Beyond the OER move – towards open and participatory learning ecosystems

In more recent years Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities gained attention for their community production and support models and regarding their way of knowledge creation and learning. From the “FLOSS perspective” it becomes obvious that the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement falls short in some points. Most strikingly, the traditional way of resource creation using the traditional role distribution models that clearly distinguishes between educators as creators and learners as consumer is still predominant. As a result even the most prominent examples within the OER movement are rather static repositories than Open Participatory Learning Ecosystems (OPLE).

The volunteering and unselfish nature in many communities enables members to get involved in activities further than the realms of software development. FLOSS communities possess many characteristics that educational settings seek to apply such as:

1. Open and inclusive ethos: everyone can participate, no charges, no deadlines, life long membership.

2. Up to date and dynamic content; everyone can add, edit and update the content.

3. Materials are usually the product of many authors with many contributions from people other than authors.

4. Frequent releases and updates where product features and community structures are the result of a continuous re-negotiation/reflection process within a continuous development cycle.

5. Prior learning outcomes and processes are systematically available through mailing lists, forums, commented code and further instructional materials (re-use).

6. A large support network; provided voluntarily by the community member in a collaborative manner nearly 24/7.

7. Free Riders (lurker) welcome paradox – the more the better

8. New ICT solutions are adapted early by the community for the sake of their usefulness, but not for the sake of using technology.

The FLOSS model shows how users can become active ‘resource’ creators, how learning processes can be made visible and can benefit other learners, how to successfully establish and maintain user support systems, and ultimately how all of this can be re-used and freely maintained. Learning in the FLOSS community therefore highly corresponds to the definition of OER, which is “the open provision of educational resources, enabled by information and communication technologies, for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes.”

The current OER movement is tackling maybe one of the most crucial aspects for education: the free and open access to educational resources being released under a commons license and thus the possibility to re-use those resources and to adapt them.

However, up until today the OER movement, analogue to the e-Learning movement, is still following largely traditional educational paradigms using experts’ production and development models, often using technology for the sake of technology and seeing the learner as a passive consumer, or at least leaving him with this role.