OSI-EDU-WG/Educators Meeting Notes, August 6, 2014

Participants

• Ian Dolphin
• Wayne Mackintosh
• Joseph Potvin
• Ken Udas

Discussion

The meeting topics centered around:

TOPIC 1 - Working Group ToR

Discussion and endorsement of the Educators Working Committee Terms of Reference, noting that we are happy to revisit the ToR as the working committee evolves and its identity grows.

ACTION/COMMITMENT

No immediate action.

TOPIC 2 - Extending Engagement & Learning About Current Capacity

1. We discussed how to extend interest in the FLOW project generally and the Educators Working Committee more specifically.
   1. Identifying organizations and individuals who may be interested in participating in the Working Committee.
2. We discussed the likelihood that organizations and academic programming in computer science, software development, and other related fields might be more interested than project management. The project management field has lagged, and the other OSI-EDU-WG/Managers Working Committee will proactively advance this relationship. The OSI-EDU-WG/Managers Working Committee is focused upon organizations (and individual academics/teachers/trainers - scholars) that have built curriculum supporting FLOW, and in advancing the utility of the FLOW Syllabus as an intermediate resource for educators (not a primary source, and not a final course design).
3. It was our feeling that although some organizations and curriculum may have capacity and instruction in technical aspects of FLOW/Working on open source environments, there has been less emphasis placed on participating in open communities.
4. Realizing though that we really do not know what is "out there" we decided to contact some colleagues to:
   1. Generate interest in the FLOW/Educators Work
   2. Elicit contributions and involvement
5. We also committed to conducting a survey to get a better understanding of activity and gaps in FLOW capacity ^{(Comment: Hey, there's a great new metaphorical phrase! FLOW capacity.)} withing the educators community.
   1. Contact organizations that may have conducted surveys to find out what they learned and to see if they are willing to share their survey instruments.
   2. Prepare an instrument for a global survey (perhaps we should discussion regionalization of the instruments as well?)
   3. We want to make sure we keep our work mufti-lingual as appropriate. Joseph & Ian agreed to have the survey instrument translated into eloquent French and Spanish (The commitment can extend to reporting an executive summary of results.)
   4. We discussed "co-branding" of survey activity.  We felt generally that co-branding with involved organizations makes a lot of sense (profile raising, better acceptance with recognized organizations leading to better survey participation and results, nature of inclusiveness, value of participation, etc.)
   5. We discussed a time line resulting in the execution of the survey before the new year.
6. Some Potential Contacts (just mentioned during the conversation - building a resource page) (who is doing teaching, research, building curriculum, academic programs, sponsored research, governments, NGOs, Foundations, ect.)
   1. OSS Watch
   2. Open Labs (Oregon State University)
   3. Educause
   4. ACODE & CAUDIT 
7. Some Potential Networks for Distribution (just mentioned during the conversation - building a resource page)
   1. Educause Openness CG
   2. Apereo
   3. OERu
   4. etc...

ACTION COMMITMENT

Ian will contact Scott Wilson at OSS Watch to find out about any survey research they may have conducted and some colleagues on the Continent.

Ken will set-up pages to support these activities. (to be actioned)

All will contribute contact suggestions, distribution notworks and other suggestions.

All investigating an appropriate Survey Tool.