To help you plan your participation the conference program schedule can be filtered by date, venue, session type, and session format using the Filter functions.
Filter by Date lets you look at a specific day of the program. Filter by Venue lets you look at the program by venue rooms where sessions are taking place. Filter by Type lets you look at the program by track. In addition to keynotes and breaks the program is made up of three main tracks or types of sessions Pedagogy, Roles, and Strategies. Clicking on a type in Filter by Type lets you see only sessions of that type in the program schedule. In addition, Pedagogy, Roles, and Strategies each have a set of associated topics. Topics appear when you hover over a type name in the Filter by Type area of Sched. Topics are clickable allowing you to further filter the program by topic. Session Format lets you view the program by types of sessions - Action Labs, Lightning Talks, Posters, Presentations, and World Cafes.
The conference program is rich and diverse representing the current state of open education around the world.
The open education movement in North America has gone from a peripheral idea to a central strategy for addressing higher education cost and access issues. With this growth, we have seen new players enter the open education space from commercial publishers to learning platform companies. Vendors are increasingly adopting language that muddies the water about the meaning of open, and reshaping digital products to appear similar to OER while carrying traditional restrictions.
Meanwhile, a larger market shift is at play as large traditional publishers transitioning from mere content providers to technology companies with the potential to build vast empires on top of teaching and learning data. This shift is accelerated by aggressive marketing for “low cost” digital options or “inclusive access” to full catalogs of materials, which are embedding data collection opportunities in every classroom. While data and analytics can be used for good, there is too little conversation about the potential harms and strategic risks. This evolving landscape sets the stage for complex future debates over privacy, algorithms, and control of the infrastructure at the core of higher education institutions.
This short talk will reflect on the state of the courseware landscape in North America and its implications for the future of higher education. How do we continue to hold the line on the meaning and vision of “open”? How do we ensure that infrastructure decisions being made now do not cut short the potential to achieve a truly open system? What steps the open movement can take to make sure we are always putting students first? Reflections will draw on SPARC’s work to map the education and research publishing landscape and some of our thinking on how to advance toward community-controlled infrastructure. Participants will walk away with some answers, but also many new questions.
