Hans Poldoja of Aalto University has successfully defended his Doctoral Dissertation entitled: “The Structure and Components for the Open Education Ecosystem: Constructive Design Research of Online Learning Tools”. I was happy to see that it was supervised by Teemu Leinonen whom I met at Eden last June. Congrats!

Poldoja examines: “five design projects of online services & learning tools in regard to four perspectives: Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL), Open Education (OE), Digital Ecosystem (DE) and Design Research (DR)”.

TEL: 1990’s, digital tech in learning, complex, interdisciplinary field (social sciences, technology, design), sub-areas include computer-supported collaborative learning, improving practices of formal education, informal learning, interoperability of tech learning services, personalization of learning etc.

OE: making educational assets visible and accessible and harnessing the collective wisdom of a community of practice and reflection (Iiyoshi & Kumar: 2008), with a licensing model that grants users with more permissions or an open environment or process, learners as active creators. (progressive inquiry pedagogical model)

DE: Web 2.0, web and mobile apps, preferred set of tools for each user, communication between users, “distributed, adaptive open, social-technical systems, with properties of self organization, scalability and sustainability, inspired by natural ecosystems”. “Briscoe and De Wilde: 2009)

DR: as in planning and giving form to new products, challenges are addressed through practice.

Poldoja focuses his research on the design of online learning tools and their mandatory incompleteness; OL tools, he says, are designed to be open and flexible for users to freely combine, however, under uncertain requirements.

His design case studies include:

• PILOT: multimedia learning resource template, open educational resources, European school education
• LeMill: web community for authoring and sharing of open educational
  resources, open educational resources, European school education
• EduFeedr: coordination tool for blog-based online courses, open online courses, higher education & teacher training Estonia
• LeContract: learning contract planning tool, open online courses, higher education & teacher training Estonia
• DigiMina: self- and peer-assessment tool, assessment of educational technology competencies for Estonian teachers

Looking forward to reading it all. I’ll be back for more.