Entries by Richard Wyles

Ken Udas' post What do we do with Non Courseware as OERs reminds me of two things 1) work in the eportfolio area 2) a concept that I've been bouncing around with people lately.

First, development of ePortfolios with social networking capability is an attempt to address the reflective learning and non-formal learning potential in educational settings. We've been heavily involved in the development of Mahara  which is partly inspired by the work that the Elgg team have achieved.

The second thing that Ken's post triggered is an idea about taking OERs and social constructivism into a new form of LMS construct. Courses and cohorts of students facilitated by knowledgeable, experienced academics is so useful that this paradigm will remain as the primary form in education. However, within that imagine a course where content is constantly dynamic and created through participation as well as external feeds etc. The easiest way to understand this at present is through the use of a wiki, although this technology has some way to go to replace the current norm of LMSs.

How might this look? A student enrols in a course, views the materials but may also change them as part of their course involvement. Students also add feeds, delete feeds, vote posts up, add comments to others' posts etc. The idea is that the courseware is thereby constantly evolving and fit for purpose when the new cohort enters the course. In addition, modules of courseware can get reused in different conetxs. e.g My login to a wiki triggers different activities, quizzes and access to discussions that does yours because I'm enrolled ina different course. There's QA considerations but at a technical level this isn't that challenging with current tools available.

While the context at every institution is naturally different, there are many commonalities when selecting a LMS and often the internal battles e.g. with the IT department, are similar.

Recently I was asked to comment on a descision making process at a university. They have been using WebCT since 2000. Then their Law School developed a homegrown system using PLONE. Since 2005 the Maths and Computer Science sections have been using Moodle. So now they have three different LMS running - sound familiar? At an organisational level they have decided to move to open source and decommiission WebCT. So its between Moodle or the homegrown system and they can't decide. 

PS. - Excuse the double post on the same topic - I thought I had lost it all ;-( and re-wrote from memory...

It appears to me that separate institutions often go through very similar processes and 'battles' with various stakeholders (e.g. their IT department) over which virtual learning systems to deploy. Sure, the context is always a bit different, but there are many commonalities and rules of thumb to follow.

I was recently asked to offer advice on a decision making process going on at a University of an island nation. They have been using WebCT for 6 years or so, but one school in the Faculty had built a home-grown LMS using Plone. Another area, Maths and Computer Science, have been using Moodle since 2005. 3 different LMSs - sound familiar?

Now, they want to consolidate and they are inclined towards open source. But it is still a tug of war between the home-grown PLONE tool and Moodle.

Do they even need to choose? What's wrong with multiple applications? At an organisational level, there's often some compelling reasons to consolidate - partly economics on support, part reduction of complexity and being able to focus resources and service, part ensuring consistent student experience.

Picking up where I left off last year, I think it's worthwhile to provide an overview of the inter-related projects the team is involved in, and how interoperability and open-ness drives the framework both at the software and content levels.

Together, these projects are providing the foundations for a cost-effective national framework or what is being termed a "network of provision" here.  

A new development build of Mahara has been released. Mahara is a user-centric Open Source ePortfolio System based on an Artefacts, Views, Groups and Communities Framework.

The most visible change in this release is the graphic design work that has been merged over the past week. While not finished, it is a huge improvement over the wireframe design used previously. You can download Mahara v0.2 via https://eduforge.org/projects/mahara/ 

In our OER project in New Zealand, while we're aiming to model a collaborative effort akin to a classic FOSS "bazaar" model, in reality that is difficult to achieve from the outset.

Instead  each "course" needs is its own mini-project with a small focused team - a "cathedral" approach. So our current approach is to develop some courseware and try and gain traction in developing collaborative inputs (small bazaars) from there.

In this post, I'm pulling together some material from a recent paper I did for Moodle users in New Zealand.

In discussion with David Sturrock from Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, David posed the following questions relating to the MyPortfolio project. I've paraphrased those answers from an email exchange.

1. What is the sustainable funding model for the myPortfolio site? Will it be open to all "students" or only to students of member schools/tertiary providers i.e. member schools pay something for the service?
   [Wyles, Richard] Yet to be determined. The initial set-up is NZOSVLE. Subsequently I see this common services approach to infrastructure coming out of the operational budget of the eNetwork project which is expected to expand beyond the 9 institutions currently involved (assuming success of course). There's also opportunity for sponsorship/ads to fund the operation (in a subtle good corporate citizen type way). I don't see a member schools/ITPs/Unis levy as being practicable and it opens up a can of worms regarding governance. There is funding allocated to this for the next 12mths which allows us time to define the sustainability model along with the eNetwork work we'll be doing during 2006.
2. What happens when students move schools or leave their school/tertiary provider altogether?
   [Wyles, Richard] In my view, nothing. We want to be encouraging lifelong reflective learning. The only reason to authenticate them in some way in the first place is to create a barrier to miscreants. After that then hopefully they remain good community citizens. 
3. If combined with a school/institution membership model I think that your option 4 looks the best in terms of active involvement from the student/school. Option 4 describes an approval process as follows: The student must include a nominated approval person from an institution/school including their email address. The email suffix could be validated - i.e. must be .school.nz or .ac.nz. The teacher/tutor receives an email and verifies the student request for a MyPortfolio account. But does it still allow for Moodle -> Elgg integration from individual school Moodle sites (i.e. content transfer and Single sign on)? Over time other LMS (KnowledgeNet, BlackCT etc) integration could be developed as well. [Wyles, Richard] I am trying to avoid the need for any top-down communications strategy as I quite like the fact this could be very learner driven. The Moodle -Elgg integration work is done although not in standard Moodle 1.6. OSVLE cluster members will get the option as standard while the Elgg interface block will be available in Moodle contrib. once testing is complete. All the Elgg enhancements have been merged into core Elgg. Yes, hopefully further integrations will occur down the track. A WebCT Elgg integration has been developed I believe.
4. Will schools buy-in to this idea that they effectively sponsor the site but can't control/monitor what their students are doing within it?
   [Wyles, Richard] Great point. This is why I don't like the membership model - it needs to be a learner driven model that is not institutionally aligned.  
5. Does this model fit with the idea of the portfolio providing evidence for assessment?
   [Wyles, Richard] Yes and no. I see the evidence for assessment residing moreso within an e-portfolio area within the LMS. Moodle is moving in this direction with some significant focus from Open University. I believe the best of both worlds can be achived by having a rich interface between the LMS centred e-portfolio and a learner driven personal learning environment external to the institutional environment. Another option (not mutually exclusive of course) is that an institution, or group of schools/institutions could have an Elgg set-up at, say, a regional level and have participation a more explicit part of teaching and assessment.  
6. Where do primary/intermediate schools fit in this?
   [Wyles, Richard] I'm afraid they're not on the radar for NZOSVLE work though I'd happily support any initiative in this area.

Since January 2004, the New Zealand Open Source Virtual Learning Environment (NZOSVLE) project has had a team of developers working on e-learning application software supported by open source communities - currently with a specific focus on Moodle, ELGG and EPrints. The project has secured NZ$1.5M of funding from the NZ Tertiary Education Commission and consists of a consortium of 20 higher education institutions.

There are several interrelated aims of the NZOSVLE project. Firstly we want to lower the barriers to entry to e-learning. By focusing on open source solutions we are bringing down the total cost of ownership for e-learning at a system-wide level and lowering the barriers for smaller institutions and schools. The project also offers very strong technical development and support services through Catalyst IT, which is also offering services to UK institutions such as the Open University UK.

So this is making it easier and cheaper for individual organisations, and there is a lot of related professional development work as well. In terms of the number of institutions, Moodle is now the leading Learning Management System in New Zealand's higher education sector.

Secondly, a highly modular system architecture using open source and open standards is underpinning a lot of innovation and flexibility with e-learning initiatives. This flexibility was previously constrained through the limitations of closed code proprietary systems.

Developing FOSS   OSVLE –II continues the direction of the NZOSVLE project. ‘Code mobility’ via open source communities holds great promise for an economically sustainable ICT investment pathway for NZ education. Interoperability standards and the modular, extendable architecture of the open source framework holds the promise of delivering the desired flexibility and ensuring greater future proofing in a technology environment that is fast evolving. This project is an important building block to achieve enhanced access to e-learning and cultivate a collaborative environment, while serving as a catalyst for quality improvement and innovation.

2. Why have you chosen Elgg? What are the benefits you think it 
brings to students / learners?

This blog entry is focused on Eduforge, the background, its objectives and direction. I've been meaning to start a bit of a project diary and comment on things open source in education for some time now. The catalyst to make the time has been a couple of recent interviews.

The first was with Matt Pasiewicz from Educause - we used Skype to have a talk - here's the podcast link.

Then I had a written Q&A format requested by Terry Freedman. The rest of this blog will follow that Q&A format of Terry's.