Open Source Courseware -- A Brief Study

May 1, 2003 (Yue)

0. Resources

• http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue6_6/newmarch/: Jan Newmarch, "lesson from Open Source: Intellectual property and courseware."
• http://www.opensource.uwa.edu.au/home/courseware: Open source courseware at University of Western Australia:
  • A course has:
    • Lectures
      • Presentation
      • Presentation Notes
      • Lab
      • Outcomes
      • Exam
        
    • Timetable
    • Help
    • Laboratories
    • Resources
    • Text Books
    • Software
    • Outline
• http://h2o.law.harvard.edu/index.jsp: H2O project at Harvard's Law School. Include Rotisserie, an innovative system for facilitiating discussion.
• http://www.opencontent.org/index.shtml: openContent, with a license for contents similar to GNU open source license.
• http://eta.ktl.mii.lt/~mask/varia/ECIS2002proceedings/stefanbaldi.pdf: "OPEN COURSEWARE VS. OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE – A CRITICAL COMPARISON" by Stefan Baldi, Hauke Heier, Fabian Stanzick. Comparing MIT Open Courseware and open source model.
  • "While the idea of putting individual course material online is a widespread practice, the systematic organization of freely available course material from different academic disciplines in a standardized, searchable archive on an institutional level is an innovative approach."
  • "MIT does not expect the initiative to undercut interest in attending MIT or willingness to pay MIT’s tuition rates": the same cannot be said for other instituitions.
  • "Open courseware is teaching knowledge both in content and structure. It can be of interest for persons willing to learn about the course topic as well as for teachers who want to see how others are teaching specific subjects or want to integrate it into their own teaching material. Course material is almost always information (i.e. processed data). Depending on their background students and teachers will be able to transform this information into useful knowledge. But the shared context (e.g. the same curriculum, common classroom experience) for online course material is in general smaller than for open source software."
  • "a common technological basis is missing" - "no similar widely accepted common framework exists for producing courseware"
• http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html: MIT Open courseware main page.
• http://www.merlot.org/Home.po: MERLOT is a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. Links to online learning materials are collected here along with annotations such as peer reviews and assignments. Links to external resource, rating, peer reviews, assignment, non-structured: e.g. Tower of Hanoi. Bypass copyright issue by referring to the external sites.
• http://dmoz.org/: open directory; open source style directory indexing aka yahoo.
• http://www.stanford.edu/group/collaborate/: collaborative writing and research in higher education.
• http://open.ncsu.edu/resources.html: North Carolina State University open courseware laboratory: papers and links.
• http://opensource.nus.edu.sg/writings.html: not directly related to open source courseware, but a lot of interesting links, including SUNY Buffalo support of open source software; a little dated.
• http://web.mit.edu/oki/: Open Knowledge Initiative;The Open Knowledge Initiative™ (O.K.I.) is defining an open and extensible architecture for learning technology specifically targeted to the needs of the higher education community. O.K.I. provides detailed specifications for interfaces among components of a learning management environment, and open source examples of how these interfaces work.
• http://www.cstc.org/: Computer Science Teaching Center, contributors submit work related to computer science teching center which may be reviewed.
• http://www.adlnet.org/index.cfm?flashplugin=1&fuseaction=home: Advanced Distributed Learning: Shareable Content Object Reference Model Initiative (SCORM), 'which defines a Web-based learning "Content Aggregation Model" and "Run-Time Environment" for learning objects.'
• http://cnx.rice.edu: The connexions project at Rice university.
• http://bunker.ece.rice.edu/users/demo/ConnexionsWhitePaper.pdf: Connexion's white paper.
  

1. Ideas

• A lot of work on open courseware, where courseware is given away.
• However, no focus on how the courseware is developed.
• Courseware materials are developed in an unstructured manner, depending on contributor's interest: e.g. MIT, Merlot.
• As far as we know, no attempt to apply the open source software development model to open source courseware:
  • Projects are divided into components according to requirements.
  • Requirements may change.
  • Needs of developing components are fulfilled by volunteers.
  • Much more structured.
• Other aspects not in the open source software development model:
  • Module and sub-module based.
  • Course constructions.
• Classification of 'courseware' Websites:
  • free (e.g CSTC) versus pripriety (e.g. visionlearning)
  • Structured vs unstructured:
    • content internal structures: strict (e.g. vision learning) vs lax (CSTC: may be text, ppt, etc)
    • content architecture: strict (e.g vision learning; only somewhat structure) vs lax (CSTC).
    • Web presentation structure?
    • Use of metadata?
    • Development model: strict, need-based: (e,g, vision learning, only partially) vs lax, contributor interest based (e.g. CSTC)
  • Searching:
    • Keyword
    • catagory
    • readiness
    • timeliness
    • nature of items: e.g lab, homework assignment, quiz and examination questions, solution, examples, alternative techniques, etc.
• Use of multiple resources/styles to explain the same concepts.
• The connexions project:
  • Similar to our project.
    • Open source free distribution copyright licenses based on creative commons.
    • Module based.
    • Post publication review, instead of pre publication review: by lens.
    • XML based.
    • Tools for composing courses, creating chapters from modules.
  • Difference in our approach:
    • We have more structures; more refined objects, hence higher degree of collaboration and better degree of 'pick and mix"
    • We have more artifacts; thus better richness of contents. We also have a more "repository based" flavor; instead of "course based" flavor.
    • On the other hand, our approach requires the instructor to do more work, has lower compatibility.
    • The approaches may be complimentary if the copyright license is compatible.

2. Needs to Research

• The open source software development model.
• Website support for the open source software development model.
• Licensing issues.
• Features in prototypes.
• How to solicit volunteers.
• How to store contents: XML or HTML?
• What other open source projects can be incorporated (e.g. H20).
• Detailed study of sourceforge and freshmeat.