Nicholas Bowskill

Pity that Sylvia. I was looking forward to another session. In the spirit of open education we could always examine the issue amongst ourselves? We are free-range learners so do we really need a 'presenter' at all? 

In a few words, I see enquiry based learning as students as being involved in developing 'interpretations' rather than 'responses' to the social world. I apologise for not being able to attribute the source of the quote but to me it expresses it nicely.

Best Wishes,

Nick

Uni of Glasgow,

Scotland.

Paul, thanks for doing the hard work of bringing it all together. I think it's a wonderful wide-ranging discussion we've all had. I still see one problem. Will we/anyone provide or receive it all for free?

I wish I could convince my local supermarket to join this idea of everything's free, fresh, fully staffed etc but they don't seem to get the idea. I use this flippant example only to point up the oddity of such expectations.

I can't see my university saying let's get our staff to allocate a year to develop free stuff and then support any and every passer-by for free. Then give free accredition for it and provide free subject, technical and information management support in the free package. There are costs involved so who's picking up the tab? I can see lot's of interesting opportunities in this but the issue of cost must surely be addressed.

I think SCOPE is a brilliant model of an OER. It's well run, well supported and intellectually stimulating. You can't ask for more and it brings in a global perspective. But even here someone pays for it.

Finally, my thoughts and prayers go out to all those of you in New Zealand after the recent earthquake. It was a shock to us all.

Nick

I'm new OER but I feel it has a great deal of deja vu in the sense that there were a host of initiatives in the early 90s to develop piles of CBT (computer-based training materials) as a resource for everyone. Amongst the reasons it largely failed (not altogether a failure and some ready-made resources did and do have value) was that tutors found it didn't fit into their courses and were resistant to the notion of a McDonalds Curriculum with everyone learning the same thing worldwide. Students also found it difficult because they they wanted to discuss and argue with some of the points made in their own language and their own context. Technicians and support staff argued with it because it had to be customised or it had resource implications that could not be met locally. Some educationalists also resisted the notion of instructional design in which you started at a known place and ended at a known place (a techno-rationalist view of learning).

Years later the ideas re-surfaced when the internet was more established as a learning tool. We then got online CBT!


Anyway in order to try and learn about OER I set myself the goal of how do you develop OER and I thought I would use OER to develop my knowledge.

I ended up on the OpenLearn site with the Open University and they had a tutorial on how to develop OER materials. I looked at the learning theory section here http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=397777&section=1.5.3

And there it discussed different the usual culprits of Behaviorism, Constructivism etc. It then gave the following much quoted quote:

Remember the proverb often ascribed to the Chinese:

Hi,

Interesting in a way but not surprising at all, in some senses. It seems to be a fundamental rejection of capitalism which only works for the few. The rest of us are just enslaved to it. 

It seems that 'purpose' is really about collectivism and the common good. I can see why that motivates people - including learners. That's why collaborative learning is better than competitive learning! Lots and lots of research provides evidence for that (see Johnson & Johnson, Slavin etc for example). I think its also partly why we're all on here discussing it isn't it? We share and contribute towards each others thinking. In that sense this is another design we could consider. We're all free-range learners aren't we?

With regards to autonomy I'd say its also social and relational. We are self-directed relative to our perception of the other and the environment. We relate the perceived other to ourselves when we act. You can see autonomy as self-regulated learning - the self is 'regulated' in relation to the social context (not free of it or oblivious to it). 

Interdependent learning designs would therefore work for the common good - a purpose. Scope forums are interdependent designs, for example. Collectivism and community etc. Participation means you help yourself too. And when it works its emotionally satisfying on the level of both the collective and the self. You often understand your 'self' better through interaction and dialogue with the collective. That understanding helps you to make decisions and to act as an 'autonomous' learner. I would say the whole idea of autonomy and identity is relational and situated - i.e. different according to context etc. 

I'm interested to hear what others think. Autonomy is *another* interesting topic like motivation isn't it?

Nick

Sylvia, In as few words as possible my answer would be: The meeting point somewhere between situational/contextual salience and personal significance. I think the same theme applies on or offline.

 

Nick

Glasgow

http://sharedthinking.info