Title of Workshop:

Incorporating Open Source Software Tools into Your Course

Leaders:

Gerona McGrath, Memorial University, Canada

Content:

In this hands-on workshop we will explore the use of six open source tools that can be easily deployed to enhance collaborative and individual student work, as well as improve learning outcomes for your course in general. Through a series of interactive activities the presenters will facilitate the workshop by first exploring commonly used open source products. These are Open Office, Audacity for audio files, Mahara for ePortfolios, WetPaint for wikis, Blogger for blogs, and CamStudio for capturing computer screen activity and audio. The participants will then go through an activity to identify areas for improvement with their course(s) and determine which of the open source tools can help. Finally, participants will have the opportunity to create their own learning resources using some of the tools.

Target Audience:

This session is aimed at instructors and instructional designers new to incorporating open source software tools into their courses.

Prerequisite Knowledge:

Basic level of comfort with personal computing, using the Internet and downloading files.

Outcomes:

Participants will be knowledgeable about several open source tools they can start using immediately to improve their student learning outcome, develop confidence in evaluating and selecting software they can use in their courses and they will have already started or completed at least one media product they can use immediately or continue to develop after the session.