1. The OpenForest Portal as an Open Learning Ecosystem: Co-Developing in the Study of a Multidisciplinary Phenomenon in a Cultural Context
- Author
-
Liljeström, Anu, Enkenberg, Jorma, Vanninen, Petteri, Vartiainen, Henriikka, and Pöllänen, Sinikka
- Abstract
This paper discusses the OpenForest portal and its related multidisciplinary learning project. The OpenForest portal is an open learning environment and ecosystem, in which students can participate in co-developing and co-creating practices. The aim of the OpenForest ecosystem is to create an extensive interactive network of diverse learning resources. In this case study, primary school students (ages 9 to 12, N = 15) participated in a cross-curricular learning project, in which they produced video artifacts and published them on the portal. The goal of the study was to determine the types of learning practices and artifacts that would emerge from this learning project. The OpenForest portal served as an emerging learning ecosystem, for designing an artifact that represented bread made from pine-bark flour as a multidisciplinary, open, and complex phenomenon. Based on our findings, we argue that the questions that students jointly co-developed at the beginning of the learning project generated a shared learning task. The final artifacts, arising from a multitude of perspectives, provided complementary pictures of this shared phenomenon. Analysis of the studentgenerated data and video artifacts indicates that the students reflected design and learning processes that explained the study and nature of experts' work. We found that primary school students are capable of collecting large amounts of data and that their construction of the informative and fun video artifacts from these data represent a strong understanding of the phenomenon. [For the complete proceedings, see ED557181.]
- Published
- 2014