Feedback on capability development course: Digital skills for collaborative OER Development

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi everyone,

Over the holidays I've managed to progress the draft of the Digital Skills for Collaborative OER Development  micro course.  

We're planning to offer the pilot version early in March this year. This will be a great resource and opportunity for OERu partners commencing on the development of their first courses for the network. So start spreading the word - I'll post details of how folk can join in the near future. 

At this stage, I would appreciate feedback and comments, especially from our partners with real world experience in developing OERu courses. Please post your suggestions on the corresponding discussion pages in the wiki. Drawing on a work-based-learning model, this course is designed to be a learn-by-doing experience for anyone wanting to develop OER cooperatively. 

With thanks to the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO we have been able to progress work to provide OERu partners with the option of hosting a course site generated from an outline of wiki pages using WordPress (in addition to a snapshot website option which the OERF will host on our servers for partner institutions).  We have commissioned a contractor to assist with implementing the OERu theme and corresponding plugin for WordPress.  In addition, with this funding support,  I have been able to acquire the editorial services of an experienced WikiEducator to help us refine these course materials. The second course to be developed under this project will experiment with using Open edX as a delivery platform.  I'm confident that these prototypes will expand the delivery options for OERu courses including easy integration into your local learning management systems.

In short, in the near future our OERu partners will have more options to leverage the power of open education on campus!

More soon ...

Wayne

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Wayne Mackintosh
Director OER Foundation
UNESCO/COL/ICDE Chair in OER

Skype: WGMNZ1
Twitter: Mackiwg

[Caine, Abel]

Hello Wayne,

Is the WE course mobile friendly?

Quickly checked it out on iPhone and it didn't render properly.

Regards,

Abel

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[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Abel,

That's an important question. The short answer, is yes the content will be mobile friendly. 

Cheers

Wayne

More information on how we do this

This past year we have been focusing considerable energy on developing responsive CSS frameworks so that we can support the growing number of learners accessing materials using mobile devices, but also improving the look and feel of the content. (The standard Mediawiki layout is a little dated.)  

You can take a peek at this early prototype for the Open content licensing for educators course which uses a responsive framework for mobile devices. This mobile friendly website was generated from an outline of wiki pages. (You will recall that the UNESCO Office for the Pacific states provided a little funding support for the development of the original course materials which we have now reused for a mobile friendly version.)  

With the support from the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO we can take this a step further. Institutions and individuals will be able to host their own OER course websites, for example, using WordPress on their own domains.  In this way individuals and institutions will have control over their own OER courses. 

Basically, an outline of any collection of wiki pages can be exported for a mobile friendly website. The technology will automatically generate the site navigation, next and previous arrows etc. Users will be able to customise the look and feel of their websites. The Digital Skills for Collaborative OER development course will help educators learn how to do this. 

The OERu network uses a wide variety of delivery technologies, so we need solutions to integrate OER courses across a wide range of technologies including LMSs, content management systems, static websites etc. The power of the wiki is that we have a scalable technology with robust version control which is easy for educators to edit. Most software versioning tools are too complex for non-technical folk to master. 

Reuse will be easy - just create a new outline page which is simply a bullet list of the pages you would like to incorporate into a mobile friendly course site. 

Moving forward one step at a time to support mainstream adoption of OER :-).  

[Caine, Abel]

Hello Wayne,

The prototype is mobile friendly and cool.

Please don't hesitate to apply to me for a small grant to significantly advance/finish developing the mobile friendliness of this Project.

I have a little amount of funds from a project which must be spent before 31 March so any contract has to be started very soon.

Regards,

Abel

[Gabi Witthaus]

Hi Wayne

This Digital Skills for Collaborative OER Development course outline looks great! I'm delighted to see that the storyboarding resources from the OOC that Brenda Padilla and I created are being reused, - have just edited that section of the Wiki to include a couple of new storyboarding tools I've learnt about in the last couple of days :-)

A few related questions for you and the OERu community:

1. Are you happy for me to keep editing/ adding to the Wiki over the next few weeks, as we create/ discover new resources during the Storyboarding OOC? 
2. If the answer to no.1 is yes, can you give me a link to the Wikieducator editorial policy so I know how far I can go in making changes? (In case I get carried away!) Also, what is the time frame for completing the course materials for the OERu's March course?
   
3. Would you like to pilot the 'Storyboarding Challenge' with the current Storyboarding OOC participants? In the final two weeks of the OOC (9-20 Feb) we will be asking participants to blog about their storyboards and share the URLs with other OOC members via the CourseSites discussion forum. It would be great if we could offer them the opportunity to also share these resources on the WikiEducator Register of Learning Challenges. I can't predict how many would take up the challenge - perhaps just a handful, but it might still be a useful mini-pilot for the OERu?

Looking forward to your thoughts,

Gabi

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[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Abel,

Thanks for your feedback. I agree, the mobile friendly version is a vast improvement. I'll contact you off the list to explore options for improving the responsive design of the WikiEducator website snapshots.

W 

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Gabi

Of course, you are most welcome to edit and improve the resources in the wiki. I'm pleased that we were able to reuse your excellent materials. Go for it! 

The only limitation is that for the Digital Skills for Collaborative OER development course - we're only using a sub-set of the materials - totalling about 3 notional learning hours. The focus in this course is more on the digital skills rather than design. However, in a forthcoming development (The OER project course) - we can incorporate more detail on storyboarding with emphasis in design. 

Cheers

Wayne

[Gabi Witthaus]

Many thanks Wayne. I'll liaise with you outside of the list about the details.

Gabi

[Cable Green]

Hi Wayne:

The course looks great!

Technical point re: the license:

(1) Will you please update the license to BY SA 4.0  (from 3.0)?  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

note: here are the notable changes from 3.0 to 4.0

(2) Will you please add a "machine readable" CC BY SA 4.0 license using the code from the CC license chooser?  http://creativecommons.org/choose/

My open attribute plugin can't see the license.

Most gratefully,

Cable

Cable

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Cable,

That's a good point. and thanks for the reminder about Version 4.0 of the licenses (my personal preference.)  

The link to the derivative snapshot materials I provided in an early post to this conversation is a prototype and work in progress. (Our attribution on the prototype site linked back to the source materials in WikiEducator which still uses an earlier version of the license.). We'll be sure to include the machine readable and CC Version 4.0 option in the production version of the technology we use to produce these mobile friendly remixes.

As a wiki community, the OER Foundation does not own the copyright of the materials hosted on the wiki. It belongs to the original authors.  

Consequently, the process of providing a 4.0 licensing option on WikiEducator material is more complex because it requires appropriate consultation with the community of authors - potentially +70K users. As you know, not everyone is as happy with 4.0 as we are.  

Technically, the mobile friendly snapshots are derivative works and we are planning to provide users with the option of releasing their snapshots under 4.0.  These things take time - and we are constrained and dependant on the available resources we have for coding these new features. 

Well get there - sooner if you can donate funding for the coding time ;-).

Cheers

Wayne