Archive for the 'ocw consortium' Category

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.

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
. 0 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

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.

Kaplan Higher Education Joins the OCWC

Published
by
Clay Whipkey
on May 19, 2009
in news, ocw consortium, ocwc, opencourseware, press coverage and publicity
. 3 Comments

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Kaplan Higher Education today announced that it has joined the OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCWC), making select Kaplan University courses and teaching materials available for free online. Through a new website, lifelong learners, students and faculty across the world can access select Kaplan University courses anywhere Internet access is available. Courses currently offered include Academic Strategies for the Business Professional, Nursing Fundamentals and Forensic Biology and Impression Evidence. Continue reading ‘Kaplan Higher Education Joins the OCWC’

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

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

Wednesday Quick Hits

Published
by
Mike Caulfield
on October 1, 2008
in ocw consortium, ocwc, ocwc_logan08, opencourseware and opened2008
. 2 Comments

I don’t know if it’s just due to the recent conference, but there’s been a huge uptick in discussion about OCW in the past couple days, and in an attempt to keep up with it I’m providing these quick hits:

First, there were a bunch of excellent posts about conference sessions.

Ken Udas on why individual membership to the OCWC is a great idea. Stian on presentations he found helpful (and some he found confusing).

Willem Van Valkenburg (of TU Delft) covers the WikiEducator presentation, and gets a shot of the slide I have been wanting to talk about but not had the time to yet — the quality assurance model of the project. This social QA bit was the really interesting bit of the presentation for me — how to avoid the overbearing paternalism that Wikipedia has got into lately while still providing some level of quality control (The solution, according to Wayne, is to allow tiered levels of content, which you can see on the slide Willem has captured). Wlliem also covers the Board composition (although I think Brandon is included in the list by mistake).

Through the glory of twitter, Stian Haklev notes we may have the first Italian OCW. I’m a little disappointed it uses Flash, which is unfriendly to hacking and things like Google translation — but given they use the ND license, I suppose this is partially by design (Stian notes the ND with a “Come on!”. Yup.) I seem to be saying this a lot lately, but I’ll try to find out more about this project and post it here. To my knowledge, they haven’t talked to the consortium.

Speaking of the glories of Twitter, Jared Stein seems hours away from having his Moodle OCW mod done, at least as I read his recent tweet (updates protected). I saw this demo’d at the conference. Very sweet, and very simple — works the way you would expect it to work. Which anyone in software knows is a difficult thing to accomplish. He’s promised me a screencast when complete (nudge, nudge).

There’s more, but I’ll have to post later…

Stanford Engineering launches OCW site

Published
by
Mike Caulfield
on September 17, 2008
in copyright, creative commons, news, ocw and ocw consortium
. 1 Comment

From the Creative Commons site:

Emulating MIT and a host of other OCW institutions, the Stanford School of Engineering has jumped on the OER bandwagon by releasing ten of its courses online in multiple formats. The pilot open courseware portal, known as Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE), is Stanford’s first move towards offering full-length course videos and other materials online for free and open use. SEE’s current ten course offerings consist of “instruction videos, reading lists and materials and class assignments” in three subject areas: computer science, artificial intelligence, and linear systems and optimization.

All course materials are open for re-use under CC BY-NC-SA. The general site content on Stanford Engineering Everywhere is licensed CC BY.

Visit the Stanford Engineering Everywhere site.

University of Basque Country moves forward on OCW targets

Published
by
Mike Caulfield
on September 14, 2008
in ocw, ocw consortium, ocwc and opencourseware
. 0 Comments

Last January, the University of Basque Country (also known as UPV/EHU) joined the Consortium, and they began to solicit OCW course proposals from faculty shortly after. They have already received 82 applications.

They’ve now announced their targets for next year. Twenty-three courses will be published by this December, followed by an additional twenty-two courses in the first quarter of 2009. By the close of 2009 they anticipate having 100 courses online.

Press Release (9/10/2008): Original Spanish version, or Google English Translation