Open Source Course Ware

Week Five Application: Open Source Blog Assignment

Open Source course wares are known as a content management system or a collaborative portal system. Open source course ware promises to be reliable, flexible, and of good quality The open source that I selected for this week’s blog assignment was The Massachusetts’s Institute of Technology site in order to review the Introduction to Computer Science and Programming course. This is the URL to access the open source course: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm.
In reviewing the open source course, I found that the course appears to be carefully pre-planned and designed for a distance learning environment because the site provided the following resources to support the learning needs of students:

• Course Home Page
• Syllabus Page
• Calendar Page
• Readings Page
• Video/lectures Page
• Assignments Page
• Exams Page

Simonson et al (2009) stated in Chapter Nine “Instructors of online courses must make the course organization, calendar, activities and expectations as clear as possible” (p. 249). The purpose is to recognize the needs of the learners as they will need this type of structure to in order to stay ‘organized and on task’. That is how the course appeared to be carefully pre-planned and designed and it did follow the recommendations for online instruction as listed in our course textbook.

For example, the open source identified for who the course had been designed for, it stated the purpose of the course and its assignments, it provided examples of acceptable topics, it identified the required components of the assignments, due dates and point values, it provided instructions for submitting completed assignments (Simonson et al, p. 249). Moreover, the course provided links to features such as video lectures, assignments (12), transcripts and to an exam and solution section. The course description provided a clear learner analysis and objective. The site offered a Join a Study Group section that invited students to sign-up for free. Its intent was to facilitate Q & A, tutoring services, the ability to collaborate and meet with others who were taking the course. The Home page included a technical requirement section which specified that python software would be required to facilitate the use of some files. Other features that were included were a site map, an RSS feeder link, and privacy and terms of use link. The Home page provided information of what level of learners the course had been designed for and provided the names of the professors who would teaching the course. A site tour video was also provided to teach learners how to navigate the open source course management system and for the introduction of the course a video was created to discuss the following topics: goals of the course, which also included the introduction of what was computation, what were data types, what were operators and variables. I like the idea that a playlist of class room lectures was created, a transcript as provided for each lecture and the managing system allowed learners to download videos. Simonson et al (2009) reported “Student assessments must be designed to reflect the specific behaviors identified in the course outcomes” (p. 250). What this suggests is that if I were to be interested in taking one of the free courses offered by the open source that it would be available to me for free. I would just need to assure that I had accessed to their required software in order to access course content. I and other learners would be able to complete courses anytime and from anywhere. Simonson et al (2009) stated that open source software was intended to be freely shared and could be improved upon and redistributed to others” (p. 256). The open source did implement course activities to maximize the active learning experiences of students by designing and providing the following activity links:

Activities: twelve
A very simple program: entering and printing your name (PDF)
Computing prime numbers, product of primes (PDF)
Diophantine equations (PDF)
Matching strings: a biological perspective (PDF)
Simulating a retirement fund (PDF)
Word games (PDF)
Word games 2 (PDF)
Review problems (PDF)
Dynamic programming (PDF)
Object-oriented programming; graphical user interface for word game (PDF)
Classes and methods (PDF)
Simulating robots (PDF)
Simulating virus population dynamics (PDF)

To conclude, I have learned that Open Source courseware is a production that will allow a community of learners to globally collaborative with multiple learners due to its access and capabilities. Blogs, Wikis and Podcast are other types of open source software that are open to the public and can be modified by users to fit their own learning needs.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_appropriate_technology
Creative Commons Attribution (2009), Open Source Initiative. Retrieve from http://opensource.org/
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.