Cole Camplese

Open Thinking

I am still reeling from my Berkman@10 experience last week ... I have told a handful of people that the gathering was perhaps the most important thing I have done professionally in the ten years I have been in higher education. No kidding ... there were moments that I was able to discover great clarity in some of my thinking -- mostly followed by moments of great confusion. The things that resonated most for me centered on what was the primary theme of the event -- openness. At the event the notion of openness took many forms -- media, learning, politics, and access come to mind as the most critically discussed. I went in with a strong sense of how this would be discussed because of my recent opportunities to spend time with Lessig, but I didn't expect my thinking to be impacted as much as it has by the event.

One of the more exciting opportunities the event afforded was having dinner with David Weinberger on the middle night of the event. I love David's work (particularly the Cluetrain Manifesto) and was very eager to hear him in person. His work in the late 90s pushed me to embrace the notion of the conversation as the core tenant of the Internet and getting to spend time with him did not disappoint! At our dinner table was an executive from British Telecom, a young man working to break down information barriers in Cuba, an attorney and lobbyist who wrote some of the original briefs on network neutrality, a creative director from Public Radio International, and others. The discussion carried real depth for nearly two hours and I found that I was able to participate at an acceptable level, even choosing to move topics around and lead some of the discussions. It was outstanding. What I took from the dinner had everything to do with open access to knowledge and content via our networks. We take for granted just how open our networks are for producing and accessing information -- in general we have clear access (without content filters) to anything available. This just isn't the case on a global basis. That guy from Cuba I mentioned? He and his group use USB memory sticks to distribute content because their isn't open access in Cuba. His stories floored me. After dinner I bought Weinberger's new book, Everything is Miscellaneous. So far it is pushing me to think even harder about what I was exposed to last week. I recommend it.

Now, open content ... I spent time listening to Jimmy Wales (founder of wikipedia) and while he can come off as arrogant and self-righteous (to some), there are some very powerful ideas in the things he says and stands for. I listened very closely to his notion of an open environment for creating knowledge and was particularly interested in the governance models supporting it all. It got me thinking about our own challenges in higher education as they relate to content creation and management for learning. Where is the wikipedia of course content? I am not really thinking about open courseware per say, what I am thinking about is how to create a discipline specific content space that could support the creation of articles by faculty for teaching and learning. Could a College or department work at the committee level to create the outline of the critical concepts within a given space and ask its faculty and students (and perhaps alumni) to create the wiki articles that satisfies these concepts? I think the answer is yes and would like to talk to some people about exploring this through practice.

The last thing I will mention here is an amazing quote by Jonathan Zittrain ... "The Internet has no main menu." If you really think about the web and what has won -- open access via the browser over the closed content provider client applications (AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy) you see this is true. Information wants to be free and when the network is open it allows contribution. Our models for collecting institutional content is going to keep us relegated to the successes (and ultimately the failures) of an AOL model. We live in times where the open Internet beat the closed content environment ... why not create that structure inside the academy.

Ok, let me hear it!

Wiki Feeds

As I was looking over the changes at theFirst Annual Learning Design Non-Conference wiki, I was noticing a bunch of additions. That in and of itself is amazing. But I decided to add the change log RSS to my Google Reader and was really impressed. I know this is going to sound crazy, but it is the first time I have ever subscribed to a wiki change log. This has to be one of the reasons why so many of my colleagues swear by the wiki for group work. I've used them for all sorts of things, but I've never fallen for them like I just did ... all because of a change log.

Our Learning Design Non-Conference

As the TLT Symposium approaches I am struck again and again at how much I enjoy working in the PSU Learning Design community ... this community is made up of faculty in all sorts of disciplines, staff across our campuses who think about teaching and learning with technology, and students who are engaged in discovering new territory. It is really active and alive! My Twitter stream tells me that is true.

With that in mind, I am thinking about how we get as many of these people together to keep pushing our conversation forward. One thing I know we should have done a long time ago is some sort of an unconference model where we can come together, pick some topics, and share thoughts related to them. So, the other night I put together a page at my wiki asking for help in designing the First Annual Learning Design Non-Conference. Come on in and help us figure it out ... the whole thing feels like the right thing to do. If there are people outside the area who would want to join the fun, help us think about how we could extend it to others.

Wiki Thoughts: Taking the Next Steps

At the risk of looking like someone who bounces from thing to thing I thought I'd share just a few thoughts on what a wiki service might be all about at a University ... I think one of the fundamental issues around wiki spaces is that people want to feel ownership. In other words, they want to "own" their space. In most higher education models, we (the IT people) bring a wiki online and say to people, "it is there, go ahead and add pages." That is met with less enthusiasm as one would expect at first blush. I think the overall ownership piece plays a part, don't you?

If you think about the model, it is a lot like simply installing a version of WordPress and telling people to start blogging. Sure they can blog, but their content is mixed in with the rest of the people blogging on that one space. In my opinion, the answer is to create a service that allows people a very easy way to create a wiki space that is their own.

With the Blogs at Penn State project we are letting people start with a centrally hosted blog publishing platform that they visit ... but when it is time to publish their content shows up in their personal webspace. That gives people a little more ownership in the whole process. If you look at what a service like PB WIki provides you can see the right model. I think others agree given I just read that PBWiki Raised $2m to grow its service.

So I am right back to square one with the whole build/buy/partner question that seems to be around every turn these days. Here's a question for those of who have implemented a wiki service at your Universities ... do you have one big wiki that people just add to, or do you provide a true wiki service where any user can create a separate instance that is their own?

Design in a Wiki

I have been thinking lately about how we use wikis for all sorts of document and collaborative design. Back in the day when I was regularly involved in first designing and then managing the design of eLearning courses we used our own custom solutions for storing content and managing teamwork. The big tool we used at IST to build and manage the Online IST courses was the Digital Design Document (D3) ... it was a FileMaker Pro application that allowed teams of people to easily create and manage course content, team communication, work-flow, storyboards, and more in one easy to use collaborative environment. It worked well for how we used it and it saved us tons of time when it came to actually delivering a course. One of the nice things about D3 was its ability to publish a 600 screen course in seconds so that it could be coupled with ANGEL or whatever other course management system we were using.

The thing that made it perfect was the collaborative capabilities. What we never attempted to do with D3 was just open the tool to the learners and the faculty -- in other words, the design team managed the tool and the content in it. What the learner and ultimately the instructor saw was the output ... they only interacted with the static pages. No way to edit, no way to update, and certainly no way to contribute to the knowledge on the page. Today we have come to expect collaborative tools as part of the work flow -- wikis, books in Drupal, multi user blogs, Google Docs, and so on have become the norm. What I wondering is if you could use a wiki to not only design your course, but then deliver it in that environment as well. If you have a team of people designing the instruction, would it be prudent to allow students to not only interact with the desired content on screen but also see the design team's notes on the same pages? Would that lead to great learning opportunities?

I am designing a new course and will be attempting to do just that. I will be putting all of the readings that I create, all the assignments for the students, and everything else in the course (from the syllabus to the final assessment) into a wiki and letting my students edit, tweak, adjust, and add to the course along the way. If I ask them to respond to a reading, I will want them to do it in the wiki so that every student's response becomes another learning opportunity for the next set of students who take the course. In the back of my head it is almost like creating an Intranet for the course that the whole world can see.

I am wondering who out there has done this and what I need to watch out for? Are there things anyone would recommend? Final question ... if I do this would people outside the course contribute content? Sort of a social experiment in course design ... if there is a topic in the course I am weak in, could I count on others to come in and contribute to the course design? Am I crazy (don't answer that one)?