Please forgive the slightly self-important title, but what we wanted to let everyone know is that, while the first run of the course is over, ocTEL will continue to be available for a variety of purposes:
- participate — existing participants can keep doing the course activities, posting on their blogs or the course forums until further notice (we stopped taking new registrations a couple of weeks ago);
- access — the course materials will remain available on this site until such time as we want to repurpose the site for another run of the course (then they will be archived in another accessible location);
- remix — all the materials we’ve originated are available for re-use under a CC-BY licence, and we’re interested to hear how they can be made more useful for re-uses.
To take each specific component of the course, here are our current plans, which are subject to change in the light of feedback and experience.
- Forums — these will continue to operate, and you can post and reply to new topics as you have throughout the course, until further notice — into the summer until such time are they are no new posts or we get a spam problem, at which point they may be frozen.
- Email list — this has been quiet for some time, so we’re likely to retire it in a week, at which point we’ll clear the list of subscribers, but the archive of messages will remain available.
- Course reader and daily newsletter — we will keep these going while they are still serving a purpose: that is, while there are still a meaningful number of new posts to bring to participants’ attention, however long that proves to be.
- Tutor support — as ocTEL tutor support was provided by volunteers, we don’t have any provision planned from now on. I’m afraid the best you can expect is the odd comment from me.
- Course text, webinar recordings & similar — as mentioned above, these will remain available here for a while. Long term, the place to look for them is the ALT repository.
- Course data — we are hoping to make the data we have collected on participant activity available for analysis and research. This will also be via the ALT repository. Data will be anonymised in line with the terms of participation.
- Blog — we will post occasional updates on ocTEL and related matters here, covering accreditation and any future run of the course, for instance.
Comments on these plans are very welcome. We’re also keen to get your advice on ocTEL 2.0.
Consultant and occasional writer, based in London. Chartered Pscyhologist and CMALT. Overall co-ordinator of ocTEL.