An Unexpected Journey: How A Dissertation Changed a Life

Every time I’ve asked a colleague from the open education community to share their work and their experience in one of our webinars, their response has always been an enthusiastic ‘Yes!’. We are all grateful for their time, their generosity, their knowledge, their willingness to help others, and so much else. TJ Bliss is no different. He has been a champion of GO-GN for years in more ways than you know of, and I’m delighted that he will be joining us next week.

Our #FirstWednesdayofEveryMonth webinar in November invites you to come along on An Unexpected Journey: How A Dissertation Changed a Life.

TJ Bliss will discuss his experiences in graduate school that ultimately led to him being involved in the OER community. He will also give a brief overview of his dissertation project “A Model of Digital Textbook Quality from the Perspective of College Students” and explain why he decided not to focus exclusively on OER in this project. He will also explain why he decided NOT to ask Dr. David Wiley to be his Dissertation Committee Chair, even though Dr. Wiley was willing, interested, and available in person.

TJ Bliss is the Director of Development and Strategy at Wiki Education, a non-profit that connects higher education to the publishing power of Wikipedia. Bridging Wikipedia and academia creates opportunities for any learner to contribute to, and access, open knowledge. Before joining Wiki Education, TJ was a Program Officer in the Education Program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. In that role, he gave $45M in grants to over 30 organizations working to expand the reach and efficacy of Open Educational Resources. Read more.

This webinar took place on November 1st, 2017. A recording has been released publicly under a CC BY licence and is available on our YouTube channel.

Featured image: Let’s DO This by Alan Levine, Public Domain.