I am doing a lunch and learn session on wikis today, so slightly expanding the scope of my show-and-tell at yesterday’s meeting. But mostly, just taking the time to cover the material at a less frantic pace, and allow for more discussion…
Why an open TRU Wiki?
I have been fortunate to be part of two Consejo Asesor processes for the Spanish-language Horizon Report. English language report here.
Advisory councils of various reports worked together to identify “metatrends” for the Report’s 10th Anniversary. Among them:
“The world of work is increasingly global and increasingly collaborative.”
“People expect to work, learn, socialize, and play whenever and wherever they want to.”
Openness — concepts like open content, open data, and open resources, along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information — is moving from a trend to a value for much of the world.
Public higher education is facing a sustained threat from economic, political, social and cultural shifts.
Part of that is a disruption that may be driven by developments in technology. (Or maybe not.) “Essentially, this is the Internet happening to education”, says George Siemens.
I would add that it is impossible to overstate the importance of participation, perhaps best illustrated by this AP photo of Barack Obama from the summer of 2008.
The UBC Wiki:
- The efficiencies in having our guides openly available and easily editable probably justifies investment in the wiki
- Student collaborative writing space, creating public resources
- Openness as a practice, not as a product – Math 105
- But wait, that’s not on the wiki — yes it is.
Embed code, multiple context reuse:
- Wiki page – to Library page, to Student Info Site, to a LMS…
- Wiki Books
- ePub
- fast, cheap, and out of control…
- augments traditional literacy with new media literacy
- results in genuinely useful public knowledge resources (perhaps the essence of open education resources)
- students will respond to tasks that are authentic
Rather than ask, “how is the web changing higher education?”, let’s think about how higher education can shape the web.
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