See below for the latest developments in the APLU’s Personalized Learning Consortium initiative. 

Highlights and UO updates:

• With the generous support of Academic Affairs, the UO has affirmed our intent to participate at the basic level. January 2014 is the target date for a decision on launching the Consortium.
• The draft membership agreement is under review with the General Counsel’s office.
• Prospectuses are posted for English Composition, PreCalculus, and Biology, with a request to “…. transmit the prospectuses for the projects attached to your pertinent department/faculty. Please let the project leader [Andrew Bonamici] and me [Michael Tanner of APLU] know if your faculty would like to contribute to a course wares development project.”
• Note that APLU is also seeking implementation partners for a planning and advising system.

OCTOBER 4, 2013 LETTER FROM MICHAEL TANNER, APLU (INFORMATION & REQUEST)
SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS
:: Commitment List
:: Membership Dues
:: Membership Agreement
:: Activities, Staffing & Annual Budget
:: English Composition Prospectus
:: Appendix B_English Comp
:: PreCalculus Prospectus
:: PreCalculus Report
:: BioProspectus
:: BioModule List
:: BioModule Description

During the month of February, APLU staff hosted several webinars to gather input on potential functions of the consortium. Here are the discussion questions and a summary of the discussions. For further detail, see Barbara Couture’s letter below.

The next steps are an Institutional Consortium Advisory Board meeting on March 12, followed by a survey to prioritize critical functions. The survey requires a coordinated official response from each institution. In addition to the current group of participants, we may need assistance from others, including but not limited to Technology Transfer, Research Compliance Services (for IRB), and Office of the General Counsel. If you think of other campus stakeholders, please let me know.

Best,

Andrew Bonamici, UO Libraries

…………………………………………

February 26, 2013

Dear Participants in the APLU Institutional Consortium Initiative:

Our thanks to all of you who joined our recent webinar series of discussions on potential functions for an institutional consortium. As promised, we are sending you today a summary of the key issues identified in these discussions. Our next step is to convene the Institutional Consortium Advisory Board, which will hold a virtual meeting on March 12. Board members will be given an opportunity to “weigh in” on potential consortium functions at this meeting and help us arrive at a condensed list of key functions. Shortly after this meeting, we will send all participants a brief survey that invites you to prioritize key functions and give us any additional information about your possible interests in an institutional consortium. Institutions will also be asked to provide an official “institutional response” to our survey so we can understand institutional priorities well.

Within a few days, we will post to our APLU website a list of the institutions that have been recorded as participants in the institutional consortium design project. As the project moves forward, we will be asking institutional leaders to provide a more formal commitment to establishing such a corporation. At this point in time, we’d like you to know which institutions have shared interest in this concept, so that you can get a sense of the breadth of interest. You can also find on our APLU website all documents which have been distributed to participants in our conversations, a list of our Institutional Consortium Advisory Board members, and a list of those individuals who have been chosen to lead demonstration projects to collaboratively develop “course specifications” for a single course. To learn more about any aspect of the initiative, again, go to http://www.aplu.org/page.aspx?pid=2582, click on the blue tab marked “Major Initiatives,” and then on the tab marked “Institutional Consortium”).

We look forward to your continued participation in this project. If you have additional questions at this time, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Best wishes,

Barbara Couture
Senior Advisor, APLU
bcouture [at] aplu [dot] org

The University of Oregon is a member of the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU). With support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the APLU exploring the potential of a consortium to share courseware. For additional details, see the APLU project site.

This effort has two major components that are quite different, and will involve stakeholders from several areas of the UO:

1. Design of an Institutional Consortium: We anticipate that this will be a largely administrative effort, including evaluation of various consortial models, MOUs, licensing agreements, etc. Andrew Bonamici (UO Libraries) will facilitate this aspect of the project for the UO.

2. Faculty Collaboration for Course Specification: Exploring this possibility requires participation by faculty in the priority content areas of Biology, Mathematics (Pre-Calculus), Psychology, Economics, and English Composition. Karen Sprague (Undergraduate Studies; Biology)  is providing critical help here by reaching out to faculty in these areas, and engaging groups such as the Undergraduate Council in the discussion.

We will use this website to provide project updates and to gather and share feedback from  students, faculty, staff, and governance and planning committees.  Your comments and questions are welcome. Contact the UO project team if you have questions or are interested in getting involved.