Proposal – Preliminary Action Plan

To start development of a collaborative educational system, we propose these actions (act now and commit to fine-tuning and midcourse corrections as we go):
 * 1) Networking stage
 * 2) Inform all potential stakeholders about this plan and invite them to participate. Potential stakeholders are veterinary schools, AAVMC, NAVMEC, veterinary associations (AVMA, AAHA +) worldwide.
 * 3) Gather development team: We need experts to cover all aspects of this project and at least one highly respected/influential eLearning experienced expert.
 * 4) Summarize tools and know-how all potential stakeholders have.
 * 5) Administrative stage:
 * 6) Infrastructures and equipment. Find a Moodle hosting solution. Moodle can be hosted ‘in house’ or a commercial Moodle hosting solution can be used.
 * 7) Install and customize a Moodle community hub.
 * 8) Create an example of a course that can be shared.
 * 9) Training. Initiate a teacher/trainer training program. Great programs already exist, so we can start with one pre-existing program.
 * 10) Design Personal Learning/Working environment – to ease collaboration and training.
 * 11) Prepare fundraising plan (sponsors, fees, advertising).
 * 12) Create manuals for administrators.
 * 13) Progressive stage:
 * 14) Promote idea through social media: start a Facebook group, describe project at Wikipedia, tweet about it . ..
 * 15) Contact all potential partners and organizations leaders as an Open Courseware Consortium to gather all knowledge and support we can.
 * 16) Prepare more detailed strategic plan (mission, vision, structure, hosting, consulting, training and support . . .).
 * 17) Present the detailed plan publicly in at least a blog and wiki format and invite all relevant experts to participate in the development. Ask for, propose and promote new ideas.
 * 18) Organize support services.
 * 19) Transformative stage:
 * 20) Propose a list of desired features for each course that will be shared through the Consortium.
 * 21) Organize an official conference where the plan will be presented and discussed as soon as the framework is defined.
 * 22) Collect all available online courses and share them.
 * 23) Benchmark.
 * 24) Continuous development with motto: act now and commit to fine-tuning and midcourse corrections as we go – as noted in The National Educational Technology Plan 2010 (Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education, 2010)