[Music] today we are excited to have with us dr catherine cronin dr cronin is strategic education developer at ireland's national forum for the enhancement of teaching and learning in higher education where she is living her dream advocating for supporting and pushing the boundaries of digital and open education her mandate at the national forum is to work collaboratively with faculty and students across the higher education sector to drive the use of open educational resources and open educational practices to promote the development of enabling policies for digital and open learn teaching and learning and to lead a national digital experience survey that involves gathering data from nearly thirty thousand students and staff who teach in a previous life catherine was an engineer she has an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in systems engineering but armed with a second master's degree in women's studies and a dissertation that brought together gender and technology it is no surprise and a happy outcome for the world of open education that she switched careers catherine has been involved in online teaching and learning for 25 plus years her phd explored the benefits risks and tensions of using open educational practices in higher education and while at the national university of ireland in galway she was the academic coordinator for their first fully online degree globally recognized and greatly admired as a leader in the field of open education catherine is prolific as a researcher educator writer a much sought-after keynote presenter she's involved in collaborative projects across the world and yet she finds time to blog and tweet a strong vein of critical theory runs through her writing and her oral deliveries she problematizes open education interrogating the tensions and the complexities always concerned about rising inequalities and always mindful in her words i quote here of the potential for openness to do the opposite of what we intend and to create or exacerbate inequalities so i know that today she will challenge us to think about openness what it means in our different contexts but especially in the context of the pandemic and the inequities that covet has laid bare but before we ask our guest to share with us the vice president of carl dr venkataraman balaji would like to add a brief word of welcome dr biology thank you merit dr cronin i would like to add my own words of welcome i'm standing here in on behalf of our professor asha khanvar president of the commonwealth of learning whose idea it is to bring together eminent people like yourself and a number of partners many of whom are present here in the audience and staff members many of whom are present here into a grand alliance called open door the idea being that this open door is don't open door to opportunities for collaboration and learning in the context of the ongoing pandemic and it doesn't seem to end at all uh so i want to start wishing every one of you present here just thanking them for their presence also wishing them continued safety and well-being in the ongoing pandemic now without much further ado i will request my colleague dr meredith newman who along with dr sanjay mishra and dr navid madik serves as among the conveners of this event to continue the proceedings further thank you dr balagi ladies and gentlemen all this promises to be a thought provoking session welcome again and do enjoy catherine over to you thank you so much mariette and dr biology what a very humbling uh introduction and welcome thank you so much um and just to reiterate what you said thank you to everyone here just for um for sharing your time today i will share my screen so excuse me for one moment now uh can you see my slides there yes that's fantastic okay thank you thank you so much i'll start my timer as well so i can stick to the time you suggested maret okay um the title of uh this presentation was decided in in dialogue really with maret and input from call with a kind of arising from an understanding of the work that carl is doing at the moment and um what you perceive as as the needs and priorities of all of the people um who you work with so the now in the title is really a nod to um recognizing the new impetus that we have in over the course of the past year in realizing the potential of open um as as noted i work for the national forum for the enhancement of teaching and learning in higher education the two squares the two images here are squares from the fem edtech quilt some of you may know what these images are and this was a global open project undertaken early in 2020 um coordinated entirely by francis bell across a huge network called fementec it's a collective work and the theme of the quilt was the femed tech quilt of care and justice in open education and you know in the description of the quilt fema tech acknowledge that care and justice in open education are not a given they need our thoughts actions and work so this quilt was an expression of those thoughts actions and work on behalf of people really from all over the globe so the squares on the left are um called open in africa stitching together open in africa square is made by 11 people involved in open education at the university of cape town and those words are all open in several different african languages and the square on the right is by vivian rolfe an open educator open researcher in the uk and the bird she said is to symbolize hope which is a theme of what i'll be speaking about today um for those of you who would like to access the feminist quilt images and stories and also all of the resources that i mentioned in the presentation um this is a link which i think na will share in the chat hopefully um and all of the slides are here and also all of the references that are that are shown on the various slides um i just want to say at this point also before i start that although the word now is in the title the words that are not in the title but very much woven into the content of my thinking is a recognition that open education is only ever realized in specific contexts of course so i'm sitting in galway on the west coast of ireland i work in the higher education sector in ireland and i don't presume to speak globally so um i'll begin with some information about um open education i'll feature examples from a range of different contexts because we all learn from each other um but then i very much look forward to um inviting your thoughts about how these ideas relate to your own context or might be realized in your own context so this notion of now where we are now and and again this was included in the introduction we're all living in a pivotal moment in history as unesco describes um this is meaningful to us as as individuals as family members as community members um as well as as educators of course so it's it's a multi-faceted um crisis that we've all been living through over the past year um but one aspect of this moment this this pivotal moment in history um that unesco has has reinforced is that really a call to action for educators and as it says here in the spirit of a joint implementation of the oer recommendation um unesco calls on the open global communities to support the use of open educational resources for sharing learning and knowledge openly worldwide with a view to building more inclusive sustainable and resilient knowledge societies and i think you know this is very much a nod to the the ethos of open um and getting back to the basics of open um so what are oer and many of you might be familiar with oer i'll start with the the definition of oer since it's cited by unesco here two different definitions here uh one from unesco one from david wiley um the you know there are different definitions of oer but they all are more or less uh the same so as it says here teaching and learning resources um in any medium a digital or otherwise that reside in the public domain or or have been released under an open license that permits no cost access use adaptation and redistribution by others and david wiley talks about the five r's retain revise remix reuse um and redistribute but um sorry i seem to have lost my cursor there we are oh sorry about that apologies everyone okay are we back yes we are we're back thank you so much um open education of course is not just about resources and the use of open educational resources enable us to um to expand our practices in ways that go far beyond the educational content and they facilitate new practices in teaching and learning so this is one definition of open educational practices or oep which includes the use and reuse and sharing of oer but also include collaborative pedagogical practices employing as it says social and participatory technologies for interaction peer learning knowledge creation and sharing and empowerment of learners and this is really moving towards what uh what i think we need to speak about um today in terms of the current covet crisis and where teaching and learning have moved in the past year if we go one level above oer and oep we can talk about the broad umbrella of open education and here we find that definitions become a little bit more loose and people have different definitions depending on their context and their priorities um it's very much an evolving concept in some senses i i as i say here i think it's a goal or an aspiration so you know we don't really talk about open in terms of a binary um like open and closed um open is is usually a goal that we're moving towards so many people use open as a verb opening education um in our open education efforts and it can be supported by policies many people describe open and open education as a philosophy and a set of values and i think that'll become clear as i share some of the work in this presentation but um it must be recognized that explicitly named open education movements um have been around for the last 50 60 70 years um and they've arisen differently in different contexts but all can be seen as part of a longer history of global social political and education movements seeking to reduce inequality so some of you may be familiar with open in other domains open universities open access open science open data but we're talking about open education today in the context of teaching and learning um i don't expect anyone to read these definitions here i just want to really um highlight the fact that the different definitions of open education there are overlaps and there are differences so one of the early ones the cape town open declaration is i think is key because it defines and discusses oer but it says explicitly that open education is not limited to just the oer so again it points to practices and pedagogies um sarah lambert's definition um published in 2020 this is part of a larger body of work by sarah focuses on social justice aspects of open education this is very important work um cited cited by many of us um these days um drawing on nancy fraser's definition of social justice um and sanjay amisha sanjay i'm delighted that you're here i really like the power of your very brief um definition of open education which you shared last year about that it embodies fairness flexibility and freedom so fairness points to again equity and social justice flexibility around learner agency and autonomy and freedom about remixing oer and engaging in open educational practices so again there are many different definitions um but there are there are overlaps between them and uh these will be highlighted in uh in the examples that i share in a few minutes so what i'd like to do um is just run a quick poll just to get um ideas from you um about your experience with open education and specifically with oer okay so um this is a multiple choice question but you can tick all options that apply so regarding your say oer practice how would you describe your yourself and this ranges from no oer practice at all but simply interested you use it you teach with it you create policy you're doing research i expect we'll have a variety leave this open just for about 15-20 more seconds thank you everyone um this is useful for me but also i think uh possibly useful for on on behalf of cole just to know you know who's engaging in the webinar today so thank you very much okay i'll just end the poll there now and share the results okay um this is interesting now so um most people use oer in some respect or another um but a fifth of people here in the webinar have no oer practice but are interested so um some of probably what i share here may be old news for some of the people who are well experienced in oer but hopefully will be valuable for those who don't have practice i'm delighted to see that over half people here use oer just over a third create and share oer just over a third use oer in their teaching open educational practices um almost 30 percent helped create policy to support the use of oer wonderful and we have a number of researchers as well okay that's tremendously valuable uh so thank you very much okay um the next few slides um i think in in thinking again of this of the current moment that we're in and the impetus um of particularly the move to emergency remote um online teaching um and what lies ahead for us is is really staying in touch with the why of open so why open for teaching and learning and i summarize the potential benefits of open educational resources and practices in three areas and i'll provide some examples of each of these so the three areas are access equity and pedagogy the first of these of course is access so in in this move again to emergency remote teaching and learning there was a sudden move to holy digital online teaching and learning so open education gained renewed attention almost immediately so teachers who for example had never taught online before um could realize that there was a wealth of teaching and learning resources available to them they didn't have to reproduce or produce new materials they could adapt remix materials that were shared by teachers openly previously in terms of students um we know from evidence in ireland and elsewhere that um the students um who who are in uh educational situations where teachers are using oer um don't have the impediments that other students have in terms of [Music] open textbooks as an example sorry um so where open textbooks are oer are used students all students can have access to those um call for example i know has evidence on you know the educational disadvantages faced by students who can't afford to buy textbooks so where oer open textbooks and other open resources are used we can enable access by all students or most students the third item there is everyone and you know do we really oer really provide access to everyone and if we qualify that perhaps it's not really everyone but really anyone with internet access and the knowledge and skills required to access them and i know again that call and others are trying to make the most of the internet access that various students and teachers have um so again to kind of expand use open to expand access to education for all and particularly those who are marginalized in one or more ways so an important part of any discussion regarding oer when we talk about access is addressing this issue of equity so the second element here is really discussing um the the potential benefits of oer oap and open education in terms of equity so the first um is that it reduces the overall costs for students as i mentioned by open textbooks and open resources that we know from [Music] surveys that have been done in ireland and again these have been done elsewhere that many students are experiencing financial hardship as a result of covert 19 and many times this is on top of existing financial hardship that they faced so not only are students having a difficult time you know buying the resources required for their education but some are not able to engage in education at all because they're not able to afford it so the strength of open educational resources and that they are persistently available means that oer are available to students not just during the time that their students but before the time that their students and perhaps after taking a course and even during any breaks in study so you know where students are are forced to take breaks in their study um the oer are available and are not are not dependent on them having for example an institutional email account or access codes open educational resources also means that we can address diversity equity and inclusion in important ways so many resources textbooks that we use whether they're open or not we know um are not inclusive in terms of gender in terms of race in terms of culture in terms of geography so the fact that um we can we can adapt edit remix oer for our particular context for our particular students means that we can represent marginalized identities and include perspectives that aren't missing and make those educational resources more effective um for for the students and for the learners and of course in terms of equity beyond the education systems we are supporting sustainable development goal number four by using open educational resources our progress towards all of the sustainable development goals is certainly has certainly been challenged to a great extent um over the past year and none more so than the than quality education and ensuring inclusive and quality education for all and promoting lifelong learning so our use of oer can help us to address that for all piece of the sustainable development goals and if reducing inequality is the goal equity and social justice approaches are how we can get there and again oer and oep are tools um in those social justice approaches um as aaron akuno has said equity is not for all equity is for those farthest from justice so you know we can again we can keep in mind those who are most marginalized um overall in society and particularly by the case of the current covet pandemic and the third aspect which i probably have the most to say about is um is pedagogy again the potential of open education in terms of pedagogy um the first of course as i mentioned is that we can adapt and use oer in context and that can be anything from translating the resource into another language developing context-specific case studies and examples actually adding perspectives um and and material that may be missing from resources that were produced elsewhere students can also engage in oer and creating or co-creating resources for learning um this also provides opportunities in terms of authentic assessment and open education again has a long history of helping to develop authentic assessment so you know this term has probably been said more in the last uh nine months than i've heard ever before um because it's something that's very important across all education systems and we have a body of work in open education that can help people who are addressing this now in the course of their teaching and the course of their learning designing authentic assessment so that can students can contribute in a meaningful way using open practices using oer and thereby contribute to public knowledge so things like editing and creating wikipedia articles creating resources that can be valuable in in a particular community or for a particular group these are all ways that we can design authentic assessments and through such practices we can do something very important and that is to help to develop the digital literacies of both students and those who teach um we can also diversify the curriculum so again add content and perspectives that may be missing we can engage with cultural heritage collections in most parts of the world museums and libraries um and other cultural heritage institutions are opening their collections so whatever subject you may be teaching um we have we have this huge body of open resources that can be included in teaching and learning so again diversifying the curriculum and finally and perhaps the biggest of all is the notion of um local and global collaboration so by by thinning the walls of of the classroom by opening our practice using open pedagogy and oep we can engage with students with learners with people outside formal education help connect our students in ways that are impossible without using open practice and you know as bell hooks talks about really embracing the the idea of education as a practice of freedom so i mean those are the these are kind of um three key strands i think of open education and what i wanted to do at this stage was just highlight some resources particularly focusing on on resources that have been developed over the course of 2020 again um addressing our current challenges that might be useful to you in looking at the people who are joining the webinar at the start many of you may even have been involved in some of this work um so i hope that you'll acknowledge that in the chat um the first is this notion of um meaningful connectivity and much as we don't like to talk about open in a binary way in terms of open and closed it's not really helpful to talk about on being online or the digital divide in a binary way and this definition by the alliance for affordable internet really um helps in that respect so as they describe online and offline masks the true nature of the digital divide which lies not only between the connected and the unconnected but in the starkly varied online experience people have so um their definition is that we have meaningful connectivity when we use the can use the internet every day using an appropriate device with enough data and a fast connection once again i know that call has done a great deal of work uh addressing this over the over the last year but i think even in my own context um you know we can look at this at a macro level at a global level but even in a micro level in our own institutions and communities we realize that there's you know vast inequalities and you know really um of all the things we've learned in the past year um whatever we may have known about inequality um a year ago we all know a lot more now um not only in the context of our of the education context within which we work but you know socially and globally so this concept i think can be a tool when negotiating for um you know straightforward things devices connectivity um data plans and so on this this concept of meaningful connectivity but of course um connections between learners and content aren't the only con aren't the only connection um that we worry about another kind of connectivity is connection amongst learners and between learners and teachers um and this is one of the biggest challenges of the sudden move um to online teaching and learning and um this very recently published article by leslie gourley is a wonderful read for anyone that's interested in this um and this quote i think captures it where you know virtual learning or online learning is always in person even when the person is alone at home in front of a screen so the importance of helping learners to develop community and connection is part of our work as digital and open educators and one growing bank of um of oer that supports that work is this one again one of many but it's one that i have been engaged in and this arose out of the equity on down project a project i collaborated on with mahabali and mia zamora equity unbound itself is um an emergent curriculum of um you know open educational resources around intercultural learning and developing digital literacies but recognizing the challenges that educators were facing in the early days of the pandemic um this wide community of educators who engage in equity unbound collectively built this as i said this growing bank of open educational resources with a lot of lovely ideas um about how how to build develop and support online community so for anyone who's engaged in in um in teaching uh i suggest that you check that out um building capabilities in terms of what is open how do we do it people who are encountering open for the first time there's such a wealth of resources um out there for how to do open education but in the in my own context in ireland uh the national forum consulted with students teaching and learning staff educators and library staff who told us that you know short sharp focused um support resources were the most valuable so these are two very short guides the first is just you know how to actually assign an open license it draws on a lot of creative commons resources and then about nine months after we published that um people were struggling with well which lessons should i pick you know for the thing that i want to share so we produce the second guide how to choose an open license and again these themselves are oer and they're available and the the url that's on the page there has these resources and and related resources that may be helpful um there are many many open textbook initiatives i'm thinking of the open university dublin city university and many others but i'm going to highlight this one project um as being i think you know very very meaningful and a wonderful example and that's the digital open textbooks for development project at the university of cape town and they their finding was that open textbooks specifically and and their associated open practice provide powerful means to address economic cultural and political injustices so um there's a big strand of this work is which is about including students in content development to shift power dynamics and build confidence and even about students authoring textbooks themselves um so i think that's that's a great example for again anyone who's interested in in open textbooks um beyond open textbooks we can think about creating oer assignments again getting into this authentic uh assessment that i spoke about earlier again this is just a further example of student authorship and agency that is possible um when we embrace open educational resources and practices so again students can will as a part of developing open resources first for assessment um can have an opportunity to develop and practice the digital and data literacies required um to be able to do that again really important lifelong learning skills and capabilities um and a final example is just um creating and editing wikipedia articles this particular page was shared by lorna campbell um and it's by the wycomedian in residence project at university of edinburgh however there's a huge um page of resources with comedians and residents wiki where you can see all of the people who are engaged in that program globally i cited the twitter accounts of wikimedia in ireland and the uk but i believe they exist in many many countries um so again wikimedians and residents help students to develop these digital and open literacies that they can take well beyond the time um that they are students um in in whatever education system we're we're teaching in so before um i get i get to the wrap up section i just want to highlight three collections um for anyone that's interested in again making the most of these three potential areas of open education access equity and pedagogy making the most of those the first is um a collection published early this past summer i was one of the co-editors but there are 43 diverse authors um who provide perspectives um that might be marginal to the dominant hegemony they're not they were not published in academic publications um but they offer critical on-the-ground perspectives about open education so if you're wanting to read and and and find out more about you know diverse voices that are that are discussing about what this means what critical approaches mean um on the ground this is a great place to start the second collection is a u.s based collection these are all educators engaged in higher education in the u.s but they are diverse authors in diverse locations students librarians teachers and there's a section on textbook replacement with again really nuts and bolts ideas for how to do that a section on open student projects and a section on open course design and the third collection i don't i don't and um expect that you can can take this in but i just want to show this amazing map of thought that um is in this open education and social justice special issue which was published earlier in 2020. uh it was co-edited by sarah lambert and laura chernowicz and again this the authors here are global reach diverse authors in a variety of locations and focuses on the intersection of open education and social justice and this all of these articles provide a theoretical grounding um to the practices that were talked about in the other resources so again three useful resources which you know if any of you are interested um you might look at um afterwards um two thoughts just to as i wrap up um creative commons notes that open education is not a short-term fix to a passing problem that's not what we're talking about today it's a long-term solution to ensuring equitable inclusive active access to effective educational resources and learning opportunities um anna kuno who i i mentioned already a very powerful quote which i think for any of us who speak about equity we must pay attention to equity isn't for all it's for those farthest from justice and those who are farthest from justice can define for themselves what they need to be whole healthy and in just relations with others so for me these are two key values that underlie all of all of my open education practice and also that i continually must remind myself of in my practice and in terms of where to go from here i it there's probably fewer better practical lists than this list from unesco uh five areas of action i think is a is a powerful place to start an important reminder of the breadth of the work so um first area of action of course is we need to build capacity of stakeholders to understand you know use adapt create and share oer we need to develop supportive policy if we don't want these to be isolated instances of learning or teaching with oer we need policy to support it so you know as i've said in my own research the lack of policy to support open education speaks very loudly to the people within any system so supportive policy is essential we need to able inclusive and equitable quality oer and expand that definition of quality to embrace inclusive and equitable so quality is not just content that's produced you know by you know elite institutions or just by teachers um it is indeed inclusive and equitable um we need to think about sustainability of what we are and open education going into the future and how it can be equitable beyond you know small and projects and facilitate international collaboration and today is a good example of that so what we really need is a collaborative systemic approach and i know this is the approach of call but it's what i have in mind in in my own work so say going from upper left over to the right you know many of us are engaged and have been engaged in oer oep projects with you know working with a particular student or teacher or a particular class and we might broaden that to think about programs disciplines institutions systems nations globally so this is i think this is the real work is thinking about the collaborative systemic work that's required and taking all stakeholders into consideration and a quote just at the bottom there from a really powerful paper written this year called a wake-up call equity inequality and covert 19 emergency remote teaching and learning from laura chernowicz and other authors in south africa they they acknowledge multiple and coexisting forms of inequality in education acknowledge complexity and yet note that collaboration and systemic approaches where we're working together is where the hope lies and i'll just end with this quote which is um a slide that i always end my presentations on and it's particularly resonant over the past year but i find hope in the work of open i find community in the work of open and you know many of the people who i engage with in open education in the open education community um recognize the complexity recognize the challenges we we face and yet are working towards that you know that future which is more hopeful for all so um i thank many of you who are here for being some of those people and i acknowledge your your contribution to my own learning so thank you so much and what a wonderful quotation on which to end an excellent presentation i'm going to hand over to my colleague david your time thanks thanks moret and thanks catherine for an extremely thought-provoking presentation today emphasizing karen justice as the guiding themes for open educational practitioners i think it's uh good for us all to note catherine's emphasis on access equity and pedagogy as principles that require us to consider in our designs for learning as well as the context in which we operate they are all different she reminded us to keep our eye on those at the margins being critical to our work that is our work making sure that access and equity match local needs and we also have to keep in mind the different players and we talked about tensions in our schools we're dealing with students teachers librarians designers i.t specialists who are actually our allies and those players can actually help us make a difference as to enable open educational practices by helping us with adaptations and sharing and assessment and the development of digital fluency and i guess overall it's this notion of agency that catherine talked about uh in the end of her presentation but this is all about a long-term solution for lifelong learners and it can only be achieved by building community and making sure that everyone has equitable access to the resources that we propose they should have access to and finally i'd just like to thank catherine for a generosity of spirit and uh in providing a wonderful presentation and a set of resources that i know knock and put the link up in the chat for everyone to get and the eight slides and the recording will be available so again thank you catherine for a comprehensive high currency to the moment presentation i'll open educational practices thank you thank you so much david