Alder: Open Access Education in Quaker College Settings, and Friendly-informed CC WUaS for best STEM-centric CC OpenCourseWare degrees at the Graduate School level

Hi Wess (and Donn, David, Kim and FAHE),

Thanks for your emails, and I've been waiting to reply because World University and School, and I, don't yet have the monies to travel to Woodbrooke Quaker Centre in England in June, but we're hoping to get them. I did bring your Friends Association for Higher Education (FAHE) - http://quakerfahe.com/annual-conference/ - email to WUaS monthly business meeting (2nd Saturdays at 9am in the manner of Friends), and WUaS thanks you for your focusing queries.

If/as monies are forthcoming, I'd be happy to hone my presentation to talk generally about open access, Creative Commons' licensed education, and MOOCs in a global context re startup CC World University and School. And since one main wing of WUaS is that we're wiki (editable web pages), and planned in all languages as wikis, we aggregate other open access projects and MOOCS. While WUaS is CC licensed (as is CC MIT OCW, CC Yale OYC and CC Wikipedia and their new backend interlingual database anticipating/developing in machine learning/AI called CC Wikidata/Wikibase), not all open access educational resources (OER) are CC. WUaS plans to, and continues to, aggregate highest quality OER in many languages, as well as facilitate open teaching (eg to one's web camera) and learning opportunities, and especially among Friends.

While WUaS's other main wing is planned online degrees (Bachelor, Ph.D., Law and MD as well as IB high school), WUaS is planning to accredit with WASC senior in California (potentially incubated by the University of California, which is already accredited by WASC, as is Stanford) for academic standards, and by accrediting on CC MIT OCW in 7 languages and CC Yale OYC for planning purposes, significantly as another source of academic standard. Both UC and Stanford are more than 100 years old, but WASC senior is not, in terms the planned life of the WUaS program.

WUaS may also seek to "accredit" with Friends Council on Education in terms of Friendly academic standards, if they "accredit" at the college level, although I seem to remember that they may not do this. Having attended the last two years of FAHE gatherings, and as a member, what are the subsequent membership procedures for WUaS in these regards to be listed as a FAHE member, Donn, David, Kim and Wess?

In seeking to become the Harvard/Haverford of the Internet, WUaS would seek to explore generating an academic - and gathered-Quaker-Meeting-centric - culture/discourse of online matriculated students that shares much with that of the Quaker colleges/cultures' attracting Friendly high achievers/thinkers, such as Guilford, Haverford, Swarthmore and Earlham et al. As I think about it currently, Friendly colleges would potentially be able to "leverage so many aspects of open access education in terms of expanding learning opportunities within our settings" if one were to conceive of Friendly college settings in terms of FAHE itself as a Friendly Quaker higher education setting for learning and related opportunities. In this opening way, Quaker colleges could anticipate, for example, Friendly-informed PH.D., Law, and M.D. online degree opportunities at CC WUaS and teach toward these at the undergraduate level, and students could learn about these degree opportunities in the context of FAHE, thus leveraging the power of open access post-undergraduate degree education re Friendly-informed open access education developments at Quaker colleges.

Perhaps it would also be good to explore changing the format of my planned FAHE presentation from "formal presentation" (or similar) to "Presentation with Q&A" or similar to leverage the benefit of Friendly group conversation about this at Woodbrooke, and in the context of the British Isles especially as well, and to explore also generating other related open access education ideas in this Friendly process.

Thank you again for your emails, Wess.

Best wishes to you and your loved ones as well this holiday season.

With Friendly greetings,
Scott

http://worlduniversityandschool.org

On 12/3/15 5:56 AM, C. Wess Daniels wrote:

Hi Scott,

Thank you for your proposal for FAHE at Woodbrooke. As a member of the board, I am working through some of the proposals and wanted to write to you about your very ambitious proposal.

Given that you had a very similar presentation this past summer Friends on the board are hoping that you might consider honing your presentation into something that could be keyed more into talking generally about open access, creative commons education, and MOOCs in a global context?

Certainly WUaS would be an example, but it might be a greater service for FAHE folks to hear about online education and open source licensing more broadly. I believe that this is where many Friends are really wishing for greater understanding in their own work (as so many of our schools are new to online education or just beginning in that world).

One question of interest would be around academic standards and how you maintain those over the life of the program.  Other questions would be around how we might leverage the power of open access education within our settings.

You are very well-versed in this world and I think it would be serviceable to the general population of FAHE if you were able to help us think more about these educational issues surrounding online education and facilitate a discussion around the various issues connected to this.

Thank you!

Wess

-- 
- Scott MacLeod - Founder & President
- http://worlduniversityandschool.org
- 415 480 4577
- PO Box 442, (86 Ridgecrest Road), Canyon, CA 94516
- World University and School - like Wikipedia with best STEM-centric OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization, both effective April 2010.

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