Wrapper role

Definition: Wrapper

Problem: In a very active course, it can be effectively impossible to stay up to date with all of the details. Not everyone will be able to attend every meeting, follow forum discussion, and project participants can easily get lost and drift away. The experience can be even worse for newcomers. Joining a course already going can feel like trying to get aboard a rapidly moving vehicle. If you’ve taken time off, you may feel like things have moved on so far that they cannot catch up.

Solution: A project contributor can summarizes what has happened recently in the GROOC stream, making progress comprehensible to participants who have not been following all of the details. If they are kept up to date, a project’s landing page and Roadmap also serve as a sort of “wrapper”, telling people what resources they can expect to find in the class and how they can participate and contribute.

Rationale: The wrapper must check the public summaries of the #GROOC #edX class from time to time to make sure that they accurately represent the facts on the ground.

Resolution: According to the theory proposed by Yochai Benkler, for free/open “commons-based” projects to work, it is vital to have both:

1. The ability to contribute small pieces;
2. Something that stitches those pieces together @coases-penguin.

The wrapper helps perform this integrative stitching function, which is often much more challenging than the job of breaking things down into pieces or just doing one of the small pieces.