Education is going to have to change with the times - so we are told - in order to keep pace with the changes in attitude, attention, and the availability of knowledge that have been wrought by the spread of affordable internet access (at least, in what used to be called “the developed world”…).
So this blog represents something of an experiment in the production and delivery of online educational materials…
The subject matter - as I hope you’ve realised from the title of the blog - is digital media. In particular, we’ll be focusing on what goes into the design, production and delivery of computer games and those interactive media that we might describe as games for want of a better phrase.
The inspiration behind the approach - creating educational materials by blogging them - is twofold:
- firstly, the Open University Relevant Knowledge programme, which delivers course materials in part via the web, using web pages that are each about the length of a blog post…
- secondly, the Open University’s OpenLearn website, which makes content available via RSS feeds.
Given that the OU is making materials available that look like they could have been delivered via a blog, I thought I’d close the loop - and doodle the production of some example materials by actually blogging them…
The style and tone of the content may be a little more informal than current OU materials, and there be rather more cross referencing and outlinking than is typical, but this is a blog, right?
I guess I need some disclaimers, too: this isn’t an OU course, and you can’t get academic credit by ’studying’ it (at least, not unless there are hundreds of being clamouring to be assessed on what I post here!)…
…but I will try to write posts as if it was OU material I was producing, at least in a draft form, and at an educational level at or around foundation undergraduate level…
…and who knows, some of the content may make it into an OU course one day!
If you want to learn, or play along, you’re most welcome. I’ll try to keep up with any comments, though I’m going to moderate them, at least at first.
If a community does star build up around the materials, then I’ll try to write posts in a responsive, conversation developing way - after all, why should it be solely down to me to set the direction of the uncourse;-)
I do have a set of things I want to try to cover though, and I will try to stay loosely on topic…;-)
– Tony Hirst
Hi - I don’t tune in to this stuff but since I bumped into you online, I wanted to add one little anecdote. I had a really memorable interaction with Randy Hinrichs and Anoop Gupta of Microsoft Research a few years ago when we (KMi) proposed some fairly radical course environment/production/experiment ideas to them. One of their responses was, “COURSE?” “Why are you so ‘COURSE’-centric?” At first glance, it seems like much too cavalier a response, and “courses” are critical to the way universities work. Hey, I’m taking a “course” right now… but, well… you get my drift…
aw, shucks… Andy Fairweather-Low is on Jools Holland right now, so I’m gonna stop there… ;-) “Who IS that masked man?”
I love the new blogging diggs Tony. I am very interested to see how this works for, not to mention the unbelievable improvements to this kind of educational publishing platform you;ll figure out along the way :)