It’s that time once again: time to blog about this year’s OER Conference! This year I got started early, and submitted a guest post to the altc blog: Openness Reimagined… from How to Who.
I missed last year’s event unfortunately, so I am doubly glad to be heading to Milton Keynes this year, and the programme looks amazing, kudos to the conference committee led by Dr. Robert Farrow and Dr Beck Pitt under the theme Openness Reimagined: Continuity, Change and Shared Vision and OER26 will also celebrate several anniversaries, including 20 years of OpenLearn and 30 years of the Journal of Interactive Media in Education.
I volunteered as a member of the Conference Committee, taking part in the peer review process and planning sessions in the months running up to the event, which has only heightened my anticipation. And so, with a bag full of stickers I am heading to the Open University, proud to have two sessions in the programme.
First up, I’m VERY excited to give a session about the case studies I have been working on with Reclaim Hosting. As I blogged on the Reclaim Blog:
Reclaim has long been a supporter of this wonderful conference and in 2021 we even joined forces for OERxDomains21. We took part in 2023 in Scotland, and in 2024 in Ireland, and this year we are heading to the UK’s Open University for much open education goodness!
Looking back at these conferences I have fond memories of my talk in 2024 together with Meredith Huffman, and all the fun we had hanging out with Alan Levine and Bryan Mathers, which led to the now legendary DS106 Radio Summer Camp. So what’s in store for this year, I hear you wonder:
From Experiment to Enterprise: Open EdTech Case Studies
Inspired by the conference theme “Open Practices and Pedagogical Innovation” our talk will showcase key points from several new Open EdTech case studies that show who and how institutions who are at the forefront of Open EdTech adoption develop, scale and deploy open source educational services. As well as showcasing how open source technologies move from experiment to enterprise service, we will highlight just how important such work is for developing digital capabilities, for faculty and for students.
I’m really proud of this piece of work and feeling privileged indeed that I’ll get to showcase this work which is very much a collaborative effort with Jim Groom, the whole Reclaim Team and of course the amazing educators and technologists that have kindly given their time and told their stories.
At the recent ILTA Conference I talked about a different case study, and although it landed very well indeed and there was a lot of interest in how to build digital capabilities with Domain of One’s Own for example, I am looking forward to taking this project to a dedicated Open Education event, and take a deeper dive into the open aspects of the work.
Walking the walk…
I also submitted an experimental session about the research for my second book, a session which is part podcast, part walk and a whole lot of storytelling. Although it’s a different part of my practice, it is conceptually aligned with the Reclaim case study, as it is also about open practice and how to use technology to navigate today’s uncertain and fast moving Higher Education landscape.
If you’d like to take a closer look, check out the dedicated podcast episode below.
OER26, I can’t wait!