The bids are in for the JISC CETIS OER Technical Mini Projects and there’s a lively discussion going on over at oer-discuss@jiscmail.com

We’ve taken a new approach to the Technical Mini Projects call that builds on rapid innovation funding models already employed by the JISC. Interested parties were asked to submit short 1500 words proposals to the mailing list so that all bids can be openly discussed by members of the CETIS OER Technical Interest Group and anyone else that happens to be interested.

Four diverse proposals were submitted for the open strand of the call, though unfortunately we didn’t get any bids for other two strands (more about that later…). The open strand bids are as follows:

1. Development of Visual Vocabulary Management Tools from Dr Ian Piper, Tellura Information Services Ltd
2. OER Bookmarking Initiative from Paul Horner, James Outterside, Suzanne Hardy and Simon Cotterill, University of Newcastle.
3. Representing Aggregations of Open Educational Resources Utilising OAI-ORE from Alex Lydiate, Vic Jenkins and Kyriaki Anagnostopoulou, University of Bath
4. CaPRéT Cut and PAste reuse and Tracking from Brandon Muramatsu, MIT OEIT and Justin Ball and Joel Duffin, Tatemae.

We’d welcome any constructive comments on these these proposals, either here or on the oer-discuss mailing list which is open to all. You can catch up on the discussions at the oer-discuss archive.

The outcome of the call will be decided by a pannel of JISC and CETIS staff on Tuesday the 19th of April. All comments posted by the end of the day on Monday the 18th will be considered.

Thanks to all those who were brave enough to submit public proposals to this experimental open call, and also to those who have already contributed to the discussion!