Open Learning Network

Present: Tina, Andreia, Karen, Sara, Giota, Kasia, Doug, Ann, Engin, Nick, Eileen, Anna, Michelle, Simon

Apols: Patrick, Canan, Elpida, Grainne

Announcements

Martin Bean (OU VC) coming to IET on 10th November, to generally and informally meet people from 12-1pm. All welcome. There'll be posters around in the area NE of the 1st floor of the Jennie Lee Building, but no formal presentations. May be tricky to get real work done there while the posters are going up for those who usually work in the area (which is a lot of us.)

Brendan Muranatsu - Giota interviewed him at the OpenEd Conference. Ed Tech at MIT but not directly involved in OCW. Will be around OU for an event on 18th November. Will talk to Giota, might come to this meeting. Wants to talk about transcription tools they have for auto-transcription of lectures etc, and find out about what we're doing.

Minor point: anyone with outstanding expenses claims should put them in, and do it monthly from now on, so we can do projections to the end of the Hewlett financial year which is end Feb. So also alert Karen about any expected claims between now and then.

General updates

Andreia: Working on design of three virtual workshops. Our pilot one, the Portuguese one in March, and the Spanish one.

Tina: Talking to SCORE project about links with them. Working on OER10 abstract and Networked Learning paper.

Anna: Worked with Engin about using collective intelligence infrastructure tools. Also did the 20 Barriers to OER remix and reuse blog post. On here (olnet.org) and on Cloudworks. Working with Elpida on paper to Networked Learning.

Nick: Mostly website, working with Michelle on Cohere. Blog post on embedding on its way.

Engin: Paper with Kasia for Future of E-Learning conference. And work with Anna, and Tina, and Elpida about survey results.

Ann & Eileen: Looking at Gráinne's framework for evaluation to apply here, will present before Christmas.

Doug: With the team, met Cathy Casserly, ex Hewlett, now Carnegie, as part of the US Foundations visit to the OU. Very interested in what we're doing. Possibility that she might come here as an OLnet Fellow next year.

Kasia: Working on an abstract.

Eileen: Query about SCORE Fellowships and relationships to ours - Karen is having a meeting with Rose Webb on Friday to talk about overlaps of process. SCORE are only open to English universities, and only related to teaching not research. Also Christine Borgman (key person in UCLA, digital scholarship, NSF Cyberlearning) visit last summer, was interested in a visit to OLnet, not followed up - but Brigid Heywood (OU PVC Research and Enterprise) will contact her and encourage her to visit again, possibly as an OLnet Fellow. Relationship to the 'Making Connections'-successor internal conference, although she was guest speaker at it last year.

Giota: Working on workshop/data collection - Pearls in the Cloud HEA activity, diverse clusters of communities, Open Exeter OER development. Will be OER expert at a workshop on blended design. Interviewed someone from Modern Poland Foundation. And Cathy Casserly. And Jimmy Wales. Paper for Networked Learning with Grainne, and Critical Discourse Studies.

Sara: Christmas OLnet meal will be on Wednesday 16th December.

Karen: Putting content on to olnet.org website. Reorganise meetings. Propose having full team meeting every other week, intercalated with two parallel, separate meetings - one with the five full-time researchers and Kasia and any other OLnet visitors (Engin), and a web-focused thing (Nick, Michelle, Karen). People like Eileen, Ann, Simon, Doug would only come to the full team meetings - which might even shift that to every month. Agreed! Next week will be small group meetings - researchers and web team. Patrick away. Sara will sort the room bookings, and circulate details.

Eileen: Trying to track down paper from Yannis, Patrick, Gráinne on emergence of patterns.

Next report/teleconference with Hewlett due on 18th, Karen wants to finalise report by 11th. Wants to point people to the stuff on the website. Much there already, but do make sure everything is captured.

Tina - Role of Professional Educator

Presentation on her continuing idea:  the professional educator role in OER.

Related projects: TESSA (Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa). Open Software Engineering (OpenSE - EU LLP funded). OER and Web 2.0 Tools to support Ethical Reasoning in ICS Project-Based Learning (HEA). POCKET (Project on Open Content for Knwoeldge Exposition and Teaching, JISC).

Recurrent theme, could similarly be a set of methodologies.

Andreia - pilot virtual workshop

Informal discussion. What do we want out of the pilot virtual workshop?

Look at OER Toolkit to identify gaps. Final aim isn't to improve the toolkit, but that could be an output along the way. Also the OER Handbook, from WikiEducator, very similar. Philosophy that people will have ownership over their environment. So idea is give a list of main points/topics from the two documents. Select people to work in particular areas. And select specific topics for specific days. People would facilitate on particular areas/days. Will invite CMU to join in.

Time: 6-11 December 2009.

Join the group on the OLnet site - OER Virtual Workshops - to take part.

Technology tool strategy is to use OLnet-related tools to do the job - Cohere, Cloudworks, YouTube, whatever. FlashMeeting. But perhaps also a virtual environment - using OpenLearn's Learning Club facility. This becomes part of the test/pilot.

Andreia is asking everyone who wants to be facilitator what topic/area they want to lead; will liaise separately how to structure that session.

Question about focusing on OLnet research questions or the existing documents. Testing the tools is a small part of the process. Main issue is about how communities can be supported, pedagogy/collaboration/content. WikiEducator workshops have to be grassroots; people coming with no knowledge of OER or of the tools, and with lots.

More discussion and work needed.