Like everyone else here, (I think....), I make quite a bit of use of the Track Changes functionality in M$-word when collaboratively producing a document, reviewing or suggesting changes to other people's docs, and responding to changes other people have made to my docs.
However, I still haven't found a usable way of reviewing changes from several people that were created at different times on differently revised documents. (M$ may support a document version control system for managing collaboratively produced docs, but I've never used it).
So it was interesting to see this screencast about an animated change viewer for Wikipedia entries, which shows how changes can be managed in other environments (specifically, the MediaWiki environment). Whilst not directly applicable to using Track Changes in M$W, it may suggest some alternative ways of using Track Changes (though it hasn't to me - yet!).
What is more interesting, potentially, is how something like this can be used to moderate/manage the change process in content that is produced for online use....
At the moment, our materials delivered as HTML from an OU server are not intended to be subject to frequent change - as with other course materials, the idea is write it, present it for the first time, fix it if necessary, and leave it. The production system is bottlenecked by workflow models that were introduced to manage the production of print materials
Where the subject is dynamic, however, or might benefit from contemporary news items in each presentation (rather than going with case studies from the first year of presentation), a flexible authoring/editing system is really handy, e.g. if it allows any time access to authors and editors, and also readily reveals document changes.
A login-required experimental wiki has been set up to help with capturing ideas about a mooted 'business web' course, although currently it's not as powerful as the WikiMedia engine underlying Wikipedia, (the one used in the screencast linked to above). It's not too hard to imagine how such a system might also be used to collaboratively author documents of a particular form, such as TSCP course pages, or certain forms of report.
Just while Wikipedia's in the thread, I also wonder whether we should be supporting closely intergrated discussion-like tabs in our online courses?
There are several ways the discussion page in Wikipedia can be used, of course (look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot if you need a link to get you in to a Wikipedia article).
1) In production - e.g. for CT to discuss a page, CT and editors to discuss particulalr pages
2) For logging errors/confusion during presentation; eg logging student 'issues' with particular bits of the course (how do other people manage/log student queries with specific sections of course materials, particularly in the first year of presentation?).
3) For students to discuss the topic...
Discussion threads related to particular sections of our course materials are encouraged in our courses already, of course, but often there is no click-thru from online materials directly to a related thread, or discussion.
A certain confused linearity of discussion also tends to arise in a (threaded) conferencing system by virtue of the accession order of posts into a thread. In the wiki discussion relating to a particular page, it is easy enough to imagine students constructing a discussion out of time, and maintaining the integrity of an argument (?!) by being allowed to make changes, or at least add to, the discussion at the point at which they want to comment, rather than relying on quoted text in long conference posts etc.
This form of discussion would allow students to structurethe page into some sort of response or commentary to the official page, or add different examples to it.
Many organisations are looking to their customers to participate and co-create content. Amazon's review system for example has been hugely successful; the open source software movement is built on co-creation of software, and the Creative Commons movement is facilitating remixing and republication of content.
In the OU, there is occasional talk about how we are faced with the problem of lack of authors, but we have (tens of?) thousands of students who are likely to be subject matter experts in particular areas of study, and who (as we are led to believe by the alumni association) are likely to want to give something back to the OU.
So what would it take for us to envisage students/alumni producing at least D1 content for us in an OU open course factory a bit like the Wikiversity? We'd scope out some learning objectives perhaps (or would the community provide those, so they get what they (think they) need/want? Chapter outlines, topic outlines, case studies (thought the students probably have access to better ones than we do), etc etc.
Increasing parts of the organisation seem to be coming round to the idea that we should take our content open. The next step, I think, is to argue that we get the students to co-create, and that we act more as course directors (in the sense of film directors, for ecxample) managing the flow of ideas and production of content with timely interventions. and shaping the outcome as a fully fledged OU course as a result ...?
Posted by ajh59 at July 6, 2005 03:55 PM