We are catching up – here is my Open Education News and Stuff from October 4 – it’s like the time rubber band is snapping ever closer to today!

Good morning everyone!

Wow, time flies.  Seems like only yesterday I was sending out an email about Open Education news and stuff, and here we are again.  Maybe today what you might be interested in hearing a bit about is the program I am taking through Kwantlen Polytechnic, the Professional Program in Open Education.   One of our Camosun Open champions, Brian Coey, is also taking the course I am currently in right now: Theory & Philosophy of Open Education, where in the past 2 weeks we have discussed the history, purposes, and definitions of Open Ed, as well as some historical perspectives.

We have been having some lively discussions about the definition(s) of Open Education in our first two weeks, and I have been finding myself wondering more and more about what it means to be Open and if institutions can truly be open if their governing bodies are not.  I know, deep thinking going on here.  You can get a better sense of my tangled thinking in my first assessment blog post.

If you are interested, here are the readings we reviewed to guide our thinking in these initial weeks.  They are well worth the time if you have it:

• Jordan, Katy and Weller, Martin (2017). Openness and education: a beginner’s guide. Global OER Graduate Network.
• Cronin. C. (2019). Open education: Walking a critical path. In D. Conrad, & P. Prinsloo (Eds.), Open(ing) Education: Theory and Practice. Leiden: Brill.
• Tait, A. (2018). Education for development: From distance to open education. Journal of Learning for Development, 5(2), 101-115.
• Peter, S., & Deimann, M. (2013). On the role of openness in education: A historical reconstruction. Open Praxis, 5(1), 7-14. 

And now, here are a couple of new open online resources I thought might interest you:

• Open Pedagogy as a tool for Student Empowerment webinar through the Community College Consortium for OER (Registration) – their webinars are great (there is one every month)
• Biology OER resources – assignments, labs, projects on the searchable Qubes Hub:  (Anyone can use the qubes hub without joining, but anyone can join qubes and it’s free.)   
• Open Medical Terminology textbook (it was produced in the US, but remember, with OER you can adapt!!)
• Hypothesis – a free online annotation tool (you HAVE to check it out!!)

And now to other things:

• I am still looking to find out who is using open textbooks and OER in their teaching at Camosun.  If you are using an open textbook in your course(s), or you know someone else who is, and I have not already had a chat with you, please send me an email because I would really love to talk to you more about your experience! 
• Have questions?  Want to talk about a potential Open Education project (or are your students interested in talking or hearing about OpenEd)?  Contact Emily Schudel and/or Gwenda Bryan!
• Share the joy – CETL (Emily) is available to come talk to your department/program about Open Ed – just shoot me an email to let me know if your department/program is interested in hearing more!
• Open Education Conference 2022 (October 17-22, virtual!)  Find out more and register at: https://openeducationconference.org/2022 

Well, that’s all for today!  Let me know if you have resources for me to include or any questions you would like me to address in these emails.  Thanks all!

Emily