Wrapping up OCL4Ed 14.06

Thank you for your interest and participation during OCL4Ed 14.06. I trust that you were able to learn a few new things about OER, copyright and open licensing.

I see that a few participants are still working through the closing sessions of the course, and that's fine. True to our open philosophy, the course materials will remain open and accessible.

This was an historic offering of OCL4Ed because we prototyped two new features:

1. A new course site design and navigation
2. The alpha release of the peer evaluation tool.

Given that we were testing new features, we intentionally did not advertise this offering widely to avoid large numbers in the event that the technology did not perform as we intended. Notwithstanding our intentions to keep things "quiet", 68 participants from +26 different countries signed up. To date, the course site has recorded 12,187 page views. Thankfully the technology behaved well and I appreciate the feedback and suggestions from the OCL4Ed class of "14.06".

Course evaluation

Please take a few minutes to complete the online course evaluation, even if you only worked through one or two sessions. Consider your time to complete the evaluation form as a donation for this free learning opportunity.

We rely on your feedback to help us improve our courses in achieving our charitable mission to widen access to free learning opportunities for all students worldwide.

Certification options

If you are seeking certification for participation or intending to complete the final assignment for formal assessment, please register your intent by the close of business on your Friday, 11 July 2014 by completing this online form.

Please note that we will be shutting down the blog aggregator after this date and that you will need to register your completed activities on the peer evaluation system before we close the blog aggregator.

Peer evaluation

I would like to acknowledge the work of Akash Agarwal, the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) student from Hyderabad, India who developed the alpha release of the peer evaluation tool. The GSoC rules require that successful students design and implement their own projects without coding support from their mentor organisations. Akash researched and developed the design which was published openly in WikiEducator and has be working to a very tight schedule to produce the alpha release. I would like to congratulate him for a functional peer evaluation tool and the courage to test his alpha release in a live OERu course context. Well done Akash!

As facilitator, I have been pushing the peer evaluation tool through it's paces having completed 25 ratings so far as part of the testing and bug reporting process. So my thanks to all participants who have registered activities for peer evaluation. As an open source development project, "behind" the scenes a number of folk have be working to provide technical bug reports to ensure a successful prototype. You have participated in a live open source development project and without your support, this would not be possible. If you're interested in how your peer evaluation submissions will inform the next iteration of the software, you can read my observations and suggested improvements for the rubric design.

Please help us with further testing of the prototype peer evaluation tool - see instructions here

Thanks and goodbye for now

I joined the teaching profession (vocation?) to share knowledge freely. Participating in these open courses is the highlight of my work at the OER Foundation.

We have a bold mission to widen access to more affordable education for the estimated 100 million learners who will not have the privilege of a tertiary education. If your institution would like to join the OERu partners in helping us to realise this vision, please consider joining our international innovation partnership.

As individuals, you can also make a substantive contribution by joining the appropriate OERu mailing list.

I look forward to joining you online again during any of the OERu courses in the future.

With kind regards
Wayne Mackintosh
UNESCO, COL & ICDE Chair in OER.