1. Southeast AAEEBL Regional Chapter: Conference at Clemson University, March 22-24, 2010 [postponed to fall 2010]
   
2. New England Regional Chapter: Conference at Stonehill College, May 18, 2010
3. Midwest Regional Chapter: organizing meeting at Collabtech Conference at Case Western Reserve University, May 6, 2010
   
4. ANZ Chapter: Conference or meeting in discussion
   

The Association for Authentic,
Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning

Guidelines and Accepted Practice for the
Operation of AAEBL Regional Chapters
Fiscal Year 2010, July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010


The following guidelines apply only to AAEEBL’s first year of operation. A revised version of the guidelines will be released in June, 2010.

AAEEBL is a local and regional, national, and international organization. The following guidelines apply only to the local and regional chapters of AAEEBL and only for the first year of operation.

Rationale

The reason for forming local or regional chapters is that the chapters can support regular periodic communication and meetings, providing continuity for shared initiatives and grant projects. AAEEBL will have just one national meeting each year, so much of the real work of AAEEBL will occur at the local and regional level.

The First Year is Different

During the year from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010, AAEEBL member institutions can lead the formation of local and regional chapters and include campuses or schools that are not yet members of AAEEBL. We hope that the other participating institutions will choose to join AAEEBL during this fiscal year but in AAEEBL’s second year, they must join to participate fully in the day-to-day activities of the chapter. If the chapter holds a chapter conference for its region, non-members can attend but will be charged at the non-member rate, to be determined.

Operations

Chapters will of course look for common needs and collaboration and all the usual things that regional organizations of a national association do.

1. AAEEBL provides a national agenda for the chapter: it's not about the technology, but about the learning; it's not just about one campus showcasing work (although that may well happen at your meetings) but about helping academia and the industry learn from your local experience.

2. AAEEBL is not looking for revenue from regional chapter meetings per-se, but from our business perspective of just increasing membership in AAEEBL, which of course does add to AAEEBL revenue. In other words, if you want to use the AAEEBL name and materials, get help from our regionals coordinator, and in other ways depend on AAEEBL to get up and running, there's no cost. If you want to charge for in-person meetings in the region just to cover expenses, then budget just for that.

3. Some of your meetings can perhaps be one-day meetings hosted by the campus in question. Providing box lunches only is not that pricey, especially if you have just 20 or 30 people. Others might be 2-day meetings to provide for travel time in larger regions, which is much more complicated, of course because it involves arranging for lodging. Although we do help with facilitating the regionals (marketing, communications, materials), we don't do logistics for meetings.

4. We found from our previous experience with the New England ePortfolio Project, 2004-2006, that it was very helpful to have 2 or 3 lead people. So, The University of Rhode Island partnered with Brown and UConn. That helped ease the workload for any one person. We three let the host campuses pretty much take on as much of the work of organizing, publicizing, agenda-setting, program-creation, and logistics as they were willing to do. We found that campuses were eager to put together programs. We had 6 meetings in 19 months.

5. At each of our meetings, a new campus would commit to doing the next one. Again, this reduced the central organizing burden. It is important to have a way to assure continuity.

6. We had one "big event" (100+ people) every year, which worked well. Our other meetings drew 25 to 35 attendees. 32 colleges and universities in New England participated.

7. AAEEBL central leadership must be consulted and must participate in the creation of a regional so that we can assure consistency across the various chapters.