Those interested in OpenCourseWare will find Tom’s post interesting. Coursefeed has hooked up Facebook and Blackboard together to provide students a way to collaborate even after the course is finished. Not surprisingly, the folks at Coursefeed are running into all sorts of privacy and proprietary issues. However, to me this is interesting for several reasons.
OpenCourseWare has none of these issues. We could set up learning environments around courses, and people could join if they wished, and leave when they want. We’ve wanted a social aspect to OCW for years, and this could be it.
The other interesting aspect to all of this is what happens when faculty realize they can put their content in OCW, and have all their learning tools in Facebook. Who needs an LMS when you have this setup? The natural next step seems to be to ditch the fee heavy, tech support heavy LMS, and move to what students are already using…
