Michael Stephens is now using WordPress MU to host his classes online, and that opening page is really sweet. It’s hardly the first time somebody’s used a blog to host course content, but I like where he’s going with it. We’re significantly expanding our use of WordPress at Plymouth, and using it to replace WebCT/Blackboard is definitely an option. The biggest difference may be that course content in blogs is public, by default, but content in Blackboard is shared only with the members of the course. John Martin calls this “teaching out loud.” My opinion is a little more emphatic: “don’t do it in the dark.”

I wonder if Michael plans to keep content online after the classes run, or what he’ll do with old content if he runs the same course again in a later term. I think there’s a lot of value in leaving course content online and available to course participants long after the course is completed. I’ve been thinking the best way to make that work is to make each course (or section of a course) in each term its own blog. That way each instructor gets full control over their course environment, while still making it easy to preserve that content over time. Here’s the URL scheme I have in mind:

• http://courses.plymouth.edu/term_code/discipline_code/course_number/section

or, in practice, something like this:

• http://courses.plymouth.edu/200810/en/3510/02

It may not be pretty to have all those numbers, but it’s reliable, predictable, and extendable. The URL structure beyond that would be up to the instructor, and the subdirectories leading to the course blogs can automatically index their sub-content. My biggest question is about where to put the term code. I expect I’ll just have to play with it a while.

It should be no surprise that journalists are talking about citizen journalism, but what of the disintermediation of other industries?

Man-on-the-street Mark Georgiev told Marketplace:

I didn’t want a certificate, I didn’t want any kind of accreditation, I really just wanted the knowledge. And I also wanted to work at my own pace.

Georgiev, the story explains, has a masters from Yale but wanted to learn programming. That’s when he found Foundations of Software Engineering in MIT’s OpenCourseware.

Georgiev finished the course in a few months time. Now, he says, he can now write rudimentary programs. His only expense was buying books.

MIT isn’t alone, and at least one professor has started selling his lectures as podcasts (via), without support from the school.

Noting that students may want to use the audio recordings while cramming for tests, as an alternative to taking notes, or as an aid for non-native English speakers, NCSU’s Robert Schrag cited policy that “each professor owns the words that he or she speaks in the classroom and can do whatever they wish with them — put them in a textbook, on a CD, sell them as MP3s — whatever.”

NCSU didn’t quite see it the same way and asked Schrag to stop, but that doesn’t change the fact that the role of educational institutions — like the role of publishers — is changing.

How long before Schrag, or somebody with a similar spirit, tries again? Audio recordings and downloadable courseware may not replicate the classroom experience any more than online communities replicate physical communities, but who would claim education will be any less affected by technology than any other industry?

college 2.0, citizen professor, Robert Schrag, OpenCourseware, courseware, education, ivory tower, network, podcast lectures