OER1128 Workshop (1 hour)
Wednesday 11 May 11.30 Breakout Room 4/4a
OERopoly: collaboration, communities and the context of academic practice
Teresa Connolly, Tina Wilson, Elpida Makryannis, Anna De Liddo & Andy Lane, The Open University
Conference Theme: Collaboration and communities
Intended audience: Anyone wishing to find out more about OER projects
Background & rationale:
This workshop aims to enable participants to investigate relationships between OER projects, Web 2.0 technologies and associated online learning communities through use of mediating artifacts within a collaborative environment. Participants will play a board game called OERopoly where ‘gaming’ provides them with a grounded and enjoyable experience of "Collective Intelligence" [1, 2, 3, 4] in action. Two versions of the OERopoly board will be available: one representing worldwide OER projects and one with a UK OER project focus that includes Academic Practice.
Main idea(s) to be explored:
Throughout the workshop different types of mediating artifacts will be used to assist participants in making informed decisions and choices around game-playing and, therefore, mediating their subsequent gaming activities and sharing of intelligence. This workshop thus exposes and explores the perceived relationships (both synergies and tensions) between these three worlds: OER projects, Web 2.0 technologies and associated online learning communities.
Mediating artifacts are broadly defined "to include instruments, signs, languages, and machines" [5]. In our context mediating artifacts include technology and community playing cards, OER project cards, pawns, dice, instructions, participants, facilitators, and the workshop format. The collaborative activity will also be guided by work undertaken with Patterns [6].
Activities participants will engage in:
1. Creating ideas: Acting and Playing
This task involves playing the OERopoly game to explore the relationships between OER, Web 2.0 technologies and Online Learning Communities. After explanation of the game rules participants will throw dice and start playing. The game will follow similar mechanical rules to Monopoly (which has influenced the design of OERopoly); but with the following underlying metaphors:
Money = Information and Knowledge of OER
"Streets", Utilities and Stations = OER Projects, OER research hot topics, and Web 2.0 Technologies
During the game participants will be asked to answer questions on OER projects, communities and technologies and to post the answers on a diagrammatic representation showing where the three worlds (OER, Web 2.0 technologies and online learning communities) converge and differ.
2. Feedback: Reflections
In the final phase of the workshop participants are requested to complete a short survey giving feedback. This enables participants to reflect on what they have learnt playing OERopoly and enables the facilitators to develop the principles for using games as a means of identifying and sharing collective intelligence.
Intended outcomes:
Participants will
Keywords: collaboration; communities; context; academic practice
References/URL:
[1] Atlee, T., Y. Benkler, et al. (2008). Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace. Oakton, Virginia, Earth Intelligence Network
[2] Buckingham Shum, S. (2008). Cohere: Towards Web 2.0 Argumentation. Proceeding of the 2008 conference on Computational Models of Argument: Proceedings of COMMA 2008. ACM, pp 97-108
[3] Levy, P. (1997) Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace. Translated from the French under the title: L'intelligence Collective: Pour une anthropologie dy cyberspace (1995) by R. Bonomo. New York, NY: Plenum.
[4] New Media Consortium (2008). Four to Five Years: Collective Intelligence. 2008 Horizon Report, in collaboration between The New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative: An EDUCAUSE Program. Available at: http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2008/ last retrieved Oct. 2009.
[5] Nardi, B.A. (1995) Studying Context: A Comparison of Activity Theory, Situated Action Models, and Distributed Cognition, chapter in Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and 
Human-Computer Interaction, MIT Press
[6] De Liddo, A. (2010). From Open Content to Open Thinking. In G. Siemens & C. Fulford (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2010 (pp. 2-11). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.