OE Global 2019

Students are in all our minds with different roles: learners; lifelong learners; next generation of decision makers; today’s and tomorrow’s citizens. We are all working for them, but still students often have little or no voice in these contexts. There is a growing debate around the type of skills, competencies, knowledge and attitudes required for them to constructively face global challenges, to become active citizens and participants in the knowledge economy. What kind of future do students envision for education? What is the role of Open Education in this process? But first: are students aware of“Open Education”? Are they engaging in “Open Practices”? If yes, how? Are they actively contributing to the creation of knowledge and growth of Open Contents? Would they, if they knew? Moreover: would it be worth it, in their perspective? Let’s ask them. Students are the protagonists of this keynote, and the work behind the scenes to support their learning success is the other part of the story we are going to tell together.
Here you can find the script of our keynote, with links to the students video, the slides, our projects:
https://tinyurl.com/students-keynote  

Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education have become a priority for nations around the world, yet many students – in both developing and developed countries – lack access to high quality STEM learning experiences. For 17 years, the PhET Interactive Simulations team has been working to make science and math more engaging and accessible for all learners, worldwide. The challenge faced by educators is that effective STEM learning environments must support student understanding of core concepts, engage students in STEM practices, and develop students to think like STEM experts. The PhET project has focused on creating simulations that simultaneously address these three learning goals, are grounded in education research, work flexibly with a variety of research-based pedagogies, and promote widespread adoption. Today, our collection of 153 interactive simulations are translated into 93 languages and used over 100 million times per year. In this talk, we will reflect on the journey from 2002 to today, examining critical decision points, lessons learned, and innovations around pedagogy, design, technology, licensing, and dissemination that have influenced PhET’s work and its impact. We will consider the role of education research and the question of what to make (and not make) easily adaptable. Finally, we will look ahead to the challenges and opportunities on the horizon – bringing science inquiry to students with disabilities, advancing teacher practice, growing international use, and building a sustainable business model.

By implication open education subscribes to notions of social justice, but implementation strategies and research often focus on economic injustice to the exclusion of cultural and political inequities. Moreover, despite altruistic motivations, open education activity may unintentionally reproduce many of the existing inequities that it seeks to change. Drawing upon the projects in which I am involved I will highlight the intertwinement of open education and social justice in projects in the global south, by illustrating ways of strengthening equitable access, cultural equality and political legitimacy.

Have you noticed that we see many creative ideas on how artificial intelligence can be harnessed in education and indeed on how open educational resources can enable more equal access to higher education and to better learning materials – but we are often less creative when we think of the resulting higher education landscape! Most foresight studies centre their ideas on how the university as an institution will look in the future. I will argue that we should start by re-envisioning people’s learning pathways. I will also argue that it makes sense to be bolder in our ideas of the role of higher education.
I will suggest that a leading vision for higher (or tertiary) education should be: To ensure that all members of society participate in higher education at some point in their lifetime.This might sound unrealistic, but with it I hope that we might achieve an important change in perspective. This vision might help us avoid the continuing exclusivity of higher education – which tends to privilege a certain age group (the young) and people of certain backgrounds (what we call in German education-proximal populations, e.g. those people, whose parents attended higher education).
This vision is also appropriate for the learning society we need, which will necessitate new phases of learning throughout everyone’s lifetime. Ignoring this in the case of higher education will only lead to a digital divide along the age groups, with older persons being left out of strategies to help them acquire the skills necessary to a better life in a digital world.
Of course, this vision can only be achieved if we can evolve a more differentiated approach to higher education that is more individualised and more closely linked to people’s learning pathways throughout their life and which takes account of informal and non-formal learning – and not just formal learning periods as ‘registered’ or ‘enrolled’ learner. I look forward to the discussion.

The UNESCO Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER) is expected to be adopted by 195 UNESCO member states at the November session of the UNESCO General Conference just days before OE Global19. This is a unique and important milestone offering, if adopted, a major opportunity to advance open education around the world.

This panel will highlight for OE Global19 participants what the Recommendation says including:

Five areas of action:

1. Building capacity of stakeholders to create, access, use, adapt and redistribute OER
2. Developing supportive policy
3. Encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER
4. Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER
5. Facilitating international cooperation

Monitoring and reporting:

• Deploying appropriate research programmes, tools and indicators to measure effectiveness
• Collecting, presenting, and disseminating progress, good practices innovations and research reports
• Strategies for monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness and long-term financial efficiency of OER

Panelists will engage in discussion of next steps involved in supporting implementation of the UNESCO OER Recommendation.