1st Consultation Meeting of the COEP

Date:: Tuesday, 17 September 2019
Weblink for live meeting:: https://zoom.us/j/759575147

Draft agenda

1. Welcome and introductions
2. About the COEP
3. Key initiatives
   • Free digital literacy courses for all New Zealand learners
     • 2019 COL Award for Excellence in Distance Education Materials
   • NZ Textbook affordability study
   • Professional development for OER practitioners
4. National OER practitioner and leadership symposium - 5 - 6 December 2019
   • Planning update
5. Actions
   • Help promote the textbook survey - see resources page
   • Circulate information on LiDA103 PD opportunity - Next cohort starts 7 October 2019. Link: https://oer.nz/wcol2019
   • Encourage colleagues to submit abstracts for the national symposium - closing date is 30 September 2019.
6. Communications
   • Join the #COEP Channel on chat.oeru.org
7. Other?

Meeting summary

Confirmed permission to record the meeting and post a public copy of the recording.

1st COEP Consultation Meeting

1. Welcome and introductions
   • Acknowledged New Zealand's early leadership in open education with the first tertiary education institution in the world to adopt a default Creative Commons Attribution licensing policy and the pioneering work of New Zealand Government Open Access Licensing Framework (NZGOAL)
   • Noted that New Zealand is lagging behind its international counterparts, including Canada and the United States, whose governments have made significant investments in open educational resources (OER) to reduce the cost of study and improve the quality of learning.
   • Confirmed that the national Centre for Open Education Practice (COEP) was established as an open collaboration to accelerate the adoption of open education practices.
   • Participants introduced themselves
2. Summarised the key initiatives of the COEP
   • Reported that the August 2019 cohort of the digital literacy courses promoted by COEP attracted +800 participants from 66 countries (50 participants from New Zealand).
   • Reported on the NZ Textbook affordability baseline study. The survey is live. (Currently 512 responses with only 20% from the Polytechnic sector). Approximately 15% of respondents report that they are aware of the concept of OER. 60% of respondents to date indicate that lack of access to textbooks has had a negative effect on them academically.
   • Advised that COEP is planning to offer a cohort instance of the micro-course: Digital skills for collaborative OER development as a free professional development opportunity for Educators later this year.
3. National OER practitioner and leadership symposium - 5 - 6 December 2019
   • Noted that call for abstracts closes on 30 September 2019. (Download Call for Abstracts (PDF))
   • Highlighted the four themes of the symposium:
     1. Social justice through open education
     2. Making education more sustainable through open education
     3. Leading change towards more open education
     4. Open Educational Practices
   • Noted the different formats including:
     • Full presentation (could include panels)
     • Snapshot presentations
     • Workshops
   • Shared information on two keynote speakers:
     • Associate Professor Cheryl Brown from the eLearning Research Lab at the University of Canterbury will report back on the findings of the national textbook affordability study.
     • Dr David Porter, CEO of eCampusOntario will share experiences on Ontario's Open Education Ranger initiative and related strategies in building a thriving OER community in Ontario, Canada.
4. Actions for COEP members and discussion
   • National symposium
     • Please encourage colleagues in your network who are interested in open education to submit abstracts for the symposium - proactive "shoulder-tapping" is needed.
       • Tohatoha confirmed they would be willing to facilitate a Creative Commons Release 'Em poker' workshop' (Wayne to liaise with Mandy about details).
       • Reported that the Journal for Open Flexible and Distance Learning has offered to publish a dedicated issue for symposium papers (peer reviewed).
       • Consider a panel comprising representatives from Universities who have adopted open access policies including Tohatoha's work on access to scholarly information and a representative from the CONZUL Open Access Group.
   • NZ textbook study
     • Requested help from COEP individual members to promote the NZ textbook affordability study
     • Highlighted the resources page to assist with promoting the survey.
     • COEP members are invited to ask tertiary educators in their network to promote the survey with their students (It is a short survey which only takes 4 minutes to complete. Survey respondents can also choose to go into a random prize draw, with the chance to win one of ten $50 supermarket vouchers.)
     • Recommended that information about the survey be distributed in the FLANZ newsletter and Tohatoha offered to distribute through their newsletter.
   • Open Education, Copyright and Open Licensing in a Digital World (LiDA103) professional development opportunity
     • Confirmed that the October cohort is open for all New Zealand educators. Registration link: https://oer.nz/wcol2019
5. Open discussion on promoting the activities of COEP
   • Acknowledged the need for proactive promotion of the activities of COEP to recruit individual members.
   • Emphasized that COEP is an open collaboration and as the group grows and matures, collectively members will decide how they will organize activities.
   • Recommended that COEP promotes its activities at educational conferences and consider developing flyers to promote the Centre.
   • Recommended an entrepreneurial approach to determine target audiences through the development of personas. Jo Allum and Ray O'Brien offered to facilitate a workshop at the symposium to develop personas and refine understanding of the target audience for COEP.
   • Meeting adjourned at 5.00pm