A Call for Papers: OCWC Global 2009 - Content, Infrastructure, and Creativity
From OCWCWiki
Conference Location: Campus Monterrey of the Tecnológico Monterrey, México
Conference Dates: April 21-24, 2009
Registration Site (currently set up to email when registration is ready): http://ocw.itesm.mx/ocwcglobal2009/
Submissions are due by February 16, 2009. We will notify those whose papers we have accepted by February 23.
[A Spanish translation of this call is [here http://wiki.ocwconsortium.org/index.php?title=OCWC_Global_2009_%E2%80%93_Contenido%2C_Infraestructura_y_Creatividad].
Contents |
[edit] Conference Themes
Creativity is often viewed as freedom of the imagination from the restraints imposed by economic necessity, convention, law or any number of other factors. Yet creativity also requires provision for the material and means of production. Establishing a solid foundation for informed creativity is one of the primary goals of the open education movement.
How do we, as educators, designers and developers, present content so as to unleash, inspire and enable creativity on a variety of levels? How do we measure and build upon our successes, the most satisfying of which may be a long time coming to fruition?
Meanwhile, infrastructure has traditionally been seen as the set of lower-level services and physical architectures which make the delivery of higher level services possible -- pipes, roads, power grids, and server farms. It's been suggested that open content itself, and not just its attendant delivery systems, can be seen as infrastructure. It has also been suggested that the role of the OCWC is to provide infrastructure for its members.
What are the consequences of seeing open content as infrastructure? Are there historical precedents are there? How could a concept of "content as infrastructure" inform what we do -- or, for that matter, lead us astray? How does this view affect our attitudes toward what flows through the pipe, over the wire, or on the road?
These are the issues we will address together as we gather for the April 2009 meeting of the OpenCourseWare Consortium. We invite you to consider the ways in which these issues inform the way you participate in OpenCourseWare and the larger Open Access Movement. Some sample applications to the session topics might be:
- How do ideas of demand intersect with either creativity or infrastructure? In what ways is developing infrastructure different than developing products, and is this applicable to OCW or not? When we speak of demand, do we mean user demand? curricular demand? employer demand? Is the situation the same in K-12 as in Higher Education? Does responsiveness to demand promote or restrict creativity?
- Is the language of infrastructure helpful or harmful in making the case to administration in the current economic climate? How might such a case be made? Is the language of creative development any more attractive?
- How can we anticipate and remove technical obstacles to our promotion of localization, universal access and interoperability while promoting the creativity of content users and producers? If infrastructure must maintain at least some use-neutrality, how does that inform our technical approach?
- As infrastructure, how does the societal impact of OCW compare to that of more traditional infrastructure projects? How do we measure the role of creativity in that impact? Can standard ways of determining ROI on infrastructure be applied to evaluating OCW?
- If creativity implies a freedom from restrictions, how do sustain our efforts, those of our users and those of our sponsors as interest levels ebb and flow? If infrastructure contains an implied commitment to maintenance and permanence, how can we make sure what we build survives -- even if we don't?
[edit] Conference Tracks
To assist us with scheduling and conference attendees in planning which sessions to attend, we ask that you identify your proposal as pertaining to one of the following tracks:
- Technological Motivation, Innovation, Insight and Strategy
- Intellectual Property
- Retention, Pedagogy and Curricular Considerations
- Evaluation, Assessment and Accreditation
- Recruitment and Sustainability
- Use-Case Panel Discussions
- Demonstrations
Workshops:
Session length: 60-minutes, with a half hour break in between sessions Session Format: Formal Paper Presentations
Sessions will be available on Thursday morning for more hands-on / how-to activity. Please submit a proposal to reserve a space for working groups or to propose an instructional session.
[edit] Submission Instructions
Submit an abstract (three sentences long) and a proposal (500 words or less), using the online form. Describe your topic, project, and/or research related to the stated theme.
Speakers wishing to be on panels are encouraged to assemble their panel and submit a proposal as a group.
All presenters are required to register for the conference. Graduate students who wish to present but require a fee waiver can find the form here. Applications for fee waivers are due March 2nd.
Acceptance announcements will be made within two weeks after the submission deadline. If your session was accepted for presentation, we strongly encourage you to provide associated presentation materials no later than seven days before the conference start date. Presentation materials should include any handouts, slide presentations, or other material. These materials will be posted on the OCWC conference wiki.
All submissions (brief description, long description and full papers) and presentations must be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0).
Submissions are due by February 16, 2009. We will notify those whose papers we have accepted by February 23.
[edit] Acceptance Criteria
Acceptance decisions will be made based on the following criteria:
A submission is RELEVANT when
- it directly address one or more of the conference themes
A submission is SIGNIFICANT when
- it raises and discusses issues important to improving the level of collaboration among open education
efforts, and
- its contents can be broadly disseminated and understood.
A submission is PRODUCTIVE when
- it either recommends a series of next steps/best practices or indicates some means by which next steps
could be identified.
[edit] Reposting This Notice
Permission to repost this call for papers is granted, as long as you list and link to this document within your re-posting as the authoritative document.
