OERu 2019-10 Agenda consultation for partner meeting

OERu

Towards more affordable education for all students worldwide

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• Dates for consultation meeting:
  1. Oceania and North America: 11 October 2019, 12:00PM (Hover over or click on link for your local time)
  2. Africa, Asia, and Europe: 15 October 2019, 9:00PM (Hover over or click on link for your local time)
• Weblink for meeting: https://zoom.us/j/926685476
• OERu 19-10 Meeting website: https://meetings.oeru.org/ (see confirmed participants.)
  • Registration link to attend Partner meeting as virtual participant: https://oer.nz/oeru19vp

Key points

1. The OERu has a tradition of open and transparent consultation on the drafting of the agenda for our international partners' meetings.
2. We have a number of "standard" agenda items - these have worked well in the past and many will be replicated for the 2019-10 meetings.
3. This year we are planning to restructure the agenda format:
   • Day 1 will be allocated to an open symposium for attendees to network and share institutional experiences in open education.
   • Day 2 will be allocated to OERu planning activities.
4. Please add suggested agenda items to the brainstorm list below, before the open online consultation meetings.
5. If you would like to discuss any items, please post your discussion on the corresponding talk page in the wiki.
6. If you don't have a WikiEducator account you will need to click on the "Request account" link above before you can edit in the wiki. This approval may take a few hours depending on your time zone location. (With apology for the inconvenience - international spam has become a major challenge.)

Aim

The aim of this consultation meeting is to:

1. Provide brief feedback on OERu activities.
2. Consult on the agenda for the OERu international partner meeting.

Brainstorm list for agenda items for the OERu 2019 Partner Meeting

Theme: Realising OERu’s community service mission – Sustainable learning for development through OER

Ideas for the symposium (Day 1)

• OERu timeline (Bring new attendees and observers up to date on the history of OERu).
• Place a call to partners and observers for snapshot presentations on the current state of OER and OEP at their institutions. --Wayne Mackintosh, OER Foundation, New Zealand (talk) 14:07, 9 October 2019 (NZDT)
• DCU showcase (session allocated to the host institution). --Wayne Mackintosh, OER Foundation, New Zealand (talk) 14:07, 9 October 2019 (NZDT)
• Modelling "open pedagogy" - e.g. inviting participants to generate H5P interactive items for use in OERu courses. --Wayne Mackintosh, OER Foundation, New Zealand (talk) 14:07, 9 October 2019 (NZDT)
• Inviting snapshot presentations from observer institutions sharing why they joined the meeting and what they would like to know about the OERu.
• Add your ideas here...

Ideas for the OERu planning meeting (Day 2)

• Taking stock, critical friend review and meeting priorities
  1. Report on implementation of the 1st year of study
  2. Technology report
  3. Critical friend review
• Increasing ROI for contributing partners
• OERu outreach partnership initiative
• OERu strategic futures

Agenda for this consultation meeting

1. Welcome and introductions
2. Update on OERu activities
   • Implementing the OERu first year of study
     1. Overview of the OERu authoring and delivery platform
     2. Landing pages and design of campaigns for automating course instructions (Cohort and independent study options)
        • Preparing to scale up operations
        • Campaign logic flow chart
     3. OERu Outreach Partnership Programme
     4. Learning in a Digital Age - COL Award for Excellence in Distance Education Materials
     5. Achieving strategic targets for 2019 (5,283 unique registered learners, with 60% residing in development countries)
   • Technology report (some demos of what is described below - further information on our technology stack, including "how tos" to help our partners replicate our technologies (all free and open source) is available on the OERu Technology Blog)
     1. Developed Wordpress plugin for Mautic integration
     2. Developed Wordpress plugin to smooth learner registration and login, as well as (un)enrolling in courses
     3. Live testing and refinement of Blog-Feed-Finder with multiple cohorts this year
     4. Improvements to snapshot process including support for H5P interactive objects
     5. Docker containers for OERu applications (Flexibility for future scalability)
     6. Maintaining infrastructure currency and consistency (addressing technical debt, improving maintainability and data security)
3. Partner meeting agenda consultation.

Summary of the consultation meetings

OERu 2019 Consultation meeting (North America & Oceania)

1. Participants introduced themselves.
2. Confirmed the purpose of the meeting, namely to:
   • Provide a brief update on progress with the implementation of the OERu first year of study
   • Consult on the agenda for the 8^th international meeting of OERu partners.
3. Implementing the OERu 1st year of study
   • Confirmed the two OERu designated qualifications:
     1. Certificate of Higher Education Business (OERu) to be conferred by the University of the Highlands and Islands
     2. Certificate of General Studies to be conferred by Thompson Rivers University.
   • Demonstrated the OERu authoring and delivery platform which utilises a component-based NGDLE for learner interaction to provide context for the work the OERF has been doing to scale-up and support a large number of learners without corresponding increases in staff.
   • Illustrated different websites where OERu learners can register to receive automated emails for course instructions from a main course landing page on the oeru.org website:
     1. Mautic landing page via the "Sign up, it's free" button.
     2. Registration on a course website using the 'Log in / Register' link via the "Start learning" button.
   • Summarized the work to date to scale-up automated course announcement emails using Mautic, noting:
     1. Signs of exponential growth in the number of course emails (currently between 1000 - 1500 course emails per day as more courses go live)
     2. The complexity of the logic underpinning the rule system for managing course emails for both cohort and independent study options.
4. Reported on the launch of the OERu Outreach Partnership Programme where selected institutions located in the developing world can join the OERu network for free:
   • Outreach Partners sign a Memorandum of Understanding
   • Confirmed that the OERu has founding Outreach Partners from Botswana, India, Namibia, and Nepal.
5. Noted that the OERu's Learning in a Digital Age course was conferred the Commonwealth of Learning Award for Excellence in Distance Education Materials.
6. Shared that OERu has exceeded its strategic target of 5,000 unique learner registrations agreed by the 2018 meeting of the OERu Council of CEO's reporting:
   • 5109 unique registered learners as on 11 October 2019
   • 5283 unique registered learners as on 15 October 2019
   • 60% of learners who participated in the August cohort for Learning in a Digital Age reside in developing countries.
7. Technology report
   • Developed software to integrate learners who enrol via course sites on WordPress into Mautic automated email campaigns for administering course instructions.
   • Demonstrated the new WordPress plugin to improve the optional account registration and course enrollment workflow for OERu learners.
   • Created and tested a Blog Feed Finder tool for learners to assign their personal blog feed URL for harvesting links of posts for the OERu course feed.
   • Reported on upgrades to the OERu snapshot process converting wiki pages for publishing on the OERu WordPress course websites. The OERu publishing model now supports:
     1. The ability to embed content via Pressbooks using iframes
     2. H5P interactive content elements
   • Reported that all OERu server applications now use Docker container technology which facilitates ease of moving applications to different server hosting infrastructure, including possibilities for partners to easily replicate OERu technologies and greater flexibility for solutions to scale up server capacity as resource demand increases.
   • Shifted hosting of OERu applications to more cost-effective cloud hosting solutions.
8. Open consultation on the agenda for the OERu partners meeting.
   • Affirmed that contributions and discussions from the OERu community can be posted on this wiki page
   • Explained that the 2018 meeting recommended that the planning components of the OERU international meeting should be consolidated into 1 Day (rather than spreading over two days). This is why we have proposed a "Symposium" format for the first day of the meeting to promote network sharing of open practices within the OERu partnership.
   • North America and Oceania consultation
     1. Agreed that a "symposium networking" focus for the 1st Day to share and showcase OER engagement would add value to the meeting, but recommended that the OERu retains the session summarizing the history of the OERu for the benefit of observers and first-time attendees.
     2. Recommended the inclusion of a "sprint format" session to develop ancillary resources in support of the OERu initiative.
     3. Recommended the inclusion of a session where partners can explore options for integrating what OERu is doing into local initiatives and establish opportunities for collaborative projects within the network.
     4. Agreed to retain the practice of:
        • Tabling recommendations from the partner meeting for the CEOs' meeting
        • Determining operational priorities and objectives for 2020
     5. Recommended the inclusion of a session to explore strategies to expand the OERu partnership.
     6. Agreed that Rajiv Jhangiani and Wayne Mackintosh will take the inputs from the consultation meetings and draft the agenda and activities for the OERu international partner meeting.
   • Africa, Asia and Europe Consultation (Scheduled for Tuesday 15 October, 9.00pm NZDT)
     1. Endorsed the recommendations for the meeting agenda proposed by the Oceania and North American meeting.
     2. Discussed the mechanics of OERu international credit transfer confirming that these are aligned with national qualification frameworks:
        • Africa and Namibia requested that a web conference be arranged with staff and representatives from the respective qualification authorities to explain how the OERu credit transfer and accummulation model works.
     3. Requested that the partner meeting consider opportunities for collaborative research in OER and OEP.
        • Shared information about the New Zealand study on the affordability of textbooks confirming that other countries can replicate the study.