OERu/Planning/Technology working group/2016-09

11:00PM UTC
(Click for your local time) Also, apologies, this was previously (incorrectly) listed as 11:30PM UTC.
Zoom video conference link (Note meeting link changed as we couldn't record on the previous session!)

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Agenda

Updates on MVP Delivery Platform

Learner Resources
- WENotes enhancements - harvesting from our Rocket.Chat, Discourse, Email Groups, and Blogs based on tags. See this example for our upcoming Partners' Meeting.
- Bookmarks - our new bookmarking utility for incorporation into courses, fulfilling the role of a course resource bank
- Our new OERu video channel
Collaborator Resources
- Improved marketing collateral, like case studies, templates, logos
- Enhanced Analytics for our online materials, along with a bunch of useful utilities (e.g. the ability to track the use of links in our materials shortened via our link shortener (example short link: https://oer.nz/a )...
- Our interactive chat system, built on Rocket.Chat
- Our planning system, built on Wekan
- our issue tracking system, built on MantisBT
- Our Single Sign-On process - still a work in progress. We're focusing on a technology called OAuth2. We will use our "course" WordPress multi-site installation as the main port of call for collaborators and learners alike.

Also, a new Resource for partners - our Tech Blog - we plan to put how-tos, technology previews, and other good stuff here.

Brian: wondered about the value our partners can get from being able to implement some of these open technologies. How do we encourage our partners to "dip their toes" further into the open source tool water.
Dave: talked about the cost savings our partners can achieve by adopting these tools... and with the further advantages that a) partners can incorporate these tools into their own infrastructure, including customisations as required, and b) the institution is not compromising learner freedom (by forcing them to use proprietary tools and create proprietary artefacts in order to complete their course requirements)
Wayne: open boundary course opportunities - accessibility of our tools is a great enabler... it means that previously institutionally bounded systems (like most institutional LMSs) can be open and visible to external learners. Those learners can make good on the promise of participating in an international multi-cultural learning experience. This is a huge point of difference for the OERu and its partners...
Wayne: noted the innovation of OERu Partner Athabasca University's developer, Dan Wilton, which he created for his own convenience, but which might have profound value to the network: namely a means for automatically/progammatically converting a WikiEducator course into a static (no web access required) HTML archive that can be viewed locally in a browser. We should invite Dan to write a guest Tech Blog post about it.

To be updated during the session...