OpenEd25 Keynote: Graduate Student Panel

[music] And now, please will you join me in giving a warm welcome to conference board member Brandon Carson to your screens to introduce the closing plenerary. >> Good afternoon everyone and welcome to our closing plenary. My name is Brandon Carson. >> Recording in progress. My name is Brandon Carson. I'm joining you today from the lands of the Missosagas of Skugog Island First Nation, part of the traditional character of the Missaga and in the lands covered by the Williams Treaties. I am deeply grateful to live, learn, and raise my family on these beautiful lands. I'm an open education practitioner, researcher, and doctoral student at Ontarot Tech University, and I'm excited to learn alongside you today. Over the past few days, we've shared ideas, sparked collaborations, and kept our eyes on the horizon together. Thank you for the energy, curiosity, and generosity you brought to Open 25, both here in Denver and online around the world. Now, to kick off your closing program, we're shining a spotlight on the next generation of open education scholars. This session features graduate and doctoral students and researchers whose work is pushing the field forward, exploring how open practices, policies, and resources are shaping teaching, learning, and opportunities. This panel was developed with support from the global OAR graduate network, also known as GOGN, and the Open Education Research Fellows Group. GOGGN is a global network of researchers that works to raise the profile of research into open education spaces. Its goal is to offer support to others conducting doctoral research in this area, promote equity and inclusion in the field of open education research, and to develop openness as a practice of research. The open education research fellowship is an opportunity for early career researchers across disciplines to conduct and publish a study in open education. The fellowship provides mentorship, collaboration, and financial support. We would like to extend a special thank you to Beck Pit and Rob Pharaoh from GOGN as well as Virginia Clinton Lel from the Open Education Research Fellows Groups for their support in coordinating today's panel. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming our facilitator Virginia Clinton Lzelle as well as our incredible panelists. We look forward to learning from your work and your vision for what lies ahead of us in the world of open education. Over to you, Virginia. >> Thank you so much, Brandon, for that introduction. My name is Virginia Clinton Lel and I'm an associate professor of educational foundations and research at the University of North Dakota. I also serve as a primary researcher for the open ed group which mentors the open education research fellowship that was mentioned. I'm excited to moderate today's panel of incredible open education researchers who are joining us both here in Denver and from across the world. Today's panel will discuss the vital role of research in advancing open education in today's complex educational landscape. Together, we will explore how research strategies can help shape resilient open education initiatives and ensure open education remains a driving force for inclusion for learners everywhere. Now without further ado let we can turn it over to our panelists. So your first question can you each tell uh us a little bit about yourself, your research and your why for conducting research in open education. >> Hello everyone. Uh my name is Bethany Eldridge and I just finished my PhD at the University of Michigan. Thank you. Um, I was studying educational studies. Um, and so I chose open education because it offers this opportunity and space to both think about and work collaboratively within a community about what it means and what it requires to have um, access to quality education. And since quality and access are both very like contextualized goals, for my research, I worked with um, Lebanese Alternative Learning um, or L. Um it's a grassroots organization in Beirut, Lebanon. Um and they developed a digital platform um that housed content that was aligned with the Lebanese curriculum for grades K through nine. Um and the platform is called Tapsura or Chalkboard in Arabic. Um and so together we were um looking to answer how teachers were using this resource to support students in a challenging time that was constantly changing. This started in 2023. So they were dealing with an economic crisis, a refugee crisis and things have continued to evolve with um the increased um escalation of conflict with Israel. And so together we through the research we found how teachers used Tapshura or the OAR um to to think about um how to still maintain access um despite schools closures and how to think about quality of education as well by centering the student and um supporting self-directed learning. Um so open education really provided this space to think both about the possibilities of OAR while also supporting um a nonprofit think about how to expand its reach with its resources. >> Hey y'all. My name is Rashetta. I do not use a last name so just Rashetta. I am from Greensboro, North Carolina. I am a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro um where I am focusing on educational studies with a concentration in higher education. Uh I'm also an open education research fellow uh which I am very pleased uh to be under uh to get such great guidance and leadership through um through the fellowship I am focusing on uh work that I'm already doing incarcereral spaces where I'm using um open pedigogy and open education resources uh for my students who are incarcerated. And for me, my why is because open ed allows me to kind of buck the system of capitalism where especially in higher ed, we see that students are viewed as consumers instead of co-creators of knowledge. So that is what I am looking at um because this gives us a way not only to collaborate amongst ourselves amongst folks who are faculty and staff but looking at students as co-creators of knowledge as it said you know those of us on the panel we were it was said that we are the next generation but who else is coming behind us and those are the students who we are also bringing up. So what research can we see of how open ed is saying we're not raising a ne another generation of consumers because we are not Amazon we are educational spaces so things should be created I think of education as art um my dissertation also my dissertation topic draws on that a lot and it looks at the ways in which black and latin fem faculty Y are using those practices um as forms of resistance and radical care uh when they are mothering each other and students and um administration and that work is invisibleized but also the backbone of most of our institutions. Um, again, my why is because the work we do is art, y'all, and it has to continue. Uh, again, this is not a product that we are creating. We are creating something sustainable for the next generation and several generations to come. >> Thank you. Uh, we'll turn it over to our virtual panelists. Can you hear me? >> We can. Maybe I'll go first. Um, yeah, it's been lovely to hear from you, Bethany and Rashetta. Your research inspires me and all of our fields are really different. myself. I'm a computer science PhD student from the University of Edinburgh and my research is on the intersection between education technology and open education. I'm almost done with a project last so now just got some corrections to do and it will be done. Uh but this project in particular was about how do teachers in Scotland and schools share and reuse educational resources. I think I got into open education uh as a means to an end. I was interested in open educational resources in the beginning and the concept of reuse environments and [snorts] whether this might be a way for people to save time and build on each other's ideas rather than constantly reinvent the wheel by making their own. Um and then the rest of open came with all of its other meanings. Perhaps coming back to the roots, why education in the first place? If I had to think about the most important problems of the world, be it war, hunger, poverty, climate change. Unfortunately, there's many to name. It's really hard to pick just one to focus on. Uh but taking perhaps the easy way out, it certainly isn't an easy way. Education can help with all of them. And yeah, I see open as a useful tool for advancing education, enabling more people to participate and allow people to build on each other's work and ideas. Okay. Um, okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. I think I will go now. And hello everyone. My name is Abid Boser. I'm a doctoral candidate at the University of Nuremberg in Germany. And I'm also currently in my third year. I just finished um my field work and I'm trying to put together all the findings to come up with the dissertation and also to present and see what happens next. So my research focuses on the implementation of global education in secondary schools in diverse contexts. So it's a comparative study between secondary schools in Germany and secondary schools in Kenya. So I'm trying to see how we can leverage on open education resources to promote uh global education in this context. And when I talk about global education, I'm looking at um a global perspective to teaching and learning, especially as we live in a highly interconnected and interdependent society where we have, you know, complex realities and students are supposed to be prepared to address um these challenges by not just you know working within the globalized world but also providing solutions to these challenges. So my why um for researching or for working in open education I look at it from my context and when I talk about my context I'm talking about a global south um perspective because I come from Kenya uh but I have also this privilege of studying in the global north. So I research global education from this context to respond to both local and global education realities. So for instance in Kenya access to quality learning resources materials remains a challenge up to now. So many learners and educators face barriers because of high cost of materials. So therefore open education offers um a meaningful way to address these challenges and provide a framework through which uh knowledge can be democratized and learners and teachers can access adapt and create learning materials which are relevant to their own context. So through this also I may be able to contribute you know an alternative uh perspective to global education you know an alternative narrative to how we can approach global uh open education. So just to give a brief example on um the why to open education and why I feel open education has been uh very important in my journey and it still is. Um four years ago I conducted research uh in Rwanda as part of my master's dissertation and what came out of this research which was focusing on teachers understanding and willingness to include global education and global issues in their everyday instruction in the classroom is that the teachers were mostly willing to introduce um uh global education is issues in their teaching. you know to introduce issues which were a bit difficult to teach in their context. But the biggest problem was that you know um access to materials was an obstacle. So access to textbooks, access to global education, relevant materials was a challenge to them. So it was difficult for them even in their own willingness to implement u global education. So they were not able to access relevant materials and because global education is not a mainstream subject that is included in the curriculum. So you have to look for materials from other context and try to you know adapt them to your own context to teach and now resources were a big challenge. So this also amplifies you know the need for global education I think not only in my work but in so many other educators um and teachers who work in my context and like I said I speak of context uh from the global south perspective. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for those responses. So our next question, how can we as an open education field better employ research as a means of advancing the field? Um I view research um moving the field forward by um mirroring the same like um what's at the heart of open education by both being collaborative, thinking about co-creation and innovation. Um if we're wanting to support, you know, students and teachers to succeed, we need to understand what their goals are and how openness can play a role in that. Um and so with my project, you know, centered around this relationship with law. Um and so you know this relationship took a long time to develop like I worked with them for a year um to um to connect to learn from each other and to build trust in order to build a project that would be mutually beneficial. So this type of work does take time in order to create something that's participatory. Um but it's very valuable. Um for instance in my research um law does not promote their research uh their work as OAR. they view um OAR, you know, they connect it with licensing and creative commons um and they just don't have the capacity at the moment to think about categorizing and licensing their materials. But through since they're, you know, they're dealing with several crises at the same time. Um but through the research, we can see that the way teachers engage with Tabura does reflect how openness is described in literature and how we think about it. Um it both um but it also expands the way we think about what it means to use, adapt and create um in a classroom. Um so it builds this idea of what openness could be but also in turn it also um by using openness um as like this lens to do research it also supports law to like have another perspective on their research to see what what makes their platform what makes their OAR so important to teachers. Um so I really view research as like you know a theme that we've had at this conference about connection and community that um that needs to be at the heart of the research process as well. Um you know I'm not an expert in Lebanese context. I never will be and I don't want to pretend I am. Um and so having a partner though doing this research, it helps you know include other voices and helps um really put the value on those who are doing the work particularly in um underresarched and underrepresented areas which I think is kind of at the heart of what open education is about. Bethany, I like something that you said that um you know, you don't pretend to be an expert um in an area. And I love that, right? That we can know things and not know everything. That Bethany knows things that I will never know and Virginia and all of you all do. And but we see here we are so freely and happily wanting to share the knowledge, wanting to share our research. And for me, while that does exist in other sectors and other communities, um, in open ed, it just feels um it feels more intentional. And that is what I believe is needed especially um as someone who my master's degree is in adult education. So I focus more so on non-traditional learners. So those are folks who are not your typical 18 to 25 year olds who are like fresh into college. Those are um what because I was a non-traditional learner. So please don't take this the wrong way but you know a little battle tested. We I came in weary. Um, I went back to school and got my associates degree while I was pregnant with my son. I was 30. Um, y'all, I was tired. [laughter] Anyone who's ever been a pregnant person, you know, everything is swollen and you're exhausted and you can't breathe and you're struggling and you've got to provide for these children and you're thinking about life in a lot of different ways. Um, but you have a willingness to learn. Um and so what I've noticed here is that there's um an acknowledgement of that, right? That folks are coming to uh education from many aspects of life and that that should be embraced and we don't all have to know everything. We don't all have to look the same way. However, we are all doing research. We are all practitioners in different lenses. um and that is what advances the career um the field of open ed so when we're thinking about um what is needed what support systems are needed um while I did just say you know I'm not a fan of capitalism we do need funding we do need support um I myself am not uh while I've just started diving into quantrit I'm not too keen on quantitative research but there are folks here who are and we need that data um so that we can advance things. So again for me uh what I the way in which I view open ed research in Virginia I hope that I'm answering this question um properly. >> You're doing great. >> Okay. Thank you. Um is that there's this community where we are so different. We have such different lenses and none of us are pretending there's not errors being put on that we know everything that we are experts in one thing and that's the end all be all. Um there is a sense of wanting to learn from one another but also to give away um what we know that we want to not be gatekeepers of the knowledge that we understand that in order to have a better resourced uh not only nation but world that openness needs to exist. Um, so again, Virginia, I'm not really sure that I did answer the question, but I was very um inspired, Bethany, by what you said that we don't have to pretend to be experts in anything. >> Thank you. Uh, we'll go online again. >> Yeah. Um thank and I think it's really important um when we think about open education and research and I think to advance open education as a field we must view research not just as a descriptive exercise but we have to look at it as a transformative and participatory process you know one that connects policy and practice and also they live realities across different um context And for me uh if we can use um research to advance open education I tend to sum it up in three ways or through three aspects. So we can use research to broaden the I'd say epistemic base of open education scholarship and in this case I tend to look at it in terms of you know when we look at what we have in literature extant literature most of it is dominated maybe by perspectives from the north which sometimes might overlook innovative and contextually grounded practices which are emanating from the south. So uh because of this I believe there's need to have a more comparative approach or cross context studies uh for open education to highlight how open education and um open education resources tend to function in different spaces what people do in different spaces and how we can bring together these practices these approaches to try and enrich the field of open education. And a basic example in this case could be you know uh studies on oeer adaptation in Africa. You know Africa is uh is a huge continent 54 states very diverse and or even research on OA in this African countries and in African schools which could illuminate how open openness intersects with different local pedagogies and linguistic diversity. And secondly, I look at it as um you know using research to advance or open education by integrating I'd say in integrating inter interdisciplinary approaches. So we can conduct research that brings together insights from different fields, from different specializations for instance from education, from sociology, from technology like what V is currently doing and other related studies which can help us to understand you know not only what works for open education or open education resources but also why and for whom we are doing these uh open education research practices. So and the third one um I look at it as you know the larger open education community everyone who is involved in open education you know be it teachers, students, educators in different um in different parts of the world they should come together as knowledge partners and not others as just subjects. I think uh this approach with an open uh which encompasses I'd say the open movement ethos of collaboration and um democratization of knowledge. It's what can help um open education to leverage on research to move forward and I basic example again is more about uh what Braden talked about at the beginning the go network you know which supports early career researchers from different countries from different contexts in the world to develop and co-develop education projects and share findings openly in conferences and workshops and in my opinion this um is the one of the ways that we can build a vibrant open education ecosystem. >> Awesome. I think because we're all working in different fields and in such different environments too, it's not always easy. I'm sure that we've all experienced this in different ways. Um, when I went into schools and started talking to teachers about open education, a lot of the time, um, outside of academia, People will hear research and think this is something big and scary. This is not for me. Um but research really in practice is something that I think everyone can use not just academics. So there's a quote from Karl Marx said philosophers have long interpreted the world. The point however is to change it. So as a saying research can describe the world. There are different kinds. Some describe it some study experiments. Some look into transformation, but generally research tends to enable change. So it will provide more information, more knowledge for people to build on and implement that. And we need people outside of academia to then drive that change. The research is useful for learning from what people tried and found and can be from around the whole world. Uh it can be useful for seeing different contexts and perspectives other from just what's around you. And it can also be useful for advocating for change as you can point to collective evidence of something that's not just your own opinion, but this is something that's been said by a number of people in various places. And so you've got a base to advocate for a change that you would like to see in the world. So yeah, I think that the open education as a whole field can employ research for advancing it and no matter what your role is, there can be something that you can make of it as well. >> Wonderful. Next question is, how can research networks serve as a potential route to relational equity? Um well there's many ways I could answer this question about research networks but like on a personal level you know I'm part of the goian network I'm part of the research fellows that helped put this together and like both groups really supported my work um enhanced my thinking about open education um I had a very supportive committee at the University of Michigan um in fact they're the ones who helped me begin the connection with law, but um they were new to open education OAR. So to have support on how to think through these things, this research network um that other researchers was really important um specifically like within GoGen and research fellows, everyone comes and as you can see from this panel, everyone comes from different backgrounds, different regions, um studying very different things. And so by you know everyone having a different um approach to openness and oar um it really highlights like what is the possibility of o um o and openness with thinking about it beyond just being open for the sake of open. So it really helped me think about what was for law what was making tapura and the oar important for them. Um and then also like on a of course research networks help also on um an emotional level. We've talked several times here about how, you know, being a teacher, being a student, um being a researcher, a librarian, an advocate, it's all hard work. And um and so being able to work in community with people who are doing the same thing or have done research before, it's um it's such a it's invaluable um support to keep going and to um think through the challenges. Um and just one quick story about that is when I was in Lebanon, um there was one day that I came down to the hotel lobby that I was staying at and I heard someone yell my name and I was like, who would I know in Lebanon that would be at this hotel and I turned around and it was a fellow member from Goian. Um, she had finished her PhD and she was supporting a project in Lebanon and we just happened to be there at the same time. didn't know it ahead of time and so one you know it was wonderful to see a familiar face in a new place for me but also like I connected with her colleagues and everything so just again expanding that network so just there's so many so much value from a research um for me personally but then also just to take it out to when I'm working with law like I you know I take their knowledge into the network and then I can take what I've learned out to the to law themselves so it becomes more of a continual cycle of knowledge sharing like I liked um earlier someone said the uh knowledge partner sharing so it's just um networks help in um all levels of research >> uh yeah that's a that's a good question what my grandmother would call a $2 question um so I I think I want to share about how I even came into the open education research fellow so when when I was um getting my masters um one of my mentors actually spoke to me about open education research and this was like 2019 um the fall of 2019 and then we all know what happened spring 2020 you know we were supposed to just go home for two weeks and then everything's going to be fine you come back outside everything's going to be great um didn't happen that way um and so that kind of stifled my um look further into um OEER. And then flash forward to uh 2024, so just last year, and I was part of like this online group I had found through LinkedIn, and they have an app called Cohort Sisters, and someone shared about um the open education research fellowship. Um and you they were recruiting and things. I was like, "Oh, wow. this isn't just like this small little thing that I thought that I heard about in 2019 and you know I was trying to apply it in different ways all by myself so I was siloed uh and there I found like a larger network and got connected with Virginia and other folks um and now I'm here with all of you all and finding out that the community is a whole lot larger um and the reach can be greater uh than what I initially um thought of. So when we're thinking about um how research networks then build a a greater capacity for relational um building um that's exactly how it works. So, it was a little seed that was planted um in my brain in 2019 and it kind of got put on hold because of the start of COVID um and then it came back um in 2024. So, I think a lot of times when we're we're looking at it and we feel like it has to be this big grand thing that, you know, we're going to go and talk about open ed to someone and they're going to like drink the Kool-Aid and they're going to be they're going to fall in love. It's going to be great, right? It's going to be so romantic because we romanticize things so much. And I wish that were were true. Um especially as a researcher because you you will spend years deeply invested into something and then you go to a conference and there's like two people there and you feel defeated. But you never know, right? You you never know um what can happen. So it doesn't have to be this huge like romantic thing that we think is going to be beautiful. Sometimes it's a slow burn. And for me, that's what it was. and then finding other people who wanted to talk about um OEER and that wanted to get more folks on board and wanted to share what it looks like in different aspects no matter um what your your background could be whether it's education or technology or engineering or art or music that there is something um that OEER can do for you. there's some oeers out there that you can get connected to. So I think a lot of times it doesn't have to be um this big beautiful thing. It can be something very small as I was sitting in um a professor's office and she told me about open education and I wanted to look more into it and did not for several years and now here I am in front of all of you all. So, I say all that to say, y'all, please don't ever get um the burnout is real. Um so, let it wash over you and you know, re hydrate yourself and get back out there. Uh because we never know who we're going to touch and how far that can go. Thank >> Thank you. Onto our virtual panelists. Those are great stories. Love Rashetta and Beth. You know when that feeling of going to a conference and meeting two people there feels relatable and at the same time really matters who those people are. I think there is this culture of care and love that just it opens you up and it's also very gratifying to know that somebody cares. Now I must admit I had to look up what is relation like with demon mean. So I understand it as fairness and balance and how we interact with each other and the environment. Fairness and balance I guess it means both taking and giving in equal measure. Um it can also mean exchanging experiences, ideas and culture. This is where the goian network has been an excellent example for me. I think it's not uncommon for people to be the only open person in their institution. So in my case that was very much the same. U I taught my supervisors about open education. Uh but Gojian was a place of inspiration and connections and also serendipity. Uh so that's where openness open-mindedness comes in. Meeting people who work on completely different things and then you weren't ing it, but you get inspired by what they tell you about and it leads to new beautiful things. It's been amazing. >> Oh yeah. Um I think I'd say research uh networks are very important just like Brethan said, you know, networks are important because they enable you to sometimes do things which you could have not done on your own. And you know a basic example was um when I moved to Portugal to start my master's research on open education and global education and then I'm my supervisor then was a member of go and she was like okay fine now you're a member of the angel network which works in global education but there's one other network that you must belong to if you really uh want to survive in this environment and this network was called GM And I think uh through God um like brother said I've been able to do a lot of things that maybe I've not have done you know through scholarships to conduct research um in Kenya and like currently we also have the goian hubs which are also running activities in relation to open education in Kenya and all these um are ideas which are set by these hubs on their own but then again um like V You know the big question is what is relational equity in this sense when we're looking at networks and uh open education and networks can serve as a powerful route to relational equity and this is um equity I look at it as equity which is not just through access to knowledge but also the quality of relationship among those who produce and use this knowledge in open education. And you know uh when in open education we talk about equity in terms of open access or open licensing. But if we think a little deeper about relational equity, then it it should be about who sets the research agenda in open education, who gets resourced and who is heard and who benefits from the knowledge that is produced u within open education and within this research um networks. And from where I see it for research networks um they can promote this kind of equity in several ways. And the basic one could be co-creating research agendas rather than imposing uh these agendas within open education. And this is when networks bring together you know different researchers, educators and practitioners from different context jointly to define you know the questions and to define what they want to address within open education and the resulting uh research then reflects diverse realities. So that way we can be able then to use uh research networks to promote relational equity within open education. And the second one could be more about you know the networks can help to redistribute um resources and recognition. For example, you find researchers and educators from different context can come together, conduct research, contribute uh data, but some of them are left out in terms of authorship or let's say in terms of funding. So I'd say equitable networks should share not just data, not just research but also credit out of that research. So through authorship micro grants to conduct you know more research and capacity building opportunities um for all those who are involved in these research networks and one aspect um that I was almost forgetting is about governance. I think in the networks we work in uh in terms of open education, we need to rethink uh governance in these research networks and by this I mean you know decision making spaces where for instance in editorial boards or project leads you know should include diverse voices and include also in this case um I'm not speaking for myself but also include early career researchers in the decision making process that can then shape um the networks and also promote relational equity. And I think so we need to use um the networks more as infrastructures of um relationships, you know, platforms where we build relationships which lead to equity. >> Okay, thank you. We have uh literally about one minute left. So, if you could each take a max of 20 seconds stops, no wait, divided by four, 15 second stops. Uh, to answer the, uh, very short and quick question of what work do you think open education researchers should take on next? >> That's a lot to answer in 15 seconds. Um, just keep working on community work. That's how you figure out um uh what access and quality will look like for um people that might not be represented yet in work. Um and then just be innovative about how you do research. Thinking about if you're doing with a partner, how to do methods that might um be easy for them to be a part of. Um yeah, so just keep moving thinking forward on how to include people more in the whole process. All right. Um I would say if I had to be very specific in our current current uh climate that we find ourselves in, uh if you're here in the United States, I would say DEIA. Um and also y'all, I'm the daughter of a Southern Baptist minister. So evangelize folks, [laughter] make them believers. Uh go out and spread the word. Thanks online >> say especially building on yesterday's Dr. Reed's keynote when she said the best way to predict the future is to create it. So be the change that you want to see in the world. I think I'll summarize and say um I think open education now needs to move beyond um adoptation rates counting um downloads and think more about understanding the impact the context and the power of what we work what we do in open education. >> All right. Well, that's all we have time for today. Uh please join me in thanking each of our panelists for taking the time to be here today. >> [applause] >> And thank you for all that you do in open education. [music]