As an academic administrator, I support educators across all disciplines in their embrace of more critical, inclusive, and open pedagogies. However, given that my scholarship bridges education and psychology I am often asked by my fellow psychologists about where they might begin in their search for relevant and high-quality open educational resources. Although I still recommend that you reach out to your local university library (which may have a liaison/subject librarian who is well situated to support your customized search needs), I have also assembled a non-exhaustive starter pack for OER in psychology. I hope this is helpful to teachers…
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The six months since I began serving as Brock University’s Vice Provost, Teaching and Learning has been an immensely meaningful and rewarding journey and I want to mark this milestone by sharing a few reflections… The choice to take the opportunity at Brock was a family decision and one born out of work with a wonderful coach, Isabel Budke, who helped me to achieve greater clarity about my personal and professional goals. One reason this wasn’t a quick decision is that I absolutely loved my work and adored my colleagues at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, where I first began working in…
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Last week, I gave a virtual keynote at the 2021 OLC Accelerate Conference. The title of my talk was 20/21: A Pedagogical Journey. In it I reflected on the journey of higher education over the past 18 months, including the many lessons learned and some of the lessons that have gone begging. In Part 1 of this series of posts I shared two of these insights, about the critical role that Centres for Teaching & Learning played during the pandemic and how we mustn’t forget the lessons of the past 18 months as we rebuild the future of higher education. In this…
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Yesterday, I gave a virtual keynote at the 2021 OLC Accelerate Conference. The title of my talk was 20/21: A Pedagogical Journey. In it I reflected on the journey of higher education over the past 18 months, including the many lessons learned and some of the lessons that have gone begging. In this post I share two of those insights… Looking Back: Centres for Teaching and Learning as First Responders As the pandemic hit our shores, our team in the Teaching & Learning Commons felt a deep sense of purpose and mission. We knew that our faculty were overwhelmed and anxious about…
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Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare Audre Lorde Three weeks ago my family and I spent three days on the gorgeous Southern Gulf Islands. Even a few hours into the trip I began to experience a palpable unpeeling of tension, a distancing from tasks, a delayering of noise and news, and a recentering of spirit and self-care. It brought into relief just how much cognitive and task overload I have regretfully become accustomed to and how much I have been risking burnout. This is something I haven’t paid sufficient attention…
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Reblogged from the KPU Teaching & Learning Commons blog. As we should all know by now, pivoting rapidly to remote delivery of teaching and learning over the course of a few days to is not the same thing as designing an effective online course. However, as many of you will also now experience, designing an online course with a few weeks notice (perhaps also while you are pivoting for your Spring semester’s final weeks and final assessments) is not quite the same thing as having four months to plan for teaching online in the Fall. Before you read any further,…
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I remember the first time I heard the term “free riders” being used in the context of the open education movement. It was at the Open Education Conference in 2015 in Vancouver when, during a presentation titled “The Economics of Open,” the Chief Executive of a for-profit player in the space was referring to those who reuse OER (including for monetary gain) without contributing anything to the commons. I remember reacting with some surprise because, as a co-author of open textbooks, I saw other people reusing my work as a measure of the impact of my efforts. Even as a…
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I love reading research on OER. That so many researchers across so many institutional contexts are actively exploring issues related to cost, outcomes, use, and perceptions makes me happy. And that OER research continues to get more nuanced, more rigorous, more transparent, and more critical makes me happier still. Yet, as powerful as quantitative research (especially local studies) can be in bolstering the institutional case for investing in OER it is worth reminding ourselves periodically that this approach is limited in what it can tell us. Yes, research tells us that students will perform the same or better when they…
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I have been thinking about the values and ideals that underpin open pedagogy for me. I say for me because these are personal, subjective, and contextual. This is similar to the concept of open pedagogy itself, which most of us are quite happy to have multiple definitions and understandings of (here’s one take from Robin and me, along with many others curated by the wonderful Maha Bali). In this iteration I am choosing to impose a constraint on my thinking by repurposing David Wiley’s structure of the 5R permissions of open educational resources to form a parallel construction. In doing…
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On October 23, 2018 I had the privilege of speaking at the United Nations Headquarters at OpenCon UN. My presentation focused on how open educational practices can support progress towards the sustainable development goals. I am sharing a video recording of my presentation, my slides, and the full text of my talk here (it begins around 15:30): Link to my slides: Good morning. It is a privilege to be here with you. Territorial acknowledgements are customary where I come from in Canada and an important element of truth and reconciliation, so I’d like to begin by acknowledging that we are in…