A new year, starting quite differently to last year. Last January I outlined a plan for the year with the goal of submitting my PhD thesis by December 1st. I submitted on the Winter Solstice… close enough 🙂 ‘For examination, PhD thesis final drafts should be submitted to supervisor in a car park at the…
Many faces of open research
I’m in the final few weeks of my PhD — the thesis-writing part of the process, anyway. My research topic is open educational practices (OEP), specifically how educators and students make sense of and make use of OEP in higher education. So, yes, I’ve been thinking a lot about that. But I’ve been reflecting also on…
Finding words
“Someone died today in #Charlottesville because an ideology of hatred marched through the city, wanting battle.” – DeRay Mckesson “Three people died today in Charlottesville, Virginia because people have not just been taught to hate, they’ve been taught that it’s important to hate in public.” – Ira Socol “I’ve got no words. Not now. Not…
Grateful for openness
Post-#OEGlobal and pre-#OER17, my mind is on fire. At the end of Open Education Week and Brexit week; working on another draft chapter for my PhD, yet pulled in the direction of events in Ireland, the US, Mosul, Venezuela and more, my mind is on fire. I have many posts to write but I shall write one, in gratitude.…
Initial thoughts… Exploring OEP in higher education
The working title of my PhD research study is Exploring open educational practices in higher education. I’m currently at a ‘pausing point’ between phases – so I plan to write a few blog posts to capture my findings and thinking so far and where I’m heading next. This is the first of those posts. The…
Road to Hope
Today I started writing a blog post about openness, inequality, and the complex reckonings we make about our digital, networked identities. But tonight I’m finding I can’t write anything until I write this. I’m just back from a meeting with two wonderful people here in Kinvara. Maeve Kelly and Pete Brazier are part of a…
Digital Identity redux
In the course of my work over the past few years I have circled back, again and again, to digital identity. In my research and teaching, when invited to speak with or facilitate workshops for staff and students (on open educational practices, social media & academia, digital literacies, etc.), and when working with young people…
If open is the answer, what is the question? #oer16
How would you answer the question above? Please join the conversation by tweeting your response (using the #oer16 hashtag) or adding to the comments below. Whether we consider ourselves to be open education practitioners or researchers, advocates or critics, wonderers or agnostics, our motivating questions regarding openness are likely to be different. For example, you…
#iCollab, communities and networks
Nurturing global collaboration and networked learning in higher education, an article based on our iCollab experiences, has been published in Research in Learning Technology today. The article was authored by Thom Cochrane, Averill Gordon and myself, three members of the iCollab community of practice – it is based on a presentation which Thom and I…
#dlRN15: Hope, Hands, and Stories
And so, the Digital Learning Research Network conference. I have been mulling over all-that-was-dlRN since leaving Palo Alto a week ago. I extended my stay in California for a few days to visit family before making the long journey back to Galway. It was a wonderful and memorable week. In looking at the photos I…