oer
-
Openness isn’t just about product
David Wiley has been something of a mischievous imp recently, arguing that Open Education will become generative AI education. What I’ve always admired about David is his focus on pragmatism. This provides a valid and consistent lens (although not the only one) through which to engage with technology – essentially the overarching question is “is it useful for learners?” David argues that if we accept: I haven’t seen David’s actual talk yet as it wasn’t uploaded at the time of writing, so maybe he addresses some of what I say below [UPDATE – oh yes it is upoaded at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5brjbA6Yww4]. From a purely practical perspective, he is right. Regardless of…
-
An OER24 transmission
I mentioned my visit to Cork to pull off One Last Job at OER24, which I am now safely and legally returned from. There I gave a fun presentation with Maren on podcasting and internet radio, and one on the afterlife of my 25 Years of Ed Tech book. The conference was excellent, with thought-provoking, engaging and warm keynotes from Rajiv Jhangiani and the double act of Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin. We had a compact, full GO-GN workshop the day prior to the conference. I like seeing new generations of GO-GN scholars coming through, there were few of the attendees who had been before and it felt like a…
-
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…
-
Spider cats and super peeps
I was at the OER23 conference in Inverness last week, hosted by UHI, so here are some snippets of thought. First up, we hosted a GO-GN one day workshop with 16 attendees. It was great to get back to a fuller session after trialling a smaller one as we emerged from lockdown last year. We used this event toi launch the super-duper mega edition Research Handbook. This combines the Research Methodology guide, the Conceptual Frameworks guide and the Research Reviews, plus other useful openly licensed resources. It is intended as a growing resource so we will add more to it. If you’re doing any research, but particularly related to open…
-
Good online learning – resources
When it comes to online learning one of the real advantages is embedding a range of resources in the environment students are engaged in. This is distinct from the lecturer using some videos in their presentation or providing a range of resources in the reading list. It gives an opportunity to interact with and experience a range of different media, opinions and voices as you are learning. This is not to absent the educator – a course is more than just a bunch of resources. But rather it allows the educator to concentrate on the areas where they add value such as explanation, support, discussion. Since the days of learning…
-
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…
-
No, Mr University, I expect you to die
via GIPHY George Siemens tweeted a link to this report the other day from HolonIQ, about Online Program Managers (OPMs), Online Program Enablers (OPEs), MOOC-as-an-OPM which they’re collectively calling OPX. I think it’s fair to say Brian Lamb wasn’t enamoured of this take. It’s difficult when reading such reports to disentangle one’s own eye-rolling response to language such as “we connected some dots by identifying OPX as a new meta-category. Collectively defining the entire spectrum of tech-enabled services models,” from some of the useful data analysis contained within. Whilst it may seem that the authors love acquisitions and mergers far more than any family members, the uptake of third party digital…
-
The Open Ed identity crisis
I’ve been keeping out of the debate around the OpenEd conference panel (Rajiv has an excellent analysis of it, if you want to catch up), partly because it seemed a very N. American discussion, but also partly because I found it, well, boring. But then I thought about why it bored me, and that was, well, interesting (perhaps). Firstly, to clarify, it wasn’t the objections made very clearly by people such as Billy Meinke-Lau or Michelle Reed that induced my ennui. These are important and valid arguments and I thank them for articulating them. Rather it was that the panel itself, and the ensuant kerfuffle, are symptomatic of a narrowing…
-
Open Unis & Open Ed
Sometimes you read a post that encapsulates something you’ve been worrying at for a while. I had such an experience the other day when I read Tannis Morgan’s account of my own inaugural. In it, Tannis asks “But here’s the thing: how many people in the OER community in North America even know that Canada has three open universities, all of which were modelled after the UK Open University? And to what extent are open universities in Canada visibly inserting themselves into the broader open movement?” The first part of her question is something I have asked more broadly on this blog. Or moaned about anyway, that the open ed…
-
GO-GN, UK OpenTextbooks and OER19
[Repost from the ALT blog] In this post I am going to attempt to weave together three aspects: the UK Open Textbooks Project, the GO-GN network and the evolving nature of the OER conference. This year, we sponsored the OET19 project through the UK Open Textbooks project. This project investigated whether the successful North American model of open textbook adoption would transfer to the UK. We partnered with OpenStax and the Open Textbook Network, who provided different models of textbook adoption. We have a fabulous shiny report on the project coming out next week, so look out for it on the website and twitter. The conclusion, was ‘sorta’. I was…
