Stating the unspoken #oer18 #knowhow Sowing the seeds for a fairer world.

Having returned home from the #OER18 conference where I presented this session I have decided to clarify some points which I may not have made clearly on the day as time was short and I had to rush to run another session elsewhere. 

I shared the experience of running a small staff and student investigation into open educational practice at Warwick. I believe there are aspects of the way this was done which were exemplary and effective. There were also aspects which could have been improved were it not for internal tensions and confusion over roles, responsibilities and mission. I am not blaming anyone, just looking to surface the points where barriers appear which can prevent us from achieving our aims. 

What went well:

• the bringing together of people from different parts of the institution over coffee to share our perspectives
• the freedom for participants to choose which project aims they wanted to contribute to and when to do that
• the agreement to create a metaphor and communication channels we could all embrace and understand
• the open validation and publishing of contributions, leaving a legacy which can be built on by all.

What could have been better:

• the insecurity of some participants due to job changes and political climate (Brexit, funding etc). 
• the lack of shared understanding of open education and evident suspicion of a hidden agenda.
• confusion over whether the project's internal communication should also be cleared by our external communications as it would be openly available. 
• Delays in funding had a knock on effect on spending, staff and student time is limited and when funding is delayed and time limited it can prevent the possibilities which we had planned being realised. 
• internal alignments of this project were clearly with agendas such as those of academic technology, skills development and research support and yet there is little evidence of follow up from those areas.  

I can see that the emphasis on compliance in institutional discourse creates fear and lowers confidence, it cripples innovation, makes individuals afraid to take risks. If we are to realise the win-win that is open educational practice we must bridge the gaps of understanding, sharing and mainstreaming (as identified by Nacimbeni et al, 2014) at the most basic of grassroots levels to align practice with a clearer confidence in our mission and greater understanding of our values. 

WIHEA #KNOWHOW progress

Easter break ending, we must pick up the pace again on the #KNOWHOW project. Having carried out some action research (#LERMOOC) during the break I am determined to get the word out around campus of this opportunity for staff and students to understand and take advantage of the potential of open practice to enhance lives but also ever more aware of the need for strong support. 

First things first, the break has not been without progress on the project front. The #LERMOOC opportunity produced a cognitive review of the project plan which should give a real wake up call to project participants, highlighting as it does the size of the task ahead. Communication with my team is a priority and I will try to get a face to face opportunity for that next week, meanwhile an email and a shared page will start the term. 

We're going to take the metaphor of seeds (which complements the image above, I have been the mother hen incubating her project eggs so far). Once these eggs hatch they will need the product of our germinated seeds if they are to grow and thrive.  Time for the the eggs to hatch, the seeds to be sown and watered, and for each of us to get nurturing so that it is clear across campus and beyond that Warwick is open for learning!

Investigating the student experience

I am about to start a second #WIHEA project with an even more ambitious remit that the previous one and I'm delighted to have many of the first team on board as they have already proven themselves to be great co-researchers. The focus of the earlier project was upon how language teaching and learning is changing in the digital age. We found essentially that there are far more opportunities to connect and interact than before and that, despite the learning curves involved in navigating digital spaces incorporating digital approaches (when done well) helps to extend learning and brings access to new literacies which had not always been fully explored in a learning context elsewhere. 

This project will be focussing more on the nature of such approaches and the issues that arise when we embrace open online resources and practices as part of the learning landscape. We are reaching out to a wider Warwick audience for this, involving our careers and skills professionals, Education and Linguistics as well as a fully open audience through a G+ community here. The project, #knowhow will offer opportunities to explore how we manage our professional digital identity, how to manage issues such as copyright and ownership online and of course how to understand the various micro-cultures that operate within the digital environment. The "students" in this case are all of us, whether we are staff or students as we are all learning together. 

I have enrolled on the #lermooc as a way of finding a community of practice to support this work as there is a tight budget and deadline ('twas ever thus) and I need to ensure that I find time and space to reflect on what we discover. I usually find my reflection is facilitated by the input of others. As an open practitioner myself I am keen to understand how working in the open may be perceived by others so I look forward to a challenging but ultimately informative experience. 

Thriving in challenging environments

This wildflower roundabout delights me every time I drive into work. In the midst of the traffic it brightens the journey with its chaotic flurry of colours, enhancing the rather sterile brand new road layout. Don't get me wrong, great improvements have been made to the access to campus since work was completed on Gibbet Hill Road, giving better bus access and making the area safer for pedestrians. All is neatly landscaped but this wildflower area is a beautiful contrast and reminds me of nature's resilience even in highly manicured spaces. Every form of life here brings value, attracting wildlife and increasing eco-diversity on campus. 

So to my thoughts on the final stages of our WIHEA project. This project has been a form of wildflower island. participants have had freedom to grow their thoughts and share them safely and they have rewarded the project with a wide range of ideas and reflections. I have been gathering these and reflecting on them in the light of existing and previous work in order to communicate our trajectory, our "next steps". It has been a great privilege to work with our students and appreciate the natural beauty that comes from empowering individuals to explore as part of a shared goal to enrich our environment for all. 

Projecting the future

Having just emerged from the usual end of year exam marking frenzy I am now pushing ahead with a learning and teaching project supported by Warwick's International Higher Education Academy. The project team is an international mix, combining staff and students with a range of roles and experience and they are keen to investigate the new learning context we see all around us. We will be looking at how we can improve engagement in lectures, how the availability of information through digital devices changes the roles of student and teacher, how we manage our online presence and what sharing means today. 

For me, this is an exciting development as so far my thinking in these areas has largely been with others outside my immediate context, through participating in online interactions in and beyond my own teaching and ed tech communities. I am interested to see if our collaborative discussions help shed some light on where the newly founded School of Modern Languages and Cultures can progress good practice informed by these pioneer researchers. 

The project approach is heutagogic - participants will make their own decisions about the investigations they wish to contribute to, they will determine their own path, reflect on their learning and co-construct pages in Mahara (our e-portfolio tool) in order to make their findings explicit. Much of the activity will be mediated through our course areas and this in itself is a new challenge. My kick off meeting and drop in session so far have focused on making sure everyone gets to know each other and feels welcome in our digital spaces. We have a short project window (finishing at the end of July) and, given the nature of the project design each has to find their own way through our set of investigations, contributing to our shared goal as they go. Order will eventually emerge out of chaos, but we all have to be comfortable with the disruption involved in order to get to grips with some challenging ideas. Not surprisingly there are lots of questions for me as project manager: can I...? should I...? and the answer is typically Do you want to? Go ahead...try it...It is scary to have permission to follow your curiosity when you have been trained to meet targets and accomplish set goals. I am very grateful they are willing to give this a go. I can't wait to see what they think and to bring it back to the ALT conference in the autumn.