The Self as an

Open Educational Resource

Suzan Koseoglu @suzankoseoglu

&

Maha Bali @bali_maha

Who are we?

We are human.

We are educators. We are open educators.

We are curious about education and everything it is connected to.

And today we are going to talk about human OERs (Funes, 2014).

How is OER commonly defined?

Definition #1: “digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students, and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research.” (OECD, 2007)

How is OER commonly defined?

Definition #2: “OER are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open Educational Resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software and any other tools, materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge.” (The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation)

A common theme across these definitions is that they all refer to the 5Rs of open education (Wiley, 2009, Wiley 2014).

• Retain • Reuse• Revise• Remix• Redistribute

How do YOU define OER?

Share your thoughts at #SelfOER

What is Open Education?

What is Open Education?

A focus on things not actions…A focus on content not people...A focus on materials not relationships…

What are Open Educational Resources?

Content.

Our Focus

Because:

Education ≠ Access to content

Educational resource ≠ Educational material

“The true benefit of the academy is the interaction, the access to the debate, to the negotiation of knowledge” (Cormier & Siemens, 2010)

We propose that:

The processes and products of open scholarship can be valuable open educational resources.

We OURSELVES can be open educational resources.

Anyone can be an open educational resource.

What Is It Like to “Be” Open?

Not just to create openly but for openness to be a state of being in the

world

“Editable person” - need not be online/public

Kevin Hodgson (@dogtrax)

http://www.digitalwritingmonth.com/roster/

flickr photo by somaya https://flickr.com/photos/somayalangley/2118009228 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license

Open, Not Just Broadcast Publicly, But:

• Make your processes open (e.g. as you think through your teaching or thesis research, defend thesis publicly)

Open, Not Just Broadcast Publicly, But:

• Be willing to change, have your ideas and your values challenged and shifted

• Be open to reevaluating your worldview when dealing with people very different from yourself

Virtually Connecting as Open Practice

Do you know Virtually Connecting?In what ways is it an open practice? Or not?

Virtually Connecting• Conference participants taking time out of the

onsite experience to include virtual participants who could not attend;

• (keynote) speakers taking 30 or more mins time to have a casual conversation with a small group of people - can be more valuable than what’s on the stage in front of 100s.

Critical Look into “Open”

• Whose voices dominate the open? Can vulnerable populations afford to be open?

• The “open” minority voice becomes dominant?• For example, how many Arab women do you know in edtech? I know about 6 and 4 of them are called Maha :)

• Responsibility? Burden? Inevitable?

… MOST OER (material/people) are Western/Anglo and so at least you help spark the possibility of “other” and get heard because “exotic”

Consequences of Open: Risk Vulnerability• Posting incomplete thoughts or raw processes -

open self to critique and possibly worse esp in academia

• Exposing own weaknesses (e.g. illness)• But all of this supports others who would not

otherwise have a window into these processes/experiences from that viewpoint

Openness is a process… A process that is:

• multidimensional• shifting and evolving• contextual• influenced by our digital literacies• not always beneficial because every opening calls for “selectiveness and exclusions” (Edwards, 2015)

A process that is...

• Personal

The unique characteristics that make us an individual (Campbell, 2013).

This is the beginning of this dialogue, not the end…

Join the conversation at#SelfOER

Thank you!

Maha: bali@aucegypt.edu Suzan: kose0031@umn.edu

Image Credits

• Sky photos by Maha Bali, Cairo Sky album:• https://

www.flickr.com/photos/25902165@N03/albums/72157645654870584