Technical Meeting, Podgorica, June 23-24th, 2014
In June 2014 the BAEKTEL Technical Meeting was held in Podgorica, Montenegro, gathering representatives of the WB partner universities: University of Belgrade, University Mediterranean, University of Banja Luka, University of Niš, University of Kragujevac and University of Tuzla, with the main goal to discuss current and forthcoming activities related to WP2.
At the beginning of the meeting, the University of Belgrade presented the planned activities for Dev 2.1. aimed at identifying and producing detailed guidelines for publishing OER content. These activities include developing institutional strategies for the integration of OER, development of high quality learning material, developing institutional policies and practices to store and access OER and staff education. Partners opted for modularity of the courses bearing in mind that there will be a wide range of students profiles, with different interests and knowledge level. One of the ideas discussed was to produce different levels of courses for different levels of students' knowledge and preparation, which would imply some additional work for course creators. Alternatively, courses can be created for a specific skill level, and for students who want to learn more, additional material can be added if needed.
Partners also discussed licenses and copyright issues, motivation for creating courses, and whether there should be two approaches, one for academics and one for entrepreneurs or should the two approaches be combined. It is something that remained to be specified during the following meetings.
As for the DEV 2.3. - Analysis of conceptual design of the ICT solution for BAEKTEL OER framework, representatives of all partner universities shared their ideas and impressions on the platforms they tested.
The University of Niš analyzed two types of platforms: MOOC platforms (OpenMOOC, edX, Moodle) and DAM platforms (NotrDAM, Dspace, Fedora Commons, CKAN). The conclusion was that the edX platform has the best overall score according to the defined evaluation conditions regarding architecture, functionality, e-learning features and security. For DAM platforms, the conclusion was that there was no clear winner, and every proposed platform can be part of final solution.
The University of Kragujevac offered a review of the platforms’ possibilities for edX, Opigno, OpenMOOC and Moodle integrated with Joomla.
The University of Belgrade offered to host the central repository, BAEKTEL metadata portal (BMP), for OER metadata development and customization. Partners will be able to store OER either at UB, or alternatively use their own repositories, but the metadata has to be stored in BMP. Open source learning platforms that might be considered according to the University of Belgrade are OpenEdX, OpenMOOC and Moodle.
The University Mediterranean compared OpenMOOC and EdX platforms. In choosing an appropriate learning platform the following features should be considered: design, logging, possibility of posting resources, simplicity in creating courses from the course creator's position, possibility of posting video lessons, user friendliness etc. These features considered, EdX platform displayed more advantages.
Finally, the University of Tuzla presented the features of the Moodle platform, which has more than 12 years of users experience, it is very present as the e-learning form on universities, it has a large community, it can be integrated with other applications and there is also the possibility of import/export courses hosted elsewhere.
Further discussion led to the conclusion that the Moodle platform is not a state of the art platform as opposed to the edX platform, and that it is not the best choice for the BAEKTEL project goals. The meeting was concluded by accepting the EdX platform for all partners, with one central repository (hub) hosted by UB for indexing metadata.
Photo gallery is available on official facebook page [link].
