2011.11 OERu Proposal for action for Academic Volunteers International

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Group 2 in Dunedin focused on developing a proposal for action for Academic Volunteers International. The group was asked to consider and think about scalability challenges and solutions.

Issues questions

Who are the volunteers?

• Not necessarliy subject content supporters
• Students
  • Free assessment services in return for facilitating, for eg 3 courses
  • Community service learning credit.
• Academics -- using recorded volunteer service hours for community service in staff appraisals self
• Retired teachers/ academics
  • "Paid" facilitators (see economic model.)
• Existing communities of online communities
• Small businesses
• Professional bodies (retaining membership)

What must volunteers do?

• Facilitate peer-to-peer learning
• Generic student suppport through the learning sequences - e-tivities
• Help build capacity
• Help learners develop as more independent and experienced OER learners

Criteria for selecting volunteers?

• Digital literacies including e-moderation and e-facilitation
• Proficiency in medium of instruction <- could we clarify a bit more what is expected?
• Cultural sensitivity

How do we connect volunteers with learners?

• Outstanding issue -- need to consider appropriate technology and processes

Here are some initial thoughts to get us started:

• one option is self selection by building personal profiles of AVI reflecting: past and current experience and expertise, indicating through badge or star system experience in facilitating OER learning in the OERu community to enable OER learners to self select a volunteer (potential issue some volunteers could be selected more than others and not able to cope with requests for support)
• another option is to match the volunteers with the level of support provided based on their skills and experience ( similar to Wikieducator badges)

Other

• Honour system --- referals
• AVI is the social networking space to support OERu learners - "Yammer"?
• Layered pyramid support model -- first port of call FAQ, P2P support, AV, OERu "Guru"
• Introduction to the community, how the community works, etc --- building capacity for success in AVI.
• 80-20 rule -- AVI only deal directly with 20% of the problems.
• Consider adapting Learnign4Content capacity building model for training of AVIs
• Will implement an agile and incremental development model.
• Not a critical path component.
• Should AVI provide career guidance?

Aims of the activity (longer term)

To develop a financially sustainable system for Academic Volunteers international (AVI)

Objectives

• To nurture the devlopment of a the critical mass of volunteers for needed self-orgasnisation and scalable growth
• To Select, modify or adapt an appropriate OSS system(s) for social networking, microblogging, FAQs etc.
• To remix and develop OERs as resource for capacity building of volunteers
• Develop online training opportunities for volunteers using WikiEducator's Learning4Content model

Narrative description of what you will do

• We will design a community ecosytem for proving a pyrimaid of volunteer support starting from

"FAQs' --> P2P learner support --> AVI facilitation --> Guru moderator status (WikiEducator Badges?) provide guidelines for course designers for the development of FAQ database

• For the prototype approach existing communities and founding anchor partners to assist with recruiting the categories of volunteers
• Develop usecase scenarios for the AVI Social Network, identify and select OSS social networking engine,
• Secure funding for code refinement if necessary.
• Design solutions for recruitment, how a self-selection model could operate and capacity building for digital literacies and e-moderation.,
• Trial the model / system in parallel with the OERu protoype(s) (assuming anchor partner scholarships for participing OERu learners).

What inputs are required?

• Staff time for design and development of the model
• Funding for strategic development of support technologies

Decision proposal(s) for OERTen partners for this activity including who and when.

• Draft a framework proposal for the AVI for consideration and adoption by the OERu anchor partners by 31 December 2011 with a core development team of a minuimum of 3 anchor partner members, Convened by Vasi Doncheva with support from Graham Bell, Herbert Thomas and Wayne Mackintosh (Volunteers most welcome.)
• Develop a funding proposal by February 2012 for NextGen 3B.
• Recruitment, training etc for go-live date.