GO-GN
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One last job…
Next week I head to Cork for OER24. While I may get invited to conferences once I leave the OU, this could well be my last one, and will definitely be my final one as GO-GN director and OU employee. That’s right, before I head off into the sunset, I’m going to do One Last Job, what could go wrong? In the manner of all One Last Jobs, a crack team has been assembled to pull it off. We have the GO-GN squad, running a workshop the day before the conference for a small team of explosive experts OER Researchers. As I’ve probably mentioned before, working on the GO-GN project…
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Meticulous informality of GO-GN
A few years ago, I used the term ‘meticulous informality‘ to describe what I liked about the ALT conferences. Maren has blogged how it’s a term we’ve discussed since occasionally on dog walks. Both parts of the term are equally important for participants in an event: informality encourages participation and suggests equality; meticulous means care and support. One without the other is not sufficient – just meticulous can be stuffy and hierarchical, and solely informal can be chaotic and confusing. Without it being an explicit intention, it captures our approach to GO-GN also. Having just hosted the largest GO-GN workshop in Edmonton, I know how much time and care goes…
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October round up
Hosting a two day GO-GN workshop in Edmonton followed by the OEGlobal conference was the main activity of this month. This was the first conference post pandemic for many people, and it was good to reacquaint myself with many of the global contingent. It was also a tad wistful as it’s likely to be my last OEGlobal and possibly last international conference. So, I was potentially seeing a lot of people for the last time potentially. I got to go out on a social high note though with a trip to see the Edmonton Oilers play with these good people: While we’re talking about OER conferences, the OER24 call for…
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July round-up
My “doing it for the newsletter” monthly round-up of activity and random bits for July. It’s been a bit of a disjointed month, because after returning from the Eden conference in Dublin at the end of June, both Maren and I came down with covid (no-one else from the conference seems to have been inflicted so probably an airport/plane thing). It was as rough as the first time around, a reminder that it’s still there and still carries a punch. I made sure to take time off work this time around though – last time I soldiered on attending Teams meetings and I think that meant it lingered around longer…
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10 PhD Viva tips from an examiner
I did a mock viva for someone recently, and I shared lots of my views on a successful viva based ion examining around 50 PhDs over the years, so I thought I’d share them here. This relates to the UK viva system, which is usually an open-ended defence, with two examiners discussing the thesis with the candidate. Things vary quite differently elsewhere. These are obviously just my views, and I’m generally a ‘nice’ examiner, I want people to enjoy the experience and to pass. Most examiners I’ve met are the same, but one does hear the occasional horror story. So here’s my top ten tips: Just my experience of course,…
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OER22 – the GOGN penguins cometh
In case you’ve missed it, OER22 is back with a mix of face to face, online live and asynchronous online this year. Everyone’s favourite conference (yes it is), is co-chaired by our lovely GO-GN team of Rob Farrow, Beck Pitt, Paco Iniesto, Kylie Matthews and me (although I’ve been firmly in the slacker category over the past month). The papers are in, the reviews have been done and the decisions sent out. It’s going to a great event, so I’d encourage you all to register. The themes are: Theme 1 – Pedagogy in a time of crisis: what does an ‘open’ response look like? How has the word of open education…
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Putting the Meh in MOOCs
First up, exciting news! GO-GN have published their annual research review. Led once again by Rob Farrow, this contains reviews of a number of papers in the open education space. It’s not intended to be an exhaustive literature analysis, but rather a selection of articles that we think cover some of the main areas. They are reviewed by members of the network and it’s an excellent example of the many hands makes light work principle of co-production. It’s worth a read all the way through for anyone interested in OER or OEP. For the review I took on three MOOC papers. Individually they were all fine papers, and well written…
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GO-GN conceptual framework
Last year the GO-GN network, under the careful stewardship of Rob Farrow, created a Methodology Handbook. It provided guidance on the function of research methodology in a PhD, and different perspectives on what constitutes a methodology. Members of the network then contributed the methods they had used in their own doctoral studies to provide a rich handbook that was useful to anyone doing OER research, but also more widely. It was big success and has been downloaded over 10,000 times. We had always planned to do a companion piece, which was the Conceptual Framework guide. This was once again led by Rob, with input from the GO-GN members, and accompanied…
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25 Years of OU: 2015 – GO-GN
I mentioned that the OER Hub was probably the defining research grant of my career, but GO-GN is probably my favourite. It is also the most fortunate to have come my way. It was set up by Fred Mulder from the OU Netherlands. Fred, who sadly passed away in 2018, was an absolute force when it came to pursuing funding for things he deemed good ideas. He had the belief that OER field would benefit from research, but as the field was in its infancy the research community needed support to grow. By establishing a global network of doctoral researchers the reach and impact of OER could be increased. He…
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Collaborative reports, with penguins
When the GO-GN project was founded, it’s initial aim was to help grow a community of researchers in OER. Over the years it has evolved that somewhat, as the community has developed. We now have a good number of researchers and alumni, so as well as continuing to support Doctoral researchers, we wanted to utilise this pool of great people to produce outputs for the OER/OEP community as a whole. The first idea we had around this came from listening to the various presentations from members and looking at the responses to our survey, where we asked what methodology people were using in their research. The answer to this was…
