‘The university as a hackerspace’

Joss Winn, Centre for Educational Research and Development, University of Lincoln jwinn@lincoln.ac.uk http://cerd.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk

How do we re-produce the university as a critical, social project?

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“Student as Producer restates the meaning and purpose of higher education by reconnecting the core activities of universities, i.e., research and teaching, in a way that consolidates and substantiates the values of academic life... Student as Producer emphasises the role of the student as collaborators in the production of knowledge. The capacity for Student as Producer is grounded in the human attributes of creativity and desire, so that students can recognise themselves in a world of their own design.” (Neary, 2010)

LNCD is (was) Not a Central Development

group!

http://lncd.lincoln.ac.uk/project/institutional-openness-case-study

DevXS hackathon (2011)

http://devxs.org.uk

Digital Education

1.  A cross-university digital education group (a committee, working group, network?)

2.  Incentives and recognition (teacher education leading to credit and funding)

3.  An anti-disciplinary Masters research programme (the ‘university as a hackerspace’)

4.  A framework for re-engineering space and time (the ‘idea of the university’:

open, flipped, virtual, edgeless, etc.)

http://joss.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2014/03/03/digital-education/

‘The university as a hackerspace’

•  Cross-university Masters by Research degree •  The ‘campus’ = the ‘hackerspace’ (virtual/

material/open/edgeless) •  Anti-disciplinary: Democratically involves staff and

facilities from across all schools. Disciplines are anti-social

•  Experiments/challenges, not ‘modules’; Hacker ethic.

•  Student as Producer: Research-based; teachers and students learn from each other. The institution learns from its teacher-student scholars. A ‘Skunkworks’ for the institution.

Questions •  Can a university contain (intellectually, politically, practically) a

hackerspace? •  Are the two organisational and educational forms compatible? •  Who owns the programme? •  Who benefits from it? How? •  Why would a student enrol? •  How can we involve the local community? •  What is the final award? •  How are contributions (staff time, Schools’ facilities) acknowledged? •  How is the degree structured? •  How many students are required to make this work (i.e. what is the

critical size of the ‘collective’) •  What are the administrative constraints and regulatory obligations?