Abstract
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.
Highlights
Perhaps one of the defining features of humankind is the ability to cooperate and collaboratively create artefacts and knowledge
The following guiding Research Questions (RQs) were formulated to direct the research enquiry: RQ1: Which factors and processes contribute to the successful resolution of issues in the Moodle bug tracker?
In the first phase of the research, 100 participant profiles were analysed from the Moodle bug tracker database
Summary
Perhaps one of the defining features of humankind is the ability to cooperate and collaboratively create artefacts and knowledge. This has involved a form of development over time – each new generation building on the knowledge and discoveries of the former – or simultaneously as a group, usually with some hierarchical forms of communication between the group members. A more recent phenomenon has been our increased ability to develop artefacts through the efforts of many people working simultaneously and in much more ad-hoc and less formal ways (Howe, 2006; Shirky, 2008). People may work together who do not know each other, who are not formally designated to a task, and in ways in which the outcome is uncertain (Howe, 2006; Shirky, 2008). More succinctly, crowdsourcing can be seen as a “story of cooperation, aggregation, teamwork, consensus, and creativity” (Brabham, 2013, p. 1)
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