About Opening Learning Interplay 2008

"Opening Learning" is a double entendre —
We aim to open learning both through increasing access through building and improving Open Educational Resources and by increasing our understanding of how learning happens. "Interplay" will bring both activities together. Both the development and learning sciences communities have valuable resources to provide to one another.

The symposium is the outcome of a year long process which included a series of three small workshop-style multi-day meetings with leading thinkers and researchers in the learning sciences interacting with each other and with open educational resource developers.

The presentations at the symposium will have been shaped by the interactions people have had at these preliminary meetings.

The purpose of this symposium is to bring together and share a broad range of perspectives on the nature of learning. To this end we will:

• Inform our practice of applying results from the learning sciences to the design of Open Educational Resources that will have a much higher chance of having a positive impact on learning outcomes.
• Discuss the role of current research, the roles of technology and virtual environments, and to identify new areas of research.
• Explore how Open Educational Resource projects can support research efforts.
• Foster dialogue between developers and learning scientists to understand the research better and voice issues within development projects that seem to conflict.
• Forge lasting partnerships and frame an ongoing research agenda.
• Present examples of existing collaborations between the learning scientists and OER developers — showing how both communities can work together to open learning.

We encourage OER developers to bring their own examples of OERs they have developed, or those in the works. The learning scientists will examine attendees’ challenges and questions, and discuss various approaches to building in learning principles to improve OERs.