August 3rd 2010

Minutes

Participants: Dianne Kaseman, Anil Srivastava, Gerry Hanley, Pierre Bey, Elder Granger, Ian Magrath, Julie Estal

OLD BUSINESS:
1. Subscribers/contributors

- Based upon the outline of OERC activities & projects created by Gerry and available on the OERC wiki site at http://oerc.wikidot.com/oerc-materials, the next action to be taken would be to hire an intern to help catalogue materials and members, with the joint support of MERLOT and AcrossWorld

– Pierre Bey raised the question of contents validation. Gerry said that most of the materials available on the site haven’t been formally reviewed yet. He described the various steps necessary to build the capacity to validate the quality of the contributed materials. Once there is a significant collection of materials, it will be possible for a community of members who regularly post comments to become an editorial board, to receive peer review training and to develop its own evaluation standards.

-Ian stressed the need to bare in mind the usefulness of materials for users in LMICs and the various contexts in which the materials will be used.

- Anil underlined the need to decide between two approaches, namely a descriptive/OER/knowledge based approach with peer commentaries vs. a more prescriptive approach with an editorial board. This would need be discussed in more details and made clear urgently. He will draft a discussion document to be included in Gerry’s white paper on content validation to be submitted to OERC Advisory Board for its review.

- Gerry created three community groups relevant to OERC on Merlot Voices, a social networking communication tool enabling members to share documents and participate in forum discussions:
-OER for Cancer (http://voices.merlot.org/group/oercancer)
-Voices for OERC Cancer Patients and Families (http://voices.merlot.org/group/voicesforoerccancerpatientsandfamilies)
-Voices for OERC Healthcare Professionals (http://voices.merlot.org/group/voicesforoerchealthcareprofessionals)

-Gerry suggested using OER for Cancer as a discussion forum to speak about the two approaches mentioned above.

- It was decided to include an article on OERC in the next issue of INCTR NETWORK Magazine, which should be sent out in September.

- Pierre Bey agreed to invite his contacts to join the OERC Community and contribute materials in French for users based in French-speaking LMICs. To this end, Julie will send him a copy of the letter signed by Larry which could be adapted and translated.

-Elder Granger suggesting contacting relevant international journals editors to ask them to promote the OERC website. He also asked for more information on how to support OERC, as he had received approaches by potential donors. It was suggested that Ian discusses this further with him.

2. Funding opportunities

- Anil informed OERC Executive Committee members that MERLOT and Across World signed a Memorandum of Understanding to help build the OERC Collection.

- Anil will meet with Fogarty Director Roger Glass on August 8th 2010.

- According to Anil, the Rockefeller Foundation might be interested in supporting INCTR. He said that we would need to find a grant writer from MERLOT willing to help write a grant request (Anil).

NEW ITEMS:

-Ian presented the Health G20 initiative. He was asked to write a piece on cancer in this health briefing which will be distributed free of charge to all attendees of the G20 meeting in Seoul in November 2010 and to some 5000 other senior figures in the health sector. This publication is edited by an NGO which recognizes OERC’s potential. To be featured, one needs to find sponsors (see http://www.pro-brook.com/ and file attached to this page).

NEXT MEETING: August 10th 2010

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