Creating OER: LeMill or Wikiversity

This post satisfies the assignment for the 2nd week of the OERcourse at Wikiversity, an online open learning institution. This week’s study is devoted to a formal introduction to Wikiversity and to LeMill, another open learn institution. OERcourse participants were asked to register with LeMill or Wikiversity, contribute something in the form of constructive feedback in discussion forums, editing, or new page creation, then write one blog post about the experience. In addition, participants were asked to join an existing learning resource or study project, as well as start our own new content or wiki-page resource in LeMill or Wikiversity. The following describes my experience in completing this week’s assignment.

A self-described “learning mill” that fosters collaborative learning in the form of unrestricted authoring and sharing of learning resources, my conclusion is that LeMill is designed for teachers, rather than students. Teachers are urged to find, author and share learning resources at will, subject to the creative commons share-alike license. LeMill would be a good place for beginning teachers to hone their skills as one is given the option to create “media pieces”, which are small modules of information (of whatever type) that may be combined later to form a full-blown learning resource, such as a course, or “collections” that the teacher could email to students or post on a blog. This type of piecemeal development of course content prior to publication is clearly advantageous. LeMill teachers also have access to a “Methods” and a “Tools” section where they can observe and benefit from successful procedures adopted by their peers. Added extras are puzzles and maps that should help teachers garner student involvement and “teacher learning stories”, probably similar to this blog post, where teachers are able to reflect on their experience.

In spite of the above, LeMill has the distinct disadvantage – as far as learning goes – of being inaccessible. For example, it was recommended that the participants in this OERcourse hang-out in the #lemill IRC channel. Well, first, I could not login here – perhaps a dead link. But no matter what I did, I was unable to access that service here. I waded through endless code and documentation, little of which I understood. Frustrated, I Googled “web chat for idiots”.  Amazingly, I experienced instant gratification upon delivery of a host called Mibbit. In less than two minutes I was registered and logged in; I searched and found the LeMill client, in addition to another participant in the OERcourse who helped me select and register an IRC name!

Here is another [more substantive] example. I registered at LeMill in order to contribute something in the form of constructive feedback in discussion forums, editing, or new page creation, as required by the OERcourse syllabus. Further, I joined a group dedicated to teaching human rights and social justice to middle school students. I already had all the content at my fingertips and I did not think it would be difficult to propose a Method or Tool related to such teaching. Well my peers, I could not add anything, other than to the forum, although I spent 78 minutes reviewing everything on the site, including the Help and FAQ!

In contrast, Wikiversity is clearly and evidently a venue for students, in the Greek sense. Learners are encouraged to jump in where angels fear to tred, however there are numerous avenues for help, including a greater community and Custodians who see to it that avid learners (I am one such) remain within the confines of written guidelines. Besides, at Wikiversity, a student has the opportunity to learn by example. This method has to be a more effective teaching device since the greatest genius among us must have had some initial guidance and training to placr them on the correct path.

In the final analysis, LeMill and Wikiversity are complementary open learning initiatives. Only after a student acquires a proper foundation can he/she pretend to create anything of value or proceed to teach another. I am an example. The font size in my second post was completely mesed up. I spent hours hop-scotching among various “how to” on the subject of HTML coding. Finally I joined the Wikiversity Web Design course [to satisfy a part of this week's assignment], which suggested that one start at the beginning: what is HTML. I invested a mere two hours on required reading and coding exercises and I am happy to report that I am now capable of creating a basic web page [no flash as yet, please] in terms of headers, fonts etc.