Things are settling down into a summer groove and I’ve been able to do a bit of reflecting on what was a whirlwind spring of activity which included a very short – but highly impressionable – trip to the Canadian Chemistry Conference in Vancouver.
BCcampus sponsored a talk by Delamr Larson, founder of the ChemWiki project out of UC Davis. I’m a fan of the Chemwiki project (an open pedagogy project that began as a student assignment and has now become one of the largest Chemistry open educational resources on the web) and jumped at the chance to have lunch with Delmar. I was also looking forward to reconnecting with Sharon and Bruno from the BC-ILN at TRU and to also meet Jessie Key from VIU who is adapting a Chemistry open textbook this summer as part of the BC Open Textbook project. But to be honest, the conference itself wasn’t much of a draw for me. I mean, I am not a chemist or have a chemistry background and attending a general chemistry conference wasn’t high on the list of conferences I was hoping to attend.
Man, was I wrong. It turned out to be one of the more revelatory experiences of my event filled spring.
From the moment I stepped into my first session I immediately regretted my decision to just spend the morning at the conference and head back to Victoria after lunch with Delmar. I had no idea – no idea – that there would be such a strong education track at a general conference. I mean, check out the edu focused stream of sessions list from the event. Sessions like Open Access Resources for teaching Analytical Chemistry, Service Learning: Contributions to Wikipedia, and a whole host of others made me wonder if I had accidentally wandered into an open education/edtech conference. There were more education focused sessions at this general chemistry conference than I’ve seen at many edu-focused conferences I’ve attended. And really excellent sessions, focused on innovative pedagogies and unique uses of technology in teaching and learning.
Wait, isn’t this the conference where chemists get together and talk about the science of chemistry? The business of chemistry? Where the heck did all of these educators come from? WHY DIDN’T I KNOW THIS IS WHERE THEY ALL HANG OUT?
It took me back. I mean, maybe this industry focused conference is different. Maybe the Canadian Psychology Conference or the Canadian Biology Conference doesn’t have such a deep connection to education as Chemistry does. Maybe I hit upon the exception rather than the rule. Maybe. But after seeing the level of edu involvement at the Chemsitry conference, it underscored that I need to find out and do some deeper research into discipline specific association conferences. And it double underlined for me how deeply higher ed faculty are connected to their discipline.
It is one of those retrospectively obvious epiphanies; want to connect with faculty? Then maybe the place to do it isn’t at edu conferences but at discipline specific conferences, like this. If I want to be a truly effective advocate for open educational resources and open learning, then these are the events I need to be at. This is where faculty connect with faculty. This is where they are talking about pedagogy, the role of technology in their classroom, teaching & learning practice, communities of practice and open educational resources, although that phrase wasn’t to be found, yet the practice was everywhere.
For example, at this conference I found out about the IONiC (Interactive Online Network of Inorganic Chemists) and VIPEr (Virtual Inorganic Pedagogical Electronic Resource). IONiC is an online network for teachers of inorganic chemistry, and VIPEr a repository of teaching materials freely available for inorganic chemistry faculty. Both these were started not by open education advocates, but by inorganic chemistry faculty themselves. They wanted space to share resources and develop community. It’s a grassroots lesson in sharing and connecting, driven by the faculty, driven by the community and not by a more formalized “Open Educational Resource” project. I mean, when you read about what VIPEr and IONiC are about, not once do you see the phrase “open educational resource” or “learning object repository”, or even the word “open”. Yet this is clearly an example of open education in action, just without the words we all use to describe open practices in education.
How many more communities like this are there out there? How many are being driven by faculty and living outside the boundaries of our more formalized “open education” world? And how do we in open education find and connect with projects like this; projects that have the potential to resonate with faculty even more deeply than more formalized OER projects (like the open textbook project I am working on) because they are being driven BY faculty FOR faculty?
Needless to say, I’ll be on the lookout for more opportunities to attend conferences like the Canadian Chemistry Conference.
Thanks to Pat Lockley and Tannis Morgan for a Twitter convo prompting this post.
Yes! Good revelation. I know my own discipline best: Philosophy. The American Philosophical Association (which includes Canadians too) has regional meetings every year, and various committees and linked associations have teaching-related panels and presentations at most of these. And I know of exactly one philosopher who tends to attend education conferences (me)–okay, my own anecdotal experience isn’t much, but it adds a little to your point here. We go to our disciplinary conferences, and sometimes go to teaching talks there.
Sometimes there are discipline-specific teaching conferences as well. I’m on my way right now to a meeting of the American Association for Philosophy Teachers (which also includes Canadians…it should be “North American Association…”!). The whole conference is about teaching philosophy! Those sorts of things are good for talking about ed tech, open edu, etc. with interested faculty. Not sure how many of those there are in other disciplines, though.
I’m doing a presentation on open edu at this teaching philosophy conference, but I bet I’ll find, as you did, that people are already doing this without calling it the usual open edu terms. Maybe all I’ll be bringing to the discussion is some terminology and some links to a wider open community. Which are not bad things!
Excellent you are presenting on open ed. I’ll be interested to hear what the reaction is from the audience at the conference. On your point about language and links to the wider community, I see those as immense positives and, really, is what we open educators can bring to the table. There is a wider community, you can find support, and here it is. Let me know how it goes!