 Good morning and good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today at the Open Education Consortium's Quarterly Membership Meeting. Please look around the screen so that you know what to do with this interface. We have quite a full agenda today as usual. Please feel free to ask questions in the chat window. Or you can ask questions by clicking on the talk button on the top left-hand side. Do you all see that? Okay. So let's start with the agenda first. The first thing we're going to do is to recap of the 24 activities. We'll then have Martin Weller give a presentation on the GOGN Network. We'll report on the OSS Open MOOC pilot. And we'll talk about the launch of the Open Education Information Center. And talk about the Open Education Implementation Strategy, followed by a summary of the Open Education Global Conference. Then we'll open the floor for questions, comments, discussion items from members. However, feel free to ask questions at any time during the session. After each session, you're free to have questions. So don't wait. Just ask questions whenever you can. All right. So we had many new and exciting activities in the year of 2014. First, we had an exchange program with the League of Arab States. This project was supported by the U.S. State Department. The focus of the exchange program was to train women faculty members from Arab states on e-learning and open education. The program was called the e-learning pioneers. We created a training program for them so that they would become experts on open education. And then there was the Open Education Professional Directory. We have more than 300 experts in the directory right now. If you're not listed, please go ahead and register yourself. The directory works to support collaborative projects in open education by identifying who has what expertise and where they are. And you can browse by expertise or you can browse by region of experiences. And then there's the Campus Virtual Dilla America where there's a centralized repository for resources in Spanish. And it's supposed to bring together and it's supposed to serve all of Latin American countries. Marcella from the OE consortium is working on this project and it offers a comprehensive array of resources on learning and open education. And our past Open Education Week was in March 2015. There were institutions, individuals, and organizations from about 40 countries that participated. There were hundreds of local and online events. And the analysis of the three Twitter activities shows that we reached 1.9 million people with Open Education Week. Now, right now we're in the process of conducting a survey to figure out when the best time of the year would be to have Open Education Week. Because some have told us that in their part of the world, March is just not the best time. So we would love to also hear from you guys. Please do participate in the survey. You can see the survey link in the chat window. Ego just posted that. And this was a really big move for us. For years we were talking about search, discoverability of OERs. And in the past year we collaborated with Merlot to integrate the search system. With the Merlot database. So basically Merlot has agreed to take all the search services for us. You can still do the same type of search on the consortium website. You can search the courses by languages, by field, by discipline. And now what you can do is you can also search all of Merlot database. Or you can choose to search from only the consortium member institutions. We're hoping that this collaboration will bring better search into Open Educational Resources. And have things maintained perfectly. And then we set up a website for Marshall McLuhan. His daughter contacted us to archive all of his lecture videos, all the terms, et cetera, to keep on the legacy. What we were able to do is to archive all the contents. And apply an open license to it. So that things are now OER. Okay, so that is a very simple recap of 24 Connectivities. And now we're going to have Martin Willard talk about the GoGM Network. Now, Martin, I'm sure you all know where it's many, many hats. So I'll just introduce one today. He is the academic lead for the GoGM Network. And now, without further ado, Martin, it's all yours. Thanks very much. I've got a bit of a cough, so if I fall apart and start coughing badly, my apologies. Okay, so I'm going to talk about GoGM Network, which we've taken over recently, and I'll explain a bit of that. I'm not too sure how much people know about GoGM here. So I'll probably do a fairly quick presentation, and then we might have time for a couple of questions afterwards. So a bit of the background. So Fred Mulder at OUNL was the UNESCO OER chair. And as part of that role, he set up the GoGM Network and worked with Robert Shua and Joss Rookers from OUNL as well. It was funded by Hewlett about three years ago, I think it was south, I should know that stuff. And its aim really is to develop research expertise in the OER field. So it's a network for PhD students who are researching OERs. And so there are kind of criteria about what you need to do in order to be able to join the network. You need to be doing a PhD in a relevant field and have supervisors in place. So the idea is that by joining the network, you get access to other PhD students. And also there's an experts field. So you can join the network as an expert in OER research. And what they've been trying to do is link, have joint supervision with other members of the networks. You'll have a local supervisor and also then a supervisor from the network. And I think about the aim of that really was to try and overcome some of the OERs and open education general is often quite a new field for a lot of people. So a PhD researcher might be the only person in the university who's interested in this field and so they can often be working in isolation. So the idea is to try and build up this research expertise and spread it globally across the network. So afraid to set that up with Hewlett funding. And then just jump back a bit. So I lead on the OER research hub at the Open University. Now really what this talk is about is a convergence of all those logos at the bottom that you see each time. So the OER research hub funded by Hewlett just comes to the end after three years and we're just about to go into a new phase which I'll talk about. And the idea of the OER research hub was to try and think about OERs have been around for over a decade and people often make quite big claims about them but often they don't back that up with evidence. And so we've pulled together 11 hypotheses. We've represented those kind of common beliefs that people have about OERs. And then worked with collaborations mainly in the US but also elsewhere trying to find evidence to back up those claims when we developed an evidence map and so on. So that's based at the Open University in the UK. And so there's very similar aim really to the OER. So the aim of the OER research hub, the kind of overall aims is to try and develop research in the OER field. We kind of felt it had reached a level of maturity in the OER field that we should be able to have strong evidence to back up these claims. And it's interesting if you look through, for instance, Rory McGrill's OER Knowledge Cloud, a lot of the papers published in there are often claims about OER but then they don't go on to back those claims up. So they might be about an OER project and they say this will lead to savings or this will lead to democratization of education and stuff but then there's not the evidence to back that up. So we want to try and establish a strong evidence base there. So you see this is very similar aim. So whereas we want to develop research in the field, GOGM wants to kind of develop the research expertise within the OER field. So last year Fred retired from OUNL and the GOGM was in need of a new home. So they felt there was a kind of real natural fit with coming to us at the Open University. So we've both been working with Hewlett. We know TJ Bliss at the Hewlett Foundation very well and he was happy for it to come there. Fred's going to be a visiting professor with us as well so he can still be involved. But also there was a kind of a good match between the aims of the research hub, the people who had the expertise were involved and what they needed from the GOGM. So we've been in a kind of transition phase and it's now more or less come over to us. There's still some bits just as we were finalizing that but it's now transitioned to us. So what the GOGM does is every year, as you probably know, every year they take a number of students from the network to the OER Global Conference. So a lot of them are in Banff back in April and they get them to present to each other and work on their presentations together and their research as a chance to meet each other and meet experts in the field. So there's a really nice kind of fit there because we were there from the OER Research Hub as well and managed to meet a lot of the students there. So I think that work will still continue. So briefly the team at the OU. So I'll be the academic lead. The coordinators will be, you may know some of these people, Bayardela Arcos and Rob Farrow, both have been working on the OER Research Hub and were in Banff and Natalie Eggleston will provide the admin support and she's also on the OER Research Hub. So there are people who are well acquainted with the OER field and a lot of the people in the area. So we've been talking about where to take the OER Research, where to take GOGM and I think the point is that it's working very well as it is so it's not that it's in need of drastic change. So the first thing, so we had one year's funding from Hewlett to cover this transition phase and they'd like to carry on funding it. So the first thing is to secure off further funding. There's a very strong message when we were in Banff talking to the PhD students there that they wanted more online activity. It felt like there wasn't much happening in between the seminars. So we'd like to do that, run regular webinars and get people to come along to those that cover a range of topics, perhaps get experts in to come and speak to them and make them open events, not just available for GOGM people but also others can come in. But so that people who are part of the network feel that they are kind of having regular contributions and regular contact. I'd quite like to shift it to being more of a peer-supporting network so that those people in that network come together or their own accord, whether it's using Twitter or hashtags or the NING platform or whichever, but also helping to facilitate that and maybe move away a bit from some of the more formal structures that were put in place early on. So for instance, at the start of the project we had institutional partners so whole institutions could sign up and I think we'll move away from that and just be more of that individual student signing up and maybe lessen some of the demands, the requirement to have a supervisor from the network as well. I think that's fine if we can get one but I think it needs to be a requirement. I'd like to make it more of a kind of open network, increase the number of people in that network and have it be more kind of peer-supported. And lastly, I mentioned OER Research Hub. The funding is coming to an end at the end of July and Tula is going to carry on funding us for a while and partly that's to cover a transition to what we're going to call now the Open Research Centre. So we want to investigate not just OERs but kind of broader aspects of Open Education as well so that would include MOOCs, of course things like Open Data, Open Access, Open Pedagogy. So I think that will match quite a lot of what we want in GOGM as well so it's not just about OERs, increasingly a lot of the applications we get are looking at things like MOOCs in developing countries, for instance. So I think it's not just OER focus. So I think there's a good alignment between where we want to take the OER Research Hub and the GOGM network as well. So I'll leave it there. I'll probably miss out loads of things and you can ask me any questions. Thank you, Martin. Please click on the top button or type in your questions in the chat window. Yeah, I will do. Igor, thanks for the question. So Igor's asking what you need to do to join. It's probably best if I send you a link. So there's a how to join link that I'll just post in here. So basically you need to satisfy the conditions which are that you need to be doing a PhD in this area and have supervision in place. So we're not providing supervision. We will get a second supervisor often from the network but we're not sort of taking over and offering PhDs. The PhDs are hosted at the host institution. And there are application forms with experts and researchers. And if you're to be an expert, you need to demonstrate that you have some expertise in this field. Just on that, I think we're going to have a... I'll tweet it out when we've got the links sorted but we're going to have a webinar next Thursday which is really open. Venom's come in and discuss where the future direction of GOGM, it's William says on the website, it says send it to JOS, to JOS at UNL. JOS just handed the final ones. We're probably going to have to change that to a generic GOGM email address. So we're having a webinar next Thursday to discuss the future direction. So I think some of the stuff about how open to the network should just allow anyone to join. Anyone's got a vague interest, that's fine. So there's always a tension between increasing the size of the network and having the people you want and that network being of value within it. So that's something to be discussed. No, no, not at all. Everywhere. Several of my students at the Open University are members of GOGM. It's really about developing the global expertise in the area of research field. So if you're not already a member, I'd just like to do a final pitch to sign up as an expert if you're not already a member and if you have PhD students who are researching this area or know of any, then encourage them to join and come along. So I'll leave it there. Thanks. Okay, great. Well, thank you very much Martin for taking your time out to present on GOGM today. Let's move on to the next agenda item which is to report on the OECX Open MOOC pilot. So we planned on having the OECX pilot courses because we thought that Open MOOCs would be something very important for the consortium members and also to the broader open education community. Now many members wanted to participate in MOOCs but didn't have the opportunity and they were talking and telling us that they would like some kind of platform and a platform where they can just test things out before they commit to the MOOC program fully. And we thought that this Open MOOC program would be an opportunity for us to leverage existing OER and add benefits of interaction and data collection offered by the OECX platform. And also it was an opportunity for us to combine open enrollment with open content to create a diverse array of Open MOOCs. And we decided to go with the OECX platform because for various reasons, but one of them was that they used an open source software. There are eight courses in the OECX pilot, one from the National Southern University from Taiwan, one from the Hokkaido University in Japan, there was a community college, Anne Arundel Community College from the States, Tufts University from the US, Tess India Program. It's a collaboration of the UK and India and then there is the University of Polytechnic in Madrid. So you can see that it's got a very good international mix representation from all over the globe. If you look at the course descriptions on the screen, you'll see that some courses are in progress right now. Some will be starting very soon. So although some will be starting very soon, we decided to go ahead and do a survey with pilot open MOOC developers. We have completed all the planning for the open MOOCs. And we found that the time commitment is significant. There was at least 40 hours of instructional designers required into creating a MOOC. There was at least 40 hours of faculty time required. There was at least 40 hours of course facilitators required. Now our suggestion or our requirement was that the university MOOC was based on OERs. So if they didn't have to redo all the videos, they needed only about 10 to 20 hours of video editing. However, if they decided to record a video from scratch, they needed at least 100 hours of shooting and editing. They required more than 10 hours of project managers, 10 hours of high level administrators. So just from this, you can see that the time commitment was just really a lot for starting a MOOC course. Now for these eight courses, the reuse of OERs varied. The range was about using 25% to about 100% of new content. And of course you could lower costs when there was a lot more, when there was higher amount of OERs used. And new content was primarily new videos made specifically for the edX MOOC format. So even though the university did have the open courseware or OER course before, they had to redo the video to meet the edX MOOC format. And all had to create some new content to fit the platform and requirements. So with the cost, the cost depended on the extent of modification of materials. And we found that the range was anywhere between $6,500, US dollars to even $100,000. And this is inclusive of staff time and resources. As you might have imagined, extensive video work was most expensive. And the cost went up with the increased requirements by edX. Now some of the impact point significance that we can draw from the pilot courses is that format of existing OER has a big impact on how well it is, how well it'll incorporate into edX. And the process is very involved and evolving. The first OECD-X course we planned has a different process for the latest OECD-X course. The process keeps evolving. And that is why we modified content to fit the edX requirement was a big deal, was a big issue for us. And the time for OECD staff on the basis of each MOOC was much higher than expected. There was at least 40 plus hours per MOOC. And that's without counting the course development. Now we're going to need to cover staff costs to continue OECD-X after the pilots are done. And we would love to get your comments on this. So this was the last slide for OECD-X report. If you have any questions or comments, please go ahead. Sofia, if you click on the talk button on top left-hand side, you can talk. Hello? Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Hi. Sorry, I was just typing the question. So thank you for your presentation. My question is, when you say that there was no course development that you still needed 40 hours of dedication, both for instructional designers and staff members, what do you mean by no course development needed? OK. So the arrangement we have with edX is that all the OECD-X courses and all the OECD members go through the consortium to have communication with edX so that they don't do direct communication with our members. So communication itself was a big deal, especially since, like I just mentioned, the process kept evolving. So every time edX changed something, we had to work together with our members to modify the contents accordingly. So that's what took us many, many hours, just for communication, modification, et cetera. That was not really about course development. It was just about meeting the needs for the material format. OK. Thank you so much. Oh, Willem just mentioned that edX updates the platform every two weeks. Maybe that's why. Well, Willem has a lot of experience with edX because he, P.U. Delft, is on edX. Susan just asked whether the phone report will be available to everybody. The phone report will be available fairly soon. It's not done yet. As soon as it's finished, you will hear from us on our website and via social network. Loryl, are you asking what the format, what the proper format is for edX? OK. I don't have detailed information on video specification for OECX other than the fact that many had to, many went through problems doing captioning for videos because that's one of the requirements. Maybe Willem can fill us in on the video specification. Thank you, Willem. So the edX videos, they have to be uploaded to YouTube and then have to be uploaded to Apple so that they can be downloaded as MP4 files. Another aspect that you might consider, Ooryl, not to Apple, sorry. So it should be uploaded to YouTube and have to be, what is it, Willem? Apple, sorry. And all videos need subtitles, transcripts, uploaded to the course environment. And long videos are not recommended. Short, shorter videos would be recommended. Right. So many of our members had longer videos. They're just capturing up lectures themselves. But some decided to re-record the whole thing because they wanted to make very short videos with impact. And they built course materials and quizzes around that short video. So that is why they had to re-do the whole thing. Right. As Willem just mentioned, most videos that universities have, they're too long. Any other questions? So we have one person who's done an OECX pilot and we've got Willem, who is an expert on the edX platform. And what else? This would be a good opportunity to ask questions. Okay. Well then, why don't we move on? And if you have any other questions, you can shoot at the end of the session. So the Open Education Information Center. The Information Center is now launched and is available on the consortium website. If you go to Resources on the top menu bar, you'll see Information Center. So the Open Education Information Center, the aim is to offer a hub of information for anything on Open Education. So there are three things that we offer here. Information on Open Education, calendar of events that are related to Open Education, and the forum to talk about issues in Open Education. If you visit the website, you'll see that information is organized to meet needs of different stakeholder groups. There are faculty, students, administrator, researchers, and policymakers. Now let's choose one topic from faculty. I'm going into technological concerns. And when you go into a page, you'll see that information is organized so that they're in questions and answers format. So what are the offering tools suitable? How can I meet accessibility requirements? And you'll have a very short answer followed by more resources, multimedia resources, et cetera. And when you scroll all the way down on the page, you'll see a button that says join discussion or start a discussion. And that's when you can access the forum. In the forum, you can talk about some issues, issues related to the questions on that page. Now, if you go into the forum site separately, it works, but just yesterday, I realized that there was some glitch with the link between our website and the discussion forum. So right now, the link doesn't work. It'll be fixed within a couple of days. It's a real, it's a very recent technology. So our web director has gotten in touch with their developers and we're fixing it right now. So both the information center and the forum, they're community efforts. So in the information center, there's a submit information button where if you have a good information to share, submit them so that we can review and upload to the information center, the forum as well. It would be great as an expert if you guys can answer as many questions as possible on the forum or just post questions on the discussion board. The information center is still a work in progress. We are uploading content still. The whole community will be building content on it. So we've got a lot to look forward to. Hopefully you'll participate as well. Any questions on the information center? Okay, then we'll get the questions at the end. We'll move on to the next item, the implementation strategy. So the OER implementation strategy, the aim was to provide background to where we are in the global movement to identify areas of common agreement, areas of divergent views, identify strength challenges, what opportunities there are with demand, supply, capacity, and we needed feedback from the wider OER community. So this is what it looks like. The OER implementation strategy document, this Google doc, they worked on this during our conference, during the global conference in BAMP as well. That's the URL. Please go through them. If you have any comments, you're more than welcome to send your comments in. Committee members are Nicole Allen, Delia Brown, Mary LaFour, Cable Green, and Alec. And our most recent event that was the Open Education Global Conference held in the beautiful BAMP, Alberta, Canada. We had representation from 37 different countries. Of course, it was in Canada, so many people from Canada and the U.S. came. In Saudi Arabia it was number three in the number of delegates. And you can probably attribute that reason, that to the fact that we had the Eric League project, Netherlands, U.K., South Africa, Slovenia, Taiwan, France, Indonesia, and Mexico, just from all over the world. And if you happen to miss it, or if you would like to recap what's going on, or if you would like to look something up from the conference, do visit the conference website. If you go to the presentation section on the website, you'll see the PowerPoint and papers for many. If you would like to hear more of the perspectives from other people, then you can go to the OV Consortium's website. There's a blog post that lists a lot of other blog posts about the OV Global. And again, OpenPraxis offered us an opportunity to publish a group of selected papers from the conference. So there were papers published on OpenPraxis, some presentations from OV Global. Okay, so that brings us to the end of the agenda item, which is to accept questions, comments, and discussion items from you guys. I'm just assuming that the silence is due to the fact that you are all very busy doing web browsing right now because Igor was kind enough to upload all the URLs that had everything that we mentioned today. Thank you, Linda. That's great. If you can add any type of information on anything, that would be wonderful. Oh, Sophia, you are doing web browsing. Okay. Okay, Willem, thanks for joining us today. Thanks, Marion. Okay, then. Oh, thank you, Linda. Do share. So everything from the meeting will be sharing very soon all the reports and everything. Do keep us, do keep posted to these OV Consortium activities. You know where to find us. Follow us, Twitter, OV Consortium, Open Education Week. There's a Facebook and LinkedIn group as well. So do let us know what you guys are up to and we'll make sure that you know what we're up to as well. Thanks, everybody. We'll finish your questions.