Above, @paulstacey mentions the amazing OEGlobal resource Education For All: Ten Years of Open Education Luminaries from Around the World . It spurred me to check out the OEWeek Asset European Open Education Champions Project, contributed by @Paola for SPARC Europe. And am I glad I did! The project gathered an initial group of thirteen OE Champions from nine European countries, and recruited members of the European Network of Open Education Librarians (ENOEL), to sit down with them for a series of insightful in-depth interviews. For example, this statement about the Open community by @catherinecronin at the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education in Ireland particularly struck home for me: “Working in Open Education, our networks are global. So when you work in one institution, then go to work in another institution or organization elsewhere, your network moves with you. That’s very comforting and satisfying…” It is indeed. Read more about and from these inspiring Open Education practitioners and advocates here.
Super excited because I just added (Liberated Learners – Simple Book Publishing) to OEWeek Assets! This is a for learners, by learners resource that is the result of an amazing collaboration from institutions across Ontario. For those that know it, this project is a twist on the wonderful Ontario Extend: Empowered Educator program, but designed to support learners as they navigate the world of digital education. Terry Greene’s thread explains it all: https://twitter.com/greeneterry/status/1496604005199486985?cxt=HHwWkoC9tbragMUpAAAA
Check it out!
Thanks for adding that Lena, there is so much to appreciate on the Liberated Learners project, both in product but more as process. Terry and the team really extended Ontario Extend.
I stumbled into a very valuable resource that is not (yet) in the collection, this came via the twitter tags:
https://twitter.com/aulibarchives/status/1501600452600860678
This looks invaluable for anyone doing open education research. The Athabasca Librarians provide this open search of 2778 published records by 4675 authors from 974 sources.
The Cloud data includes searchable records of journal articles (eg. papers in periodicals), reports (eg. from government or industry), books or other items in any medium. These items are available either directly from the Cloud repository or by links to their sources. Through the Cloud, Athabasca University Library aims to be a repository for all data related to open educational resources and the source of electronic copies of many references.
The Cloud’s documents will be of enduring value to the OER community of researchers and scholars, industry and government, writers, historians, journalists and informal learners. By providing free access to research initiatives, data and other information on all aspects of open educational resources, the OER Knowledge Cloud enhances research opportunities and access to knowledge, removing barriers, opening up scholarship and making research universally accessible.
The “cloud” provides as well temporal trends of keywords:
I’d be curious if someone who does more research than me can give it a solid review.
My highlight, today, across four activities: many people are ready (eager, in some cases) to collaborate individually across institutional boundaries.
OE’s made of people.
Of course, OE’s all about sharing and collaboration. The shift I perceive is close to “Solution Mode”. The “How Might We…” phase during which we’re discerning some pathways to collaboration.
It’s like letting go of a burden.
“Burden of life” by VinothChandar, CC BY 2.0.
During one of these activities (might have been yesterday), @MelB mentioned a case in which puzzle pieces start falling together because of contacts between individuals. Several comments today (about platforms, recognition, even awareness of licenses and use of metadata) had to do with meaningful action which might not sound like much, in the abstract.
Some of it had to do with “going glocal”, as a global movement embedded locally.
Yesterday, during a Canadian panel, @mdiack was sharing about his MERLOT SkillsCommons H5P project, linking Baton Rouge and Dakar. This morning, @PerrineCoet facilitated a very stimulating session meant for profs in her region. @mariannedube facilitated a workshop which engaged people from different parts of Quebec. @Dominique and Marie D. Martel were able to draw inspiration from one another across Canadian provinces, beyond institutional barriers.
In other words, it now feels like we should inject blood in the interpersonal network which brings us all together.
“20-3 The blood vessels of the upper part of the thigh.” by Knowledge Collector is marked with CC PDM 1.0.
My Day 3 started early. I frequently have 7am meetings, but today I got up extra early for a 5am OEG Voices podcast with OE Award Winners Gino Fransman @GinoFransman and Werner Westermann @wernerio. I was so glad I did.
Werner is from Chile and Gino from South Africa so the open education stories they shared are of the global south an essential complement to more prevalent global north stories. They spoke from the heart and direct experience. I found their remarks on open education profound and well said. They spoke frankly, including how difficult it can be and what keeps them going.
Throughout my OEWeek Day 3 I’ve been reflecting on two insights I walked away with from this podcast.
The first insight I’ve been thinking about is that open education is best understood through a process of doing. Advocacy and awareness raising are worthy but easily get bogged down in definitions of terms or legal implications of different open licenses. Sure terminology and open licenses are important but they aren’t the things that motivate people or generate interest.
For me this resonated with conversations we’ve been having at OEGlobal around how “openness” is a way of being. A verb not a noun.
A second insight is that open education entails being part of a global community, something largely absent in traditional education settings. Open education opens up the world. Connects us to other parts of the world. Forges global relationships with others similarly engaged. Engages an international community in a shared common purpose.
Thank you @GinoFransman and @wernerio for framing my OEWeek Day 3 experience in this way and giving me so much to think about. I see those insights manifesting in your work and the events and assets being shared by the global open education community this week.
Yes!
Resonates well with some things that panelists Josie Gray and @ecarlisle were saying during the Middle of the Road session during the Open Symposium. Including the importance of not forcing openness on others.
Any insight on how we might relay that notion through other parts of the movement?
I shall refrain of following my brain’s neural associative trail form “OE’s made of People” to the closing scenes from Soylent Green 
Thanks for these updates, Alex. I hope it inspires more sharing. Each time I look at the events listing I feel that struggle to pick one session to attend.
It really feels like a decentralized conference, this year. It’s almost getting to the point where having the equivalent of Sched would make sense. With calendar invitations.
As for sharing, my hope is to do a kind of debrief with some participants… and report back, here.
At conferences, whether online or not, I have enjoyed a counter-intuitive strategy…
Rather than browsing for sessions of interest, I pick one that seems far from anything I know about. I have found there is always something I can learn from a topic I know nothing about (this worked in my undergraduate education too, hence as a science major taking an elective in Art History, which turned out to be one the best courses I had).
Yesterday I was browsing and saw Post COVID Classroom Management - why and what shall be done differently to be able to manage kids again. I mis-read the language, I thought I was entering a session in Spanish-- yes sometimes I watch sessions in languages I don’t speak, but the presenter was speaking in English.
Also, I am not involved in elementary education, but am interested in the longer term implications on the upheaval of education over the last 2 years-- what happens in 10, 12 years when the elementary students enter higher education?
The other thing was when I got to the room, I was one of two attendees. Now we may always want a good sized audience.
Yet.
At one of my first conferences in the 1990s I walked into a room, and found I was the only attendee! The presenter seemed hesitant to present, but I wanted to listen. So rather than do a formal presentation, we had more of a conversation.
Years later, I wish more presentations were like this. When I am seeing screens of slides being narrated, it feels like this is all stuff I could read/watch on my own.
So in this OEweek session hosted by Oldiko Gyori, she was sharing parenting strategies aimed at addressing student behavior in/after the pandemic shutdowns (available from her web site, which is in Hungarian but Google translates as “Coaching Based Tools in Parenting”).
What was valuable is the other audience participant was an elementary teacher (I forget where she was based, but that does not matter), but it was obvious this conversation and topic were extremely relevant.
There was helpful classroom tools and strategies shared. Yet it reinforces my awareness/worry about how little we know about what the long term impact of the pandemic will be on us as a society.
But my takeaway is that we know the learning is not a knowledge transfer process (filling buckets with content), I think we need to factor that more into our conference activities- we seem still very presentation (aka content) focused. I find the conversational, discussion approach is more valuable… but that is for me.
@enkerli Alex, if we want to shift from open education to opening education then we need to rethink how we introduce people to the field. If the focus is orienting a teacher or faculty member coming into open education work and wanting to understand OER I think of it as progressive steps such as:
Step 1 Show Me
Faculty and teachers want to see an open education resource pertinent to their field. They want to assess for themselves relevance, quality, and fit.
Step 2 Try It
Once something of interest is found, try using it. Try it out. Assess for yourself what it is like. See what students think about it.
Step 3 Revise / Remix It
Inevitably the use of open education leads to an interest in customizing it, modifying it to specific teaching and learning needs or a local context.
Step 4 Author Your Own
Success in the first three steps often leads to an interest in authoring your own open education resources. Do it and experience first hand what is involved. Use it.
Step 5 Share and Collaborate with Others
Share your resource with others in the same field. Collaborate with them on improving and curating your resource and a collection of other resources the group have found useful.
Step 6 Go from Local to Global
Explore the relevance and interest in the OER you have authored or are using in a global context. Add and improve your open education practice by bringing in other perspectives and resources from around the world. Connect with peers outside your institution, country or region and engage in knowledge exchange sharing open education practices and learnings.
Step 7 Diversify
Having started with open education resources diversify your open education practices to embrace other elements of open - open pedagogy, open science, open tools, etc.
Step 8 Advocacy, Mentoring, Guiding
Having built your own open education prowess help others develop similar expertise.
These steps are just off the top of my head but my point is that entry to open education should focus less on licenses and concepts and more on doing. Once engaged in doing the relevance of things like licenses and concepts becomes more evident. Learning by doing is best not only as a point of entry but as a means of further progression.
@Enkerli Alex, I’m really heartened by your remarks grounding open education in people and the readiness for collaboration. I’d love to hear ideas from everyone around “How might we collaborate”.
Wow. Read this when you posted it… and it remained with me since.
As with any “open recipe”, there’s both deep insight as-is… and an opportunity for a remix.
For instance, there might be some feedback loops around some of these steps.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
As Design Thinking becomes even more fashionable in our movement, it’s increasingly common to apply the Double Diamond to Learning Experience Design. Since we’re all learners, that LXD aspect fits in the work we do as colleagues.
Another adaptation I might try is to shift from OER to an open learning pathway as an entry point. It can get tricky when part of the process is to decide on milestones and destinations through co-design. So it’s an interesting challenge. Given our history of Open Pedagogy since the late 1960s, I’ve been trying to link back to educators in Quebec who were active at the time. Also a challenge.
Further to adaptations: shifting learning contexts. Most of us work in either Higher Education or in primary/secondary education (K-12 in the US and parts of Canada). Yet there’s a lot of OE which can happen through community groups or even large organizations. The work done by the public servants behind GCshare and CSPS Open Learning inspires me. In this case, the steps are very similar. The main difference is in how the work is structured and who’s allowed to experiment. For instance, the Open Government Partnership also involves a move from Global to Local. (All of these are part of our glocalization models.)
These potential adaptations really are in the spirit of remixing. Could make for some useful job aids. Assuming these posts allow for adaptations. 
Speaking of licenses…
I fully agree with your concluding remark and was glad to hear similar echoes from @GinoFransman & @wernerio through OEG Voices 32: An OEweek Conversation with Gino Fransman and Werner Westermann. Let’s focus on the doing. Including those “random hacks of OEness” which have outsized impact from low effort, right?
Reminds me of unconferences. They might have become less trendy, after becoming as elaborate as most formal conferences. Yet there’s something of this approach which remains fully relevant. Conference sessions need not be a numbers game. (Apart from some line items for accountability.)
Without going “too meta”, there’s something interesting about trends in conferences. Including events which aren’t framed as conferences.
As noted in another thread, much of OE Week felt like a decentralized conference, including a form of hallway chat.
Some of the most impactful moments come from having informal conversations with diverse people (likeminded or not) who participate in a session with this type of openness. Or with people who want to hear about a session after the fact.
Between now and Nantes, many interactions are likely to contribute to the OE movement while happening “under the radar”.
WOW!!! This is a great step-by-step to inducting new faculty to OER. Maybe look for some way to loop back, so this can be a continuous or permanent process. I always look up to this “optimal” open process: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/An-optimal-Open-Education-cycle-Hodgkinson-Williams-et-al-2017-p-32-Image-CC-BY_fig1_332468165
I always thought that “raising awareness” was so floppy as an objective, without any clear outcome and normally reduced to a snapshot.
Hello @Enkerli regards from Chile, let me follow up on your interesting reply.
First, let me agree with you, that focus on doing OER can help you explore and practice OEness (like that acronym!!) as a way to innovate in the learning and teaching process, basically with student/learner-centered pedagogies.
Second, after the venue with @GinoFransman wondered on something that’s been on the scope for years now, and how we can take larger steps, how can we scale and mainstream the adoption and impact of Open Education. Because I have the sense that a focus on doing OER can better introduce you to these practices, but normally reduced to the personal experience and agency, normally disconnected to peers and specific contexts. I think this is so much more common in K-12 as the professional development approach is so much different and scarce than Higher Ed faculty. Are we condemned to another forced trade-off?
I think we can learn a lot and “remix” from the Open Government Partnership OGP. In a decade, more than 100 countries around the world are creating national action plans co-constructed by public institutions, the academy (HEd) and civil society, thanks to an open framework. It took a precise problem definition (democracy at risk, need to re-engage citizenship, etc.) and three domains of the solution (participation, transparency and accountability) catalyzed by ICTs potential. Today is an incredible hub of innovation share globally and grounded locally that has reshaped to relation between the public sphere and citizens.
Why not think about a similar partnership framework to promote “OEness” to K-12 education, where you have tremendous post-Covid challenges, very much centralized and connected actors, where you can co-construct answers built on innovative learning and teaching, sharing and inspring best practices from local to global, and viceversa.
Any thoughts on how to focus on doing to introduce and embrace open, but in scale or mainstreaming?? Thanks and hugs to @cogdog and @paulstacey.
By the way, Chile celebrated 10 years of OGP with a publication a couple of months ago: https://www.ogp.gob.cl/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Libro-Voces-de-Gobierno-Abierto-en-Chile.pdf
In page 76, there’s an article of mine (in spanish though!!!) discussing the role of OGP in civic education and how open, OER in specific, has and can contribute to OGP action plans and how to educate “open” citizens to be active civil agents. Best wishes!!
Indeed!
In fact, when we created a “Massively Open and Nimble Online Collaborative Learning Experience” on Public Engagement (Learn4PE, as I called it), the OGP is what was driving us. At the time, Canada was OGP co-chair. Laura Wesley, our team’s Executive Director, worked through the Multi-Stakeholder Forum for OGP (alongside people like Jean-Noé Landry, then at Open North, now at the Obama Foundation. Lots happening in the Government of Canada (GC), around that time.
It was the first MOOC-like experience within the GC… where Stephen Downes works.
Nowadays, the OGP connections might sound less obvious. Still, there’s OEness in the GC, as was obvious during LearnX. Two useful examples (that I’ve shared previously; thanks Discourse for the warning):
- Share – GCshare – Public Service Open Educational Resource Library (ecampusontario.ca)
- CSPS Open Learning (learn-apprendre.ca)
So, @wernerio, you might be the person I need to ask… Are you aware of other initiatives by governments and public servants to share OERs? When “dOErs” talk about govvies involved in OE, it’s mostly about policy or funding for educational programs. Yet public servants get involved in other aspects of learning.
Anyhoo…
Another theme on which your insight would be appreciated!
Been on a trail, for the past year, about the links between 21st Century OE and Open Pedagogy movements from the mid-to-late 20th Century. It was really impactful in Quebec.
https://twitter.com/enkerli/status/1453385487520079878?s=20&t=ePYAO8etluP5G3PzWywdHA
(Alt-text: book covers from Éditions NHP, 1976-1986, focused on Open Pedagogy.
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Paquette, Claude (1976) Vers une pratique de la pédagogie ouverte
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Brouillet, Yves (1977) Plans d’études et pédagogie ouverte
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Paré, André (1977) Créativité et pédagogie ouverte (volumes I–III)
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Lortie Paquette, Michelyne et Claude Paquette (1980) Grille d’analyse réflexive pour cheminer en pédagogie ouverte
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Paquette, Claude et al. (1980) Évaluation et pédagogie ouverte
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Paquette, Claude (1985) Pédagogie ouverte et autodéveloppement
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Gauthier, Clermont (1986) Une éducation juste ou juste une éducation ? : critique des courants pédagogiques contemporains
My photo, CC0 Public Domain Dedication.)
We’ve all gone to school in such a learner-centred system and there have been multiple attempts at reforming education, most revolving around learners’ needs (though a move towards ungrading was thwarted, 20 years ago).
To this day, Quebec learners have tuition-free access to high quality education (including a large part of post-secondary education). Which leads to student strikes (including yesterday and ten years ago) about university tuition.
Yet, somehow, we’ve mostly moved away from the whole pedagogical trend towards openness. Sure, we’ve been creating OERs for a while (contrary to some claims). And Open Research has been lively for a long time. Not to mention all sorts of community-led initiatives to help people learn. (My favourite is University of the Streets Café (concordia.ca))
Yet approaches to school-based learning have become much more focused on teaching, especially in post-secondary education.
I hear a number of people talk about “The Global South” as though such models were completely absent. “Oh, you know, in those ‘countries’, the ‘sage on the stage’ model is the norm. Very hierarchical. What we do in the North is completely foreign.”
What puzzles me, though, is that I also hear about the impact people like Freire, Illich, and Abreu have had in parts of the World which are generally considered to be part of “The Global South”.
So, my questions would be:
- What inspiration can we draw from those earlier parts of the history of Open Pedagogy?
- What made “us” shift away from those modes of learning, worldwide?
Thanks a lot for the insight!
(As usual, apologies for length.)