The University of Sunderland has done a lot of work over the past few years to standardise and professionalise our personal tutoring provision and align it with UKAT, the United Kingdom Advising and Tutoring association. It was from this that the Studiosity project began, and when our Pro VC for Learning and Teaching put out a call towards the end of last year for us to attend and present at this year’s conference en masse, I submitted a proposal for my Studiosity pilot year presentation – now in what I hope is its final form, including impact on attainment and progression for the pilot cohort.
Conference sessions I was able to attend as a participant were:
UKAT Curriculum Taster Session, by Karen Kenny of the University of Exeter which allowed me to complete an introductory module.
Empowering Under-Represented Voices, by Rachael O’Connor from the University of Leeds which included a discussion on how tutors can reach and support those students.
Considerations Around Academic Misconduct, by Luke Jefferies from the University of East Anglia – a really good session that deconstructed notions of ‘cheating’ and discussed some of the unspoken and unacknowledged factors which feed into academic misconduct. I had not considered, for example, that in some cultures it is a sign of respect to directly quote others, rather than being taken as plagiarism as it is in UK HE.
Lighting Talks on the significance of graduate attributes, an evaluation of the impact of mindset interventions, and the impact of specialist academic tutors from my colleagues at our London Campus.
Technology in Advising SIG, by Pete Fitch of UCL who led a discussion on what technologies we are using to support tutoring, including learning management systems, ePortfolios, and bespoke timetabling and appointment booking systems.
Understanding Student Finances, by Charmaine Valente from the Student Loans Company who talked about the current loans system in England and Wales which is helpful for PATs to know about to be able to inform students.
Academic Coaching at the University of Wolverhampton, by James Jennings who talked about the dedicated academic coaches they are employing at Wolverhampton to provide dedicated support and pastoral care for students.
Critical Thinking and Tutoring, by George Steele of Ohio State University which was an interesting session to see some of the differences in perspective in the US system, such as students choosing an institution first without knowing what they want to major in. Part of the role of tutors there is to guide students and help them make that decision.
Active Listening for Effective Personal Tutoring, by Angela Newton from the University of Leeds who led an interactive session exploring and evaluating our listening skills.
Attached photos are from the opening keynote speech, George Steele from Ohio State talking about reflective thought, and examples of the Welsh language not trying very hard (I feel like I can get away with this joke by being Scottish).
Slide showing every nation with a space programme of some kind – it’s a lot!
“Why I got out of bed for class today?” Because if I hadn’t, my boss and my boss’s boss would have taken turns to kill me if I had missed our first annual learning and teaching conference.
Back in those heady days of 2019, when we were all young, innocent and care-free, a couple of good friends of mine bought me a ticket to see Nightwish at the Wembley Arena in December 2020 as a Christmas present. Well, there was some sort of global event or emergency or something which means it didn’t happen. It was rescheduled for the following year, and that didn’t happen either. We never did find out why it was cancelled with less than a week’s notice the second time, but our suspicion is that someone in the band got Covid. So it was rescheduled again, for November 2022, and this time it went ahead, and it was wonderful!
Such was this case with our conference too – planned since 2019, and finally taking place two years later. It was every bit as good as Nightwish I swear. We had some 220 people sign-up from all across the University, and my team were out in force, running sessions on CleverTouch boards and working as marshals, making sure everything went without a hitch, and I did my Studiosity impact presentation in one of the breakout sessions.
The conference began with a student panel discussion, talking about their experience of online study over the pandemic, and later as hybrid learners. The OfS could learn a thing of two from them – students want both. The benefits and social connections of in-person teaching, and the convenience of being able to catch-up with recorded and online sessions in their own time. One astute comment was that “engagement is not the same thing as attendance”, and disengaged students can be every bit as much of a problem in-person as online. Their thoughts on solutions were to mix up teaching methods, and to have interactive and group activities that make students want to be there.
Sessions I attended were from Dr Nicola Roberts on ‘Failing to Progress on a Programme of Study: A Statistical Analysis of Factors Related to Criminology Students’, Dr Helen Williams on ‘The awkwardness of transitioning to Higher Education and the implications for student retention’, and Dr Elizabeth Hidson on ‘SunRAE – the Sunderland Reflective Action in Education Conference, Podcast and e-journal contribution to enhancing international initial teacher training student engagement’.
The day wrapped with a keynote by – somewhat unbelievably – Dr Andrew Aldrin, son of Buzz. I was one, single degree of separation from a man who walked on the moon. Andy, as he insisted on being introduced, is the President of the Aldrin Family Foundation which has a mission to educate people, mainly K12 school aged kids in the US, about space, the moon, Mars, and to inspire people into pursuing space-related careers. As the man said, “Kids love space, and dinosaurs, but they get over dinosaurs.” (It was a good job we didn’t have any palaeontologists in the room.)
I was honoured to be invited to attend the UUK’s Access, Participation and Student Success Conference 2022 by colleagues at Studiosity, to present a case study on why and how we have implemented Studiosity at Sunderland over the past year. This was a variation of my presentation for InstructureCon, with the technical slides de-emphasised and new sections added about how the Studiosity project ties in with our wider personal academic tutoring project and the University’s Student Success Plan 2025. My presentation was well-attended and I got some good questions and feedback, and as an attendee at the conference I got a lot out of the other sessions I was able to attend.
Kaushika Patel, Deputy PVC Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at De Montfort University, presented on closing ethnicity awarding gaps, something which is an issue for us at our London Campus in particular which has a much more diverse student intake. Kaushika’s talk was about what progress has been made since the 2019 UUK and NUS ‘Closing the Gap‘ (PDF, 2Mb) report. My first photo above shows that there has been some progress, with the overall gap decreasing from 13.2% to 8.8%, but there is also a particular issue with 1st class awards, where the attainment gap between BAME and white students is 9.6%. Kaushika made some practical suggestions about what we can do going forwards, including signing up for the Race Equality Charter. I’ve picked that one out as I was disappointed to find that Sunderland was not a member, though I’ve spoken with our EDI lead and been assured it is on the agenda of our BAME staff group.
I also got a lot out of Nathalie Podder’s passionate talk about how the cost of living crisis is affecting students. Nathalie is the Deputy President (Welfare) at Imperial College Union and her presentation was based on consultations with students at Imperial College London. My second two photos show their ‘Findings’ and ‘Government Recommendations’ slides. Among the findings are that 95% of students are concerned about the cost of living crisis, 58% are worried about their ability to pay rent, and 20% about being able to pay utility bills. Their recommendations for the government included starting a new hardship scheme for students, reinstating maintenance grants, raising NHS bursaries and regulating landlords who own student properties.
It’s that time of year again, Panda spotting day in the midst of new student chaos at the busiest time of year: InstructureCon! I didn’t spot the panda until late on, during one of the final corporate keynotes which all seemed to have an Indiana Jones / wilderness theme, because education is a journey I believe.
After the corporate shenanigans, Simone Giertz delivered the opening guest keynote which I enjoyed and had been looking forward to as an existing fan of her YouTube. She talked about the value of problem solving and searching for unique or different solutions to problems, such as her unique rollable jigsaw table. Simone also talked about how important it is, in STEM specifically but it applies in all areas, of visibility of people that children can project themselves onto as part of their development.
This was followed by Sidharth Oberoi, Instructure’s VP of International Strategy, giving the more hands-on business keynote on Instructure’s vision of the future of education. Very heavy on alternative teaching methods and hybrid learning, so he’s definitely going to be on the Office for Students’s naughty list. He also talked a lot about the need and value of micro-credentials, something that would be a bit of a theme of the conference, and I’ll share my thoughts on that at the end.
After the morning keynotes we had time to build our own experience by sampling a range of pre-recorded on-demand sessions from the community, of which clearly the greatest and best of all time was yours truly on Sunderland’s experience of integrating Studiosity into Canvas.
The sessions which I actually attended were I’ll Have to Say ‘I Love You’ in a Survey” by Ben McGrae and Will Moindrot at the University of Liverpool which covered their experience of developing and analysing a survey after transitioning to Canvas.
Product Spotlight: Canvas Credentials by John Boyle of Arizona State was a case-study of use of Canvas Credentials, the newly re-branded Badgr tool, following Instructure’s purchase of Concentric Sky, the main developer of Badgr.
Impact by Instructure Updates was another update on an Instructure purchase, this time Eesysoft. This is another one I feel close to as I spent a lot of time at Northumbria cosying up to Eesysoft as they were very interested in its possibilities, just not enough to actually spent money on it. Impact looks very much like I remember, giving administrators the ability to provide context-aware help throughout the VLE. The big difference now of course is that it’s a Canvas exclusive product, whereas Eesysoft had integrations available for all the major VLEs.
The final on-demand session I attended was Canvas LMS Updates for Higher Education by Jewel Pearson and Whitney Pesek which was very useful for seeing the features and enhancements which are around the corner. I’m particularly looking forward to the Comment Library in SpeedGrader, which offers similar functionality to Turnitin’s QuickMarks and which our academics have been after since day one with Canvas. I’m not entirely sure that integrating emojis in submission comments is necessary, but if you’re going to do it, at least having a feature to set your preferred skin tone universally is a nice touch. The fancy touches to assignment submission, such as a progress tracker, also look nice.
The closing keynote by Matin Bean was another I was looking forward to, as Martin was the vice-chancellor of the OU during my time with them. His talk focused on predictions for the future of education – the growth of micro-credentials, the increasing involvement of business and competition from non-traditional learning providers, and the use of different types of teaching methods, e.g. more hybrid learning (someone else with no fans at the OfS then.) Martin also talked about what, in his experience, employers are looking for in graduates – namely, ‘grit’, or determination.
Finally, Adam Grant in the closing keynote talked about how Instructure can help educators to avoid burning out, and the growth of people learning from non-traditional means such as YouTube and podcasts. This is very true; only the day before I taught myself how to re-silicone seal my bathroom on YouTube (outcome: it looks fantastic!).
As I mentioned above, a theme of the conference was micro-credentials, something which came up over and over again in the corporate talk, and was echoed in Martin Bean’s keynote. I first wrote about badges in 2014, and while I think the concept is grand, in the 8 years since I haven’t seen any significant real-world demand, it still feels like a solution in search of a problem. This is perhaps evident in the re-branding from ‘open badges’ to ‘micro-credentials’. I also remain concerned about long term viability, having lost half my badges in the migration from Mozilla’s Backpack to Badgr. And what is going to happen to Badgr now that Instructure have purchased the lead developer of the standard? They are already offering certain functionality – pathways – as something additional to the base standard, only available in Canvas. Sidharth talked about decentralisation, student control, and learner’s owning their educational journey and results, but who controls the “wallets?” Canvas Credentials, the purchase of Eesysoft, and the corporate talk from today don’t point towards student control and decentralisation to me, but rather to Instucture’s increasing control and consolidation of the educational vertical stack.
I’m also a “Top Pick”, for InstructureCon 2022 (ICON22) – according to the email announcement about the agenda being published.
I’ve attended InstructureCon, or CanvasCon as it once was, pretty much every year since Sunderland went over to Canvas in 2017, and I’ve always wanted to present but didn’t feel like I had a good enough topic. This year I’m proud to announce that I will be presenting on our experience of implementing Studiosity through Canvas over the past year, supported by my spiritual other half at our London Campus, Evi.
Our presentation is attached below, and I’m sure our actual presentation will be available online after the conference. Alas, it is a recorded one, much as I would have liked the University to send me off to Barcelona to present in person. (Damn you, Dan!)
My first in-person conference in two years at the University of Roehampton’s gorgeous campus was a chance to learn about Studiosity’s plans for the future, to network with colleagues at other UK HEIs using Studiosity and compare notes, and pretty randomly, I was able to get a tour of Roehampton’s new library building during lunchtime (it’s lovely).
On those future plans, we’re going to see an enhanced version of the student feedback view in the next couple of months which is going to allow their subject specialists to insert short videos and infographics explaining particular grammatical concepts, issues with spelling, and so on. They are also introducing a new ‘Student Connect’ tool which will help to facilitate peer-to-peer student support. This is currently in beta testing, and two UK universities are part of this evaluation.
The keynote address was by Sir Eric Thomas, who sits on Studiosity’s Academic Advisory Board, and he made a great point that, looking at historical precedents from past plagues, people at the time always think, “this is going to change everything, we can’t go back to how things used to be”, but invariably things do go back to exactly how they were once the threat is over. He speculated that this was because plagues and pandemics leave physical infrastructure unchanged, in contrast to wars, where the physical act of rebuilding allows for societal changes to be literally built in. However, what may be different as we ‘re-build’ after Covid, is that new communication technologies such as Teams and Zoom have come into their own and already effected change in how we live and work. The permanence of these changes is something that lingers in my mind as I contemplate my future.
Good opportunities for informal chats with colleagues at more advanced stages of Studiosity use, and no easy answers to be had in terms of managing use and expectations, and showing causal links between use of the service and student retention and attainment, something I’m in the midst of grappling with now as we approach the end of our pilot.
A second online only event for CanvasCon as the pandemic rumbles on, with two key differences from last year’s event: first of all, this event combined both all of Instructure’s various wares, not just, Canvas, and all regions – the Americas, EMEA, etc. And secondly, it was, to be blunt, a bit rubbish. I’ll get more positive and have nice things to say towards the end of this post, but I’ll proceed in order.
You have to go into events of this nature expecting a deal of corporatisation and marketing nonsense, but last year Instructure managed to get product and company updates to us via the means of a news broadcast style segment which worked well and was entertaining. In contract, this year felt like whatever private equity firm(s) currently own Instructure had sucked all life and soul out of them. The morning keynote was a roundtable discussion between what was effectively eight different marketing people heavily selling technological solutionism. A particular low point was reached when trying to sell the benefits of Canvas for Elementary. Do elementary school children (primary school), really need a VLE? Really?
This was followed by a ‘partner and product hall’ for corporate sponsors of the event to sell their wares, and were divided into platinum, gold and silver tiers depending on how much money they had paid Instructure to be there (I imagine). I engaged with these out of desire to try and get the digital badges and swag that were on offer (damn you psychology!), but there was very little value in the experience. They used a platform called Bizzabo to host these, and like Remo last year, it was awful, though for different reasons. They don’t support Safari, my default browser, the Microsoft session had an animated banner in the background which was completely distracting, and a number of sessions I went into just had no-one there, or, in one case, had people complaining about how the service wasn’t working for them as hosts. I did manage to have a good discussion with folks from PebblePad as I was keen to see what it looks like now and what it can do, as I’m involved in a small project looking for an ePortfolio solution for a midwifery programme that goes beyond what we can accomplish with Mahara.
In our third contrast with last year’s CanvasCon, the afternoon keynote was from will.i.am, and it was a rambling, incoherent mess, though he came dangerously close to making some salient points at times. While LeVar Burton’s keynote last year could be criticised for being a little too generic, it was well-argued and coherent, and more importantly, it was genuinely inspiring and motivational.
The conference was saved by the afternoon partner-led sessions – educators talking about education, and how they’ve used various Instructure tools to help and support them – this is what it should have been all about. I attended five such sessions in the afternoon, three of which were a bust for different reasons, but in a concerted effort to end on a positive note and take something constructive out of the day, I’ll focus on the two that were genuinely good.
“Quick Quality Guide: 10 Take-Home Tips to Make Your Course Sexy” from Florida International University, was a presentation on their top-tips for engaging and accessible course design using a metaphor of ‘sexy / fashionable’. Lots of Universal Design for Learning on show here, including using multiple measures of assessment, and a wide variety of different course materials. They also talked about using a landing page with key information, having a learner support page, and using course structure tools, like the Syllabus tool in Canvas, to aid design and navigation.
“Why Microlearning is Real Learning” by Dr Peter Thomas of HaileyburyX was another excellent session discussing the benefits of micro learning – content chunked into 2-5 minute sessions, and 15 minutes at most, as a way to reduce extraneous cognitive load, replicate real-world environments where people often have to learn tasks very quickly, and exploit attention grabbing mechanisms like Twitter and TikTok do so successfully, but for good intent!
All of the session recordings, including the other 85 peer / partner breakout sessions I couldn’t attend, are available to watch online here. Colleagues inform me that they attended some good sessions too, on the coming improved Teams integrations with Canvas for example, so maybe I was just a little unlucky in what I chose to attend. We’re all in agreement that you can probably skip the keynotes though!
Now that I have Day 1 sorted, hopefully it isn’t going to take me as long to write up and publish my notes from Day 2! Again, I am going to attempt to keep this relatively brief, just a few key points from each session I attended, but I was conscious that I ended up writing more and more for each session of Day 1. Recordings of all sessions are available on the YouTube playlist or via the interactive TV Guide.
09:30: Nominal Group Technique for Student Feedback in Pandemic Times | Me!
Highlight of the conference, as voted for by 100% of attendees in my house: my ‘Gasta‘ on adapting NGT for online teaching. A little disappointing that I wasn’t able to present live, but the recording was done in one take, and no editing.
Also 09:30: Digital Fluency In A Public Liberal Arts Institution | Jeff McClurken and Lee Skallerup Bessette
As all of the Gasta sessions were pre-recorded, I was able to watch this one about a project to give all students and staff their own domain name to do with whatever they want (largely), as a way of empowering them to develop digital literacy skills.
09:45: Welcome To Day 2 From The Conference Co-Chairs
I didn’t get any bright ideas this time, thankfully! (First image in my gallery, showing remixed conference badges.)
10:00: Wikipedia In The Classroom In The New Normal | Ewan McAndrew
Ewan talked about two projects involving students and Wikipedia, the first getting them to participate in edit-a-thons updating existing pages, and the second about finding something not already on Wikipedia, researching the topic, and then writing the page themselves. This gave students agency and enabled them to see tangible outcomes of their learning. (Second image in my gallery, a quote from a student on what they got out of the Wikipedia project.)
10:20: Open To Diversity: Inclusive Design Insights From The Australian OER Textbook | Sarah Lambert and Habiba Fadel
The purpose of the Australian Open Textbook Project is to audit and improve the diversity of textbooks and reading lists, noting that ‘open’ cannot just be about being free, but must be representative of the student body and society – and this isn’t just about who is shown in pictures, but whose knowledge is represented.
10:40: Moving Your Language Teaching Online Toolkit | Hélène Pulker
This discussion was on the particular challenges faced by students of modern languages learning online, and presented a toolkit of resources that the Open University has created to help address these issues. The toolkit is a highly practical collection of guides and principles.
11:10: Digital (Un)Tethering | Clare Thomson and Kate Molloy
Throughout the conference I was looking for alternative format sessions wherever possible, and this one did not disappoint. Instead of a presentation or video, we had a guided Twitter chat on the topic of self-care and balancing work and personal life while working and studying from home. You can read the chat on Twitter by checking the hashtags #Untether #OER21 #OERxDomains21. It was eye-opening to realise how much time I am spending in front of different screens, and thinking about how it has impacted my life. Hence the need to #Untether.
11:50: The Adventures Of The Writing Process Digitising The Writing Process | Patricia Dennis
I re-tethered for this session on helping students to develop a process for writing, rather than focusing on the content or finished product which is where the emphasis is usually placed.
13:00: Keynote | Jasmine Roberts
A wonderful, passionate, keynote address from Jasmine who explored how open education ideology has its roots in black feminist liberation and, in particular, the work of Bell Hooks. One of the most powerful things said all conference, was that ‘the time needed to care, or to create OERs, is often not institutionally valued, so we do it ‘off desk’ in our own time’. (Third image in my gallery, a quote from Jasmine: ‘We are teaching students, not content’.)
14:00: The Use And Misuse Of Care | Sundi Richard and Autumm Caines
An introduction to CompelU, a fabulous new online proctoring service to catch-out lying, cheating students in their lies and cheating. But no… this was a discussion on the dangers of certain companies that I won’t name co-opting the language of care to sell anti-student services to institutions. Their blog post on this is well worth a read. (Fourth image in my gallery, a meme on how it is easier to put on a webinar about care, rather than addressing structural failures.)
14:20: Open Pedagogies In A Pandemic: Educator Perceptions And Experiences In Diverse Contexts | Leigh-Anne Perryman and Rebecca Ferguson
A theme which emerged from the conference for me was that ‘open’ doesn’t always mean ‘good’. An example from this talk was a case where students were asked to work collaboratively to produce an open textbook, but this was anxiety inducing for some students, and there were worries about the process damaging students’ esteem if their work was rejected. To mitigate these risks you can use universal design for learning which has a principle of providing students with multiple means of engagement. (Fifth image in my gallery, a quote on the dangers of online anonymity.)
14:40: Lessons From The Frontline: Challenges And Strategies For Inspiring A Shift From Surveillance To Open Practices | Emily Carlisle-Johnston
Another talk on the dangers of surveillance software which made the points that this removes students’ autonomy, and burdens staff with extra work. Specifically, in using something like online proctoring, you may ‘solve’ the problem of academic staff not having to redesign traditional essay-style exams, at the expense of labour and cost which is transferred to the technical support teams who must procure, implement and maintain these systems.
15:15: The Joys Of Open Collaboration, Stories From The GO-GN Picture Book Team | Chrissi Nerantzi, Hélène Pulker, Paola Corti, Verena Roberts, Penny Bentley, Gino Fransman, Bryan Mathers and Ody Frank
A presentation on the work of The Global Open Graduate Network (GO-GN), which is building a global community of researchers in open education. In the example presented, a group of educators collaboratively created a picture book story about open education during the pandemic.
15:35: Community And Care In The Open: The CUNY Graduate Center’s TLC During The Pandemic | Luke Waltzer and Laurie Hurson
How the CUNY Graduate Center helped to support staff and students of the New York based university cope with the switch to online learning during the lockdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. They were well-placed to do so, having built an open infrastructure, the CUNY Academic Commons, which enabled them to share their archive of online teaching content.
15:55: Trent Online: Trent Extend mOOC Spring 2021 | Christian Metaxas, Kristine Weglarz, Terry Greene and Stephanie Park
A discussion about the pending launch of the Ontario Extend mOOC which is intended to be a place for educators to learn without fear of failure, where we will be able to ‘mess up’ and play while dropping the knowledgeable front we put on for students. However, another important take-away from this session was that ‘Ontario is better than British Columbia’. I… don’t know why, but what the heck? I liked these folks and am happy to get on this bandwagon with them.
16:25: Exploring The Web Monetisation Standard As A Solution For Sustainability In The Creation Of Open Educational Resources | Erica Hargreave, Lori Yearwood and Kevin Ribble
This presentation was about the Web Monetization Standard which offers people an alternative way of being compensated for making content freely available that doesn’t rely on advertisement, affiliate links, freemium models, or paywalls.
16:45: Open Source Technologies For Instructional Design: Hands-On Experience In Teacher Education With H5P | Benjamin Eugster
A couple of case studies of content which had been created with the H5P content authoring tool. Something else I’m taking from this session though, is the concept of explicit and implicit learning objectives.
17:05: Let It Break Or Be Broken: Care, Moral Stress, And The University | Brenna Clarke Gray
This was an excellent talk on how care is being used (abused) to paper over the cracks of institutional failures, the result of neo-liberal models which are extractional by nature – and design. This causes moral injury or stress to those of us providing care, and it should not be on us to repair that damage, but on institutions to change their structural models. I highly recommend the article ‘Moral injury and the COVID-19 pandemic: reframing what it is, who it affects and how care leaders can manage it’ by Suzanne Shale to explore this topic further.
17:40: Keynote | Rajiv Jhangiani
The final keynote speaker began with an impassioned advocacy for openness and why he was drawn to it as a concept – because of the limitless and unknown opportunities for future collaborations. However, Rajiv also posed many difficult questions on the limitations of openness. Consider consent, for example. On Our Backs was a queer, feminist magazine published between 1984 and 2006, which gained some notoriety in 2015/16 when the copyright owner digitised and openly released the entire archive online. Could the writers and models who participated in a niche 80s magazine with a limited audience have given any meaningful consent to their work being available to literally the entire world? Without autonomy, you don’t have any choice in making things open or closed. The archive has since been removed. (Sixth image in my gallery, a quote from a model who was featured in On Our Backs after learning that her photos were now online.)
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.
Rather than typing notes and taking screenshots throughout the conference and typing up something polished over the next few days (possibly weeks…), I’m going to try live blogging it! This is a very last minute thought I’ve had and it may be terrible. And / or deleted.
Welcome and Orientation
Love the conference programme being styled as a TV guide. Are there going to be people at this conference who don’t get this reference?
Opening Plenary: Joy and Care in Open Education in Times of Pandemic
What has brought me joy over the past year? I have better connections with my team. We have a morning catch-up call at 9:30 to plan the day ahead, and a more informal ‘banter’ meeting at 4 to have all of the office chat that we would be missing out on throughout the day. This culture is going to have to be something we work to keep when we return to campus.
Catherine Stihler taking an early lead in my ‘home office of the conference’ award.
“Technical issues have an emotional impact on people” – Nicholas
Discussing the pros / cons of synchronous and asynchronous teaching – Tutalenui made some great points about how the ability to work asynchronously is a privilege. That there are some people for whom home working / learning has thrust upon them unexpected caring responsibilities. I’m very conscious of this on our student body. With regards to previous comments I’ve made about my team, I recognise the privilege that most of us have in that we don’t have young children / caring responsibilities, which is part of the reason why it has worked well for us.
That there are academics who want to do live Zoom sessions for 3 hours is indeed a problem. It is “adapting” teaching for the pandemic in the worst possible way. My vote is strongly for asynchronous, but it does take time to adapt teaching materials for the new approach. My own sessions have – and I hope my students would agree with this! – considerably improved since the beginning of the pandemic.
Open Reading with Your Eyes Shut: Demystifying Foo-Foo the Snoo
In total and complete honestly, I have chosen this strand because that title haunts me. From Mark Brown at DCU, asking the question of how we keep current with research in our fields. Identifies a problem of ‘drowning in open resources and journals’. Publishes a top 10 list of articles as ranked by his team. Strong focus on open access journals, but commented about the problem of many articles still being behind closed-doors / paywalls. Some authors are responding by publishing their pre-published drafts in open journals. Cautioned wariness of sticking with known / favourite resources as this could result in missing good things.
Contemporary Art and Open Learning
Neil Mulholland discussing the problem of teaching contemporary arts during the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic there were very few distance / online learning communities for artists – the field was over-reliant on the studio as a means of socialisation. Responded by creating a new OER collating relevant peer reviewed resources.
Update: Nope!
It is just about 12 noon and I’m calling it on the ‘live blog’ thing! Great idea Sonya, but too much work. Instead of concentrating on the content of the sessions, I’m worrying about formatting issues on this post. Will revert to my classic frantic scribbling of notes which I’ll turn into a couple of posts over the following few days.
