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| thanks to Gabriel Vivas for image under Creative Commons Licence |
There is still time to get a proposal in and to sign up for the conference.
Theme 1: Openness, care, and joy in the times of pandemic;
Theme 2: Open Education responses to surveillance technologies and data ownership in education;
Theme 3: Open in Action: open teaching, educational practices and resources, how you might be using Domains and other tools;
Theme 4: Shifts in agency and creativity as empowerment of learners and educators;
Theme 5: Open Source Tools: infrastructure, cloud environments, targeted teaching tools.
We've come along way since #OER10 , I've blogged some of my own #OER journey.
My world may be similar to your world - wherever your geographic location.
Teaching staff while juggling their own domestic commitments are finding ways to develop engaging learning experiences . We can see a lot of thought and design going into Moodle courses and higher levels of interactivity through quizzes , forums, and other tools. Staff have been embedding Wakelets , H5P ,Google Sites and in the UK the Blended Learning Consortium content alongside links to open digital materials in the College's library to give students a rich learning experience.
We can see too great use of Zoom , Click-View and YouTube to provide short episodes of learning embedded in courses - while staff are doing crash courses in Microsoft teams used on the admin side of the organisation.
On assessment, staff are developing flexible solutions and making good use of dropbox and Turnitin where these are required - but mainly looking around at more open portfolio approaches to gathering evidence.
From learners feedback is positive. They understand the challenges we are all facing . They appreciate the richer content , collaborative activities and zoom sessions. They enjoy using social media to support their formal learning and classes now use a variety of tools to stay in touch. They are coping with remote learning along with their own challenges.
Like any other year the students are looking for more feedback. Some innovative staff are doing this through voice and video recordings as well as through more traditional feedback mechanisms.
One of the biggest challenges is a very human one - how do we get everyone to work with their camera switched on.
On all fronts we are trying to get staff to share and collaborate beyond the institution - in some ways the challenges are the same as 2010 but we have more solutions and staff are more willing to explore these and finally work in the open !
#OERxDomains21 is a great space to explore what open education could do for you as a teacher and how it can empower your learners. If you are an institutional leader it will steer you to the systems and policy you need to put in place to open up your learning.
I hope you come along and meet this global community of innovators.
If ever the world needed more openness it is now ! Tune in
