Ph.D. Candidate Researching Open Education and Saying Hello!

Hello OEGlobal Community!

My name is Alex Wanstrath and I’m an Instructional Design and Technology Ph.D. Candidate focusing my dissertation on the lived experience of U.S.-based higher education faculty who create and user Open Educational Resources (OER). I am a former high school social studies teacher who used OER in my classroom, but have since left education for private business where I’m now a Learning and Development Manager.

I am always looking for connections to discuss OER, Open Education Practices (or Pedagogy or OER-Enabled Practices, or whatever phrase to describe using OER in instructional approaches), student impact, and OER & OEP research.

I am actively recruiting for my dissertation and have had the great fortunate of making some amazing connections. If you are interested in my study (participant or for discussion) or would like to discuss the broader subject of OER, please reach out! I can be contacted here or via awanstrath@liberty.edu.

Can’t wait to enjoy more about this community and engage more great people.

Best,
Alex Wanstrath
awanstrath@liberty.edu
Instructional Design and Technology Ph.D. Candidate
Liberty University - School of Education
Creative Commons Certified, June 2021
Global OER-Graduate Network (GO-GN) Member

Hi Alex, and thanks for joining OEG Connect and introducing yourself. I hope others here follow your step as a key benefit of this space is finding other colleagues with overlapping interests.

Much of the community here is based in higher education so I am noticing your high school teaching experience, as we do get questions about the use/benefits/perspective on OER in the primary/secondary sectors.

And finally, I always like to give an extra GO-GN friendly penguin hello to those from that network, I hope maybe you might later share the value of that experience.

And everyone else, I have seen Alex’s call for research interest elsewhere, so please reach out to him or ask him for more details.

Keep Connecting.

Alan-

Thanks for the response! I am really enjoying the various conversations happening throughout the threads I have been able to dive into. If the K-12 arena is of interest to others, I’d be happy to start a thread and discuss more in depth with my experience and those I’ve connected with. I appreciate the friendly penguin hello from a friend in the GO-GN Network - having access to personnel and their output has been a great support!

-Alex