User:Mackiwg/Temp/Testing-convertor.doc

Shortage of educators in the formal education sector with the capacity and skills to engage meaningfully in mass-collaboration approaches of OER development and reuse on an international scale

Learning wiki skills is cited by new users of WikiEducator as the top reason for registering an account on the WikiEducator site (70% of respondents). This is closely followed by "researching innovative educational trends and ideas" (68% of respondents) and "developing free content materials" (66% of respondents) as the main reasons for joining the project.

This survey data emphasises the importance and need expressed by educators joining WikiEducator to learn how to develop OER using the collaborative wiki model, especially given that 72% of WikiEducator users are teachers, lecturers or trainers working in the formal education sector and that approximately half of our users are older than 45.

WikiEducator has pioneered a low-cost training model using OER to teach wiki skills in a live wiki community. WikiEducator's Learning4Content training project has demonstrated its capacity to provide wiki training on a global scale. As a wiki project, the skills development of the Learning4Content project is focused on developing basic wiki editing skills in conjunction with an introduction to the concept of OER and free content licensing. A significant feature of the Learning4Content training program refers to the potential of skills transfer for other wiki projects, including Wikipedia, Wikibooks and Wikiverstity which use the same technology as WikEducator. We do not track data on the number of Learning4Content graduates who have subsequently made edits on Wikimedia Foundation projects but there have been posts on the WikiEducator community list and personal reflections and communications which provide examples of Learning4Content graduates who have subsequently ventured into editing on Wikimedia Foundation projects.

With the growing number of educators acquiring basic wiki skills through the Learning4Content training programme, the community has expressed the need for an intermediate level course to follow on from the basic wiki skills course. These requests are posted on the WikiEducator community discussion list and relevant planning pages for community requests on the WikiEducator web site. However, prior to the finalisation of the curriculum proposal for the development of tutorials for an advanced skills course, appropriate community consultations and analysis will be conducted to determine needs and priorities. In addition, we anticipate further uptake and investment by other institutions in widening skills development using the Learning4Content OER resources and supporting materials.

1.3.1 Proposed solution
Under this proposal, we will continue to offer free basic-level wiki training for educators around the world.

In addition to the basic-skills course we propose to develop further OER tutorials covering more advanced skills. This will enable the commencement of an intermediate-level workshop using the Learning4Content model for members of the WikiEducator community seeking to advance their skills in collaborative OER authoring, for example a tutorial on how to remix OER in support of the OER content interoperability initiative of this proposal. The needs analysis for determining the topics for the intermediate-level tutorials will be conducted in consultation with the WikiEducator community.

1.4The absence of a systemic OER participatory learning infrastructure which alludes to the requirement to foster the evolution of sustainable OER ecosystems
= relationships with every other element constituting =

Another heading
the environment in which they exist. At the micro-level of the OER ecosystem, there are early signs suggesting the potential sustainability of individual OER projects, for instance, Monterey Institute for Technology and Education, which is nearing the operational breakeven threshold. However, there is still much work needed in fostering the development of a sustainable OER ecosystem at the macro-level. There is a growing body of knowledge beginning to reflect on the sustainability question, for example Downes' (2006) work articulating different models for sustainable OER and Dholakia, King, and Baraniuk's (2006) reflections on sustainability in the case of Connexions. A number of important principles are emerging from these reflections:


 * Learning infrastructure is fostered, not built: Self-sustaining OER systems will only be achieved when social, organizational, and cultural issues are resolved in tandem (Atkins, Brown and Hammond 2007:56). Self-organisation works best when the global pattern emerges from the collective interactions of the sub-elements where the rules of interaction are determined at the local level. Open wiki models exemplify these processes of self-organisation where local projects and initiatives can determine their rules of interaction and engagement, while simultaneously fueling the emergence of sustainable OER ecosystems at the macro-level. The wiki model enables incremental growth combined with flexible adaptation as knowledge and experience of the system grows. Conceptually the proposed sustainability model advocated by the OER Foundation is based on collaboration rather than competition among individual OER initiatives. “Co-opetition” is well understood in the business world where corporations collaborate in order to compete better. Consider for example, the collaboration between Toyota and Peugeot Citroen who share design, component parts and a jointly owned manufacturing plant to produce competing vehicles . Specifically, this proposal is designed to encourage and promote collaboration between Connections, WikiEducator and the Mediawiki projects as a mechanism to improve collective interactions between sub-elements of the macro-OER ecosystem, contributing to the individual sustainability of these projects through collaboration..
 * Sustainability is a value system, not merely an economic return for an OER product: An OER product, for instance a low-cost open textbook, is part of a larger system which should also include "volunteers and incentives, community and partnerships, co-production and sharing, distributed management and control" (Downes 2006) . Consider for example, that school-level education in most countries are largely publicly-funded systems, consequently OER sustainability in this sector would benefit significantly from refinements in the national funding models as an incentive for the OER ecosystem, rather than total reliance on a user-pay system where individual schools fund the development of OER products. By contrast, it is easier to achieve a membership-funding model through higher education consortia given higher levels of institutional autonomy. The sustainability strategy for the OER Foundation will focus on an institutional membership model for the tertiary sector component and initiate a national New Zealand collaboration for the school sector as the first step in modeling the benefits of national funding support for OER at the school level.