OEGlobal 2024

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. 

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.

• initial advocacy and outreach work
• open publishing via the university’s institutional repository
• working together with the University Press to publish open texts
• setting up a grant program to support authors to publish open texts
• establishing a dedicated OER librarian position
• participation in the CAUL collective and publishing via Pressbooks
• where UC are now, and what’s coming up

1. Identify Privileged Epistemologies and Pedagogies: Participants will engage in discussions to identify the dominant knowledge systems and teaching methods that are often prioritized in educational settings. We will explore how these systems can perpetuate inequalities and marginalize non-dominant perspectives.
2. Understand Epistemic Injustice: The workshop will delve into the concept of epistemic injustice, focusing on how the credibility of marginalized individuals and groups is often undermined. We will discuss testimonial injustice (wherein a speaker is unfairly discredited) and hermeneutical injustice (wherein a group's experiences are misunderstood or overlooked due to gaps in collective interpretive resources).
3. Develop Inclusive Educational Practices: Participants will learn how to create and implement educational practices that empower non-privileged learners. This involves developing curricula and pedagogies that reflect diverse perspectives and recognize the value of marginalized voices.
4. Empower Marginalized Narratives: A key goal of the workshop is to bifurcate the neo-colonial saviour narrative prevalent in many educational contexts. We aim to allow voices, perspectives, and narratives of marginalized others to be seen and heard, thereby fostering a more inclusive educational discourse.
5. Co-Creation of Open Resources: The workshop will provide hands-on sessions where participants can develop research, educational practices, and materials that are specifically designed for the benefit and empowerment of under-represented learners. These materials will be tailored to address the unique needs and contexts of these learners, ensuring they are both relevant and effective. Ideas generated, with permission, will be shared on a open pedagogy notebook, developed by the presenter.

• How can we construct activities that mitigate epistemic vices?
• What design choices can educators make to increase epistemic virtues?
• What do effective social justice interventions look like in a learner-centric environment?
• How can open pedagogy be leveraged to create more inclusive and equitable educational experiences?

• Mindset - The core beliefs, perspectives and dispositions that underpin openness as an educational philosophy and enable open pedagogical practices.
• Collaboration - The process of openly sharing ideas, resources and collectively co-creating new knowledge together with others across contexts.
• Flat Learning - Deconstructing traditional hierarchies and power structures so that everyone has an equal opportunity to engage as open co-learners.
• Openness - A holistic approach embracing radically transparent, collaborative pedagogies focused on learning as an inclusive, continual process of open knowledge construction. Cultivating an open participatory mindset oriented around collaboration and flat, inclusive co-learning is everyone's business - essential for transforming teaching into an open educational practice fostering global connectedness for our modern, networked world.

• Realize translanguaging and self-regulated learning scaffolds into the EMI MOOCs.
• Initiate a design team to prototype the “wrapped” course activities for the EMI MOOCs.
• Implement the prototype as two courses on one of Taiwan’s MOOC platforms to evaluate learning activities and improve the developed course activities based on learner feedback.
• Encompass the other six courses across SDGs to observe EMI students’ practice and engagement when taking the wrapped EMI MOOCs in different areas.
• Develop research-supported instructional practice for translanguaging scaffoldings MOOCs and its continuing growth.

• Personalized lesson plans based on students’ progress on Tabshoura
• Alternative schedules that support continued learning outside of school
• Student-centered pedagogical approaches that are exciting for students AND for teachers

• Empowers Indigenous people to lead the agenda
• steps towards a holistic approach to incorporate Indigenous knowledges in normalising ways
• reduces the likelihood of tokenism
• values process as equally important to (and constitutive of) product
• embodies Indigenous methodologies into process, underpinned by centring Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing (Brodie et al, 2023)
• transforms non-Indigenous collaborators into accomplices through becoming culturally responsive (Finlay, 2020)
• carves out Third Spaces for generating culturally responsive ways of working that cultivate mutually beneficial two-way learning (Dudgeon & Fielder, 2006)
• enables advocacy to widen these ways of working to challenge to deeply rooted conventional ways of working

• Understanding the limitations of an “additive” approach that reduces Indigenous knowledges to inessential, extracurricular content
• Identifying how cultural safety is different to both cultural responsiveness and cultural awareness
• Distinguishing between Indigenisation and Decolonisation
• Recognising how power relations operate between non-Indigenous and Indigenous staff

• Accepting the possibility of unintentionally “doing the wrong thing” as an active alternative to guilt-based paralysis
• "doing the work” independently without making reckless assumptions about one’s own knowledge of Indigenous knowledges
• thoughtfully approaching Indigenous collaborators – how, when, why, and what the “ask” is
• The meaning of yarns and how they cultivate open and respectful relationships between diverse groups

• JCU Library leadership has invested considerable time and demonstrated strong support for the project.
• Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP) grant funding was secured for:
  
  
  • two short-term staff positions to ensure successful project coordination 
  • CU internal grants targeting academic stakeholders to maximise ongoing benefits for the JCU community.
• The whole-of-Library project status means the team can draw upon expertise from all Library staff.
• The core project team is drawn from four geographic locations bringing together complementary skills to meet differing facets of project requirements.
• A subscription to Airtable, a cloud-based relational database tool, facilitates management of the project’s complex relationships, data analysis and reporting.
• The TAP team has been able to leverage results from the highly successful JCU Open eBooks program.

• Explore different viewpoints within the OE community and understand the complexity faced by stakeholders.
• Identify strategies for overcoming challenges and fostering collaboration in OE initiatives.
• Reflect on personal biases towards OE stakeholders to be better equipped to navigate challenges and build partnerships.

1. Build infrastructure, capacity and achieve tangible outcomes to move the OER agenda forward at a national level.
2. Facilitate collaborative authoring and publishing of open textbooks in targeted priority disciplines, with a preference for the inclusion of local and/or Indigenous content.
3. Allow Member institutions to publish their own textbooks in disciplines of their choosing.

1. students' academic performance significantly improved, with high school students outperforming university students in the post-test;
2. the new learning model showed significant improvements in students' agentic, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement, as well as critical thinking, with no significant difference in social engagement;
3. nearly 40% of students completed the final project through team collaboration using online tools like Instagram chat, Google Meet, and Google Slides;
4. students initially felt shy and awkward but gradually enjoyed and felt accomplished in knowledge sharing;
5. students used digital note-taking, integrating screenshots, typed notes, and handwriting.

• 10 minutes: introductions, pre-recorded 1-slide lightning presentations from experts, panel reactions
• 10 minutes: panel interaction and debate
• 15 minutes: Q&A with panel members based on thoughts submitted by the audience (with backup questions prepared by the moderators).
• 5 minutes: closing discussion and synthesis.