[Oer-community] e-Conference on Learning Repositories in Agriculture Food & Environment: Quality Promises & Considerations (6-20/10/2010)

[Nikos Manouselis]

Dear colleagues,

please find below an invitation to an online consultation that I think is 
very relevant to the community. It particularly focuses on the thematic 
areas of agriculture, food and environment. But the considerations to be 
discussed are very much aligned with priority #3 on "Quality assurance 
mechanisms and standardisation"of the priorities of the COL/UNESCO Online 
Discussion Forums.

If you would like to follow and contribute to this consultation, please feel 
free to register at the www.e-agriculture.org platform of the Food & 
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (currently including a 
community of more than 3,000 experts).

With kind regards,

Nikos Manouselis.
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+apologies for cross postings+

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e-Conference on Learning Repositories in Agriculture Food & Environment: 
Quality Promises & Considerations in Learning Repositories and Portals, 6-20 
October 2010, e-Agriculture Platform (http://www.e-agriculture.org)
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** Background **

Learning portals and repositories that make learning content available on 
various topics, have increased exponentially during the last few years. 
Digital learning resources, addressing the needs of various types of 
learners reach a worldwide audience with minimum effort through portals 
dedicated to specific topics.

In the broader spectrum of topics related to Agriculture, Food & 
Environment, various institutions have developed learning repositories and 
portals that provide access to a vast number of resources, giving ground to 
new research & practice directions regarding their management in 
repositories and portals.

One focal point of interest for all involved stakeholders (course creators, 
repository & portal owners and users) is quality and its various aspects and 
dimensions. The relevant discussion covers topics such as the learning 
content, the process of creating/organizing new content as well as the usage 
of the portals from the actual users of the resources.

**Aims**

To this end, it is necessary for all stakeholders that are involved in the 
development and operation of repositories and portals on Agriculture, Food & 
Environment to discuss on issues regarding quality and share guidance, 
standards, technologies, tools,
recommendations, and good practices for:

- Building quality into the creation process of Learning Resources;
- Creating processes & tools to ensure quality in the resource annotation, 
curation & preservation life cycles;
- Setting up quality processes on a repository level;
- Defining quality criteria and processes on a web portal level;
- Assessing the quality of Learning Resources;
- Taking advantage of users' feedback as a component of the quality status 
of either a repository or a portal

The aim of the e-Conference on "Learning Repositories in Agriculture Food & 
Environment: Quality Promises & Considerations in Learning Repositories and 
Portals" (AgLR 2010, http://www.e-agriculture.org/18.html?&no_cache=1) is to 
initiate the dialogue that will hopefully contribute to the creation of a 
common understanding of the quality considerations for all the stakeholders 
of repositories and portals on environmental issues. It will be launched on 
October 6th and end on October 20th.

The e-Conference is the second of a series of events that started two years 
ago, with AgLR 2008 e-Conference (http://aglr.aua.gr/node/24) and are 
supported and promoted by the Agricultural Learning Repositories Task Force 
(AgLR-TF, http://aglr.aua.gr).


** Agenda **
The following agenda will be used to facilitate the discussions during the
AgLR 2010 e-Conference.

* Introduction -- 1-5 October 2010: Preparation, participants' registration 
at e-Agriculture.org

* Phase 1 -- 6-13 October 2010: Quality considerations for the Learning 
Resource creation process
# Topic 1 -      Learning resources creation: What constitutes a quality 
learning resource?
# Topic 2 -      Providing quality metadata: Is the gain worth the effort?

* Phase 2 - 14-20 October 2010: Building quality into repositories and 
portals
# Topic 1 -      Populating a repository with resources and metadata: The 
quality versus quantity dilemma
# Topic 2 -      Managing a portal with thousands of resources and users: 
Are communities "attracted" to quality, like bees to honey?

Each session will have a Subject Matter expert serving as a facilitator, who 
will pose a number
of open questions and ask all participants for their opinions. At the end of
each session, the facilitator will collect and report an integration of the
feedback from all participants in a short report that will document the 
major
ideas and contributions from the posts' exchange.

In addition, recognised experts will be invited to give short keynote 
speeches
on each session topics. These speeches will be recorded and made available
online before the start of each session.

 ** How to participate? **
The e-Conference is open to all interested members of the wider community of 
stakeholders that work or are interested in repositories and portals in 
Agriculture, Food & Environment. It will take place through the 
e-Agriculture platform (http://www.e-agriculture.org) where all participants 
are kindly asked to register.