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.)