OpenCourseWare Consortium
Happy Festive Season
2012 In review
This has been an exiting year for
the OCW Consortium. Early in
the year, our Board of Directors
voted to enlarge the scope of our
work to support the open
education movement more
generally and to focus on user
experience. Membership
requirements changed to reflect
this shift; membership criteria are
now demonstrated through
expressing support for open
education rather than production
of OCW courses. This shows our
commitment to using OER and
open educational practices as
well as to sharing materials.
December
Newsletter 2012
The OCW Consortium recently
partnered with OpenStudy to
offer a Certificate of Participation
to learners who achieve a certain
level of proficiency through
studying OCW materials. This
project is in its pilot phase, and
we’ll be looking to expand the
project in 2013. See our
announcements blog and
www.openstudy.com/courses for
more information.
The Consortium was also
selected to be part of the US
Commitment to the Equal Futures
Partnership, an international
cooperative effort to increase the
economic and political
We started the first annual open
participation of women. Along
education week in March 2012
with Creative Commons, we will
with the goal of increasing
be organizing an OER-STEM
general awareness about open
task force to examine ways that
education, what resources are
OER can support girls’ success in
available, where projects are
studying STEM subjects. See
located around the world, and
how people can make the most of (http://tinyurl.com/bsrqd6k) for
materials and tools. Please join us more details.
for Open Education Week 2013,
In collaboration with the research
11-15 March. Showcase your
group GICAC from the
work in open education by
contributing a video, webinar, or Universidad Politecnica de
resource. Fill out the web form at Madrid (GICAC-UPM) and the
www.openeducationweek.org by Universidad Particular Tecnica de
18 January 2013 and tell us how Loja (UPTL), the Consortium has
embarked on a project to improve
you would like to contribute.
the search and discovery of open
Participation is free and open.
educational content, which will
enhance the ability of learners and
educators to find and use OCW
courses.
To better show the impacts of
open education worldwide, the
OCW Consortium is gathering and
sharing data on both the
production of materials and the
use of these resources, along with
case studies of how OER are being
used. You can find several case
studies of OER in Community
Colleges in our announcements
(www.tinyurl.com/oercanyons, for
example). Stay tuned in 2013 for
summaries of this data and links to
more case studies.
Thank you for your continued
support of the OCW Consortium.
To view an online version of the
newsletter click here
(http://tinyurl.com/c3c5tfn). As
always, we welcome your
feedback and suggestions at
[email protected] or
[email protected]
With Best Wishes for 2013
Mary Lou Forward
Executive Director
OCW Consortium
Inside this Issue:
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OER Around the World – Views from the OCW Consortium’s Board of Directors
Overview of New Members of the OpenCourseWare Consortium in 2012
Reminders: OCWC Global 2013 & 2013 Awards for OpenCourseWare Excellence (ACE)
Proposals to host OCWC Global 2014, Happy Birthday to CC & New OCWC Members
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OER Around the World – Views from the OCW Consortium’s Board of Directors
Anka Mulder, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), the Netherlands
The board of TU Delft has decided to invest in Online Education and the development of
MOOCs. Delft has given keynote speeches on Open and Online Education at major Dutch
higher education conferences. We have also informed the government about the developments
in this field. TU Delft has also strengthened ties with UNESCO Netherlands, working jointly
on advancing OER nationally.
The European Union will launch a programme on Open Education in 2014: “Opening up
education” (http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/education_culture/consult/open_en.htm). They are holding
a consultation round now and all EU organisations and institutions are invited to respond. As a
follow up to the currently ongoing EU OCW project (http://www.opencourseware.eu/), we
would like to set up an EU STEM academic network using OER
(http://www.opencourseware.eu/stem. We have already identified a number of partners.
Wei-I Lee, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
Taiwan OCWC (http://tocwc.nctu.edu.tw/) has 27 members, comprising 15% of all the
universities in Taiwan. Members are adding approximately 300 new courses each year with
200 of these being complete videos and teaching materials. Furthermore, members have been
working on standardization of Google Analytics to pool together for meaningful data. The
OCW sites cumulatively get approximately 100,000 viewers each month; the university
population in Taiwan is 1.2 million.
TOCWC is interested in collaborating with universities in Taiwan to produce MOOCs and are
looking into setting up a company that would start offering courses possibly in August 2013.
In Mainland China, the 5-year plan released last year allocated 100M USD into OCW. This
will include 200 top video courses, and course materials for another 1000 courses each year.
James Glapa-Grossklag, Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER), USA
During 2012, there has been an active schedule of webinars, providing a rich array of
professional development to faculty, staff, and administrators. Topics have included research
on student outcomes, models for faculty training, accessibility for all students, and—of
course—MOOCs. Presenters included community college faculty, staff, and administrators, as
well as representatives from state offices of education and professional researchers.
Community College conferences increasingly feature panel discussions and keynote
presentations on OER. The CCCOER (http://oerconsortium.org/) advisory board meets
regularly, developing a strong community of interest. Case studies of successful
implementations of OER in community colleges are available on the OCWC website,
providing examples of real cost savings and improved learning for our students. The number
of community colleges that are members of the OCW Consortium has increased significantly
over the past year.
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Catherine Ngugi, OER Africa, Kenya/South Africa
OER Africa (http://www.oerafrica.org), a SAIDE initiative (http://www.saide.org.za/),
continues to work with universities in Africa to build awareness on how open can met some of
the challenges of delivering quality education to large and growing numbers, with limited
physical and human resources. One such OER Africa project is AgShare,
(http://www.oerafrica.org/agshare/AgShareHome/tabid/1290/Default.aspx), an agriculture
OER project to link classroom study with practice by farmers, funded by the Gates
Foundation. OER Africa continues to work on policies at the institutional level that allow
greater collaboration and sharing of resources. We are also contributing to an IDRC
(www.idrc.ca/) research project, looking at impact of OER in developing countries.
SAIDE was recently awarded a Comic Relief grant for the African storybook project, focusing
on early childhood literacy. Although there are lots of stories across the continent there are not
many storybooks. Having lots of stories to read in their own language helps children develop
literacy. The project will collect and share stories under open licenses in order to support
literacy development.
Murilo Matos Mendonca, UNISUL - Universidade do Sul de Santa Catarina, Brazil
OER have recently been included in a number of conferences and symposia in Brazil.
The OCWC Symposium on Open Education assembled a countrywide audience and served to
raise awareness as well as interest in open education among educational institutions and
government (http://www.unisulvirtual.com.br/simposioOCWC/palestrantes_english.html).
In policy, in September, Simão Pedro, Congressman of the State of São Paulo, discussed his
OER Bill with the State Secretary of Education of São Paulo. The Bill proposes that all
educational resources purchased or developed with public funds, be made available as OER
(http://rea.net.br/site/pl-sobre-recursos-educacionais-abertos-e-apresentado-em-sao-paulo/).
Finally, UNISUL is involved in a research group currently being put together with the purpose
of looking into collaborative learning through OER. From 2013, procedures will be developed
to validate non-formal learning acquired through OER/OCW. The OportUnidad project
(http://www.oportunidadproject.eu/) has just released a publication called “Compendium
OER: Cases from Latin America and Europe in Higher Education”. The Compendium can be
downloaded from the OportUnidad website. Ignasi Labastida i Juan, Creative Commons, Spain
The reuse of materials for educational purposes is going to be challenged in court after a
couple of public universities in Spain have been sued by a collecting society. This is a great
opportunity to show how to share by creating and using Open Educational Resources (OER).
Both creators and users need to understand the importance of OER in order to advance
building of an open knowledge society. We plan to use Open Education Week
(www.openeducationweek.org) as a venue to educate about open licenses, open education and
the value of OER. CC has turned 10 this year: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC10
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Mary Y. Lee, Tufts University, USA
Open academic resources at Tufts (http://sites.tufts.edu/tuftsoer/) support and expand our
University’s commitment to internationalism, active citizenship, and global civil society. The
Tufts University Sciences Knowledgebase (TUSK) is an enterprise-level knowledge and
curriculum management system designed for life and health sciences education and training.
TUSK’s software is open source (opentusk.org) and will soon be available in French. TUSK is
being used in the United States, India, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of the
Congo, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and Sweden, and is being planned for Rwanda, Ethiopia, and
Thailand. Tufts has led OpenGeoportal (http://opengeoportal.org/), a collaboratively
developed open source platform to gather and share large data assets in geo-spatial science,
and hosts Selected Patient Information Resources in Asian Languages (SPIRAL
http://spiral.tufts.edu/index.php) which provides high-quality Asian-language health
information for non-English speakers and their health providers. The 2nd Sloan Summit
(http://vimeo.com/35899334) on Open Access - Mission and Mandate was hosted by the
Boston Library Consortium at Tufts in January 2012, for university administrators to explore
open access issues and how they are transforming teaching, research, and collaboration.
Edmundo Tovar, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain
Together with researchers from Universidad Tecnica Particular de Loja, UPM has recently
finalized a study on the impact of Open Education Resources (OER) and the OpenCourseWare
(OCW) in Spanish and Latin American universities. The research project was supported
financially through the Spanish Ministry of Education. OCW initiatives in Spain and Latin
America have been analyzed both from the point of view of OCW/OER usability and from the
perspective of managers/content creators of OCW projects/OCW.
Serendipty (http://serendipity.utpl.edu.ec/), a project aimed at improving discoverability of
OER/OCW, is moving ahead with the support of the OCW Consortium. We are also working
on a visualization tool to be able to show graphically data about OCW and other OER
initiatives around the world (http://serendipity.utpl.edu.ec/map).
As part of the EU OCW project, we have produced a report on the impact of OCW on
European higher education institutions, which will be available on the project website
http://opencourseware.eu/. We are also working on including OER in engineering education.
The 2013 Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) will include the use of OER as one of the
conference themes. Furthermore, the IEEE Transactions on Education has issued a call for
papers for its special issue on “Open Educational Resources (OER): Original Experiences
Using Open Course Ware and OER. MOOCs have also had a considerable impact on Spanish
Higher Education. UNIVERSIA, Telefonica and UNED have recently launched a platform
called “Miriada X”. The platform hosts open education content offered to Ibero-American
academics from the UNIVERSIA network. Academics can use the platform to create and
teach MOOCs. UPM will contribute several courses to Miriada X in the near future.
Finally, UPM OCW Office will transform into Open Education Office in 2013, a step
considered as a natural evolution in open education by other Spanish universities.
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Bakary Diallo, The African Virtual University, Kenya/Senegal
Following the successful completion of the Phase I of the Multinational project, which
resulted in the creation of 219 open resources in English, French and Portuguese, the African
Development Bank approved funding for the AVU Multinational Project Phase II to build on
the project’s initial successes. This grant strengthens the capacity of the AVU to establish
distance and eLearning infrastructure in selected partner institutions, develop and deliver
quality ICT-integrated programs in mathematics and science teacher education, computer
science and peace and conflict resolution. It will help the AVU to launch its research and
development agenda with a focus on mobile learning, and to scale up its OER initiative
(http://[email protected]). The grant also supports gender mainstreaming through awarding
scholarships to women in science programs. Phase II of the Multinational project is being
implemented in 27 partner institutions in 22 countries across the African continent. Launch
meetings have begun for the project, which include OER workshops. Six OER workshops
have been conducted to date in Ghana, Nigeria, Sudan and South Sudan.
Overview of New Members of the OpenCourseWare Consortium in 2012
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14
1
2
1
2
21
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1 New Member: Australia, Belgium, Panama, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates; 2
New Members: Brazil, China, Indonesia, Italy, South Korea, Mexico, Netherlands; 14 New Members:
United States
Total number of new members in 2012: 36; Total number of OCWC members: 274
For more information about OCWC members, please visit:
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/en/members/members
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Call for Participation: 2nd Open
Education Week
Open Education Week is a fiveday celebration of the global Open
Education Movement. Its purpose
is to raise awareness of both the
movement and its impact on
teaching and learning worldwide.
Participation in all events and use
of all resources is free and open to
anyone.
The Open Education Week
Organizing Committee invites your
participation in the second annual
Open Education Week, 11-15
March 2013, to be marked by
online and in-person events around
the world. Contribute a virtual tour
of your open education project, a
webinar, links to resources, host a
local event or propose something
creative. To contribute, simply fill
out the web form
at www.openeducationweek.org by
18 January 2013. All
contributions must use an open
license that allows for reuse and
modification. Open Education
Week is coordinated by the OCW
Consortium.
Open Education Week: Some Frequently Asked Questions
What topics will be covered during Open Education Week?
This week is dedicated to raising awareness about open educational
resources, open educational practices, open policies, open access, open
data – any topic related to open education. Open education refers to
educational practices that increase access to high quality education
and openly licensed educational materials that allow reuse and
modification.
What is a project showcase? What are the requirements?
Provide a pre-recorded informational video of your project, work, or
organization. This should be focused on the work you’re doing in open
education and designed for a general audience.
What are the guidelines for a webinar?
Webinars are well suited for topics of general interest, such as what’s
happening in open education in a particular area or country, new
projects, or topics that offer discussion possibilities. We also welcome
webinars that offer training opportunities in areas such as open content
licensing, online tools/open sources software applications for creating
or repurposing OER, and more.
How do I contribute basic resources?
Create or share existing text- or video-based, downloadable
information that’s helpful in understanding open education or in
implementing open educational practices.
What do you mean by a local event?
Sponsor or host an in-person event in your local area during the week
of 11-15 March 2013. This could be a community discussion, a forum
on open education, a challenge and/or a celebration.
Make a difference!
For detailed information on how to participate in OEW please visit
www.openeducationweek.org or email us at
[email protected]
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Reminder: Call for Proposals
for OCWC Global 2013
Conference is Open!
OCWC Global 2013, hosted by
APTIKOM Indonesia, will be
held in Bali, Indonesia May 810, 2013. Partnering with the
OCWC and APTIKOM for the
realization of conference goals
is a local organizing team,
which includes the National
ICT Council of Indonesia,
Ministry of Education and
Culture, Ministry of
Information and
Communication, and the
Indonesian Open University.
Held annually, OCWC Global
reunites the OCW/OER
community for three days of
showcasing new projects,
debating issues of common
concern, and exchanging useful
practices in matters such as
pedagogy, policy and
technology.
The OpenCourseWare
Consortium invites session
proposals for the 2013 global
conference. We encourage
submissions for sessions that
highlight learning beyond
borders, summarize research,
showcase best practices, discuss
issues facing the community,
and encourage thinking about
the future direction of “open”
learning.
In keeping with the theme of the
conference, Learning Beyond
Borders – Delivering Quality
Education to Your Fingertips,
we particularly welcome
proposals that integrate accounts
of OER’s role in broadening
access to education via policy,
accreditation, assessment and
improving quality.
There will be 3 conference tracks:
1. Collaboration in Open
Education
Reminder: 2013 Awards for
OpenCourseWare Excellence Call for Nominations is Open!
The Awards for OpenCourseWare
Excellence recognize outstanding
individual contributions to the
OCW/OER movement,
exemplary OCW member sites
and excellent individual course
presentations. A panel of voting
members will select ACE site and
course winners from finalists
culled by the award committee.
Individual winners will be
selected by a vote of the board of
directors.
Nominations for individuals, sites
2. Accreditation and Assessment
of OER-based learning
3. Expanding the reach of OER
The Deadline for Proposals is
31 December 2012. Registration
for the conference is now Open
as well.
For more information about
submitting session proposals and
to register for the conference
visit:
http://conferences.ocwconsortium
.org
and courses will be accepted
through January 14, 2013 and
may be submitted through the
following page
(http://ocwconsortium.org/ace) or
by e-mailing
[email protected]. Visit
the above web page for complete
information on preliminary
criteria, rules and eligibility. The
OCW ACE’s will be presented at
the next global OpenCourseWare
Consortium meeting in Bali,
Indonesia, May 8-10, 2013. For
information about the 2011 and
2012 ACE winners please visit:
http://ocwconsortium.org/en/com
munity/ace
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Call for Proposals to Host
OCWC 2014 Global
Conference is Closed!
Thank you to all who
submitted proposals to host
OCWC 2014 Global
Conference. The Board of
Directors of the OCW
Consortium will make a final
decision about the 2014
OCWC Global conference
location during their Board
meeting in January 2013 and
new location for the 2014
OCWC Global will be
announced during the 2013
Global conference in Bali,
Indonesia in May 2013.
Happy 10th Birthday to
Creative Commons
The first Creative Commons
licenses were released 10 years
ago. The Global Open Education
Community and the
OpenCourseWare Consortium
would like to congratulate
Creative Commons for their
extremely important role in
enabling the gift of sharing of
educational resources openly and
freely.
Happy Birthday CC! For more
information, visit:
http://10.creativecommons.org/
We welcome these new
members to the Consortium
Institutional
Universitas Terbuka - Indonesian
Open University
(http://www.ut.ac.id/), Indonesia
Pontifícia Universidade Católica
do Rio de Janeiro- PUC Rio
(http://www.puc-rio.br/index.html),
Brazil
Università degli Studi Guglielmo
Marconi
(http://www.unimarconi.it), Italy
Organizational
GUIDE - Global Universities in
Distance Education
(http://www.guideassociation.org),
Italy
Please visit our website for news links and blogs to keep up with what is happening in OER around the world.
Better yet, you can like us on Facebook (OCWConsortium) or follow us on Twitter (OCW News) to be
updated in real time. If you have something to share email us at: [email protected] or
[email protected] and let us know!
Unless otherwise noted, the OpenCourseWare Consortium December 2012 Newsletter is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
OpenCourseWare Consortium
PO Box 251, Newton, MA 02464, USA
www.ocwconsortium.org
[email protected]
Activities of the OpenCourseWare Consortium are supported
by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, member dues,
and contributions from our sustaining members:
The African Virtual University | Fundação Getulio Vargas - FGV Online | Delft University of Technology| Japan OpenCourseWare
Consortium | Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health | Korea OpenCourseWare Consortium| Massachusetts Institute of
Technology | Netease Information Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. | Open Universiteit (the Netherlands) | Tecnológico de
Monterrey| Taiwan OpenCourseWare Consortium |Tufts University | UNIVERSIA| Universidad Politécnica de Madrid |
University of California, Irvine | University of Michigan