Hello all (apologies if any of you receive this multiple times due to
being members of more than one of these lists),
The OER Foundation has recently completed its annual report, and we
thought members of these three lists (MVP Task Force, Strategic
Planning Working Group, and the Technology Working Group) might be
interested in seeing how our technology's been progressing towards the
MVP. We also thought that some of our partners might find some of these
technologies relevant for their own institutions!
We've adapted the following from the annual report:
= Open technology philosophy =
Sharing is fundamental to education on every level. The OERF uses Free
and Open Source Software (FOSS) and open standard file formats where
feasible because they foster sharing.
The OERF has three major aims in adopting technology:
1. facilitating cost effective collaboration among OER developers and
designers to enrich resources hosted by the OERF for multiple reuse
contexts,
2. facilitating communication between OER collaborators as well as
learners, and
3. creating a “known good” tool set for OERu partners to make OER
resources available to learners.
Apart from the significant cost efficiencies gained from using FOSS
(which is typically available at no cost), our choice is driven by our
open principles. Building an open education model, designed for maximum
sharing and exploration on closed technologies, would be self-defeating.
By adopting FOSS technologies, we can ensure that every educator and
learner in the world is able to participate in OER without the barrier
of proprietary software costs. They have freedom to explore our entire
software ecosystem, adopt and adapt the bits of value to them, and have
perpetual access to their own creative works without the need to pay a
proprietary software vendor.
Our technology choices are made to ensure that other OER adherents
around the world can both learn from, and easily emulate, our FOSS tool
sets to facilitate their own OER efforts, including the ability to build
internal capabilities with minimal budgetary implications.
= OERF technologies =
We utilise cloud computing resources and a hosted server for development
and selected production applications to build a flexible infrastructure
within tight cost constraints.
On behalf of the OERu, we have created a FOSS ecosystem of services to
support: educators creating learning materials, partners deploying those
materials as fully formed online courses direct to learners, and tools
for learners to collaborate with one another and with educators.
WikiEducator, an instance of the FOSS Mediawiki platform (on which
Wikipedia is built), is a flagship technology of the Foundation. OERu
learning materials proceed through their collaborative evolution
primarily on WikiEducator, from concept to fully realised sets of
micro-courses. Educators use other tools to facilitate collaboration and
track responsibilities and progress.
The OERu FOSS infrastructure includes:
- a central "Dropbox-like" cloud storage repository for digital
artefacts and file archives (ownCloud) which allows for secure storage
and access to large files shared by collaborators.
- email lists (OnlineGroups.net)for each course development project,
facilitating a persistent discussion which serves as a historical
reference and a resource for new members of each team, all recorded in a
searchable web-based archive.
- a more immediate “chat” environment (Rocket.Chat) ideally suited for
bursts of support-related discussion (e.g. between educators and OERF
staff) or more dynamic real-time conversations, including the ability to
initiate secure in-browser video conferencing among participants.
- a course and project planning system (Wekan) to capture and track the
completion of tasks, using the “kanban” method, making it easy for
course development teams to track progress, annotate tasks, and assign
responsibility and priorities for specific tasks.
- an issue tracking system (MantisBT)which lets collaborators submit
"issues" against specific projects and tasks ensuring they are recorded
and can be allocated to those who can address them.
- an array of partner-branded websites, (WordPress multisite) with one
site per course offering. Each learner, whether in situ or remote,
requires just a single account to register for any courses offered
through this system, regardless of who is offering it.
- an OERF-developed dynamic social networking system (WENotes), which
scans posts from Twitter, the mailing lists, chat, forums, and
designated learner and educator blogs, "harvesting” content (based on
tags and keywords) relevant to specific courses, automatically
displaying them on the specific course website pages.
- a marketing/outreach platform (Mautic)for facilitating both learner
and partner engagement, including periodic newsletters to update
interested people regarding upcoming events and new offerings, as well
as automated rule-based lead follow-up to improve and expand responsive
recruitment without substantial administrative burden.
- tools for recording analytics (YourLS, Piwik, and Mautic) across
various OERu and partner web platforms, allowing us to assess both the
use of our resources and enabling partners to assess use of their OERu
efforts.
We are actively developing further tools, which we intend to include in
our formal launch of the OERu 1st year of study including:
- a "course resource bank” companion tool (SemanticScuttle) in which
learners and educators alike can store annotated web references both for
assessment and for reference and collaboration within courses.
- a Single Sign-On (SSO) solution which allows OERu educators and
learners to use their course-related user credentials to access all of
our learner-related services. We are progressively extending this system
to include all our FOSS infrastructure. (wp-oauth-server through the
WordPress multisite) thereby generating substantial integration, between
these various tools to make the process of registering for an OERu
partner course seamless from a learner's perspective.
Many of these solutions are broadly applicable in any learning
environment. With our published code and configuration/deployment
instructions, we endeavour to make it easy for partners, to adopt and
adapt them as required for use within their own institutions at minimal
cost and risk.
Links to all these FOSS projects, the OERu instances of them, our OERF
code, and a growing set of instructions to help others adopt and adapt
these tools is are available on our tech blog - https://tech.oeru.org
If any of you (or any of your technology-enthusiastic colleagues!) would
be interested in following - or getting more involved in - our
technology adventures, please join the Technology Working group email
list: http://groups.oeru.org/groups/oeru-technology/ if you're not
already subscribed!
Thanks,
Dave
being members of more than one of these lists),
The OER Foundation has recently completed its annual report, and we
thought members of these three lists (MVP Task Force, Strategic
Planning Working Group, and the Technology Working Group) might be
interested in seeing how our technology's been progressing towards the
MVP. We also thought that some of our partners might find some of these
technologies relevant for their own institutions!
We've adapted the following from the annual report:
= Open technology philosophy =
Sharing is fundamental to education on every level. The OERF uses Free
and Open Source Software (FOSS) and open standard file formats where
feasible because they foster sharing.
The OERF has three major aims in adopting technology:
1. facilitating cost effective collaboration among OER developers and
designers to enrich resources hosted by the OERF for multiple reuse
contexts,
2. facilitating communication between OER collaborators as well as
learners, and
3. creating a “known good” tool set for OERu partners to make OER
resources available to learners.
Apart from the significant cost efficiencies gained from using FOSS
(which is typically available at no cost), our choice is driven by our
open principles. Building an open education model, designed for maximum
sharing and exploration on closed technologies, would be self-defeating.
By adopting FOSS technologies, we can ensure that every educator and
learner in the world is able to participate in OER without the barrier
of proprietary software costs. They have freedom to explore our entire
software ecosystem, adopt and adapt the bits of value to them, and have
perpetual access to their own creative works without the need to pay a
proprietary software vendor.
Our technology choices are made to ensure that other OER adherents
around the world can both learn from, and easily emulate, our FOSS tool
sets to facilitate their own OER efforts, including the ability to build
internal capabilities with minimal budgetary implications.
= OERF technologies =
We utilise cloud computing resources and a hosted server for development
and selected production applications to build a flexible infrastructure
within tight cost constraints.
On behalf of the OERu, we have created a FOSS ecosystem of services to
support: educators creating learning materials, partners deploying those
materials as fully formed online courses direct to learners, and tools
for learners to collaborate with one another and with educators.
WikiEducator, an instance of the FOSS Mediawiki platform (on which
Wikipedia is built), is a flagship technology of the Foundation. OERu
learning materials proceed through their collaborative evolution
primarily on WikiEducator, from concept to fully realised sets of
micro-courses. Educators use other tools to facilitate collaboration and
track responsibilities and progress.
The OERu FOSS infrastructure includes:
- a central "Dropbox-like" cloud storage repository for digital
artefacts and file archives (ownCloud) which allows for secure storage
and access to large files shared by collaborators.
- email lists (OnlineGroups.net)for each course development project,
facilitating a persistent discussion which serves as a historical
reference and a resource for new members of each team, all recorded in a
searchable web-based archive.
- a more immediate “chat” environment (Rocket.Chat) ideally suited for
bursts of support-related discussion (e.g. between educators and OERF
staff) or more dynamic real-time conversations, including the ability to
initiate secure in-browser video conferencing among participants.
- a course and project planning system (Wekan) to capture and track the
completion of tasks, using the “kanban” method, making it easy for
course development teams to track progress, annotate tasks, and assign
responsibility and priorities for specific tasks.
- an issue tracking system (MantisBT)which lets collaborators submit
"issues" against specific projects and tasks ensuring they are recorded
and can be allocated to those who can address them.
- an array of partner-branded websites, (WordPress multisite) with one
site per course offering. Each learner, whether in situ or remote,
requires just a single account to register for any courses offered
through this system, regardless of who is offering it.
- an OERF-developed dynamic social networking system (WENotes), which
scans posts from Twitter, the mailing lists, chat, forums, and
designated learner and educator blogs, "harvesting” content (based on
tags and keywords) relevant to specific courses, automatically
displaying them on the specific course website pages.
- a marketing/outreach platform (Mautic)for facilitating both learner
and partner engagement, including periodic newsletters to update
interested people regarding upcoming events and new offerings, as well
as automated rule-based lead follow-up to improve and expand responsive
recruitment without substantial administrative burden.
- tools for recording analytics (YourLS, Piwik, and Mautic) across
various OERu and partner web platforms, allowing us to assess both the
use of our resources and enabling partners to assess use of their OERu
efforts.
We are actively developing further tools, which we intend to include in
our formal launch of the OERu 1st year of study including:
- a "course resource bank” companion tool (SemanticScuttle) in which
learners and educators alike can store annotated web references both for
assessment and for reference and collaboration within courses.
- a Single Sign-On (SSO) solution which allows OERu educators and
learners to use their course-related user credentials to access all of
our learner-related services. We are progressively extending this system
to include all our FOSS infrastructure. (wp-oauth-server through the
WordPress multisite) thereby generating substantial integration, between
these various tools to make the process of registering for an OERu
partner course seamless from a learner's perspective.
Many of these solutions are broadly applicable in any learning
environment. With our published code and configuration/deployment
instructions, we endeavour to make it easy for partners, to adopt and
adapt them as required for use within their own institutions at minimal
cost and risk.
Links to all these FOSS projects, the OERu instances of them, our OERF
code, and a growing set of instructions to help others adopt and adapt
these tools is are available on our tech blog - https://tech.oeru.org
If any of you (or any of your technology-enthusiastic colleagues!) would
be interested in following - or getting more involved in - our
technology adventures, please join the Technology Working group email
list: http://groups.oeru.org/groups/oeru-technology/ if you're not
already subscribed!
Thanks,
Dave