David A. Wiley
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David A. Wiley, currently an Associate Professor of Instructional Technology, is also the Director of the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning, (C()SL), at Utah State University. He is best known for having coined the term Open Content and creating the first open source-style license for non-software. His work on open content, open education, and informal online learning communities has been reported in many international outlets, including the New York Times, the London Financial Times, The Hindu, The Globe and Mail, The Economist, MIT Technology Review, and WIRED.

He has received the National Science Foundation's CAREER award and served as a Nonresident Fellow of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, served as the Chair of the NSF’s National Science Digital Library’s (NSDL) Standards Committee, presented at AERA, AECT, Internet2, WebNet and recently at the 6th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT).

Wiley earned his Ph. D., in Instructional Psychology and Technology, from Brigham Young University in 2000 and a BFA in vocal performance from Marshall University in Music in 1997. He has expressed personal interests in, among other things, superstring theory, Japanese music, world religions, and musical theater.

C()SL

The Center for Open and Sustainable Learning (C()SL) operates on the principle that "free and open access to educational opportunity is a basic human right". Because it is getting easier to develop and distribute electronic tools around the globe, C()SL sees the use of learning objects as a way to bring "open education" to all areas in an effort to fulfill "a greater ethical obligation than ever before to increase the reach of opportunity".

Reusability and Learning Objects

Much of Wiley's work has focused on the development of learning objects. On one website, reusability.org, he explains that learning objects , are developed to be reused as a solution to the problem of "teacher bandwidth". The "teacher bandwidth" problem is defined as "the number of students we are capable of serving with our distance education offerings". (see "Sociability and Scalability in Online Learning Environments", Wiley 2004)

Works

A list (last updated in 2004) of Wiley's publications is available on his blog at http://opencontent.org/blog/writings/

His work includes:

Conversations About Learning Objects, a wiki follow-up to his first book: The Instructional Use of Learning Objects, available online in its entirety.

OSOSS (Online Self-Organizing Social Systems) - Crisis / Response.

Learning objects: difficulties and opportunities.

Online self-organizing social systems: The decentralized future of online learning. Quarterly Review of Distance Education. (With Erin Brewer).

Learning objects need instructional design theory. In A. Rossett (Ed.) The 2001/2002 ASTD Distance Learning Yearbook. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Learning objects — a definition. In A. Kovalchick & K. Dawson (Eds.) Educational Technology: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.

The Instructional Architect: A System for Discovering, Recommending, and Using Learning Objects

Another hypermedia biography on David Wiley, done as an assignment this semester (Fall 2006) by a student in David Wiley's Foundations of Instructional Technology course.