For those of wondering who is minding the chicken coop, and why, here is a little background of who we are, what we are doing, and why. And some of the goals we have set for ourselves in the coming year.
Historically, whenever people in B.C.’s post-secondary sector were interested in open educational technologies, their options to learn more were limited to occasional conferences and self-directed professional development. Without the ability to easily share and collaborate everyone was essentially left to their own devices, managing in isolation and figuring out best practices through trial and error.
When a group of educators, technologists, and designers got together after an event in 2016, they discussed the various challenges they had experienced in their home institutions. Once they realized they’d duplicated efforts with varying results, they decided to create a community where they could draw on each other’s strengths, experiences, and knowledge to develop effective solutions across the system.
Today the OpenETC is a thriving community of practice, wrapped around a set of shared open educational technology platforms. We’ve worked together to provide and support for WordPress and Mattermost, as well as room for experimentation with a host of other open source options.
The OpenETC model is built on collaboration between members throughout the post-secondary system of B.C. To benefit from the shared platforms, members are expected to contribute to the community. This can be in the form of technical, administrative, or financial support, recognizing that the BC post-secondary system is highly variable in terms of resources and funding. The “contributions not contracts” model over the past eight years has allowed the community to sustainably thrive and grow: a member of one institution will share their need, and the other institutions all see what they can do to fill it.
One of the most powerful parts of the OpenETC is that users are not left to find answers or solutions on their own. Many projects begin with a simple “How do I …?,” which spurs the group into action. Each contributor to the conversation is engaged with finding the answer that best suits the user’s needs, and it’s not unusual for the conversation to start in Mattermost and then lead to experimentation, trial and error, iterations, and a workable solution. In almost every case, there’s a user in B.C. who knows a little bit of the answer, and together the collaborative can work out a viable, practical solution. Sharing resources goes beyond server space and load balancing: it’s a network of like-minded professionals
interested in advancing access and awareness of educational technology in B.C. and beyond.
You can learn more about us in this report we assembled last year.
We are very proud of what we have built together, and how we have been able to do it with a “contributions, not contracts” ethos and on very low budgets. But as we have grown, and people increasingly come to depend on our platforms, we have realized that we need to hatch out from the “grassroots pilot” stage and to formalize our offerings. To that end, we have set the following deliverables for ourselves in the coming year.
Developing a business case and non-profit business model. We need to formalize what value we provide to our members and communities and develop a sustainable model to keep going. We are using a Business Model Canvas approach to document our unique value proposition and key customer segments and then validate with our project advisory team as well as the wider B.C. community
Establish and document a governance structure for the project. We want to move past our current model of “Founders” and “Institutional Leads” to formalize a structure that is both transparent and robust.
Develop a community engagement strategy to grow, sustain, and support the user and/or contributor base, and so that leaders understand the value of what we do.
Develop an explicit IP policy and ensure appropriate licensing tools are in place for end users to assert their rights to IP in whatever way is appropriate. Fund some work on plugins for doing a non-CC assertion of IP rights that would meet Indigenous needs, and a land acknowledgement plugin.
Carry out an accessibility audit on the platform such that we can develop a VPAT statement. Remediation activities will be carried out as needed.
We also will develop a privacy policy and perform a PIA via Thompson Rivers University, and provide tools for others to do the same.
A big part of our focus is to pilot a new infrastructure and platform. Our existing infrastructure is eight years old, and whilst it remains robust and resilient, there are technologies now available which would provide significant improvements to our service availability with reduced workload and enhance our business continuity plans. We will document our cyber security practices and procedures and ensure appropriate controls are in place within the new pilot infrastructure.
We will develop a range of static resources and workshop offers related to our core technology platforms and specific to OpenETC customisations e.g. cloning learning design templates. This work will improve the ability to support a wider range of users into the service sustainably.
We will review existing OpenETC policies. Identify gaps and updates required and devise/revise as required.
This is a large undertaking and it will push our current members and new collaborators to get us where we need to go. Watch this space for updates and opportunities to participate.