OER@UCT

A Creative Commons Image by Stuck in Customs

The University of Cape Town's Centre for Educational Technology takes great pleasure in announcing the launch of UCT's OpenContent directory, a new portal for accessing the university's collection of open educational resources.

Funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation and developed as part of the Open Educational Resources Project in the Centre for Educational Technology, the directory will showcase the UCT Collection of teaching resources shared freely on the internet.

The launch of the OpenContent directory is part of a greater OpenUCT initiative to increase the institutions participation in the global open research, teaching and social responsiveness environment. We are pleased to be able to align the event with the efforts of the University of the Western Cape and the Open CourseWare Consortium, who are hosting a full day of activities to support open educational resources in South African higher education.

The launch of the OpenContent Directory and the Open UCT initiative will be followed by a cocktail party. Guest speakers will be CET Director Assoc. Prof Laura Czerniewicz, OpenCourseWare Consortium President Steve Carson, and Deputy Vice Chancellor Prof Jo Beall.

The even will be held on Friday the 12th of February 2010 on UCT's middle campus. Please contact Michelle Willmers (michelle.willmers [AT] uct.ac.za) if you would like any additional information or wish to join us at the event.

I had the great opportunity to represent the OER UCT project at the recent GeekRetreat held in the beautiful Stanford Valley.  The retreat was an opportunity to network with some of South Africa’s great thinkers and key players in the tech industry.  Venture capitalists, software programmers, entrepreneurs, journalists, educators, and management types all gathered around the weekend’s main theme, How to make South African online education better.   

The schedule was quiet informal and participants signed up for skill shares, talking heads, and presentations as the weekend progressed.  I managed to garner some great feedback and curiosity about the OER UCT project through a talking head session.  The developers were able to give me excellent advice around optimizing the discoverability of the site and its associated content.  The social media gurus were able to offer advice on attracting and maintaining users in the system.  The management folks were able to advise me on institutionalizing the creation of OER.  The educators were able to present their concerns and reservations, which is usually the most valuable information I get!  I hope to continue engaging with a number of the participants as we launch next month.  

I was particularly interested in the development of the P2P University which is about to launch a new set of courses on their exciting new website which launches February 1st.  P2PU, now referred to as the “social wrapper” for open educational resources, have a unique approach and I am looking forward to the new ‘semester’ and the research surrounding the successes and challenges.  P2PU is open to people moderating courses, so if you have an interest in online education and social learning via the internet you should make contact with them.  

Without a doubt there were some excellent conversations started over the weekend which have the potential to lead to remarkable interdisciplinary projects.  What shone most brightly was the enthusiasm shared amongst the group in pushing the boundaries of traditional education.  

Thanks to the event organizers and sponsers specifically Old Mutual, Yola, Seacom, IS, Skyrove, Orca, econsultancy, Jackie Scala, White Wall Web, and the Birkenhead Brewery for the great tour!

Creative Commons image by fd

 
Stephen Carson from MIT has released some impressive statistics from their open educational resource website.  In the year 2009 the site received:

• 15+ million visits
• 9+ million visitors
• 100+ million page views (not counting PDF views)

That is staggering traffic for an open educational resource website!!  MIT has also reported receiving 1 million visits directed from the MIT community site (the mit.edu domain) since the launch.  This seems to indicate that the MIT main sites are becoming major referrers to the MIT OER material.  I think it is safe to say that MIT OCW has lended itself tremendously to the marketing and branding of MIT. Congratulations!