A Comparative Study Between FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) Communities and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)

Work in Progress
PhD Thesis
Working Title: A Comparative Study Between FLOSS (Free/Libre

Open Source Software) Communities and Higher Education
Institutions (HEIs)
Extract of Chapters 1, 6 and 7
Author: Andreas Meiszner
Institute of Educational Technologies (IET)
The Open University, UK
Version 090130_1
Contact: A.Meiszner@open.ac.uk
Table of Content
ABSTRACT
1 RESEARCH RATIONALE AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Recent trends: Open Educational Resources & Open courses
1.2.1 The Open Educational Resource (OER) movement
1.2.2 The recent emergence of open courses
1.3 Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities as a learning environment and ecosystem
1.4 Objectives of this work
1.5 Research questions
1.6 Contribution of the work
1.7 Research Outline
2 FLOSS COMMUNITIES AS A LEARNING ENVIRONMENT & ECOSYSTEM
2.1 Introduction
2.2 FLOSS communities and their tools
2.3 Roles and responsibilities of FLOSS community members
2.4 FLOSS from an Educational Perspective
2.4.1 Learning and Knowledge Creation
2.4.2 Re-experience and Re-use
2.5 Learning Resources and Content in FLOSS
2.6 The FLOSS Support System
2.7 Motivations of FLOSS community members
2.8 The role of knowledge broker
2.9 Modularity as a way to reduce complexity
2.10 Summary of key characteristics of FLOSS communities
3 LEARNING IN FLOSS AND ASSOCIATED PEDAGOGIES
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Learning in FLOSS and associated pedagogies
3.3 Self-Studying
3.4 Cooperative learning in a networked environment
3.5 Problem, case, project and inquiry based learning
3.5.1 Problem based learning
3.5.2 Case based learning
3.5.3 Project-based learning
3.5.4 Inquiry based learning
3.6 Reflective practice
3.7 Meritocracy vs. formal assessment
3.8 Learning materials in FLOSS vs. higher education
3.9 FLOSS key characteristics and differences to higher education
3.10 Summary
4 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK: META-DESIGN & COURSES AS SEEDS
4.1 Meta-design
4.2 Courses as seeds
4.3 Lessons learnt from initial pilots at University of Colorado, Boulder – US
4.4 Summary
5 METHODOLOGY
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Research in FLOSS
5.2.1 Quantitative Research Methods
5.2.2 Qualitative Research Methods
5.3 Research workplan & methods
5.4 The research methods
5.4.1 Reflective Practice
5.4.2 Action Research
5.4.3 Participatory Action Research
5.4.4 Case Studies Research
5.5 Data collection Methods
5.5.1 (Focus Group) Interviews
5.5.2 Recorded conversations & created artifacts
6 FLOSS TYPE CASES WITHIN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Case study 1 - University of Washington Bothell, US
6.2.1 Course Facts
6.2.2 Course Description:
6.2.3 Course particularities
6.2.4 Similarities to FLOSS case
6.2.5 Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case
6.2.6 Possible areas of improvement
6.3 Case study 2 - Utopia Discovery / ADM - Douglas County School District, US
6.3.1 Course Facts
6.3.2 Course description
6.4 Case study 3 - Dept. of Informatics, Aristotle University, Greece
6.4.1 Course Facts
6.5 Case study 4 - OpenEd syllabus, Utah State University, United States
6.5.1 Course Facts
6.6 Case study 5 - Connectivism Course, University of Manitoba, CA (to be done)
6.7 Case study 6 - St. Cloud State University Minnesota, US
6.7.1 Course Facts
6.8 Conclusion
6.8.1 Comparison against key characteristics of FLOSS as a learning environment
6.8.2 Comparison against key characteristics of learning in FLOSS
7 POSSIBLE ADOPTION OF FLOSS APPROACHES IN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS
7.1 Introduction
7.2 FLOSS key characteristics deemed to be desirable
7.3 ‘Inside’, ‘Outside’ or ‘Hybrid’ approach
7.3.1 Inside approach
7.3.2 Outside approach
7.3.3 Hybrid approach
7.4 Involved roles: Educators, students, free learners & practitioners
7.5 Comparative overview of Inside, Outside and Hybrid approach
7.6 Questions related to the application of such approaches, in particular the hybrid approach
7.7 Conclusion
8 SET OF EXPERIMENTAL APPLICATION OF FLOSS TYPE APPROACHES
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Development of an experimental FLOSS type learning environment
8.2.1 Focus group workshops on adoption possibilities and recommendations
8.2.2 Implementation guidelines to be considered
8.3 The NetGeners.Net trial (04/08 to 07/08)
8.4 Software Engineering at Aristotle University (10/08 to 02/09)
8.4.1 Background
8.5 Summary
9 RESEARCH FINDINGS
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Qualitative findings
9.2.1 Stakeholders’ Surveys
9.2.2 Observation of learners’ activities
9.2.3 Review of artifacts created
9.3 Quantitative findings
9.4 Summary
10 CONCLUSIONS
10.1 Introduction
10.2 The research findings
10.3 The contributions of the study
10.3.1 The theoretical-methodological contribution
10.3.2 The applied contribution
10.4 The limitations of the study
10.5 Suggestions for further research
10.6 Conclusion
11 REFERENCES
1 Research rationale and research questions
1.1 Introduction
Web 2.0 tools and techniques have developed a dynamic of their own, creating many
good examples of how to take advantage of the web to support individual and collective
learning, providing some evidence about the opportunities provided for the educational
landscape.
There is an ever growing number of free and open informal learning spaces where
students and free learner outside of formal educational settings come together unfolding
the opportunity the web provides for collaborative learning and knowledge production.
The Web 2.0 has the potential to blur the boundaries between formal and informal
education, providing all learners with a richer learning experience and additionally
allows for the establishment of continuous and evolutionary growing educational
communities (Bacon & Dillon 2006, Schmidt 2007, Schmidt & Surman 2007, Staring
2005). It allows for new ways of organizing learning embedding students’ activities
within such open participatory learning ecosystems, to make students’ learning
processes and outcomes visible, to connect content and discourse, and to preserve all of
this as learning resources for future learners. This is to say that future learners would be
enabled to benefit from earlier achievements and build upon them, instead of starting
from scratch. Such Web 2.0 ecosystems could allow learners to make use of the
multitude of freely available (through the Internet) good content from e.g. educational
institutions, companies, or individuals brought into these ecosystems by individuals or
institutions as a part of their learning activities and interactions.
The Web 2.0 provides the potential of combining all kinds of channels through which
knowledge can be changed and shared, from pure text to interactive multimedia
applications, allowing participants’ to develop critical thinking and analytical skills on
how to engage within those environments and how to take advantage of the web for
their personal learning needs (Brown & Adler 2008, Weller & Meiszner 2008).
However, despite all of the potential the Web 2.0 provides higher education still has
adapted very little in response to them (Wiley 2006) with graduate education often not
employing “the power of new media in visionary or effective ways” (Derry, S. J., &
Fischer, G. 2007). Albeit a growing number of initiatives at higher educational level
that aims at exploring the opportunities the Web 2.0 provides, at institutional level as
well as on a course level, higher education structures are still largely ‘analogue’,
‘closed’, ‘tethered’, ‘isolated’, ‘generic’ and ‘made for consumption’ (Wiley 2006).
This is in sharp contrast to the learning environments the Web 2.0 provides, which are
‘digital’, ‘open’, ‘mobile’, ‘connected’, ‘personal’ and ‘driven by participation’ (Wiley
2006).
Students are inside a classroom (tethered to a place), using textbooks and handouts (printed
materials), they must pay tuition and register to attend (the experience is closed), talking during
class or working with others outside of class is generally discouraged (each student is isolated
though surrounded by peers), each student receives exactly the same instruction as each of her
classmates (the information presented is generic), and students are students and do not
participate in the teaching process (they are consumers). (Wiley 2006)
On the positive side, a vast and constant move towards online courses is fostering a
change from ‘analogue’ to ‘digital’ and from ‘tethered’ to ‘mobile’ (Wiley 2006), with
the remaining four desirable characteristics ‘open’, ‘connected’, ‘personal’ and ‘driven
by participation’ being more and more addressed as following described.
1.2 Recent trends: Open Educational Resources & Open courses
During the past years there has been a growing trend within traditional education to
‘open up’. The case of MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative1 marked the start of the Open
Educational Resource movement, a movement largely strategically driven on
institutional levels. With this movement good quality tools and educational materials
were made freely available to educators and learners throughout the globe.
More recently one can observe a further type of openness within the educational
domain, an openness where formally enrolled students engage with their peers at the
Web 2.0, resulting to an ever blurring border between the formal and the informal and
providing the potential of taking further advantage of the opportunities the participatory
Web 2.0 provides. Those attempts, unlike the OER case, seem to be more driven by
individuals on a course level, but not be strategically addressed at the institutional level.
1.2.1 The Open Educational Resource (OER) movement

The Open Educational Resource (OER) movement has emerged as what might be seen
as an alternative to traditional educational environments, aiming at opening the door to
the next generation of higher education provision.
The current OER movement is tackling maybe one of the most crucial aspects for
education: the free and open access to educational resources being released under a
commons license and thus the possibility to re-use those resources and to adapt them.
(Schmidt & Surman 2007)
However, the OER movement appears to largely follow traditional educational
paradigms using experts’ production and development models, and seeing the learner as
a passive consumer, or at least leaving him with this role. This can be seen for example
by the traditional expert production model it applies that results in the fact that content
and learning activities / processes (discourse) remain disconnected and therefore not
personal (Meiszner, Glott & Sowe, 2008b).
Following Wiley’s (2006) 6 characteristics the OER movement therefore addresses a
further point relevant to a changing educational landscape: ‘Open’, yet leaving another
3 to be addressed: ‘connected’, ‘personal’ and ‘driven by participation’.
1.2.2 The recent emergence of open courses

More recently one can observe a further type of openness within the educational domain
that might be broadly characterized as ‘open courses’. Those attempts, unlike the OER
case, seem to be mainly driven on an individual educators’ level, but not be strategically
addressed at the institutional level.
Those open courses apply, intentionally or on purpose, a number of principles that are
inherent to the web 2.0 therefore addressing the remaining three points of Wiley’s
(2006) 6 characteristics: ‘connected’, ‘personal’ and ‘driven by participation’.
Despite the lack of thorough research in this domain and their early stages, those open
courses seem to experiment with a range of different educational approaches, tend to
promote different levels of openness, incorporate different sets of free and open tools,
and - to a varying degree – mix the formal with the informal bringing together the
1
http://ocw.mit.edu/
different stakeholders to be found at the web. What all of those attempts seem to have in
common however is to experiment in a more unconventional way and with less
traditional educational restrictions with the opportunities the participatory web 2.0
provides.
The emergence of the OER move and the growing number of experimental open
courses might have the potential to develop new educational structures that would meet
all of the 6 characteristics that Wiley (2006)describes, but being still at an initial stage it
might be beneficial to have a closer look at well established and mature learning
systems to be found at the web, to understand how they work and which of their
principles might be taken forward to educational settings, and what the application
scenarios are.
1.3 Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities as a learning

environment and ecosystem
Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities are probably the best-known
examples of well established and mature learning ecosystems to be found at the Web
and there is an ever growing number of research. Such research has been looking at
FLOSS from different perspectives, such as community of practice / community of
learner perspective (Wenger 1998; Pór 2004, Stürmer 2005), from the software
development perspective, (Scacchi 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006a, 2006b), from the
knowledge building perspective (Hemetsberger & Reinhardt 2004, 2006; Hemetsberger
& Reinhardt 2006; Hemetsberger 2006), a technological community perspective (Pór
2004; Meiszner 2007), or from a conceptual and educational perspective (de Paula et al.
2001; Fischer & Sugimoto 2006, Fischer 2007; Scharff 2002; Staring 2005; Bacon &
Dillon 2006).
FLOSS communities provide a good example on virtual online learning environments
that foster in example collaborative content creation, re-use and peer review and
community based support systems. The FLOSS case therefore potentially provides us
with insights in how to make use of ICT and the Web 2.0, on the way members create
the content, the motivation why they do this and they way they engage with each other
on content development and support.
The FLOSS model shows how users can become active ‘resource’ creators, how
learning processes can be made visible and can benefit other learners, how to
successfully establish and maintain user support systems, and ultimately how all of this
can be re-used and freely maintained. (Glott et al. 2007, Weller & Meiszner 2008)
The FLOSS-type of learning is not radically new and unrelated to the solid pedagogic
framework that has been established for new types of learning, as a response to the
shortcomings of traditional educational systems. From a pedagogical perspective
learning in FLOSS is characterized by self-studying, project-based learning, problem-
based learning, inquiry-based learning, collaborative learning, reflective practice or
social learning. It is not assumed that those pedagogies were deliberately set out, but
rather that due to the structure, approach and governance of FLOSS communities
certain pedagogies have emerged (Glott et al. 2007, Weller & Meiszner 2008). FLOSS
appears not as a contradiction to such pedagogies but in many respects as a best practice
case of the implementation of their principles and goals.
The FLOSS case therefore might be a good example on how the 6 desirable
characteristics as outlined by Wiley (2006) can be applied within a Web 2.0 educational
world.
1.4 Objectives of this work

The objective of the work is to examine and understand how FLOSS communities
function as a learning environment and ecosystem, to identify and formulate crucial
characteristics and to draw up ways on how some of those principles might be leveraged
to educational settings.
After having thoroughly reviewed FLOSS communities as a learning environment and
ecosystem it is than aimed to identify similar cases within formal educational settings
and to evaluate how they work out in comparison to the FLOSS cases, to identify the
variations between those cases and the FLOSS case and to draw up possible impacts of
such variations.
With the results obtained of the first two steps it is than intended to develop application
models for such a FLOSS type learning ecosystem taking into account the lessons learnt
from the similar cases within educational settings.
At a fourth step an experimental FLOSS type learning environment will be developed
based upon those application models, to be subsequently tested to compare the
outcomes of the test against initial assumptions and expectations.
For the development of such an experimental learning environment based on FLOSS
approaches the Meta-design and its underlying courses as seed process model (de Paula
et al. 2001; Fischer & Sugimoto 2006, Fischer 2007) will serve as a generic conceptual
framework as detailed at chapter four.
1.5 Research questions

The research questions of this work relate to three levels: the theoretical-
methodological, the descriptive-analytical and the applied level
Research questions at the theoretical-methodological level include:
• What are the application models of FLOSS type approaches within an
educational scenario?
• How does the Meta-design and its underlying courses as seed process model
support the initiation of a FLOSS type learning environment?
Research questions at the descriptive-analytical level include:
• Which are the key characteristics of FLOSS communities as a learning
environment and learning ecosystem?
• In which way are those key characteristics different to similar cases within
educational settings and what might be the impact of those differences?
• Which are the principles of FLOSS communities that have been applied within
those FLOSS type approaches and how have they worked out?
• Which are the principles of FLOSS communities that have not been applied
within those FLOSS type approaches and what might be the reason or impact?
Research questions at the applied level include:
• What are the requirements for a learning environment that is build upon such
FLOSS type approaches?
• How does such an open learning environment works in practice that was (1)
built upon the developed application models, that (2) considers and addresses
FLOSS type characteristics and that was (3) implemented following the Meta-
design and its underlying courses as seed process model?
1.6 Contribution of the work

It is hoped that the results of this work will contribute at the three levels: the theoretical-
methodological, the descriptive-analytical and the applied level
At the theoretical-methodological level; by developing application models of FLOSS
type approaches within an educational scenario and by improving the understanding
about the suitability of Meta-design and its underlying courses as seed process model
for the implementation of such models.
At the descriptive-analytical level; by examining how FLOSS communities work as
learning environments through analysis and characterization of the underlying
principles, structures and processes. This would be complemented by a review of
FLOSS type cases within educational settings to identify and evaluate similar elements
and approaches and how they worked out within educational settings.
At the applied: level; by building up an experimental open learning environment based
upon (1) the developed application models, that (2) considers and addresses FLOSS
type characteristics and that was (3) implemented following the Meta-design and its
underlying courses as seed process model.
1.7 Research Outline

This first chapter provided information about the rationale of the work and the research
to be carried out.
Chapter 2 will examine how FLOSS communities work as a learning environment and
ecosystem. This will be done through an in depth review of the literature and supported
by some own data collection on underlying technologies and tools.
Chapter 3 is looking on the individual aspect of learning in FLOSS, which is – again –
based on an in depth review of the literature.
Chapter 4 will cover the conceptual framework for this work, by explaining the
functioning, objectives and aims of Meta-design and the courses as seeds process
model, which will serve as the fundament for the development and experimental testing
of an FLOSS type learning environment (chapter 8).
Chapter 5 is detailing the methodological framework of this work and the
methodologies selected.
At chapter 6 this work will present a number of case studies on approaches at a course
level within educational settings that appear to be in some ways similar to FLOSS,
including an outline of the characteristics of such cases, the initial lessons learnt, and
also in which way they appear to be different to the FLOSS case and what the
implications of such differences might be.
Chapter 7 will than draw up application models on how FLOSS type approaches might
be applied within an educational scenario and what are the burdens to be overcome.
Chapter 8 will provide an overview of a set of experimental applications of FLOSS type
approaches.
The overall finding of this work will be subject to chapter 9, presenting the main
findings; with chapter 10 providing an overall conclusion, recommendations and further
research suggestions.
6 FLOSS type cases within educational settings
6.1 Introduction
In this section a number of different case studies are provided which demonstrate how
FLOSS type approaches have been used on a course level within educational settings,
be it intentionally or on purpose1. For each case the similarities and variances to the
FLOSS case will be analyzed, followed by their possible impacts.
6.2 Case study 1 - University of Washington Bothell, US

6.2.1 Course Facts
Course area: Environmental: History and Globalization; Conservation and Sustainable
Development
Type of community: Higher education
Principle type of user: Student, general audience
Course Environment: Wikis (Wikipedia)
Raw format cases study & sources URL:
http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=17
7&Itemid=116

This case study features two courses that were given by Martha Groom2 involving
Wikipedia3. The two courses were (Environmental) History and Globalization (BIS303,
Autumn 2006) and Conservation and Sustainable Development (BIS 459, Spring 2007).
As part of the courses students were given an assignment and supposed to research
Wikipedia and write articles for submission.
Following Groom, the structure of the traditional term paper can limit its educational
value. To make the students’ assignment more meaningful, the students at the two
courses published their papers in Wikipedia.
The reasoning of using Wikipedia for students’ term paper assignments were driven by
the following questions:
• How to make a term paper a larger learning experience (rather than a limited
academic exercise)
• How to provide authentic peer review
• How to connect and engage an external community
• How to make a term paper benefit a wider community
• How to motivate students to do their best work
• How to have students think more deeply about the issue of creating knowledge
o Go beyond just thinking about the paper topic
1
The original case studies, including further references and raw information are online available at:
http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=30&Itemid=116
2
See also: http://www.bothell.washington.edu/IAS/faculty/mgroom.xhtml
3
URL: http://wikipedia.org
The result of those two pilot courses showed that with one exception, students in both
courses felt this was a valuable experience, superior to the typical term paper
Regarding the students’ contributions 1 article was deleted within 24 hours of posting,
another 4 articles were deleted after discussion, material merged into existing articles,
and intervention was required for 1 article. Also some discussion comments from
Wikipedia community were delivered rudely, as also sometimes is the case within
FLOSS.
Overall however there was no persistent difficulties in navigating Wikipedia or in
publication to Wikipedia for any student
Not all went out just perfect and some areas of improvement concerned:
• Too much choice led to some poor postings (which were deleted)
• Timing -- Publishing once at the end of course
o May be better to publish in stages
o Posting deadline with at least one week left to course
• Students needed extra guidance to create high quality articles in encyclopedia
style
• More instructor time required to shepherd students through entire process
What students said:
• “This assignment felt so Real! I had not thought that anything I wrote was worth
others reading before, but now I think what I contributed was useful, and I’m
glad other people can gain from my research.”
• “Although I was really scared by this assignment, I really appreciate a chance
to write something that might help someone else beyond myself.”

Course activities
For the first course in autumn 2006 students were given a term paper assignment with
the objective to large edit or to write a new Wikipedia article with a minimum of 1500
words. During the second course in spring 2007 the objective was for students to create
a wikipedia article or sub-article as a collaborative group work among students.
The improvement from the first to the second pilot was a more specific guidance and
stricter oversight on selection of projects and to focus on collaborative projects that
allowed greater student oversight.
Involved content
The content consisted of instructional materials, general readings and reviewing one of
the Wikipedia contributions4, that were made as part of the course in autumn 2006, the
4
The contribution in question can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_during_the_Roman_period
content / information used to write the Wikipedia article consisted of printed literature
and web sources, such as BBC5 or Annual Reviews6.
Purpose content was used / developed for

The reason to let students contribute to Wikipedia was to provide some meaning to the
college-level term paper, which typically has an audience of one (the professor) before
ending its career in a recycling bin. Groom hoped that assigning students the task of
creating a Wikipedia entry would make the effort more meaningful, since students were
writing for what might be a wider audience and with the intention of providing a general
public benefit. She also suggested that the project would be a good introduction to the
academic world, which focuses on the production and dissemination of knowledge.
The motivation for letting students engage at wikipedia and contributing to it was:
• Writing a Wikipedia article can be a more sophisticated learning experience:
• Enhances quality of research and writing
• Enhances student understanding of the research process
• Highlights importance of using verifiable and credible sources
• Increases pride in work
• Encourages collaborative model of knowledge creation
Thus with students engaging at Wikipedia they gained a perspective on the value of
credible sources, and complete citations. Also peer review became a more purposeful
effort; with good critiques being more highly valued than bad ones.
The results of the two courses also showed that students invested more in their work,
felt greater ownership, and experienced greater returns for their efforts with the result of
generally better written Wikipedia contributions than the typical term papers.
Involved stakeholders
Part of the nature of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit the content from someone else
and so was the case for the contributions of the students.
Getting familiar with the fact that content is being edited on the fly, by people one never
met before, and getting used to constant revisions by regular contributors was a part of
the experience. Students posting material to the site would also learn to stop viewing
their work as ‘sacrosanct.’
But this Wikipedia characteristic of peer editing also led to a further challenge with
some Wikipedia editors didn’t find some of the students’ articles relevant enough to
warrant their own topics; meanwhile other contributions (see image XXX7) were seen to
be of sufficient quality and relevance.
5
URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk
6
URL: http://www.annualreviews.org
7
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communal_Wildlife_Conservancies_in_Namibia
Image 1 – Example of good quality feedback
Some students’ contributions were either deleted or merged (see image XXX 8) with
existing articles. That reality is in part a function of Wikipedia’s vast breadth, which
already covers virtually any topic in which there is sufficient public knowledge.
Image 2 – Example of insufficient quality feedback
Inclusivity
Access
As common for Wikipedia all content is publicly available and therefore no one
Contribution
As common for Wikipedia all content can be edited.
Student roles
During the course students were not only acting as learner, but also adopted roles such
as active investigator and researcher (image XXX9) , as editor (image XXX10), or
collaborator with peers (image XXX11).
8
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Gralo#Renewable_energy_in_Africa
9
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:MCoca
10
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_Wildlife_Conservancies_in_Namibia
11
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Bracine
Image 3 – Example for students’ as a researcher
Image 4 – Example for students’ as an editor
Image 5 – Example for students as acting as peers
Use of prior learning

Due to the nature of the class work (writing a term paper) prior learning outcomes that
could be used seemed to be limited to resources created by Wikipedia users that help
contributors to learn how to compile a professional Wikipedia article and how to use the
involved technology. Additionally, students have to provide a brief review of their
ongoing’ discourse at the projects, which potentially could be of use for future learners.
Connection to further content
Yes, as common for Wikipedia.
Involves peer-review
Peer review is one of the characteristics of Wikipedia and therefore also student
contributions were reviewed by classmates and others (image XXX12).
Image 6 – Revision history of students’ contribution
Learner assessment
Students work was assessed as well by Wikipedia users, as it was on a class level to
officially grade the students’ work (see also image XXX above).
For the first course in autumn 2006 60% of the course grade was based upon the
students’ work at Wikipedia, and for the second course in spring 2007 40% course
grade.
The students work within Wikipedia was assessed by the criteria as illustrated at the
image below.
12
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Renewable_energy_in_Africa&action=history
Existent support system
Support is provided in class by the teacher and through one-on-one help and through the
Wikipedia community.
Since students seemed to be new to Wikipedia they initially needed extra help shifting
voice from ‘essay’ to ‘encyclopedia entry’. Thus initial support focused on the
following aspects:
• Technology issues
o Requires some wiki markup language
o Understanding Wikipedia components
History
Revisions
Discussion forums
Creating accounts
• Restrictions for new accounts
• Technology solutions
o Students had to complete a tutorial at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial
Sandbox provides practice spaces
o In-class training session and handouts
o One-on-one help
• Copyright
• Referencing
• Linking to internal and external sources
• Finding topics to add to Wikipedia

Looking at the similarities to FLOSS case one must take into account the environment
these pilots took place at: Wikipedia. Wikipedia itself might be one of the closest
examples of a successful FLOSS type project, but maybe not of a FLOSS type learning
environment. Similarities to FLOS start with cultural manifestations and go up to the
collaborative production process.
Therefore we initially will briefly describe the similarities between Wikipedia and the
FLOSS model, before looking separately at the pilot courses from Washington Bothell.
As for the FLOSS case Wikipedia stands for some freedoms, like:
• Freedom to access information from the commons
• Freedom to analyse and edit the information
• Freedom to co-operate
• Freedom to synthesis new information and contribute it to the commons
The most obvious link between Wikipedia and the FLOSS model might lays in the
commons-based peer production (Benkler 2002) model that both follow. Development
is tracked through versioning systems allowing users to understand what changed over
time and also why it changed, with discussions on changes being displayed at a separate
discussion space. Though having some hierarchies in place Wikipedia explicitly invites
newcomers to become active participants, a trend that can be also seen at the web at
large but also in educational approaches.
The case of Washington Bothell shows a blended type of learning environment, with
students’ engagement within the classroom and within Wikipedia. This is something
one can also find within FLOSS, e.g. the Ubuntu local teams or the Ubuntu developer
meetings, where participants meet up not only at the web, but also in the real world.

Unlike FLOSS projects Wikipedia uses a quite centralized and even more basic
environment. FLOSS environments13 are on the other hand dispersing environments
where members engage at various spaces and that involve a large set of communication
and collaboration tools. Wikipedia on the other hands attempts to centralize all
communication and collaboration on its wiki space.
Though working on a Wikipedia article might take part as a form of collaborative
project based work, and might involves some problem solving tasks, it can’t be
compared with its FLOSS counterparts. On the one hand FLOSS projects do have
typically a roadmap, a feature list that is partly derived from users’ needs and feedback,
and established teams that are assigned to a broad range of tasks and sub-projects. On
the other hand ‘solving problems’ is a driving force within FLOSS with solved
problems being an important learning resource (see also the FLOSS support model), and
13
A illustrating presentation on FLOSS environments is provided at:
http://www.slideshare.net/andreasmeiszner/floss-as-a-learning-environment
being an important part for product requirement definition process, which ultimately
leads to a continuous improvement cycle.
Linked to this; a major difference to FLOSS is the availability of a (learner) support
system. Though Wikipedia has a versioning system and discussion pages, much of the
collaborative nature that (usually) forum based FLOSS support system (section 2.6)
characterise is absent in Wikipedia, or takes place outside of this environment and is
therefore ‘lost’. Users at Wikipedia either engage at Wikipedia to retrieve information
or to submit information, but they do not engage with its content as part of their learning
process at Wikipedia as it is the case within FLOSS. Thus the type of re-experience
(section 2.4) of other participants’ learning processes and re-use (section 2.4) of content
that can be seen in FLOSS is not present in the same way at Wikipedia. Comparing
Wikipedia content with FLOSS code only probably leads to the same type of re-use
within both: Wikipedia and FLOSS. However, once looking at e.g. the user support
system, including user postings, user compiled how-to guides, etc, Wikipedia is quite
different to FLOSS
One also does not find, likely to be as a consequence of the foregoing facts, the same
type of motivations (section 2.7) to contribute to Wikipedia, nor is it a common
characteristic that peers helping peers to solve a respective problem.
For the concrete case of the Washington Bothell pilot, the underlying environment and
activities might be illustrated as shown at image XXX.
Image 7 – Washington Bothell learning environments

To make students’ projects not only a useful contribution to Wikipedia, but also to help
future students within their learning process and to provide them with continuous
updated and growing learning resources it could be beneficial to run this course within a
more integrate environment (see also inside / outside approach) and to establish a
learning community, which consists of course students, students from other institutions
and free learners.
Within such an integrated environment it might also be considered to give students the
option of building upon existing projects, or if preferred to create their own projects, or
to work on project extensions.
To foster a certain degree of continuity and growth the usage of a well known and
frequented space like Wikipedia, or maybe Wikiversity the educational arm of it, is a
good starting point. Due to the large number of visitors and contributors this might also
help to bring in ‘old foxes’ (e.g. free learner) into this learning environment and to
provide some kind of FLOSS type support and guidance.
To bypass the communication limitation of wikis such an integrated environment might
also uses additional collaboration spaces, like forums, or web based spaces as provided
by Google (e.g. Google groups & docs). Using such tools might also be a way to make
learning processes visible and to record them14, so that they are of use for future
students.
6.3 Case study 2 - Utopia Discovery / ADM - Douglas County School

District, US
6.3.1 Course Facts
Course area: Citizenship, social studies, futurology (students create a vision of a future
society)
Type of community: K12
Principle type of user: K12 student, general audience
Course Environment: Web based tools consisting of free / open source software,
including wikis, blogs, calendars, forums, tags, guides, manuals, demos & use cases
(knowledge base)
9&Itemid=116
6.3.2 Course description

The Discovery Utopias Project15 course is modelled as an Authentic Learning
Environment16 that asks students to create products and learn processes with real
purposes and a real audience. Purposes outside of getting a grade and pleasing the
teacher increase ownership of learning. Audiences larger than just a singular classroom
increase achievement and metacognition. The Six Strings of authentic learning describe
Authentic Learning as a Contextual, Connected, Collaborative, Change-Directed,
Conversational, and Continuous environment17. This means that teachers (should) create
14
For a illustration on the topic please see also: http://www.slideshare.net/andreasmeiszner/learning-
resources-in-floss
15
URL: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com
16
See also:
http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=161&Itemid=116
17
See also: http://yongesonne.edublogs.org/files/2007/11/authentic-learning.pdf and
http://academyofdiscovery.wikispaces.com/Proposal
activities, assignments, and assessments based upon the idea that all learning can and
should last longer than the course.
The course applies the Academy of Discovery Model (ADM) that is built upon
collaboration and connectivity, all major software and resources are based upon open-
source and Creative-Commons platforms. This means that all of the connections made
with experts, all of the collaboration with classmates, and all of the information
resources can be accessed virtually for free. By teaching students to use and improve
upon existing free resources, the ADM teaches them that learning is an open and
collaborative process.
The Academy of Discovery Model creates a culture of learning that will not fit into the
traditional classroom. The ADM does not assume that by throwing technology at
students, learning will occur. It systematically works to ensure that students own their
learning by making it valuable and relevant to their lives, thus incentivising the learning
process by intrinsic means.

Course activities
Each year, the class creates multiple visions of a perfect society. This is to say that each
student creates his own project; expressing and describing his view of how the world
should be. At the year 2007 the students are, unlike at prior years, going to create a
pluralistic vision of perfection. They will be using a wiki space (image XXX18) to
answer all of the great questions of society (What is the role of government, What is the
responsibility of the individual, etc.) and come to a collaborative consensus about what
a society truly needs in order to run smoothly.
18
Source: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com
Image 8 – Utopia Discovery Course Space
The students are supposed to follow a predefined course outline and:
• Use the discussion tab in order to debate their ideas and the history tab to see the
evolution of their ideas.
• Embed media to show their concepts in different ways.
• Link to one another, creating a web of ideas.
• Add pages explaining their thoughts, coming together and splitting from one
another at times.
• Adhere to the Discovery Blogging Rules19, and the rules set out by themselves
in their perfect societies.
• Transform the Utopia Template into a working society of their own creation
using multiple types of text.
During the course students are supposed to acquire skills within the four following
interdisciplinary principles of ADM, allowing them to pursue learning that they see as
benefiting their own lives:
• Real literacy has a real purpose and a real audience.
• All history has a context.
• Math, logic, and problem-solving are fundamental to every-day experiences.
• Observing and learning about how the world works is a hands-on process.
19
See also : http://discovery0607.wikispaces.com/Discovery+Blogging+Rules
These principles ensure an authentic classroom environment filled with student
ownership and engagement. Instruction focuses upon project-based learning with a
constructivist base, in turn creating a platform for interdisciplinary study and thematic
exploration. Basic skills are more deeply understood because students can see their
relevance, and higher-order thinking skills are enhanced because teachers use the
methods of inquiry.
Involved content
Content consists of instructional materials, freely available content at the web and prior
students’ projects. Content is manifold, has different formats and is built upon
collaboration and connectivity using different tools and environments. This means that
learning resources do also include connections made with experts, collaboration with
classmates, and all of the information resources the web provides.
By teaching students to use and improve upon existing free resources, the ADM teaches
them that learning is an open and collaborative process. Below one can find a list of
open-source, web-based, or creative-commons applications that are used within the
ADM.
Application Notes
Google Documents and Wordpress blogging applications will
Word processing be used in order to write out and connect concepts. Open
Office is also available for more sophisticated applications.
Bubbl.us, Gliffy, and FreeMind provide both creation and
Concept mapping
publication of mind maps for organizing ideas.
Spreadsheets and Google Spreadsheets, Zoho Sheets, and Open Office will be
Databases used for data collection and analysis.
Audacity will be used for editing podcasts and audio field
Audio and Music editing notes. Gcast will be used for recording on-the-fly observations
and reflecting upon the learning process.
Gimp, Picnik, and Fauxto will be used for editing digital
Photo editing
learning artifacts.
Video editing and Jumpcut, ChapterToolMe, and Bubblr will be used to create
Multimedia Authoring digital stories and presentations of knowledge.
Fauxto and Litha Paint will be used for drawing out simple
Painting and Drawing
ideas. Gliffy will be used for creating complex diagrams.
Zoho Show, Thinkfree, and Open Office will allow students to
create PowerPoint compatible presentations for their learning.
Presentation
They will also use SlideShare in order to share these
presentations with the world.
Google Calendar will be used to synchronize all assignments
Calendar
and collaborations.
Videoconferencing and
Skype will be used to collaborate and create a flat classroom.
Videoconferencing
Students will create a web-presence through the creation of
Website authoring their Wordpress blogs, Wikispace authoring, and through the
use of Google Pages.

The course aims to join collaborative and inquiry-based technologies of discourse with
the pedagogy of project-based learning, constructivism, and interdisciplinary study to
create an authentic learning environment that necessitates student ownership,
engagement, and achievement.
All content and teaching decisions are made based upon what the ADM outlines as ‘The
Six C's of Authentic Learning’, a kind of definition of what makes assignments,
assessments, and instruction different in an ADM classroom:
Image 9 – The 6 “C” of the Authentic Learning
• Contextual (Relevant) - All information that is disseminated, and content that is

uncovered has a greater context in the past, present, or future lives of the
students.
• Connected (Hyperlinked) - All concepts are linked to others' ideas, whether they
be original source documents, experts in the field, student experts who already
have an advanced understanding.
• Collaborative - Each assignment has the potential for working with others to
brainstorm, create, refine, or revise.
• Change-directed - All knowledge is constantly changing, and so are students
understanding and demonstration of knowledge.
• Conversational - Understanding is created through thoughtful discussion,
conversation, and debate.
• Continuous (Spontaneous) - Students can pursue all of their inspiration for
learning. It does not have to wait until they get to the next class or until they get
home because they have access to the technology and the freedom of the
environment.
The course provides a central environment (the wiki) with instructional material and
projects from past years’ students, but also uses the web at large. Content is developed
within the students’ projects by building on existing content from various sources,
involving a broad range of web spaces and technologies as following outlined.
1. Online interactive notebooks
• Students have all notes in the same place.
• Students can add pictures, graphs, and video to their notes.
• Students can hyperlink to other information that gives a greater context to the
text.
• Greater reflection can occur when students can make significant connections
between the four major disciplines.
2. Collaborative note taking
• Students can work together on creating a master set of notes that can be used by
the classroom.
• Because each student will get something different from a classroom session,
they can add their unique knowledge and perspective to the notes.
3. Curriculum Wikis that are edited by students
• All directions, instruction, and resources are easily available and editable online.
• Students can influence the curriculum by making directions more clear or adding
a great new resource for the lesson.
• Lesson plans become both more refined and expansive when students can add
new options that teachers may not have thought of.
4. Thematic strands of curriculum that students could learn all disciplines within.
• Students can see how each discipline affects the others.
• Students won't have to artificially separate events from their context, literature
from the economic concepts that helped to create it.
5. Synchronous and Asynchronous online discussion.
• Students can voice their opinions both at school and at home in audio forums,
discussion boards, video comments, and textual critiques, thus providing an
avenue for all voices to be heard.
6. Online Digital Portfolios.
• Students can take their work with them from year to year.
• They can showcase their best work and receive feedback from peers, teachers,
and other interested parties around the world.
• Each student's body of evidence is unique, and because of this, more clearly
shows their particular interests and skill sets.
Inclusivity
Access
Students’ projects and collaborations are made publicly available at the course wiki
space. However, since students use a broad range of technologies and spaces to display
their content and also for discourses the wiki space is only one of the involved spaces
where content is stored. Presentations might be made available through slideshare, or
chats might be recorded at gabbly. Those contents, if not linked to from the course wiki,
will therefore be difficult to trace by external users and next year’s students and might
appear out of the context if viewed within the external space. E.g. seeing image XXX20
isolated doesn’t show the context it was embedded in at the student's project (image
XXX21). Since content is taken from the commons and released under the commons it
can be accessed and re-used further by the commons.
Image 10 – Example student’s artifact
20
Source: http://g.sheetmusicplus.com/Look-Inside/large/wb-pfm0008.jpg
21
URL to student’s project: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/dude9coolio%27s+Utopia
Image 11 – Example student’s project page
Contribution
Depending on the type of content the group that is supposed to edit it varies. Students’
own projects at the wiki space are supposed to be the work of the respective student,
other areas appear to be designed for course internal participation only, meanwhile
some areas at the wiki space explicitly invite third parties to contribute. However, once
students act out at the web the rights will depend on tools and spaces used, in
accordance with the general particularities of the web.
Student roles
Students take on several roles, depending on their current activities and objectives. On
the one hand students are learner and inquirer that develop their own projects and with
this create new content and gain new knowledge. But students are also peers and
collaborators, both on an internal level, e.g. once adding their individual class notes to
one single wiki space, and on an external level, e.g. once engaging at online forums to
learn using a software or tool.
Students are also supposed to act as internal support provider by using their respective
skills and helping other students that still lack those. In order to circumvent the
unwelcome stress and extra work associated with ICT the ADM harnesses the power of
student passion and expertise. The ADM prescribes a format of student tech support that
allows the students to gain valuable 21st century skills, while providing a vital service
to the classroom. As noted by Wilkoff, who designed ADM, students are much more
likely to learn how to be self-sufficient from a peer than from a teacher; they may let a
teacher fix a problem on their computer, but they will learn how to fix the problem
themselves from a peer. Students are always finding new and more efficient ways of
doing work on a computer, and this knowledge should be shared and cherished among
the teaching staff. In this students can adapt a mentorship role, where both students and
teachers become learners.
From the course outline it is understood that students have access to the projects and
resources that last year students created. Thus one can see a (re-)use of prior learning
outcomes, but as it appears not that much of prior learning processes. This is to say that
processes, like e.g. the way of solving a problem or to build something, are not
presented online - like e.g. at a forum or wiki space. However, there are some
indications, like within the course wiki22, that some processes take place online and are
thus recorded. This might also be the case once students engage at the web outside of
the course environment.

Students’ projects make use of commonly available content23 from the web or content
that is created by them24 at web spaces as a part of their project25. Thus content is not
limited to pre-designed learning materials, but consists of a broad mixture. A common
point of content, however, seems to be the fact that it is digital and commonly available.
Students’ are supposed to act also as peers26 within the course environment and might
be reviewed by peers once they act at collaborative web spaces (image XXX27).
22
Source: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/message/list/home
23
Such as e.g.: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/The+American+Age+(II)
24
Such as e.g.: http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/?id=8274
25
Such as e.g.:
http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/Utopia+(We+Think)+Feril_Durza+Table+of+Contents
26
See for example: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/message/list/ed3
27
Source: http://www.slideshare.net/nextmj1/music-and-its-power
Image 12 – Example for student’s project outcome
Learner assessment
During the course students report about their work progress28. In general students are
assessed as defined by ADM through ‘Authentic assessment’29 using Jon Mueller's
‘Authentic assessment definition’30 with assessment being "A form of assessment in
which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful
application of essential knowledge and skills.” (Müller 2008)
This definition demonstrates how ADM uses assessment as a way of furthering the
learning process, rather than detracting from it. ADM utilizes a portfolio system in
which both students and teachers will select the best work to be presented in the online
arena. This type of assessment is based upon two values: change and mastery.
1. Valuing Change:
Because each student comes into the model at a different proficiency level, the
expectations must therefore be different for each student. This model allows teachers
the ability to tailor goals for individual students based upon their needs and then take
the achievement of these goals into consideration in determining their grade.
2. Valuing Mastery:
28
As can be seen for example at: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/message/list/Progress
29
See also: http://academyofdiscovery.wikispaces.com/Accountability#tocAccountability4
30
URL: http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox
Each core discipline will identify certain skills that can be mastered in middle school.
Once each student has demonstrated mastery of the topic, concept, or skill, they will
become certified to teach others. This model allows students to become experts and
mentors for other students, thus fully rendering the classroom environment a place of
apprenticeship learning.
3. Standardized Assessment:
ADM prescribes the same solution for standardized assessment that the NWEA31
(Northwest Evaluation Association) does where assessment should be one that:
• Gives a child the chance for success.
• Students find engaging.
• Respects classroom time.
• Provides useful information.
With this in mind, the ADM will use the MAP test in order to standardize the results of
students learning. Using this assessment (and its corresponding online aggregating and
disaggregating tools) will allow seeing just how much improvement ADM provides
over traditional classroom teaching. It will also allow students to chart their progress in
a more concrete way, thus giving them even further validation of their authentic
learning.

Besides support provided by the teacher, the teacher and students also point out existing
tools, manuals and support32 and also student to student mentorships and assistance33.

The main similarities to the FLOSS case might be seen in the activities students
perform, the disperse environments they engage at using a large set of tools, the way
students engage with others and the underlying cultural manifestation (openness,
collaboration, etc.).

The Discovery Utopia course environment and activities might be illustrated at image
XXX.
31
URL: http://www.nwea.org
32
See also: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/Enhancements
33
See also: http://academyofdiscovery.wikispaces.com/Digital+Learner+Mentors
Image 13 – Discovery Utopia Course Environment
Comparing the Discovery Utopia case, and ADM in general, with the FLOSS type
inside / outside model (see below) it becomes visible that there are some differences
regarding the actors involved, their roles and the way course and web spaces (the
learning environment) are used.
Project actions and activities of course students are to a certain degree pre-defined. This
is to say that students can’t pick up any project of interest, but need to work on a given
subject with (somewhat) pre-defined activities. Course students can however focus on
areas and tools of interest and do become creative knowledge creators.
Image 14 – FLOSS type learning environment - simplified

All of the courses different online spaces are accessible by the general public, as it is the
case in FLOSS. But free learners, or students from other institutions, are not supposed
to contribute directly at a given students’ project, though there are some spaces the
course wiki to provide feedback34 , or for external participants to start their own
34
As for example shown at: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/message/view/home/496473
project35. Free learners and students from other institutions can access all information,
but (as it seems) do not become an integrated part of this community as it would be the
case in FLOSS, or also Wikipedia. This means that there is no systematic integration of
those outside groups, albeit they might interact at the wiki space, or interact once the
course students engage at the web. Consequently there is no sustainable development of
products and processes and no community growth.
Also the type of support system is different to a FLOSS type environment as there is no
integrated army of volunteering support provider, nor ‘old foxes’, or recorded problem
solving processes or other development activities that could act as learning resources.
The content of the course is partly re-used and re-mixed as current students make use of
available online content and last year students’ projects once they develop their projects.
However by starting each year entirely new projects they don’t improve what others did
in the same way one can see it happening within FLOSS or Wikipedia

As it seemed, students enjoyed this new learning environment36, which is important in
terms of providing the right incentives and to motivate students.
An open question however is on how to motivate ‘old foxes’ (e.g. free learner) to join
into this environment and to provide support and guidance. The ‘itching’ or ‘learning
how to improve your product’ seems not to be an incentive within such an education
environment, but it is a strong motivation in the FLOSS case.
As pointed out by Wilkoff support provider (the ‘old foxes’) can also be other course
students that possess already better skills in a given area and that help their peers if
required. Within a mixed environment (FLOSS type hybrid approach) there might be
the critical mass of skilled students to systematically use such support approaches
across the institutional border and to establish a culture where students help students.
FLOSS type support systems might also be created by joining established
communities37 at the web and to integrate them into the own course.
Related to the support aspect it would also be beneficial to make learning processes
visible and to record them38, so that they are of use for future students.
Following AMD, students’ projects do become part of the course’s learning resources
and can be of use for future students. Leveraging this principle to an integrated FLOSS
type environment, bringing students from different institutions and free learners
together to work individually or collaboratively on projects, should, analogue to FLOSS
and Wikipedia, increase the richness and value of the environment and ultimately lead
to the emergence of a FLOSS type support system. Within such an integrated learning
space it might also be considered to give students the option of building upon existing
projects, or if preferred to create their own projects, or to work on project extensions. As
noted by Wilkoff, students have different starting points and allowing them to choose
from where they want to start would contribute to their learning outcome.
35
See also the guideline at: http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/Contribution+Instructions
36
See also the related blogging at: http://yongesonne.edublogs.org/2007/05/10/safety-vs-panic
37
Such as for example: http://classroom.all-science-fair-projects.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1559
38
As further illustrated at: http://www.slideshare.net/andreasmeiszner/learning-resources-in-floss
6.4 Case study 3 - Dept. of Informatics, Aristotle University, Greece39
6.4.1 Course Facts
Course area: Software engineering
Type of community: Higher education, FLOSS
Principle type of user: Student, FLOSS communities
Course Environment: FLOSS environments
6&Itemid=116

This case study features the Software Engineering course at Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki. In spring 2005 the course team implemented a revised course framework
as a pilot study within the teaching and learning context of the ‘Introduction to Software
Engineering’ course (ISE), a course that is lectured for approximately 12.5 weeks –
though students can continue their project based works beyond the lecturing duration.
ISE is one of the 72 undergraduate courses offered by the department of informatics.
The course is compulsory for computer science majors and is offered as a 12-13 weeks
course during the 5th semester. The objectives of the course are:
• to provide students with a pragmatic picture of software engineering research
and practice,
• to expose students to the principles software engineering as a laboratory and
practical science.
• to equip students with software engineering knowledge and skills which will
enable them to effectively participate and contribute to the information
society.
During the course, students have 2hrs/week lectures and 2hrs/week of laboratory work.
As part of their assignments students work in small groups, write and execute test plans
for their group projects. Topics covered in the course range from software development
models and processes, project planning and management, system design, software
maintenance, etc, to testing individual programs and complete systems. The subject area
for this pilot study is software testing. Courses students would have completed prior to
the ISE course are:
• Semester 1: C language (Basic Constructs)
• Semester 2: Advance C language, UNIX
• Semester 3: C++, Logic and Functional Programming
• Semester 4: PROLOG, Compilers
39
Note: This chapter contains parts that were written together with Sulayman K. Sowe – Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki, Greece. The original case study is available at:
During semesters 1 to 4 students would have acquired certain software development
skills which may be vital to the software testing aspect of the ISE course and the
implementation of our framework.
Students are supposed to learn the difference between testing small programs they write
for themselves and large scale software products that they might deal with when they
graduate. The teaching and learning context focuses on the identification of software
faults and failures, unit and integration testing, function and performance testing,
writing and execution of test plans/cases, etc.
The framework for teaching SE courses in general and software testing in particular has
two aims:
• provide opportunity for the students to work on what they considered interesting
themselves,
• give the students real-world experience in dealing with large software projects.
This concept is seen to help extending the methodology by which SE courses are taught,
and also to guide students towards a meaningful and life-long learning of software
engineering concepts.
Two lecturers were involved in the pilot study. One was responsible for scheduling
FLOSS activities, the other acting as an adviser. The framework shown in Figure 1 is in
three phases. Each phase (see image XXX40) describes a context in which students get
involved in FLOSS projects activities. Their involvement was basic. Students select a
project and download and use the software. Any problems they encounter in the use of
the software are reported to the project's community for action. Their main tasks were to
find and report bugs in their respective projects. These tasks may take the form of
functional, usability, or smoke testing.
Image 15 – Aristotle SE course structure

Course activities
40
Source:
Students are supposed to choose a FLOSS project and learn bug reporting and other
procedures. They then test the software using various techniques. They report any bugs
and monitor the progress of these. Students are allowed to work on their projects
anytime and anywhere they felt like following a testing strategy as shown at image
XXX41.
Image 16 – Student’s activity illustration
Involved content
At the beginning of the course students are provided instructional and course learning
materials including a guide on how to participate in FLOSS projects. At the end of the
introductory lectures the students are guided to explore sourceforge.net42, a repository
of FLOSS projects to give the students an overview about the existing number and type
of FLOSS projects they might choose from. Besides the instructional and course
learning materials developed by the course team students are expected to make use of
the different types of instructional and learning materials that the FLOSS projects in
particular and the web in general provide.

One of the objectives is to provide students with the opportunity to work on what they
considered interesting themselves, and give them real-world experience in dealing with
large software projects. Pedagogically, these aims embody project-based learning,
constructivism, and collaborative study to create a genuine FLOSS type learning
41
Source :
42
URL : http://sourceforge.net
experience that necessitates learners freedom to learn what they deem fit into their own
worldviews, expediencies, potentials, abilities and skills. The model provided at image
XXX indicates how the FLOSS framework allows the department to send students out
to participate in FLOSS projects. Through the principle of CID (Communication,
Interaction, Dialogue), students engage with the FLOSS community in various projects
and learn software engineering concepts and skills (how to test), communicate with
fellow participants (software developers and users), and learn the essentials of
participating in a distributed software development environment (using bug tracking
systems). The ISE course also benefits from the students’ involvement and helps us
design new and improve existing teaching and learning strategies.
Model for Involving Students in FLOSS Projects43
The stakeholders involved are Aristotle students and educators at the one hand and the
wider FLOSS community domain on the other hand. Besides inhouse materials
developed by the course team, students have access to a large and diverse pool of
content that was developed and is shared within the FLOSS communities. Participants
are continuously building on existing content from various sources, involving a broad
range of tools. Students’ contributions themselves become a part of the respective
FLOSS project they are working on, to be later reflected on by the wider community
and further used in case their contributions are found to be useful.
Inclusivity
43
Source:
Access
Students’ testing activities and their engagement with the various FLOSS communities
in their various projects are made publicly available at the various bug tracking systems,
forums, mailing lists (See image XXX for a typical forum contribution). Subsequent
participants the project may benefit from what the students contributed.
Image 17 – Example student’s contribution / interaction44

Contribution
The external environments used by Aristotle’s students are – analogue to the FLOSS
case – open and editable to all. The internal environments however are reserved for their
(Aristotle) own students only.
Student roles
Student/Learner: Students as learners
Practitioner: Students act e.g. as bug tester, developer, etc.
Peer: Students may choose to test in a project together and peer-review their
participation.
44
Source: http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=3002&highlight
Yes, though the prior learning that is accessible resides within the respective FLOSS
communities, but not within the course learning environment.

Yes, within the respective FLOSS communities
The first batch of students (2005) only peer reviewed their classmates of the same year.
In subsequent pilot studies the course team assists in identifying students across years
(e.g. those ones that haven’t finished their project yet) who work on similar projects and
software categories to help, exchange ideas and peer review each others work.
Learner assessment
At the end of the pilot study students are evaluated based on the presentations they
made in class, their participation in their respective projects, and their testing activities.
Furthermore, two online surveys are conducted by the course team in order to capture
the students’ opinions and experiences in testing in FLOSS projects.
Students were assessed and graded by using online surveys to gather information on
their perception of the pilot study as well as the FLOSS type learning environment. The
grading was based on their testing activities and presentations they made at various
stages of the implementation of the pilot study. The grading took into account the
following aspects:
• Class presentation (10%). 3 points for each of the presentations made in Phases 1
and 2. And 4 points for the final presentation in Phase 3.
• Project participation (12%). Measured by the number of emails we exchanged
with the student about his project.
• Working with testing tools (13%). How a student used and understood the bug
tracking system or bug database in his project.
• Testing activity (TA) 15%. Measured by four variables;

In terms of human resources; students could rely on course instructor as a resource or
support person. Support was usually provided through email exchanges, one-to-one or
group meetings. Fellow students and the various FLOSS communities in the students’
projects also provided a further source of support.

As this involves participation in real FLOSS communities, using the tools and
procedures adopted in those communities, it is obviously very closely aligned with
FLOSS principles including active participation, observation, use of technologies,
software testing and community monitoring. Furthermore, students are free to choose
what projects they wish to work on, when to work (test), how much time they should
dedicate to their work.
The course is also part of a lecture series, so students are taught some FLOSS principles
which others may have to self-learn. There is a formal assessment element which is
usually not part of FLOSS that deploys evaluation systems based on meritocracy.

Though the case is making use of FLOSS and their communities and therefore truly
follows FLOSS principles potential areas of improvement relate to students guidance.
As students interact within their respective FLOSS environment much of their
contributions and lessons learnt will be lost for other students, be it of the same year or
for future students. Since students are also working on their projects beyond the
lecturing period there theoretically would be the potential to better connect last year
students to new students and to increase collaboration between years. The Aristotle case
does also not allow ‘outsiders’ to benefit from or access the instructional and learning
materials provided by Aristotle’s course team to their students. This is undesirable in at
least two ways: first it prevents that course materials on the one hand and processes and
artifacts on the other hand (created by Aristotle students and others involved outside the
Aristotle course) would be connected and put into a context. Secondly, and as a
consequence of this closeness it prevents that course materials would be continuous
improved, enriched and complemented by the various stakeholders involved.
6.5 Case study 4 - OpenEd syllabus, Utah State University, United States
6.5.1 Course Facts
Course area: INST 7150 Introduction to Open Education, Fall 2007
Type of community: Higher education, open educational resource.
Principle type of user: Educators, students, general audience
Course Environment: Blogs, Wikis
http://flosscom.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=178&
Itemid=116

The Open Ed Syllabus is an introductory course into open education. This pilot course
is comparable with a 3 credit graduate-level course and free for anyone to attend, but
does not offer any formal certificate.
The goals of the course are:
• To give a firm grounding in the current state of the field of open education,
including related topics like copyright, licensing, and sustainability
• To help locate open education in the context of mainstream instructional
technologies like learning objects
• To get students thinking, writing, and dialoguing creatively and critically about
current practices and possible alternative practices in open education.
The course is a fully virtual course without face to face meetings and uses only
asynchronously online communication, but includes optional synchronous ‘social’
meetings.
The course is structured in a formal and traditional way with well defined activities that
consist of weekly assignments, namely readings and bloggings, and also with well
defined roles and structures.
Students are supposed to read the weekly assigned materials and to blog answers to pre-
formulated questions, or simply complete assignments for weeks when there are no
readings or questions. Bloggings are supposed to demonstrate students’ understanding
of the assigned reading material and to include original thoughts and synthesis.
Following the initial course design the course also includes grading with each weekly
assignment being worth 10 points, for a total of 150 possible points for the course.
Weekly assignments are supposed to be graded according to (1) the degree to which
they completely answer the questions asked, (2) the degree to which they demonstrate
understanding of the assigned reading material, and (3) the degree to which original
thinking is evident in the writing. An extra point may be awarded when a student draws
on and references others student writing effectively.
The course started with 53 students, out of which 27 attended the course more or less
active and with approximately 20 of them keeping an active blog as requested by the
course outline.

Course activities
The course is structured in a formal and traditional way with well defined activities that
consist of weekly assignments, namely readings and bloggings, and also with well
defined roles and structures.
Students are supposed to read the weekly assigned materials and to blog answers to pre-
formulated questions, or simply complete assignments for weeks when there are no
readings or questions. Bloggings are supposed to demonstrate students’ understanding
of the assigned reading material and to include original thoughts and synthesis.
The initial course outline primarily requires self-studying through reading given
materials and to answer given questions through individual students’ bloggings. As a
result of a course re-design course activities were enhanced with students also being
asked to read through the blogs of other students and to comment on them. Besides
those blog peer reviews the current course structure does not foresee any particular type
of collaborations between the students.
Involved content
All of the content is available online and the majority of it consists of reading materials
like online books and papers, with a minority consisting of videos, OER project
websites and the students’ blogs.
Self-studying is the pre-dominant form of learning, with the main type of contents being
pre-selected materials provided by the lecturer, but later on also included the blog posts
of other students to be peer reviewed.
Most of the content used was developed by subject mater experts like educators or
professional authors and has been selected and provided by the course lecturer, with the
exception of students’ blogs that are used as content sources itself as part of the peer
reviewing process.
Inclusivity
Access
All materials are available online, including students learning outcomes that are made
available at their personal blogs.
Contribution
Besides the students’ bloggings the content used at this course is static. This is to say
that there is no possibility for students to work with the content to either improve it,
update it, to annotate it, or engage with it in any way that would be of benefit for future
students, except their own bloggings that are scattered at the web.
Student roles
The course uses mainly the traditional role model with the teacher on the one side and
the learner on the other, with the role of peers being relatively limited to the review of
students’ bloggings.

In theory prior learning outcomes are made available for future learners through the
individual students’ bloggings, In practice this might turn to be difficult since students’
blogs are not linked to weekly assignments and therefore one would need to browse
through them on a one by one base. Learning processes are not available with the
exception of students’ bloggings that might reflect on their individual learning
processes. Students’ bloggings provide some connection of content and discourse that
could be of use for future learners.

The learning materials consist mainly of pre-defined readings (sources), with only some
of the assignments pointing to repositories, like OER project websites, that allow for
further third sources.
The course contains some peer reviewing activities with students being expected to
review other students’ bloggings and to reflect on them.
Learner assessment
Following the initial course design the course also includes grading with each weekly
assignment being worth 10 points, for a total of 150 possible points for the course.
Weekly assignments are supposed to be graded according to (1) the degree to which
they completely answer the questions asked, (2) the degree to which they demonstrate
understanding of the assigned reading material, and (3) the degree to which original
thinking is evident in the writing. A review of the course spaces however did not show
any examples of students’ assessments.

Support is provided by the teacher, following the traditional educational model.

The OpenEd Syllabus case shows some similarities to learning within FLOSS / open
source communities. One of the main similarities lies within ‘openness’. This is to say
that the course is open to be attended by anyone, with all contents used being freely
available, including the students’ blogs. Analogue to FLOSS self-studying is an
important form of learning, with ‘learning from what others did’ being at least partially
addressed. The course also uses a variety of information spaces, but only a small range
of communication and collaboration spaces, namely a wiki and blogs.

The course shows clear borders to FLOSS / open source communities as learning
environments. One of the borders is the course structure: The course was designed
following a traditional course design approach with classical teacher / student roles,
given assignments and traditional assessment. The course does not benefit from students
bringing in their prior knowledge by e.g. allowing them to start own activities or
projects, or to build teams around those activities or projects. In general communication
and collaboration takes place at a low level and peers play a subordinate role. As a
consequence of this learning processes remain mostly invisible and learning outcomes
are loosely spread over the web and therefore are not easily detectible by future
learners.

The maybe two most valuable characteristics of learning in FLOSS, the content richness
and commons component, are not really addressed by the course as shown at the
contrasting illustrations XXX and XXX below.
Image 18 – OpenEd learning environment
Image 19 – FLOSS type learning environment

During the course and by its end students themselves identified areas of improvement,
which included the following:
At a discussion45 students requested to have more space for collaborative activities and
to review the work of others to comment on it or to learn from it. This goes into the
direction of learning in FLOSS, like e.g. learning from what others did, peer reviewing
and provision of feedback.
Students were also complaining about an information overload and being lost46. This is
not a surprise and might be equally true for FLOSS cases; with the difference being
perhaps that the FLOSS often benefits from humans acting as information broker that
point others to the right resources (see 2.8). Those information seeking and providing
activities are e.g. frequently seen at the forums of a respective FLOSS project, though
not being limited to it. This type of information brokerage was also discussed between
the course students and resulted in suggestions from dividing reading up to a more
45
The full text is available at: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/386
46
For further information see: http://opencontent.org/wiki/index.php?title=MEETINGPOINT
integrated course environment47. However, within the current course form that has a
100% student turnover it would not be possible to apply the concept of information
brokering analogue to the FLOSS case as this would require the existence of an
established community with some ‘old foxes’ that can point newbies into the right
direction.
The discussion also addressed the students’ roles; with some students suggesting to
move to a more pro-active role where students would bring in course materials
themselves and thus contribute to a continuous development of the course48. Again this
is something that can be seen within FLOSS and that ultimately allows the learner to
enter the course at his current knowledge stage, with other students being able to benefit
from more advanced students’ knowledge. A further step into this direction, though not
discussed between the students of the course, would be to allow students to create their
own activities or projects and to form groups around them. This would allow students to
focus on areas that they are interested in, but still being able to learn from what other
students created. It would also allow getting out most of prior students’ experiences and
knowledge, as this is where students would start their activities and projects, with the
outcomes of those activities or projects being available for all other students.
As a result of the reflections on the course the next year's course design suggestions49
included a more collaborative structure and environments, but still using the traditional
assignment model with the disadvantages over the FLOSS model as explained above.
6.6 Case study 5 - Connectivism Course, University of Manitoba, CA (to be

done)
Course area: Education
Type of community: Higher education, open educational resource.
Principle type of user: Educators, students, general audience
6.7 Case study 6 - St. Cloud State University Minnesota, US

6.7.1 Course Facts
Course area: Introduction to Rhetorical and Analytical Writing (Spring 2008, Fall 2007,
Spring 2007, Fall 2006, Spring 2005 and Fall 2005), Writing in the Professions (Spring 2008,
Fall 2007 and Spring 2007), Writing for the Web (Spring 2008), Teaching College Writing (Fall
2007), Computers English and Pedagogy (Spring 2007), Advanced Rhetorical Writing (Fall
2006), Computers and English (Fall 2006, Fall 2005), History of Rhetorical Theory (Spring
2006)
Type of community: Higher education
Principle type of user: Students, general audience
Course Environment: Blogs, forums, wikis – (uses the open source software TikiWiki)
47
Such as the following one established by course participants: http://opened.wetpaint.com/?t=anon
48
See also: http://opened.wetpaint.com/page/Intro2OpenED2007
49
Available from:
http://opencontent.org/wiki/index.php?title=Next_year%27s_course_design_suggestion
The above cited courses are all lectured by Matt Barton, an assistant professor of
English at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota (USA), where he teaches courses in
rhetoric, new media, and computers and writing. All the courses referred to above make
intensive use of Tikiwiki, an open source platform which allows readers to interact with
each other through blogs, forums and wikis. As presented above, in the last few years
Matt Barton has been giving courses for undergraduate or advanced undergraduate and
graduate students namely Introduction to Rhetorical and Analytical Writing (English
191), Writing in the Professions (English 332), Writing for the Web (English 432),
Teaching College Writing (English 656), etc.
Overall there have been no persistent difficulties in using Tikiwiki for any student.
Following Matt Barton the small time investment that students make learning these new
tools will pay off immensely in the long run.
What students said about the courses and the Tikiwiki:50
• "My name is Saurav Pandey and I was in your English 332 MW 3:00pm class. I
just wanted to thank you for a great semester. I really enjoyed your class and
enjoyed doing the projects as well as the blogs and the forums. I think I learned
a lot about writing in the professional world and am confident that this will help
me in the future."
“You are a very strong professor! I thought you did a wonderful job engaging the class
and providing us with the information in a clever way. I really enjoyed the use of your
Tikiwiki page to do our blogs and forums; it was totally different from any other class.
— English 332 Student, Fall 06.

Course activities
In each course the student is assigned to several projects, sometimes also peer reviewing
the projects of the classmates, and has to do other activities such as participating at face
to face class discussions, or virtually within the forums and blogs. Regarding the virtual
students’ tasks, each student has to make a contribution of a least 500 words to the
Tikiwiki site on a weekly base up in four ways:
• Creating a Blog Post: Answering to one of the ‘suggested topics’ for the week or
inventing a new one;
• Creating a Forum Post: Either creating a new topic or responding to an existing
one on the forums;
• Responding to a Blog Post: Adding a comment to someone else's blog post;
• Adding a Comment to a Page: Adding a comment or asking a question about one
of the assignment pages on the site.
50
Source: http://mattbarton.net/tikiwiki/tiki-
pagehistory.php?page=HomePage&compare=1&oldver=159&newver=178&diff_style=unidiff
Involved content
The content used consists of lecturer’s sources, including presentations, publicly
available third party literature such as wiki books or opinion articles; and students’
contributions within the wikis, blogs and forums.

The reason for using the wikis, forums and blogs was to evaluate what students have
learned from the lecturer’s presentations and readings. Since the wikis, blogs and
forums are designed to give the participants an opportunity to share their thoughts and
receive feedback; they are a suitable medium for students to apply what they have
learned and to put their ideas into their own words.
In all courses each student has to contribute at a minimum 500 words to the Tikiwiki on
a weekly base by creating or answering to a Blog/Forum Post. In some of the courses,
namely ‘Introduction to Rhetorical and Analytical Writing’ the student has also to
submit 5 projects and peer review the projects of classmates. Therefore students are
forced to become active contributors, whether they want to or not.
Inclusivity
Access
As common for Tikiwiki all content of the forums and blogs are publicly available.
Contribution
Despite the fact that all content at Tikiwikiare publicly available , including forums or
blogs postings, only enrolled students and the lecturer can edit it.
Student roles
During the course students are not only acting as learner, but also adopted roles such as
content creators or peer reviewers of the classmates projects.

Once all content is publicly available the students enrolling in a course have access to
the projects, forum posts, bloggings, wiki edits and further resources that previous
students created.

Students’ assignments make use of commonly available content from the web such as
Wikipedia articles, wiki books and opinion articles. Thus content is not limited to pre-
designed learning materials, but consists of a broad mixture. A common point of
content, however, seems to be the fact that it is digital and commonly available.
Students are supposed to act also as peers within some of the courses, like e.g.
‘Introduction to Rhetorical and Analytical Writing’ or ‘Writing in the Professions’.
Learner assessment
The student assessment varies from course to course. For example, at the ‘Introduction
to Rhetorical and Analytical Writing’ course the students’ grade depends on the criteria
a illustrated at image XXX51.
Workshop
Participation; 5%
Forums and
Blogs; 25%
5 Final Copies of
Projects; 50%
8 Peer Reviews;
20%
Image 20 – Students’ grading approach

The ‘Teaching and College Writing’ course on the other hand uses a different grading
approach as illustrated at image XXX52, which again is tailored to the activities
performed by the students.
51
Source: http://mattbarton.net/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=English+191+Syllabus
52
Source: http://mattbarton.net/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=English+332+Syllabus
Final Exam; 10%
Blog and Forum
Participation; 25% Individual; 20%
Wiki Work; 30%
Holistic; 10%
Discussion Leader
(2); 10%
Class Presentations
(2); 25%

Support is provided both in class and on-line and in most of the cases through the
lecturer with peer support assuming a subordinated role. Since the courses make
intensive use of online resources the Tikiwiki webpage contains a large amount of
explanations, comparable to what is commonly referred to as FAQs. As it had become
clear that those students not being comfortable with using the virtual space are those not
being comfortable with PCs in general, an upfront warning (called
‘BartonCompositionChecklist’) has been placed that informs students prior to their
enrollment and assists them to determine whether or not the courses are right for them.

The main similarities to the FLOSS case might be seen in the activities students
perform, namely the participation in the forums, blogs and wikis, the peer review of the
projects, with the result of preserving learning processes and outcomes of students as
learning resources for future students, but also the underlying cultural manifestation
(openness of the Tikiwiki platform, collaboration, etc.).

Students learning processes at TikiWiki, be it their own publications or commenting on
the work of their peers, become part of the learning resources for future students.
However, there are some aspects that limit benefits for future students:
• only students enrolled at the course can become active at the environment
• future students likely won’t be able to advance discussions with earlier students,
since they finished their course
• since the environment is open to enrolled students only there is a 100%
community turnover per semester and consequently there is an absence of a truly
community that includes ‘old foxes’, nor does it allow a support system as one
can find in FLOSS

To make students’ projects and activities not only a useful contribution to classes, but
also to help future students within their learning process and to provide them with
continuous updated and growing learning resources it could be beneficial to expand the
learning community to students from other institutions and free learners. Moreover, it
could be interesting to give students the option of building upon existing projects, or if
preferred to create their own projects, or to work on project extensions.
6.8 Conclusion
The case studies presented above demonstrate that there are a number of different
possibilities to apply FLOSS principles that can be found within an educational setting.
This is not astonishing given the fact that FLOSS principles are not to be only found
within FLOSS, but are inherent to the web 2.0 as it has emerged.
The cases above show a deployment of a variety of communication spaces and tools,
being either located within the institution or at the web. Consequently the ownership of
the involved spaces and the possibility to influence their design ranges from possible
(case Aristotle, Washington Bothell) to partially possible (case Open Ed Syllabus,
Manitoba) to almost impossible (case ADM, St. Cloud).
6.8.1 Comparison against key characteristics of FLOSS as a learning

environment
How do the cases above compare against the key characteristics of FLOSS as outlined
at chapters two and three?
First characteristic: ‘openness’ or ‘inclusivity’
All of the cases meet somehow the criteria of openness, inclusivity however is not met
by ADM and St. Cloud, and truly ‘open’ and ‘inclusive’ are only the cases of Open Ed
Syllabus and Manitoba where all instructional and learning materials, as well as spaces
are open and accessible to all, including the opportunity of collaboration.
Second characteristic: volunteering and volatility with FLOSS participants voluntarily
deciding which role(s) they play or which responsibilities to take on.
In all of the cases students are expected to fulfil some pre-defined assignments, which is
not the case in FLOSS where individuals decide about the roles and tasks they take on;
however besides this all of the cases also allow students to take on further roles and
responsibilities analogue to FLOSS.
Third characteristic: use of large-scale networks and the way they are established and
maintained.
Only the cases of Washington Bothell and Aristotle make use of large scale networks,
as they send out their students into well established communities (Wikipedia and
FLOSS). The other four cases do not provide sustainable networks, something
challenging to be established within the traditional semester based course structures that
usually result in a 100% community turnover with future cohorts of students being
disconnected from earlier ones.
Fourth characteristics: content-richness and specialisation. FLOSS communities
Analogue to the third characteristic only the cases of Washington Bothell and Aristotle
provide their students with a diverse repertoire of learning materials, though all of the
cases to some degree make use of content to be freely available at the web.
Specialisation takes place, as each of the students is working towards achieving the
learning outcomes of their respective courses. However specialisation in FLOSS
involves a heterogeneous group where members specialize in a variety of different
subjects. In the cases of Washington Bothell and Aristotle students do have regular
access to specialists outside of their study field as they are interacting within broader
communities. But even in those cases the contact to those experts is not – or at least not
systematically – integrated into the courses environment. This is true for two reasons: a
technical absence of providing a link between the course environment and the outside
environment (Wikipedia or FLOSS) and a human absence of knowledge broker as to be
found in FLOSS. Cohorts of students from different years act in isolation and there is an
absence of other stakeholders, such as students from fellow universities, practitioners or
learner outside of formal education that could bridge the gap to connect those different
cohorts.
Fifth characteristic: modularity to reduce systemic interdependencies between different
files of the same product, allowing a higher level of task partitioning and a lower level
of explicit coordination and interaction among programmers.
Some type of modularity can be found in all of the cases, at least if translating
modularity to the students work on a specific small and manageable task. Modularity in
FLOSS on the other side not only provides easy entrance and facilitates collaborative
work, but also relates to the fact that the different modules contribute to the overall
software project and therefore each of those modules adds a value to it. This is be fully
true for the cases of Washington Bothell and Aristotle where students work is adding a
value to Wikipedia or the FLOSS projects, potentially true for the cases of ADM and St.
Cloud since the students results are systematically available for future cohorts of
students (albeit likely disconnected to those earlier students) and unclear for the cases of
Open Ed Syllabus and Manitoba, since both of the cases are – in their current form –
running for the first time.
6.8.2 Comparison against key characteristics of learning in FLOSS

Besides showing a number of differences, there are also similarities to be found within
the presented cases, namely:
1. Openness – all courses show some type of openness, with the least open ones (ADM,
St. Cloud) only allowing outsiders to observe, at least accept that students interact with
the wider virtual world and collaborate (Aristotle, Washington Bothell), or actively seek
a collaboration with the wider world (Open Ed Syllabus, Manitoba). This is a
fundamental difference to traditional education (Wiley 2006) in which courses are
‘closed’ in that students have to attend, pay or sign up for a course.
2. User generated content – at all of the cases students are supposed to ‘produce’
something that would become available online. Outputs range from fulfilling weekly
assignments (Open Ed Syllabus, Manitoba, St. Cloud) to project based works (ADM,
Aristotle, Washington Bothell). Therefore and analogue to the FLOSS case students are
allowed to contribute to the creation of the content itself, as in software projects.
3. Contribution to the process – one important aspect of FLOSS communities are the
different roles that individuals undertake, such as maintaining forums, testing software,
peer review the work of others or to provide support to their peers. Each of the cases
above shows such students contributions.
4. Use of technologies – All of the cases use the same type of technologies that are
commonly used in FLOSS communities and in the same way, e.g. using forums as a
means of discussion but also as a learning resource. But only the case of Aristotle
makes use of the full spectrum, which is a result of students’ engagement in FLOSS.
5. Informal learning – learning in FLOSS communities is through access to peers and a
community, rather than formal structured support systems. In this respect most of the
case studies are not similar because they tend to relate to formal courses. Case study 4 is
the closest in that it is not supported formally.
The cases above indicate that there appear to be two different ways of applying FLOSS
principles, an inside way of creating similar conditions within the course environment
and an outside way, by sending out students into well established external
environments. Both of the approaches appear to have as well advantages as
disadvantages and therefore a blending of both approaches might be desirable as
detailed at chapter XXX.
7 Possible adoption of FLOSS approaches in educational settings
Some sections of this chapter have been compiled as part of the EU funded
FLOSSCom project and sections that include co-authored work are marked as such.
7.1 Introduction
The analysis of the organisation of learning in FLOSS communities and FLOSS as a
learning environment that has been carried out above suggests that FLOSS
communities are indeed worthwhile to be considered as one bests practice case of
informal learning environments; and as a benchmark for other attempts to organise
learning in a more self-organised and opener way than traditional learning
environments. The same analysis has also shown limitations of the FLOSS approach.
Therefore the objective can not be to abandon traditional higher education practices as
we know them and to replace one system (traditional HE) through another (FLOSS
type learning), but instead to find the optimal mix of the best principles of both
systems in order to achieve maximal synergies.
There appear to be three different scenarios on the adoption of FLOSS approaches
within educational settings, with each of them having a different level of complexity
and a different degree of benefits. Before detailing the three different scenarios let us
first recall the FLOSS key characteristics that are deemed to be desirable.
7.2 FLOSS key characteristics deemed to be desirable

As has been shown throughout this work, FLOSS characteristics that are seen to be
desirable for Higher Education are:
• Openness – most educational courses are ‘closed’. In monetary terms this
means that students have to attend, pay or sign up for a course. One way of
adopting a FLOSS type approach is to make the content of a course open, and
free to access. The wider concept of openness however also includes
transparent structures and user engagement.
• User generated content – another means of embracing FLOSS principles is to
allow students to contribute to the creation of the content itself, as in software
projects.
• Peer production – active engagement in producing something with a set of
peers is a powerful motivational and educational driving force.
• Real activities – engaging in legitimate activities that are not restricted to an
artificial university setting also provides valuable experience.
• Contribution to the process – one important aspect of FLOSS communities are
the different roles that individuals undertake, such as maintaining forums,
testing software, peer review the work of others or to provide support to their
peers.
• Greater sharing of knowledge – in higher education much of the previous
input is lost, whereas in FLOSS the dialogue, resources, and outputs remain as
learning resources.
• Peer support – a large support network provided (voluntarily) by peers in a
collaborative manner nearly 24/7.
• A more personalized learning experience – instead of learning objectives that
apply to a whole cohort, a FLOSS approach allows learners to gather the
elements of knowledge they require.
• Informal learning – learning in FLOSS communities is through access to peers
and a community, rather than formal structured support systems.
• A greater range of inputs – not just from the educator, but from all
contributors so the collective is the source of knowledge, not one individual
• Use of technologies – using the type of technologies that are adopted in
FLOSS communities and in the same way, e.g. using forums as a means of
discussion but also as a learning resource.
• Open learning ecosystem – The sum is bigger than its parts, thus educational
models and scenarios should not be limited to students only formally enrolled
at a course.
Which of those characteristics might be implemented very likely depends on the
context and the objectives of a given higher educational course and the adopted
approach: inside, outside or hybrid.
7.3 ‘Inside’, ‘Outside’ or ‘Hybrid’ approach1

There appear to be three different scenarios on the adoption of FLOSS approaches
within educational settings; the ‘inside’, the ‘outside’ or the ‘hybrid’ approach.
7.3.1 Inside approach

The inside approach refers to the practice of taking the principles found in FLOSS
communities and applying them within the higher education context. In line with
Fischer’s work (2007), this approach involves mapping the key principles onto
education, including an evolutionary growth of the course and its environment. This is
to say that current students would build upon the work of earlier students developing
course and content further year by year, therefore improving content quality and
richness and providing regular feedback. Such feedback might refer to course
structure, material, processes and tools. The inside approach thus takes the sort of
characteristics and tools found in FLOSS as its inspiration. The ‘meta-design’ and
‘courses as seeds’ process model (Fischer 2007) is one example for a structured
attempt of the inside approach aimed at supporting self-directed learners within
virtual learning communities by creating socio-technical environments that support
new forms of collaborative design. Fischer talks of users creating socio-technical
environments and has a continuum of participation ranging from passive consumer to
meta-designer. This mirrors some of the roles of engagement in FLOSS communities
which range from passive users to core developers.
1
This section contains elements of co-authored work initially compiled for:
• Meiszner, A. et al. (2008) “Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS-like) education
transfer report”, FLOSSCom Project. 2008.
• Weller, M. & Meiszner A. (2008) “FLOSSCom Phase 2: Report on the effectiveness of a
FLOSS-like learning community in formal educational settings”, FLOSSCom Project. 2008.
Within the ‘inside approach’ institutions might also decide to ‘open up’ their virtual
learning environments to fellow universities or the general public to view what is
going on within the environment. Within the inside scenario an institution might even
allow those outside groups to participate and engage at this environment, in the case
doing so, this likely would be a first step towards a hybrid approach.
A general limitation of the inside approach is that the outside world remains largely or
totally disconnected, depending on the degree of openness (e.g. open to view, open to
participate, etc.). An example for a semi-open environment is MIT’s Open Course
Ware project2 that is partially open for outside observers, but participation is limited
to formally enrolled students only. Another limitation relates to ‘community building’
and ‘evolutionary growth’, since this is per-se limited within a given institution that
only involves the own student population, and usually even further limited due to (a) a
100% student turnover per semester / course and (b) a comparatively small number of
potential community member (formally enrolled students of a course)3.
Within such an inside attempt likely not all desirable FLOSS characteristics can be
implemented and some key features of traditional higher education, such as a
fundamental distinction between learners and teachers, performers and evaluators,
might be kept. A inside approach is therefore always a compromise between the old
and the new that requires careful planning from those who design and manage the
transfer processes.
This scenario might be relatively moderate to implement since the technology should
be already in place at most higher education institutions, although admittedly
modifications very likely would be necessary. On the down side this approach still
would keep the students of the institution within this learning environment preventing
their semi-structured engagement and collaboration within the wider web. It would
also limit the opportunities of ‘best of breed’, as the wider web might provide better
technological solutions or already established and mature communities for respective
study fields.
Examples for such an inside approach where the cases of ADM and St. Cloud.
7.3.2 Outside approach

The ‘outside approach’ at which institutions would send out their students into already
well established and mature environments to engage at and collaborate within those
communities on pre-defined tasks. In contrast to the inside approach, the outside
approach might take traditional education as the starting point by providing
theoretical information and then sends the students ‘outside’ to find well established
2
http://ocw.mit.edu
3
However, as e.g. the case of “Students' Knowledge Base” (http://wiki.sch.bme.hu) at the Budapest
University of Technology and Economics (BME) illustrates, it is not an impossible attempt. The
project started as an intranet site that was set up by 4-5 students living at the Schoenherz Dormitory of
the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. During the first few months the site was only
accessible within the dormitory. Only after this initial phase access to the site was opened up to the
public. Meanwhile (by February 2008), there are 5980 pages of content, the wiki receives on average
1.2 million hits per month, and there are more than 2600 registered users. This all happened without
funding from the university. Source: Glott, R. & Schmidt, P. (2008): Learning Opportunities in
FLOSS. Presentation given at the FKFT Free Knowledge, Free Technology Conference on Education
for a free information society, Barcelona, July 15th to 17th, 2008
communities, such as the FLOSS ones, to work within those communities and to
apply and deepen their theoretical knowledge.
In particular for the area of software engineering this approach might be suitable due
to the existence of a large number of mature FLOSS projects and a myriad of
educational resources. This is seen in the work of the Aristotle University in Greece,
where undergraduate students are sent out in to real FLOSS communities as part of
their degree in software engineering. Students are provided with an initial academic
background in principles of software engineering, testing software and the tools and
approach in FLOSS communities and then required to choose and engage with a real
project. This clearly has benefits in computer science as it gives students real
experience of collaborating with other developers and also of the different types of
role and work required in software development. The outside approach, however, is
not restricted to computer programming. It can be realized whenever there is an
external, ‘real’ community that is operating on FLOSS type principles. The case of
Washington Bothell is a good example for this where students were required to
contribute to actual Wikipedia articles as part of their assignment work, thus gaining
much of the practical experience of collaboration and authenticity experienced by the
software programmers at Thessaloniki.
The outside approach might be the least complex and almost cost neutral; and
therefore relatively easy to implement. One of the drawbacks of the outside approach
however is that the results of students’ collaborative learning and knowledge
production likely would remain within this outside community and therefore would be
lost for future students. This scenario would also not provide next year students
(newbies) with an easy access as no former learners are present at the institutional
level, nor the resources they created, to facilitate the newbie entrance.
7.3.3 Hybrid approach

If we view the inside and the outside approaches as opposite ends of a spectrum, then
there is clearly a range of blended, hybrid approaches in the middle, which take
components of both elements. Such a ‘hybrid’ approach might be seen as the best
option as it allows a continuous evaluation (by educators, students and the wider
world) of what ‘the best of both worlds’ is and how the transferred elements actually
suit in their respective new environments. One of the underlying assumptions is that
using a hybrid approach, as maybe also partly valid for the inside approach, could be
a response to challenges such as a 100% student turnover per semester as (a) not all
participating students (and educators) should start at the same time and (b) free
learners outside of formal education and practitioners are not bound to any course
schedule.
Perhaps one such model for this hybrid approach is that of an open participatory
learning ecosystem, as outlined by Brown & Adler (2008). The concept here is that
some of the principles of FLOSS communities are adopted in education (thus it is an
inside approach), such as collaboration, use of technologies, peer production. People
learn by doing, for example by remixing or remashing content that is viewed by
others. However these activities occur in a broader ecosystem that is open for
everyone combining students, informal learners, tutors, experts, organizations, etc,
and in this manner it is an outside approach since learners are engaged in a real
community. Such a hybrid approach likely would include a number of environments
where students could engage at in a semi-structured way and where guidance and
support is provided through the use of technologies (e.g. RSS, suggested contents,
etc.) and the use of the human factor (e.g. knowledge brokers, community support,
etc.).
The hybrid approach also has the potential to open new doors for e.g. (a) new revenue
models that could be based in assessment of learners outside of formal education
against fees and formal recognition of informally acquired skills, (b) the provision of
niche courses and faster identification of potential new courses, (c) up to date learning
resources and continuous improvement of processes and products, or (d) an
evolutionary growing community including the inherent support system.
The drawback of the hybrid approach might be that it probably requires the most
drastic overhaul of higher educational practices and might be the most complex to
implement.
7.4 Involved roles: Educators, students, free learners & practitioners

All of the above described three approaches involve educators and formally enrolled
students. If the inside approach has been chosen, they might be limited to one HE
institution. If the outside approach or the hybrid approach are chosen, educators and
enrolled students might involve several HE institutions in a more (hybrid approach) or
less (outside approach) unstructured and disconnected way.
There are at least two further groups that can be found within the inside, outside or
hybrid approaches: ‘free learners’ and ‘practitioners’.
‘Free learners’ are learners outside of formal education that participate with the
intentional objective to learn. This group is (1) a consumer at the inside approach, in
the ideal case might be allowed to participate, (2) might be active at the outside
approach but not connected in a structured way to formally enrolled students and (3)
will be active at the hybrid approach and connected to formally enrolled students in a
structured way.
‘Practitioners’ on the other hand, can be found at the outside and hybrid approach and
are the regular participants of a given community (e.g. a FLOSS community,
Wikipedia, or other virtual communities such as Jishka, Yahoo answers, or
PhysicsForum) 4. Practitioners and free learners might be the same, depending on their
motivation to participate.
4
Jishka is a forum that assists thousands of children and teenagers with schoolwork everyday by
publishing educational content and providing instant-help services for students who need urgent
help (http://www.jiskha.com) / Yahoo answers allows finding and sharing information where
individuals can ask questions on any topic and get answers from real people
(http://answers.yahoo.com). / PhysicsForums is an informal collaboration space where people can
chat about maths, physics and science. The forum went online in 2003 and had 77.203 members
that started 154.509 threads and received 1.341.084 answers by November 2007.
http://www.physicsforums.com. Those are only three randomly picked up examples out of myriads
to be found at the web.
7.5 Comparative overview of Inside, Outside and Hybrid approach
Table 7-1 provides a simplified overview on the implementation scenarios of the inside, outside and hybrid approaches based on a course level
detailing the potential impact of applying those approaches within an educational setting.
FLOSS type educational approaches

Inside Outside Hybrid
Open Learning Environment / Ecosystem
HE institutional virtual X X
spaces
Outside virtual X X
community space(s)
Interactions
F2F on campus X - of 1 institution X - of 1 institution X - of various participating institutions
Virtual X X X
Learning User Groups X - self organized learning groups, analogue to e.g.
Linux User Groups that meet F2F
Level of Openness
Static Content Educator/Student can edit / Free learner Educator/Student & practitioner can view & Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner can view
can view, might even allow outsiders to edit & edit
participate to some degree
Dynamic Content (e.g. Educator/Student can edit / Free learner Educator/Student & practitioner can view & Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner can view
Discourse) might view, might even allow outsiders edit & edit
to participate to some degree
Participation Educator/Student can edit / Free learner Educator/Student & practitioner can Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner can
likely not, but might even allow participate participate
outsiders to participate to some degree
Characteristics
User generated content Educator/Student - rather small scale – Educator/Student & practitioner - potentially Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner -
except if allowing outsiders to large scale potentially very large scale
participate
Peer production Educator/Student - rather small peer Educator/Student & practitioner - potentially Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner -
group – except if allowing outsiders to larger peer groups and / or higher number of potentially high number of peer groups and break down
participate groups in sub-groups working on particular subjects / projects.
Sub-groups might consist of formally enrolled students
only, or mixed groups
Contribution to the Educator/Student - rather limited but Educator/Student & practitioners - though Educator/Student, free learner & practitioners - though
process very structured the later might assume a dominating role as again once "invading" the outside space of established
the student has a fixed entrance and exit date communities (e.g. Wikipedia) practitioners might
and therefore might be seen rather as a assume a dominating role
"Newbie"
Greater sharing of Educator/Student - rather limited – Educator/Student & practitioner - potentially Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner -
knowledge except if allowing outsiders to large scale potentially very large scale
participate
Connection of content Only if earlier and future students are Yes, though based at the web and therefore Yes, since this scenario involves formally enrolled
& discourse involved in current students' activities - might be disconnected for future students, or students from various institutions it allows to shape
e.g. Earlier students as mentors, future at least requires them to figure out the inside space in order to suits students' needs. Students
students as lurker connection themselves. Again earlier and from different institutions will also have different start
future students might be involved in current and end times that might help to assure an equilibrated
students' activities to allow a connection - ratio of students, free learner and practitioners and lead
e.g. Earlier students as mentors, future to continuity and evolution.
students as lurker. Students are only "guests"
at the outside space and therefore the space
is not shaped for their needs
Peer support Educator/Student - rather limited, Predominantly by practitioners Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner - potential
except if allowing outsiders to for robust support structure
participate
Peer assessment Educator/Student - rather limited There might be a peer assessment, either Two types of peer assessment: unorganized by
unorganized by practitioners or organized by practitioners and organized by other students & free
other students learners
Real activities Educator/Student - rather limited Educator/Student & practitioner - potential Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner - potential
for engagement in real activities for engagement in real activities
Personalized learning Educator/Student - rather limited / Free Educator/Student & practitioner - potential Educator/Student, Free learner & practitioner - potential
experience learner can ‘consume’ what they are for personalizing the learning experience for truly personalized learning experiences
personally interested at – might also be
allowed to participate
Informal learning Potentially limited Formal and informal learning - formal Formal and informal learning - formal learning more
learning clearly structured unstructured
Use of technologies Limited to available institutional tools Limited to available tools used by outside Large and diverse range of involved tools and spaces,
community based "out" at the web as well as across participating
institutions. Likelihood of having "champ hosts" for
different modules that could be institutional or existing
web communities.
Speed of innovation Likely rather slow Depending on outside community, Fast, perpetual beta
and evolution potentially faster than inside approach
Speed of learning Likely fast Depending on outside community, Depending on the learner and type of support provided
potentially slower than inside approach for formally enrolled students. Likely slower for
newbies, but faster for ICT literate learner
Scope of learning Limited, predictable Enhanced, fairly predictable Widest, with guaranteed minimum scope for formally
enrolled students depending on institutional guidance
Unique Selling Points · Transparency of environments · Real life learning with resulting higher · Transparency of environments improves quality
improves quality degree of soft skills, key and practical skills
· Meets social responsibility · Enhanced employability chances as a · Meets social responsibility
result of the points above
· Possibility to attract higher number · Opportunity to meet future employer · Possibility to attracts higher number of future
of future students (that might also match students (that might also match better - "know before
better - "know before what they buy") what they buy").
· Real life learning with resulting higher degree of
soft skills, key and practical skills
· Enhanced employability chances
· Opportunity to meet future employer
· Allows for new HE business models - e.g. learning
for free as you go, pay for services (f2f classes, formal
assessment, degrees)
· Allows for niche courses and identification of
rising stars at low costs.
Examples
Utopia Discovery Aristotle University None, by now
St. Cloud State University Washington Bothell
Table 0-1 FLOSS type educational approaches
7.6 Questions related to the application of such approaches, in particular
the hybrid approach
There are a number of poosible challenges to be considered related to the application of
a hybrid approach providing in number of unanswered questions.
• First characteristic: ‘openness’ or ‘inclusivity’

The cases of Open Ed Syllabus and Manitoba suggest that truly ‘open’ and ‘inclusive’
environments can be achieved and that there are apparently no major issues to be
overcome. Therefore to achieve this characteristic seems to be mainly a question of
‘opening up’.
Question: none
• Second characteristic: volunteering and volatility with FLOSS participants

voluntarily deciding which role(s) they play or which responsibilities to take on.
The cases of Open Ed Syllabus and Manitoba, which attracted a number of volunteering
participants, suggest that there are some motivational aspects to participate at such an
open learning experience. However, those two cases might not be representative, since
the lecturers of the two courses in question are globally well known and therefore it
should not be difficult for them to attract a number of volunteers out of a global pool.
Motivations to participate at FLOSS are e.g. ‘to learn’, ‘gaining reputation’ or ‘personal
enjoyment’, but also a clear ‘win / win scenario’ between information seeker and
information provider resulting in learning benefits for both sides (Demaziere et al.,
2006). Those motivational aspects might be difficult to transfer to and apply in formal
educational settings, where the main motivation relates to obtaining a formal degree.
While learning in the FLOSS community is efficient because ‘project managers’ and
‘community managers’ (and many more roles) voluntarily assume responsibility for
organising work, tasks, content, and communication, in formal educational settings
roles, tasks, and responsibilities are more pre-determined and rigid (Glott et al. 2007).
And even if allowing for such roles within an educational setting, what would be the
motivation to assume such roles?
Question: How to motivate volunteers to participate at such an open learning
environment and which are the motivational factors that realistically can be provided?
Secondly, in all of the cases reviewed students are expected to fulfil some pre-defined
assignments, which is not the case in FLOSS where individuals decide about the roles
and tasks they take on; however besides this all of the cases also allow students to take
on further roles and responsibilities analogue to FLOSS.
The cases of Open Ed Syllabus and Manitoba, which attracted a number of volunteering
participants, followed a traditional educational approach with participants being
provided with a pre-defined course format, weekly assignments and clearly identified
expectations. Within a FLOSS type scenario however there should be more
opportunities for participants to engage and contribute.
Question: In which way could a focus on pre-defined assignments be combined with
volunteering contributions as it is the case in FLOSS?
• Third characteristic: use of large-scale networks and the way they are
established and maintained.
Only the cases of Washington Bothell and Aristotle made use of large scale networks,
as they send out their students into well established communities (Wikipedia and
FLOSS). Opening up structures, as seen in the cases of Open Ed Syllabus and
Manitoba, can bring together formally enrolled students and the wider world. However,
traditional semester based course structures usually resulting in a 100% community
turnover are a major challenge to establish large scale networks, in particular for an
inside approach.
Question: How to set up large scale networks and maintain them over time within
semester based course structures?
• Fourth characteristics: content-richness and specialisation. FLOSS communities

The cases of Washington Bothell and Aristotle show how students can enrich learning
resources and also how to make use of content that is freely available at the web. But
even in those cases the contact to experts of the outside environments is not – or at least
not systematically – integrated into the courses environment. This is true for two
reasons: a technical absence of providing a link between the course environment and the
outside environment (Wikipedia or FLOSS) and a human absence of knowledge broker
as to be found in FLOSS. Cohorts of students from different years act in isolation and
there is an absence of other stakeholders, such as students from fellow universities,
practitioners or learner outside of formal education that could bridge the gap to connect
those different cohorts.
Question:
How to provide the same content richness as in FLOSS?
How to make learning processes visible to allow them to become a valuable learning
resource itself?
How to connect learning resources and learning processes (and associated discourse)?
How to integrate outside experts or knowledge broker systematically into the courses
inside environment?
How to provide opportunities for the different groups as existent in FLOSS with
opportunities to participate?
• Fifth characteristic: modularity to reduce systemic interdependencies between

different files of the same product, allowing a higher level of task partitioning
and a lower level of explicit coordination and interaction among programmers.
All of the cases show a type of modularity if modularity is translated to the students
work on a specific small and manageable task. Modularity in FLOSS on the other side
not only provides easy entrance and facilitates collaborative work, but also relates to the
fact that the different modules contribute to the overall software project and therefore
each of those modules adds a value to it.
Question: How to create a FLOSS type scenario in which the students’ works would
contribute to the overall value of the course?
As might becomes visible the questions above appear to be interrelated and all relate to
organizational and motivational aspects and therefore it might not be possible to address
one question without considering another.
Additionally it should be noted that there are a number of further questions that would
need to be considered once moving from an ‘experimental beta’ implementation of a
hybrid approach to a ‘production stable’ stage, which relate e.g. to quality assurance,
legal aspects or cultural concerns.
7.7 Conclusion
The inside approach allows educators to take some of the existing practices found in
FLOSS communities and to employ them within a conventional higher education
setting. Such an inside approach might be ‘closed’ to the outside world, ‘open’ to the
outside world to view, or ‘open’ to the outside world to participate. Inviting the outside
world to participate likely is a first step towards the hybrid approach as the major
cultural and legal challenges should have been already overcome.
The outside approach allows educators to provide students with a real life experience, to
provide them with richer and more up to date learning materials and to gain soft and key
skills ‘on the fly’ through real interactions in the virtual world. This obviously has
benefits in the field of software development, but also in other subject areas as it gives
students experience of real collaboration and accepting feedback. However, the
opportunities for this type of approach may be limited, since it relies on an existing
FLOSS type community to be realised, and these may not be present in every subject
area. Additionally the outside world is not connected to the institutions inside world
resulting in a loss of the created / involved artifacts, lessons learnt, or external expertise
with future students not being able to benefit from those.
It has also been shown that many questions related to the application of a hybrid
approach relate to organizational or motivational aspects, which include:
• The availability of a large number of (volunteering) participants
In the case of FLOSS communities this is characterized by volunteering and volatility,
is probably one of the cornerstones of the efficiency of the FLOSS community as a
learning environment. A crucial question for transferring FLOSS principles to formal
education is how similar networks can be created within formal environments, which
usually have small classes. On the other hand, FLOSS community members have
regular contacts to only 1 to 5 other community members (Glott et al. 2007) and
therefore a question is how to reap similar network effects from small networks in
formal education. Meanwhile the ‘outside approach’ is taking advantage of existing
online communities, the ‘inside approach’ and the hybrid approach will need to
establish structures, incentives and motivations to bring together the different involved
stakeholders and to establish such a community.
• How to allow re-experience?
Within FLOSS much of the learning processes and outcomes are made visible and
therefore allows future learners to learn from what others did and to build upon those
experiences. A project based approach, analogue to development processes in FLOSS,
might provide an answer to this as collaboration and discussions could emerge around
those project works.
• The motivational aspect
As earlier mentioned, motivations to participate at FLOSS are e.g. ‘to learn’, ‘gaining
reputation’ or ‘personal enjoyment’, but also a clear ‘win / win scenario’ between
information seeker and information provider resulting in learning benefits for both sides
(Demaziere et al., 2006). Those motivational aspects might be difficult to transfer to and
apply in formal educational settings. While learning in the FLOSS community is
efficient because ‘project managers’ and ‘community managers’ (and many more roles)
voluntarily assume responsibility for organising work, tasks, content, and
communication, in formal educational settings roles, tasks, and responsibilities are more
pre-determined and rigid (Glott et al. 2007). And even if allowing for such roles within
an educational setting, what would be the motivation to assume such roles?
There are a number of possibilities to provide incentives within formal educational
settings such as rewards for students who voluntarily assume positions, similar to
project or community managers in FLOSS, or to include into the curricula the
obligation of more experienced students to share their knowledge with the less
experienced. Free learners outside of formal education might also be offered a
certification of their learning outcomes against fees, or a virtual credit account that
rewards them for taking on roles such as mentor, facilitator, moderator or tutor. Those
virtual credits than might be used to pay for assessment and certifications. With regards
to incentives for practitioners to participate one possibility would be to involve learner
into concrete project works – e.g. to provide computer science students with the
opportunity to take on some tasks at a respective open source project. Participants of
FLOSS communities are also aware that the skills they learn have a positive value on
the labour market and are able to judge this value realistically. Precondition for
competing with others that have a comparable formal degree is that informally attained
skills in the FLOSS community must be provable (Glott et al. 2007). Peer-reviewing
and recognition within the community is very important in this regard to build up a
repute that can be shown to possible employer. Similar opportunities, as well for
students as for free learner, therefore might be desirable within an educational setting.
Even if addressing all the points above it might still be a challenge to provide an easy
entrance strategy for students from fellow universities or free learners outside of formal
education. This challenge relates to questions such as ‘what are learners supposed to do’
or ‘how to get involved’.
The cases as provided at chapter 6 suggest that the ‘inside approach’ and the ‘outside-
approach’ are viable. Those cases indicate that FLOSS principles can be successfully
leveraged to educational settings to provide students with similar learning resources, or
allowing them to become content creators. The Hybrid model potentially offers the
highest benefits but remains to be explored and will be subject to chapter 8 of this work.
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A Comparative Study Between FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) Communities and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)

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Work in Progress

Working Title: A Comparative Study Between FLOSS (Free/Libre

Extract of Chapters 1, 6 and 7

Author: Andreas Meiszner

Institute of Educational Technologies (IET)

The Open University, UK

1.2.1 The Open Educational Resource (OER) movement

1.2.2 The recent emergence of open courses

1.3 Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities as a learning

1.4 Objectives of this work

1.5 Research questions

1.6 Contribution of the work

1.7 Research Outline

6.2 Case study 1 - University of Washington Bothell, US

6.2.2 Course Description:

6.2.3 Course particularities

Purpose content was used / developed for

Image 2 – Example of insufficient quality feedback

Image 4 – Example for students’ as an editor

Image 5 – Example for students as acting as peers

Use of prior learning

Image 6 – Revision history of students’ contribution

6.2.4 Similarities to FLOSS case

6.2.5 Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case

Image 7 – Washington Bothell learning environments

6.2.6 Possible areas of improvement

6.3 Case study 2 - Utopia Discovery / ADM - Douglas County School

6.3.2 Course description

6.3.3 Course particularities

Purpose content was used / developed for

Image 9 – The 6 “C” of the Authentic Learning

• Contextual (Relevant) - All information that is disseminated, and content that is

Image 10 – Example student’s artifact

Connection to further content

Existent support system

6.3.4 Similarities to FLOSS case

6.3.5 Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case

Image 14 – FLOSS type learning environment - simplified

6.3.6 Possible areas of improvement

6.4.2 Course Description:

Image 15 – Aristotle SE course structure

6.4.3 Course particularities

Image 16 – Student’s activity illustration

Purpose content was used / developed for

Model for Involving Students in FLOSS Projects43

Image 17 – Example student’s contribution / interaction44

Use of prior learning

Connection to further content

Existent support system

6.4.4 Similarities to FLOSS case

6.4.6 Possible areas of improvement

6.5.2 Course Description:

6.5.3 Course particularities

Use of prior learning

Connection to further content

Existent support system

6.5.4 Similarities to FLOSS case

6.5.5 Borders, limitations and differences to FLOSS case

6.5.6 Possible areas of improvement

Image 19 – FLOSS type learning environment

6.6 Case study 5 - Connectivism Course, University of Manitoba, CA (to be

6.7 Case study 6 - St. Cloud State University Minnesota, US

6.7.3 Course particularities

Purpose content was used / developed for