Category Archives: Blog Hub

Open Learning Design: A (draft) Manifesto

Recently, my colleagues Cindy, Rie, and myself undertook an exercise to map the frameworks and principles of Open Learning Design, which is at the intersection of our separate portfolios on Learning Resource Design and Open Education Initiatives. Since one of the principles in this area is that education is a political act, we’ve thought it would be fun to draft a manifesto for Open Learning Design. We hope to refine it, so, as always, comment and critique are welcome.

Sharing is the foundation of the University.

Sharing is not a functionality within the University; rather the University is the functionality of sharing within its community.

Embedded within the vision and values of the University is that it “supports scholarly pursuits that contribute to knowledge and understanding within and across disciplines, and seeks every opportunity to share them broadly.”  Teaching and learning is at the heart of these scholarly pursuits and, as Teachers and Learners, we must seek every opportunity to share broadly, for, as others have noted, “we share our work in education so that one day we might become free through education.”

As Teachers and Learners, we understand that open practices enhance teaching and learning.  

As learners, we understand we have the greatest capacity to learn when we are free to share in the shared knowledge of the University. Free, as Wiley defined, to access, to reuse, to revise, to remix, to retain, and to redistribute that knowledge, those materials, that help us learn.  We also understand that learners contribute to this shared knowledge and that we should, as Bruff describes, not merely be passive consumers of knowledge but producers, engaged in meaningful, generative work of the University.

As Teachers, we understand that knowledge does not equal understanding and that meaningful learning is authentic learning.

We understand that good teaching requires empathy and that authenticity is grounded in the expertise of the learner in their own learning. We strive to make our students be co-collaborators and co-producers of the curriculum. We work to build trust through honest collaboration for, as Neary states, the capacity for students as producers is “grounded in the human attributes of creativity and desire, so that students can recognise themselves in a world of their own design.”

As Teachers and Learners, we design for sharing and we create for understanding.

We are not wasteful. We are not afraid of failure. Understanding is developed through opportunities to iterate and practice across time and contexts, applying feedback to refine and deepen. Understanding requires self-awareness, practice, reflection and feedback. Understanding is supported by who you know and have access to through your networks, and good educational design facilitates connections.

As Teachers and Learners, we understand that we are one community. We understand that our community is not the University but rather that it is the community which forms the University. Sharing broadly is the means to remove the artificial barriers between the University and the community.

Education is the means that allows the individual, as Freire states, to “deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”  The University’s role is to share this education broadly.

WordPress as Learning Management System (LMS)

One of the many wonderful things about WordPress is that it is such a stable and widely used web delivery platform that many thousands of useful plugins have been created for it. Think of WordPress as a simple folding pocket knife, a sturdy tool for slicing an apple or opening a letter. Think of the plugins as additional tools that can be added to the pocket knife to turn it into a Swiss army knife, capable of many more functions like removing corks from bottles and trimming toenails.

swiss army knife

Swiss Army Knife

Each WordPress plugin enables your simple WordPress site to preform some additional kind of web-based function. There are plugins to let you use your site to sell pocket knives, to show off your photos in a gallery, and to host a discussion forum. There are even plugins to turn your WordPress site into a learning management system or LMS.

Here is Wikipedia’s relatively succinct definition of an LMS: “A learning management system (LMS) is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of electronic educational technology (also called e-learning) education courses or training programs.”

Moodle logo

Moodle Logo

Learning management systems are big business. Almost every major university and college uses one these days. Some, like Blackboard and Desire2Learn cost multi-thousands of dollars to purchase or rent, and thousands more annually to maintain. Moodle is an excellent open-source LMS, but you will need a web-master’s expertise to install and maintain it.

A WordPress LMS, however, can be low-cost and you can set it up yourself with very little technical expertise. Yet with it you can offer most of the benefits of online learning that are normally available only from much costlier installations. WordPress enthusiast, Chris Lema, has reviewed a couple of them, LearnDash and WP Courseware, HERE.

One thing to remember about most WordPress plugins – you won’t be able to use them if your site is hosted at WordPress.com. You will have to have an independent WordPress site using the free software you can download from WordPress.org.

[Swiss Army Knife photo by Jonas Bergsten, Public domain; Moodle logo from the Moodle project, on Wikimedia Commons – GNU license]

Building a WordPress Site

WPlogo_500x500Creating and building a WordPress site is pretty simple these days.  You no longer need a computer science degree, your own dedicated server, or a ton of money to get a website up and going quickly.  With this ease of creation many more people are diving in and learning how it all works.  The University of British Columbia will be hosting an open online course “Teaching With WordPress” in June…

to talk about and experiment with, among other things:

  • open education, open pedagogy and design
  • WordPress as a highly customizable framework for teaching and learning
  • examples of instructors and learners using WordPress sites in many different ways for multiple purposes
  • plug ins, applications and approaches for creating, discussing, sharing and interacting with each other

While I’m not an official educator by profession, Rockylou Productions will be joining in to learn from and help others to build a functional and effective website using the WordPress foundation.  Perfect timing as we are in the midst of remodeling the site.  I’ll be using a “buildingWP” category to categorize all of the relevant posts in one place.