Creating a Custom Course (for oneself as a learner)

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Creating a Custom Course (for oneself as a learner)
Similar to Creating a Curriculum, end users may create a custom course from existing course materials (e.g, OCW lectures and assignments) and individual OERs (e.g., interactive resources).

Examples:
 * Send2Wiki converts selected content in to wiki format
 * Connexions provides a derived copy facility for customizing materials and the collection structure discussed above for assembling them.
 * Topic Maps - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/09/11/topicmaps.html

Challenges:
 * friendly environments
 * non-high-tech skills needed to reuse content from different sources. A recycling system so that, with a minimum of work individuals can upload their content.  No formatting necessary, not even cutting and pasting.

Enablers:
 * Send2wiki
 * OCWinMotion
 * MakeAPath
 * Low-tech solution: Volunteers who can accept hard copy in the mail; scan/OCR it; tag it; validate the donator. Huge amounts available in boxes.  (e-mimeograph!).  There is interest from the Retired Teachers' Association.

Story including search (for learner constructed course/curriculum)

 * Learner wants to become (e.g.) a good object-oriented software designer:
 * searches for a course ...
 * finds several ranked according to profile of the learner,
 * selects one and customises the overview, objectives, etc. and
 * saves it (e.g. on an optionally publically available myLearningSpace
 * other learners might choose to use this learning design and customise it for themselves.
 * The learner then proceeds along this custom learning path with access to other learners on intersecting paths (e.g. mailing lists and chat rooms shared by people covering similar learning objectives even if their ultimate goals are different) - irrespective of institutional affiliation.
 * Self-assessment may be done via automated testing tools (for testing the understanding of basic concepts) and done by peers and assessors in the distributed pool of interested people.
 * Formal assessment may be offered by professional service providers (certification authorities) ... and via job performance where relevant.

The main thing being the ability of educators and learners to produce custom learning pathways drawing on a variety of distributed sources extracting quite fine-grained components.