Design for free learning

In this experience report, we provide a case study on the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in higher education, developing an open source interactive learning environment to support a blended course.Our aim is to improve the quality of adult distance learning, ultimately involving peers worldwide, by developing learning environments as flexible as possible regardless of the culture and context of use, of individual learning style and age of the learners. Our example concerns a course of Service Design where the teacher was physically present only intermittently for part of the course while in the remaining time students worked in teams using our online learning environment.We developed a structure where students are guided through discovery learning and mutual teaching. We will show how we started from the students' authentic goals and how we supported them by a simple structure of pacing the discovery process and merging theoretical understanding with practice in real life.Based on these first empirical results practical guidelines have been developed regarding improvements on the structure provided for the learning material and on the interaction facilities for students, teachers and instructional designers.