At the recent OER24 conference in Cork, Ireland, Laura Czerniewicz and I had the great honour of giving a joint keynote, in the company of another keynoter, the inimitable Rajiv Jhangiani. In addition, we were inspired by the range and depth of work shared by so many in the international open education community who presented…
OER23 part two: inclusive, hopeful and “warm space*”
After returning home from #OER23 I wrote a short blog post about the joy of returning to the conference as an in-person event – and the privilege of sharing an update on Higher Education for Good (co-edited with Laura Czerniewicz), particularly with several of the book’s contributors in the room. This “part two” blog post…
GO-GN Fellowship reflections
On 21 November 2022, the Global OER Graduate Network (GO-GN) launched a report reflecting on the GO-GN Fellowship scheme. Between 2020 and 2022, nine GO-GN Fellows undertook OER/OEP-related postdoctoral research projects in Africa, Europe, North America, South America and Australia. I was privileged to be a GO-GN Fellow in 2022 here in Ireland. My Fellowship…
Capabilities Approach & open education
This blog post is an initial contribution to a workshop I’ll be co-presenting at OER22 (26-28 April): ‘Applying the Capability Approach to Open Educational Practice’ with Gabi Witthaus. The workshop arises from our recent discussions about overlaps in our work and our visions for open education. Next week, Gabi and I will publish a joint…
Ready for #OER19
It has been a whirlwind, a unique learning experience, and a privilege to work these past 14 months with my OER19 co-chair Laura Czerniewicz, with ALT‘s star team of Maren Deepwell, Martin Hawksey and Jane Marsh, with a fabulous conference committee and Galway planning team and with a global network of open educators, researchers, and…
Reflecting before #ALTC: personal & political
I initially qualified and worked as an engineer, but for the past 25+ years I have worked as an educator — mostly in higher education, but also in different community contexts and in the tech industry. At ALT’s 25th annual conference next month, Frances Bell and I will facilitate a workshop titled: A personal, feminist…
Open education in higher education: policy recommendations
Three months ago, I submitted and openly published my PhD thesis, Openness and praxis. The aim of the study was to understand whether, why, how, and to what extent individual educators used open educational practices (OEP) — with OEP defined as the creation, use and reuse of open educational resources (OER) as well as open…
Privacy, openness, and contextual integrity – #NLC2018
I’ve another blog post brewing from all that’s transpired in the past month, particularly the #OER18 and #OEGlobal Conferences, but today I’m presenting at the Networked Learning Conference and want to capture a few links here. I’ll be sharing some of the results from my PhD research, but want also to foreground work that has…
PhD thesis: Openness and praxis
Yesterday I formally submitted my thesis to NUI Galway. It is done! There are so many gateways and milestones in the doctoral process: each year’s progression (via Graduate Research Committee review), thesis submission for examination, the viva, completion of final corrections, printing and binding the final version, formal submission, and uploading the open access version.…
Considering openness
Today and tomorrow I’ll be working with a group of academic staff here at NUI Galway as part of the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education here in CELT. Of course it’s very dangerous to ask someone who’s *just* completed their PhD in open education to talk about… open education 😉 So, I’ve…