Last week the yearly OER conference took place in London. The title, the Politics of Open, and the themes can give a sense of the depth and breadth of the event. A great experience where different scholars from around the Globe, and this is really AROUND THE GLOBE, we had people from South Africa, Chile, USA, Egypt, Europe, UK, Colombia, and maybe more, gathered together to share their thoughts, findings and new ideas about different elements of the politics of open education. If you want to have an idea of all what was happening during and after take a look at the blog post roundup #OER17
Much of the conversation in OER17 was about care (The refugee situation in Europe demands attention), inclusion (The MOONLITE project), social justice (Critical pragmatism and critical advocacy) and in general, the bigger conversation was about the need to be critical when researching about open. In his talk, Openness and Ethics: a provocation, Rob Farrow said something very relevant
As ‘open’ is becoming mainstream, more radical aspirations of the open movement are becoming secondary!
This cannot be allowed, radical aspirations need to be kept alive and the conference was a place to make this possible!
The experience was not only intellectually challenging but also emotionally moving. I felt immersed in a space of care and social justice, of women wanting to make a difference with their discourses and actions, of art wanting to find its place in open education, of open projects like Wikipedia wanting, among other things, to bridge the gender gap… A special place, for sure! And it is in that special place where we, Catherine Cronin and Caroline Kuhn, gave a workshop to stress the power of narrative research and storytelling to uncover the nuances of students’ digital practices and daily entanglements with digital technologies as well as the struggles and negotiation practitioners face when thinking about the open as a way to embrace their teaching practice. There is an inner story for this workshop and I (Caroline) want to share it with you. Catherine and I, are without planning it, doing a very similar research –not only regarding the topic we are exploring but also how we are exploring it. We are interested in the idea of understanding, through exploration, the daily experience of individuals (practitioners, in the case of Catherine and students in my case) with open practice and digital practice, respectively. Both are using constructive grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006). This mutual interest is in students and practitioner’s experiences and meaning-making.
The aim of our workshop was twofold: challenging participant’s beliefs about young people being ‘digital natives’ and not-so-young people being digital immigrants. This idea of youth being digitally fluent and versed in the digital world is a limitation when it comes to HEI policy and other initiatives to educate students digitally. In this part of the workshop, we shared part of our data with asked participants to create a tentative profile for that group. We used a Padlet wall (link) so that participants could write and share their stories. Then participants related those stories to their own experiences, both professional and personal, recognising themselves in some of the data they worked with. The workshop ended with a rich discussion about participants’ own experience.
It is rewarding to read what participants thought and felt after the workshop; all the work is worth this! Thank you to all who participated, assisted and made the workshop possible
carolinekuhn.wordpress.com 
Thank you, Caroline! This workshop – from our first conversation through to the OER17 conference and beyond – has been such a wonderful experience. Reading your description above, I’m reminded that we learn so much when moving beyond the boundaries of our own work, breaking these open and seeing (at least some) things anew. As you say, we are exploring a similar issue from two different perspectives – yet both are essential to understanding and addressing the challenges we face in higher education. I will blog before the end of the week – and will link to your beautiful post. Thank you 🙂
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Thank you Catherine for your thoughtful comment. I agree, it is only when we dare to go outside of our own work that things can be seen differently. It has been my pleasure to have shared my work from a very early stage with you, my initial ideas, my doubts and preoccupations, the excitements of the research process; it has provided me always with new insights and good thinking! Thank you!!
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