This page is a description of the open source teaching method as envisaged at the current stage of development. The thinking is continuously developing and this page may change rapidly.

Contents

What is it about?

How does it work?

Delivery of Courses

What are Learning Objects?

Where do the Learning Objects come from?

Who would use it?

How Is It Used?

What are the driving forces?

Citation Index

How is the Resource Bank structured?

What is it about?

The open source idea has proved outstandingly successful in the development of Linux, the free ware version of the Unix programming language. In this case, a group of interested people voluntarily co-operated together for reasons other than a short-term cash reward.

In our project, interested teachers from a number of Universities will co-operate to produce teaching materials that are freely available to all. The chosen topic for this project is Visual Basic but, if successful, it should work for almost any subject.

How does it work?

The open source learning material is held in a Resource Bank on the 'www.opensourceteaching.org' server and is protected behind a firewall. Anyone can read, copy or use it, subject to certain restrictions, sometimes known as copyleft. Only the Charter Group can edit material in this area.

Figure 1    Outline structure of open source teaching method

Click here for free drawing of Figure 1 in separate window.

Delivery of Courses

An institution, company or individual can set up a Delivery System to use any of the material on the web site as they see fit, completely free of charge, subject only to copyleft conditions. How material is delivered; how much is used or what value is added, depends on the purpose the end user has in mind. They can only charge for the value added and the costs of delivery. Any changes to the original material must be acknowledged.

Figure 2    One of many possible course delivery structures

Individuals may use the material to learn about Visual Basic on their own but without receiving any support or qualification.

What are Learning Objects?

A Learning Object is the basic unit that teaches a single idea or skill. It is a collection of just about any type of files and each file is called an Atom. Each Atom shows something and they are linked together to produce an overall multimedia effect.

Figure 3    The learning can object contain any kind atom including learning objects

A Learning Object can have hyperlinks to other Learning Objects, data, help files or external sites to reference other examples and materials.

Each Learning Object must have a Main Atom as a starting or entry point and currently this is an Internet document (.html or .htm).

Where do the Learning Objects come from?

Initially, the Charter Group will build a Resource Bank of suitable materials to make the site of sufficient interest to 'pump prime' the whole process.

The Open Learning Server (www.opensourceteaching.org) has a public area outside the firewall to which everyone is invited to contribute, figure 1. This area contains bulletin boards, news groups, theme conferences, help lines, web links, etc.

The Charter Group will sift through these areas (cherry pick) and are able to promote good material to the Resource Bank. These open areas are also a resource, but only the Resource Bank is stable and subject to strict quality control. The promotion of material is a mark of excellence.

The Charter Group has a significant task to:

• edit the material;
• apply quality control;
• ensure that material fits into the index system;
• keep control of revisions and version changes.

Who would use it?

The Open University would sell these materials as a training pack or build it into one or more courses. In this case the value added could include:

• tutorials (face to face or virtual);
• readers, guides and other teaching material;
• conferences;
• assignments;
• assessment;
• award of qualification.

The University of Ulster would use it in a teaching lab environment. Staff with less specific knowledge could facilitate the course, even if they could not have written it. In this case the value added could be:

• tutorials;
• assignments;
• assessment;
• provision of rooms and computer equipment;
• award of qualification.

Industry or commerce could tailor it to specific training needs. In this case the value added could be:

• training;
• services to other departments or companies.

The participating groups may seem to have differing needs. For example, the Open University's courses in the 'Going Digital' series would be much more general than UUJ's 'hard engineering' courses. It is up to the Charter Group to provide a Resource Bank for a wide range of end uses including VBA and Office automation.

How Is It Used?

Click here for free drawing of Figure 1 in separate window.

The key features of the structure in figure 1 are the 'index to materials' and the 'shopping cart'. The index will be structured in such a way as to allow the learning objects and atoms to be examined and 'tagged' if selected for use.

Not all materials will be able to be viewed directly, e.g. a Visual Basic project file (.vbp) can only be meaningfully viewed in the VB editor. However, the learning object files should be able to run with many of their embedded dependent files. The index will also list any dependent files that are required by the main file being viewed, e.g. images, sounds etc.

Tagged items would be automatically added to the shopping cart, together with the complete set of dependent files. At the end of the session all tagged items would be zipped for the user to download. If desired, the meta data files that describe the file and its dependent files can also be added to the basket.

It may be necessary to download some or all of the database tools, so that the user can keep track of a large number of files by reading the Metadata. This would simplify building the delivery system. Indeed, a tool for building the course is an obvious next step.

What are the driving forces?

What cultural and social forces are at work that will make the system effective? That it worked in the case of Linux is undeniable. People contribute to open source because:

• of approbation by peers;
• being part of a centre of excellence can make an individual more productive than working alone;
• it provides access to a source of good practice and material;
• it leads to a work load reduction;
• it provides a kite mark for courses for Teaching Quality Assessment;
• they wish to contribute to a self-organising community that may change 'the system'.

Citation Index

If the project is successful, this teaching method could grow to be a major movement in teaching. Making a contribution to this type of reviewed teaching resource could become an important recognition of professional competence. At the moment, there is no equivalent to the refereed research publication for teaching staff. The citation index could become such an equivalent.

It is essential to build a prominent 'citation index' into the materials index so that recognition of contributions is obvious to all. This provides recognition, benefit and further motivation to contributors.

How is the Resource Bank structured?

The user can select a set of required Learning Objects from the Resource Bank index by viewing the object directly or by scanning through the Meta Files.

Figure 4     Simplified database structure

The meta files contain the following data for each object.

• Name
• Caption describing the ideas or skills to be learned
• Previous knowledge required
• Level
• Learning outcomes
• Next suitable objects to study (if known)
• Location
• Files list
• Source
• Author(s) name

These meta file data are a sub set of IEEE P1484 Learning Object Metadata specifications.