The SocialLearn project, which is intended to be a more open replacement for the systems currently deployed by universities. It’s designed to be extensible, and will have a documented API for doing so; long term, the group hopes to make the whole package open source.
The vision
For 3000 years education has made the learner adapt to the system. SocialLearn aims to reverse this and make the education system adapt to the learner. SocialLearn is a project initiated by The Open University to combine the best of the values and approaches found in the new social web technologies with those of higher education. This will create new modes of recognised and supported learning experiences for a wide clientele.
Assumptions
SocialLearn is predicated on a number of assumptions:
- There is a major shift in society and education driven by the possibilities new technologies create for creating and sharing content and for social networking.
- Higher education, to date, has not really addressed how to engage with these fundamental shifts and their impact on the core business model of higher education.
- There is educational value in the application of both the technologies seen in web 2.0 and the approaches they embody.
- The status quo is no longer feasible or advisable; we need to apply the best of our expertise and experience to address the necessary change.
- Competition in the learner sphere is ever more complex, multi-faceted and fragmented; If higher education doesn’t address the issues this raises someone else will.
- The principles embodied in SocialLearn reflect the essence of the proposal – harnessing social networking for learning and include adopting an approach which is open, flexible, disruptive, democratic and, most importantly, pedagogically driven.
The term SocialLearn is used throughout this site to describe the concept under discussion: it does not constitute the proposed or even preferred eventual name for the project.
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Posted in SocialLearn blog
