KS Reporter 2: Visions of Learning Units

The Kuali Student Reporter update has information about the Kuali Days VIII schedule, presentations at EDUCAUSE, and a some insight into learning unit, the basic component of Kuali Student’s Curriculum Management.

Kuali Days VIII Schedule Released

The Kuali Days VIII Schedule-at-a-Glance is now available on the Kuali Days VIII Web site. Check out the planned Kuali Student presentations, while also getting an idea of the other presentations.

Be sure not to miss out on the benefits of early registration. If you have not registered for Kuali Days VIII yet, now is the time! Visit the Kuali Foundation Web site for registration information.

KS at EDUCAUSE 2009

EDUCAUSE is in Denver this November and Kuali Student is offering the following sessions:

You Can't Change Learning with that Old Curriculum Management System When: Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - 3:50 p.m. Where: Korbel Ballroom 2B.

Designing Data Warehousing and BI for Service-Oriented Solutions When: Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - 4:55PM p.m. Where: Colorado Convention Center, Hall F (exact table numbers and floor plan TBD)

Designing Services within an SOA Student Information System When: Friday, November 6, 2009 - 8:10 a.m. Where: Korbel Ballroom 2B.

A Course is a Course, of Course, of Course

A Course is a Course, of course, of course And everything can be modeled as a Course, of course Unless of course, it's not a course It's a research project or experiential learning, or community service, or co-op, or thesis, or field study, or module, or seminar, or... if you study at the University of Cambridge

Sung to the tune of the "Mr. Ed" theme song except the last line where it all breaks down

The Kuali Student project is becoming a tangible embodiment of the vision of Learning Units.  Three years ago I sat on the third floor of MIT's Student Center listening to Richard Spencer, executive direct of IT at the University of British Columbia. He stated:

A “learning unit number” is like an SKU... It can be a course; single lecture in a course; 15 minute student presentation in a course, participation in community service, and any activity that the student wants to include on a formal or co-curricular transcript.  We can also have: learning results, learning plans, learning resources.

At the time, I didn't care about learning units.  I was at this workshop because of its open-source vision.  Listening to Richard, I came to realize how hamstrung our current infrastructure is: We model everything as a variation of the fixed entities that were hard-wired into the structure of our systems.  Most of the problems of maintaining our student systems are due to this hard-wired nature. Learning is fluid and dynamic and professors at MIT want to push the boundaries of science, as well as those of teaching. I was hooked. I drank Richard Spencer's Kool-Aid.

Fast forward three years: That vision has had some real birthing pains. Richard's idea was that learning units could slide up and down a scale from the most general type, such as degree programs to the more specific types, such as courses and their activities.

The basic structure of the dictionary --- which manages system information about field names and types – was laid out last July by the Kuali Student service and technical architects.  It was designed to allow configuration of objects by both type and state.  Working with Seth Winerman, we took that abstract structure and used it to flesh out the dictionary with requirements for credit courses at Kuali Reference University, the project’s fictional test university. 

The first iterations show that we can successfully model a credit course and link it to its various formats and activities using a single reusable canonical Learning Unit as the basic building block.  I can see how we can extend this to non-credit courses as well.  It remains to be seen if we can model other types such as degree programs, general education requirements, experiential learning, and projects the same way.   

At a recent presentation I showed how the dictionary can be configured for each institution and how fields can be turned on or off, shortened or lengthened.  What I didn’t stress was that this capability that allows schools to customize Kuali Student to meet their own individual needs is the exact same capability we need to allow us to customize the core building blocks to create new learning unit types. 

Many of the differences between a UBC course and an MIT course and a Delta Course is that, although they are all “courses,” they actually lie at slightly different points on that sliding scale of Learning Units.  Put another way, just as the word "bird" refers to both sparrows and hawks, the term "course" refers to “similar but not the same” thing at each of our various schools.

So, what about the Ostrich?  Well, this is where Kuali Student Partner, the University of Cambridge, comes in.  If these same reusable components can be used to successfully model Cambridge's 800-year-old teaching structure of Triposes with their Michaelmas, Lent, and Easter terms, then they can be used to model any structure that our MIT professors can come up with.  While not conclusive, initial results are promising.

- By Norm Wright, MIT and Kuali Student