Author Archive for Steve Carson

Organizational planning activities

Published
by
Steve Carson
on March 3, 2010
in organizational planning
. 0 Comments

I’d like to make the OCW/OER community aware of two important upcoming opportunities to participate in shaping the future direction of the OCW Consortium. The Consortium develops and maintains two key planning documents, a strategic plan and a business plan. New strategic and business plans are due to be drafted in the coming months, and I am happy to invite the community to share in the development of these documents.

The strategic plan is designed to represent the consensus of the community on the strategic direction and priorities of the organization, and is submitted to the Board of Directors every other year by the Consortium president. The business plan is submitted to the Board of Directors every year by the Executive Director, and represents the Executive Director’s plan in the coming year to use the resources of the Consortium to achieve the goals identified in the strategic plan. You can access the current versions of these documents on this page under the “OCWC planning documents” link.

FY2011 Business Plan

The business plan for fiscal year 2011 (based on the FY10-11 strategic plan) is due to be submitted to the board of directors for the upcoming global meeting in Hanoi, May 5-7. As part of the drafting process, OCWC Executive Director Mary Lou Forward will be hosting an e-mail based discussion of the current business plan (FY10) in order to gather community input for the drafting of the FY11 plan. The e-mail list for the discussion is businessplan at ocwconsortium dot org and the dates for the discussion are March 15-April 16. Mary Lou will send out an invitation e-mail to the community with further details and instructions as to how to register for the mailing list. The draft of the FY11 business plan will be made available prior to the Hanoi meeting for final community input.

FY2012-2013 Strategic Plan

The most recent strategic plan, covering the fiscal years 2010 and 2011, was developed primarily though and organizational effectiveness planning process in late 2008 and early 2009, supported by a grant from the Hewlett Foundation. While the process included surveys and interviews of community members, the timing of the process did not allow for wide community discussion. I am pleased that for the next iteration, we will have much more time for community input.

The final draft is due to be submitted to the Board of Directors at the January 2011 board meeting, but the first steps of the process are to gather community input through an e-mail-based discussion I will host from April 5-April 30 and through an open session at the Hanoi meeting to gather input in person. The mailing list for this discussion is strategicplan at ocwconsortium dot org, and I will send out an invitation message with more details and how to register for the list as well.

Please Participate

These two drafting processes are the key direction-setting exercises for the Consortium and are your chance to have a voice in the future direction of the organization. Please take this opportunity to provide you input.

Leading global universities make commitments to OpenCourseWare’s future

Published
by
Steve Carson
on March 1, 2010
in opencourseware
. 2 Comments

Universities pledge funds to support OpenCourseWare Consortium

Cambridge, MA, March 1, 2010 - Universities and non-profits that have led the movement to openly share educational content are now stepping forward with funding to ensure the movement’s future. A core group of leaders in the OpenCourseWare community have collectively pledged US $350,000 over the next five years to support the OpenCourseWare Consortium, the non-profit association of global OpenCourseWare publishers. Other members will pay annual dues of US $50 to $500 dollars to ensure the Consortium has the funding necessary to catalyze the development and use of OpenCourseWare content worldwide.

Many university OpenCourseWare programs and the OpenCourseWare Consortium have historically been grant funded. As these grants expire, OCW programs and the Consortium are transitioning to sustainable funding models. “These commitments demonstrate the strength of the movement,” said Stephen Carson, President of the Consortium. “Not only are these universities sustaining their own publications, but they are making meaningful commitments to the global effort to openly publish educational materials.”

The following universities and organizations have each pledged US $25,000 over the next five years in support of the OpenCourseWare Consortium: China Open Resources for Education (China), Delft University of Technology (the Netherlands), Japan OpenCourseWare Consortium (Japan), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (United States), Korea OpenCourseWare Consortium (Korea), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (United States), Open Universiteit (the Netherlands), Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico), Tufts University (United States), Universia.net (Spain), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain), University of California, Irvine (United States), University of Michigan (United States), and University of the Western Cape (South Africa).

To date the approximately 200 universities of the Consortium have published materials from more than 13,000 courses, available through the Consortium’s Web site . These materials are freely available on the web as resources to support informal and formal teaching and learning worldwide, and have received an estimated 100 million visits from virtually every country and region in the world.

About the OpenCourseWare Consortium

The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is supported in part by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

About OpenCourseWare

OpenCourseWare (OCW) is course materials—typically including syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, exams and occasionally videos of classroom activities—openly published on the web for reuse and redistribution by educators and learners around the world.

For more information, please contact:

Stephen Carson
President, OpenCourseWare Consortium
P: (617) 253-1250
C: (617) 633-4659
scarson@ocwconsortium.org

LINC 2010 - University Leadership: Bringing Technology-Enabled Education to Learners of All Ages

Published
by
Steve Carson
on December 16, 2009
in conferences, education, mit, ocw and open educational resource
. 0 Comments

I’m happy to share that MIT President Emeritus Charles Vest, who was MIT’s president at the inception of MIT OpenCourseWare, will be the keynote speaker at the upcoming LINC 2010 conference on MIT’s campus this May. This conference promises to be a great opportunity for global discussion of OCW and other technology-enabled education projects. Details included below.

————————

The Fifth International Conference of
MIT Learning International Networks Consortium (LINC)
May 23-26, 2010
University Leadership: Bringing
Technology-Enabled Education to Learners of All Ages
On the campus of MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts USA

MIT LINC is an international community of individuals and organizations that focuses on higher education in emerging countries and the role that technology can play in expanding educational reach. It is a collaboration of educators from around the world whose purpose is to share best practices and to learn from each other’s mistakes, in order to move forward with successful e-learning projects in their home countries.

With the 2010 theme, “University Leadership: Bringing Technology-Enabled Education to Learners of All Ages”, the consortium intends to showcase examples where universities are increasing usage of e-learning by reaching down to K-12 education or reaching up to lifelong learners. If technology-enabled education is to contribute to the social and economic development of emerging nations, it must move beyond the university to improve K-12 schooling and to create a culture of lifelong learning.

Plenary speakers include rectors of the leading virtual universities in Latin America, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The keynote plenary speaker is Dr. Charles M. Vest, President of the National Academy of Engineering and President-Emeritus of MIT. Other plenary speakers include educational leaders from business and government.

LINC 2010 participants will travel from all parts of the world as representatives of universities, government, corporations, foundations, K-12 education and lifelong learning initiatives. Each will come to share an international forum with others who understand the challenges faced by emerging nations in achieving the transformational potential of technology-enabled teaching and learning.  Innovative technologies and content will be presented and explored, along with the policies and pedagogies that make them successful. In the end, as with previous LINC conferences, valuable contacts will be made, strategic relationships developed and exciting educational collaborations begun.

More information available here.

Current Events in Context: Typhoon Morakot

Published
by
Steve Carson
on August 12, 2009
in current events and opencourseware
. 1 Comment

As news of the devistation in Taiwan and China comes in from Typhoon Morakot, our thoughts are with the people in the affected areas and our friends there in the open education community.   The OOPS team in Taiwan has taken open sharing to a new level with the blood drive they’ve undertaken to help the victims of this storm.

As Taiwan and China recover from this disaster and the hurricane season begins in earnest in the Western Hemisphere as well, we are again confronted with the challenges of understanding the causes of these storms, what impact global warming may be having on their frequency and severity, and how best to prepare for and recover from their effects.  In another edition of Current Events in Context, I’ve mined the MIT site for courses that can help address these challenges.  As always, please feel free to add courses and content from your own favorite OER site.

Understanding climate

12.003 Atmosphere, Ocean and Climate Dynamics Fall 2008

12.307 Weather and Climate Laboratory Spring 2009

12.333 Atmospheric and Ocean Circulations Spring 2004

12.811 Tropical Meteorology Spring 2005

Lessons of Hurricane Katrina

4.001J /11.004J CityScope: New Orleans Spring 2007

11.945 Katrina Practicum Spring 2006

Disaster Recovery

11.941 Disaster, Vulnerability and Resilience Spring 2005

NextMap Disaster Management
MAS.965 / 6.976 / SP.716 NextLab I: Designing Mobile Technologies for the Next Billion Users Fall 2008

Current Events in Context: H1N1

Published
by
Steve Carson
on July 20, 2009
in current events, ocw consortium and opencourseware
. 0 Comments

There’s been a lot of speculation about how the H1N1 virus will spread in the upcoming flu season, and how virulent it will be. For a better understanding of the science behind epidemics, what we might expect this fall and how medical systems cope with outbreaks of disease, I’ve pulled together this list of starter resources from Consortium member sites.  Same caveats as last time, though this topic lends itself to a less MIT-centric list.  Please suggest additions if I have missed something on your school’s site.

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:
Impact of Pandemic Influenza on Public Health
550.694.81 Fundamentals of Epidemiology I
340.627.81  Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases

MIT:
6.891 Computational Evolutionary Biology
7.340 Under the Radar Screen: How Bugs Trick Our Immune Defenses

University of Nottingham:
Flu pandemic : how prepared are we?

TU Delft:
Public hygiene and epidemiology (CT5420)

Tufts University:
233 Population Health, Spring 2007

AASL names MIT’s Highlights for High School to top web site list

Published
by
Steve Carson
on July 13, 2009
in opencourseware
. 0 Comments

Highlights recognized as valuable free resource for secondary educators and students

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 12 - MIT’s Highlights for High School site (http://ocw.mit.edu/highschool) has been recognized as a Landmark Website for Teaching and Learning by the American Association of School Librarians.  An outgrowth of MIT’s renown OpenCourseWare program, Highlights for High School features more than 2,600 video and audio clips, animations, lecture notes and assignments taken from actual MIT courses, and categorizes them to match the Advanced Placement physics, biology and calculus curricula. Demonstrations, simulations, and animations give educators engaging ways to present STEM concepts, while videos illustrate MIT’s hands-on approach to the teaching of these subjects.

MIT President Susan Hockfield described the Institute’s motivation for the program at its November 2007 launch. “Strength in K-12 math and science will be increasingly important for America if the nation is to continue to lead in today’s innovation economy,” said MIT President Hockfield. “Highlights for High School will provide students and teachers with innovative tools to supplement their math and science studies.  We hope it will inspire students to reach beyond their required classwork to explore more advanced material and might also encourage them to pursue careers in science and engineering.”

The AASL’s Best Websites for Teaching and Learning program honors websites, tools, and resources of exceptional value to inquiry-based teaching and learning as embodied in the American Association of School Librarians’ Standards for the 21st-Century Learner.  The Landmark Websites are honored due to their exemplary histories of authoritative, dynamic content and curricular relevance. They are free, web-based sites that are user-friendly and encourage a community of learners to explore and discover and provide a foundation to support 21st-century teaching and learning. Read more at http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/aboutaasl/bestlist/bestwebsiteslandmark.cfm

Since its launch, the Highlights for High School site has received more than 700,000 visits.  Surveys indicate that visitors include high school educators (34%), high school students (15.5%),  and parents of high schoolers (13%).  In using the site, educators most often integrate Highlights for High School into classroom instruction, increase their knowledge of a specific subject matter, and learn new methods of teaching. Students use the site to help them study for tests and to learn for personal knowledge.

MIT has a long history of support for secondary and elementary education, with successful prior national efforts.  For example, the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) formed in 1956 by a group of university physics professors and high school physics teachers, and led by MIT’s Jerrold Zacharias and Francis Friedman developed new pedagogies for the teaching of introductory courses in physics. MIT also has over 40 successful current K-12 programs and initiatives addressing science and engineering preparation at a local and national level.

The MIT OpenCourseWare site (http://ocw.mit.edu), from which Highlights for High School draws content, contains the core academic materials for more than 1,900 of MIT’s courses, voluntarily provided by MIT faculty under an open license that allows site users to download and modify the materials for noncommercial use. The site contains notes from more than 1,500 lectures, 9,000 assignments, and 900 exams. Many courses include enhanced multimedia content, including 32 that contain complete video recordings of course lectures.

For more information, please contact:

Stephen Carson
External Relations Director
MIT OpenCourseWare
(617) 253-1250
ocw-outreach@mit.edu

Current Events in Context: Iran’s Election Dispute

Published
by
Steve Carson
on June 22, 2009
in current events, ocw consortium, open educational resources and opencourseware
. 2 Comments

The recent dramatic events in Iran bring together numerous complicated issues including the political and cultural history of Iran and the Middle East, the role of women in culture and politics, and the impact of social media on world events.  Courses throughout the OCW Consortium can be useful in providing context for the events surrounding the current election dispute.  The following is a list I’ve pulled together, drawing heavily on the MIT catalog I am most familiar with.  I encourage the OCW community to think of it as a starter list and to suggest additional resources.

Iranian History

21H.615 The Middle East in 20th Century (MIT)
Spring 2003

17.405 / 17.406 Seminar on Politics and Conflict in the Middle East (MIT)
Fall 2003

MELC 20040 - Islamic Societies of the Middle East and North Africa: Religion, History, and Culture
(Notre Dame)
Fall 2005

Democracy and Political Theory

21A.245J / 17.045J Power: Interpersonal, Organizational and Global Dimensions
Fall 2005

17.508 The Rise and Fall of Democracy/ Regime Change
Spring 2002

17.522 Politics and Religion
Fall 2006

21H.001 How to Stage a Revolution
Fall 2007

17.582 Civil War
Spring 2005

21A.225J / SP.621J / WGS.621J Violence, Human Rights, and Justice
Fall 2004

Women and Politics

17.905 Forms of Political Participation: Old and New
Spring 2005

New Media and Politics

CMS.998 / CMS.600 New Media Literacies
Spring 2007

Art 23AC Foundations of American Cyber-Culture
Fall 2007

21L.015 Introduction to Media Studies
Fall 2003

21A.348 Photography and Truth
Spring 2005

New OCW Executive Director Named

Published
by
Steve Carson
on May 20, 2009
in opencourseware
. 1 Comment

The OCWC Board of Directors is delighted to announce that Mary Lou Forward, of Brattleboro, Vermont, has accepted its offer of the OCWC Executive Director position.  Mary Lou comes to us from SIT Study Abroad, where she has served as Academic Dean of African Studies since 2000.  In that role, she provided academic and strategic leadership for 29 accredited undergraduate study abroad programs in Africa, leading SIT’s incorporation of technology and distance learning in international programming and developing innovative opportunities to collaborate across countries and between diverse student groups.

Prior to that, she served for six years as Academic Director for SIT’s Madagascar program, developing, revising and evaluating curricula for interdisciplinary undergraduate programs in Environmental Studies and Cultural Geography.  Mary Lou has her BA in Psychology from Rutgers University (1988) her MA in International Administration from the School for International Training (1994) and is ABD in Environmental Studies.  Although not formally joining the OCWC staff until July 15, Mary Lou will be consulting informally with the board and staff over the coming weeks.

As you may be aware, the position of Interim Executive Director has been filled for the past nine months by Terri Bays of Notre Dame.  Terri will be stepping down on July 15th, but remaining with the Consortium on a part-time basis as Special Projects Manager to support Mary Lou as she settles in. The Consortium could not have succeeded as it has in the past year without Terri’s tireless efforts to move the organization forward.

Please join the members of the Board in welcoming Mary Lou and thanking Terri for her effort.

OCWC Executive Director Search Committee

Published
by
Steve Carson
on November 7, 2008
in opencourseware
. 0 Comments

As you may be aware, the Consortium will be conducting a search in the next six to eight months for a new executive director. I am chairing the search committee and am pleased to be joined by two other members of our board of directors, Yoshimi Fukuhara of Keio University/JOCW and Anka Mulder of TU Delft.

We would also like to include three members of the community at large on the search committee, and are inviting employees of member organizations to submit their names for consideration. Final selection of the three at-large members of the committee will be made by recommendation of Anka, Yoshimi and myself to the board of directors, and selections will be made to ensure a balance of perspectives from across the membership.

We look forward to rounding out our search committee and beginning the process of identifying a new executive director to propel the Consortium forward in the coming years. If you are interested in serving on the search committee, please send me an email at scarson@mit.edu.

OCW Consortium Executive Director Transition

Published
by
Steve Carson
on August 26, 2008
in staff
. 2 Comments

It is with mixed emotion that I share that the OCW Consortium’s executive director of the past three years, John Dehlin, is taking the next step in his personal development and beginning prerequisite work for a PhD program. In order to concentrate on this study, John is stepping down as executive director. John has spoken to me often about his desire to further his own education, even while dedicating his time and skills to furthering the educational opportunities of countless others.

While I am immensely pleased for John to be able to take this next personal step, it comes at a loss to the Consortium. He has guided the organization though an important transition to independence, expanded the membership tremendously and provided a solid infrastructure to support the ongoing operation of the OCWC. Throughout his time as executive director he has also been a great collaborator and friend for me personally. John will continue to serve the Consortium in some capacity as he pursues his study.

The Consortium is fortunate to have Terri Bays of Notre Dame University available and willing to serve as interim executive director for the upcoming year, providing the Consortium the opportunity to conduct a thorough and orderly search for a new permanent executive director. As special projects manager, Terri has led the drafting of the Consortium’s bylaws and many other key steps in creating the new non-profit organization.

Please join me in thanking John for his contributions to the OCW movement to date and wishing him well in his new endeavors, and also in thanking Terri for taking on her new role in guiding the Consortium.