Seminar

Two and a half days in Cape Town

March 17, 2017 /
After Ljubljana and Washington in 2014, Banff in 2015 and Kraków last year, we returned to where the first ever GO-GN seminar took place in 2013. This is the story of two and half days in Cape Town.
Once upon a time, it was a very sunny morning when…

Wait, we weren’t in Cape Town for the views, right? Get on with it!


The morning of day 1 (March 5th) was spent doing group work: some of us had met before, for others it was a first time, but after a quick round of introductions, it was like ‘hey coz, good to see you!’. As GO-GNers we work together to raise the profile of research into open education and to support new open education researchers in their journeys to PhD wisdom; that road is also an invite to do research in the open. What does that mean? Being able to communicate your research as clearly as possible…


and a commitment to share…

Or, as our friends from ROER4D put it, a commitment to “conducting and sharing research in which a selection of research proposals, work-process documents, literature reviews,methodologies, research instruments, analytical frameworks, findings and/or data are intentionally shared on publically-accessible platforms in order for others to freely access, use, modify, and share them subject to measures that preserve ethical practice and legal provenance.” (Hodgkinson-Williams & King, 2015:5)
From then on, it was presentations time. Janesh kicked off with his comparative study of Indian learners in MOOCs…


Next, Judith presented her research on students and lecturers’ access to, use and sharing of OER in Kenyan Universities…

Lisa told us how she plans to explore the challenges of using OER for teacher education in Ghana…

Tabisa addressed the question of how first year students in a South African University understand OER and OEP…

Sarah invited us all to consider how inclusive is the ‘openness’ of open education…


And Gino brought day one to a close with…


Some of us had to rush out to connect with @VConnecting folks for a quick chat about all things GO-GN…

All work and no play? Surely not. We needed the buzz of a night out to discover that Jamison and Caroline’s talents go well beyond desk research, and that springbok is actually very tasty… with apologies to all vegetarian friends.

The next morning everyone was back in one piece and raring to go for day two of presentations. Catherine was first, talking about her research in Ireland: in what ways do academic staff use OEP? What practices, values, and/or strategies are shared by open educators, if any?…

GOLD (Global Online Learning Designer) Jenni managed to bring honey bees into the OEP conversation…

Michael put forward his interest in exploring how OEP are evolving and being actualized in formal higher education…

Chrissi fleshed out her cross-boundary collaborative open learning framework for cross-institutional academic development…

Jamison brought us theory, policy and practice (real utopias, potentials, constraints, tasks, critical discourse analysis… oh so juicy!)

Veteran Anne was brave enough to cross boundaries…

And finally Caroline shared her ongoing research on students’ agency in digital practice…

In the afternoon, Rory McGreal joined the OERHub team in a panel to discuss life after a PhD (thanks, Rory!)


And that was a wrap! As I said on the day, with this amazing group of people, fear not for the future of research into open education!


After the two days we released GO-GN researchers into the wild (i.e. OEGlobal) but not before a quick visit to Siyavula (hence the half day in the title)…

While some people continued to work really really hard…


Others had a different take on life in Cape Town…

There was, of course, some running…


And no stopping Caroline!


Here’s the photo for the family album…


Everyone made it home safe and sound, although maybe lighter (figure it out!)


Thank you, my friends! 🙂 We are in this together…

Come and join us…

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