Learning the Lessons of Openness

The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement has built up a record of experience and achievements since it was formed 10 years ago as an identifiable approach to sharing online learning materials. In its initial phase, much activity was driven by ideals and interest in finding new ways to release content, with less direct research and reflection on the process. It is now important to consider the impact of OER and the types of evidence that are being generated across initiatives, organisations and individuals. Drawing on the work of OLnet (http://olnet.org) in bringing people together through fellowships, research projects and supporting collective intelligence about OER, we discuss the key challenges facing the OER movement. We go on to consider these challenges in the context of another project, Bridge to Success (http://b2s.aacc.edu), identifying the services which can support open education in the future

RE:FORM - Reimagining Education for the Future Of Redistributed Manufacturing

Manufacturing supply chains are being reshaped and redistributed by the Internet. Designers in Delhi are working with makers in Manchester, transporting bits over networks rather than boxes by container ship. We are moving to a world where software files rather than physical products are posted, with makers local to consumers fabricating products designed and developed globally. How do we educate future makers and designers for this new industrial reality of networked prototyping and manufacturing? The Open University (OU) and MAKLab have been exploring this challenge as part of the Royal College of Art’s Future Makespaces in Redistributed Manufacturing project. The OU is a distance learning institution. Providing hands-on making experience for our design students is difficult as we cannot assume our students have access to any equipment or materials, yet we recognise the importance of materiality in a design education: not just understanding the theories, but also how materials and tools perform. MAKLab specialise in providing individualised training pathways in design and digital fabrication, but are interested in exploring how to scale up that individualised educational model in partnership with educational institutions. Partnering allowed us to explore what benefits learners might gain from being involved in an online collaborative design and making process, from sketches to software models through to full scale prototypes: not only learning technical expertise but also the soft skills of negotiation, collaboration, and project management. As educators we were interested to find out how universities and makerspaces might work together to set learners a challenge that more closely resembled what they might experience in their professional lives. To address these questions, our project was underpinned by a number of research workshops and interviews to establish the context and potential challenges to be addressed, but we were agreed that our project wouldn’t stop at the theoretical stage. We would test our ideas by running a live study with participants, aiming at real measurable outcomes

A case study in online formal/informal learning: was it collaborative or cooperative learning?

Developing skills in communication and collaboration is essential in modern design education, in order to prepare students for the realities of design practice, where projects involve multidisciplinary teams, often working remotely. This paper presents a learning activity that focusses on developing communication and collaboration skills of undergraduate design students working remotely and vocational learners based in a community makerspace. Participants were drawn from these formal and informal educational settings and engaged in a design-make project framed in the context of distributed manufacturing. They were given designer or maker roles and worked at distance from each other, communicating using asynchronous online tools. Analysis of the collected data has identified a diversity of working practice across the participants, and highlighted the difficulties that result from getting students to work collaboratively, when not collocated. This paper presents and analysis of participants’ communications, with a view to identify whether they were learning collaboratively, or cooperatively. It was found that engaging participants in joint problem solving is not enough to facilitate collaboration. Instead effective collaboration depends on symmetry within the roles of participants and willingness to share expertise through dialogue. Designing learning activities to overcome the challenges that these factors raise is a difficult task, and the research reported here provides some valuable insight

Online distributed prototyping through a university-makerspace collaboration

Distance based design education is limited in its ability to support learners’ exploration of tangible aspects of design processes. However this mode of learning trains students in working in online environments. Makerspaces offer training in physical aspects of making and designing but with a focus on informal teaching of instrumental skills. We have investigated the feasibility of bridging these environments to offer a more rounded educational experience that could prepare students for future employment in emerging redistributed manufacturing industries. Our pilot study paired design students at The Open University with maker learners at MAKLab, a community makerspace. Teams communicated via an online environment, to evolve design concepts from sketches and CAD models to fabrication of a full scale prototype chair, repeated in three iterations. Participants experienced challenges in cross disciplinary communication and collaboration across the different learning cultures mediated solely by the internet, but learners noted they had gained insight into a range of processes, and the pilot showed potential as a model for future university-makerspace collaborations

Communication is not collaboration: observations from a case study in collaborative learning

This paper presents a case study that focusses on developing communication and collaboration skills of undergraduate design students studying at a distance, and vocational learners based in a community maker-space. Participants were drawn from these formal and informal educational settings and engaged in a project framed in the context of distributed manufacturing, with designers working at a distance from the makers, whilst communicating using asynchronous online tools. Early analysis of the collected data has identified a diversity of working practice across the participants, and highlighted a disjunction between communication and collaboration. Encouraging learners to communicate is not the same as encouraging collaboration. Instead effective collaboration depends on sharing expertise through dialogue