Scroll to 5:45 in the video below to get to the actual starting point.

Grant Potter of UNBC was broadcasting a live panel session using the UStream iPhone app. The panel featured Rory McGreal (Athabasca), Stephen Downes (NRC) and Liz Burge (UNB) talking about issues surrounding the use of open educational resurces (OER).

This was a quick hit of professional development that was both enjoyable and thought provoking. I especially liked Liz’s probes of OER value propositions from a practitioner perspective, and the response it it provoked from Stephen.  Great fun, as well as stimulus for reflection and further consideration.

Two things were notable:

• The ease with which this sort of micro-broadcast could be done live, with relatively good picture and audio quality
• The potential that this medium has for quickly engaging a viewer with a high-level presentation or conversation, and for conveying the feeling that you are as much there as the audience was in Saint John

Although I didn’t ask a question, I know that had I tweeted to Grant he would have happily served as a proxy for a question.

Grant’s archive of CNIE 2010 micro-broadcasts is here.

Luckily, there are a few outdoor urban niches where you can escape the downtown rush and find a sonic refuge. One of these is the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden – a short walk from my office.

Click the photo above to see my slideshow (14 images) of the Sun Yat-Sen Garden.

I visited the Sun Yat-Sen garden this week on a sunny Monday afternoon. The garden’s surrounding walls and central waterfall feature provide the ideal ambience for muffling the drone and din of the city while you reflect and dream in a tranquil setting.

Inlaid pebble-tile footpaths and bridges connect the garden spaces – cool white rooms filled with pots and bonsai, carved screens and impressive wooden doorways. One outer wall of the garden offers a series of round portals to seating areas and benches that look across a quiet pond to a park beyond.

The garden is my urban refuge.

But…

It’s all over way too soon -

3-2-1, you’re back in the room.

The anxiety continues unabated.  I want to write a blog post.  I can’t write.  I resort to random tweets to help dissolve the blockage.

Or, I write well constructed emails about professional projects and initiatives, taking time to craft every sentence as if it were a poetic work.

Arghhhhh.

Somewhere within I know the answer.

And, I need an adventure.

While searching using “simple, easy, agile” and other adjectives to describe “OER workflow,” I finally got a hit that made sense.

OER Workflow Diagram by Lisa Rogers – Heriot-Watt University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

The OER workflow diagram by Lisa Rogers, and the explanation of its use is a valuable resource.

Thank you, Lisa.

d.

After 30 minutes of flying we were crossing the long fjord-like inlets Toba, Bute and Knight, that carve a path between successive mountain ranges along the coast. Each range features a spectacular drop to the the ocean from its glaciated peaks.

I was thinking that with any kind of luck we might fly right past the highest peak in the BC Coast Range, a rarely visible jagged spire with glaciers flowing in multiple directions from its base.

As Bute Inlet came into view, I could see the Homathko River at its head, and as we flew on, it was becoming increasingly likely that we would follow the river to the glaciers at the base of Mt. Waddington.

Wow — within minutes a steep glacier started climbing up and up from the Homathko River until it reached the base of Waddington, granite fingers with an ice coating, reaching to the sky. Amazing, we were flying at 16,000 ft. just above the Waddington summit of 13,000+ ft.

The near (southeast) side of Waddington holds the enormous Tiedemann Glacier, and beyond this point all the way to Terrace, is an almost unbroken series of ice fields and sharp peaks that define the wilderness of the BC northwest.

In the madness and technical focus of my daily work it is easy to forget the breathtaking natural beauty that exists in this part of world. I’m truly thankful that my job requires me to see it all in my visits to the 25 colleges and universities that make up BC’s public higher education system.

d.

WikiEducator (WE) began its life as the brainchild of New Zealander, Wayne Mackintosh, and grew and flourished while Wayne served as an Education Specialist, eLearning and ICT Policy at Commonwealth of Learning (COL) in Vancouver, Canada.

Recently, Wayne and WE have moved back to New Zealand, and WE is now operated under the auspices of the newly created Open Education Resource (OER) Foundation that was officially launched on 17 September 2009.

WE provides free training for its community members through a series of workshops and seminars conducted online using WE itself, Google Groups, and though live events using the WizIQ web conferencing system. I got a late start, actually 5 days late, but quickly got caught up with assistance from the workshop host Patricia Schlicht and encouragement from other participants.

What makes the WikiEducator training so convivial is its pace and usefulness in guiding novice wikinauts through the core principles of wikitext in a manner that allows them to demonstrate incremental skill acquisition using a graded certification scheme. WE participants can earn designations such as WikiApprentice and WikiBuddy and all the way to WikiMaster – in a simple but effective manner that builds skills and confidence. This approach made it easy for me to catch up five days worth of training in a few hours over the weekend and feel part of the group, a sense of belonging that is a vital link when you try new or hard stuff beyond your normal comfort zone.

I can’t help thinking that my experience with WE to date is certainly not unique. Thousands of others have registered for this training – 14,000 by the most recent count.

And, as part of the training program, WE participants were asked to start a Sandbox activity in their user space. I’ve begun mine with a view to examining an agile workflow for OER development and deployment – not agile from a tech-weenie perspective, but agile from a teaching-human perspective.

The big issue, raised at a live web conference event on September 27/28 (depending on your time zone), using a whiteboard onto which everyone was invited to scribble questions was, “What comes next for WikiEducator– or maybe more importantly, what comes after what comes next?”

In a WizIQ whiteboard question for Wayne Mackintosh last night I also asked what the conceptual map for WikiEducator was, and followed it up with a few other questions.

How will WE work beyond its community authoring roots to service actual use cases of teachers who may be bound to open source or proprietary delivery systems in K-12 or higher education environments?

How do we meet teachers where they are in terms of beliefs, access, tools and experience and provide them with an agile WE OER workflow that allows them to extend themselves without imposing a pain-for-gain threshold that is too high?

Further updates coming…

d.

Such is the case with the whole open movement. I love the sentiments, the allure of community and collegiality. It is an ideal that I find compelling and attractive. I just like it. It feels right. The recent OpenEd 2009 conference in Vancouver was an opportunity to celebrate with others who are also drawn to this community and its approach to making knowledge accessible.

It’s clear that across North America, in Europe and in other parts of the world, there is now a growing movement to share educational resources in ways that leverage investment in instructional development many times over for the public good and for the opportunity to build sustainable knowledge communities.

In British Columbia, the organization I manage (BCcampus) has provided leadership in promoting open educational resources (OERs) as a strategy for developing and sharing educational models and instructional resources among our 25 public post-secondary institutions. The Online Program Development Fund (OPDF), established in 2003 by our Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour Market development has succeeded in demonstrating that institutions and educators can collaboratively develop educational resources and share them with their peers under specified conditions.

Publications and papers authored by BCcampus staff, by industry folks, and by UNESCO document the BCcampus rationale and role in the OER movement within the British Columbia academic domain.

In our case, we offer the choice of a Creative Commons license or own BC Commons license. Not surprisingly (to me), most developers and faculty choose the geographically limited BC Commons approach as a very tentative foray into the world of open. This seems like a realistic first step for many who are unfamiliar with the benefits and/or implications of a more open approach. The resonant value in open is not immediately apparent to everyone. What may seem sub-threshold openness to some, is actually a leap of faith by others.

The diagram below, developed by my colleague Paul Stacey, describes many of the decision points that need addressing in order for various constituencies of users to actually play in the open domain.

What remains for us is an explicit rationale for BC educators and institutions to participate in the OER movement in a more active manner, in a more open and on a more global basis.

For me, what works in a systemic context is an optimal approach to innovation, not an ideal one.

David Wiley’s invitation for readers of his blog to post on the reasons for their approach to openness sparked the notion to write this post.

“…clearly there is a long way to go before OER becomes mainstream, and any positive and practical suggestions you had on how to move it that way I’m sure would be appreciated by the community.”

Well here goes.

One of the powerful ways people learn (to teach) is from watching others and emulating their practice – often improving it through further iterations and enhancements. I know I’ve benefited from many wonderful teachers and colleagues in my career, and I’m fairly certain that the core beliefs and principles in my own practice arise from those experiences.

The first really “open course” I saw was a wiki-based approach that David Wiley modeled a few years back. I was still using learning management system models myself and was impressed by David’s approach. Even though I knew lots about keeping content and presentation separate throughout its life-cycle, I’d never seen any achievable examples of how to do that using lightweight tools completely under my control as an instructor.

At the same time, John Maxwell at Simon Fraser University, a former student, and more recently a mentor to me, was experimenting with wiki-based course environments for his SFU Publishing Program students.

Since then, I’ve seen other fine examples of open instructional practice from Alec Couros and from the team of Stephen Downes and George Siemens.

Couros – Social media and open education

Maxwell – Thinkubator

Siemens and Downes – Connectivisim

Most recently, my co-teaching colleague David Vogt and I have taken our UBC Master of Educational Technology (MET) course Ventures in Learning Technology into the open blogosphere using a Word Press MU (multi-user) environment. Previously, we’d explored various environments for hosting and engaging with students in this course, everything from WebCT Vista to Crowdtrust – an experimental social networking technology.

Without benefit of access to the models noted above we would have nothing obvious against which to compare our UBC MET experiences. And, I’m sure other folks are looking for models and examples for comparison and exploration, too. It think it would be a great service to see a catalog of examples of open-type course models that we could all explore and borrow from to suit our own instructional needs.

We’ve presented on our UBC course model, talked about why, what and how we do what we do in our course, and have reported on the experiences of our students. Recent presentation slides from the Canadian e-Learning Conference 2009 can be found here:

Breaking Out of the CMS: Civilizing the Open Internet Frontier for Learning

So, in answer to Scott’s question, I believe the simplest approach is best. Contribute examples of practice, be prepared to answer questions and critique about them. I think this could be an accessible starting point for many instructors wanting to go in the open direction.

We also need to bear in mind that what we’re talking about here should be close to the principles that Brian Lamb put forth in his post, Are you open enough?

d.

The Mulder presentation conveyed a sober view of what it actually takes to move open education and OER models forward in the context of academic, institutional and political structures that are specific to individual jurisdictions. Fred’s examples were attuned to the reality of the Netherlands, but much of his approach is likely generalizable in other western contexts.

My take-aways:

Have a systemic strategy (make it explicit)

Use a strategy than spans K-Life (K-12, post-secondary and beyond)

Market the strategy effectively (to colleagues, to funders, to politicians)

Draw upon supporting strategies from other contexts (The Netherlands pointed to India’s strategy)

Pick an ideal license model for OERs (even if you’ve previously chosen something less than ideal)

Seek adequate funding

Use open textbooks as an easy entry point to providing open resources systemically

Understand that a mix of open and proprietary may be a reality you will face

Ensure that training and research are the complementary bookends of the implementation process

d.

Using video stories collected from Net colleagues and friends, the prezo showed a way forward for marketing the goodliness of open without having to say anything else.

Bravo!

d.

Watched the screencast this morning of the Wiley Downes Dialogue from OpenEd09. Couldn’t help thinking phase change when the discussion crisscrossed terrain that has been traveled many times before at various conferences, forums and meetings since about 2000.   “It’s deja vu all over again,” as Yogi Berra said when describing repeated back-to-back home runs by Mantle and Maris in the early 60s. But it was more like veja du for me – I know I’ve been a party to these conversations countless times before. The discussions/arguments continue to hover around definitions, clarifications of terms, and wishful thinking about an education system that is what it is.

Some tweets on the subject (unattributed):

• …how many angels can dance on the head of a Creative Commons license? hoping Downes/Wiley move on to more fertile ground
• Let’s move it along Stephen and David… and, we wonder why the OER movement hasn’t really taken off…
• Didn’t expect Stephen and David to spend so much time arguing about what the definitive Zeppelin album is. And really… PRESENCE?

Now the above tweets have been selectively chosen to help me make my point. There are other tweets that reveal that many participants were drawn into the arguments to some degree. See here for more –> #opened09. And that’s a pity.

Unfortunately for the OER innovators and early adopters, what needs to happen to move the OER approach ahead is a lot more focus on the how, rather than on the what and why parts of the argument. A phase change really needs to take shape – one that involves actual practitioners, people who teach courses, normal humans, real instructors. A quick peek into the wiki list of participants at the OpenEd09 reveals a usual-suspects array of characters, devoid of the instructor base at which this innovation is aimed and pitched. This is not be the stuff of change, of implementation, of mainstreaming.

To move this innovation ahead will require another skill set, better (more authentic) marketers – and a phase change.

d.

I’ve read two separate articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education in the last two weeks, each highlighting instructor discomfort with technology tools in higher education classrooms.

One focused on the perils of desktop slideware. The other on the notion of parking techno-tools in favor of a social fasting approach.

The articles are commentary on the proliferation of slideware in post-secondary classrooms, as well as the perceived headlong rush towards amusing themselves to death that has been associated with NetGen students. Together these two rubs provide a sort of yin::yang relationship.

On the one hand it is easy to agree with students that it may be reasonable choice to focus on an engaging small screen experience when faced with a mind-numbing onslaught of 12-point type on the classroom big screen. Comments toThe Chronicle blog about “When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom,” underscore the sentiment that is it not the technology that is bad, but the way it is so often used – seems like common sense to me.

However, the proponent of the article pushed the notion of “going naked” into the classroom a little further, emphasizing a greater need for engagement through thoughtful dialogue of the sort that occurs in small classes like those in graduate school or smaller colleges. But, the rub occurs when an instructor finds herself in front of a large-scale class of 100+ undergraduate students all sporting laptops and various mobile devices. I’ve faced this situation myself occasionally as a guest speaker. I literally scoped out one of the classes, an inter-disciplinary group of engineers, computer science and business students, a week in advance of my appearance, to try to better understand the classroom dynamic and to plan how I would engage their brains and devices simultaneously. I knew it was going to be a challenge.

Teaching remains a performance sport. What I’ve learned from my limited large-scale engagements is that like a good stand-up act, I’d need a set of “routines” (instructional strategies) around which I could structure large-scale classes, the course material and my interactions both verbal and digital with the learners. And, I’d likely need to work on the routines as ongoing projects to keep them fresh to ensure that actual learning or teachable moments were to occur in those lecture-style classes. I don’t know how others are coping, but I’d love to know. It’s not surprising to me that slideware becomes a default approach in an attempt to bring both structure and focus to classroom experiences. What is sorely needed is an updated pedagogy and new models of practice that would enable engagement of both brains and devices in various teaching situations, without backtracking to the “naked” approach.

The flip side of the story, the yang to the previously discussed yin, is the notion of social fasting that was put forward in The Chronicle article, “Professor Challenges Students to Turn Off, Tune Out, Drop In.” In this scenario, the professor challenged students to come to his classes without benefit of social media devices and in fact by dropping other forms of media (movies, TV, video games) while they take his course. His exchange for their “fast” is an additional 5 percent in their overall grade.  Hmm.  Surely, the horse is out of that barn.

d.