Re: Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources

Roy Williams, June 17, 2008

I think we are looking towards a co-production and self-production model. But maybe we should shift right out of that perspective, and delete the term production altogether.

We might start by shifting the emphasis from 'inter-operability' to inter-accessibility, or to be more precise, 'inter-addressability'. In other words, inter-operability is an important infrastructural requirement, but this tail should not wag the dog.

If we start at inter-addressability, and then move on to the next level, we get to the following:

Level 1. We can allow people to link quickly and easily to 'resources' (whatever they are)

2. Level 2: We can provide 'micro-events' which you can interact with, rather than learning objects, which you can 'use' or 'consume'.

A micro-event is a 'linked set' of some of the following: texts, people, tasks, software, feedback loops, challenges etc which provide you with an opportunity to explore, individually or in a community, so that you can achieve, at a modest, micro level, the "capacity for effective action" (which is St Onge's definition of knowledge, incidentally).

Level 2 is then a set of meta-information, which links to adressable resources at a more 'granular' level; the meta-information itself also needs to be addressable.

This gives us two levels of addressable texts/information, which include, at level 2, exemplars of how resources at level 1 are combined. Add some metatags, and that's it.

Metatags:
The 'value' of these 'micro-events' depends on context, so we need to include metatags (on the meta-information) which indicate, if not describe, the context in which the micro-event was used.

This provides the resources for our community of inquirers, who still need to do the work of applying each micro-event to their own context, with revisions, changes, reversions, etc.

These derivative micro-events are then made addressable to the community too: so we start to build up families of micro-events.

Examples:
1. OLDaily
OLDaily itself is what I would call a micro-event: its an opportunity to interact, as I am doing now, and in the process I engage with issues, and articulate my own (partly new) response to them, and insert this back into the community, and its addressable too.

2. Critical thinking:
I wrote a 'micro-event' on critical thinking for a Foundation Degree programme (a two year entry level 'degree', started in the UK recently), as part of the resource that students could use to develop their critical thinking. See: http://flexible-learning.wikispaces.com/Critical+Thinking
which contains the gist of what became a Critial Thinking 'micro-event' (I have tried to avoid using the word 'activity').

Micro-events linked together, or embedded/ nested within each other can then make up a 'course' or a 'workshop'.

In my experience, many of these ('courses') are (usefully and necessarily) proprietory, but many if not most of the micro-events can be Open Source.
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