Open learning implies diverse learners. Design beyond wide access of previously local closed courses. Reconsider a book-logic design to address a global audience.
The First generation of open courses were often based on local courses, initially designed for a specific class and context and then modified somewhat to allow open access. Designs were still based on the personal preferences of an instructor and developed for a specific class. The lifting of access restrictions was a wonderful accomplishment. That was a significant step towards natively-born open courseware (OCW). As the concept of OCW matures, we face many serious challenges, including sustainability, maintaining content relevance, and designing natively for an open courseware (OCW) environment to meet the expectations of such courses.
This presentation focuses on the key considerations to design future OCW. It is the intentionality of the architecture that provides the desired long-term affordances to ably meet the objectives. From a holistic perspective we all seek exceptional instructional value, relevance and longevity of the offerings, and sustainability beyond the initial phases and beyond a local context and following. These issues will be guided by the following questions in the presentation:
? How can the design accommodate learners with diverse skill levels?
? How can different learning objectives be satisfied?
? How can the learning be rewarding for thousands of concurrent learners?
? How can the learning community be formed and maintained?
? How does the design influence the sustainability of the whole project?
Openlanguages.net has been in development since 2004. In addition to addressing the needs of many diverse casual learners, the site is the prescribed learning environment of college courses and supports the learning of home schoolers and college students on two continents. These needs lead to a modular design, allowing many curricula to be based on the same expanding content infrastructure.
Open Courseware (OCW) still suffers from disjointed development efforts with a lack of collective strategies to exploit explicit goals to benefit the international community. Layers of structures have to be developed to harness information and development of courses and resources. It is now time to consider future designs to employ Internet-based and Web-based solutions to deliver content and communication to the wide array of mobile and stationary platforms with ubiquitous access. It is the right time to design natively open courseware. It is a new generation of design and development to built upon the unrelenting efforts of unwavering pioneers.
