Pedagogical Purpose of Open Sharing

Please cite as:
Barba, Lorena A. (2016): Pedagogical Purpose of Open Sharing. figshare.
https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.4496783.v1

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At the opening keynote of the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS), Prof. Barba discussed the pedagogical purpose of open sharing—how openness enriches our capacity to create knowledge together.

The reflections for this keynote stemmed from years of experience as an open educator: sharing open educational resources (OER), spearheading a new genre of OER using Jupyter notebooks, and creating an indie MOOC on numerical methods for engineering.

*Background*

At the 2014 SciPy (scientific Python) conference in Austin, TX, Barba gave a keynote where she declared IPython Notebooks (later re-branded as Jupyter) a “killer app” for STEM education.
Soon after, she coined the term "computable content," defined as educational content made powerfully interactive via compute engines in the learning platform. The concept is at the center of her self-produced MOOC, "Practical Numerical Methods with Python." She has inspired others around the world to create similar OERs using Jupyter notebooks.

*Why “open” in education?*

In an October-2015 interview by mathematics professor and blogger Robert Talbert, Barba answers this question: “Why do you advocate so strongly for open-source technology in research and education?” She first clarified what we mean by “open” in education.

Barba takes inspiration from the open-source software movement:

"Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a human invention of tremendous impact. It poses an alternative to intellectual-property instruments that are limiting and want to control how a creative work is used. Open-source licenses allow people to coordinate their work freely, within the confines of copyright law, while making access and wide distribution a priority. I’ve always thought that this is fundamentally aligned with the method of science, where we value academic freedom and wide dissemination of scientific findings. In education, “open” also carries the meaning that the copyrighted work is free to use, distribute and modify. Lately, this meaning has been eroded to include only free access, and I take issue with this. In many MOOCs, we see “all rights reserved” all over the content: this is not open.

Openness in education serves a pedagogical purpose, no less. The view of connectivist knowledge sees it created by interacting individuals in a personal learning network. Learning by forming connections (between concepts, people, actions, objects, etc.) is made richer by open sharing, especially with learners creating derivative works, and sharing these too. The open-source software communities have really shown us how the coordinated labor of many, sharing their products freely, produces great advances in technology, and so it can happen in education."

Transcript

1. Berkeley Initiative for
   Transparency in the Social Sciences
   Annual Meeting
   Pedagogical Purpose of Open Sharing
   Prof. Lorena A. Barba
   Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
   The George Washington University
   December 2016
   

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2. Sharing OER via
   — iTunes U
   — YouTube
   — TED-Ed
   — GitHub
   — self-hosted Open edX site
   Disseminating via
   — Twitter & self-hosted blog
   http://lorenabarba.com
   

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3. http://lorenabarba.com/news/bus-top-provider-of-educational-media/
   

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4. Added views > 500,000 checked 12/10/2016
   

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5. IPython Notebooks
   A new “genre” of OER, using collections of IPython
   Notebooks (a.k.a., Jupyter)—rich documents mixing text
   and computable content. (Shared under CC-BY on GitHub.)
   

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6. https://github.com/barbagroup/CFDPython
   

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7. One example …
   Each lesson contains
   text, figures, equations
   and executable Python
   code, providing an
   interactive learning
   experience.
   Students can change
   code and see the effects
   in the output.
   in
   

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8. View Slide

9. Computable content
   educational content made powerfully interactive via
   compute engines in the learning platform
   

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10. Self-produced MOOC:

    “Practical Numerical Methods with Python”
    —Fall 2014
    

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11. http://openedx.seas.gwu.edu
    

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12. The MOOC based on Jupyter Notebooks has
    inspired others around the world to create
    similar OERs.
    

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13. View Slide

14. Why “open” in education?
    

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15. http://rtalbert.org/blog/2015/interview-lorena-barba
    Why do you advocate so strongly for open-source
    technology in research and education?
    

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16. What is “open education”?
    

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17. Free & Open-source Software (FOSS)
    An invention of great impact:
    ‣an alternative to intellectual-property instruments
    ‣OS licenses allow people to 

    coordinate their work freely
    

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18. The Open Definition
    “Open data and content can be freely used,
    modified, and shared by anyone for any
    purpose.”
    http://opendefinition.org
    

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19. Why “open” in education?
    

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20. The first MOOC
    “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge”
    by George Siemens & Stephen Downes (2008)
    ‣ “MOOCs as they were originally conceived…were the locus
    of learning activities and interaction, but as deployed by
    commercial providers they resemble television shows or
    digital textbooks with, at best, an online quiz component.”
    - Stephen Downes, in The Times Higher Education (Oct. 17, 2013)
    

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21. The first MOOC
    “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge”
    by George Siemens & Stephen Downes (2008)
    ‣ “Our goal was to encourage the development of learners
    through open and transparent learning, where the process of
    knowledge generation was iterative …”
    - George Siemens, in The Times Higher Education (Oct. 17, 2013)
    

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22. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning,
    January 2005
    

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23. Connectivism
    Thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network of
    connections and therefore that learning consists of the
    ability to construct and traverse those networks.
    

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24. Knowledge is distributed.
    Knowledge is created by conversation and interactions.
    cf. Stephen Downes
    

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25. Community:
    … clustering of similar areas of interest that allows for
    interaction, sharing, dialoguing, and thinking together
    — George Siemens, 2004
    

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26. View Slide

27. Why Open Education?
    Pedagogy of openness—open teaching & learning
    practices actively promote rich networks, lively
    communities, and fertile connections.
    

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28. Open-source licenses:
    People can coordinate their work freely, within the
    confines of copyright law, while making access and wide
    distribution a priority.
    

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29. Open-source licenses:
    People can coordinate their work freely, within the
    confines of copyright law, while making access and wide
    distribution a priority.
    

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30. View Slide

31. Language/Action perspective:
    People act through language.
    

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32. Winograd & Flores,
    1986
    

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33. Conversation for Action: an example
    Can you give the
    opening keynote
    for BITSS2016?
    I accept.

    i.e., I commit to
    be there & speak
    Request
    Commitment
    

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34. Communications of the ACM
    Special Issue
    Two decades of the Language-
    Action Perspective
    The editorial calls the book by
    Winograd & Flores a
    “groundbreaking textbook on system
    design.”
    

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35. View Slide

36. Structure of a Conversation for Action
    1. A makes a request or offer
    2. B makes a promise or accepts
    3. B declares to have delivered
    4. A declares to be satisfied
    

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37. Full analysis has more outcomes
    After A makes the request, there are 5 possible outcomes:
    1. B accepts the conditions, promises to satisfy them
    2. B rejects them
    3. B asks to negotiate a change in the conditions
    4. A can withdraw the request before a response
    5. A can modify the conditions
    

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38. Open-Source collaboration
    In a Pull Request:
    ‣ contributor A wants project owner B to perform some action: pull
    new changes into their repo (review & merge)
    ‣ B can decline —END
    ‣ B can accept, and B will merge the PR —> the agreement is implicit
    ‣ often, before B accepts, B must review the contribution: this work
    happens outside the conversation
    ‣ B can counter, and a pull request discussion starts; A agrees to
    change the PR and B merges (END) or A disagrees and B closes the
    PR (END)
    

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39. Commitment-based culture of collaboration
    I’m reviewing
    this PR.
    Project contribution policy:
    “Log an issue for any question
    or problem.”
    

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40. A commitment to coordinate action to address
    the issue—for the sake of the project’s shared
    mission.
    “Team.”
    —F. Flores, “Conversations for Action”, p. 77
    

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41. … tool-of-the trade in the open-source world that
    supports the workflow, and promotes a culture of
    collaboration
    

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42. Open-Source Software
    projects build institutions that
    have very strong ethical
    commitments…
    (1) freedom of access
    (2) transparency
    (3) governance
    

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43. Language/Action Perspective —helps us
    design computer systems to support humans
    to be more effective together
    

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44. Online learning—can we have a
    platform as effective as GitHub?
    

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45. Openness
    …serves a pedagogical purpose: learning is richer
    by open sharing.
    Coordination
    …in the model of open-source culture, to create
    value together, fostering innovation & leadership.
    

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