Knowledge Forum + Carnegie Mellon's "Open Learning Initiative"
Teams from the University of Toronto and Carnegie Mellon University are working on layering stand-alone online course modules,
designed for individual learning, with an open discourse environment tailored to encourage collaborative knowledge building.
Open Learning Initiative (OLI, http://oli.web.cmu.edu/) is one of those prestigious projects in the open educational resources (OER) movement that strives to “champion the sharing of knowledge worldwide to increase human intellectual capacity (UNESCO, 2004).” With a goal to enable individual learners to have access to high quality educational material, the OLI compiled a team of content experts, learning scientists, and software engineers to develop web-based learning environments that are the complete enactment of instruction (Thille, 2008). The team’s efforts span challenges from developing better resources, to designing cycles of feedback, to conducting studies to deepen our understanding of learning. As a stand-alone learning environment built to support individual learners, OLI is a cutting edge example of innovation in pedagogical and technological design.
The Open Learning Initiative provides a context in which sustained knowledge-building discourse would be highly desirable. The collaboration between teams at the Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology (IKIT) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) aims to integrate pedagogies and technologies of OLI and Knowledge Building together to create a new environment that encourages collaboration and communal discourse in achieving deeper understanding. This integration brings about new possibilities of building a stronger pedagogical model for open learning resources. Initial pilot experiments testing the new blended environment will focus on whether the use of a blended platform can enhance both individual learning and group cognition (Stahl, 2006). Based on results of this study, we will consider issues such as the following: If learning is enhanced for a few students, do their contributions to the collaborative space enhance the work of the group? How can we assess the growth and spread of ideas generated by knowledge-building discourse within OLI environments? Can we keep ideas alive and continually improving in a worldwide open learning community?
