Author Archive for Terri Bays

$16.5 million in grants for groundbreaking remedial education programs

Published
by
Terri Bays
on June 25, 2009
in education, news, oer, open educational resource, open educational resources, remedial education and teaching
. 0 Comments

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and MDC, Inc. announced today that they are awarding $16.5 million in grants to community colleges and states “to expand groundbreaking remedial education programs that experts say are key to dramatically boosting the college completion rates of low-income students and students of color” (http://bit.ly/wouV8). A significant portion of the grants, especially those made to the states, will go towards enhancement of tracking systems so that systems can tell how well their efforts are succeeding.

These are important initiatives, and we hope that the grantees will follow the lead set by the beneficiaries of a recent £7.8 million grant in the UK (see bit.ly/ibBcB), designing their solutions with openness in mind. For much of what succeeds in these efforts defies description in an academic article or conference presentation. If successful methods are not to slip away they must not only be measured and celebrated but also shared at a level of specificity rarely delivered outside of classroom observation or the publication of open educational resources. Naturally, we at the OCWC favor the OER approach!

Nor is OER useful only as a way of promulgating retention methods. Carol Lincoln, director of the Developmental Education Initiative and national director of Achieving the Dream for MDC says:

The pressing need to shore up weak academic skills in first-year students is one of the most significant, but least discussed, problems confronting higher education. Colleges that can figure out how to quickly and efficiently boost basic skills, particularly among students of color and low-income students, will play a leading role in helping them earn the college degrees necessary for economic success in America today. (see http://bit.ly/wouV8)

Teaching with OER provides quick, efficient, strategic remediation in the form of Flash Forward-Flash Back, a technique where an instructor “flashes back” to openly available background skills and information, granting students access to learning they missed the first time around. An instructor may also motivate current learning by flashing forward to applications in later coursework. This technique, and others like it, are particularly valuable to students who may be the first in their families to attend college and thus have considerably less opportunity to imagine where their efforts might lead them. As more and more courses become openly available, techniques like this will only increase in value.

Yes, it’s another new staff person!

Published
by
Terri Bays
on June 23, 2009
in ocw consortium, ocwc, opencourseware and staff
. 0 Comments

Today we’re welcoming Rana Banerjee to the OCWC team. Rana will be consulting with us regarding the development of better membership support processes. Back in the old days (as long as a year or two ago) membership support was something we could handle informally, with a call or email in the course of handling other OCWC business. As the consortium has grown however, and new members come on board at an increasingly rapid pace, we have to be more deliberate in our proceedings. Rana will be helping us out with that over the next three months, in preparation for our hiring a more permanent staff person in September.

Rana comes to us from MIT OCW, where he’s worked since March, 2006 on the Highights for High School project, a resource for high school math and science which includes both MIT OCW materials modified for the high school audience as well as presenting content created by MIT
students and outreach programs. In addition to having primary responsibility for the acquisition and publication of Highlights site content, Rana has worked extensively in the area of usability, conducting interviews and focus groups of over 200 teachers, students, administrators and policy makers in order to help the site meet the needs of secondary STEM education.

Doris Rojas of the Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria, Lima-Peru Appointed to OCWC Board

Published
by
Terri Bays
on June 17, 2009
in OCWC Board, ocw consortium and ocwc
. 0 Comments

The OCWC Board of Directors has recently appointed Doris Rojas of the Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria, Lima-Peru to fill the vacancy left by Meena Hwang’s resignation from the Board. Doris Rojas is an Industrial Engineer with 24 years of professional experience in business consulting, working on topics such as Strategic Planning, Redesign of Processes, Informatic Projects, and Human Resources. Currently, she serves as the director of the Center for Information and Communication Technologies at the Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria, where she has taught courses such as Planning and Strategic Direction, Organization Projects and Methods, Human Resources Management, and Redesign of Processes. I am pleased to report Prof. Rojas’ acceptance of this appointment, which will last until next May’s annual election, when the OCWC membership will elect a director to complete the term.

Meena Hwang resigned her position on the OCWC Board of Directors last month, subsequent to resigning fro her position at Korea University. An OCWC Director is required to be an officer, director, trustee or employee of an OCWC member organization. Directors officially resign upon ceasing to be related to the members with which they were affiliated at the time of their election.

Meena Hwang Joins OCWC Staff as Interim Director of Community Outreach

Published
by
Terri Bays
on June 17, 2009
in news, ocw consortium, ocwc, opencourseware and staff
. 0 Comments

We are very excited to have Meena Hwang join the OCWC staff as our Interim Director of Community Outreach. Having formerly initiated and orchestrated not only the Korea University Open Course Ware project, but also the Korea OCW Consortium, Meena brings considerable experience and enthusiasm to the OCWC staff. She will be directing the outreach efforts of the OCWC over the next six months, taking over from the much-missed Mike Caulfield. We are grateful to Meena for stepping in at this juncture so that our new Executive Director may settle in before running a formal search for the DCO position.

Many of you are already familiar with Meena from her work with KU OCW and KOCW. In addition to those responsibilities, Meena served on the OCWC Board of Directors from its inception in 2008 until her resignation from Korea University this past month. From her position on the OCWC staff, Meena will be able to extend many of the valuable projects she started in Korea, particularly the OCW Student Movement. I know that you will want to join me in saying how delighted we are with this opportunity to continue our collaboration with Meena.

Into the Sunset. . .

Published
by
Terri Bays
on May 14, 2009
in opencourseware
. 2 Comments

Today is Mike Caulfield’s last day working on the OCWC staff. We thought we had successfully stolen Mike from Keene State, but they sneaked up on us from behind and stole him back with an offer of a pivotal role as an Instructional Designer in a Teaching and Learning Center for which he helped write the proposal. Rest assured that plots are already in development to get an OCW project going at Keene so that we can retrieve Mike as a committee member!

Mike came on board last fall as our Director of Community Outreach, and in nine short months has done a great deal to increase awareness of OCW and to support both current and potential OCWC members. We are very sorry to see Mike go, and we’re sure you will want to join us in thanking him for his work, his enthusiasm, and his fine company.

Best wishes, Mike!

Participate in the OCWC Business Meeting and Board Reports

Published
by
Terri Bays
on April 21, 2009
in opencourseware
. 0 Comments

You can call in to participate live in our business meeting by dialing

Reservationless-Plus Toll Free Dial-In Number (US & Canada): (888) 830-8920
Reservationless-Plus International Dial-In Number:(770) 657-9185
Conference Code: 510-267-9409

Between 10:30am and 12:30pm CDST (GMT/UTC -5) today (April 21).

Proposed Amendments to Bylaws

Published
by
Terri Bays
on March 23, 2009
in ocw consortium and ocwc
. 0 Comments

Dear Colleagues,

As required in Article X of the OCWC Bylaws, last Friday I posted 30-days notice of seven measures calling for amendments to those bylaws. The certified voting representative for each OCWC Member will have the opportunity to vote by proxy on these measures between April 16, 2009 and April 21, 2009.

To download the Proposed Amendments to the OCWC Bylaws arranged on a measure-by-measure basis, please visit:

http://www.ocwconsortium.org/docman/2009-bylaws-amendments-measure-by-measure/download.html

To download the Proposed Amendments to the OCWC Bylaws in their entirety, please visit:

http://www.ocwconsortium.org/docman/2009-bylaws-amendments-entire/download.html

Please fee free to contact me at tbays@ocwconsortium.org if you have any questions about individual amendments or this process in general.

Best wishes,

Terri

Working Session on International Copyright Exceptions and Limitations at OCWC Global 2009

Published
by
Terri Bays
on March 19, 2009
in Fair Use, OCWC Conference, copyright, creative commons, education, educational, intellectual property, licensing, ocw, open educational resource, open educational resources, opencourseware and remix
. 2 Comments

You may have heard rumors that some of the US OCW producers have been working on a project to explore issues of Fair Use in Open Educational Resources.  Fair Use is the US version of a phenomena more generally known as Copyright Exceptions and Limitations, and most OCW projects have started out with the conservative assumption that they don’t get much fair use coverage.  Some lawyers are starting to say otherwise, however, so the Fair Use Working Group is gathering data about how OERs in the US are negotiating Fair Use.  The hope is to publish a Code of Best Practice for OER later in the year.

But the OCWC is a global consortium, so the Fair Use project is only one part of a larger initiative to explore the implications of Copyright Exceptions and Limitations (CELs) for OER’s.  We’ve started a wiki page for this larger initiative entitled Copyright Exceptions and Limitations, where you can see a conceptual map for the larger project as we see it so far.  You’ll also see a link to a draft page for gathering data about CELs in different legal jurisdictions.  Use the comment tabs on either page to share your ideas!  We’ll be hosting a working session on International Copyright Exceptions and Limitations at the OCWC Global Meeting in Monterrey, Mexico next month, with Ahrash Bissell from CC Learn as our facilitator.  At the session we’ll discuss what additional data it would be useful to gather and walk through the data gathering process.

OCWC Organizational Effectiveness Survey

Published
by
Terri Bays
on January 13, 2009
in ocw consortium, ocwc and opencourseware
. 0 Comments

This January, the OpenCourseWare Consortium is undergoing an organizational effectiveness review, and we need your input. We’re looking for ways to further develop an organization that best serves the needs of current and potential members while most effectively furthering the mission of the Consortium—to improve education and empower people worldwide through OpenCourseWare.

We’ve created four versions of a short survey: for current members (both educational institutions and affiliates), as well as for OER community members who are not currently members of the Consortium (again, one for educational institutions and one for other types of organizations).

Please take a few minutes by Friday, January 16 to visit

www.ocwconsortium.org/planningsurveys,

where you can find and complete the survey most appropriate for you. Even if you’re not interested in participating in Consortium activities, your input will help us better understand our role within the OER movement and will further the cause of widening educational opportunity around the world.

Thanks in advance!

Terri

Bridging the gap between 2- and 4-year colleges

Published
by
Terri Bays
on October 8, 2008
in education, educational, oer, online, open, open educational resource, open educational resources, opencourseware and teaching
. 0 Comments

Great article by Jeffrey Brainard in the Nov. 10th Chronicle of Higher Education about collaborations which assist aspriring engineers as they make the transition between 2- and 4-year colleges. This type of collaboration strikes me as a great opportunity for OCW-providers. Brainard observes that:

the road leading a two-year engineering student to be a full-fledged engineer has proven to be rough because it travels through four-year degree programs. Universities’ requirements for transfer credits vary, sometimes in unpredictable ways, making admissions hard and forcing some students to repeat course work. Even a little additional time and expense can force some of those students, who are frequently from lower-income families, out of engineering altogether.

He goes on to report on efforts in California and Maryland to smooth the transition, including an agreement among schools in Maryland which defines:

analytical skills and areas of knowledge expected of prospective transfers. Participating two-year colleges would ask their governing board, the Maryland Higher Education Commission, to certify that their courses leading to an associate degree in engineering provide students with all of those “learning outcomes.” Participating four-year institutions would, in turn, agree to accept all of the credits earned by those graduates.

The movement towards defining “analytical skills and areas of knowledge” is where the opportunity arises for OCW-producing institutions. From the 2-year institution’s end, ocw publication allows the faculty to demonstrate that their courses foster the requisite skills and knowledge for successful transfer. From the 4-year institution’s end, ocw publication allows greater communication with prospective transfers, who can supplement their learning at a 2-year institution with materials from the 4-year institution to which they aspire. Since engineering students transferring from two-year colleges “perform quite well. . . earn[ing] better grades and graduat[ing] at slightly higher rates than those who started at the four-year institutions,” they ought to be worth recruiting, and what better way to convince them to enroll than to give them a taste of what they can expect to get from your institution? What we’d love to see is a situation where students could demonstrate independent acquisition of skills and knowledge for transfer or placement credit, further reducing the chance that time and expense will force worthy students out of professions where they are sorely needed.

Nor is there any reason this should apply only to engineering. Any number of professional fields are suffering from a shortage of skilled workers. Any number of communities are suffering from a shortage of affordable training opportunities. Schools who open up their course materials will attract and place better students. And we all will benefit from that.