[edtech] Ed Tech Partners meeting notes - 10/4/2004

Tue Oct 5 16:42:48 EDT 2004

Hi folks!  Just a little OCW followup...

The learning community/discussion forum initiative is run by Utah State 
University.  You can see the first seven courses they are supporting at 
http://ols.usu.edu/

Our latest traffic stats show that last month was our biggest ever -- 
490,443 visitors (not page hits).  Unique visitors from October 2003 to 
the end of last month: 2,177,745.  Yes, that's 2 million people and 
counting!

Cheers!
John
--
John Dennett
MIT OpenCourseWare Faculty Liaison
Room 9-235B, 77 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139
voice: 617-253-5244   fax: 617-253-2115
mailto:dennett at mit.edu   http://ocw.mit.edu
On Oct 4, 2004, at 3:31 PM, Jean Foster wrote:

> OCW: They just met their latest publishing milestone. As of Sept 17 
> there are 900 MIT subjects published!  They believe they are at the 
> halfway point and so are  having a celebration today for the MIT 
> community - 4:00 in 10-250 and then the Bush Room for cocktails.  
> Future plans: an OCW conference in 2005; working with other schools 
> who want to have their own OCW.  There are many foreign language 
> translations, spanish, chinese, taiwanese.  Partners in Utah 
> University of Utah(?) is stating a set of 7 forums with faculty who 
> will work on discussion boards with people who are trying to learn 
> from the course.  Learning communities - partnering with university in 
> Utah, they are starting a set of 7 forums, which will have faculty 
> participating through discussion boards,.
>
> - OCW Organization changes: 2 FLs from other cycles Farnaz (was 
> EECS,Civil, & Aero) is now the outreach liaison to institutions 
> outside MIT.  Sandy M. (was SHASS, HST liaison) is now the production 
> manager & is doing faculty video interviews).  More staged video 
> lectures & lab demos in future.  Millions of people are visiting the 
> OCW site and their are lots of regular repeat visitors.   New 
> assessment surveys will be conducted this fall.  Next big effort is 
> recruiting faculty for the next cycle. Helping faculty transcribe 
> notes. These can then be put on the current Stellar site.  They are 
> hiring students to take notes for OCW at the discretion of the 
> instructor.   Some of the OCW Department Liaisons are auditing courses 
> and taking their own notes.  They have until 2007 for the next 900. 
> They are still giving some funds to each course. ($2k)  After that 
> they will be in "steady state", adding as needed & maintaining.
>
> Academic Computing:
> Katie is now the group leader of Educational Technology Consultants.  
> ETCs are doing more project-based consulting. Phil is 50% director of 
> iCampus outreach.  Jean is the Academic Computing communications 
> person reporting to Vijay.  New group for Installations and Spaces led 
> by Bill Fitzgerald.  Another Software Tools group led by Jeff 
> Merriman.
> - Katie and Carter Snowden working on an Ed Tech Projects Inventory 
> pilot - collecting information about all of the ed tech projects at 
> MIT.  They have started wtih the School of Science, SHASS, They have 
> set up a database.  Surprising amount of projects going on and some 
> surprising findings about which depts are doing what.  The report will 
> be out soon. Katie and Carter will present at a future Ed Tech 
> Partners about this. They are hoping the report will be reviewed by 
> the end of the semester.  The pilot is successful enough and there is 
> enough interest in the data for the project to continue.
> * John Dennett suggested that the OCW micro teams might be of use by 
> the end of October after they have made all of the contacts for the 
> current semester. Katie should call John at the end of October.
> This inventory is of interest to DSpace as well.
>
> DSpace:
> Version 1.2 with new features is running. DSpace is running on 150 
> sites worldwide. Several countries have translated the interface into 
> Chinese, Portugese, French, etc.  They are using SourceForge for 
> outside developers to add source code.  More than HP and MIT are 
> working on the code now.  They are also doing an early adopters study. 
> They are also interviewing faculty, submitters, and administrators.  
> They are working with MArsha Sanders on marketing plan. DSpace was 
> originally open to communities but now they are open to individual 
> faculty because some faculty belonged to more than one community.  
> They are sending out postcards inviting faculty. Has been since Nov 
> 2002 as a service. It is now sustained by grant money.They have a 
> 2-tiered service level. One level for free. 2nd tier (premium) for 
> more space. If they want someone to create the metadata for them they 
> can buy that service. SMA has used this.  This will be available on 
> their site. Servers are moving over to Libraries computer room in bldg 
> 14. Libraires systems office is going to be running the hardware for 
> MIT DSpace. STS?
>
> Ed Tech Events:
> - TWT first major updates happening this week
> - Ed Tech Times - won a SIGUCCS award.  Newly enhanced site will be 
> released within the next two weeks.
> - New Learning Spaces initiatives (and promotion for this) - Student 
> Learning Spaces Redesign event - October 18 to celebrate the work done 
> over the summer in N20-575, E51, and bldg 56 clusters.
>
> MITCET:
>  (Bob Brown is staying on for 1 year as Provost).  Reconstituted 
> MITCET has identified 3 areas of interest for ed tech initiatives for 
> the coming year:
> 1. Sustainability - how to move successful projects into supported 
> services (funding)
> 2. Digital content and the infrastructure needed for the sharing of 
> digital content
> 3. Dissemination at MIT (Some of the ways IS&T AC is supporting this: 
> Ed Tech Inventory, Ed Tech Fair)
> iCampus is not funding as many projects at MIT. Some funding will be 
> going to the sharing of previous iCampus projects to other areas of 
> the world. (5 projects: TEAL, 6.001, iLab, ?,?)
>
> - Marsha has been asking for old records about ed tech projects and 
> has gotten all of the material to do a timeline of how we started out 
> 5 years ago to where we are now.
>
> Auditor's Office: Looking to support worthy long term initiatives.
>
> Misc:
> - Ed Media conference next year (June 2005?) will be in Montreal.
> - Ed Tech Fair: * Jean will send out the invitation to the ed tech 
> partners list for ed Tech services to present.
> - Future Ed Tech Partners events:  If you have suggestions for 
> presentations or topics you would like to discuss, let Jean know.
> *Marsha suggested we invite Laurie Breslow to talk about assessments 
> of projects.
>
> ***No meeting in November because of the Ed Tech Fair. Next meeting 
> will be Mon December 6 in the Bush Room (10-105).
>
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