Costello, Eamon ORCID: 0000-0002-2775-6006, Johnston, Keith and Wade, Vincent (2019) Crowded house: an analysis of how the virtual learning environment Moodle is built via bug tracker participants. Interactive Learning Environments, 31 (5). pp. 2583-2593. ISSN 1049-4820
Abstract
This research investigated how the bug tracker database of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) Moodle is developed as an application of crowd work. The bug tracker is used by software developers, who write and maintain Moodle’s code, but also by a wider public world of ordinary Moodle users who can report bugs. Despite many studies of the phenomenon of open source bug fixing and software building, much remains to be answered. Specifically, we sought to analyse the implications of this massively distributed collaborative development process for education and educational technology. The research examined the ways educators interface and contribute to the development of the VLE Moodle at the granular level of bug fixing as an example of a global crowdsourced activity. In this study, twenty community participants were interviewed, from fringe members, to key actors, including lead developers from the Open University, Moodle HQ and Moodle founder Martin Dougiamas. We uncovered rich stories of practices of community members. We found that projects are complex interplays of many actors assuming different roles and identities, and that brokers, or “kindly souls”, play a key role in activities such as filing reports on behalf of others, or inducting new members.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article (Published) |
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Refereed: | Yes |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | Crowdsourcing; open source; Virtual Learning Environment; Moodle |
Subjects: | UNSPECIFIED |
DCU Faculties and Centres: | Research Institutes and Centres > NIDL (National Institute for Digital Learning) |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Official URL: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2019.1678488 |
Copyright Information: | © 2019 The Authors. |
ID Code: | 23912 |
Deposited On: | 06 Nov 2019 16:46 by Thomas Murtagh . Last Modified 14 Aug 2023 11:39 |
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