OEGlobal 2024

This workshop will explore the potential of Open Educational Resources (OER) to promote and mainstream Global Education (GE). GE is an educational approach to create knowledge, skills, and awareness and to provide training for responsible global citizenship from a lifelong development perspective (Altun, 2017). In our increasingly interconnected and interdependent modern world, it is crucial to prioritise the development of global awareness among individuals, particularly those in the Global South, to equip them with the necessary skills and understanding to navigate and contribute positively to a complex, diverse, and rapidly changing world. By leveraging OER, GE can overcome existing obstacles and transcend geographical and socioeconomic barriers, enabling individuals to access and utilise GE content and acquire competencies and knowledge to navigate our contemporary interconnected world (Arinto, Hodgkinson-Williams & Trotter, 2017). Watson et al. (2023) argue that adopting Open Educational Resources (OER) can be an effective strategy for achieving equity, diversity, and inclusion, aligning closely with the GE concept and its principles.

Research indicates that OER can play a role in mainstreaming and promoting GE. For example, Hodgkinson-Williams & Arinto (2020) propose that the transformative potential of OER in democratising access to resources can develop and nurture global citizens to contribute to solution-finding to the global complexities of a highly globalised society and challenge existing structural inequalities that hamper the voices and knowledge of the global south. Recognising the importance and role OER can play, this workshop provides an opportunity for participants to explore how OER and open education, in general, can promote and mainstream GE through access, equity, and innovation of resources, particularly for populations, educators, and students in developing settings. In particular, participants will discuss practical strategies for identifying, adapting, and creating OER that incorporates global education themes such as cultural diversity, global issues, and intercultural competencies, as well as key considerations for ensuring accessibility, relevance, and ethical use of OER-GE-oriented resources in various contexts. Through five dynamic and active group sessions, participants will actively engage in a hands-on activity to brainstorm ideas, and strategies, and identify scenario-based design challenges for the real world of integrating GE within OER.

The itinerary for this workshop includes: 10 minutes: introduction to workshop objectives and overview of global education. 25 minutes: group work activities where each group focuses on a particular global challenge or issue. They will brainstorm ideas, and strategies, and identify OERs to address the issue. Through group work, they will also explore challenges of leveraging OER to address global issues. 20 minutes: Discussion of groups to present their outcomes and feedback from the groups. 5 minutes: Wrap up, a summary of key takeaways, and Q&A

Dr. Vi Truong and Mr. Abiud Bosire will facilitate the workshop. Abiud Bosire will provide an overview of GE and why it is important to provide and produce GE materials as OER. Dr. Truong and Mr. Bosire will, together with other participants, participate in group activities.



Included in [Session 2B]: Sustainability

References
Altun, M. (2017). What Global Education should focus on. International Journal of Social Sciences and Educational Studies, 4(1), 82-86. https://doi.org/10.23918/ijsses.v4i1p82

Arinto, P. B., Hodgkinson-Williams, C. & Trotter, H. (2017). OER and OEP in the Global South: Implications and recommendations for social inclusion. In C. Hodgkinson- Williams & P. B. Arinto (Eds.), Adoption and impact of OER in the Global South (pp. 577–592). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1043829

Gougou, S., & Paschal, M. (2023). Integrating Open Educational Resources to support transformative approach in English as a foreign language in Africa. Canadian Journal of Language and Literature Studies, 26-44.

Hodgkinson-Williams, C., & Arinto, P. (2020, April 1). Adoption and impact of OER in the Global South. OAPEN Home. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/29431

Watson, E., Petrides, L., Karaglani, A., Burns, S., & Sebesta, J. (2023). Leveraging Open Educational Resources to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion: A guide for campus change agents. AAC&U. https://www.aacu.org/publication/leveraging-oer-to-advance-dei

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. (2017). Open educational resources. http://www.hewlett.org/strategy/open-educational-resources/

Author Keywords
Open Educational Resources, Global Education, Low-resourced settings

For OEGlobal 2024 I've been facilitating a series of asynchronous online Reimagining Open At The Crossroads activities in the OEGlobal 2024 Interaction Zone. Activities kicked off October 14, 2024 with an Introduction and an activity called Reimagining Open At The Crossroads Through Music followed by three other weekly activities. All activities have been asynchronous and open to everyone to participate in whether attending the OEGlobal 2024 conference in-person or not. 

These activities carry forward the work of Catherine Cronin 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. 

In Brisbane I'm facilitating in-person the fourth Reimagining Open at the Crossroads activity called Pathways and Connections.

This activity invites you to create a visual representation of your personal open education path forward from this crossroads in time. Plurality of paths are welcome. A template using the Brisbane River in Australia will be provided for you to imagine your open education path as a river with tributaries. 

This activity invites you to:

• identify your main pathway and places along it. Your main path can be based on your current open education work or on a reimagining of open education you've been contemplating. 

• create tributaries that connect with and feed into your main path. Tributaries represent other practices you believe can enhance your main pathway. Tributaries could be emergent trends affecting open education such as AI, open pedagogy, and the notion of digital public goods. Tributaries could connect other forms of open to your open education path e.g. open science, open access, open infrastructure, open data, open culture. Tributaries could be people or events that will inform your path going forward.

• Explore and integrate music, What if?, and Make Claims outputs from Reimagining Open At The Crossroads activities 1, 2, and 3 into your pathway.

The activity concludes with opportunities to share and discuss pathways along with finding others pursuing similar pathways you can connect with. This in person sharing intentionally aims to braid your work with others.

Come and invent your future in open education.


Included in [Session 2D]: Practice and Policy in OE

References
Cronin C., Czerniewicz L. ALT OER 2024 https://altc.alt.ac.uk/blog/2024/03/oer24-the-future-isnt-what-it-used-to-be/

Author Keywords
reimagining open, call to action, music, what if?, make claims, personal pathways

This session examines the trajectory of Canadian federal OER advocacy over the past several years. Since 2001, Canadian OER advocates have developed a more systematic approach to national OER advocacy. This presentation reviews the developments with an aim to inform other attendees of approaches to advocacy and to share insights on how the Canadian situation has developed. Despite a history of work in open education, Canada’s lack of a national department of education creates a major barrier to federal involvement in OER.

Recognizing these challenges, successive steps have been taken to develop a coordinated approach to advocacy among national stakeholders in the Canadian context. The session begins with an examination of who these stakeholders are. The session then covers the work of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries to develop the Open Educational Resources (OER) National Strategy – Stratégie nationale en matière de ressources éducatives libres (REL) group. The presentation explores how advocacy priorities were identified by the National Advocacy Framework for Open Educational Resources in Canada (McNally & Ludbrook, 2023).

The Framework identified 27 advocacy proposals on six themes that were narrowed down to focus on three key areas - Indigenous OER, Francophone OER and OER infrastructure and policy. Building on the work of the Framework strategy document, the session then explores the three focused summits that were held on each key priority area - the OER Infrastructure and Policy Summit in Toronto 2022, the Francophone OER Summit in Ottawa 2023, and the Indigenous Knowledges and OER Summit: Exploring Indigenous Knowledges and Open Educational Resources in Vancouver 2024. Each of these summits, attended by different delegates, produced a series of different outcomes - from formal advocacy positions to problematizing entire areas of future OER advocacy in Canada.

The presentation concludes by examining how national advocacy has evolved since being informed by the summits. We will also report on each stage of the priorities, in terms of advocacy, outline some plans for future work and the focus on how we are strengthening the work needed. The presentation provides an important viewpoint into the interplay between stakeholders, a coordinating strategy document, and focused advocacy summits to develop and refine advocacy strategies. It also provides an update on this work to date in Canada.



Included in [Session 3B]: First Nations

References
McNally, M., Ludbrook, A., et al. (2023) A National Advocacy Framework for Open Educational Resources in Canada. https://www.carl-abrc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/A-National-Advocacy-Framework-for-Open-Educational-Resources-in-Canada.pdf

Author Keywords
Open education policies and strategies, Sustainability, Inclusion, diversity, equity, access, First Nations perspectives, Local Indigenous cultures and ways of knowing, Canada, open education

At OE Global 2023, Indigenous ways of knowing and being were a fundamental component of the conference design and organization. Indigenous and non-Indigenous organizers established a collaborative governance approach to foster partnership and mutual guidance throughout the planning and execution stages.

In this session, the four conference program co-chairs will perform métissage to recount the design and implementation of, and personal experiences with, a conference program that reflected the concept of two-eyed seeing, navigating Indigenous and non-Indigenous worldviews. We will explore the incompatibility and compatibility of Indigenous ways of knowing with the ontological and epistemological assumptions embedded into open education. A fundamental question we examine is how the braiding of conference stories can unearth the interplay of Indigenous (nêhiyawîhcikêwin Plains Cree) ways of knowing with the values and practices of open education.

As a storytelling research method, métissage provides an opportunity to use an arts-based approach to evoke, provoke, and possibly unsettle the privileged notions of knowledge and knowledge sharing embedded into open education. Métissage draws from life writing, storytelling, theater, and figuratively, from the art of braiding (Chambers et al, 2008). This research performance will use the metaphor of braiding to weave together the conference program co-chairs' short narratives as they respond to specific prompts:

1. Why did the metaphor of braiding matter to the conference experience?

2. How did you experience relationality or what did you think it was and what do you think it is now?

3. Why does braiding open education with Indigenous ways of knowing matter?

4. How can the richness of Indigenous knowledge face the challenge of, and domination of western knowledge systems and practices?).

Through this narrative and arts approach, truths and awareness of the self and knowledge of others may be conveyed; self/other knowledge is a hallmark of arts-based research (Gerber et al, 2012 as cited by Leavey, 2017).

This session draws upon open education practices (Cronin, 2017) and explores their relation to the Seven Sacred Teachings (Norquest, 2017). The seven sacred teachings cannot be swiftly summarized. The areas they cover include Peyak: Respect, Nîso: Courage, Nisto: Truth, Newo: Honesty, Nîyânan: Wisdom, Nikotwâsik: Love, and Tepakohp: Humility.

There are significant differences between the axiological, ontological, and epistemological characteristics of Indigenous Ways of Knowing and open education but there are also areas of overlap. “The Cree natural law concept of wahkôhtowin shows us that there is no ‘us and them.’ All human beings are part of the same family; we are all interconnected.” (Norquest, 2017, p. 10). It is this interconnection among the two framings that underlies this research project and our methodological approach of métissage. Through the metaphor of braiding, stories reflective of the seven sacred teachings and of open education practices will work individually and collectively to reveal the interconnections, the gaps, and the need to listen closely to these braided stories.



Included in [Session 3B]: First Nations

References
Bishop, K., Etmanski, C., Beth Page, M., Dominguez, B. & Heykoop, C. (2019). Narrative métissage as an innovative engagement practice. Engage Scholar Journal, 5(2), 1-17.

Cronin, C. (2017). Openness and praxis: Exploring the use of open educational practices in higher education. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(5). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i5.3096

Leavey, P. (2017). Research design: quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, arts-based, and community-based participatory research approaches. Guilford.

Norquest College. (2017). Wahkôhtowin we are all related: Norquest College Indigenization strategy 2017. https://www.norquest.ca/NorquestCollege/media/pdf/about/publications-and-reports/norquest-college-indigenization-strategy.pdf

Author Keywords
First Nations perspectives, métissage, Local Indigenous cultures and ways of knowing, Open educational practices, Inclusion diversity equity and access