Presentation
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Honorarium etiquette
via GIPHY During the online pivot I have been asked to give a few keynotes, talks, workshops, etc. I usually say yes if a) I can do it without much preparation (the day job is kinda busy), b) I don’t have too much else on that day c) it seems like a helpful event. I don’t need the money from these gigs as I have a full time job, so I often don’t ask. I’ve mentioned before that I need to get used to making the ask though, and this is not really for me, but rather for people who do need to get paid for these gigs. I shouldn’t…
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Making the ask
via GIPHY I’m quite a reserved person and I also like to be helpful, so when people ask me to give a keynote or a talk, I usually say yes, particularly online. Also, when you’re from a not particularly privileged background you tend to be grateful for stuff rather than demanding. I still expect someone to tell me they’ve made a mistake in appointing me professor, and in fact I should be working in a supermarket (no disrespect to supermarket workers, I was one for years). All of this means that I tend not to ask for anything. If I can do the talk, then I’ll do it. But since…
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Open ed as the anti-disruption
I keynoted at the Research and Innovation in Distance Education Conference , which has the theme “Examining Disruptive Innovations in Distance Education”. I didn’t actually attend in the end, because I had a (completely normal for this time of year) cough, and didn’t want people panicking if I had a coughing fit on stage. My apologies to anyone who was hoping to see me there (I know, it’d be a select group) and thanks to the organisers for letting me give my keynote remotely. Now, you’ll know that disruption is not my thing. Initially I was asked to talk about how open ed (in different forms) may be disrupting higher…
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Questions about openness – the audience decides!
During my inaugural I made extensive use of PollEverywhere, in order to make it more interactive and gain feedback (I also had a sore throat so these parts gave me a chance to swig water, but let’s go with the pedagogic justification). Following on from the previous post detailing the theme of the inaugural, here are the responses to the questions, and some musings on what they mean. First of all, lots of lovely people came in from across the globe (disc if you’re a flat-earther) which in a way, demonstrated the point I was making about exploring openness. These were often people I have met via blogs, social media,…
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A journey through open education
On the 19th Feb I gave my inaugural lecture (rather belatedly, having become a Prof about 15 years ago), as part of the Open University’s 50th anniversary celebrations. Given the delay it was something of a mix between an inaugural and a valedictory, as I chose to trace the changing nature of open education through the personal narrative of my own involvement in projects at the OU. My pitch was that up until the 90s, ‘open education’ roughly equated to the open university model – there were some variations, but it was largely focused on access to higher education. The advent of the internet, and wide spread popularity of the…
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Inaugural lecture klaxon!
Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the Open University and as part of the celebrations they have organised a series of inaugural lectures. I am honoured to be one of those selected to give one of these, on the 19th Feb, 18.00-19.00 GMT. If people want to attend in person (and after all, what better way to spend a Tuesday evening) there is an Eventbrite page (only sign up there if you’re definitely coming to the face to face event, no need to register for online). They’ll provide a live stream link nearer the time also and it will be on the OU Facebook live page. It’s actually about…
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It’s all about me
(This is a picture of a fish. I don’t know why it’s here either) Like many of you, I get asked to do bits of ‘scholarship on the side” – webinars, interviews, podcasts etc. These seem to have come in a burst recently, after not much in the preceding six months. Some of them are parts of interesting series, so partly because you may find these interesting, and also as a means of collecting them for my own purposes, here is a list of recent ‘other stuff’: Open Education: What Now? – This was a webinar for part of European Distance Learning Week, along with Catherine Cronin. Although we didn’t…
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Social media and the academic (through the medium of dog pictures)
Photo by Don Agnello on Unsplash I’m giving a presentation to OU staff on the use of social media. This was part of a broader social media training day, and they were interested in the potential impact of using social media. I chose to present it as a series of hypotheses. For many of these there is some evidence, but for a lot it is either very indirect, or we haven’t really gathered it yet. And just for the sake of it, I limited myself to only using pictures of dogs in the slidedeck. Because dogs. The hypotheses (some are more just statements if I’m honest), were as follows: Soc Med increases student…
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The role of policy in open ed
I was invited to give a talk at the Dept of Business Information and Skills for a meeting organised by ALT, on the role of policy in open education. I looked at OER policies at the institutional, regional and national level and open access policies. I argued that open policies are a good example of how policy can influence practice, and also some of the issues. But the same applies to other areas you might want to consider. The Open Flip I argued will be significant, and policy offers us a means of reallocating resources and encouraging new models, such as Open Library Humanities. Putting these slides together was a…
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The new or reused keynote dilemma
James Clay wrote a post about ‘the half life of a keynote‘ recently in which he pondered how long you should keep giving the same talk for. I know people who always create a new talk, and people who give the same one for almost their entire careers. This year I decided I would create new talks for every keynote, so it’s something I’ve been thinking about. I think the initial reaction is that creating new talks is better. But now I’m through my new talk phase, I’m less convinced. To add to James’s conversation then, here are my pros and cons. The advantages of giving the same talk multiple…
