OE Global 2019

Session Table Name: NAPOLI

Has “open”, which we normally associate with positive effects, actually had unintended negative consequences for higher education?

This World Cafe discussion considers that question using the lens of higher education as a commons. My current research indicates the answer is yes and I have posited a framework and narrative for how, at least for the United States, that has happened.

The question for participants at this café table is: Does this ring true for your country, culture, or institution? Has efforts to “open” access to higher education, that is, to greatly scale participation in higher education and educate more students, actually had the negative unintended consequence of changing the nature of higher education itself? Have technological changes that have “opened” the campus also resulted in commodification of learning itself and attempts to enclose the commons?

The discussion will open with a brief of the higher education-as-commons institutional framework first presented at the OER19 conference and updated with a brief narrative of how two waves of “open” in the United States have actually had negative unintended consequences. The first wave was the effort to greatly scale participation in higher education and resulted in the burea-state and firm-market orientations exerting dominance in colleges and universities to the detriment of the learning commons. The second wave has been the technological wave that has resulted in publisher efforts to enclose the commons as a means to replace the control they once had via the printing press.

With the help of participants I aim to explore the hypothesis that this is a global phenomenon and not just a United States narrative. If so, it may shed light on how we may collectively reassert open as a positive force that supports the commons.

Session Table Name: ROMA

We present a novel approach to establishing a quality model for OER, based on quality aspects that are considered to be universally accepted in any educational resource, as well as a number of aspects that are dependent on the goal and preferences of the educator that is looking to adopt OER to his or her teaching. We approach the concept of quality as something that is dynamic, constantly changing and time- and purpose-dependent. This means that determining whether a resource is of high quality is a continuous process that changes with technological advancements, current trends and the experiences of a user.
Determining what aspects of quality are measureable serves as a basis for designing an automated search tool that is capable of searching through multiple OER repositories simultaneously and evaluate large amounts of OER on relevancy, and a range of other aspects that can define the quality of the resources. We will engage with the participants of the World Forum to discuss such a design and to get feedback on our approach to evaluating quality of OER.
The participants will be discussing topics regarding the quality of OER, to gain insight into recognizing quality of OER and into requirements of an automated search algorithm capable of finding high-quality resources. These topics include: which aspects of OER are accepted as general measures for high quality; purposes for which someone might search for OER and what aspects of resources label them as high quality for those purposes; properties that should be evaluated by an automated search algorithm in order to recognize high-quality OER; which OER platforms and repositories should be evaluated by the search algorithm. The discussions will serve as the basis for determining which aspects of OER make it a quality resource and to develop an search tool capable of quantifying quality.

Session Table Name: VENEZIA

The goal of this World Café session is to share ideas about making connections between the life and learning experiences of students and the learning experiences in an educational system. By the end of this session, I hope to find the most important question(s) we should be asking and some creative solutions to making these connections.
1. What makes learning experiences meaningful?
2. Is there a need or should it be a goal to make learning experiences meaningful for students?
3. How does an understanding of the knowledge, values, and skills of our students connect to relevancy in learning experiences?
4. How can we determine local knowledge, cultural values, and literacy skills and how can we create learning environments and lessons to create meaning learning experiences? Who are our students? What are their values? What are their experiences?
5. What are the questions we can ask ourselves as practitioners to understand our students?
6. Are the connections between creating meaningful learning experiences different for different groups of learners?
The answer might lie in open pedagogy, in creating learning experiences that value the experiences of the learner and in creating learning experiences that are diverse in knowledge, skills, and creativity.
How does open pedagogy facilitate connections between the experiences of the learner and the learning experiences?
Open education is an important cornerstone of my challenge to create meaningful learning experiences for students. My future project is to continue to find ways of understanding the learning experiences, values, and skills of students in my classes in order to continue to create meaningful learning experiences.

Session Table Name: FIRENZE

This session continues discussions from the OER19 conference in Galway, Ireland which introduced the “Helen Lovejoy phenomenon in Open Education”.

With the reference to The Simpsons character we shed light to situations in which adults pretend to think not OF the children but FOR them, i.e. patronizing them. There is also a Helen Lovejoy Syndrome in Open Education: We tend to think not only OF the learners but we intend to think FOR them. ( “We” refers to educators and educational institutions that design and provide OER).

At the OE Global 2019 we will provide a brief summary and then introduced the audience to new issues of unknowns in Open Education which will be discussed on-site as well as on-line.

Session Table Name: TRIESTE

Do you teach SDGs or work to advance them in your community? A visit to this table at the World Action Café invites you to brainstorm and share ideas about local, national, regional or international efforts that focus on the advancement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. EduChange, a small instructional design firm in the USA, is seeking collaborations with STEM researchers, NGOs, community leaders, business leaders and policymakers who are interested in:

1) connecting multiple worlds of ‘open’—open data, open science, citizen science, OER—with education and action around the SDGs;

2) involving people at all ages who could benefit from educational OER that address specific SDGs and real-world contexts, including ways in which multiple SDGs connect within and across contexts.

For context, from 2016-2018 we updated four full years of interdisciplinary STE(A)M curricula already used in five countries to strategically embed all 17 SDGs through global contexts that connect learning to real life. We worked with an international cadre of STEM practitioners to contextualize the SDGs and make them approachable, personal and real for students. We also tapped multiple open databases, citizen science initiatives, and STEM partners who are taking action in various ways. These partners have suggested that our OER educational materials would be well-suited to community, workplace and adult education programs tied to the SDGs. Please view this short video to get an idea of the possibilities

We also know that many SDG-related efforts exist, and there is a possibility to highlight the endeavors within our OER, for reciprocal benefit. Additionally, we would like to encourage students at the secondary and Community College/Vocational/Trades levels to lead SDG-focused projects in their own communities or collaborate with existing projects led by researchers, NGOs, businesses or community groups.

We hope the World Action Café will generate fresh ideas, connect collaborators, and generally advance collective thinking about the SDGs.

Session Table Name: BELLAGIO

The core concept behind the World Cafe is to bring together librarians and a range of cross-disciplinary professionals to actively explore how we can better collaborate to increase, and rapidly, access to Open Education resources. This event is being proposed by the European Network of Open Education Librarians. Members of this growing group of academic librarians and OE stakeholders serve as OE ambassadors and facilitators, driving awareness and support for Open Education at our individual institutions. Thanks to the advances made in OA and OS in the past decade plus, the academic and scholarly communities have a store of relevant learnings to draw upon as we intensify efforts to move Open Education forward in Europe. But if we are to fully capitalize on all that we have learned, we must collaborate, partner -- share. Since our inception in Spring of 2018, our Network has done the foundational work of exploring the key challenges to implementing OE. Moving to the next phase of addressing these challenges requires that we draw many more voices into the conversation. Enter OE Global and the World Cafe. Our session would engage a broad swath of stakeholders and foster conversations around how to encourage partnerships and collaborations that advance Open Education.

Session Table Name: NAPOLI

This session will feature three necessary roles in standing up a successful initiator: the energizer, the funder, and the facilitator. Sometimes these multiple roles are inhabited by only one or two people, we recognize. We will suggest ways of finding advocates and allies, even when that’s the case. And we will discuss with participants what additional roles might be required, beyond these three.

This session introduces an experienced library business manager, highlighting a voice that doesn’t often get represented in the public OER conversation. We will speak to infrastructure and nuts and bolts of building a more organized program. Focusing on building a viable foundation and addressing the practical details of rules and policies surrounding funding an initiative is a crucial step, and one that this session will emphasize. Successful OER programs touch many corners of an institution, and require partnerships with representatives who don’t have familiarity with the unique economics and impact of open education. Establishing and navigating relationships with these stakeholders is vital. This conversation will empower participants to apply the motivations they’ll be exposed to throughout the conference towards the development of their own local practices.

Participants will leave with a tangible document that outlines steps to take at their home institutions, to either develop a new OER initiative or expand an existing one.

The session will consist of four facets:
1-How to build energy
2-How to address skeptics and find resources
3-How to keep the momentum
4-Discussion and takeaways

Session Table Name: ROMA

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have generated considerable interest in the educational research community. This interest stems from the potential that these courses offer in providing flexible, affordable, and on-demand options for learning and development in a time of instant connectivity and constant change. Despite this rise in interest and research output, there are some major blind spots within this field of research that require serious attention. Early research in this area focused on categorizations of MOOCs based on their technological and pedagogical underpinnings, with this focus moving later to issues related to learners’ experiences and patterns of engagement within a MOOC (Olazabalaga, Garrido, & Ruiz, 2016). However, this shift in focus did not extend beyond learners’ experiences and engagement within a MOOC. Many researchers have pointed out the need to examine the impact these informal learning experiences have on participants’ actual practices after they participate in a MOOC and how different design factors support or hinder the transfer of knowledge and experiences gained to real-life situations (Castaño, Maiz, & Garay, 2015; Olazabalaga et al., 2016). Some studies suggest that learners do not use the knowledge they gain in MOOCs in their jobs and that improvements in MOOC design could help remedy this problem (Mathews, 2014).

The purpose of this world cafe session is to share the effectiveness of a MOOC offered on the Canvas Open Network entitled “Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning” (HumanMOOC) by exploring the impact that this
informal learning experience had on learners’ teaching and learning practices after they participated in the MOOC. Our topics of inquiry were: In what ways has participating in the MOOC changed how participants perceive and enhance presence in their online courses? What factors (i.e. course design, personal, and institutional) supported or hindered the implementation of these changes in participants’ actual practice?

Session Table Name: VENEZIA

The quick expansion of MOOCs has collected a massive amount of learning data. Professionals said that it’s the best time that we know how human learn. Massive data are the foundation of the newly “smart technology”, which it's called “artificial intelligence” in the old days. In this session, I will focus on the application, development or imagination of AI in MOOCs. I would like participants to imagine the possibilities of AI for open education.

Session Table Name: FIRENZE

The CC Certificate provides an-in depth study of Creative Commons licenses and open practices. Content targets copyright law, CC legal tools, as well as the values and good practices of working in the global, shared commons. Learn more about the CC Certificate and access the course’s open licensed content at https://certificates.creativecommons.org/.

All CC Certificate content is available under the CC BY 4.0 license, making it open educational resources (OER), available in downloadable in editable file formats. While use of the Certificate OER alone does not yield a CC Certification--Creative Commons encourages everyone to use and adapt content to meet their needs.

The CC Certificate is a global course, built with the intention of adaptation and remix. We seek opportunities to share and adapt the course OER for different countries, languages and communal contexts. We also encourage our community members to share local case studies. The more audiences with whom the content resonates, the better.

Since making the OER available, we’ve seen multiple adaptations of the work. In this World Cafe conversation, we will ground discussion around a question about adaptation: “What happens when we relinquish control of our work?” Conversation will also highlight one of the exceptional adaptations of the Certificate that we’ve encountered: the CC Certificate in Italian, complete with the first local case study.

Join us for a conversation about adaptation, and get a “sneak peak” at the CC Certificate in Italian!

Session Table Name: TRIESTE

More than a billion people live with some form of disability, and 80% of them live in developing countries. Disability is both a cause and a consequence of poverty: poor people are more likely to become disabled, and people with disabilities are among the poorest and most vulnerable groups of the global population. Disability and Accessibility are gaining whole new perspective in current shifting global status quo beyond the initial definition of intellectual, psychiatric, cognitive, neurological, sensory or physical impairment. It is extending to include economic imperatives caused by lack of lifelong learning, disabilities resulting of accident, illness, injury and the process of aging throughout life. That is in addition to disabilities caused by digital divide thus hindering the design for diversity through creating learning experiences that travel the globe. This has perpetuated a situation in which environmental barriers are still preventing persons with disabilities from accessing, participating and being fully-included in social, economic and political activities. To scale to the global education dilemma we have to scale the solutions.

In this session we shall try to broaden our perspective on what is considered a disability and the role of OER in bridging the gap of digital accessibility. We will try to grasp all the aspects of the challenges that face global education in general, open education, and OER from infrastructure to the quality of the resources and what makes them truly open and accessible and its potential in affecting global policies and economies. We will also try to investigate and design an inclusive roadmap that would highlight the role of OER in solving disability and accessibility issues through setting a collaborative session among teachers, administrators, legislators, state and federal leaders, parents and community members.

Session Table Name: BELLAGIO

This paper introduces "The Quality Reference Framework (QRF) for the Quality of MOOCs". It was developed by the European Alliance for the Quality of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), called MOOQ. Overall, MOOQ could address and reach out to more than 100,000 MOOC learners, designers, facilitators and providers through dissemination and exploitation activities. Main objective of MOOQ was the development of the QRF finalized and published in the year 2018 after more than three years of revisions. In close cooperation with leading international institutions and associations, MOOQ could involve in the QRF finalization more than 10,000 MOOC learners, designers, facilitators and providers through divers means including the Mixed Methods research with the Global MOOC Quality Survey (GMQS), the MOOQ presentations and workshops at regional, European and international conferences as well as communication and collaboration in traditional channels and social media. The QRF consists of three dimensions: Phases, Perspectives and Roles. They were carefully selected, discussed and agreed with all MOOC stakeholder groups to cover the different views, requirements and responsibilities during the lifetime of a MOOC. The paper presents the two QRF quality instruments: the QRF Key Quality Criteria for MOOC experts and the QRF Quality Checklist for MOOC beginners.

Session Table Name: BARI

 Watch the  Ex Ante Video

This World Cafè will involve OE Global attendees in a common reflection about a specific MOOC format that has been proposed in the field of eLene4Life http://elene4life.eu/. eLene4Life is an Erasmus+ KA2 project (2018-2021) supporting curriculum innovation in higher education through the development of active learning approaches for soft skills, with the ultimate aim of improving students’ employability.
The activity's goal is to come up with an appropriate definition suitable for a "discussion- based MOOC" for teachers. It is a new MOOC format focused on stimulating and supporting users' reflection through experiences shared by peers.
One of the criticisms carried out by some authors in the MOOCs' field concerns the lack of human Interaction. This is the reason why the "discussion-based MOOC" vision is shaped on trying to put people back at the center of the process. In fact, the eLene4Life MOOC will be designed collecting experiences which show how active learning can support soft skills development. These experiences will stimulate participants' reflection and inspire discussion among peers. In this MOOC you will not be “just” a learner but the maker of your learning experience.  
The main questions we'd like to work on are: how can we frame a new MOOC format able to valorize peers' experiences? How can we make them become catalysts that will spark reflection and discussion?

We’d like to work with OEG conference attendees through a three steps brainstorming activity: 

1. First step: working on a common definition of what attendees at the table mean by discussion-based MOOC, leaving from the following definition: a MOOC where the contents come from storytelling of direct peer experiences.
2. Second step:starting from the agreed definition, created by the previous group,  going deeper in defining what users should expect to find in this kind of MOOCs in terms of activities, contents, interaction among participants and with teachers.
3. Third step: reflecting on risks connected to what emerged during the previous  “exploration” phase. Attendees will pretend to be the instructional designer responsible for the MOOC development: which risks will you come across? How can you overcome them?

At the end of the activity the attendee are going to be invited to join an Active Learning online community dedicated to support the soft skills development. Joining this online community will give them the possibility to follow the MOOC development and the project itself.
The idea is to experience both in general and in this world café, the same process and methodology that will be used to spark reflections in the "discussion-based" MOOC itself.
Licence:  CC BY 4.0 

Session Table Name: NAPOLI

To date, there is little research that speaks to the student perceptions of open education environments. As higher education institutions change to meet the requirements of contemporary learners, there is a need to discuss the benefits and challenges of implementing open education practices in these spaces. This session will share a review of current literature focused on student perceptions of open educational practices and digital pedagogies implemented within open education environments. By open education environments, we refer to practices that include student and instructor use of institutionally supported open source blogging and other collaboration tools accessible on the open Web, as well as learner-chosen social media. Using the World Café format, the student experience in open education environments will be discussed, and promising practices for students working in these spaces in higher education will be identified. Through a series of questions, participants will examine key issues of (1) transitioning student and teaching roles; (2) evolving support requirements for student and faculty; and (3) developing networked scholars/practitioners. As these questions are explored, participants will be encourage to represent their thoughts using a variety of medium, and the table hosts will summarize and make connections to the other contributions emerging from the World Café. These summaries will be shared more broadly using an electronic whiteboard. Course developers and instructors will gain insights into the supports that are necessary for students and faculty working in these environments. In this session, we hope to foster interest in conducting global collaborative research, in order to better understand students’ needs and expectations when learning in open education environments.

Session Table Name: ROMA

Today, Wikipedia it is probably the foremost source of information on scientific and technical issues (but also art, history, etc.) for the general public. It also provides a natural platform for Open Education, as “free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute”. In recent years, we have coordinated three editions of a one-week intensive course entitled “Science, technology, society and Wikipedia” for the PhD students in engineering, architecture or industrial design at the Politecnico di Milano. The course is carried out in collaboration with experienced Wikipedia editors. It introduces the students to the workings and rules of Wikipedia and, most of all, engages them in the production of new material for it. The final evaluation of their work is based both on the technical quality of the articles (“referee reports” by academics at the Politecnico) and their adherence to Wikipedia guidelines. The course has been increasingly successful with the students. We have also received positive feedback from the Wikipedia community, and a fourth edition has already scheduled for June 2020. We propose to hold a World Café session. Our aim is share our experience with Open Education experts and discuss ways to improve and possibly expand our course.Ex-ante video: https://youtu.be/0GvQX-ap9fY

Session Table Name: VENEZIA

You are invited to this discovery world café to contribute to the current pulse of open education for the primary and secondary sector. There is a conundrum happening – open practices are embedded in the professional experiences of primary and secondary teachers yet they seldom identify as open practitioners. Sharing and collaborating inform their school and broader contexts yet only pockets of self-identified open pedagogues exist.

The OER developments within higher education have been driven by the costs of textbooks. Although higher education institutes use the terms of open practices (e.g. OER, open access, etc.) the structure of the professorate does not reward curriculum creation or sharing. Ironically, these same practices describe the situation in many areas of primary and secondary teaching. These K-12 teachers create their own content, engage their students in participatory technologies, apply creative representations of knowledge, and encourage aspects of peer review yet this digital and open pedagogy is frequently unlabeled or commended. Additionally, the decision-makers that support these primary and secondary teachers have many competing demands and their knowledge of open educational resources, licensing, and innovative digital practices lacks depth.

What to do? What to change? How can openness in education become better understood, supported and promoted in the primary and secondary sector? What insights from individuals within higher education can be offered to those involved with educating children and teens? How can meeting the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 4 be met with changes and improvements for awareness and deep understanding of openness in education for young learners?

The questions in this world café are provocations and starting points. We want to assess the current situation, and explore some “big” questions and wicked problems (i.e. difficult or impossible to solve). We want to discuss creations of possibility and consider workable strategies. Please join us!

Session Table Name: FIRENZE

Our group is from Canada, a sparsely populated nation and the second largest country in the world. Establishing and maintaining open education relationships and projects across Canada is a challenge. We're certain the same must be true for other large countries. So, during this World Cafe session we will brainstorm about how large jurisdictions might manage global, and intra-national, partnerships. (READ MORE about the history of and challenges regarding open education in Canada.)

Collaboration is key for the amplification of open education activities, especially as institutions share and collaborate in Open Educational Resource (OER) creation, Open Educational Practices (OEP) and Open Research. Establishing connections to enable open collaboration and stimulate growth can be challenging at best, and especially so in the context of large countries or across national and international borders.

During this 60-minute World Cafe session, we will explore how to sustain communities of practice that aim to openly share ideas, projects and educational content, within the context of large countries. We aim to engage participants in meaningful discussions about the impact collaboration can have on shaping the future of Open Education, in particular, by looking at how it can improve sharing of ideas, projects and educational content for a more socially just and equitable learning environment.

We will offer two separate tables with each dedicated to one of these two questions:

1. What are the biggest challenges to collaboration across boundaries (national and/or international) in terms of sharing (working in open contexts) open content, practices and data?

2. What specific opportunities do you see that can help grow and sustain collaborative open education initiatives around the world?

We call on our colleagues from around the world to share experiences from their countries as the group discusses strategies to mitigate challenges and barriers to cross-boundary collaboration and harness the opportunities created by the inherent diversity and richness of contributions from international partners. 

Session Table Name: TRIESTE

Openness can be a stimulator and amplifier of creativity (Resnick, 2017). Within this wordcafe session we will introduce delegates to the #creativeHE community (Nerantzi, Jackson, Mouratoglou and Baff, 2018) that has engaged in open courses and discussions on the theme of creativity since 2014. Some of these have involved collaboration with other higher education institutions and organisations that harnesses the opportunities open communities bring to connect educational practitioners, students and the wider public across professions and sectors, countries and continents. Open platforms enable people to come together locally and globally to nurture discussions and activities around creativity in higher education.

We will share an activity that was undertaken as a contribution for World Creativity and Innovation Week 2019 with the Creative HE community, the Centre for Imagination in Research, Culture and Education (CIRCE) and led by the Creative Academic Network. The project involved the collaboration of these three established networks and overlapping communities.
Open discussions on Facebook and LinkedIn platforms aimed to develop a Manifesto for Higher Education to encourage and enable learners to use and develop their imaginations and creativity, and gain recognition for their creative efforts and achievements.

The process involved an open-ended inquiry promoted by a series of questions and supported by discussion papers. Participants shared their personal manifestos the forums and other participants were able to value their contributions and add their comments. The overarching openly licensed manifesto was created by one of the facilitators gleaning important ideas from the personal manifestos and has been included in a dedicated open access Creative Academic Magazine (Jackson & Willis, 2019).

During the Worldcafe we will take delegates through the process and create mini personal creativity manifestos and a table manifesto that can be shared more widely.

Note:References didn't fit in the box. We will provide these if accepted

Session Table Name: BELLAGIO

As video has become a primary instructional data type across all sectors of education, it is important to consider how we can make video objects into first-class citizens in the OER movement. In many ways, the complexities of video have hindered their development as OERs; by learning more about these constraints, we can start to outline a framework for overcoming them. Further, there are unique possibilities of video which should be accounted for in this OER effort, and understanding these aspects are necessary in formulating an approach to Open Education Video Resources.