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Tag: Balance

OERxDomains Conference: Day 1

As I sat down to get comfortable and begin the OERxDomains conference I had the flash of inspiration to ‘live blog‘ the conference instead of hastily scribbling notes that I would type up and organise later. I thought this was a great idea! And would solve my bad habit of writing about things long after they happen and egregiously lying about the date when it comes to publishing on my blog. I managed to keep it up for a couple of hours, but it was completely unsustainable. Two reasons, firstly because the conference was absolutely jam-packed there was little room to catch-up, and secondly because I don’t have it in me to be content with rough notes and found myself obsessing over formatting issues rather than concentrating on the content of sessions.

So here we are, over a month later, and I’m just now getting round to publishing my notes. Because of the huge amount of content, I’m going to try and limit myself to just a sentence or two to recap what I took from each session I attended.

In keeping with the spirit of a conference on open education resources, all sessions recordings are now freely available at either the YouTube page or, better, you can use the excellent TV guide style programme for Day 1 or Day 2.

09:50: Welcome From The Conference Co-Chairs | Jim Groom, Lauren Hanks, Joe Wilson, Lou Mycroft and Louise Drumm
During which I had my ill-fated live blogging epiphany.

10:00: Opening Plenary: Joy And Care In Open Education In Times Of Pandemic | Catherine Stihler, Nicolas Garcia, Tutaleni Asino and Orna Farrell
There were a few highlights from the opening plenary – a reflective question on what has brought joy over the past year, the pros and cons of synchronous and asynchronous teaching (and the privilege of being able to choose, or not!), and a fabulous observation from Nicolas that ‘Technical issues have an emotional impact on people.’

11:00: Open Reading With Your Eyes Shut: Demystifying Foo-Foo The Snoo | Mark Brown
A session title that will haunt me. Mark was discussing the problem of curating open resources and journals, and attempts to address this by publishing an annual Top 10 list of articles curated by his team at DCU. Also noted the problem of articles about open education being published behind paywalls(!).

11:20: Contemporary Art And Open Learning | Neil Mulholland
Discussed the problem of teaching contemporary arts during the pandemic and the lack of distance / online learning communities for artists – responded by creating a new OER collating relevant peer reviewed resources.

11:40: Encouraging Learner Agency Through Self-Mapped Learning Pathways | Matt Crosslin
Presented a case study on implementing self-mapped learning pathways (SMLP), which seeks to blend traditional instructor-led pathways with learners’ self-directed pathways.

12:10: Familiar Faces And Shared Goals: Evaluating The Impact Of An Open Community During The Covid-19 Pandemic | Kate Molloy
Talked about the timely Enhancing Digital Capacity in Teaching and Learning in Irish Universities (EDTL) project that began in 2019 and the impact the pandemic had upon them – changed focus, added resources relating to Covid specifically, and making all resources openly available. (First image in my gallery, showing the 4 pillars of the project.)

12:30: Links Between Open Education And DEI – Findings From A Latin American Study | Carina Bossu and Viviane Vladimirschi
Posed the problem of the prevalence of English language OER that doesn’t meet the needs and realities of the global south, and asked what we can do to improve the situation. Suggestions included funding for translation services, and linking with networks such as GO-GN.

12:50: Careful Practice: Extending A Framework For Valuing Care In The Open | Caroline Sinkinson and Merinda Mclure
An interactive session on the Care in the Open Framework, which utilised a shared Google doc and Answer Garden to explore the value of care as a moral imperative for society, and how it cannot be limited to private, domestic spheres. Therefore, it must be a consideration in the classroom. (Second image in my gallery, with a sketchnote depicting attributes of care.)

14:00: Interactive Courseware To Connect Discussion To Course Material: So What? | Matt Smith, Tinne De Laet and Howard Scott
An exploration of Nextbook, an interactive textbook that allows students to write questions which staff can respond to, to give just one example. An attempt at getting away from the VLE paradigm of ‘a tool for this’ and ‘a tool for that’, providing a more integrated experience. (Third image in my gallery, showing a sample Nextbook page with inline discussion.)

14:40: Open Education, Data Analytics, And The Future Of Knowledge Infrastructure | Nicole Allen
This was an excellent talk on the problem of institutions attempting to buy solutions to technological problems, which are really sociological problems, and the vulture-like companies who are more than ready and willing to provide ‘easy’ solutions in the form of subscription models for textbooks(!), online proctoring software, learner analytics, and what they are doing with the data they are gathering. This included an example of a US textbook company selling data to ICE, the notorious US agency for enforcing immigration. (Fourth image in my gallery, because while I came for the conference, I stayed for the awesome bookcases in people’s homes!)

15:15: Openlab – Open Infrastructure In Action At CUNY | Charlie Edwards, Jody Rosen and Christopher Stein
Because ‘we don’t break up with students at the end of the semester’, CUNY have been running Commons in a Box for the past 10 years, a WordPress / BuddyPress system which provides continued student and alumni access to content.

15:50: Reflecting On Market Vs Commons Rhetoric: Care And The Professor’s Dilemma | Jim Luke
Another interesting talk, this one on how metaphors shape how we think, and specifically how higher education has been driven by the market and hierarchical thinking for the past 40 years. Jim left us with the thought that the question we should be asking ourselves is ‘Does it improve people’s lives?’, not, ‘Does it generate money?’. (Fifth image in my gallery, depicting some alternative metaphors for education such as ‘weaving a story’.)

16:20: Harmonising National Copyright Exceptions To Build A Global Body Of Open Educational Resources With The Code Of Best Practices In Fair Use For OER | Will Cross, Meredith Jacob, Peter Jaszi and Prue Adler
Possible winner of longest session title. This was a positive and reassuring discussion on copyright, in particular fair use rights. They noted that the method of linking out to copyrighted material may seem the legally safer option, but it creates unnecessary barriers for students accessing resources.

17:00: Crystallizing An Academic: Domains For Open Thinking | Helen DeWaard
Helen discussed the process of blogging and what she has gotten out of sharing the messiness inherent in the production of a PhD thesis – a refreshing take when we typically only get to see the finished, polished results! She talked about writing as a way of crystallising her learning, which struck a chord because that’s largely why I write my blog. (Sixth image in my gallery, an example of how Helen uses writing to crystallise her thoughts.)

17:30: 25 Years Of Ed Tech: Giving Voice and Conversation To The Community Or That Open Resource Sure Has Legs! | Clint Lalonde, Laura Pasquini and Martin Weller
This was the ‘most alternative’ session format today, a live chat on Discord while Clint was recording a podcast episode for the series 25 Years of EdTech, based on Martin Wheeler’s book of the same name. This type of remixing of the book has been made possible because Martin chose to publish it under a Creative Commons license.

18:00: Day 1 Keynote | Laura Gibbs
At 6 PM, after a day absolutely full to the brim, we came to the first keynote address! Laura discussed her experiences as an educator over the past 20 years using a randomised slide deck for prompts – a really interesting, not to mention brave approach! Laura teaches on various humanities online courses for the University of Oklahoma, with particular interests in mythology and folklore. Her talk was passionate and inspiring. She discussed how, teaching online courses only, she never gets to meet her students in person, but feels connected to them via the blogs and websites she has them create. Laura also, wonderfully, talked about how and why she has never used a VLE, and never given a student a grade! Much of Laura’s own work, including a teaching guide exploring her methods, can be found on her website: Drabbles.

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