alt | Open World
Open World
Lorna M Campbell
The 16th annual
Open Education Conference
(OER25) is taking place in London next week and the theme “Speaking truth to power: open education and AI in the age of populism” could be more urgent or important. Chaired by Sheila MacNeil and Dr Louise Drumm, both of whom have a long standing commitment to critical engagement with ed tech, the conference features
keynotes
by Helen Beetham and Joe Wilson.
Helen’s keynote, “When speaking truth is not enough: repurpose, rebuild, refuse”, will explore the links between the AI industry and the politics of populism. Helen’s thoughtful, contextual approach to education technology and AI in particular has already made me step back and question the foundational concepts of artificial intelligence. I’m still thinking about her keynote at the 2023 ALT Winter Conference “
Whose Ethics? Whose AI? A relational approach to the challenge of ethical AI
.”
Joe Wilson has been my
Open Scotland
partner in crime for over a decade now and I’m continually inspired by his optimism and his commitment to openness. Joe’s keynote, “Shaping Open Education ” will focus on the challenges of closing the attainment gap, promoting social mobility, ethical use of AI and keeping open education at the heart of change.
I’m also really pleased to see that Natalie Lafferty and Sharon Flynn will be leading a workshop on reviewing ALT’s
Framework for Ethical Learning Technology
, which is more critically important now than ever. The workshop will inform an updated version of the framework, which is due to be launched at the end of the year.
I’ve been hugely privileged to attend all fifteen OER Conferences, going right back to
OER10
in Cambridge, but unfortunately I won’t be able to go to London this year. I’ve had to step back from all work commitments as I was diagnosed with stage two throat cancer earlier in the year. I’ve already completed six weeks of radiotherapy treatment and am now (hopefully!) on the slow and convoluted road to recovery. (The jury is still out as to whether and how this relates to the
autoimmune disease
I was diagnosed with last year. That remains to be seen.) Over the last six months I’ve been deeply moved by how immensely kind people have been, I really can’t express my gratitude enough.
I haven’t had much energy to focus on anything other than recovery for the last six months, but during occasional bright spots I’ve found myself turning more and more to independent writing and journalism in an attempt to find some respite from endless doomscrolling. Shout out to Audrey Watter’s
Second Breakfast
, Rebecca Solnit’s
Meditations in an Emergency
, Carole Cadwalladr’s
How to survive the Broligarchy
, and Helen Beetham’s
imperfect offerings
for keeping me sane, more or less. All inspiring women with fearless voices speaking truth to power.
I’ve also been enthralled by the
Manchester Mill’s
tenacious investigative journalism that led to the suspension of two member’s of the University of Greater Manchester’s senior leadership team, including the vice chancellor, and the subsequent police enquiry into “
allegations of financial irregularity
“. As a former (brief) employee of the University of Greater Manchester, when it was better known as the University of Bolton, I’ll be watching with interest to see how this investigation develops.
I’ve been making a rather half-hearted attempt at following the progress of the government’s questionable Data (Use and Access) Bill, particularly as it relates to AI and copyright, but I haven’t got the brain or will power to write about that right now.
In the meantime, I’ll hopefully be able to follow some of the OER25 Conference online and I’ll be with everyone in spirit, if not in person, this year.
Hands of Hope, Cork, CC BY, Lorna M. Campbell
Last week the OER24 Conference took place at the Munster Technological University in Cork and I was privileged to go along with our OER Service intern Mayu Ishimoto.
The themes of this year’s conference were:
Open Education Landscape and Transformation
Equity and Inclusion in OER
Open Source and Scholarly Engagement
Ethical Dimensions of Generative AI and OER Creation
Innovative Pedagogies and Creative Education
The conference was chaired with inimitable style by MTU’s Gearóid Ó Súilleabháin and Tom Farrelly, the (in)famous Gasta Master.
The day before the conference I met up with a delegation of Dutch colleagues from a range of sectors and organisations for a round table workshop on knowledge equity and open pedagogies. In a wide ranging discussion we covered the value proposition and business case for open, the relationship between policy and practice, sustainability and open licensing, student engagement and co-creation, authentic assessment and the influence of AI. I led the knowledge equity theme and
shared experiences and case studies from the University of Edinburgh.
Many thanks to Leontien van Rossum from SURF for inviting me to participate.
A Cautionary Fairy Tale
The conference opened the following day with Rajiv Jhangiani’s keynote, “
Betwixt fairy tales & dystopian futures – Writing the next chapter in open education
“, a cautionary tale of a junior faulty member learning to navigating the treacherous path between commercial textbook publishers on the one hand and open textbooks on the other. It was a familiar tale to many North American colleagues, though perhaps less relatable to those of us from UK HE where the model of textbook use is rather different, OER expertise resides with learning technologists rather than librarians, OER tends to encompass a much broader range of resources than open textbooks, and open resources are as likely to be co-created by students as authored by staff. However Rajiv did make several point that were universal in their resonance. In particular, he pointed out that it’s perverse to use the moral high ground of academic integrity to defend remote proctoring systems that invade student privacy, and tools that claim to identify student use of AI, when these companies trample all over copyright and discriminate against ESL speakers. If we create course policies that are predicated on mistrust of students we have no right to criticise them for being disengaged. Rajiv also cautioned against using OER as a band aid to cover inequity in education; it might make us feel good but it distracts us from reality. Rajiv called for ethical approaches to education technology, encouraging us not to be distracted by fairy tales, but to engage with hope and solidarity while remaining firmly grounded in reality.
Rajiv Jhangiani, OER24, CC BY Lorna M. Campbell.
Ethical Dimensions of Generative AI and OER Creation
Generative AI (GAI) loomed large at the conference this year and I caught several presentations that attempted to explore the thorny relationship between openness and GAI.
UHI have taken a considered approach by developing policy, principles and staff and student facing guidance that emphasises ethical, creative, and environmentally aware use of generative AI. They are also endorsing a small set of tools that provide a range of functionality and stand up to scrutiny in terms of data security. These include MS Copilot, Claude, OpenAI ChatGPT, Perplexity, Satlas and Semantic Scholar. Keith Smyth, Dean of Learning & Teaching at UHI, outlined some of the challenges they are facing including AI and critical literacy, tensions around convenience and creation, and the relationship between GAI and open education. How does open education practice sit alongside generative AI? There are some similarities in terms of ethos; GAI repurposes, reuses, and remixes resources, but in a really selfish way. To address these ambiguities, UHI are developing further guidance on GAI and open education practice and will try to foster a culture that values and prioritises sharing and repurposing resources as OER.
Patricia Gibson gave an interesting talk about “Defending Truth in an Age of AI Generated Misinformation: Using the Wiki as a Pedagogical Device”. GAI doesn’t know about the truth, it is designed to generate the most most accurate response from the available data, if it doesn’t have sufficient data, it simply guesses or “hallucinates”. Patricia cautioned against letting machines flood our information channels with misinformation and untruth. Misinformation creates inaccuracy and unreliability and leads us to question what is truth. However awareness of GAI is also teaching us to question images and information we see online, enabling us to develop critical digital and AI literacy skills. Patricia went on to present a case study about Business students working collaboratively to develop wiki content, which echoed many of the findings of Edinburgh’s own Wikipedia in the curriculum initiatives. This enabled the students to co-create collaborative knowledge, develop skills in sourcing information, curate fact-checked information, engage in discussion and deliberation, and counter misinformation.
Interestingly, the Open Data Institute presented at the conference for what I think may be the first time. Tom Pieroni, ODI Learning Manager, spoke about a project to develop a GAI tutor for use on an Data Ethics Essentials course:
Generative AI as an Assistant Tutor: Can responsible use of GenAI improve learning experiences and outcomes?
CC BY SA, Tom Pieroni, Open Data Institute
One of the things I found fascinating about this presentation was that while there was some evaluation of the pros and cons of using the GAI tutor, there was no discussion about the ethics of GAI itself. Perhaps that is part of the course content? One of the stated aims of the Assistant AI Tutor project is to “Explore AI as a method for personalising learning.” This struck me because earlier in the conference someone, sadly I forget who, had made the sage comment that all too often technology in general and AI an particular effectively remove the person from personalised learning.
Unfortunately I missed Javiera Atenas and Leo Havemann’s session on
A data ethics and data justice approach for AI-Enabled OER
, but I will definitely be dipping in to the slides and resources they shared.
Student Engagement and Co-Creation
Leo Havemann, Lorna M. Campbell, Mayu Ishimoto, Cárthach Ó Nuanáin, Hazel Farrell, OER24, CC0.
I was encouraged to hear a number of talks that highlighted the importance of enabling students to co-create open knowledge as this was one of the themes of the talk that OER Service intern Mayu Ishimoto and I gave on
Empowering Student Engagement with Open Education
. Our presentation explored the transformative potential of engaging students with open education through salaried internships, and how these roles empower students to go on to become radical digital citizens and knowledge activists. There was a lot of interest in Information Services Group’s programme of student employment and several delegates commented that it was particularly inspiring to hear Mayu talking about her own experience of working with the OER Service.
Open Education at the Crossroads
Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin opened the second day of the conference with an inspiring, affirming and inclusive keynote
The Future isn’t what it used to be: Open Education at a Crossroads OER24 keynote resources
. Catherine and Laura have the unique ability to be fearless and clear sighted in facing and naming the crises and inequalities that we face, while never losing faith in humanity, community and collective good. I can’t adequately summarise the profound breadth and depth of their talk here, instead I’d recommend that you watch to their
keynote
and read their accompanying
essay
. I do want to highlight a couple of points that really stood out for me though.
Laura pointed out that we live in an age of conflict, where the entire system of human rights are under threat. The early hope of the open internet is gone, a thousand flowers have not bloomed. Instead, the state and the market control the web, Big Tech is the connective tissue of society, and the dominant business model is extractive surveillance capitalism.
AI has caused a paradigmatic shift and there is an irony around AI and open licensing; by giving permission for re-use, we are giving permission for potential harms, e.g. facial recognition software being trained on open licensed images. Copyright is in turmoil as a result of AI and we need to remember that there is a difference between what is legal and what is ethical. We need to rethink what we mean by open practice when GAI is based on free extractive labour. Having written about the contested relationship of invisible labour and open education in the past, this last point really struck me.
HE for Good
was written as an antidote to these challenges. Catherine & Laura drew together the threads of
HE for Good
towards a manifesto for higher education and open education, adding:
“When we meet and share our work openly and with humility we are able to inspire each other to address our collective challenges.”
CC BY NC, Catherine Cronin & Laura Czerniewicz, OER24
Change is possible they reminded us, and now is the time. We stand at a crossroads and we need all parts of the open education movement to work together to get us there. In the words of Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and current Chair of the Elders:
“Our best future can still lie ahead of us, but it is up to everyone to get us there.”
Catherine Cronin & Laura Czerniewicz, OER24, CC BY, Lorna M. Campbell.
The Splintering of Social Media
One theme that emerged during the conference is what Catherine and Laura referred to as the “splintering of social media”, with a number of presenters exploring the impact this has had on open education community and practice. This splintering has lead people to seek new channels to share their practice with some turning to the fediverse, podcasting and internet radio. Blogging didn’t seem to feature quite as prominently as a locus for sharing practice and community, but it was good to see Martin Weller still flying the flag for open ed blogging, and I’ve been really encouraged to see how many blog posts have been published reflecting on the conference.
Gasta!
The Gasta sessions, overseen by Gasta Master Tom Farelly, were as raucous and entertaining as ever. Every presenter earned their applause and their Gasta! beer mat. It seems a bit mean to single any out, but I can’t finish without mentioning Nick Baker’s
Everyone’s Free..to use OEP,
to the tune of Baz Luhrmann “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”, Alan Levine’s
Federated
, and Eamon Costello’s hilarious
Love after the algorithm: AI and bad pedagogy police
. Surely the first time an OER Conference has featured Jon Bon Jovi sharing his thoughts on the current state of the pedagogical landscape?!
Eamon Costello, Jon Bon Jovi, Tom Farrelly, Alan Levine, OER24, CC BY, Lorna M. Campbell
The closing of an OER Conference is always a bit of an emotional experience and this year more so than most. The conference ended with a heartfelt standing ovation for open education stalwart Martin Weller who is retiring and heading off for new adventures, and a fitting and very lovely impromptu verse of
The Parting Glass
by Tom. Tapadh leibh a h-uile duine agus chì sinn an ath-bhliadhna sibh!
Martin Weller, Tom Farrelly, Gearóid Ó Súilleabháin, CC BY, Lorna M. Campbell, OER24.
The title of this blog post is taken from this lovely tweet by Laura Czerniewicz.
Posting an end of year round up at the end of January might seem a bit daft, but I’m already one step ahead of last year, when I posted my end of year reflection in February!
The beginning of the year was a succession of real highs and lows. UCU entered a long phase of industrial action which came at a particularly challenging time for me as January and February is usually when I’m preparing for Open Education Week and the OER Conference. However I also took some time out for a trip to New York with friends, which turned out to be one of the high points of my year.
Open Education Week
For Open Education Week we ran a webinar that celebrated
10 years of open course development at the University of Edinburgh
and shared the open course creation workflow that we’ve developed and refined over the years.
OER23 Conference
It was great to see the OER Conference returning to Scotland in March when it was hosted by UHI in Inverness. Inverness is a place that is very close to my heart as it’s the main city in the Highlands and it’s also were we used to go on holiday when I was a kid. Inverness is still a stopping off point on the journey home when I go to visit family in Stornoway so I had a slightly weird feeling of nostalgia and home-sickness while I was there, it was odd being in Inverness and not traveling on further north and west.
One of the themes of this years conference was Open Scotland +10 and Joe Wilson and I ran a number of sessions including a pre-conference workshop and closing plenary to reflect on how the open education landscape in Scotland has evolved over the last decade, and to discuss potential ways to advance open education across all sectors of Scottish education.
Open Scotland Plenary Panel by Tim Winterburn.
Here, the closing Panel Plenary session
Open Scotland @10
OER23 Conference: Imagining Hopeful Futures
Open Scotland @10 Plenary Panel synthesis & outputs
Generative AI
Like many working in technical, educational and creative sectors I found it impossible to ignore the discourse around generative AI, though I hope I managed to avoid getting swept up in the hype and catastrophising. In July I wrote an off-the-cuff summary of some of the many ethical issues related to generative AI and LLMs that are becoming increasingly hard to ignore:
Generative AI – Ethics all the way down
. I appreciated having an opportunity to revisit these issues again at the end of the year when I joined the
ALT Winter Summit on Ethics and Artificial Intelligence
which provided much food for thought. Helen Beetham’s keynote
Whose Ethics? Whose AI? A relational approach to the challenge of ethical AI
was particularly thoughtful and thought provoking.
Student Interns
Much of the summer was taken up with recruiting and managing our Open Content Curator student interns. It’s always a joy working with our interns, their energy and enthusiasm is endlessly inspiring, and this year’s interns, August and Mayu, were no exception. I suggested it might be fun for them to interview each other about their experience of working with the OER Service and, with the help of our fabulous Media Team, they produced this lovely video.
I was delighted when August and Mayu were shortlisted for the Student Employee of the Year Award in Information Services Group’s Staff Recognition Awards, in acknowledgement of their outstanding work with the OER Service and their wider contribution to ISG and the University.
Their Finest Hour
The OER Service welcomed another student intern in the summer, Eden Swimer, who joined us to help run a digital collection day as part of the University of Oxford’s
Their Finest Hour
, a
National Lottery Heritage funded project at the University of Oxford,
which
is
collect
ing
and
preserving
the everyday stories and objects of the Second World War.
Organising and running the digital collection day proved to be a huge undertaking and we couldn’t have done it without the help of 26 volunteers from across ISG and beyond who committed so much time and energy to the project.
The digital collection day took place in Rainy Hall, New College at the end of November and it was a huge success.
Over 100 visitors attended and volunteers recorded over 50 interviews and took thousands of photographs, all of which will be uploaded to an open licensed archive that will be launched by the University of Oxford in June this year. It was a deeply moving event, many of the stories recorded were truly remarkable and the visitors clearly appreciated having the opportunity to share their families stories. In some cases these stories were being told by the last surviving relatives of those who had witnessed the historic events of WW2 and there was a real sense of preserving their experiences for posterity.
Their Finest Hour digital collection day by Fiona Hendrie
The collection day was covered by STV and you can see a short clip of their news item here:
Second World War memories to be preserved at university collection day
Publications
It was a privilege to work with co-authors Frances Bell, Lou Mycroft, Guilia Forsythe and Anne-Marie Scot to contribute a chapter on the “FemEdTech Quilt of Care and Justice in Open Education” to Catherine Cronin and Laura Czerniewicz’s timely and necessary
Higher Education for Good: Teaching and Learning Futures.
“Quilting has always been a communal activity and, most often, women’s activity. It provides a space where women are in control of their own labour: a space where they can come together to share their skill, pass on their craft, tell their stories, and find support. These spaces stand outside the neoliberal institutions that seek to appropriate and exploit our labour, our skill, and our care. The FemEdTech-quilt assemblage has provided a space for women and male allies from all over the world to collaborate, to share their skills, their stories, their inspiration, and their creativity. We, the writers of this chapter, are five humans who each has engaged with the FemEdTech Quilt of Care and Justice in Open Education in different ways, and who all have been active in the FemEdTech network.”
I was also invited to submit a paper to a special open education practice edition of
Edutec Journal
. Ewan McAndrew, Melissa Highton and I co-authored a paper on “Supporting open education practice: Reflective case studies from the University of Edinburgh.”
“This paper outlines the University of Edinburgh’s long-running strategic commitment to supporting sustainable open education practice (OEP) across the institution. It highlights how the University provides underpinning support and digital capability for OEP through central services working with policy makers, partners, students, and academics to support co-creation and active creation and use of open educational resources to develop digital literacy skills, transferable attributes, and learning enhancement. We present a range of case studies and exemplars of authentic OEP evidenced by reflective practice and semi-structured ethnographic interviews, including Wikimedia in the Curriculum initiatives, open textbook production, and co-creation of interdisciplinary STEM engagement resources for schools. The paper includes recommendations and considerations, providing a blueprint that other institutions can adopt to encourage sustainable OEP. Our experience shows that mainstreaming strategic support for OEP is key to ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.”
Writing this paper was an interesting experience as Edutec is a research journal that expects evidence to be presented in a very particular way. As a service division, we support practice rather than undertaking academic research, so the case studies we present are based on authentic reflective practice rather than empirical research, however it was useful to think about this practice from a different perspective.
Wikimedia UK
In July I was awarded Honorary Membership of Wikimedia UK in recognition of my contribution to the work of the charity during my six years as a Trustee. When my term as a trustee came to an end, I was hoping that I’d have more time to contribute to the Wikimedia projects. That hasn’t quite happened, I didn’t manage to do any Wikipedia editing in 2023, but I did enjoy taking part in
Wiki Loves Monuments
again. I also digitised some pictures I took of the Glasgow Garden festival way back in 1988 and uploaded them to Wikimedia Commons to share them with the fabulous
After the Garden Festival
project, which is attempting to locate and archive the legacy of the festival.
Teddy Bears Picnic, sponsored by Moray District Council. CC BY, Lorna M. Campbell on Wikimedia Commons.
ALT
I made short-lived trip to the ALT Conference in Warwick in September. Unfortunately I had to leave early as I came down with a stinking cold. I was really disappointed to have to miss most of the conference as it was outgoing CEO Maren Deepwell’s last event and I was also due to receive an Honorary Life Membership of ALT award. It was a huge honour to receive this award as ALT has been a significant part of my professional life for over two decades now. You can read my short reflection on the award here:
Honorary Life Membership of ALT.
For almost three decades Lorna has been a champion of equitable higher education and an open education activist. Lorna ‘s lifelong commitment to and passion for equality and diversity clearly is evident in her work, yet Lorna tends not to push herself forward and celebrate – or even self-acknowledge – her many achievements.
ALT press release
Kenneth White, 1936 – 2023
I was deeply saddened to hear of the death of Kenneth White in August. Despite being an avid reader of Scottish poetry, and having studied Scottish Literature at Glasgow University for a couple of years, I hadn’t come across White until my partner introduced me to him in 2002. His absence from Glasgow’s curriculum, and indeed his relative obscurity in his homeland, is striking given that he was a graduate of Glasgow University who went on to become the chair of 20th century poetics at
Paris-Sorbonne.
White, however, has always been a writer who
divides
the
critics
, particularly in Scotland. A poet, writer, philosopher, traveller, and self-identified transcendental Scot, White founded the International Institute of GeoPoetics and was a regular visitor to the Edinburgh International Book Festival, where I was fortunate to see him read. To say that White’s writing, particularly his meditations on openness and the Atlantic edge, had a profound effect on me, is something of an understatement. This blog is named after the title of White’s collected poetic works and his lines frequently find their way into more unguarded pieces I’ve written. I’ll leave you with a few words from the man himself.
Last week I joined the
ALT Winter Summit on Ethics and an Artificial Intelligence
. Earlier in the year I was following developments at the interface between ethics, AI and the commons, which resulted in this blog post:
Generative AI: Ethics all the way down
. Since then, I’ve been tied up with other things, so I appreciated the opportunity to turn my attention back to these thorny issues. Chaired by Natalie Lafferty, University of Dundee, and Sharon Flynn, Technological Higher Education Association, both of whom have been instrumental in developing ALT’s influential
Framework for Ethical Learning Technology
, the online summit presented a wide range of perspectives on ethics and AI, both practical and philosophical, from scholars, learning technologists and students.
Whose Ethics? Whose AI? A relational approach to the challenge of ethical AI – Helen Beetham
Helen Beetham opened the summit with an inspiring and thought-provoking keynote that presented the case for relational ethics. Positionality is important in relational ethics; ethics must come from a position, from somewhere. We need to understand how our ethics are interwoven with relationships and technologies. The ethics of AI companies come from nowhere. Questions of positionality and power engender the question “whose artificial intelligence”? There is no definition of AI that does not define what intelligence is. Every definition is an abstraction made from an engineering perspective, while neglecting other aspects of human intelligence. Some kinds of intelligence are rendered as important, as mattering, others are not. AI has always been about global power and categorising people in certain ways. What are the implications of AI for those that fall into the wrong categories?
Helen pointed out that DARPA have funded AI intensively since the 1960’s, reminding me of many learning technology standards that have their roots in defence and aeronautical industries.
A huge amount of human refinement is required to produce training data models; this is the black box of human labour, mostly involving labourers in the global south. Many students are also working inside the data engine in the data labelling industry. We don’t want to think about these people because it affects the magic of AI.
At the same time, tools are being offered to students to enable them to bypass AI detection, to ‘humanise” the output of AI tools. The “sell” is productivity, that this will save students’ time, but who benefits from this productivity?
Helen noted that the terms “generative”, “intelligence”, and “artificial” are all very problematic and said she preferred the term “synthetic media”. She argued that it’s unhelpful to talk about the skills humans need to work alongside AI, as these tools have no agency, they are not co-workers. These approaches create new divisions of labour among people, and new divisions about whose intelligence matters. We need a better critique of AI literacy and to think about how we can ask questions alongside our students.
Helen called for universities to share their research and experience of AI openly, rather than building their own walled gardens, as this is just another source of inequity. As educators we hold a key ethical space. We have the ingenuity to build better relationships with this new technology, to create ecosystems of agency and care, and empower and support each other as colleagues.
Helen ended by calling for spaces of principled refusal within education. In the learning of any discipline there may need to be spaces of principled refusal, this is a privilege that education institutions can offer.
Developing resilience in an ever-changing AI landscape ~ Mary Jacob, Aberystwyth University
Mary explored the idea of resilience and why we need it. In the age of AI we need to be flexible and adaptable, we need an agile response to emerging situations, critical thinking, emotional regulation, and we need to support and care for ourselves and others. AI is already embedded everywhere, we have little control over it, so it’s crucial we keep the human element to the forefront. Mary urged us to notice our emotions and think critically, bring kindness and compassion into play, and be our real, authentic selves. We must acknowledge we are all different, but can find common ground for kindness and compassion. We need tolerance for uncertainty and imperfection and a place of resilience and strength.
Mary introduced Aberystwyth’s AI Guidance for staff and students and also provided a useful summary of what constitutes AI literacy at this point in time.
Achieving Inclusive education using AI – Olatunde Duruwoju, Liverpool Business School
Tunde asked us how we address gaps in inequity and inclusion? Time and workload are often cited as barriers that prevent these issues from being addresses, however AI can help reduce these burdens by improving workflows and capacity, which in turn should help enable us to achieve inclusion.
When developing AI strategy, it’s important to understand and respond to your context. That means gathering intersectional demographic data that goes beyond protected characteristics. The key is to identify and address individual students issues, rather than just treating everyone the same. Try to understand the experience of students with different characteristics. Know where your students are coming from and understand their challenges and risks, this is fundamental to addressing inclusion.
AI can be used in the curriculum to achieve inclusion. E.g. Using AI can be helpful for international students who may not be familiar with specific forms of assessment. Exams trigger anxiety, so how do we use AI to move away from exams?
AI Integration & Ethical Reflection in Teaching – Tarsem Singh Cooner
Tarsem presented a fascinating case study on developing a classroom exercise for social work students on using AI in practice. The exercise drew on the
Ethics Guidelines on Reliable AI
from the European Group on Ethics, Science and New Technologies and mapped this against the
Global Social Work Ethical Principles
The assignment was prompted by the fact that practitioners are using AI to uncritically write social work assessments and reports. Should algorithms be used to predict risk and harm, given they encode race and class bias? The data going into the machine is not benign and students need to be aware of this.
GenAI and the student experience – Sue Beckingham, Louise Drum, Peter Hartley & students
Louise highlighted the lack to student participation in discussions around AI. Napier University set up an anonymous padlet to allow students to tell them what they thought. Most students are enthusiastic about AI. They use it as a dialogue partner to get rapid feedback. It’s also helpful for disabled and neurodivergent students, and those who speak English as a second language, who use AI as an assistive technology. However students also said that using AI is unfair and feels like cheating. Some added that they like the process of writing and don’t want to loose that, which prompted Louise to ask if we’re outsourcing the process of critical thinking? Louise encouraged us to share our practice through networks, adding that collaboration and cooperation is key and can lead to all kinds of serendipity.
The students provided a range of different perspectives:
Some reported conflicting feelings and messages from staff about whether and how AI can be used, or whether it’s cheating. Students said they felt they are not being taught how to use AI effectively.
GCSEs and the school system just doesn’t work for many students, not just neurotypical ones, it’s all about memorising things. We need more skills based learning rather than outcome based learning.
Use of AI tools echoes previous concerns about the use of the internet in education. There was a time when there was considerable debate about whether the internet should be used for teaching & learning.
AI can be used to support new learning. It provides on hand personal assistance that’s there 24/7. Students create fictional classmates and partners who they can debate with. A lot of it is garbage but some of it is useful. Even when it doesn’t make sense, it makes you think about other things that do make sense.
A few thoughts…
As is often the case with any new technology, many of the problematic issues that AI has thrown up relate less to the technology itself, and more to the nature of our educational institutions and systems. This is particularly true in the cases of issues relating to equity, diversity and inclusion; whose knowledge and experiences are valued, and whose are marginalised?
It’s notable that several speakers mentioned the use of AI in recruitment. Sue Beckingham noted that AI can be helpful for interview practice, though Helen highlighted research that suggested applicants who used chatGPT’s paid functionality perform much better in recruitment than those who don’t. This suggests that we need to be thinking about authentic recruitment practices in much the same way we think about authentic assessment. Can we create recruitment process that mitigate or bypass the impact of these systems?
I particularly liked Helen’s characterisation of AI as synthetic media, which helps to defuse some of the hype and sensationalism around these technologies.
The key to addressing many of the issues relating to the use of AI in education is to share our practice and experience openly and to engage our colleagues and students in conversations that are underpinned by contextual ethical frameworks such as ALT’s Framework for Ethical Learning Technology. Peter Hartley noted that universities that have already invested in student engagement and co-creation are at an advantage when it comes to engaging with AI tools.
I’m strongly in favour of Helen’s call for spaces of principled refusal, however at the same time we need to be aware that the genie is out of the bottle. These tools are out in the world now, they are in our education institutions, and they are being used by students in increasingly diverse and creative ways, often to mitigate the impact of systemic inequities. While it’s important to acknowledge the exploitative nature and very real harms perpetrated by the AI industry, the issues and potential raised by these tools also give us an opportunity to question and address systemic inequities within the academy. AI tools provide a valuable starting point to open conversations about difficult ethical questions about knowledge, understanding and what it means to learn and be human.
Many thanks to Martin Hawksey for sharing this picture of Helen O’Sullivan announcing the award.
I’m hugely honoured to have been awarded
Honorary Life Membership of the Association for Learning Technology
at ALT’s 30th Annual Conference Gala at the University of Warwick. Unfortunately I wasn’t there to receive the award in person because, in a stroke of spectacularly bad timing, I’ve come down with a really horrible cold. Though as Maren pointed out, the great thing about Honorary Life Membership is that you can celebrate it any time!
For almost three decades Lorna has been a champion of equitable higher education and an open education activist. Lorna ‘s lifelong commitment to and passion for equality and diversity clearly is evident in her work, yet Lorna tends not to push herself forward and celebrate – or even self-acknowledge – her many achievements.
ALT press release
ALT has been a significant part of my professional life for over 20 years. I attended my first ALT Conference in the late 1990s, joined the Board of Trustees in 2016, and was awarded
Senior CMALT
in 2022. Serving on the ALT Board, and various committees, including the ALT Scotland SIG and the COOL SIG, has been immensely rewarding to me on both a personal and professional level. I learned a huge amount from my fellow trustees and ALT colleagues and benefited enormously from working with a diverse group of people from a wide range of backgrounds, who I might not have had the opportunity to work with otherwise. I really appreciated having the opportunity to engage with the wider learning technology community at a senior level and to contribute to sector level strategic initiatives. But perhaps most importantly, working with ALT gave me an opportunity to give something back to the Association in return for their dedicated commitment to openness and ethics in learning technology. I’m really humbled that this award acknowledges my open practice and open education advocacy. Open education is a cause that I have a deep personal commitment to, and though at times it has felt like a bit of a quiet up-hill struggle, it has also been immensely rewarding.
I’m also really touched to be following in the footsteps of other Honorary Life Members who have been a real inspiration to me throughout my career, including Josie Fraser, Linda Creanor, Frances Bell and Teresa MacKinnon. However I can’t reflect on this award without acknowledging the exemplary leadership of ALT’s outgoing CEO Maren Deepwell, who successfully steered the Association through many changes and challenges. Throughout her tenure as chief executive, Maren has really embodied ALT’s core values. It’s been a privilege and a pleasure to work with Maren over the years. I’ve learned a great deal from her and been continually inspired by her professionalism, commitment, and compassion. I have no doubt that ALT will continue to go from strength to strength under the leadership of CEO Billy Smith and I look forward to seeing new directions ALT will take with him at the helm.
Picture by Chris Bull for Association for Learning Technology, CC BY-NC 2.0, 2019.
To mark 10 years of the
Open Scotland
initiative, Joe Wilson and I ran two events as part of the
OER23 Conference
at UHI in Inverness, which provided an opportunity for members of the education community to reflect on how the open education landscape in Scotland has evolved over the last decade, and to discuss potential ways to advance open education across all sectors of Scottish education.
Open Scotland Pre-Conference Workshop
Joe has already written up our pre-conference Open Scotland workshop, which brought together around 40 colleagues, in person and online, to discuss key challenges and priorities. You can read Joe’s summary of the workshop here:
Open Scotland Reflections on Pre-Conference Workshop
OpenScotland @10 Plenary Panel
The closing plenary panel of OER23 brought together open education practitioners from within Scotland and beyond. Panel participants were Lorna M. Campbell, Open Scotland and University of Edinburgh; Scott Connor, UHI; Maren Deepwell, ALT; Stuart Nicol, University of Edinburgh; Robert Schuwer, consultant and former UNESCO Chair on Open Educational Resources; Joe Wilson, Open Scotland and City of Glasgow College. Each member of the panel was invited to briefly share their thoughts on future directions for Open Education, before we opened the discussion to the floor.
Open Scotland Plenary Panel by Tim Winterburn.
Stuart Nicol
, Head of Educational Design and Engagement at the University of Edinburgh, acknowledged that while it’s disappointing that there hasn’t been more support from Scottish Government, there has been a support for open education at a number of institutions, including the University of Edinburgh. Stuart highlighted the important role of committed people who have pushed the open agenda within institutions. Short of having government level commitment and policy, Stuart suggested we need to provide opportunities for people to come together to share practice and to encourage institutions to work together.
Scott Connor
, Digital and Open Education Lead at UHI’s Learning and Teaching Academy, outlined UHI’s strategic commitment to open education which is underpinned by an OER Policy and a
framework for the development of open educational practices
. Scott highlighted lack government mandates and funding as a barriers to engagement with open education and suggested that real impact would come through the government adopting the Scottish Open Education Declaration and using it to mandate that resources created with public funding should be shared openly to benefit everyone.
Both Scott and Stuart highlighted the OER policies adapted and adopted by the
University of Edinburgh
and
UHI
as a prime example of open education collaboration.
Open Scotland Plenary Panel by Tim Winterburn.
Robert Schuwer
, independent consultant and former UNESCO Chair of OER, provided an overview of open education in The Netherlands where the government has supported a range of OER initiatives and stimulation grants since 2006. In 2014 the Education Ministry issued a strategic agenda stating that by 2025 all teachers should share their learning materials. Although some institutions such as TU Delft are front-runners, other smaller institutions are just getting started.
Robert suggested that the biggest challenge is to cross the chasm from early adopters and innovators to the majority of teachers to encourage them to adopt principles of openness in education. He suggested connecting to teachers passion, which is teaching, not sharing materials, and highlighting how open education can help them to become better teachers.
Maren Deepwell
, CEO of the Association for Learning Technology, reminded us that we’re not just talking about openness in Higher Education we’re looking at all sectors including schools, training, vocational education, FE, HE, and research. UK Government looks at Open Access research and thinks the open box is ticked. ALT has tried to reach out to both Scottish Government and the Department of Education, but often there is no one with responsibility for open education policy beyond Open Access and Open Research funding.
Maren noted that we tend to see open education as another challenge alongside Brexit, the cost of living crisis, climate change, sustainability, etc., and ultimately it is never at the top of the agenda. She suggested that our opportunity is to present openness as a way to solve these challenges. It’s ingrained in us that openness is the extra step that teachers need more time, more funding, more skills, to take. Instead we need to highlight how openness could solve resource scarcity and training issues, and help small independent providers collaborate across sectors. We need to show openness as a way to solve these challenges, rather than as a stand alone challenge in its own right.
Open Scotland Plenary Panel by Tim Winterburn.
Opening the discussion to the floor, members of the community put forward a range of comments and suggestions including:
Taking a whole population approach to education rather than a sectoral approach. Open education is a way to educate for all our futures, not just those who can afford a good education. Open educators should collaborate with demographic data experts to see how open education could address key challenges of our ageing population, including health and social care.
Start with early interventions at primary school level. How do children learn, what do they learn, what role models do they see? Start to train a new generation of people to think in different ways. Currently there is no mention of openness in the General Teaching Council programme, but a logical place to start would be with teaching staff who are teaching children how to learn. However because of concerns about GDPR, teachers work in closed environments, there are challenges around safeguarding and managing digital identities.
Scotland’s baby box has been an import mechanism for learning for both parents and children, why not add a leaflet about open education?
Scotland has always had a very egalitarian tradition of education, the principles of openness fit well with this tradition, from school all the way up, so it’s frustrating that we haven’t been able to introduce open education at school level.
Maybe we’re trying too hard to change policy, perhaps it would be better to focus on doing fun stuff and sharing open practice. Do what you can at the small level; small OER, rather than big OER. This can be really powerful. Sharing in small ways can make a difference.
People hear about Open Scotland and are interested in open education, but they’re constrained by their local authorities or their college marketing teams.
The strength of open education is in the grass roots, as soon as it get sucked into politics, it gets watered down. There is a risk that comes with government policy and funding. You cede some control when policy is dictated at that level. At grass roots level we can control it, shape it and manage it. It’s hard work pushing upwards but there is a danger when it comes from the other direction that we lose something and open education gets co-opted by people we may not wish to work with.
Robert Schuwer countered this point by noting that this has not happened in The Netherlands. Government support is provided at all levels of education but there is a lot of autonomy within institutions. The only mandates were the 2014 strategic agenda and a 2020 Open Access research mandate, both of which have been beneficial. Robert also noted that students lobbied the Education Minister and had directly input to the 2014 sharing agenda. This was also the case at the University of Edinburgh, where EUSA encouraged the University to support open education and OER.
We have a political problem in that our education ministers don’t know much about education, so openness is never a priority. We need to trust ourselves and continue with the grass roots work. We need to feed messages up to government ministers that open education can be a solution to sustainability and other strategic agendas. We need to take our advocacy up a notch, perhaps take out an advert in the press.
Next steps
The next step will be to continue synthesising the outputs of the workshop and plenary panel, captured in this Padlet, with a view to drafting a new Open Scotland manifesto to share with the community and move the open education agenda forward.
This blog post was originally posted on the
Open Scotland
blog.
To mark 10 years of the Open Scotland initiative we will be holding two events as part of the
OER23 Conference
to bring together members of the education community in Scotland to reflect on how the open education landscape in Scotland has evolved over the last decade against the backdrop of global crisis and uncertainty (Campbell and Wilson 2021). Hosted by ALT and the University of the Highlands and Islands, the OER Conference is taking place in Scotland for the first time since 2016. One of the main themes of the conference is “Open Education in Scotland – celebrating 10 years of the Scottish Open Education Declaration.”
Thigibh a-steach!
Come and join us at the OER23 Conference in Inverness to contribute to shaping the future of open education in Scotland.
Open Scotland Pre-Conference Workshop
When: Tuesday 4th April, 15.30 – 17.00
Where: UHI Inverness and online
Who: Open to all.
This pre-conference workshop, facilitated by Joe Wilson and Lorna M. Campbell, will reflect on the Open Scotland initiative and discuss ways forward for the open education community. We’ll briefly address the history and impact of Open Scotland and explore the role of Open Scotland and the Scottish Open Education Declaration going forward.
We’ll ask whether the aims of Open Scotland are still relevant, whether the Scottish Open Education Declaration has a role to play in the future, and how it can be reframed to reflect current challenges and priorities.
How can we encourage more teachers, learners and education institutions across the sector to engage with open education?
How do we ensure that the Scottish education community tunes in to global open practice and makes most of the possibilities of open educational resources , open research , open textbooks and other opportunities?
Can we effectively lobby the Scottish Government to adopt policies that support open education and OER at the national level?
How can we in Scotland, the UK, and internationally, align with the principles of the UNESCO Recommendation on OER (UNESCO 2019)?
We invite key leaders, influencers, educators, open practitioners and advocates across the Scottish education community to join us. This workshop is free and open to all. Remote participation will be available for those who are unable to join us in Inverness.
Registration
If you are not an OER23 delegate, please register here in order to participate:
Open Scotland Pre Conference Session for External Delegates
OER23 Conference Closing Plenary: OpenScotland @10
When: Thursday 6th April, 16.20 – 17.00
Where: UHI Inverness and online
Who: OER23 Conference delegates
The closing plenary panel of the OER23 Conference will bring together open education advocates from Scotland and The Netherlands to reflect on the open education landscape in Scotland and internationally. We’ll discuss engagement with open education across Scotland, focusing on the benefits and affordances of open education and OER and how it can help to address local and global education challenges and priorities, while reflecting on the relevance of the original aim of Open Scotland: To raise awareness of open education, encourage the sharing of open educational resources, and explore the potential of open policy and practice to benefit all sectors of Scottish education.
Panel participants: Lorna M. Campbell, Open Scotland and University of Edinburgh; Scott Connor, UHI; Maren Deepwell, ALT; Stuart Nicol, University of Edinburgh; Robert Schuwer, consultant and former UNESCO Chair on Open Educational Resources; Joe Wilson, Open Scotland and City of Glasgow College.
Background
Open Scotland
is a voluntary cross-sector initiative, established in 2013, to raise awareness of open education, encourage the sharing of open educational resources, and explore the potential of open policy and practice to benefit all sectors of Scottish education. In the decade since its launch, Open Scotland has been supported by Cetis, the Scottish Qualifications Authority, the Association for Learning Technology, Reclaim Hosting, the University of Edinburgh and Creative Commons. Openness remains a key strategic principle for many of these organisations.
In order to achieve its aims, Open Scotland hosted the Open Scotland Summit (2013) and Open Education, Open Scotland (2014) at the University of Edinburgh, which brought together senior managers, policy makers and key thinkers to explore the development of open education policy and practice in Scotland. Members of Open Scotland contributed regularly to national conferences, and participated in international events including Open Education Global in Ljubljana, OERde14 in Berlin, Morocco Open Education Day, the Open Education Policy Network, UNESCO European Regional Consultation in Malta, and the 2017 UNESCO OER World Congress.
In 2014, inspired by the UNESCO Paris OER Declaration (UNESCO 2012), Open Scotland launched the
Scottish Open Education Declaration
(Open Scotland 2014), an open draft document that all members of the community were invited to contribute to. The Declaration called on the Scottish Government, the Scottish Funding Council and all sectors of Scottish education to endorse the principles of the UNESCO OER Declaration and ensure that educational materials produced with public funding are freely and openly available to all. With support from ALT Scotland and Creative Commons, the Declaration was brought to the attention of three consecutive Cabinet Secretaries of Education, however the Scottish Government declined to engage with these principles. Despite this lack of response, the Scottish Open Education Declaration has been influential elsewhere. It inspired the OER Morocco Declaration (Berrada and Almakari 2017), informed the OpenMed Project, and has raised awareness of open education within institutions, triggering discussions about open education at policy level.
Visit the
Open Scotland blog
to find out more about the initiative.
References
Berrada, K. and Almakari, A. (2017) Déclaration du Maroc sur les Ressources Educatives Libres / OER Morocco Declaration. Available at: https://openmedproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/OER-Morocco-Declaration.pdf (Accessed: 9 January 2023).
Campbell, L.M. and Wilson, J. (2021) Open Educational Resources: An equitable future for education in Scotland. Available at: https://openscot.net/further-education/open-educational-resources-an-equitable-future-for-education-in-scotland/ (Accessed: 9 January 2023).
Open Scotland. (2014) Scottish Open Education Declaration. Available at: https://declaration.openscot.net/ (Accessed: 9 January 2023).
UNESCO. (2012) The Paris OER Declaration. Available at: https://en.unesco.org/oer/paris-declaration (Accessed: 9 January 2023).
UNESCO. (2019) Recommendation on Open Educational Resources. Available at: https://www.unesco.org/en/legal-affairs/recommendation-open-educational-resources-oer (Accessed: 9 January 2023).
If you’re curious about what the role of a Trustee involves, and are interested in finding out more, I wrote a reflection on my experience of serving on the ALT and Wikimedia UK Boards as part of my Senior CMALT portfolio, which you can read here:
Communication and Working with Others
. I also recorded this video for
Trustees Week
last year.
Stepping down from these rolls certainly doesn’t mark the end of my involvement with ALT and Wikimedia UK though. Far from it! I’m still involved with the ALT Scotland SIG and the ALT Copyright and Online Learning SIG, and I’m also hoping that I can spend bit more time editing Wikipedia and getting involved in community events. I’m also wondering what to do next, so if you’ve got any suggestions, let me know!
It just remains for me to say a huge thank you to Maren Deepwell, CEO of ALT, and Lucy Crompton-Reid, CEO of Wikimedia UK, for their inspiring leadership, and also to the Chairs of Board who guided us with patience and insight; Sheila MacNeil (ALT), Helen O’Sullivan (ALT), Michael Maggs (Wikimedia UK), Josie Fraser (Wikimedia UK), Nick Poole (Wikimedia UK) and Monisha Shah (Wikimedia UK).
Earlier this month the annual
ALT Conference
returned as an in-person event for the first time since the pandemic. Around 400 participants joined the hybrid conference at the University of Manchester, for both an in-person and online programme. For many delegates it was their first in-person conference since the Before Times and I think it’s fair to say that everyone appreciated the opportunity to reconnect with friends and colleagues from across the sector.
I had the pleasure of being one of the co-chairs of the conference, as to mark its in-person return, the event was was chaired collaboratively by the Trustees of ALT. My term on the ALT Board came to an end at the AGM, so I’m proud to say that opening ALTC 2022 with a short reflection, alongside Natalie Lafferty and Puiyin Wong, was one of my last actions as an ALT Trustee.
Attempted to tweet this this afternoon but failed… here is a late is always better than never group selfie with the amazing ladies
@LornaMCampbell
@nlafferty
after our reflections of what’s gone well and looking forward at the
#altc22
opening plenary!
@A_L_T
#altc
pic.twitter.com/tbX1Lz5sZa
— Puiyin Wong 💙🇪🇺🇭🇰 (@Puiyin)
September 6, 2022
Natalie emphasised the need for learning technologists to become a collective voice that shapes the narrative and the future of learning and teaching. Asking how we can consolidate the relationships we’ve developed with academics during the pandemic, Natalie urged us to be confident in our own role working at the intersection of academic and professional services.
Puiyin reflected on her own journey as a learning technologist over the last few years. As a result of the pandemic, colleagues finally know who learning technologists are and what we do. We’re not just the people who fix Moodle, we understand pedagogy, we understand learning, we understand how to use technology in education, and how to make learning engaging, accessible and fun. Puiyin also urged us to welcome more TEL researchers into the community to share our knowledge and expertise.
I touched on the ebook crisis and the increase in institutions establishing open textbook presses in response. I hope that our libraries and open presses will draw on the OER expertise that already exists in the learning technology community to build on our knowledge of openness in education. I also emphasised the necessity of ethically informed approaches to how we implement and interact with learning technology and the importance of pedagogies of care, which are increasingly necessary during these uncertain times.
"There is no back to normal"
@LornaMCampbell
#altc22
re significance of pedagogy of care. ALT Ethical Framework as a reference point
— Matt Cornock (@mattcornock)
September 6, 2022
Although openness wasn’t one of the specific themes of the conference, it remains one of ALT’s core values, and openness underpinned many of the sessions. The Global OER Graduate Network presented an overview of their community values and research activities, and I also really appreciated Fereshte Goshtasbpour and Beck Pitt sharing their experience of re-purposing an existing open course for reuse in a different global context. Reuse and repurposing of existing OERs is something that we’re really interested in at Edinburgh, so it was useful to hear this case study.
Ethics and care were two themes that also ran throughout the conference. Rob Farrow’s keynote presented a short overview of ethics in Western philosophy and highlighted the need for ethical frameworks for technology, such as the
ALT Ethical Framework
, and the space they offer for reflective collaborative thinking Rob also picked up on the theme of ethics of care, which was explored by Chris Rowell in his talk on
critical digital pedagogy
. Chris outlined six principles for critical digital pedagogy, all of which really spoke to me:
Knowledge should be co-created between teachers and students.
Digital education should challenge oppression.
Digital education is a human process.
Education and technology is inherently political.
Knowledge should relate to and develop from the lived experience of teachers and students.
Digital education is built on trust and belonging and should cultivate hope and optimism.
One beautiful manifestation of all these principles is the Femedtech Quilt of Care and Justice in Open Education, a craft activism project led by Frances Bell in collaboration with members of the FemEdTech network in 2019/2020. You can read the story of the quilt on
femedtech.net
and also engage with the digital quilt at
quilt.femedtech.net
The quilt was originally intended to be displayed at the OER20 conference, but as a result of the pandemic this is the first opportunity we have had to showcase the quilt in all its material glory
I spent most of the second day of the conference quilt sitting along with Frances Bell, Catherine Cronin and Sheila MacNeill. It was a really moving experience seeing people interacting with the quilt. It was especially lovely to see people finding and reconnecting with squares they had created, pointing out this or that square – “That’s my daughter’s dress!” “That’s my mother’s earing!” So many women, mothers, daughters, grandmothers, so many personal connections are sewn into the quilt. There was also an opportunity for people to contribute to the quilt by sewing on a button or a few stitches of embroidery and it was wonderful seeing people taking a quiet moment out of the busy conference schedule and becoming absorbed in the shared task of making.
So lovely to see people interacting with the
#femedtechquilt
at
#altc22
pic.twitter.com/h8QKTRHHzY
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell)
September 7, 2022
Sheila has already written a lovely reflection on the quilt here:
Transcending the digital and physical at #altc22 – the #femedtechquilt
. I particularly love this observation:
In quite a magical way, the presence of the quilt provided a way to bind many of us together by providing a safe, open, space to have long overdue catch ups, to share experiences and allow time for reflection and just “being”.
At the end of the day, those of us who had contributed to the quilt came together to suspend it over the balcony outside the main auditorium so it could be viewed by delegates. It was an emotional (and slightly nerve wracking!) experience holding all that shared hope and creativity in our hands.
At the end of today’s
#altc22
sessions, a committed
#femedtech
crew gathered the
#FemEdTechQuilt
& held it over a balcony to display it in its full glory. Haven’t seen those photos yet, but here’s what it looked like behind the scenes 🙂
pic.twitter.com/tadlky5j9O
— FemEdTech – shared account for FemEdTech network (@femedtech)
September 7, 2022
Look at all these amazing ladies with the
#FemEdTechQuilt
@femedtech
@A_L_T
#altc22
#altc
pic.twitter.com/tHCI6vpVFY
— Puiyin Wong 💙🇪🇺🇭🇰 (@Puiyin)
September 7, 2022
We’re still living in desperately uncertain and insecure times, and our new normal is a world away from our old normal, however reconnecting with the learning technology community at ALTC 2022 gives me hope that if we can work together, to share our experiences and share the load, we can support and care for both our community and our learners.
I’ve been to three hybrid conferences over the course of the last few months so I thought it might be interesting to write a bit of a reflection on my experience of being both a delegate and a speaker at these events, what worked, what didn’t, and what I learned in the process.
OER22 Conference
The first event was the
OER22 Conference
run by ALT at the end of April. This conference marked a return to in-person events for ALT for the first time since the pandemic started, and I know that there was some understandable anxiety about bringing people together for a face-to-face event. The conference ran for three days; kicking off with a day of in-person talks and parallel sessions in London, followed by a day of recorded online talks, and finally a day of live online parallel sessions. About 80 people attended the in-person day of the conference, with around twice that number taking part online. ALT have a wealth of experience when it comes to running both in-person and online conferences and, despite having a very small staff team, their events invariably run like clockwork. As expected, ALT handled the logistics of bringing people back together with real sensitivity and empathy, with plenty of space at the venue so that people never felt crowded, and plenty of time in the programme for people to network and socialise.
For the online component of the conference ALT used the same suite of technologies that they’ve used for several previous online events, which includes Streamyard, YouTube and Discord, all of which worked well. The programme was easily accessible and simple to navigate, and it was possible to move between sessions if you wanted to catch presentations that were taking place in parallel. I did have a bit of trouble getting into my own online presentation session, due to some technical weirdness, but ALT dealt with the hitch smoothly, and it didn’t detract from my experience as a presenter. A Discord server provided a social space where delegates could share slides and resources, and meet and chat informally throughout the conference. There was also a dedicated channel for help and support. I confess I was
not enthusiastic
when ALT first started using Discord as part of their online conference platform, primarily because it’s a channel I use a lot outside work, however I have to admit that it works really well and it really adds to the online conference experience. I’ve written a longer reflection on the OER22 here:
OER22 In Person & Online
University of Edinburgh Learning & Teaching Conference
Like OER22, the University of Edinburgh’s internal
Learning & Teaching Conference
ran as a hybrid event after having run online for two years during the pandemic. The first day of the event took place in the magnificent McEwan Hall and surrounding buildings, and consisted of an exhibition space, posters, keynotes and parallel sessions. The second and third days took place online and consisted of parallel tracks of online talks. I don’t know how many people attended the conference but I’d guess maybe 60 – 80 people were present for the in-person day of the event. The content of the conference was excellent, all the sessions I attended online and in person were really thoughtful and thought provoking. The exhibition space in particular provided a great opportunity for colleagues to network and socialise after so long apart, and I appreciated that the breaks were long enough not to feel rushed.
The conference platform was based on Eventscase and Zoom and this is where some problems crept in. The platform could be accessed via the web, but we were also asked to download an app and a QR code to join the conference. Normally I avoid loading work apps onto my personal devices, so I wasn’t mad keen on having to do this, however as it turned out, I didn’t need to use either the app or the QR code after downloading them. Navigating the programme on Eventscase was tricky; the schedule was available as a web page and in a calendar view, which also allowed delegates to book on to specific sessions. However because the calendar view
only
showed sessions that had to be booked, you had to go back to the webpage to find information about keynotes and plenaries, so there was a bit of confusion about what was happening where and when during the first day. Also while I appreciate the reasons for encouraging delegates to book onto online sessions, it didn’t seem to be possible to change sessions, to listen to different presentations running in parallel, even when there were still places available, which was more than a little frustrating. Presenters had to book on to their own sessions in order to be able to present, but getting into the sessions wasn’t always straightforward, and in some cases session chairs had to e-mail speakers Zoom links instead. The session chairs were unfailingly helpful though, as were all the conference helpers who directed delegates around the campus on the first day of the event. Although I really enjoyed the conference the Eventscase platform did feel unnecessarily complicated and at times seemed to be more of a hindrance than a help.
ALT Scotland Annual Conference
The
ALT Scotland Annual Conference
was a much smaller event, which provided a really interesting opportunity to experiment with a different kind of hybrid conference; one where some participants attended online and some attended in-person simultaneously. The event, which ran for one day, was hosted by City of Glasgow College, and brought together learning technologists and policy makers from across all sectors of Scottish education. Again, I’m not sure exactly how many people attended, but I’d estimate there were c.20 people attending in person and perhaps the same number again online. The conference took place on the day of a national rail strike which meant that quite a lot of folk who had planned to attend in person, had to join online instead. The event was facilitated using Thinglink, Zoom, and a double screen and camera set up that had been donated to the college by a vendor whose name I didn’t catch. We had one person chairing the event in the room and another coordinating Zoom online. The screens at the front of the room showed Zoom but unfortunately it was difficult to see the online discussion from where I was sitting. Several of the attendees in the room also joined Zoom from their laptops so they could participate in the online chat with colleagues who were attending remotely. Unfortunately I couldn’t get on to Eduroam so I wasn’t able to join the online interaction, and it did rather feel like I was missing out. Several of the presenters joined remotely via Zoom which worked well for participants both online and in person. I gave a short talk in-person, which was a bit of an odd experience. Standing at the front of the room facing the camera meant that the screens were behind me, so I couldn’t help feeling like I’d turned my back on the online participants. This also meant that I couldn’t see the Zoom chat which meant that some of the remote participants felt as though their questions were being ignored. When I finished speaking, the camera stayed locked on to me and followed me all the way back to my seat, which was a little disconcerting!
As a group of learning technologists, the conference gave us an excellent opportunity to experiment with the kind of technologies that might be used to facilitate hybrid teaching and learning, and we had a really interesting discussion at the end of the day about the pros, cons and practicalities of running hybrid events like this. I think we all agreed that it’s not easy, and we need a lot more practice to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Joe Wilson, who chaired the event in-person commented that it would have been impossible to coordinate everything, online and in-person, without the help of Louise Jones who was managing Zoom. Sheila MacNeill has written an interesting
blog post
about the ALT Scotland Conference, which includes some reflection on a questionable “attention tracking” feature of the conferencing system, which I hasten to add we
didn’t
experiment with during the event.
Reflection
In terms of my takeaways from these three quite different hybrid events I’d say that running conferences that have in-person and online components on different days is a good way to ensure that an event is accessible to as many people as possible. I did really appreciate being able to get together with colleagues in person, and I wouldn’t want to lose that again, however there are many advantages to having an online component too. Online events are generally more accessible, convenient, they reduce the necessity to travel and as a result they’re better for the environment.
In terms of the technology, simple is better. It’s often more convenient to have the conference programme available on a simple web page rather than in an interactive calendar that takes multiple clicks to navigate. Also requiring delegates to download apps onto their personal devices is not a good idea for numerous reasons.
When it comes to running events online and in-person simultaneously, we still have
a lot
to learn. As is so often the case, it’s not necessarily the technology that trips us up, it’s the human interactions that really make a difference, and clearly we still need a lot of practice to ensure that simultaneous events provide an equitable experience for everyone involved.
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