Open Learning Network

Present: Doug, Karen, Patrick, Andreia, Liam, Janet, Kasia, Ann, Eileen, Anna, Michelle, Canan

Apologies: Giota, Tina, Elpida

Announcements and Updates

Patrick: Hewlett meeting next week. Patrick and Karen going. OER10 last week, lots of people went, it was very good; about 130 people. Year 1 report has been accepted; admin and finance checks left before we get next year's money. FlashMeetings available of the reporting - Karen has the URLs. Our funder is behind us - she urged us to do work that interests us.

Michelle: Trip to Jetpack Design Camp was good; notes posted on Cohere blog, will copy it over to here. Updates underway.

Anna: Has done some work on a mock up design of the CI infrastructure. Also working with Cloudworks people on Monterey meeting, to represent the conversation - has Cohere views of it from different points of view.

Andreia: GUIDE (Global Universities In Distance Education) Association Workshop in Rome, presented OpenLearn research. UNESCO is producing an OER portal, want to link OpenLearn resources. Discussing with Jonathan Darby and Chris Pegler about it (SCORE). University in Pakistan interested in working with us. Attended OER10, enjoyed it. Filmed session, but sound not very good. Is on her blog and YouTube OLnet channel. Also worked on OPAL project, put together a list of UK OER initiatives on Cloudworks. See also Review of Open Educational Practices.

Liam: Working on a demonstrator for CouchDB for OER - document-oriented storage system. Not (necessarily) as a repository but as a pointer/imported. Potential link with Anna's work on Cohere, and underlying problem of getting multiple sources in to the OLnet site. (Nick is working on the functional spec for OLnet.org)

Kasia: Has been doing interviews with people using OpenLearn forums; 3 done, 2 more this week. Also social software seminar, well attended, very successful.

Ann: Jenny Preece - OLnet Expert Fellow; works on online communities; link here is especially the Reader to Leader framework with Ben Schneiderman. Elpida's paper on Fairy Rings Of Participation draws on it particularly. Visit coming up next week - Thursday and Friday. Meeting at 10.30 on Thursday for two hours; Tina and Giota will give an overview. (She'll return in September - perhaps 13th-15th.) Elpida can't make the meeting next week. Possible disruption from train strikes won't help. People please confirm to Janet whether they want to join that meeting and/or have a one-to-one with Jenny.

Eileen: OER10 presentation will be on Slideshare soon. Has been moving forward with the evaluation framework. Gill Clough has been at annual review for xDelia, where the WP and deliverables (the essence of our evaluation framework) were very positively received. The plan is to recreate/regenerate/reinvigorate the old IET Evaluation Toolkit. So after Easter, Gráinne, Eileen, Ann, Canan plus others will make a plan for how to do this online. Gill has already started to gather an Evaluation Toolbox on Cloudworks, based on the old LTDI Evaluation Cookbook; would like someone from OLnet team to work with her. This could be an output for xDelia and OLnet. Eileen going to AERA next April.

Canan: CALRG conference is approaching - 24-25 May - still time to submit proposals; deadline 28 April. Three confirmed external speakers for the game-based learning day. Concept is a multi-handed OLnet presentation, taking recent presentations with up to 6 of us, making them in to 10 minute presentations, taking up two adjacent one-hour slots in the CALRG programme. Volunteers to Patrick and/or be volunteered.

Doug: Scoped out the Participatory Learning strand of OLnet with Karen and Patrick. Worked with James Aczel on progressing the OpenED project - Giota may be doing some work on it; we want to pick up the evaluation framework from xDelia and OLnet too.

Karen: Working on totally virtual conference 22-23 June: Learning in an Open World. Martin Weller is organising, publicity coming out. Work on Cloudworks already. Role for Elluminate moderators; Cloudworks is the main participatory asynchronous tool; Elluminate is the synchronous. Not posters, but multimedia presentations. Radical in being entirely open conference for the OU's annual teaching and learning conference. Meeting next week with Hewlett will also be on Cloudworks. Talked to Rebecca Galley about publicity and leaflets.

Half Day Away Day

Is coming up in three week's time, scaled up afternoon event. Want to collectively go through next year's programme.

Cohere and RQs

Anna gave a demonstration of her mapping in Cohere of the OLnet Research Questions (from Monterey), showing the conversations mapped as nodes and connections.

Plan to have a hands-on workshop on Cohere some time in May.

Collective Intelligence OER infrastructure

Anna also showed a plan for the CI infrastructure - a mockup of how it might work.

Fellowship scheme

We now have many people we are in contact with. Plan for another round of open competition with a deadline around June. Also discussed proposals for interns - we haven't appointed any yet; suggestion is for us to set out ideas for work (mini-projects), which prospective interns might then apply to carry out. Would be easier for them than coming up with a coherent proposal for working with us, since they are by definition not very experienced in doing such things.