This semester, David Blakesley and I are teaching our two sections of ENGL 420S: Business Writing at Purdue University using Drupal via distance ed with both of our sections on the same site. I've posted a little more information about this at DrupalED

This afternoon, Samantha Blackmon, David Blakesley, and I will be giving a presentation at Purdue University's 2005 Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) Conference. View the Shockwave version or download the original OpenOffice presentation format. This presentation is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Also, below are some of the many Drupal sites being used for teaching this semester in the English department at Purdue. For most instructors, this is the first time teaching with Drupal. With others, this is the first time working with any online course management platform. Their responses so far about using Drupal have been very positive; I look forward to seeing how everyone's Drupal teaching practices evolve and develop over this semester and in the future.

This Slashdot post notes that Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative is available to the public. However, unlike MIT's OpenCourseWare which is a content delivery system (granted, with a lot of useful content), OLI is a community-based approach with some innovative, interactive features:

OLI courses include a number of innovative online
instructional components such as:

• cognitive tutors
• virtual laboratories
• group experiments
• simulations

Cognitive theory and faculty expertise guide the
initial development of each course. As the courses are delivered,
OLI researchers conduct a variety of studies to examine the effectiveness
and usability of various educational innovations. The research results
are used not only to improve the courses themselves, but also to
contribute to a growing understanding of effective practices in
online learning environments. (from the Project Overview page)

It's nice to see that Carnegie Mellon is using OLI as a way to test new pedagogical tools in an open source developmental style. With the potentially larger user base from making this system public, Carnegie Mellon scholars should be able to leverage a wider range of feedback in user testing.

Hopefully we'll see more of this as educators begin to understand that open content is not just about access to materials for students and other teachers to use, but also a new twist to developing pedagogy that is rooted in the long tradition of pratictioners who have shared their ideas and content with others in a way that futher develops our teaching practices by more than just depending on the publishing of research.

A Panel Presentation for the 2004 Computers and Writing Conference.

Fellow Kairosnews editor and computers and writing researcher Matt Barton has been integrating technology into his courses for a while, doing some great work with using both wikis and phpBB in his teaching. If I weren't so busy using weblogs, I'd be following in his footsteps investigating their pedagogical value, too :)

Well now for the announcement. Matt has taken the portal plunge. Instead of a static front page in front of the class wiki and discussion forums, Matt has placed phpBB EZ Portal on the front of his site, MattBarton.net, turning it into a versatile content management system with a blog for Matt on the front page. Looks great from here, Matt! Now, just get us an RSS feed so we can follow along with your posts.

In reference to a post which reminds us that Blackboard sites are hidden from the rest of the world, Randy of CarvingCode writes,

I'm more and more less and less at ease with what "we" are doing in online education. Many faculty are ignorant of the larger issues of keeping content behind the WebCT/Blackboard/eCollege, etc. firewalls. Financial reasons aside: why are we doing this if we aren't going to make it available? Isn't their a larger good to be gained by opening the door?

I agree, Randy. There is a larger good.

But for most teachers and institutions, I think it's about Fear:

Fear of loss of control.

Fear of being exposed.