The global network provides significantly more options than a regional network. Niall Sclater, director of Learning Innovation at the Open University concluded (Bierhals, 2009): “It wouldn't make sense to restrict [partnerships] to the UK or Europe. You're not getting all the expertise that's around.”
Power of Global Network. If we mobilize all veterinary faculty experienced with Moodle course development, we will see that we have a huge number of experienced e-learning professionals and a significant number of interactive online courses. Just to name a few:
- Veterinary School University of Illinois has nine online courses (http://vetmed.illinois.edu/veo/)
- Centre for Veterinary Education (cve.edu.au) has more than 300 hours of continuing education
- VetScholar (vetscholar.vetspace.org.nz), an award-winning online learning program has more than 30 courses
- Veterinary School in Glasgow has dozens of courses
- A commercial educational provider will probably be interested if they can promote their courses through the network we are trying to build.
Results. That means that if we open our doors (benign open) while we are peering, sharing and acting globally, in no time we may have more than 100 courses, hundreds of experienced partners and enough power to make and keep momentum.
Chief Networking Officer. Of course, it will require time, planning and negotiation to include numerous partners and their courses in our network and there may be a significant number of ‘potential partners’ that do not fit into this project or cannot participate in this project. But online course providers are just the tip of the iceberg. Globally we have significantly more potential partners and many more potential courses we can include in our network. That is why it may be beneficial to add the Chief Networking Officer (CNO) position to the team.
What is the CNO? The CNO connects people and businesses within the company/school, with other companies/schools, and with consumers (Wikipedia, 2010). The CNO's mission is to facilitate know-how transfer and information flow, fostering innovation, safeguarding diversity, and facilitating profit growth. More about the CNO position is available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_networking_officer.
Case Studies
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VetEd.Net – What is possible now?Teachers’ perspective is described in the Veterinary Education Consortium example, so in this case study, we will be focused on benefits students can gain from this framework. Student Jessica. ...Full Story
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WikiVet.NetWikiVet.Net is a Web site and Community of Practice developed by MediaWiki--the same software as Wikipedia but focused solely on veterinary medicine and with a more robust quality control system (medev.ac.uk,...Full Story
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The Open University UK: creating a win-win situation by sharing code and contentThe Open University (OU) UK, one of world's largest distance-learning universities (200,000-plus students) started implementing Moodle Virtual Learning Environment during 2005. Moodle was chosen as...Full Story