Connexions
Connexions is “a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc.”
The module I’ll be looking at first is a featured listing called “Understanding Basic Music Theory”
This is one of the modules referenced by a recentCNN.com article. CNN indicated the content has been viewed nearly 7 million times. According to the summary, this module is:
“An expanded version of “Introduction to Music Theory”, this course includes a review of common notation and an introduction to the physics behind music theory, as well as the basic concepts of music theory and a few slightly advanced but very useful topics, such as transposition.”
What will be interesting to see is how similar Connexions is to university-implemented LCMS’s (Learning Content Management Systems) such as Blackboad Vista, Sakai, and Moodle. These LCMS’s are used within the context of specific university courses - most frequently with a defined start and end date, and more noteably include methods of assessment such as assignments, quizzes and tests.
Connexions’ open source model means material is available to all learners worldwide, which immediately expands the potential audience of the content, however it also presents some interesting implications for the concept of assessment and evaluation.
It will be interesting to see if such tools exist in Connexions, or if the tool is intended more for information dissemination / content distribution. I’m hopefuly that at a minimum, courses include self-assessment options to help students improve and locate areas of confusion where further study is necessary.
It is important to note too that despite the online content being “free”, instructors are given the opportunity to derive an income from their content via the option to order printed copies of their material.
Nonetheless it’s arguable that income generation is more of an afterthought to those who make their content available on Connexions and that the main aim and focus is on the learning process itself and the sharing of knowlege.
