I sincerely wish I could do something with Stephen’s comment about how the early quests are rather dry, but hey - do you remember the training quests in Lineage (attacking a dummy-scarecrow thing until you’d successfully hit it 300 times or something)? Or those early levels in WoW when you spent mind-numbing hours gathering herbs and figuring out which creatures you could and couldn’t really attack? The attentive reader of the syllabus will notice that the Quests are roughly structured around Bloom’s taxonomy, and yes - those early quests do involve a lot of “remember” and “understand” initial skills and knowledge development that a person needs to be able to complete the more difficult tasks.

I’ve pulled out references to “oral exams” and moved all assignments back into the blogs in order to keep more of the content in a written, and more easily shared, format. This should add value both for the on-campus and distance participants.

Some readers have assumed that because the course is modeled after games like WoW that the course will take place in a completely online / virtual world. Not so. The BYU credit-earning crowd will be playing significant portions of the game face-to-face, making their experience more like that of an old-skool RPG like Dungeons and Dragons. However, I’ll work with distance participants in the course to choose a common environment for them to play the game in (play by IM? play by Twitter? play in Second Life?) so that we can all find each other.

I continue to love your feedback. Many thanks for the comments you’ve left and the emails you’ve sent so far… Please keep them coming!

Instructional design faculty are frequently criticized for delivering information about innovative new pedagogical methods to their students in the form of traditional lectures - for talking the talk but failing to walking the walk. Setting positive examples is important for people in every field to do.

There are two ways to describe the design of this course, and both are equally valid. On the one hand, this course is a mix of direct skills instruction combined with project-based learning and collaborative problem solving. The course employs a progression of increasingly complex problems with supportive information, and requires students to synthesize hundreds of pages of literature, interview data, and their own design intuition to produce meaningful artifacts both individually and as part of highly inter-dependent teams. The idea of teach-reteach (characterized so well in Gong’s description of the Three Person Problem) is at the heart of the students’ day-to-day learning experiences.

On the other hand, the course is a massively multiplayer role-playing game in which students select a character class, develop specialized expertise, complete a series of individual quests, join a Guild, and work with members of their Guild to accomplish quests requiring a greater breadth of skills than any one student possesses.

One need not look very far to find indications that the genre is extremely effective in promoting informal learning - see the work of Constance Steinkuehler and John Seely Brown as examples. Despite the impressive work of Constance, JSB, and others, to the best of my knowledge no one has ever designed and implemented a university course as a massively multiplayer role-playing game. In addition to helping students gain a working knowledge of the field of open education (i.e., knowledge they can actually put to work), this course is a design experiment exploring the effectiveness of running a university course as a massively multiplayer role-playing game.

Visit the syllabus to learn about the four character classes, the specifics of the quests, and other information. I’m still inserting links to some of the readings, but the course structure is complete and I would love any and all feedback (including negative feedback) on the course design.

The course will be open again this year, meaning anyone, anywhere is welcome to participate. And yes, I will print and mail completion certificates again for those who earn and want them. =)

I want to remix a little of his post and provide some supporting comments:

Good open content is a vital part of creating a vital open education apparatus… Content is just one piece of the open education mosaic that is worth a lot less on its own than in concert with practices, context, artifacts.

Opening content up isn’t the sexiest activity. But I would argue that in one way if it’s not the most important, it’s still to be ranked first among equals. (Emphasis added)

Yes, yes, yes! The way I’ve tried to communicate this idea is “content is infrastructure.” Now, everyone knows that infrastructure is not the sexiest thing to work on. Who grows up thinking “I want to build better roads when I grow up!” or “I want to squeeze more bits down a piece of glass faster when I grow up!”? Infrastructure is generally hidden away in the background, and we all just assume that it will be there and will work. Most people would rather ride the Harleys and launch the Web 2.0 startups, not lay the asphalt and improve routing efficiency.

Creating and sharing content is certainly not the sexiest part of the open education movement. But the open education movement is going nowhere fast without open content. And while infrastructure / content work generally doesn’t excite anyone, the results of innovation in the infrastructure space do excite people. What would you say if I told you that “fiber to the curb” internet service was going to be available at your house/apt in January!”? Probably the same thing you would say if I told you that “content complete, interactive courses - including assessments with feedback - will be available from BYU’s Open Learning pilot in January!”

Infrastructure is critical; open content is the infrastructure of the open education movement; and open content deserves the respect Chris is trying to give it.

Call for Papers - Openness and the Future of Higher Education

This Call for Papers is for a theme issue of the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (www.irrodl.org) entitled: Openness and the Future of Higher Education. The projected publication date is October 2009. The Guest Editors are Dr. David Wiley and John Hilton.

The aim of this Special Issue is to further our understanding of the manner in which the open source, open access, and open education movements are now and will impact higher education organizations, learners, and other stakeholders in the future.

Our intent is to stimulate critical debate, encourage collection and analyses of relevant data, and add to the theoretical foundations used in policy and planning discussions related to openness within institutions of higher education. Special consideration will be given to articles that present analyses and interpretations of empirical data, but rigorous theoretical submissions will also be considered.

All submissions will be peer reviewed. Those submissions accepted for publication will be published under Creative Commons license in www.irrodl.org.

DEADLINES:

* Submission Proposals: January 15, 2009
* Notification of Acceptance: February 15
* Papers Due: May 1
* Peer Reviews Returned: June 30
* Finalized Papers Due: August 1
* Publication Date: October 15

SUBMISSION PROPOSALS

Individual or multiple-authors must first submit an abstract-length proposal of approximately 500-750 words to IRRODL’s Managing Editor, , at irrodl@athabascau.ca.

Those who have had their abstracts accepted will be formally invited by the Guest Editors to submit a full-length paper of approximately 5000 words. For IRRODL’s submission guidelines, visit: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/about/submissions

All full-length papers submitted to IRRODL will be subject to multiple blind peer review. All blind peer reviews will be shared with the authors. While influenced by the outcome of the blind peer reviews, the Guest Editors reserve the right to make final publication decisions.

TOPICS MAY INCLUDE:

* Critical perspectives on open education
* Effect of openness on access to educational opportunity
* Evaluation of open educational resources and services
* Issues of affordability and openness
* Issues of quality and localization of open educational resources
* Openness and accreditation
* Openness and future course management systems / personal learning environments
* Open models for awarding credit or degrees
* Open / peer tutoring and advising models
* Open source, open access, or open education policy in higher education
* Open teaching / massively open online courses (“MOOC”)
* Open textbooks
* Social implications of open education
* Structures and patterns of reuse of open educational resources
* Sustainable models of creating and sharing open educational resources
* Unique impact of openness on institutions in developing countries

For more information contact:
David Wiley, PhD
Associate Professor
Instructional Psychology & Technology, Brigham Young University
Email: david.wiley@byu.edu

***

ABOUT IRRODL

The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (www.irrodl.org) is a peer reviewed, open access e-journal designed to disseminate research, theory, and best practice related to open and distance learning worldwide. IRRODL enjoys strong download activity and because it is fully peer reviewed, reputable, and open access, it is cited broadly.

Detailed information about submission is available on IRRODL’s website at: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/about/submissions. All submission proposals and full length papers must be emailed to IRRODL’s Managing Editor, Paula Smith, at paulah@athabascau.ca.

The copyright of all papers published in IRRODL will be held by Athabasca University - Canada’s Open University. All articles published, however, are licensed under the Creative Commons for re-use and distribution for non-commercial purposes. For details on IRRODL’s Creative Commons license, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

For details concerning IRRODL, please contact:

–

Paula Smith - Manager Canadian Institute for Distance Education
Research (CIDER) http://cider.athabascau.ca
Managing Editor
International Review of Research
in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL)
www.irrodl.org
Athabasca University - Canada’s Open University
Peace Hills Trust Tower
1200, 10011 - 109th Street,
Edmonton, CANADA T5J 3S8
Phone: 1.780.421.2536 Fax: 1.780.497.3416
E-mail: paulah@athabascau.ca

Now, if you’ve ever taught, you know that many students love to talk. It seems that they live to ask questions, argue, and endlessly discuss. Now, I ask you: How can removing all possibility of engaging in their favorite approach to learning (by making the computer the only entity with whom they can interact) be said to be personalization for them?

(And let’s not forget my pet hypothesis regarding the increasing importance of social interaction as one moves further up Bloom’s taxonomy. When students are working near the top of the taxonomy, the absence of social interaction will greatly decrease the efficiency of all learners.)

Systems that want to make claims to “personalize” must include multiple options for students who prefer interacting with other humans. A “full palette” of personalization options that involve variations of interactions with a single entity (the computer) is basically a monochrome palette. “Personalize your new car with any color you want! You can get it in blue, light blue, midnight blue, sky blue, Carolina blue, azurite, ultramarine, cerulean blue, cobalt blue, even Prussian blue!” (Reminiscent of the great SNL skit, “He could be green, or lime green, or mint green…”)

If we’re going to talk about “personalization,” options rich with human interaction must be part of the palette. Otherwise, we should call it what it is - a power grab by administrators forcing learners into a learning environment they do not prefer for the sake of increased efficiency.

- We grow our network by sharing, they start their network by setting up initial agreements.
- We share what we share, they want to share what they often don’t have (or even really want).
- We share with people, they share with “Institutions.”
- We develop multiple (informal) channels while they focus on a single official mechanism.

The paper reminds me somewhat of Clay Shirky’s A group is its own worst enemy. D’Arcy says, “Sharing works because you do it. That’s all there is to it.” After reading Scott, Tony is left asking himself, “I wonder if we have any more SocialLearn planning meetings this week?” I find myself asking the same question about new open projects whose planning I am participating in. Thanks, Scott, for the uber-timely and super thoughtful post!

Hopefully Mark and his team will choose to migrate the license from the GFDL to CC By-SA now that the new version of the GFDL has made this possible. Otherwise remixing these materials is going to be a nightmare. Even if they become CC By-SA it will still be nigh unto impossible thanks to incompatibilities amongst CC’s own licenses (esp. CC By-SA and CC By-NC-SA). But we shall overcome…

UPDATE: Mark has written back to say that all contributors have agreed to relicensing all FHSST content CC-By!!!

Oh, happy day! Oh, happy day! / When licensing compatibility problems go away!