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OCWC Organizational Effectiveness Survey

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

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…

University of Basque Country moves forward on OCW targets

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

Mike Caulfield — New Director of OCWC Community Outreach

I am very excited to announce the selection of Mike Caulfield as the new Director of OCWC Community Outreach. To read more about Mike and his enthusiasm for the position, click here.

You will be hearing more from Mike in the coming weeks and months, but for now, welcome, Mike!!!!

Board Greetings from Cambridge!

Recently the OCWC Board of Directors met in Cambridge, MA for our 2nd board meeting (photo below - courtesy of Philipp Schmidt).
More on the outcome soon!!!

OCWC Board of Directors

OCWC Now Hiring: Director of Marketing and Outreach

OCW Community,

I am VERY pleased to announce the opening of a new full time position within the OCWC — the OCWC Director of Marketing and Outreach (listed below). If any of you are interested in this position — or know of a strong candidate — please contact me immediately. We are looking to fill this position within the next 4 weeks.

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The OCWC Director of Marketing and Outreach, in close consultation with the OCWC Director and the OCWC Board of Directors, is generally responsible for the oversight and execution of marketing, public relations and outreach activities within the Consortium. The principal responsibilities of the OpenCourseWare Consortium Director of Marketing and Outreach are: Continue reading ‘OCWC Now Hiring: Director of Marketing and Outreach’

Seeking OCWC Committee Volunteers

OCWC Members,

As part of the OCWC incorporation process — it is important that we now formalize the various OCWC working committees, and begin to staff them with volunteers. Committee work (I might mention) is the only material cost of OCWC membership at this point — so we are hopeful that many of you will be willing/able to volunteer some of your time and talents to help make the OCWC successful. Continue reading ‘Seeking OCWC Committee Volunteers’

OCWC Dalian Kickoff Presentation

For those interested, here are the links to the opening keynote for the Dalian conference:

Thanks again to you all for your support!

OCWC Board Elections

In the Governance Portion of the 2008 OCWC Meeting in Dalian, China, we formally registered the proxy votes cast April 8-18 for the Board of Directors for the OCW Consortium. Those board members are:

Institutional Board Representatives

Two Years:

  • Stephen Carson - MIT (United States)
  • Yoshimi Fukuhara - Keio University (Japan)
  • Andy Lane - The Open University (United Kingdom)
  • Phillip Schmidt - University of Western Cape (South Africa)

One Year:

  • Meena Hwang - Korea University (Republic of Korea)
  • Jesus Arriaga - Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (Spain)
  • Jose Escamilla - Technologico de Monterrey (Mexico)
  • Anka Mulder - Delft University of Technology (Netherlands)

Affiliate Board Representatives

  • Brandon Muramatsu - Center for Open and Sustainable Learning (United States)
  • Fun-Den Wang - China Open Resources for Education (China)

Thanks to all who participated in the election process, and particularly to those who were willing to stand as candidates for this inaugural board. In addition to the regular work of steering the OCWC, this board will have the burden of establishing structures through which that work can get done fairly, efficiently, and as transparently as possible. Please extend to them your thanks and support in the year to come.

Terri

Newcomers’ Breakfast

Below is a link to the slides from the Newcomers’ Breakfast we hosted just prior to the OCWC Meeting in Dalian. Please note that much of the detail drops out when you view them online, but it’s really there and can be viewed if you download the slides to your desktop (mental note: work out slideshare-friendly formatting for the future) . Much thanks to Tom Caswell, Meena Hwang and Clay Whipkey for their contributions as co-presenters!

http://www.slideshare.net/tbays/newcomers-breakfast

Terri