Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Will Dr. OpenACS survive? Or why I stopped worrying and learned to love the .LRN consortium?
I am not a doctor yet 😊 but i have some thought about OpenACS i want to share with all of you that have been taking this great conversation in this forum keeping the flames public available. We can learn with this kind of discussion too if we could deal with it in a positive manner.
Why I came to OpenACS and why I love it and why I want this community survive? It is just because i perceive the value of this community-driven software development as a template for education. Not just for my personal education but also for other who want to involve with opensource.
As a template for education OpenACS survival is almost entirely dependent on the participation of the community that supports their efforts, regardless of their specific association with the project. Other reasons like we don't do Q&A, market analysis, or use focus groups seems to me less important for OpenACS survival than create group processes into this community to Build Good Software and Education
Rob Reynolds wrote once a interesting article for Xplana Learning where he suggested there are the elements that go into the making of good software and education. They are here:
* Abundant dialog -- the conversations occur and proliferate at every level, not just top-down. There are active, grass roots discussions that are just as important as the formal conversations taking place;
* Quality listening -- since information sharing and product evolution are the goals, listening is the most important element in every stage. Every detail can be important and people stop talking hen they do not feel they have been heard;
* True positive feedback -- positive feedback in the sense of a positive feedback loop -- information that actually causes a change in or modification to the system;
* Openness to real change -- positive feedback is a design feature that means the process/system is open to change, in fact, that it is expecting change to occur;
* Open-ended inquiry -- a driving force in quality developments is the asking of questions that have no set or pre-determined answer.
Maybe these elements could help us to create a group process that is dependent on asking questions, allowing new information to alter previous plans, and listening to the input of others. We have tools for enhance this kind of group process (public available TIPS, forums, IRC logs, maybe we could explore Survey). We have community-friendly for this (knowledgeable, transparent). If we see just only this thread we have great positive feedback 😊
.LRN
I really think .LRN is a little different from OpenACS. The most important differece i think is that .LRN is the unique expressions not only of OpenACS community or .LRN Consortium, but also and much more of their Users. .LRN competitors like Moodle, Atutor, ILIAS and others are good because there is a collaborative User community surrounding each of them in which people listen to the ideas of others and are willing to change. Where are .LRN users? Where are them using .LRN (at university, at k-12, at reseach centers etc)? What type of .LRN user are them (Educational administrator, Systems administrator, Teacher etc)? When will be the next .LRN conference? Is there something like a DDP (dotLRN Documentation Project)? Tips and Tricks Using .LRN for Teaching for Researching for Universitary Portal for Courseware etc? Reviews on IT news, EduInfo etc?
I think .LRN Consortium has great advances on it. Quality survey from Rafael covered most of the "where". Sloan and Bruce Spears covered some aspects on teaching using .LRN. Al and Cesar Brea has in touch with conferences. E-lane has working on methodologies and producing contents for e-learning. Dave Bauer and others has focusing on discussions about Good practices in elearning- either here in forums and his personal page at thedesignexperience. Could we glue all of these advances and show them for people who want to try .LRN?
