OEGlobal 2024

Through a unique collaboration between higher education institutions and sectors, two community colleges (College of the Canyons in California and Maricopa Community Colleges in Arizona) joined forces with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a research-focused university, to learn what happens when community college faculty adopt and adapt open educational resources (OER) from MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW). Community colleges provide access to high-quality post-secondary education for students across socioeconomic statuses (Budwig, 2022) and they democratize education by advancing open practices (Tesh, 2022). MIT has long-shared OER at scale through OCW but has traditionally not collaborated with community colleges.

Guided by the principle that “Open is Everyone’s Business,” we intentionally crossed institutions, sectors, student communities, and geographic locations to support community college faculty in discovering, using, and reflecting on teaching with OER. In this presentation we will offer a working model to help develop similar cross-institutional collaborations that will support teaching and learning with OER as a shared responsibility for all stakeholders within the open ecosystem.

In this 60-minute panel discussion, leaders from each institution will share insights, learnings, and reflections from this Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant-funded collaboration that concluded in June 2024. Topics will include: the benefits of collaborative goal-setting; the impact of providing structure such as professional development, reflective practice opportunities, curated OER discovery assistance, and in-person community building; and addressing assumptions about prestige and status.

The panelists will discuss how these learnings point to three tenets of a working model for cross-sectional institutional open collaborations, including: the importance of 1) identifying institutions with which to collaborate that have complementary strengths; 2) communicating respect for stakeholders via programmatic infrastructure; and 3) making space for transparent conversations about how institutionalized stigmas and historical oppression impact the collaboration. These conversations are important because they allow stakeholders to challenge and dismantle prevailing ideologies that perpetuate inequities in higher education.

Throughout the panel discussion, participants will be encouraged to help the panelists expand on the model they are developing for cross-institutional open collaborations by contributing nuances to the tenets discussed and adding others from different perspectives that the panelists have omitted from their working model. We see attendees’ contributions as critical to our work because we cannot build a model for cross-institutional open collaborations alone. It takes a community. Together, we can forge an innovative and adaptable model that draws on the strengths of many to advance equity for all.



Included in [Session 2C]: First Nations, Equity

References
Budwig, N. (2022, Fall). A democratizing force: Eduardo J. Padrón on the transformative power of community colleges. Liberal Education. https://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/articles/a-democratizing-force.

Tesh, G. (2022). Open educational resources in community colleges: Benefits and challenges. In E. Langran (Ed.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (pp. 1143-1148). San Diego, CA, United States: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved November 10, 2023 from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/221134/.

Author Keywords
Cross-sector open collaborations, Cross-institutional open collaborations, Models for collaboration, Community college faculty, Open Educational Resources (OER), OER adaptation

Fostering faculty participation in adopting Open Educational Resources can be challenging when faculty lack full competency in digital literacy. Digital literacy is a pillar of UNESCO's Sustainable Development Goals and integral to the adoption of OER. Creating resources and training to provide faculty comfort in learning digital literacy can help in the buy-in and adoption of OER. This requires collaboration in a variety of areas across campus and identification of people who can teach these skills in multiple areas.

This presentation will focus on how to use public relations tactics to create buy-in among faculty members that promotes institutional spread of digital literacy and OER across a small, non-profit minority-serving institution in the United States.



Included in [Session 3D]: Digital Capability, Artificial Intelligence

References
https://prsa.org iabc.com

Author Keywords
Digital competence, Public Relations, Open Educational Practices, Open Educational Strategies

Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) have been a significant topic within the Open Education (OE) community. However, the provision of free and online resources, such as Open Educational Resources (OER), does not guarantee that access to these open resources is equitable, diverse, and inclusive. The vast majority of OER is only available in the English language, which makes it difficult for many learners worldwide to access them, in particular learners in the Global South. This is just an example that openness might not necessarily reach everyone and that more work is needed to ensure that open is equitable, diverse and inclusive (Bossu, et al., 2023; Iniesto & Bossu, 2023).

Other instances where EDI in OE might not be applicable or appropriate for everyone: • Resistance to change – as not everyone may be open to embracing EDI principles and practices. Individuals or institutions with entrenched biases or outdated beliefs may resist efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in open education. • Cultural beliefs - cultural differences and norms can influence the acceptance and implementation of openness. Some communities or institutions may have cultural traditions or beliefs that need to be respected, but also clash with certain aspects of openness, posing challenges to its widespread adoption. • Lack of awareness - some open practitioners may not fully grasp the importance of EDI or may be unaware of the impact of systemic inequalities on marginalized groups. This lack of awareness can impede efforts to promote EDI across all educational contexts, in particular in open education.

While promoting EDI in open education is critical for fostering a more inclusive and equitable open learning environment, it is essential to recognise that there may be limitations and challenges that hinder its universal applicability. Addressing these barriers and engaging in thoughtful, context-specific discussions and strategies can help ensure that EDI initiatives are relevant and effective.

This panel aims to provide a venue for these discussions to take place. Distinguished speakers from various backgrounds and from different regions of the world, including from South America, Asia, and Africa, will shed light on the impact of EDI practices in promoting access and participation in open education. Through sharing research, case studies, and best practices, the panellists will provide valuable insights on how to create more inclusive learning environments and resources. Panel attendees can expect to engage in thought-provoking discussions and gain practical strategies for advancing EDI in the field of open education.



Included in [Session 4D]: Diversity Equity and Inclusion

References
Iniesto, F., & Bossu, C. (2023). Equity, diversity, and inclusion in open education: A systematic literature review. Distance Education, 44(4), 694–711. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2023.2267472

Bossu, C.; Iniesto, F.; Vladimirschi, V.; Jordan, K. & Pete, J. (2023). GO-GN Guidelines for Equity Diversity and Inclusion in Open Education with a focus on Africa and Latin America. Global OER Graduate Network. https://go-gn.net/gogn_outputs/edi-guidelines/

Author Keywords
EDI, Equity diversity and inclusion in Open Education, EDI guidelines, EDI strategies for open education

This panel presentation is an expansion to the research presentation (under review), “Toward a more sustainable open education community: Breaking through barriers to bridge primary, secondary, and tertiary open practices”. We suggest that even though Open Educational Practices (OEP) are supported and implemented differently across these sectors, working together as boundary spanners (Walz & Farley, 2023) can be a productive contribution to OEP sustainability. Addressing this gap is important to providing equitable quality education to all which is a UN Sustainable Development Goal. The panelists in this presentation were strategically selected to represent diverse perspectives across educational sectors (primary/secondary teacher librarian, tertiary/Higher Education librarians, Teacher Education faculty, Professional Staff, and state-level Government Leader). They will discuss commonalities and differences in their OEP work, perceived barriers, and opportunities, and share concrete examples where bridging the gap has positively impacted OEP implementation and advancement in their communities.

Some of the barriers that challenge boundary spanning include a lack of OEP and OER awareness (at all levels), including not understanding the need for OEP and OER in the first place. Copyright fears and gatekeeping around ownership and sharing materials prohibit engagement and, in some regions, primary and secondary teachers are required to obtain permission to openly license and publicly share their work. Where OEP does bridge primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors, inequities persist regarding how a contributor is compensated for their work, putting at risk the sustainability of these partnerships. From a governance perspective, stakeholder turnover at the state or provincial level is challenging to move this work forward. Widespread uncertainty regarding budget availability also threatens the sustainability of this work.

This panel, however, is optimistic that by working together, we can impact the sustainability of OEP by empowering multi-level awareness and engagement. Panelists agree that the first step is to work towards policy that permits teachers, especially K-12 teachers, to engage in OEP. Furthermore, understanding and valuing one another's contributions is key; one potential solution is through common language about OEP that honors and recognizes this work, especially at primary and secondary levels. Panelists will also share their observations regarding the “Teacherpreneuer” mindset, where teachers could work as educational leaders and policymakers to incentivize and grow OEP engagement instead of commodifying teaching resources. Where copyright fears and debates around ownership keep educators from engaging, Creative Commons licenses provide a “third space” by shifting the focus from ownership to one of access, equity, and impact. Finally, panelists will discuss opportunities to bridge OEP across sectors through adopting and adapting open curricula and by collaborating in projects that require multi-level engagement.



Included in [Session 4B]: Sustainability

References
Walz, A., & Farley, J. (2023). Making Open Educational Resources with and for PreK12: A Collaboration Toolkit for Higher Education. Virginia Tech Libraries. Retrieved May 1, 2024 from https://doi.org/10.21061/OER_PreK12_highered

Author Keywords
Open educational practices across diverse levels, Policy and governance, Enabling transferability of knowledge and practice, Primary and secondary education policy, Sustainability, Overcoming barriers

Details TBA

Digital publishing platforms can create multiple pathways for knowledge equity, students as creators, and engagement with readers. At the City University of New York (CUNY), we have worked with our partners at the University of Minnesota Press and Cast Iron Coding, to create Manifold, a free, collaborative, open-source digital publishing platform that is used across the 25 campus CUNY community (and the world) to create and teach with dynamic digital projects. Access to this open publishing platform has opened new possibilities within the OER initiative at CUNY to create digital projects to house custom classroom versions of texts that are in the public domain or openly licensed, written by faculty and students, including journals, capstones and theses, and faculty scholarship.

Using Manifold’s built-in social annotation feature, CUNY instructors find creative ways to help students develop critical reading skills, empower students as co-creators, help students see that reading and writing are never solitary activities, and teach important digital literacy and civic engagement. The CUNY community uses Manifold reading groups to create public, private, and anonymous annotation groups where they can work together to annotate texts and project resources, conduct peer review, study course assignments, and create custom course readers. Unlike other social annotation tools, Manifold@CUNY is both open-source and free to all users.

In this presentation, a librarian at a CUNY four-year college, a teaching faculty member at a CUNY two-year college, and the Manifold Open Educational Technology Specialist will discuss projects that they have created, facilitated, and/or adapted on the platform and their experiences managing projects and working with students as open knowledge creators. The projects include My Slipper Floated Away: New American Memoirs, the OER Starter Kit Workbook, the special issue of the Journal for Multicultural Education on the intersections of Open Educational Practices and Equity Pedagogy, Introduction to American Government, HUM 1: Modern Humanities, and more. Several of these projects have received recognition as OE Global Award winners, as has the Manifold platform itself. The presenters will offer their experiences with Manifold, including selecting Manifold as the platform for the project, the creation process, engaging readers, and updating materials.

As we discuss the ways we and other members of the CUNY community have used Manifold, we will foreground the fact that Manifold is open to the wider community in multiple ways. First, anyone from anywhere is able to create a reader account on CUNY’s installation of Manifold - they need not be a member of the CUNY community to use any of the annotation features, so instructors at other institutions and individual learners all have access as readers to all of the projects on CUNY’s Manifold. Second, and more importantly, Manifold is free and open source, meaning that anyone anywhere can set up an installation. We will conclude by discussing the potential challenges and expenses, such as hosting and support that make Manifold free like a puppy. But just like a puppy, Manifold is more than worth the trouble.



Included in [Session 10C]: Practice in OE

Author Keywords
open educational practices, open textbooks, social justice

AI pervades various facets of society, including education. In the open education domain, the notion of open AI, distinct from the entity OpenAI, is attracting attention. However, the precise connotations of "open" in conjunction with "AI" remain subject to diverse interpretations, reflecting conceptual tensions and longstanding differences around concepts of “open” in respective domains.

In a blog post last year, prominent edtech expert David Wiley wrote, “when people talk about whether or not generative AI should be “open,” they could be talking about whether the foundation models should be open, whether the modified model weights that result from fine-tuning should be open, and/or whether the prompts (which includes templates, embeddings, etc.) should be open” (Wiley, 2023). In a similar direction, focusing on licensing for different aspects of AI technology, the Open Source Initiative are currently developing an “open-source AI” definition (Open Source Initiative, 2024). On the other hand, in broader literature, definitions of open education and open technology encompass a wide range of concepts, where “open” could mean: “ethical” (Holmes et al., 2022), “inclusive” and “innovative” (Bozkurt, 2023), “co-created” and “learner-driven” (Walberg and Thomas, 1972), “non-proprietary” (Berners-Lee, 2023), “decentralised” (Crowston and Howison, 2005), “accessible without barriers” (Knox, 2013), “available to join”, “shared”, “not tightly controlled” (Weller, 2020), “available in the public domain or under an open license” (UNESCO, 2022), “interpretable” and “visible” (Conati, Porayska-Pomsta, and Mavrikis, 2018), and many others.

This indicates that “open AI” and “open-source AI” are overlapping but not identical concepts. “Open-source AI” seems to be about the tangible aspects of systems, whereas “open AI” is broader and potentially includes context of how systems can be used, who can use them, and what for. Rather than trying to resolve these debates into a single taxonomy/typology, we propose a meronomic, holistic account of openness in AI education which explores the relationship between definitions with respect to part-whole relationships. This will facilitate diverse contributions and critical discussion.

In this panel session, participants will have the opportunity to engage in the panel discussion and ask questions regarding the dimensions of openness of AI in education.

The agenda includes:

• 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.

Experts who agreed to contribute so far include David Wiley, Anne-Marie Scott, Aras Bozkurt, Chrissi Nerantzi and Leo Havemann. Some of them might join virtually. They will be provided with prompts ahead of time for their initial statements. Robert Farrow, an experienced moderator, will chair the panel discussion. During the discussion, delegates will be able to contribute reflections and questions through a back channel and these will be integrated into the discussion.



Included in [Session 11A]: Artificial Intelligence

References
Berners-Lee, T. (2023). Frequently asked questions by the Press – Tim BL (w3.org). Available at https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html (Accessed: 2 May 2024) Bozkurt, A. (2023). Generative AI, Synthetic Contents, Open Educational Resources (OER), and Open Educational Practices (OEP): A New Front in the Openness Landscape. Open Praxis, 15(3), pp. 178–184. DOI: https://doi.org/10.55982/openpraxis.15.3.579 Conati, C., Porayska-Pomsta, K. and Mavrikis, M., 2018. AI in Education needs interpretable machine learning: Lessons from Open Learner Modelling. arXiv preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.00154 Crowston, K. and Howison, J. (2005). The social structure of Free and Open Source software development. First Monday, Volume 10, Number 2 - 7 February 2005 Available at: https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/download/1207/1127 (Accessed: 2 May 2024) Holmes, W., Porayska-Pomsta, K., Holstein, K., Sutherland, E., Baker, T., Shum, S.B., Santos, O.C., Rodrigo, M.T., Cukurova, M., Bittencourt, I.I. and Koedinger, K.R. (2022). Ethics of AI in education: Towards a community-wide framework. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, pp.1-23. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-021-00239-1 Knox, J. (2013). Five critiques of the open educational resources movement. Teaching in Higher Education, 18(8), pp. 821–832. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2013.774354 Open Source Initiative (2024). The Open Source AI Definition – draft v. 0.0.8. Available at: https://opensource.org/deepdive/drafts/the-open-source-ai-definition-draft-v-0-0-8 (Accessed: 2 May 2024) UNESCO (2022). Understanding Open Science. UNESDOC Digital Library. DOI: https://doi.org/10.54677/UTCD9302 Walberg, H.J. and Thomas, S.C. (1972). Open education: An operational definition and validation in Great Britain and United States. American Educational Research Journal, 9(2), pp.197-208. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312009002197 Weller, M. (2020). 25 years of ed tech. Athabasca University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15215/aupress/9781771993050.01 Wiley, D. (2023). An analogy for understanding what it means for generative AI to be “Open”. Open Content. https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/7289

Author Keywords
Open AI, Open-source AI, Artificial Intelligence, Open data, Open-source technical platforms

The conference closes with a panel discussion and reflection from our conference keynote speakers, Robert dhurwain McLellan, Penny Jane Burke, and Siobhan Leachman.

And join us in celebrating the closing session of OEGlobal 2024.