Talk:OERu/Planning/OERu Management Committee/15.12 Meeting of the OERu Management Committee
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| Thread title | Replies | Last modified |
|---|---|---|
| Notes on the meeting | 1 | 12:32, 16 December 2015 |
Hello all: I believe these minutes capture the discussions and decisions that were part of the meeting. I would like to note for the record a couple of questions that I raised during the meeting that, while not needing to be part of the minutes, I hope will be part of the discussions we have regarding implementation of some of these items going forward. (In a few cases I am elaborating on those statements here--yes, it might have been helpful for me to have articulated the full ideas during the meeting.)
1. Regarding the creation of the first-year certificate we are working toward: we have several courses already completed that could be part of this certificate program. It would be helpful to note the status of these, either as complete or as ready for local customization. I know that this information is elsewhere on the wiki but it would be good to have a measure of our progress toward the certificate/MVP: what's done, what's left to do.
2. Following up on this last point: I am not clear as to whether the MVP will include a standard set of courses, intended for "off-the-shelf" use, or a set of courses that each partner will need to customize in order to make them fit our own curricular requirements. If the latter is the case, then what are we saying constitutes a completed course? Is it all the content and assessments? Is it just the content? Methodologies? Modular format in which there are regular pauses for "insert your own local content here"?
3. At what point will we be able to create local assessments, and to what extent is that part of the MVP approach? Are there institutions that are planning to collaborate on this? Should we encourage that?
4. What is our plan for using already existing OER course materials, such as that created by Saylor or Lumen Learning or others? Can we do a survey to determine the viability of such courses to help us reach our goals?
Hi Marc,
Thanks for your confirmation of the minutes. I also appreciate your question relating to MVP as these will inform our action plan for 2016. Would you be willing to serve on the Group tasked to progress the action plan? We need insight into the US accreditation landscape.
I should preface my responses by referring to the "Porter challenge" which framed discussions and planning for OERu MVP. In short, MVP requires:
- 5 to 10 exemplar courses
- Completed by a target date (eg June 2016)
- Hosted on a common platform
- Available from one location (OERu.org)
- From which students can participate,
- And on completion could be directed to OERu institutions providing assessment
- Where they could achieve a credit-based assessment
- Towards transcript credit that would be awarded, badged and recognised towards an exit credential.
Completed courses
Yes, we do have "completed" courses. The first step in the action plan is would require an audit to see what needs to be done to achieve the requirements for the "Porter challenge" I envisage that members of the new Curriculum, programme of Study and Quality group will join the MVP task force and factor this "what done" and "what's left to do" into their work in developing the programme specification document for the 1st year of study. The current status of "completed" needs to be updated. Do for example, we need to reconfigure the Critical Reasoning course for the OERu platform.
Off the shelf versus "customised courses"
I suspect given individual partner autonomy, we will see a variety of approaches and solutions. The critical path decision for an MVP candidate requires three conditions to be true:
- The course meets the "Porter challenge" requirements plus
- The course outcomes can be assessed for transcript credit towards a local credential at one or more partners. (So this may entail a full course content plus assessment, or assessment only for an existing MVP course in the programme specification document) plus
- The course credit can be recognised for the nominated exit awards (currently the Certificate in General Studies at TRU and the CertHE at UHI.)
With regards to methodologies, modular format etc - this is the intention of the pedagogical specification KPI for and the Minimum Viable Platform KPI - we will define what these courses and/or assessment packages might look like for MVP.
Collaboration on assessment
Yes - we must encourage this imo. The sooner we can start the better. So for example, I would love to see TESC assessment services for the OERu Regional Relations in Asia and Pacific course so USA citizens can benefit from the course. (USA is part of the Asia Pacific ;-)) Alternatively, I would love to work with you and other partners in developing assessments for the four business courses we have on the table (see the bottom of the table if you'll pardon the pun ;-).
Plan for reusing existing OER courses
I would hope that remix and reuse of Saylor, Lumen etc courses would constitute the lion's share of our work in achieving MVP. Once we know the gaps we need to fill for the programme specification for the 1st year - we can pro-actively recruit OERu partners willing to provide assessment services and assist with the assembly of the course to meet the "Porter challenge" for MVP. So for example, we will need college composition course(s) for the skills area of the programme specification document.
Marc - excellent questions and these are the issues I see the MVP task force taking on board and providing direction through the respective working groups.
