Connexions — TBA
Joel Thierstein, Executive Director,
Connexions will discuss what Rice University's Connexions is doing relative to:
- Making open textbooks editable/customizable
- Formatting open textbooks for delivery on multiple devices
- Encouraging open textbook adoption
You may also want to browse our archive of past webinars.
If you would like to suggest a webinar topic, please email the project coordinator at ejohnson@distancelearn.org
Click here for a list of possible upcoming topics.
Recordings of past webinars are archived below:
- Global Text Project, January 22, 2010
- MedEdPORTAL, January 15, 2010
- Open Source Software Options for Digital Repositories, November 20, 2009
- Digital Repositories for Learning Recap, October 23, 2009
- Automated Metadata and Content Discovery, July 17, 2009
- Textbook Affordability, June 18, 2009
- Orange Grove Textbooks, May, 29, 2009
- Development of eTexts, April 16, 2009
- Common Cartridge, April 2, 2009
- Community College Open Textbook Project, February 20, 2009
- USG Share Contribution Process and Repository Structure, December 12, 2008
- Repository Structure, Friday, November 21, 2008
- Repository Content, October 24, 2008
- Change Management: Getting Buy-In, Upping the Ante, and Keeping Your Sanity, June 27, 2008
- Building the Infrastructure of Open Education: Legal, Technical, and Social Challenges, April 25, 2008
- Repository Funding: Sources, Strategies, and Challenges, March 28, 2008
- Sell Yourself: Marketing Your Program, February 15, 2008
- Making Content Interoperability Work: Structured Practice January 18, 2008
- Cool Content: Highlights from the Orange Grove, December 7, 2007
- The North Carolina Community College System Repository Project, November 16, 2007
- Repository Models: A Web Tour of Key Repositories October 12, 2007
Global Text Project , January 22, 2010
Marisa Drexel, Associate Editor for the Global Text Project discusses the project's approach to:
- Making open textbooks editable/customizable
- Formatting open textbooks for delivery on multiple devices
- Encouraging open textbook adoption
Recording of the webinar will be posted soon
MedEdPORTAL, January 15, 2010
Presented by: Michael Saleh
Michael Saleh, Project Manager,
MedEdPORTAL will discuss MedEdPORTAL’s peer review process and repository structure.
Recording of the webinar will be posted soon
To view the slides from this presentation, click here.
Open Source Options for Digital Repositories, November 20, 2009
Presented by Dr. William Moen
A project team at the Texas Center for Digital Knowledge, University of North Texas, with funding by the OnCoRe Blueprint Project, undertook a review of seven open source software (OSS) platforms and applications that can be used in the context of a learning object repository (LOR). The
project focused primarily on the technical specifications, features, and functions of the
underlying software. The review also examined implementation-specific LORs’ use of the OSS platforms, which included discussions with the LOR implementers. This presentation reviews results and findings as well as discussing the opportunities and challenges of using OSS.
Digital Repositories for Learning Recap, October 23, 2009.
The OnCoRe Blueprint project recently sponsored a conference on digital repositoies in Vancouver, Canada. This session offered conference participants and other interested parties a forum to discuss current repsositiry projects and to raise isssues and questions for group discussion.
Click here to view the webinar
Automated Metadata and Content Discovery, July 17, 2009
Damon Regan from Eduworks discusses the role of metadata in the discovery of learning content. He demonstrates how metadata can be automatically generated and employed in classifying content.
Click here to view the webinar
Textbook Affordability: A Discussion About Skyrocketing Costs and Emerging Solutions June 18, 2009
Hear Nicole Allen, (Making Textbooks Affordable Project) and Eric Frank (Flat World Knowledge), as well as students and faculty members, discuss approaches for making open textbooks available to students. Introduction by Cable Green from the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges.
Orange Grove Textbooks, May, 29, 2009
Presented by Meredith Babb of the University Press of Florida
Meredith Babb, Executive Director, University Press of Florida (UPF), this webinar discusses Orange Grove Textbooks, a new digital division of the University Press of Florida. Orange Grove Textbooks is collaboration between The Orange Grove Digital Repository and the University Press of Florida, to:
- Empower faculty to locate and select quality textbook materials from high quality open access textbooks with the ability to customize chapters, examples, etc. or add personal materials
- Receive editorial support through the UPF
- Produce high quality textbooks through an on-demand publisher
- Reduce the cost of textbooks to Florida's students by about 50%
- Provide digital copies of textbooks at no cost or low cost
Click here to view the webinar
Development of eTexts, , April 16, 2009
Presented by Dr. Timothy Lenz, Professor of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University This webinar addresses some of the issues and challenges involved in creating e-Textbooks. He discussed his efforts to create an etext for American History and his support for open textbooks.
Click here to view the webinar
Common Cartridge, April 2, 2009
Presented by Kevin Riley,
Senior Strategist for New Activities,
IMS Global Learning Consortium
"Common Cartridge is a set of open standards, freely available and without royalty, developed by a global industry consortium with over 80 voting members. These standards, if followed by content developers and learning platforms, enable strict interoperability between content and systems. They also support great flexibility in the type of digital content supported and where such content is located." Representatives from the Common Cartridge Alliance will join us to discuss the product.
Click here to view the webinar
Click here to download a PDF of the PowerPoint slides
To learn more about the project, visit their website:
http://www.imsglobal.org/cc/commoncartridge.html or
http://www.imsproject.org/cc/alliance.html
Community College Open Textbook Project, February 20, 2009
Presented by Dr. Judy Baker, Project Director, Community College Open Textbook Project
Judy Baker discusses the Community College Open Textbook Project and their efforts to "make free, open textbooks a sustainable resource for faculty and students."
Click here to view the webinar
Click here download the PowerPoint
Click here for a list of open textbook resources
USG Share Contribution Process and Repository Structure, December 12, 2008
Presented by Marie Lasseter (University System of GA) and Equella representitives
Marie Lasseter from the University System of Georgia demonstrates the USG Share repository's contribution wizard. Representatives from Equella demonstrate USG Share's current collection structure and answer related questions.
Click here to view the webinar
Repository Structure, November 21, 2008
Presented By : Cathy Alfano, Orange Grove Manager & Elizabeth Johnson, OnCoRe Blueprint Project Manager
Participants discussed their underlying repository structure and the rationale for establishing that structure. Are there any challenges not met by this structure? If so, how did you solve those challenges? Who manages the repository administration and how is that working?
Click here to view the webinar
Click here to download PowerPoint Slides
Repository Content, October 24, 2008
Presented by Elizabeth Johnson, OnCoRe Blueprint Project Manager
Offering sufficient content to attract faculty to use a repository is a challenge that every new repository faces. In this session, we will explore content options. Do you provide basic content in many subject areas? What types of content are you targeting, if any? Do you offer whole courses or provide the component parts to whole courses? Are you licensing content to include? Are you federating or harvesting content? Do you target federal grant funded content for inclusion? Are you asking or requiring institutions or faculty to contribute content developed with state dollars? What are your success stories and your failures? Can you provide links to content or repositories that you believe is especially valuable? We can learn from each other.
Click here to view the webinar
Change Management: Getting Buy-In, Upping the Ante, and Keeping Your Sanity, June 27, 2008
Presented by Debbie Kell, Director, Virtual College, Mercer County Community College
This presentation offers insights into methods for planning and implementing new technology in an academic setting. The example is selecting and implementing a learning management system, but the planning and techniques can easily be apply to a repository or any large scale technology implementation.
- Click here to view the webinar
Building the Infrastructure of Open Education: Legal, Technical, and Social Challenges, April 25, 2008
Presented by: Ahrash N. Bissell, Ph.D.,Executive Director, ccLearn Creative Commons
Educational paradigms are changing. The pace of information creation necessitates new ways of managing and imparting content. New technologies exacerbate the information overload, but they also provide many potential solutions. In particular, the advent of the internet has profoundly altered the ways in which information is accessed and shared, and one would expect the impact on education to be revolutionary. While technological tools are being used in many classrooms to enhance instruction, one of the most exciting areas of development is in the creation of open educational resources (OER), which in their fullest form should be free, accessible, authoritative, and derivable. The availability of open educational content is growing exponentially, yet the usage of such content does not appear to be widespread. Worse, much of the OER currently being created is incompatible - legally, technically, and socially - with other OER.
Our presenter, Ahrash Bissell, describes the work of ccLearn in encouraging and facilitating the adoption of practices that will enable the fullest realization of the potential for OER to transform education. He will touches upon many of our longer term goals, including substantial community building, provision of educational access to underprivileged communities at home and abroad, and hoped-for changes in the culture of educational practice so that teachers have greater control over their classrooms and pedagogy, greater freedom to experiment, and a larger community for support. Fundamentally, the grand goal is to rise to the challenge and promise of technological and pedagogical innovation in such a way that access to and the experience of quality education is a reality for everyone, everywhere, at any time.
For more information on Creative Commons visit their website or view this short video describing their philosophy.
- Click here to view the webinar
Repository Funding: Sources, Strategies, and Challenges, March 28, 2008
Presented by: Members and Partners of the OnCoRe Blueprint Project
This presentation offers insights into many of the issues surrounding repository funding. Representatives from The Orange Grove and the Kentucky Learning Depot discuss how funding has impacted the growth and development of their state's repository projects. We will also explore how other successful repositories have addressed their funding needs through, grants, commercial endeavors, and other creative solutions. All participants were invited to share and discuss their experiences including challenges faced by own their repository projects and the approaches taken to dealing with these situations.
- Click here to view the webinar
- Click here download the PowerPoint
Sell Yourself: Marketing Your Program, February 15, 2008
Presented by: Nicki Hilliard, PharmD,
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR
This presentation may be applied to a statewide repository initiative or any other education project in which you need to sell your ideas and services to a variety of people, including administrators, students, colleagues, industry, and additional funding sources. Learn about marketing and advertising opportunities for your educational program and share ideas with your colleagues.
This webinar shares experiences and resources of taking a local educational program offered at two separate universities and combining efforts to build a national online program that is a financial and educational success. We discuss the components of a business/marketing plan and how to get buy-in from the top level of the university. Learn how to promote your program to the profession via meetings, publications, eNewsletters, internet, and more. Discover easy and inexpensive tools to increase your exposure. Market yourself and your educational program and reap the rewards!
- Click here to view the webinar.
Making Content Interoperability Work: Structured Practice January 18, 2008
Presented by: Jeff Kahn and Ed Walker, CS4Ed
The key to making content mobile and usable is following a systematic approach to picking technology, identifying and managing risk, prioritizing objectives and developing criteria for deciding what to work on, what to wait on, and what to keep an eye on. This webinar will draw on the presenters' experience with successes, failures, and lessons learned about 1. Techniques (e.g., OAI, Dublin Core, LOM, IMS, OKI) 2. Implementations (e.g. iPod, iTunes, iTunes Univ, Kindle, Amazon, VitalSource, Follett, MyPearson, CourseSmart) 3. Organizations (Merlot, Sakai, ADL-SCORM) 4. Sea changes (the internet, multimedia, SOAs, open source)