University of Southern Queensland 2015 IAP
OERu
Towards more affordable education for all students worldwide
Contents
Contact information
| Name of OERu partner | University of Southern Queensland |
| Contact person for this IAP | Ken Udas |
| eMail for IAP contact person | Ken.udas@usq.edu.au |
| Name of primary OERu contact | Ken Udas |
| eMail of primary OERu contact | Ken.Udas@usq.edu.au |
Executive Summary
USQ’s focus this year is to build a broader dialogue and resource activities in “openness,” with OERu serving as one of our cultural touchstones and commitments. As indicated below, we are working on a second course as well as developing “micro-courses” for the rest of “Regional Relations.” We also intend on closely aligning technical contributions to OERu with a more progressive direction at USQ.
There are a number of activities that we believe we can align with OERu, which do not appear formally in this document as commitments:
- Asking teachers who are awarded funding to produce “open textbooks” if they would be willing to host a mixed (USQ/OERu) course.
- Engaging much more actively in Openness professional development.
- Potentially co-funding an OERF developer.
- Involving additional USQ (Academic Division) staff on committees and perhaps special projects aligned with OERu mission and annual goals
In short, our focus is on building capacity for a culture (normal, patterns, and artefacts) of openness in which participation in OERu; other openness activities; and insistence on open processes, practices, and governance is a natural impulse and commitment.
2015 Objectives
- Deliver micro-course in International Relations
- Develop 3 micro-courses in International Relations
- Develop 1 micro-course in Indigenous (topic name) in partnership with 3 other OERu institutions resulting in 1 full-course.
- Demonstrate the potential of distributed virtual OER course development. (perhaps as a Topic in 23 Things About Openness)
- Continued support for technology development.
- Continued participation in the following OERu working groups: Strategic Planning; Technology; Course Approval and Quality; General Education 1st Year of Study.
2015 FTE contribution for OERu course nominations
| Name of staff member or Department | Name of existing and new course development nominations | Total FTE days |
|---|---|---|
| Marcus Harmes | * Regional Relations in Asia and the Pacific
|
15 days |
| Tim McCallum | * Regional Relations in Asia and the Pacific
|
15 days |
| Jim Taylor | * Regional Relations in Asia and the Pacific
|
10 days |
| David Bull | Australian Indigenous Studies (possible micro course in association with College for Indigenous Studies, Education and Research (CISER) and Learning & Teaching Support (LTS)) | 5 days |
| Megan Cooper | Australian Indigenous Studies (possible micro-course in association with College for Indigenous Studies, Education and Research (CISER) and Learning & Teaching Support (LTS)) | TBA |
Participation in OERu working groups
| Name of staff member | email address | Assigned OERu working group(s) | Total FTE days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jim Taylor | taylorj@usq.edu.au | Strategic planning | 40 days |
| Tim McCallum | timothy.mccallum@usq.edu.au | Planning/Technology working group | 10 days |
| David Bull | david.bull@usq.edu.au | General education, first year of study | 10 days |
| Marcus Harmes | marcus.harmes@usq.edu.au | Course approval and quality | 5 days |
OERu community source and technology innovation
0.2 Contribution to shared Open Source Technologist Postion
Other contributions in kind
- Automated course creator (template). Python software which, runs natively on Linux operating systems, creates mobile-first, responsive-design web site (course) and takes parameters from an Excel spreadsheet (course-code, course-name, logo, and URLs). Demonstration videos and further information can be found on the wikieducator.org site < http://wikieducator.org/OERu/Planning/Technology_working_group/2014-07-11 >
- Contributing to the installation and testing of software, systems, and in-house OERu software development as required, using MediaWiki, Wordpress, Amazon EC2, HTML/CSS Bootstrap, Javascript, PHP, MySQL, Python.
