Introducing our GO-GN Scholarship Awardees!

In February 2024 we launched the GO-GN scholarship programme and our first call for applications from GO-GN doctoral researchers and alumni. We were thrilled with your response to the call. Thank you so much to everyone who submitted an application.

We’re delighted to now announce the awardees for the first round of our GO-GN scholarships. Congratulations to Abiud Bosire (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany), Vi Truong (Charles Sturt University, Australia) and Helen DeWaard (Lakehead University, Canada)!

Read on to find out more from our awardees about their scholarship aims and activities over the coming months. Scholarship awardees will be regularly reporting back on progress, and we’ll share more from Abiud, Vi and Helen in due course. Congratulations!

Abiud Bosire: Workshops to empower and support postgraduate students in Kenya

Abiud Bosire is a doctoral candidate and researcher under the Chair and Research group on Diversity Education and International Educational Research of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. His current doctoral research focuses on the determinants (curriculum and teacher competencies) for the implementation of global education in secondary schools in Kenya and Germany. 

Through GO-GN funding, Abiud will conduct a series of workshops themed Empowering Postgraduate Students to Access Global Activities and Networking Opportunities in the Southwestern region of Kenya. These workshops will be held at four universities: Rongo University, Kisii University, Jaramogi Oginda Odinga University and Maasai Mara University. All these are relatively young universities, having received their charters after 2010.

The workshops will focus on the Global OER Graduate Network. The goal is to provide critical information about the GO-GN Network and its activities and establish avenues through which doctoral students at these universities can tap into available resources, network with scholars worldwide, and create a sustainable support system for continued access to global opportunities. Furthermore, the workshops aim to enhance graduate students’ skills in leveraging open educational resources (OER) and empower them to access global scholarly opportunities.

Abiud said: “As a student from the global south, particularly from a remote village in Kisii, Kenya, I am privy of the experiences and challenges of postgraduate students in peripheral universities (universities located away from the capital city and other major cities) in accessing information and opportunities to enhance their academic journeys. Therefore, drawing on my own experience, where an information sharing session gave me the opportunity to continue my studies in Europe, I understand the transformative power of these type of workshops and initiatives. Therefore, I am honoured to have received this funding and facilitation to conduct these workshops in Southwestern Kenya with the hope that they will impact someone.”

Abiud extends his appreciation to the Global OER Graduate Network (GO-GN) for supporting these workshops, and to the faculty members at the selected universities, particularly Dr. Stephen Momanyi of Rongo University and Dr. Peter Oino of Kisii University, for their logistical support and for agreeing to host the events.

Vi Truong: Raising awareness of open education in Viet Nam

Dr. Vi Truong, an alumna from Charles Sturt University, Australia, has been awarded a GO-GN scholarship to attend the International Symposium on Global South Studies 2024 in Nha Trang, Vietnam, this August. As one of the pioneers in open education research in Vietnam, Vi aims to use this opportunity to present her research and raise awareness about the open education movement to a diverse audience beyond the usual education and IT circles. Vi plans to promote OER as a solution to educational challenges in the Global South, foster new research initiatives and collaboration, and especially promote our GO-GN network.

After the conference, Vi will provide a blog post detailing her experiences and insights from the event. This will cover the reception of her presentation, questions from attendees, and key learnings from other research topics. Additionally, Vi will summarise the key points of her presentation in an infographic about the role of university libraries in advancing open education through institutional OER repositories.

Helen DeWaard: Internationalisation at a distance

Dr. Helen DeWaard is based at the Faculty of Education, Lakehead University and successfully defended her PhD thesis Media and digital literacies in Canadian teacher educators’ open educational practices: A post-intentional phenomenology in November 2023. Helen shared the following on her scholarship:

For this GO-GN scholarship, I will support the completion of a multi-voiced collaborative auto-ethnographic research project with GO-GN members. The primary purpose for this research will be the publication of a journal article specifically for the British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET) special edition on Internationalisation at a distance: Critical reflections on the digital shift in international higher education. This scholarship supports research into an expanded perspective of internationalisation at a distance that is offered by experiences within the Global Open Education Graduate Network (GO-GN). 

The GO-GN community of practice centres on doctoral studies, moving beyond traditional boundaries of higher education contexts, thus shifting the dynamics and definitions of internationalisation at a distance. Current research into internationalisation at a distance focuses on the transnational mobility of the student or the formal online dissemination of curricula within a program of study in higher education. This research extends internationalisation at a distance beyond formal studies and offers an alternative vision for doctoral research at a distance, through informal community-driven capacity building, and the sharing of knowledge withinmeaningful intercultural and international experiences relative to open educational resources, pedagogies, and practices in doctoral studies. The stories and experiences shared by the GO-GN membership for this research may open opportunities for networking as others enter into a PhD program in local or online higher education institutions around the globe. This GO-GN research scholarship will help me bring awareness of the benefits of the GO-GN connections and endeavours as a unique form of internationalisation.

This GO-GN scholarship will support my work with collaborating authors from GO-GN to complete this research – managing the research ethics approval process, moving the research and writing sequentially through the review and revision process, and the successful publication process. The research submissions from the GO-GN members have been collected and the draft manuscript has been submitted to BJET for review. 

This scholarship will further support the promotion and dissemination of this research to a wider audience and to enhance GO-GN membership in Global South geographic locations. I propose to support the translation of some of the research outputs into additional languages such as French, Spanish and/or Portuguese in order to disseminate and dismantle hegemonic language barrier issues. In addition, I will promote this research with alternative publication materials (graphic sketchnote, video montage) as well as GO-GN guest blog submissions and a future webinar presentation. This scholarship is an opportunity to work with the GO-GN membership to further advance this research and support GO-GN’s unique version of internationalisation at a distance.