1. EDULINK - SideCAP Project Presentation to Faculty Deans – 28 April 09
Louise Vakamocea & Alanieta Lesuma-Fatiaki

2. Overview About the SideCap Project Other institutions
Core & Other Activities
Way Forward
Faculty Involvement
Discussion
Web links

3. About the SideCap Project
SideCap stands for, Staff Improvement in distance education for Carribean, African and Pacific universities
EU funded project – 32 months
5 institutions; OU, UHI, UM, UWI & USP
Led by Professor Robin Mason, OU

4. About the SideCap Project
Overall objective
Promote multilateral activities amongst European and ACP partners through practical activities, networking and hands on exercises to improve the quality of teaching and support for students.
Specific objective
Repurpose existing Open Content teaching material and adapt it to local contexts using appropriate technologies

5. OER – Open Educational Resources
Defining OER
OER – Open Educational Resources
First adopted at UNESCO Forum of Open Courseware for HE in Developing Countries
educational materials and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses to re-mix, improve and redistribute.
Learning Content
Tools
Implementation resources
(Source:
Compendium - is the hypermedia knowledge mapping software that allows users to manage,
share, analyse and track information and ideas,
and the connections between them. It provides tools for annotation, linking
and visualisation by supporting the creation of dialogue maps to which the user
can link possible answers, arguments and literature in the form
of electronic files and hyperlinks. Educators and learners will be able to
publish Compendium maps to a Knowledge Map Exchange which is intended to
complement the open educational resources. Maps can then be searched,
analysed and visualised in new ways to help users spot new connections and find new peers.
Cohere – 2nd OpenLearn Knowledge mapping tool following Compendium. Automatically runs in your browser & generates
maps layouts. Can also upload compendium maps to Cohere. Optimized for the cross-platform fireforx browser. Recommended for use. Do 3 things; add ideas, connect them & browse & filter your own and other’s knowledge maps. Can be shared as normal web links or as embedded ideas & maps in other websites as interactive elements.
MSG is the open source tool developed to provide a combination of instant
messaging, geolocational support (who is online and where) and friend-finding via
semantic matchmaking (who can help me solve a specific problem right now?).
It is an augmentation of existing instant messaging environments as it provides additional
information about a user’s availability
(eg accessible by mobile phone only and studying a certain unit)
and their personal attributes (eg interests, friendship networks, publishing history, annotated photo libraries).
FlashMeeting is an application that allows large-scale meetings to happen online via video-conference.
In addition to text chat,voting and URL sharing, users can re-use
meeting content by editing and annotating it. They can also publish video blogs
FlashVlog – is a tool , allowing you to create video blogs online almost instantly. Only need a properly installed
Webcam & microphone attached to you computer, as well as Adobe Flash plug in version 8 or above.
Learning Clubs – potential for use in our professional development programmes. Gain experience in online instruction & tutoring for our teaching staff

6. OER Sites

7. Project Activities 1 - Project website setup & maintenance (UHI)
2 - Preparation of background reports (All)
3 - Kick-off meeting at the OU
4 - Establish ACP Researchers Network
5 - Open Content activity
6 - Open Content in DE workshop in UM
7 – Technology Training
8 – Drafts of Teaching Material
9 – QA Workshop in UWI
10 – Cascading Activity
11 – Final Dissemination Event in USP
12 – Final Evaluation Report
1 – already set up by University of Islands & Highlands (UHI), Scotland using a wiki – wetpaint and a group hub. As we draw closer to the USP hosted event, key people can be added to the group hub for the organisational bit of the event.
2. Already done. Presentations made during the 1st day of Kick-off meeting
3 – done
4 – discussion ongoing. Idea brought to meeting is to open it up to interested individuals in all institutions spreading to other institutions in the ACP region
5 – conducted at OU
6 – to be conducted in UM in December 2008
7 – conducted in UHI, Scotland, May/June 2009
9 – QA workshop in UWI, December 2009
10 – conduct of series of events across the university. Using the documentation & ideas from the project workshops, staff will devise and run activities, both f2f & online in which we will try to impart what we have learned from the project. We will be required to write a report on these cascading activities to be included in the final evaluation report.
Money for travel allocated in budget in order for staff from distant locations can participate in the activities.
11 – Final dissemination event in USP – July 2010 (targeting semester break)

8. Other institutions University of Mauritius (UM)
Participants; Prof. Alain Senteni & Mohammad Santally
Heavily involved in setting up of technology based applications
University of the West Indies (UWI)
Participants; Roger Powell & Stewart Marshall
Setting up of Open Campus
University of Highlands & Islands (UHI) Millenium Institute
Co Principal Researcher - Frank Rennie OU
Lead Researcher - Prof. Robin Mason
UM – reps from the Virtual Centre for Innovative Learning Technologies VCILT
UWI – setting up Open Campus. Originally the DEC. to be the 4th campus of UWI. Serves 15 countries.
UHI – thriving partnership of 15 colleges & research centres; 13 academic partner collegtes & 2 associated research institutions. Lews Castle College, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis

9. Core & Other Activities
UM – reps from the Virtual Centre for Innovative Learning Technologies VCILT
UWI – setting up Open Campus. Originally the DEC. to be the 4th campus of UWI. Serves 15 countries.
UHI – thriving partnership of 15 colleges & research centres; 13 academic partner collegtes & 2 associated research institutions. Lews Castle College, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis

10. Way Forward Complete pilot courses by proposed deadline June 2009
Dissemination of information about project through cascading events
Write a chapter towards the book on 'how to repurpose Open Content for distance education in developing countries.'
‘Prototype-run’ at least one from each partner with a few students and peers to evaluate and see responses etc in each partner’s context.

11. Way Forward UHI – Technology Training (22-26 June 2009)
UWI – Quality Assurance (November 2009)
USP – Final Dissemination Event (8-12 Feb 2010)

12. Faculty involvement Cascading events Pilot run of study skills package
Identify DFL champions from each faculty to make presentations
ACP Researchers Network
OER course USP

13. Discussion

14. Web links SideCap Project site: http://sidecap.wetpaint.com/?t=anon
SideCap Group hub:
SideCap Project blog:
OpenLearn site:
Cohere:
OU site:
UM:
UM, VCILT:
UWI:
UWI, Open Campus:
UHI:
UHI, Lewis Castle College:
OIL site: