Thread:«no subject» (607)

Question One
--Katherine Bolman 00:50, 15 December 2009 (UTC)====Bold textQ1.Do you have any concerns about the quality of educational resources developed using an open authoring approach? If so, what are your concerns? If not, how does an open authoring approach contribute to high quality learning materials?Bold text====

I have some concerns about open authoring if the work being used is the only source on a subject.

I feel that there is a great deal if information in the heads of people around the world that we did not have access to in the past. Open authoring can add information that the writer did not know. It takes courage to publish in a format that is open to being changed and it is a learning experience.

I suspect some things are published on a wiki to encourage readers to become involved in the topic.Kbolman

=Using open resources= does not mean ignoring all of the knowledge that knowledge professionals and copyright holders of published materials have created. We can use traditional resources but rework them, synthesize them, create knowledge adn author new works which we can release into the educational world as open resources.

The quality of open resources such as wikinews can be checked against authoritative sources that are cited in the bibliography of the article. Some experts voluntarily publish their research as open resources. For example arXiv.org houses preprints of high quality that are open to anyone to read on the web.--redcamarocruiser 02:27, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Question Two
Bold textQ2.In your opinion, should course development for education use closed or open authoring approaches? Give reasons for your viewBold text

I think the key word here is development. I think open authoring would be a great asset to the course I am working on. In taking on the idea of a course in the history of art and architecture around the world I had to deal with the idea that there was no way for me to know everything about a topic as broad and rich is this one. I will be posting my work on wikieducator as soon as I know how because I want the input. I will, at the same time keep control over the website in which the course is not growing. I think that open authoring, in this case, provides me with a team of people which I need and do not have now.

If at sometime I feel a unit is complete I will no longer want open authoring for myself and if people continue contributing it will be useful or not for people around the world.

It is my opinion that open resources should be encouraged in course development. Collaboration brings multifaceted viewpoints and makes a multidisciplinary approach possible.redcamarocruiser 02:27, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Q3.What mechanisms can be adopted to assure quality of educational content developed in Wiki environments?
I have no idea how to answer this question. The only thing I can think of is that wikieducator might have in house subject experts that they can call on. If the subject expert feels that something is incorrect then the expert should use what ever methods are usual to handle this problem. I keep in mind the idea that quality educational content is a variable which is dependent on the reader to evaluate. I do hope that wikieducator does have a lot of quality content.

To assure quality of educational content we can
 * Check the resource against known authoritative materials.
 * use the consensus of collaborators, who are continually improrving the resource, to arrive at the best version of the resource. With many people working on it, any mistakes will be seen and speedily corrected.redcamarocruiser 02:27, 15 December 2009 (UTC)