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Executive Director Update

PROJECT IDEAS Resulting from #OEGLOBAL18

As the new Executive Director of the Open Education Consortium, I was thrilled to co-host the global gathering of open educators at OEGlobal18 in Delft April 24-26, 2018. It was great to see how open education is flourishing around the world and witness the formation of networks and relationships among participants.

Many attendees took the opportunity to propose to me projects the Open Education Consortium could help make happen in support of open education development around the world.

The following are three proposed ideas that could become Open Education Consortium pilot projects:

1. Open Education Fellowship Exchange
2. Open Anatomical Atlas

3. Open Educational Resources (OER) Translation

These projects were chosen from many suggestions as being practical, globally relevant, and having benefits to all. Below is a short description of each of these projects along with a link to a form through which I invite you to express interest. Based on response the Open Education Consortium will work with those who express interest to coordinate and facilitate collaborative efforts to plan and implement these as pilot projects.

Project #1 Open Education Fellowship Exchange

This idea was proposed to me by Tian Belawati of the Universitas Terbuka (Indonesia Open University). Open Education Consortium members have extensive expertise and resources in a wide range of areas including, Open Educational Resources (OER), open textbooks, open licensing, repositories, open policy, open pedagogy, open education practices, etc. The idea of a fellowship exchange is to put in place a match making program that helps members who need to acquire skills and knowledge in an area of open education to be matched up with, and work for a period of time with, another member who already has that expertise. This project will design and trial an open education fellowship exchange program with the aim of structuring and implementing it in ways that are mutually beneficial to both members. If you think this is a good idea and want to participate in the creation and implementation of an open education fellowship exchange please express interest using this form.

Project #2 Open Anatomical Atlas

This project idea was proposed to me by Paul Gobée of the Leiden University Medical Center. Anatomy is a basic discipline for all medical and paramedical fields around the world. Anatomical illustrations are essential for the teaching and learning of anatomy and are universally relevant in all countries. Good quality artist-created anatomical drawings are available in anatomical atlases and textbooks but are mostly copyrighted. There are very few good quality anatomical images available under an open license. This project will bring together Open Education Consortium members from around the world who are interested in collaborating on co-creation of an open anatomical atlas of anatomy images. If you think this is a good idea and want to participate in the creation and implementation of an open anatomical atlas please express interest using this form.

Project #3 OER Translation

This idea was proposed to me by a whole group of people led by Ann Fiddler the open education librarian at the City University of New York. The City University of New York has a very multi-culturally diverse student population. Open Education Consortium members are from all parts of the world. While there are growing quantities of Open Educational Resources (OER) they are predominately in English. The OER Translation project would coordinate the engagement of students, as part of their academic studies at an institution, in translating OER into their native language. If you think this is a good idea and want to participate in the design and implementation of an OER translation project please express interest using this form.

We’ll collect expressions of interest over the month of June and July then follow-up with everyone who expressed interest in August.

If you have other ideas or suggestions for pilot projects of global interest please feel free to send them to me at paulstacey@oeconsortium.org.  You can expect more communication from me about activities we’d like to engage you all in over the coming months.

Sincerely,