I’m back from Australia.
It’s always helpful to be together as a community in person. So special to be together exploring and thinking about open education in such a concentrated way.
And I like taking a bit of time to assimilate what took place.
In Brisbane I had the good fortune to lead a group of people in-person through the four Reimagining Open At The Crossroads activities. In the process I shared the contributions made online in advance of the conference from here, in this Interaction Zone, as well as engaging everyone in generating their own responses to the four activities.
The first activity, Reimagining Open Through Music, served as great context setting for the overall idea. I brought a bluetooth speaker with me and used it to play a subset of contributed songs live at the venue. Music is great for establishing rapport and connection. Participants were then invited to name songs that have personal open meaning to themselves. In addition to Rage Against the Machine which @RobertFarrow has already posted to this forum suggested songs included:
For activity two participants were invited to work with others seated next to them to come up with What if’s? and … Then’s. Here is a sample of some of the What if’s? that emerged:
- What if open practices were woven throughout all our teachings from K to gray?
- What if sharing and open were tied to becoming a tenure professor?
- What if publishing something openly was actually respected as much as publishing traditionally?
- What if there was time for faculty to create locally relevant materials for students?
- What if higher education institutions actually knew about open education and actually tried to enable it to happen?
- What if there were Teachers Without Borders and participating academics received credit, recognition and reverence academically for participating in it?
- What if all OER could be available in any language?
- What if universities could be embedded in communities?
- What if it wasn’t profitable to be a commercial publisher?
In addition to What if’s? some exploration of the Then followed. For example one What if? imagined copyright never existed. Which led to “Then we wouldn’t have to teach our children that sharing is wrong.”
The hard part of imagining these What if’s? is the how part. How would we get rid of copyright? But this activity is freed from how. Sometimes just imagining What if’s is itself a really big step.
The majority of time was given to activity four involving the drawing of personal pathways identifying areas of open reimagined that participants want to explore and the connection of these to their main work as tributaries feeding into the Brisbane River. Here is a sample of the verbal sharing of pathways at the end of the session:
“Situating the river in a big cycle. Thinking about it as a water cycle and what makes it animate. Coming out into the ocean is the “commons”, the warmth of imagination and respect shines down on it, and it raises inspiration in the commons which gathers in clouds of gritty persistence and resilience, raining down. Springs of surprise feed the start of the river.”
“Seeing the main river as the open education policy river flowing into the bay of open practices and futures. The river flows through various locations much like towns and cities on a real river such as widening participation, digital accessibility, OER, student partnerships, EDI, universal and local learning design and co-design, open courses, micro-learning, communities of practice, collaborative pedagogic knowledge making. Other tributaries increase the flow making the river happen such as a support structures and infrastructure stream, reward and recognition river, capacity building creek, and research river.”
“Imagining a vibrant and connected ecosystem, and thinking about all the different organizations and people working in different places and how we come together and share, including teachers librarians, faculty, leaders and systems. How we are all connecting and learning together and moving forward in a coordinated way.”
And many more. Special thanks to @RobertFarrow and @cogdog for sharing their river pathways and connections here in this forum.
If you’d like to hear more an audio recording of the entire session can be found here.
I’d like to thank everyone for humouring me and participating in these activities. I’m really pleased with what emerged. Special thanks to @catherinecronin and @czernie for giving me the freedom to imagine their call to action in the form of these activities. I also express appreciation to OEGlobal, and @cogdog in particular for giving me a forum for these activities.
Open education has been around for a number of years now and for all those years it’s kind of been about the same things OER, open textbooks, and open practices, but at this juncture I think there is an opportunity for open to go beyond those things. Big thanks to all for the open minds and imaginative takes on what the future of open entails.