My personal highlight after participating in four sessions, today: a recognition that, though affordability remains relevant and important (especially when considering a large diversity of learners), the movement as a whole is about shifts in the ways we learn and teach, more broadly.
In fact, during the Open Symposium panel on “ZTC” and “ZedCred” (Zero Textbook Cost and Zero-Cost Credits), @brsmith brought up the point of re-engaging with pedagogy.
There’s also a mix of hopefulness and vigilance, among participants in these #OEWeek activities.
For a session in French, this morning, I had prepared a list of trends that I perceive in Canada’s involvement in the OE movement. Might as well share a loose translation here, though it’s less specifically about today.
Trends
- From cost-free OERs to “epistemic flexibility” (with reference to the Open Science recommendation)
- Student governance: student bodies getting involved from the ground up
- Sustainable development (including renewable assignments)
- Granularity (from H5P modules to “The Great Unbundling”) and microcertificates (including badges)
- Professionnalisation and recognition (OER librarians, faculty tenure from OE work…)
- Collaborative writing (including among OE experts)
- Equity as an ethical side of pedagogical work, occasionally with reference to “what counts as knowledge worth learning and teaching?”
- Linguistic diversity as a benefit instead of an obstacle
- Bookstores as potential allies
- University presses: their role in both OA and OE
- Colleges as different from other parts of Higher Ed
- Collaboration across learning contexts (from kindergarten to post-doc and from community-based learning to corporate training)
- Annotations as a gateway to Open Pedagogy
Still missing, I find: a thorough discussion of “pedagogical efficacy” as a counterpoint to those discussions of “quality” which are focused on publishers.
(Sure, many discussions of quality have little to do with publishers. Just mean that there’s an embedded comparison with the publishing process, sometimes with explicit connections to what counts as a “book”).
Of course, this is just what I notice, as a fieldworker. If I’m off the mark, it means I’ll learn something.