“Exploring new ways of being open,” the 24th installment of the Impact of Open Source Software Series, was posted on October 14, 2008, by Martin Weller. Martin Weller serves as Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University in the UK. He chaired the OU's first major online course with 15,000 students, was the VLE Project Director and is now Director of the SocialLearn project. His interests are in elearning, web 2.0 and the implications of new technologies for higher education. He blogs at edtechie.net 1. Thanks, Martin, for a great posting!
Martin starts by framing the term “Open” as it is being applied in education and how the Open University UK is addressing the openness agenda. He points to three projects, at the OU including their adoption of Moodle, the OpenLearn project, and Social Learn, which Martin is directing. Martin first indicates that SocialLearn will serve not only as a way to loosely couple applications thorough an open API to form a Personal Learning Environment (PLE), but also as a platform with the potential for supporting learner derived open curriculum. SocialLearn has the potential to sit significantly enough outside of traditional educational infrastructure and pedagogy, to serve as one of the ways that the OU can influence and accommodate the changing needs and economic models of higher education.
Finally, Martin points to the phenomena of disaggregation in higher education, leaving out there the question of its prudence.
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