OER ACHIEVEMENTS, CHALLENGES, AND NEW OPPORTUNITIES
- Service-oriented—a contemporary architectural form for distributed systems.
- Multi-lingual—required for global reach and impact. Translation services are part of OPLI.
- Incremental and architecturally light at its roots—as http was initially.
- Interchange on demand—Use powerful but cheap computation power to convert between standards and systems rather than struggle for universal agreement on standards. More generally we may now be on the verge of having more computing cycles than we know what do with. So much in the past has been constrained by the assumption of scarce bandwidth and cycles that none of our institutions are prepared to think through new ways of teaching, learning, creating content, modes of sharing, instrumenting, and improving served by infinite computing power. We need to find ways to think out of the box.
- Human-centered and socio-technical in nature—many different kinds of audiences, needs, capabilities, and lack of understanding. Avoid the pitfall of viewing OPLI as primarily a technical set of issues. Charles Vest, former President of MIT, probably receives the credit he deserves for finding a way to bring the faculty into OCW. OCW is a major institutional innovation, not a technical one. There will be the need for many more such institutional innovations.
- Support a spectrum of openness—Openness is a characteristic based on accessibility and responsiveness.[1]
- Most products, services, or processes are neither open nor closed, but can be placed on a continuum of openness.
- Moving toward openness means increasing accessibility and responsiveness.
- The degree of openness required depends on the purpose of the activity and the need to exercise judgment and control.
- Support for collaborative learning in multi-role, hybrid groups—Peer learning can only go so far. We need ways to enable hybrid learning contexts: a mixture of peers with mentors, coaches, and guides.
- ↑ Based on presentation and personal communication with Elliot Maxwell, emaxwell
emaxwell.net.
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