Tag Archives: WhyOpen

Open Participants, Syndicated

Upcoming Hangout – #101OpenStories for #YearOfOpen

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I’m really looking forward to this hangout happening Tuesday July 25 at noon my time (6am EDT/11 BST). Watch below (or use this link)


Jenni Hayman did a great job organizing this one. It’s a pretty diverse group: Sukaina Walji who is British but works in South Africa (notable for her ROER4D work), Catherine Cronin who is originally from New York but works in Ireland (we all know her PhD is about open ed), Maha Abdelmoneim (Egyptian who has worked in different places – mostly outside academia) and myself. 

I don’t want to burn my story, but writing generally helps me organize my thoughts… And if I had to summarize my open story… It would probably fall into several different points, so I’ll just mention them here and expand during the hangout, as I’m also looking forward to listening to others’ stories.

  • Openness as an attitude that isn’t tied to online necessarily 
  • Becoming pro open access (including illegal kinds even though that doesn’t really count as open access) by necessity at times when saved me
  • Openness as a need for myself as a professional in my particular circumstances 
  • Openness as a critical approach that is more collectively than individually focused, as many (tho not all!) of us who are open are marginal in some way – and thinking of Virtually Connecting and how it shifts the power in academic conferences (I hadn’t been planning on mentioning it, but I’m glad it occurred to me while writing this – so that hopefully I mention it then)
  • Risks of openness – watching other women and minorities take those risks, what it means in my own Egyptian political context as well
  • Mabel’s garden (story Teresa Mackinnon shared with me) and how building the wall in the garden to protect flowers ends up preventing sunlight – but how this metaphor is beautiful but still flawed, as not all the walls around us are of our own making….

Thanks again to Jenni Hayman and the team working on 101Openstories and to #YearOfOpen – this is the second hangout in a series. And anyone can contribute in writing (or probably whatever format?) to 101openstories.org, including you! And check out stories already there!

Open Participants, Syndicated

Curation of Posts on Open Pedagogy #YearOfOpen

Reading Time: 4 minutes

In preparation for Monday’s Open Pedagogy Hangout (see announcement here – includes list of guests and YouTube watch link) I thought it might be useful to roughly curate some relatively recent work on the topic. I am hoping folks will help me fill in the gaps – as some already have! I will basically list authors here and only highlight something small to give an idea of what the posts are about.

  1. The #YearOfOpen website itself has so far posts from 6 different people with a range of Perspectives. If you see mine, it refers to a spectrum of practices that I consider to be open pedagogy and I refer to work by Catherine Cronin, Viv Rolfe, Robin DeRosa, Rajiv Jhangiani and Samantha Veneruso. If you open David Wiley’s (defining it with respect to 5Rs), you will see recommendations to look at previous posts of his on the topic, which provide background on why he defines it this way. He also has a follow-up post (published today) where he reflects on difference between open as in open web and how he was looking at open
  2. Martin Weller who defines this “Open educational practice covers any significant change in educational practice afforded by the open nature of the internet”. I don’t know if this debate Martin refers to between Downes and Wiley tackles this question.
  3. Jim Groom who says “there is an attempt to define it in order to start controlling it” And he says “I am not too concerned if #ds106 is understood as open pedagogy or not, because as soon as it is a choice between awesome and open, I will choose awesome every time” (I agree, but it’s such a privilege to not need a label to give credibility to what you do, eh? Even as most of us do this work on the margins already anyway)
  4. Josie Fraser whose post reflects on many things, but additionally asks why we aren’t using the term “open heutagogy”?
  5. Clint Lalonde who finds student work that isn’t licensed openly to still be part of open pedagogy
  6. Catherine Cronin and Frances Bell blogged about their panels/presentations with others like Laura Czerniewicz, Sheila MacNeill and others) on critical Open Educational Practices at #oer17.
  7. Hot off the press: Sheila MacNeill 
  8. An important article Sheila references and is mentioned in the YearOfOpen article by Robert Schuwer is 8 Attributes of Open Pedagogy by Bronwyn Hegarty
  9. Suzan Koseoglu channels bell hooks and writes a powerful post on the philosophy and spirit of open. #mustread
  10. Tannis Morgan digs into history of the term Open Pedagogy. Also this, after #oer17 which lays out so many different facets of open and questions the centrality of content to pedagogy altogether (agreed!)
  11. A favorite of mine from Jesse Stommel: Open Door Classroom
  12. Rajiv Jhangiani on Definitions vs Foundational Values
  13. Samantha Veneruso connects open pedagogy to complexity (Cynefin framework) and suggests open pedagogy can only be known retrospectively based on how it’s practised.
  14. Karen Cangialosi has more questions than answers
  15. Jim Luke thinks this through and decides “Any production process uses resources, but the resources are not the essence  of the process”
  16. Lorna Campbell reflects on how the use of the term “pedagogy” rather than “practice” distances some of us involved in education who don’t teach (also echoes what Josie Fraser had mentioned). Hearing this several times this week is making me think a lot
  17. Frances Bell on Ground Zero approaches to open and how we could broaden our perspectives, look back and look around, because by excluding work/ppl based on narrow definitions, we lose opportunities to learn from each other.
  18. Posted by Sukaina Walji for ROER4D,  a post by IDRC Senior Program Officer Dr Matthew Smith from March 2016: Open is as Open Does. He writes “requiring that narrow, technical or legal definitions are used may actually hinder our ability to really understand the important stuff, i.e., the “open practices” — sharing, reuse (5R’s), and collaboration that these legal and technical characteristics are intended to enable. OER by themselves don’t do anything – they don’t have an impact just sitting in the cloud or on someone’s Raspberry Pi. It is only when they are used in particular ways that change can happen – and it is this change that motivates most people interested in “open” in the first place”
  19. Catherine Cronin “Opening Up Open Pedagogy” – great round-up of different ways open ped and OEP have been used 1972-2012.
  20. Robin DeRosa Quick reflection ahead of the #YearOfOpen hangout
  21. Javiera Atenas on how her trip to Palestine changed her views on OEP
  22. Remi Holden on Marginal Syllabus as OER/OEP “how are everyday digital spaces transformed into open learning environments?”
  23. Let me know if I missed something recent and important or an oldie but goodie that adds a different perspective

Posts After the hangout

Thanks to everyone who has been pointing me to their blogposts and those of others – this list has grown significantly since I first started it. It is notable that many of these posts also have really insightful comments and I’m too overwhelmed to curate those.

Suzan Koseoglu suggested on Twitter that we have a Google doc for people to curate notable comments, and that sounds like a good idea! So here is the Google doc shortlink: http://bit.ly/CurateOpenPed where you can

  • Insert useful links
  • Enter notable quotes/comments
  • Enter questions about open pedagogy (I’m not sure if we will have enough time to go through all of them during the hangout, but the conversation doesn’t have to end at the hangout).

It’s an open document – feel free to do whatever you like with it and it can live longer than 24 hours if needed 🙂

Open Participants, Syndicated

Curation of Posts on Open Pedagogy #YearOfOpen

Reading Time: 2 minutes

In preparation for Monday’s Open Pedagogy Hangout (see announcement here – includes list of guests and YouTube watch link) I thought it might be useful to roughly curate some relatively recent work on the topic. I am hoping folks will help me fill in the gaps – as some already have! I will basically list authors here and only highlight something small to give an idea of what the posts are about. 

  1. The #YearOfOpen website itself has so far posts from 6 different people with a range of Perspectives. If you see mine, it refers to a spectrum of practices that I consider to be open pedagogy and I refer to work by Catherine Cronin, Viv Rolfe, Robin DeRosa, Rajiv Jhangiani and Samantha Veneruso. If you open David Wiley’s (defining it with respect to 5Rs), you will see recommendations to look at previous posts of his on the topic, which provide background on why he defines it this way.
  2. Martin Weller who defines this “Open educational practice covers any significant change in educational practice afforded by the open nature of the internet”. I don’t know if this debate Martin refers to between Downes and Wiley tackles this question. 
  3. Jim Groom who says “there is an attempt to define it in order to start controlling it” And he says “I am not too concerned if #ds106 is understood as open pedagogy or not, because as soon as it is a choice between awesome and open, I will choose awesome every time” (I agree, but it’s such a privilege to not need a label to give credibility to what you do, eh? Even as most of us do this work on the margins already anyway) 
  4. Josie Fraser whose post reflects on many things, but additionally asks why we aren’t using the term “open heutagogy”?
  5. Clint Lalonde who finds student work that isn’t licensed openly to still be part of open pedagogy 
  6. Catherine Cronin and Frances Bell blogged about their panels/presentations with others like Laura Czerniewicz, Sheila MacNeill and others) on critical Open Educational Practices at #oer17.
  7. Hot off the press: Sheila MacNeill 
  8. An important article Sheila references and is mentioned in the YearOfOpen article by Robert Schuwer is 8 Attributes of Open Pedagogy by Bronwyn Hegarty
  9. Let me know if I missed something recent and important or an oldie but goodie that adds a different perspective 
Open Participants, Syndicated

What is Open Pedagogy? #YearOfOpen hangout April 24

Reading Time: 2 minutes

What is Open Pedagogy? Who gets to define what open pedagogy is, and how does that affect all of us who call what we practice “open pedagogy”?

I was invited to submit my answer to that question by the OEConsortium for #YearOfOpen a while ago, and I submitted it before my trip to London to OER17. During #OER17, my response, as well as others’, was published here.

My feeling was that

  1. A discussion among open pedagogy advocates and practitioners was needed beyond these statements
  2. More diversity of voices on the matter are needed
  3. David Wiley’s contribution is controversial imho and I wanted an opportunity to discuss a variety of approaches. Hence the hangout I am announcing here

I have lots of complicated feelings about this topic, and I have invited a bunch of  (relatively) diverse folks to discuss this topic as part of #YearOfOpen (thanks Sue and Mary Lou for giving their blessing and being part of it)

The session is scheduled for Monday April 24 at 4pm EDT/8 GMT/9 BST/10 Egypt/South Africa time

You can watch here and participate via #YearOfOpen hashtag on Twitter (hangout will livestream to this link and be available as recording afterwards).

Discussion on definition of open pedagogy will involve:

David Wiley, Catherine Cronin, Robin DeRosa, Sheila MacNeill, Sukaina Walji, Viv Rolfe, David Kernohan, Mike Caulfield and me (Maha Bali). Joined by Sue Higgins and Mary Lou Forward from OEConsortium

(note that there are a few people I invited who declined for various reasons, and a lot of people I would have liked to invite but the hangout filled up – using a space that allowed larger numbers of people was an option, but any larger and we probably won’t be able to really have a deep discussion – and the livestreaming of GHO allows people to watch and tweet along even if they’re not inside the hangout itself)

If you have suggestions for activities or questions to do before this session is scheduled, please post them in the comments.

Open Participants, Syndicated

What is Open Pedagogy? #YearOfOpen hangout April 24

Reading Time: 1 minutes

What is Open Pedagogy? Who gets to define what open pedagogy is, and how does that affect all of us who call what we practice “open pedagogy”?

I was invited to submit my answer to that question by the OEConsortium for #YearOfOpen a while ago, and I submitted it before my trip to London to OER17. During #OER17, my response, as well as others’, was published here.

My feeling was that

  1. A discussion among open pedagogy advocates and practitioners was needed beyond these statements 
  2. More diversity of voices on the matter are needed
  3. David Wiley’s contribution is controversial imho and I wanted an opportunity to discuss a variety of approaches. Hence the hangout I am announcing here

I have lots of complicated feelings about this topic, and I have invited a bunch of  (relatively) diverse folks to discuss this topic as part of #YearOfOpen (thanks Sue and Mary Lou for giving their blessing and being part of it) 

The session is scheduled for Monday April 24 at 4pm EDT/8 GMT/9 BST/10 Egypt/South Africa time

You can watch here and participate via #YearOfOpen hashtag on Twitter (hangout will livestream to this link and be available as recording afterwards). 

Discussion on definition of open pedagogy will involve:

David Wiley, Catherine Cronin, Robin DeRosa, Sheila MacNeill, Sukaina Walji, Viv Rolfe, David Kernohan, Mike Caulfield and me (Maha Bali). Joined by Sue Higgins and Mary Lou Forward from OEConsortium

If you have suggestions for activities or questions to do before this session is scheduled, please post them in the comments.

Open Participants, Syndicated

Post #OpenedSIG Webinar, Pre #OER17 #OpenEducationWk

Reading Time: 3 minutes

This morning, I had the honor of being a guest with the warm and welcoming Teresa Mackinnon on an #OpenEdSIG webinar that’s part of Open Education Week and also a pre #OER17 session.

I will embed the slides once I get to a computer, but for now, here’s a link.

I will post the recording as soon as it’s up also.

I am so grateful for this session. It was such a useful opportunity for me to meet with a sample of the OER17 conference participants, not to have a fully equitable conversation, but to still get to interact with them a little.

Teresa’s Introduction made a huge difference. It was very personal and very warm. I wanted to cry because i was so touched. I remember my keynote announcement making me feel like I had been hugged. Teresa’s intro did that today. And it’s a reminder when we introduce someone, how much of a difference it makes if we personalize our intro rather than just read a bio. It automatically affected the atmosphere and I think warmed people towards me also.

(immediately before we started, btw, I had squeaky voice syndrome related to mic issues – this happens to me occasionally and Martin had helped me troubleshoot it before for hangouts – and today I followed the same steps before figuring out where the audio wizard was on the Bb Collaborate).

It was lovely to see some people I know well (like Frances Bell and Christian Friedrich) and new friends (like Debbie Baff and Sheila MacNeill) and several folks I am just getting to know on Twitter as well.

I felt that the impostor syndrome slide resonated a lot. Which is hilarious coz I removed it from my keynote. But I guess it will come out in some form or another as I speak. How could it not, right?

I talked about my process of thinking about my keynote and how difficult it is for me to give a one-way keynote and all the ways I hope to make it interactive both in the room/live and virtually/asynchronously.

For example, I will ask some questions of the audience. Some are prepped to participate and some will be surprise questions (not too many). I also plan to have my slides open to comments and to have a link for feedback at the end. All the links are scheduled to go live on my website April 5 just before I start keynoting at this link: www.mahabali.me/oer17

I also talked quite a bit about Virtually Connecting and shared the link to our signup form: http://bit.ly/OER17VC – hopefully some people now know more about it – also we published today a blogpost on the OER17 blog about vconnecting. 

I loved how Teresa stepped in and talked about how she felt about vconnecting and that it clicked for me that Simon Ensor (who had introduced me to Teresa originally) was doing virtual buddying for OER17 inshallah next week.

I tried to respond to questions on the slides as I spoke and I occasionally lost my audio while trying to do that 🙂

One other thing that seemed to resonate a lot with participants was my ending quote from Sarah Ahmed on how we need space outside our institutions to be able to speak about issues we cannot speak about within our institutions. And that’s what open has given me and it seems many others.

Frances asked a really good question about when sometimes those spaces need to be private rather than open. And that is absolutely the case, of course, and some things are too risky to talk about in the open. Some things are better done privately. And it reminded me of a post of Kate Green’s where she talked about open not being the opposite of private. I don’t remember the details. Will try to link it here later.

I also like that people seemed to like my ending Oscars type slide where I have photos of all the people I learn from about open (and I am sure I have forgotten someone important).

Again, this was a really helpful session to me personally because it gave me a warmup that was low-stakes prep for the keynote and gave me a sense of what to expect from the audience f2f inshallah.

Open Participants, Syndicated

Post #OpenedSIG Webinar, Pre #OER17 #OpenEducationWk

Reading Time: 3 minutes

This morning, I had the honor of being a guest with the warm and welcoming Teresa Mackinnon on an #OpenEdSIG webinar that’s part of Open Education Week and also a pre #OER17 session.

I will embed the slides once I get to a computer, but for now, here’s a link.

I will post the recording as soon as it’s up also.

I am so grateful for this session. It was such a useful opportunity for me to meet with a sample of the OER17 conference participants, not to have a fully equitable conversation, but to still get to interact with them a little.

Teresa’s Introduction made a huge difference. It was very personal and very warm. I wanted to cry because i was so touched. I remember my keynote announcement making me feel like I had been hugged. Teresa’s intro did that today. And it’s a reminder when we introduce someone, how much of a difference it makes if we personalize our intro rather than just read a bio. It automatically affected the atmosphere and I think warmed people towards me also.

(immediately before we started, btw, I had squeaky voice syndrome related to mic issues – this happens to me occasionally and Martin had helped me troubleshoot it before for hangouts – and today I followed the same steps before figuring out where the audio wizard was on the Bb Collaborate).

It was lovely to see some people I know well (like Frances Bell and Christian Friedrich) and new friends (like Debbie Baff and Sheila MacNeill) and several folks I am just getting to know on Twitter as well.

I felt that the impostor syndrome slide resonated a lot. Which is hilarious coz I removed it from my keynote. But I guess it will come out in some form or another as I speak. How could it not, right?

I talked about my process of thinking about my keynote and how difficult it is for me to give a one-way keynote and all the ways I hope to make it interactive both in the room/live and virtually/asynchronously.

For example, I will ask some questions of the audience. Some are prepped to participate and some will be surprise questions (not too many). I also plan to have my slides open to comments and to have a link for feedback at the end. All the links are scheduled to go live on my website April 5 just before I start keynoting at this link: www.mahabali.me/oer17

I also talked quite a bit about Virtually Connecting and shared the link to our signup form: http://bit.ly/OER17VC – hopefully some people now know more about it – also we published today a blogpost on the OER17 blog about vconnecting. 

I loved how Teresa stepped in and talked about how she felt about vconnecting and that it clicked for me that Simon Ensor (who had introduced me to Teresa originally) was doing virtual buddying for OER17 inshallah next week.

I tried to respond to questions on the slides as I spoke and I occasionally lost my audio while trying to do that 🙂

One other thing that seemed to resonate a lot with participants was my ending quote from Sarah Ahmed on how we need space outside our institutions to be able to speak about issues we cannot speak about within our institutions. And that’s what open has given me and it seems many others.

Frances asked a really good question about when sometimes those spaces need to be private rather than open. And that is absolutely the case, of course, and some things are too risky to talk about in the open. Some things are better done privately. And it reminded me of a post of Kate Green’s where she talked about open not being the opposite of private. I don’t remember the details. Will try to link it here later.

I also like that people seemed to like my ending Oscars type slide where I have photos of all the people I learn from about open (and I am sure I have forgotten someone important).

Again, this was a really helpful session to me personally because it gave me a warmup that was low-stakes prep for the keynote and gave me a sense of what to expect from the audience f2f inshallah.

Open Participants, Syndicated

Fixing the shirt but spoiling the trousers #OER17 Open Call for Your Stories!

Reading Time: 2 minutes

So I am finally getting around to solidifying (inasmuch as someone like me can solidify something this far ahead of its date) my OER17 keynote. There are slides, people. 90 of them. Some will have to go, because I also intend for my keynote to be a bit interactive and imagining time for that will be difficult to gauge.

So here is one way to give myself a bit more flexibility and options.

There is a part of my keynote where I plan to refer to an Egyptian expression, which, literally translated, means “when you tried to fix the shirt you spoiled the trousers” (must remember to say trousers not pants in the UK or they’ll think I mean underwear). It conjures up an image of comedy of errors or such, where trying to fix a problem creates new problems.

I think of “open” as having many such problems that arise out of its solutions, and I already have some examples in mind, but would love for the community to offer me more examples of this. I also want to make sure I don’t just bring in privileged white male voices (the people most likely to raise a hand in a crowded room, I think) or to privilege the people in the room – hence asking in advance. The easiest way for me to track these responses would be for you to either

  • Comment here
  • Tweet to #oer17 tagging me
  • Blog and send me a link here or on Twitter

If you’re present at #OER17 I might ask if I can call on you to tell your story quickly to the audience instead of me telling it when you’re sitting right there 🙂

It could be a story of something you have observed in others, or it could be a story of something that happened to you. It could be a personal story, or a story about a larger policy/issue. I have both kinds in mind.

Open Participants, Syndicated

Fixing the shirt but spoiling the trousers #OER17 Open Call for Your Stories!

Reading Time: 2 minutes

So I am finally getting around to solidifying (inasmuch as someone like me can solidify something this far ahead of its date) my OER17 keynote. There are slides, people. 90 of them. Some will have to go, because I also intend for my keynote to be a bit interactive and imagining time for that will be difficult to gauge.

So here is one way to give myself a bit more flexibility and options.

There is a part of my keynote where I plan to refer to an Egyptian expression, which, literally translated, means “when you tried to fix the shirt you spoiled the trousers” (must remember to say trousers not pants in the UK or they’ll think I mean underwear). It conjures up an image of comedy of errors or such, where trying to fix a problem creates new problems.

I think of “open” as having many such problems that arise out of its solutions, and I already have some examples in mind, but would love for the community to offer me more examples of this. I also want to make sure I don’t just bring in privileged white male voices (the people most likely to raise a hand in a crowded room, I think) or to privilege the people in the room – hence asking in advance. The easiest way for me to track these responses would be for you to either

  • Comment here
  • Tweet to #oer17 tagging me
  • Blog and send me a link here or on Twitter

If you’re present at #OER17 I might ask if I can call on you to tell your story quickly to the audience instead of me telling it when you’re sitting right there 🙂

It could be a story of something you have observed in others, or it could be a story of something that happened to you. It could be a personal story, or a story about a larger policy/issue. I have both kinds in mind.

Open Participants, Syndicated

Perspectives on #OpenAccess During #OpenLearning17 hangout

Reading Time: 1 minutes

We just ended the first of two #OpenLearning17 hangouts, with Frances Bell, Chris Gilliard, Chris Friend and surprise guest, Peter Suber, whose book on Open Access we’ve been reading this week. The hangout was co-facilitated by Sue Erickson and myself, and I also invited folks from the community to participate, so Amy Nelson and Jim Luke joined us and enriched the discussion further. When putting together the guest list for this, I thought of reaching out to people with diverse approaches to openness, and I think while we all have a similar orientation towards openness and social justice, we definitely took different approaches to it in the hangout. From Chris Friend talking about openness in the Hybrid Pedagogy review process, to Frances Bell providing her perspective on open access over time, and offering critical questions (what Frances has to offer is so multi-faceted it’s difficult to summarize, honestly), and Chris Gilliard talking about digital redlining – and Peter Suber answering questions on different topics, but particularly giving his views on Gold Open Access that involves Article Processing Charges. There were some great questions from Twitter and within the hangout and some useful resources/links shared to the #OpenLearning17 hashtag on Twitter (Storify here). To watch the hangout:

The second hangout is planned for Thursday March 9th at 1pm South Africa time (6am EST) and will be a Virtually Connecting session from #OEGlobal (in Cape Town) with Laura Czerniewicz, Catherine Cronin, Rajiv Jhangiani and Caroline Kuhn. That session will be livestreamed and recorded also, and the link to watch is below:

See you around!