From 26-28 November, the OEGlobal conference took place in Milan. This conference is the annual event from the Open Education Consortium. During the conference, they announced a name change to Open Education Global, to be realized somewhere over the next weeks.
The conference attracted around 200 participants, mainly from Europe and North America. In three days, a wide variety of topics in a variety of formats (presentation, world cafe, action lab, 10 minute lightning talks) came across, and ample opportunities to informally meet each other.
The absolute highlight for me was the keynote of Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams from the University of Cape Town titled The Warp and Weft of Open Education and Social Justice. In a catchy manner she made me start thinking about the economic, cultural and political consequences of my activities in the open world. I am still thinking about it and how these insights may change my behaviour. The slides can be found here.
Another highlight was the closing session where a.o. Mitja Jermol presented about the process that has led to the acceptance by the UNESCO General Assembly of the OER Recommendation. In another blog I will go deeper into this. For me, the beginning of his presentation was emotional. He asked for a 1 minute applause to remember Fred Mulder and Indrajit Banerjee. Both have meant a lot in the process, but have passed away last year and early 2019.
If I have to name one trend visible at this conference, I would say the many presentations involving student-generated content as a means to create OER. For me, these are concrete examples of how Open Pedagogy can be implemented in teaching. The Dutch SIG Open Education has just published a theme edition about this topic to provide concrete handles to teachers for how to implement these ideas in their teaching practices (in Dutch, but translation into English will soon be available). In 2020 this publication will be extended, resulting in an online tool for teachers to get inspired by cases of Open Pedagogy.
I was involved in three presentations and an action lab about policy making. Details of the presentations are now following.
The butterfly effect: how connecting digital learning materials to the constructive alignment theory may accelerate adoption of OER
This presentation is about the Dutch Acceleration Plan for Innovation of Education using ICT, more specifically the topic Towards digital (open) learning materials.
How about reuse?
Results of a study on practices of reuse, conducted together with Marjon Baas.
Community of Practice and OER, a successful formula?
Study of the role of a Community of Practice in adoption of OER in Nursing. Marjon Baas is conducting this study as part of her PhD study. It is work in progress.
Next years edition of the OEGlobal will be organized in Taiwan.
Hi Robert, As someone not able to attend, I was wondering excited to read your summary … especially -“ If I have to name one trend visible at this conference, I would say the many presentations involving student-generated content as a means to create OER.” I was wondering if you are seeing a trend of intentional creation of OER as a form of open pedagogy … or instructors using OEP, and as a result OER are created, but they don’t have to be? I guess my question stems from the intention of the learning design – is the focus on the creation of a product OR on the process ?
Thank you for your summary !
Verena 🙂
Hi Verena,
In the presentations mainly the intended creation of open resources by students (an implementation of Open Pedagogy) came to the fore. So the focus was mainly on the process.
I guess the not intended creation of resources (in most cases a particular initiative of students) is happening a long time already, although not in all cases these resources were shared openly. I remember in my days as a student mathematics (1974-1980), fellow students shared their college notes, although not digitally. Both my sons (graduated in 2015 and 2019) have the same experiences, but then digitally.
Regards,
Robert