What is OLS?
David's project ![[WWW]](/www/moin/htdocs/classic/img/moin-www.png){kind=small}
Open Learning Support is described as:
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Open Learning Support is a new partnership with the OpenCourseWare (OCW) project at MIT, in which we will build infrastructure to facilitate the development of informal, self-organizing learning communities around the OCW materials, and play a role in catalyzing the emergence of the communities. The research team for this project is funded under a National Science Foundation CAREER grant awarded for the study of informal, self-organizing online learning communities and the role of reusable educational resources ("learning objects") in supporting informal learning.
Meeting: Jan 30, 2004
An online meeting of OLS is happening on Friday, January 30, 2004: agenda, What are the OLS/EduCommons meetings?. QuickTime stream rtsp://barboursville.ed.usu.edu/oslo.sdp starting around 9:00am MST
OK -- I'm listening in now!! (I'm yee@uclink.berkeley.edu on MSN Chat if anyone out there wants to chat....)
I'm curious about the "degrees of integration" between OLS and OCW...some integration but not too tight so there is clear "brand identity" (for legal, institutional, and other issues).
There's evaluation info about OCW that's being discussed. Is that publicly available anywhere? Very interesting stats about why people come to OCW. Nothing on the OCW evaluation page right now other than a plan. It is: http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v50/i21/21b02001.htm (CHE subscription needed, I think)
Andy Van Schaack (the research Director of the OSLO Group) has been at the board....
I'm wondering what discussions are happening already with OCW materials to give OLS a feel for how the world at large might behave at large. David said that there are 5 or 6 Yahoo! Groups around OCW materials....interesting.
Some of my questions:
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Will OCW link back to the activities in OLS? As OLS forums accrete good stuff, will OCW point to it? (Even less formal -- trackback for OCW?) (David: We're formally partnered with OCW and funded by one of the same organizations -- Hewlett Foundation. We have agreements in hand already for OCW to link directly to OLS materials, eg., a link on the OCW Physics X.YZ Lecture Notes page to the OLS Physics X.YZ Lecture Notes discussions page.)
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Because of the ScholarsBox, I'm very interested to see the technical integration that OLS and OCW will be pulling off. For example, integration with Instructional Architect with OCW?
