We threw the switch this morning, launching the OER pilot program. It’s a small-scale initiative, intended to support the integration of open textbooks into 10 courses within the 2017/2018 academic year. There are two branches - faculty advocacy, and project implementation. The implementation is being let by my team at the Taylor Institute, working with the University of Calgary’s OER Faculty Advocate and his team.
We’ll be hiring a graduate student to act as a research assistant for the program, who will help coordinate the various projects - hopefully 10 concurrent projects with instructors working with up to 20 undergraduate students to identify good candidate resources for use in a course, which will be reviewed by a graduate student (and the instructor) before being integrated into the course.
The Taylor Institute’s AV systems were designed to be incredibly flexible, able to adapt to changing requirements between (or even during) classes. That meant shifting from hardwired analog systems to fully digital media management to allow for software-controlled mixing and switching of signals.
What people assume, when they walk into a classroom, is something basically like this:
You show up, plug your laptop in, and it sends stuff to the projector. And other stuff to the speakers. Simple.
Dr. Märtensson’s research formed much of the foundation of the plan for the Taylor Institute. Specifically, the macro/meso/micro layers within an organization, and working with each layer in various ways to draw people into the community. Her keynote at the 2017 University of Calgary Conference on Post-secondary Learning and Teaching was great, and nicely connected many of the threads of the conference.
Nowadays, (hyper)linking is an afterthought because most of the action occurs within platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and messaging apps, which all have carved space out of the open web. And the idea of “harnessing collective intelligence” simply feels much more interesting and productive than it does now. The great cathedrals of that time, nearly impossible projects like Wikipedia that worked and worked well, have all stagnated. And the portrait of humanity that most people see filtering through the mechanics of Facebook or Twitter does not exactly inspire confidence in our social co-productions.
We tried something new (for us) this year, and had an Ignite session during the Taylor Institute’s annual conference. It was a risk, as we had never hosted that format before, and none of the 6 presenters (for 5 presentations) had ever done an Ignite. Nevertheless, we persisted.
I got talked into being the (humble) host for the event, introducing the format and acting as emcee between presenters. Each presenter provided their slides earlier in the week, so I had time to smush them all into one master presentation file and apply the automatic slide progression for their decks.
The push for educational technology exists within a broader political, economic, ideological, and technological context. The all-too-common ignorance of this context and the subtleties of learning itself may prove problematic for edtech — and higher education’s future.
The article is a really good one, and points to the broad issues with the disruption-of-education-by-silicon-valley narrative (one which has been championed by Audrey Watters for years, and which also overlaps with the work that Stephen Downes has been doing forever).
We’ve been in the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning’s new building for almost a year now, and it’s time to step back and reflect on what we’ve learned through that first year.
The building itself is a marvel of architecture, design and technology. We’re extremely fortunate to be able to go to work there every day. It’s been a constant source of inspiration - not the building, but the amazing things that instructors, students and staff are doing within it, together, on a regular basis.
I’ve been struggling with this, as I’m sure most people are. It hit me last night (again), when I was essentially numb as I tried to tune out the insanity from Trump’s speech to Congress.
I try to assume everyone is trying to do the right thing, in their own way, from their own perspective. Even Trump. He’s a scared little man, used to entitlement and getting his way. From that perspective, he’s just trying to use his awesomeness to save the world from lesser men. Yikes.
The muslim ban executive order was a wakeup call. It’s now a different world, and we need to take the time to think through what the implications are.
Personally, I’d probably be largely unaffected. I’m a middle-aged white male with no visible signs of dissent. Well. I have a beard. But I could probably continue travelling to the US without much trouble.
But. I work with people who would be directly challenged by this. And there are students in the computer science lab I’m part of who would be forbidden from entering the US. Which is ridiculous. But it’s a serious problem - academia is strongly based on the conference model - travel to a place, present your research and make connections with other people doing similar research. It’s how things are done.
I’ve been thinking about doing this since the last US election. And now, with the words and actions of the Trump administration, I’m just not comfortable leaving my web presence on US servers.
The decision to move my stuff back onto Canadian servers was easy - just a simple exercise in logic. The hard part is leaving what has been the best web hosting company - the best online community supporter - I’ve ever had the pleasure of being a member of. ReclaimHosting (nee Hippie Hosting Co-op) is the best web hosting provider I’ve ever come into contact with. Great company. Even better people. A pleasure to work with on any level.
Our annual conference is coming up quickly - the call for proposals is open now (closing Feb 3, 2017 - less than a month away!). This is one of the things I’m most proud about. This conference has grown from a small, mostly-internal thing, to an incredible and deep conference with an amazing community vibe. It’s now drawing participants and presenters from across Canada, and has a surprising number of international participants as well. This has become my one must-go-to event each year (which is handy, considering I work in the building and help to organize and run it) - and I would easily rank it as one of the top conference experiences I’ve ever had.
