Macquarie Uni launches open source teaching

Macquarie University's Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) Foundation has announced the LAMS Community, a global community Web site for teachers and developers who use the open source LAMS software for collaborative learning.

The LAMS Community lets teachers share so-called "digital lesson plans" that can be delivered online with students, and to discuss their experiences using LAMS.

According to the university, this announcement signals the birth of "open source teaching", as the LAMS Community encourages the sharing of digital lesson plans under open content licences, like Creative Commons. It will let teachers find digital lessons plans that are freely available to use and adapt, and they can share their own creations and adaptations to the benefit of all education.

The LAMS Community is based on the open source ".LRN" community platform developed at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). LAMS leader, Macquarie University's Professor James Dalziel, said the LAMS Community is central to the strategy of empowering teachers to transform education using "the revolutionary, digital lesson planning approach offered by LAMS".

"Educators can now freely and openly share best practice teaching in a way never seen before in the history of education," Dalziel said. "We chose .LRN for its sophisticated community management functions, complementary feature set, and our shared, open source philosophy."

The LAMS Community will benefit from .LRN features for community-based news, discussion forums and sharing of digital lesson plans, or "sequences", and other resources. Initial communities will include developers, technical support and education, and sub-communities for K-12, higher education and training, and research and development.

In addition to using .LRN for the LAMS Community, integration between LAMS and .LRN for course management, is scheduled to be available in the coming months.

John Norman, director of the Cambridge University Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technology praised the collaboration.

"Both .LRN and LAMS have set the pace in the development of collaborative learning platforms for higher education," Norman said. "This integration and co-operation between the two projects will create a powerful learning environment for students."

The LAMS Community is now open at www.lamscommunity.org.

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