the term to best meet the learning needs of students

How do we keep the design open enough to include all possible perspectives, yet ensure that the report results are meaningful to the user?
Wizard approach - too constrained prevents it from being simple to use
Easy of use vs. Richly tagged data - too many steps may hinder user input or reflection on learning experience

Different approaches considered for categorization: Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, Knowledge Building, Scaffolding, Constructivism, Social Learning Theory

Prompted questions may limit knowledge growth
Social knowledge building on learning - students design own categories (tags) and recognize own patterns
Open concept - No formal set learning style approach will be used at this time
*Community developed knowledge focusing on learning experiences is favoured

Student's Perspective

How do we invite people to interact and reflect?
Find similarities and differences with peers
Five point scale for likes and dislikes
Find your pattern of best learning- with the help of others
Result: This tool's success depends on student community input

Instructor's Perspective

Could assume administrator role for course
Ability to add diagnostic learning style questions, quizzes or questions linked to learning theories that they value (i.e. multiple intelligence quiz)
Continuous improvement of course through use of the tool
Result: This tool could be linked to course syllabus, resources, wikis and presentations

Administrator's perspective

Discussed possibility of this as an administrative tool for course selection, or as an automated system to track credits/repository of learning
Social tags don't cater to absolutes
High degree of control would be needed
Result: design would be too constrained with administrative goals at this point

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Open Source - able to evolve from user and designer input
Increased integration - able to use new tools i.e., Java Script, Ajax (to parse data in real-time), Web 2.0
Use Joomla platform - open source content management system

Very different future scenarios exist for this design

Social context only if Professors don't see value
Course selection tools could be added and an administrative use enabled for Registrar use
Change in how learning is viewed and measured, i.e. Universities could one day allow students to openly traverse their learning experiences by jumping across snippets of courses