XLP-Manual Chapter 3. How XLP Works
Missions
XLP’s core activity is the mission. Participants either prepare the mission or execute it.
These missions engage individuals and the group as a whole. Each group designs and operates its own small (or ”micro”) learning community that serves the individual and collective aims of the creators and participants.
Each mission is governed by a logic model to deliver maximum learning value through hands- on activities. In this chapter we will give a high-level overview of the activities and participants in an XLP mission and the resources made available to achieve the mission goals. In the following chapters we will present detailed step-by-step breakdowns to help you prepare and run missions yourself.
Participants
XLP engages with learning communities of all shapes and sizes. They may be:
- Large or small
- Physically together, near each other, or spread around the world
- Of similar (or vastly different) ethnic, cultural, educational, professional, and religious
backgrounds
- Similar(or different)skill sets, skill levels, interests, and life experiences
- Relatively homogeneous, or highly diverse
- Stay together for many years, or come together to design and conduct a single learning activity
These micro learning communities come together to learn something specific, often for a specific duration. Multiple communities can interact, and may later merge to form larger learn- ing communities, just as amoebas divide and recombine in different ways. As a community becomes larger, it becomes more and more like the real world, and participating individuals, institutions, systems and societies can iterate upon increasingly optimal solutions.
Each community may have three kinds of members: Mission Designers (MD’s), Mission Executors (ME’s) and Sponsors. The Designers and Executors learn individually and collectively, and this community is a microcosm of a larger context – for example, a university, a society, or a nation. XLP challenges every learning team to be a focused, goal-oriented microscopic society in a digital publishing/learning workflow environment.
Mission Designer
Mission Designers (MD’s) design and test learning missions in accordance with the goals of sponsors, tailored for participants based on the available resources and requirements.
MD’s are generally divided into four or five groups that reflect Lawrence Lessig’s Four Forces that are discussed in a later chapter:
- AlawcourtandperhapsapatentofficetoregulatethelegalinteractionsbetweenME’s
- A media department to reflect the social norms of the ME’s through social media, other digital media, and traditional media
- Market regulators to regulate the operation of the market
- TechnologysupporttoenableME’stoexecutemissionsusingthetechnologyarchitecture required to do so
Mission Executor
Mission Executors (ME’s) participate in the missions designed by Mission Designers, and later become Mission Designers themselves. While on the mission, they learn to execute at a higher level of complexity or speed, and learn how to guide others to perform the mission.
Sponsor
School/department that provides resources for XLP program.
Resources
A learning environment encompasses resources in both the virtual and physical worlds. These can be further divided into two categories: Resources to prepare before the learning process and resources (which have been used and tested in the past) to implement during the learning process:
Outputs
Containers of Knowledge
Containers are the foundation of XLP. A container can be thought of as a box that contains soft- ware, the data needed to configure that software, and data created by users (i.e. digital assets). These containers can be installed and used anywhere, and data can be imported and exported easily.
- XLP creates replicable, learning missions in containers, which can then be installed and used anywhere in the world
- Our online platform, Remix, provides the infrastructure to perform this digitally
- Participants create digital assets in their containers using digital publishing, as a record and proof of the work they have performed in the mission.
By taking part in the mission and digital publishing workflow, participants create a body of knowledge covering their area of study. This is in the form of a container which includes soft- ware (typically MediaWiki and other tools like WordPress), configuration, and content produced by the participants. These containers may contain many forms of digital asset:
Proposal or Report Form
Discusses the conclusion of a certain research study, or the conclusion of certain industry analysis (”research study,” ”business proposal,” or ”industry analysis report.”)
Budget
Including both a planning schedule (i.e., a resource and human resource budget and timetable) in addition to a financial budget.
Short Movie
Usually a compilation of interesting video footage of the activity, annotated with written text and non-proprietary music.
Prototype Product
A book, pamphlet, brochure, or even physical product.
Example Containers
- Bauhinia Program
Team
One of the most important aspects and products of any XLP event is the friendship developed between participants. Ideally they can create a social network so they can always tap into these human resources for future cooperation.
Refined XLP Manual
Because everyone uses a similar mechanism to learn from each other, we can collect data on this to improve XLP as a general learning process – so that everything we do in XLP can be used as case studies or data to improve practices in future. The most direct contributions will be sections, refinements or revisions to the XLP operating manual that you are reading now.