Open Education Roundtable

From UBC Wiki

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Open education at UBC: Where we are… and where are we going?

12:00 P.M. – 2:00 P.M., Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Rm. 260, Stikine Room, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre

Many of us at UBC are engaged in activities that might be defined as ‘open education’… But maybe we are wondering who else is working towards such objectives, and if our efforts might align? This meeting hopes to gather as many interested participants as possible to begin the articulation of an open education community of practice: to identify who is interested, and how we might work together.

Mini-Presentations

  • Joy Kirchner, UBC Library - Slides
  • Jon Beasley-Murray, Wikipedia authoring, blog-based platforms (Presented in absentia by Brian, sporting a leather coat and a fake English accent)
    • A hundred, thousand apologies for not making it today. My only excuse is that I find myself on sabbatical time, which exists at a strange tangent to the normal twenty-four hour clock. I'm especially sorry that I missed the spectacle of Brian "sporting a leather coat and a fake English accent." --Jbmurray 02:47, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Also participating: Alex Garnett (SLAIS), Zack Lee (OLT), Sandra Singh (IKBLC), Shawna Reibling (NCIE 's "Knowledge Mobilization Coordinator" winning title for the day's coolest job title), Nicole Ronan, Michelle Lamberson, Wayne Ross, Sharon Hu (EPLT), Kristen ?, Marianne Schroeder (OLT)

Environmental scan of open education at UBC and beyond

(Besides the initiatives discussed above, here is an admittedly 'Lambicentric' collection...)

  • iTunesU and YouTube.edu (early stages), Kaltura pilot
    • Hilde reports pending upgrade of cIRcle will have streaming audio and video capability.
  • OpenEd Tech - ongoing collaboration led by the Open University of Catalonia
  • Northern Voice - not exactly open ed, but Canada's first (and maybe best) social media conference takes place every year at UBC
  • More?

Challenges and questions

The mini-presentations above and related discussion took most of the allotted time. A few nuggets below - and people are welcome to add their thoughts via WikiMagic.

  • Do we want to more tightly align the many efforts at UBC that might best be described as "open education"?
    • If so, what would be an appropriate framework for that?

-- No proper discussion. Perhaps future meetings can consider the pros and cons of the OCW Consortium, or adopting the Cape Town Declaration as frames to define future activity.

-- A common theme was the sense of engaging students to think of themselves as writers, as creators, rather than simply consumers of their educational experiences. Perhaps we can elaborate on that in future meetings.

  • I would certainly be keen on there being more links between those of us who are working under this (large and motley) umbrella that is "open education." --Jbmurray 02:49, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
  • There is some confusion about what the university's policies regarding issues such as intellectual property. How best to make inquiries and get more clarity?

-- Again, an issue that will require more discussion. In his opening remarks, Dr. Willinsky seemed to suggest a more assertive sense of academic exemptions allowed under law, that these protections and the potential they allow is in a sense a "public trust", and how we exercise those rights justifies that trust.

  • From an administrative perspective, when research contracts are negotiated and research accounts for projects are set up, the IP owner is indicated and signed off on before money is received. Therefore, for some research projects IP ownership is explicitly stated. As Overhead charges becomes mandatory on all research projects, I think a culture of IP ownership i.e. the value proposition, will take hold with faculty, who will in turn pass this cultural shift onto their students. -- User: Reibling

-- Short answer, yes. There is language related to Open Access as well. But again, further discussion is required.

-- Not discussed.

Next steps...

  • Is this a conversation (and set of activities) we wish to continue? If so, what is the best way to move ahead? To communicate?

-- Not discussed in depth. However, as the meeting concluded Brian threatened further meetings, email, and he's plotting a blog and wiki resource centre. Nobody explicitly objected.

  • Despite (because of) my failure to appear today, I would certainly be keen on continuing (joining) this conversation. --Jbmurray 02:50, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I am more focused on open access information flows for faculty, rather than students, but I believe the approaches are complementary. -- User: Reibling
  • Who else needs to be part of this?