The New Pedagogy of Open Content: Bring Together Production and Learning

Graham Attwell - Director of theWelsh independent research institute, Pontydysgu;
Paolo Pumilia - the Open Culture promoters group. (Europe)

The fast growing Open Content movement has profound consequences for pedagogical approaches to learning. Whilst in its initial phase the movement focused on the use of new licenses - such as Creative Commons - allowing the reuse of educational materials, the advent of social software is narrowing the divide between the consumption and production of learning materials. Learners are increasingly learning through what John Seely Brown has called bricolage - through experimentation and through practice in different social contexts. Creation of learning materials by learners is developing an ecology of open content that could have implications also in the way scholars are coping with the growing need for crossdisciplinary competences in scientific knowledge areas, in order to be able to follow the leading edge researche in other fields. The paper will explore the use of open source software and open content in education in higher education and consider its pedagogic implications.