Abstract:

The originally designed Sysbook represents the essence of system theory: different systems have a number of common basic properties which characterize their behavior. Concerning the research introduced, a kind of peculiar framework is provided by the fact that the innovation, which takes open source content development as one of the approaches of reforming teacher training, is connected to a technical university of long-existing traditions (Benedek, A; Molnár, Gy, 2014, 2015). Our methodical research was to involve students (future vocational teachers) into the process of Open Education Resources (OERs) development, and to provide them with a methodological knowledge that can be used in the permanent improvement of active learning using community content development elements. Thus from a methodological aspect, we consider this procedure to be linked to the learning material; it makes, in terms of openness, the thematic connections more colourful and perhaps even raises them to a higher level by visual and mathematical inter-connections and complex examples. The Sysbook as a learning support material is available at http://sysbook.sztaki.hu/ in Hungarian and partly in English. Each of the almost 140 sections is of display size, each of them is built on six levels of interpretation (Comic – Description – Maths – Example – Theoretical – Education).
The starting points were the education of systems thinking needs prepared teachers, descriptive examples and case studies easy to understand by the students. It was followed by the question: why could not this latter be collected and “explored” by the students? According to empowering learners in digital age the original objective of the Sysbook was to introduce the basic notions of system theory and control engineering in a descriptive way easily comprehensible by anyone on one hand and more deeply through explanations and mathematical descriptions on the other. This is partly more than the “web words” students dealing with this topic in vocational teacher training must undertake. Therefore, from the aspect of teaching methodologies and teaching itself it was especially important to indicate the optional relations to Sysbook in the learning resource by providing links in the curriculum. Our paper deals with the questions of seeking a new teaching paradigm by the new learning technology related to the ‘Systems and control are all around us’ approach. During our endeavours made to develop OERs within the frames of our experiment implemented in 2015-2016, we found that student participation offered great potentials in relation to the content and the methodology, as well. The e-resource as result of open content development was created within the frames of a development which strived to surpass the usual forms of traditional learning materials and even their e-learning adaptions.

Keywords:

case studies, content of education, control systems, open content development, students’ contribution, systems and control for everyone, micro content