Hi all,
Hope you're all well! Just wanting to provide an update to the Tech
Working Group participants to assure you that the lack of traffic on
this list shouldn't be interpreted as a lack of activities or progress!
If you haven't seen it yet (and yes, I need to do a few more posts!)
there's our Tech Blog (https://tech.oeru.org) with a description of our
tech stack and some how-tos to replicate some of our most useful tools
for your own purposes.
We've been doing heaps of stuff to prepare for the technology to support
the OERu Minimum Viable Product (A first year of study with a formal
exit credential!). Among other things:
- we've adopted a new (and, we think, better) open source planning tool
(we used Wekan), moving to Kanboard (see http://kanboard.net) - we're
paying for the hosted service, but could be hosting it ourselves.
- we have been paying a modest monthly fee to use the hosted open source
Mautic service (https://mautic.net) which we use to automate sending out
messages to course participants (and save instructors and admins lots of
time!) in a timely manner automatically. We also use it to help follow
up prospective partner inquiries - think of it as "Mailchimp on steroids".
Mautic have recently told us that our paid plan will rise in cost by 10x
in a couple months, so (due to it being open source), we've created our
own instance of it (https://mautic.oeru.org), providing us with
independence (but costing them a paying customer). A fringe benefit of
that is that our partners, too, can benefit from the lessons we've
learned and implement their own instances, too! I still need to write
that one up. I'm also busy working on integrating Mautic into the
learner course sign-up process taking advantage of the Mautic app's
complete API.
- we've added an ownCloud instance (https://cloud.oeru.org) to help us
all distribute large files - ownCloud (https://owncloud.org) is like
having your own Dropbox for your organisation (and, yes, they can be
federated). I'll be publishing a blog post on how we did that soon.
- I've been working on streamlining our implementation of WENotes (which
is made up of a number of rather involved components, very cleverly
assembled by Jim Tittsler) in an effort to make it more long-term
supportable and replicable. I've set it all up as a set of 3 Docker
container recipes that can be managed by Docker Compose... another
future Tech blog post.
- We've had some instruction on making use of Google Analytics (and
we'll be looking at how we can use open source Piwik as an alternative)
to measure the use of - and *how* learners are using - OERu services to
help us tune things to suit actual usage.
- Until the release of MVP, I'll be focused on ensuring we have smoothed
and integrated access for learners wanting to participate. That means
writing code to tie together a bunch of services and login systems, and
provide us with tools to efficiently manage/measure our interaction with
learners and educators alike!
- I'm probably forgetting something, so that'll likely give me an excuse
for a future update :)
As co-convener of the Tech Working Group, I'd be keen for us to have
another (virtual) meeting in the next few weeks so we can hear what
others are doing, provide further updates, answer any questions, and, I
hope, organise further fruitful collaborations!
All the best,
Dave
Hope you're all well! Just wanting to provide an update to the Tech
Working Group participants to assure you that the lack of traffic on
this list shouldn't be interpreted as a lack of activities or progress!
If you haven't seen it yet (and yes, I need to do a few more posts!)
there's our Tech Blog (https://tech.oeru.org) with a description of our
tech stack and some how-tos to replicate some of our most useful tools
for your own purposes.
We've been doing heaps of stuff to prepare for the technology to support
the OERu Minimum Viable Product (A first year of study with a formal
exit credential!). Among other things:
- we've adopted a new (and, we think, better) open source planning tool
(we used Wekan), moving to Kanboard (see http://kanboard.net) - we're
paying for the hosted service, but could be hosting it ourselves.
- we have been paying a modest monthly fee to use the hosted open source
Mautic service (https://mautic.net) which we use to automate sending out
messages to course participants (and save instructors and admins lots of
time!) in a timely manner automatically. We also use it to help follow
up prospective partner inquiries - think of it as "Mailchimp on steroids".
Mautic have recently told us that our paid plan will rise in cost by 10x
in a couple months, so (due to it being open source), we've created our
own instance of it (https://mautic.oeru.org), providing us with
independence (but costing them a paying customer). A fringe benefit of
that is that our partners, too, can benefit from the lessons we've
learned and implement their own instances, too! I still need to write
that one up. I'm also busy working on integrating Mautic into the
learner course sign-up process taking advantage of the Mautic app's
complete API.
- we've added an ownCloud instance (https://cloud.oeru.org) to help us
all distribute large files - ownCloud (https://owncloud.org) is like
having your own Dropbox for your organisation (and, yes, they can be
federated). I'll be publishing a blog post on how we did that soon.
- I've been working on streamlining our implementation of WENotes (which
is made up of a number of rather involved components, very cleverly
assembled by Jim Tittsler) in an effort to make it more long-term
supportable and replicable. I've set it all up as a set of 3 Docker
container recipes that can be managed by Docker Compose... another
future Tech blog post.
- We've had some instruction on making use of Google Analytics (and
we'll be looking at how we can use open source Piwik as an alternative)
to measure the use of - and *how* learners are using - OERu services to
help us tune things to suit actual usage.
- Until the release of MVP, I'll be focused on ensuring we have smoothed
and integrated access for learners wanting to participate. That means
writing code to tie together a bunch of services and login systems, and
provide us with tools to efficiently manage/measure our interaction with
learners and educators alike!
- I'm probably forgetting something, so that'll likely give me an excuse
for a future update :)
As co-convener of the Tech Working Group, I'd be keen for us to have
another (virtual) meeting in the next few weeks so we can hear what
others are doing, provide further updates, answer any questions, and, I
hope, organise further fruitful collaborations!
All the best,
Dave