Specific Features of Fragmented Content: Nano-Technology of Learning

Introduction

In the future, data will connect everything and everybody. “Open is related to affordable education, transparent science, and accessible scholarships. These ideals are slowly becoming a reality thanks to the open education, open science, and open access movements. Running separate-if parallel-courses, they all share a philosophy of equity, progress, and justice” (Jhangiani and Biswas-Diener, 2017). Nevertheless, most universities continue to teach students in the traditional way and use classic strategies for professional development.

Nowadays, students are wired differently. Their world has changed dramatically. The educational system becomes open, but old pedagogy slowly moves through innovations. Cornelius (2018) notes “Institutional fear of embracing and managing change has alienated an entire generation of learners. They no longer believe what is being pushed to them in school has relevance to their future. And they may be right. The resulting disconnection caused by our irrelevance on yesterday’s inflexible failing systems and pedagogy is effectively robbing our students of their future by continuing to prepare them for careers that no longer exist”.

University pedagogy can and should play an important role in the OER movement instead the primary role of open pedagogy is not about content at all. One of the biggest problems in education is fragmented content. Every day has appeared new OER that allow to remix and share text, photos, music, video, and animation in various creative ways. According to the British English Dictionary, the meaning of term “fragmented content” refers to separated into or consisting of several parts. First meaning would have been an extremely radical (metaphysic) thesis of non-traditional instructional methods, and most particularly, of active learning and skills development. The second meaning is more a concern about reading with open textbooks.

This chapter is focused on the pedagogy of learning in the ill-structured fragmented environment. For this aim, it was established two basic objectives. The first is to describe the specific features of the fragmented content. The second objective is to establish how nano-learning meets the standards of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. This chapter is organized as follows: we begin with an explanation of issues regarding the fragmented content and proceed with an explanation of how nano-learning could be taken into account.

The chapter is a first attempt to give an overview of learning in an ill-structured fragmented environment. It is an intention to follow up a discussion regarding principles and norms of Metasystems Learning Design Theory and its didactical model. In particular, this chapter is focused on understanding the phenomenon of openness from the perspectives of nanotechnology. The chapter is based on assumption that “cross-border fragmentation of production is a defining feature of the modern international economy. This fragmentation entails ‘slicing up’ production stages or tasks required to produce output and distributing them across countries to minimize production costs” (Johnson & Noguera, 2012, p. 2).

Focusing first on generic ideas as outlined in the scientific literature, the author argues that future investigations need to be focused on OER terminology, knowledge ecology, affordability, and risks of using and developing non-effective open textbooks. These research questions are not summarized yet. Following this idea outlined examples of good practice evident in a series of open studies. Thus, fundamental to the chapter is the idea that sophisticated studies in OER technology can only be guaranteed only on the basic of “Metasystems Learning Design Theory”.