Group Admins
Description
A college degree is more than the sum of its courses. Randy Bass and Bret
Eynon (2016) argue for the importance of engagement, community and
mentorship, and integration in liberal education. Claiming the digital
revolution has tended to unbundle higher education and reduce it to a
collection of online training courses, they argue for a new “learning-first”
digital ecosystem that is learner-centered, networked, integrative,
adaptive, and open. They provide many examples including OER and devote an
entire chapter to “Domains of One’s Own” (DoOO) projects.
Martha Burtis, Jim Groom, and Tim Owens pioneered the DoOO concept at
University of Mary Washington (Burtis, 2016). By 2016 over 40 schools,
mostly universities, had begun DoOO projects, but no community college had
attempted it. Lansing Community College became the first in January 2016. We
called it the Open Learn Lab.
We experimented for 1.5 years, creating nearly 300 blogs and sites. Users
were enthusiastic, evidencing success, but challenges remained. Many
faculty, students, and administrators struggled to understand open learning
or how it “fits” with the LMS, OER, and the school mission. The
challenge moving forward has been to “institutionalize”, scale, and
integrate with OER/other initiatives.
To help faculty/administrators conceive how “it fits” we frame open
learning as a digital Commons of Our Own (CoOO). Our concept of CoOO as
social system is informed by David Bollier and other economists (Bollier,
2014). The technology remains mostly WordPress sites, similar to DoOO.
Indeed, we use a DoOO VPS account with Reclaimhosting. Our CoOO uses a .net
domain distinct from the school’s .edu domain to emphasize the
commons-community aspect.
The LMS provides a temporal digital “classroom” while CoOO provides a
stable, digital counterpart to the non-classroom campus. Historically, the
physical campus provided spaces for ambient learning, social connections,
and authentic learning experiences – opportunities to create, connect, and
share. Online, commuter, and part-time community college students tend to
miss these benefits of campus life. CoOO overcomes the physical limitations,
creating the digital eco-system Bass and Eynon envision.
To help people understand the diversity and roles of sites in our CoOO, we
created three clusters called Learn-Create-Connect. Learn sites are faculty
managed and often structured as program-department collaborations, including
our new Pressbooks OER publishing platform. Create/Voice sites are typically
student blog sites and course hubs which we see as “on ramps” to DoOO.
The Connect cluster are social- and outreach-oriented sites providing
engagement both within the campus community and the larger public community.
The CoOO framework links the LMS, classes, and public to students, faculty,
campus groups, and our OER publishing. The CoOO framing began this year with
the goal of accelerating adoption of OER, open learning practices, and
student blogs. Early indicators point to success.
Bass, R. & Eynon, B. (2016). Open and integrative: Designing liberal
education for the new digital ecosystem. Washington, D.C.: Association of
American Colleges & Universities.
Bollier, D. (2014) Think like a commoner, New Society Publishers.
Burtis, M. (2016) Keynote address to Digital Pedagogy Lab, audio and text at
http://www.digitalpedagogylab.com/hybridped/making-breaking-rethinking-web-higher-ed/