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

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

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

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

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.)

https://github.com/barbagroup/CFDPython

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

Self-produced MOOC:
 “Practical Numerical Methods with Python” —Fall 2014

http://openedx.seas.gwu.edu

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

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Why “open” in education?

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

What is “open education”?

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

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

Why “open” in education?

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)

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)

International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, January 2005

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.

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

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

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

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

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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Language/Action perspective: People act through language.

Winograd & Flores, 1986

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

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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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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.