Exploring Border Resources for Open Learning: Designing for an Evolving Pedagogical Landscape

1. Open learning -- delivery of ed programs through ICT • Border resources -- shared social resources associated w/ use of educational artifacts • Knowledge mobility -- move ‘knowledge’ normally housed in institutions to local contexts • Mass higher education -- through ICT and ‘open learning’ models -- accessibility • Tertiary education -- post-secondary ed. • “New order” -- ‘old methods’ no longer relevant; rise of new technologies; new pedagogies demanded by new context of open learning; large scale, global national corporations

2. Anthropomorphizing -- giving something human characteristics • Borderline framework-- a tool for thinking about an ongoing fascination with technologies creates center, periphery, contexts -- way of looking at challenges of open learning • Center and Periphery -- can shift, not fixed, examine in relation to one an another • Border resources -- socially shared, need to examine the relationship between center/periphery • Research on open/distance ed -- a) advocacy; b) design of tech; c) reactions of teachers/students

3. Portable context -- “set of conventions that TRAVEL WITH THE ARTIFACT” • Social inertia -- ‘the extent to which artifacts demand significant resources to get into circulation and resist changes once there’ • Artifacts and meaning/s are interrelated through use • Borders -- a) arise through social practices and constituted by center and periphery WITHIN an interpretive context EG coke bottle; b) serve to ‘embody, preserve and represent authority’; c) serve to sustain and constrain interpretation

4. Social inertia -- strongly associated with authority • Legitimate peripheral participation -- learning w/in a community of practice with access to a larger set of practices. Learning as participation. (Lave and Wenger) • Positional good -- mass production -- value is a function of its position -- status change • physical demassification -- not being in same room together • Social demassification -- niche marketing -- not trying to reach “everyone” -- specialization

5. Borderland resources -- curriculum and pedagogy. • “New order” for pedagogy --- move from teacher-centered pedagogy to student-centered pedagogy • Individualized exile -- isolated in our own communities • FOCUS on curriculum, not pedagogy in open learning contexts • What are border resources and how to design for open learning contexts? • Material social binary -- border framework tries to get around -- forced to look at points of intersection between material and social • Pedagogies as artifacts

6. Intellectual Production Work Day 7 Give an account of Taylor’s article from the standpoint of your own understanding of distance education/open learning, paying special reference to questions of the ‘use value’ or ‘exchange value’ of your graduate studies.