[TOS] Creation of open source curriculum, open invitation

[Tom Callaway]

On 07/02/2014 12:41 PM, Matt Jadud wrote:
> Hi Joseph,
> 
> I'm interested (in a way), but it sounds like you might have conflicting
> goals.
> 
> 1. A textbook is an artefact that brings a lot of words together. It is
> "content." Books *sometimes* imply a curriculum.
> 
> 2. A curriculum (or course, module, etc.) is a value-, goal-, and
> objective-driven educational process specification that has many design
> facets that are not easily enumerated as "content."

Hi Matt, you're absolutely right. One of the things that we've heard in
our investigation on how to promote open source at the university level
is that in some places, a textbook is a useful artifact to accelerate
the timetable for having a curriculum (or course, module).

We want to built a core set of content (in an open source project)
around the core ideals of how open source works. Structuring that
content with the explicit goal of generating a textbook will hopefully
enable and empower people to setup courses and curriculum in their
schools, around a (hopefully) standard reference text.

I do think that we want to build out beyond the "textbook", but we're
starting there. We're definitely planning to empower this community to
go beyond that (and to take the bits of our content that they see as
useful and fork them and build other amazing things with them).

This is also not the only place that Red Hat wants to participate in and
invest in. We believe in POSSE, and we believe in the value of active
learning. We _hope_ that this content (whether in textbook format or
simply incorporated into existing material) will simplify the task of
delivering an engaging learning experience.

One of the other things that we heard was that course creation was very
personal, very individual, at least for the majority of successful ones,
that it involved the passion and talents of the educator creating an
experience that they knew worked (even if always being
refined/tweaked/overhauled). I did not want to be so arrogant as to
state that it would be possible/successful for us to create an entire
"prepackaged" course on Teaching Open Source (tm) that would be applicable.

It seemed more logical (to me) to start with the idea of generating (and
merging existing) common reference material ("the textbook") and
providing a community space for educators to discuss how they've built
successful classes/seminars/experiences around that.

Thanks,

~tom

==
¸.·´¯`·.´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸><(((º> OSAS @ Red Hat
University Outreach || Fedora Special Projects || Fedora Legal
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: tcallawa.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 4 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.teachingopensource.org/pipermail/tos/attachments/20140702/7f70209a/attachment.vcf>