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Apereo Newsletter - November 2019
Deadline for the December edition will be December 9, with publication on or around December 16. Send your contributions along to newsletter@apereo.org!

From the Executive Director

Open Apereo 2020 Keynote Announced

We are very pleased to announce the Keynote for Day 1 of Open Apereo 2020 is Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Digital Humanities and Professor of English at Michigan State University. Kathleen's most recent work is 'Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University', published by Johns Hopkins University Press in February 2019. More information about Kathleen can be found at https://kfitz.info/about/

What is the Open Apereo 2020 conference? Open Apereo is the open source conference for education. It's an international, inclusive event offered by the Apereo Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing and sustaining innovative open-source software solutions for education.

Apereo sponsored software communities develop and sustain learning tools and environments, media capture and management, authoring learning materials, portals, authentication, learning analytics, and more. At Open Apereo, you’ll have the opportunity to -

  • Obtain a high-level overview of all Apereo software and software communities

  • Participate in our “Design Challenge Day”, bringing together educators, learning technologists, software developers and curriculum design specialists in imagining and building aspects of the future of learning

  • Present your experience of supporting the academic mission with open technologies, and hear the experience of others

  • Participate in the HAXCamp webcomponents workshop

  • Attend and participate in Apereo software community activities 

This year's conference will be held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA from June 15-19, 2020.

The Call for Proposals for Open Apereo 2020 is open until December 20th http://bit.ly/oa20cfp 

Why not present at Open Apereo 2020. We are seeking proposals for presentations or discussion sessions in these tracks:

  • Strategy and Leadership
  • Open Source Software: Student and Faculty Success Stories
  • Technical Deep Dive
  • Facing the Future: Innovation Supporting Change

We look forward to your proposal!

Sincerely,

Ian Dolphin, Executive Director, Apereo Foundation
Alan Regan, Open Apereo 2020 Planning Committee Chair
Martin Ramsay, Open Apereo 2020 Planning Committee Vice-Chair
Jennifer Cummings,
jenn.cummings@apereo.org, Open Apereo 2020, Conference Coordinator

Apereo Diversity Scholarships: An Appeal

Will you help support diversity in open source by funding a scholarship?

Your organisation almost certainly uses open source software. Open source communities create valuable and widely used educational software. To continue to create and sustain software successfully, those communities need to reflect the diversity of those who use it. Inclusion is a critical value of an effective open source community, just as it is in your organisation.

The Apereo Foundation is home to seventeen software communities creating and sustaining open software serving the academic mission. Apereo is a diverse community with members and participants on five continents, yet that diversity is not always reflected at the events Apereo and its partners organize. One of the principal reasons for this is lack of funding -- particularly in the global South. We want to change that.

The new Apereo Diversity Scholarship Fund is designed to help support participation in events organized by Apereo and its partners, including Open Apereo 2020. Open Apereo 2020 will take place at the University of Michigan School of Information in Ann Arbor June 15th to 19th 2020.

Applicants must be a member of a group not well-represented at Apereo community events, including but not limited to: those from the global South, lower-income or less developed countries, women, people of color, LGBTQ+, indigenous peoples, ability/disability, or non-binary gender identities. We also invite applications from members of underrepresented and/or marginalized groups that don't fit into the categories listed above.

We aim to start the ball rolling by providing at least six scholarships of $2500 per participant. Each scholarship will be named after the donor organisation, and will feature prominently in Apereo event press releases, other promotional material, and social media. Sponsoring one Diversity Scholarship would make a dramatic difference to the opportunities of an individual from an under-represented group. 

Will your organization help us reach this goal? 

Help us build diversity through inclusion - and build better software. Contact ian.dolphin@apereo.org for further details. Help us spread the word by copying this message to relevant groups or individuals in your organisation.

Apereo Board Minutes


The minutes of the Apereo Board of Directors can be found here on the Apereo website. They are updated monthly. 

Join Friends of Apereo!

 

The Apereo Foundation and its projects have been at the forefront of creating and sustaining software in service of education.  Apereo extends membership to individuals through the Friends of Apereo program. This program allows individuals to support our community programs and activities.  

By making a small contribution that will be dedicated to our support programs, Friends of Apereo can help make a difference. In return, we'll help you stay in touch by providing discounted access to Apereo events and by giving Friends a say in how Apereo is run by voting for a reserved Friends of Apereo board seat.

Apereo's work has touched countless learners, teachers and researchers worldwide, helping to both extend access to learning opportunities, and enriching them. Please help us sustain and extend that by becoming a Friend of Apereo today.

Individual memberships are available for $100.   Joining is easy at https://www.apereo.org/Friends

Individual membership supports the work of the Foundation as a whole.  If you'd like to direct your gift to a specific Apereo Project, please specify the details using the special instructions section in PayPal.

Thank you for your continued support of the Apereo Foundation!

 Upcoming Events

 ESUP Day/Apereo Paris: Feb. 4, 2020

The ESUP-Portail Consortium and the Apereo Foundation are pleased to invite you to the sixth edition of the ESUP-Days/Apereo Paris event. This joint conference will be hosted at the Université Paris Descartes (Paris, France) on February 4, 2020.

As usual, admission to the event is entirely free. Please note that only registered participants will be able to access the conference room, so
 don't forget to register online beforehand.

If you want to give a talk during this conference,
 just let us know by submitting a proposal before December 24, 2019
Please 
visit our website for more information on the conference (location, accommodations, etc.).

We hope to see you soon in Paris!

#esupdays29 #apereoparis20 | February 4, 2020 | Paris (France)

Opencast Summit 2020: Call for Proposals

The Opencast community is an international collaboration of individuals, higher education institutions and organizations working together to discuss, develop, define and document best practices for the management of audiovisual content in academia.

The annual Opencast summit will be hosted at Ghent University, 5-7 February 2020.

The conference is dedicated to the use and management of academic video in general and Opencast in particular. While the focus of the event will be on Opencast, the community seeks participation from related domains and projects.

Find out more and submit session proposals at: https://oc2020.ugent.be/cfp.html

Project News

OAE 16.0 Is Released!

The OAE team is proud to announce the release of OAE 16.0 codename Harpy Eagle. It’s a major release that includes many changes aiming at making OAE easier to maintain and contribute to, including:

  • Refactoring of the queueing system
  • Replacement of obsolete libraries
  • Fixing of security vulnerabilities
  • Continuous integration optimisation
  • Code quality and robustness

These changes take OAE closer to developers who might consider contributing, as they help to tame complexity considerably and reduce overall overhead when understanding how it works. 

The OAE remains focused on working towards reducing the number of unnecessary dependencies and components when possible, aiming at simpler architecture without ever sacrificing performance and scalability.

-- Miguel Laginha

 

Project Updates

Opencast crowdfunding campaign 2019/2020

The first phase of the crowdfunding campaign has ended with the community identifying its favourite projects to be implemented, with a “quality booster” (aka “bug bash”) and a stand-alone video editor coming out on top. The board is currently working with both institutions willing to fund such efforts and service providers involved to flesh out the work schedule.  We are confident to be able to fund and finish some of the tasks in 2019 (!), with the rest moving into 2020.


Sakai Virtual Conference Recordings Posted!

This year's Sakai Virtual Conference was another success, with 200 attendees, 30 presentations, and 50 presenters. The event raised approximately $10,000 in funding to go toward Sakai Development. Recordings of conference presentations are available on the Sakai YouTube Channel in the 2019 Sakai Virtual Conference Playlist, https://youtu.be/CgUoswEtats

User Story: Opencast at University of Cape Town

The University of Cape Town (UCT) is a public research university. Founded in 1829, it is the oldest higher education institute in South Africa. In 2018, 28 600 students were enrolled - with 17,552 undergraduate and 11,048 postgraduate students. There are over 4500 staff members consisting of academic, and professional administrative support and service staff.

The department of the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) is part of the faculty of Centre for Higher Education Development. Within CILT there are three clusters of work, including an academic staff development, course and curriculum design and learning technologies. The learning technologies team provide a number of educational services such as the learning management system (Vula) which is Sakai-based and lecture recording system which uses Opencast. The lecture recording system is closely supported by the Information and Technology Services (ICTS) for venue-related and server support.

The University of Cape Town's use of Opencast includes automated video recording, processing, analysis and publication. Read more about their use cases at: https://opencast.org/2019-10-01-university-of-cape-town.html

Share Your Institution's Story

For a number of years Apereo has collected short stories illustrating how open source software can help solve institutional problems in ways that are both innovative and inexpensive. We've called these short stories "vignettes", and have used them successfully on the apereo.org web site and in presentations. 

Vignettes bring two-fold benefits. Firstly, a vignette is designed to be drafted rapidly. It does not carry with it the overhead associated with a case study. Secondly, a vignette communicates directly and clearly; it is designed to be comprehended at something just over a glance. 

We'd like to update our collection of vignettes. Please consider either spending a few minutes creating a vignette to illustrate the success of the software your community creates and sustains, or pass this message to members of your community who might help.

Thanks in advance for your help -- it will help to make Apereo a better advocate for the values we share.

 

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