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| un phare en coquille / Lighthouse like a shell (Photo credit: TisseurDeToile -[*]) |
I’ve recently been engaged
with faculty in a discussion about “open” in their courses. Interest and
experience vary widely and for many, the concept is foreign and frightening. “Designing”
for such a course might seem an oxymoron. However designing simply means
considering the overall course goals & what you want students to be able to
achieve, as well as making learning relevant, so students can incorporate their
knowledge into real world experiences. Designing for such a course must also
consider the available resources (there are many things available via the net)
and the needs for communication, interaction, building community, showcasing
student work and assessing understanding. How can we make this learning
experience unique, distinct, dynamic and create a course that learners want to
take?
What if a course were truly
dynamic? What if you the instructor and your students experience content that
was dynamically updated every time you access your site? What if the instructor
provided a framework and selected data feeds that could provide dynamic
information related to course specific topics? It seems that this could provide
faculty and students with opportunities to engage in relevant discussion and
create new works to both explore and demonstrate learning? Such a learning
environment might also allow faculty to demonstrate their processes of
thinking, research, collaboration, communication, and personal learning.
In the digital age, information
is constantly and things such as breaking news, research, interesting questions,
social media, all drive our quest for understanding. Recently on NPR I heard
the term Verticals: data driven ventures. As I understand it (and I certainly
need to learn more), news, marketing and other digital publications are
increasingly using data driven verticals: data driven ventures information.
Wouldn’t it be interesting for faculty design a course with both fixed content and selective feeds of
dynamically driven information to engage in open learning ask interesting
questions around and help explain information?
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