It was so much fun presenting at OER19yesterday. I’m so lucky to be here connecting with friends I have known for years – and to meet new friends who are also exploring all definitions and meanings of open. Thank you all who were able to come in person (as there were so many amazing sessions to choose from).
My session description & slides are below, and I ended with a timely invitation that I would like to share here as well. In October 2019, #OpenEd19 will take place in Phoenix and I’m looking to collaborate with anyone who would also like to examine (y)our course syllabi and reading lists for open and see where our exploration takes us (and then, we will share that at #OpenEd19.) If accepted and you’re unable to come to Phoenix, we can coordinate virtual participation so your voice will be there will us in the presentation.
Please tweet or message me if you’re interested and I’ll be in touch soon to share a Google doc with the proposal so we can finalize and submit by April 19th!
#OpenEd19 – an invitation to collaborate
- Deeply examine our syllabi & reading lists
- Look for “statements of open” in syllabus
- Are our open resources visible? How?
- What opportunities exist to make open more transparent in our classes?
- What practices can we cultivate?
- What resources can we share?
Session Description
In this reflective practice session I would like to share heuristics I have used for “open coding” my syllabus which help the learners in our care see the critical processes behind resource inclusion in a syllabus. Inspired by the method of open coding (Glasser, 2016), this takes the “open” in open coding a step further and makes the actual codes visible to our learners. As practitioners, we may profess to being digitally literate, critical, or open however, many of the very literacies we practice are often hidden in the construction of a syllabus as our students and co-learners only see the final product. By openly coding resources on a syllabus we are pulling back the layers for the students and modeling our understanding(s) of open. In addition to making our curricular moves visible to students, it also forces us to take a close and critical look at our syllabi in an ever evolving quest to improve our own open practices.
While the genre of the syllabus often gets criticized for housing mundane (or even damaging) policies, it offers tremendous opportunity and potential (Konikel, 2018). I will engage the participants by sharing my emerging protocol and technologies and inviting others to participate in the syllabi coding process after OER19 with the hopes of producing a collectively authored publication on the results of our syllabi self-studies. Additionally, I will share open syllabi resources such as the Humanities Commons CORE Repository (https://hcommons.org/core/) which provide further collaborative and open opportunities.
References
Glaser, B. (2016) Open coding descriptions. Grounded Theory Review: An International Journal. December 2016, Vol.15(2). [Online] Available at: http://groundedtheoryreview.com/2016/12/19/open-coding-descriptions/ [Accessed: 26 November 2018]
Konikel, S. (2018) Examining the syllabus as scholarly object: what can we learn about values from this teaching tool? [Online]. Available at:
https://humetricshss.org/blog/examining-the-syllabus-as-scholarly-object-what-can-we-learn-about-values-from-this-teaching-tool/ [Accessed: 26 November 2018]