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…
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 ALTâs 25th annual conference next month, Frances Bell and I will facilitate a workshop titled: A personal, feminist…
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…
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…
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.…
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 đ  So, I’ve…
I successfully completed my PhD defense (or viva) last week — and am feeling the joy! No success is an individual accomplishment, of course. We move forward, in whatever ways we can, thanks to a multitude of sacrifices, kindnesses, and the good work of many others, seen and unseen, known and unknown. I initially shared…
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…
I’m a lover of a variety of podcasts — education, science, politics, arts & culture. I listen to learn, to laugh, to be moved (and, honestly, often to be transported elsewhere as I inch through another of Galway’s traffic jams). A wonderful find of the past year has been Teaching in Higher Ed by Bonni Stachowiak. A recent episode with…
Many thanks to Maha Bali for organising tonight’s Open Pedagogy Hangout. Maha has curated a number of blog posts about open pedagogy and also started a Google doc to collect notes, links, etc: http://bit.ly/CurateOpenPed. Thanks to all who have blogged and shared their thoughts. I’m grateful for the opportunity to participate and looking forward to…