Open Education 2016

We believe that tools, environments, and processes are as integral to open practice as the sharing of open content, or the development of policies. Yet due to the complexity and expense of developing and supporting rich open online environments, too often this element stands as a barrier to effective action. The British Columbia Open Ed Tech Collaborative (http://bcopened.org/) is dedicated to supporting a broad community while implementing specific strategies. This work has taken place in the context of the global "indie ed tech" community, and it is hoped that this session will deepen the connection between that community and the practitioners of OER.

In this panel presentation and discussion that includes different members of the the BC Open Ed Tech Collaborative, we will briefly outline the purpose of the Collaborative, its principles and processes. We will demonstrate a Docker-based hosting environment that allows for collaborative, multi-institutional management of WordPress that allows for organizational and individual differentiation. We also outline a collaborative arrangement that allows participants to rapidly deploy a wide range of open source tools via a locally-hosted sandstorm.io application market. We are working towards a service that enables non-technical end users to install and run software downloaded from an audited app store, installed with one click - much like installing apps on Google Play or iTunes. Each app runs in a secure "containerized" environment, where it cannot interfere with other apps without permission. It also ensures that corrupted applications do not disturb the operation of others. This approach allows for rapid prototyping and experimentation, while reducing the risks associated with them.

The ability to easily share, or "clone" pre-configured and ready-to-use learning apps across courses, or organizations, offers immense potential benefits. In a sense, it would allow educators to share ready-to-use online learning tools the way we now share OER. It could also allow us to share our OER already packaged with a technology wrapper that is optimized for the learning resources. In addition to sharing our progress to this point, this session hopes to engage #OpenEd16 attendees in a discussion on how best to optimize this capacity for the open educational community, addressing challenges familiar to the early adopters of OER: how best to share? How do we ensure these approaches achieve their potential to enhance the experience of learning?