Reimagining Open at the Crossroads Introduction

OE Global 2024 Interaction Zone
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Photo showing pathway in a garden leading under an arch and branching.
Photo showing pathway in a garden leading under an arch and branching.486×648 220 KB

Garden Crossroads by Paul Stacey CC BY-SA

Hi, I’m @paulstacey (Paul Stacey). I submitted a wildcard proposal for the OEGlobal 2024 conference called Reimagining Open at the Crossroads which, to my great delight, was accepted.

My proposal activities aim to carry forward the work of @catherinecronin and Laura Czerniewicz who gave a joint keynote entitled “The Future isn’t what it used to be: Open Education at a Crossroads” at the March ALT OER 2024 conference in Ireland. Their keynote situated open education at a crossroads in a polycrisis world and issued a call for the open education community to take action to move forward from that crossroads. It’s a bit unusual to carry forward a call to action from one conference to another and I gratefully acknowledge Catherine and Laura’s permission and encouragement for me to do so.

Carrying this call to action forward builds on the indigenous concept of “braiding” introduced at the 2023 OEGlobal Conference in Edmonton Canada. In many local Indigenous cultures, particularly First Nations, braiding is a significant cultural practice with symbolic meaning, including the feeling of connectedness to the “creator, their ancestors, and the land”. At the 2023 OEGlobal conference, braiding was used to connect together different tracks and sessions and to capture this spirit of connection and belief in a better future for all through the power of open education.

My Reimagining Open at the Crossroads activities seek to connect and braid the keynote Catherine and Laura gave at the ALT OER 2024 conference in Ireland to the OEGlobal 2024 conference in Brisbane. I’m super pleased to see this concept being carried forward more broadly as described in Braiding Again at OEGlobal 2024.

Catherine and Laura’s call to action has a five part framework:

  1. Name & Analyse - troubles of Open Education

  2. Challenge & Resist - hegemonies

  3. Make Claims - for just, humane & globally sustainable Open Education

  4. Courageously Imagine - & share fresh possibilities

  5. Make Positive Changes - here and now

For more on each of these five parts I encourage you to read their excellent essay.

One of the things I especially like about their call to action is the encouragement to generate and share ideas using alternative genres like storytelling, poetry and artwork. My wildcard proposal involves a series of asynchronous activities using alternative genres.

All Reimagining Open at the Crossroads activities are scheduled to take place online here in OEGlobal 2024 Connect leading up to and during the OEGlobal 2024 conference. Everyone is welcome to participate in these activities whether you are attending the OEGlobal 2024 conference or not.

The Reimagining Open at the Crossroads schedule of activities is:

  • Activity 1: Reimagining Open at the Crossroads Through Music, online launch date October 14, 2024. Open for your participation here.
  • Activity 2: What if?, online launch date October 21, 2024. Open for your participation here.
  • Activity 3: Make Claims, online launch date October 28, 2024.
  • Activity 4: Pathways and Connections, online launch date November 4, 2024. In person version will take place at the OEGlobal 2024 conference in Brisbane, Australia on Wednesday, November 13th from 11:00am-12:00pm.
  • Activity 5: Pathway Sharing. Online and in-person pathway outputs from activity 4 are invited to be posted here in OEGlobal 2024 Connect. Making pathways visible makes it possible to connect with others who are following the same path, both those in person attending the conference and those participating virtually. Connections can be made simply by replying to a shared pathway, providing a link to your pathway, and identifying points of mutual interest.

I hope you join in on these activities and braid your reimagining open experiences, insights and aspirations with others.

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Thanks Paul for opening up this path of participating in OEGlobal 2024, given that the theme of open being “Everybody’s Business” we hope here and in other places to enable modes of participation for everyone, whether they are in Brisbane or not.

I hope many here join Paul in his call for participation, and also applauding his embracing braiding as a he is doing here to bring together activities from multiple conferences and places on the web, and also to offer a way for people to approach this through multiple forms of expression.

For more strands to the braiding @catherinecronin and Laura last week offered an “Open Education at the Crossroads” session at Open Education 2024, where not only is a recording available, but also the collaborative document highly edited during the session (and still open) that might also be some fodder for doing this imaginative work.

Thanks again Paul, for providing this means to contribute to your workshop in Brisbane and feed the wider conversations happening around the Crossroads.

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@cogdog Thanks for your encouragement and I especially appreciate you sharing Catherine and Laura’s interactive session at the recent Open Education Conference 2024. The collaborative document which participants edited contains some very thought provoking comments and ideas for moving forward from the crossroads. I joined others expressing interest in working with Catherine and Laura to take crossroad ideas forward by adding my contact info to the end of that document.

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A little late to this party, but finally here :slight_smile: Thanks so much @paulstacey for keeping the flame of this ‘Open at the Crossroads’ conversation going – and adding your own creative sparks. And thank you @cogdog for linking to the rich responses gathered at our recent OpenEd24 workshop (more on that, soon!). I’ll happy to respond to your invitations here, Paul… will explore your follow-on posts now.

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@catherinecronin Thanks for joining the party!
Great to have you with us here in this Open at the Crossroads conversation.

I’m enjoying seeing responses to activities so far.
Lots of creative sparks fanning the flame of open.

More to come.

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Braiding in (as they say) more context from @paulstacey in his blog post on these activities.

What might you weave in as a connective braid?