1) Who are you?

I am currently Director of the Centre for Innovation in Education (CIE) at the University of Liverpool. My love affair with OER started in 2009 with a Jisc funded OER project and I was fortunate enough to be an OERconf co-chair in 2014.

My academic career has been consistently based on openness and sharing, both with institutional colleagues, but more broadly friends and colleagues from across the globe. Wherever I have worked I have tried to leave my “open footprint” – and so at the University of Liverpool I have now made all of the resources we develop in CIE available on open license, so feel free to take a look at this growing set of educational development stories and resources.

2) What is your vibe? Share it in a meme or quote…

I came across a wonderful article about the “Flipped Academic” and it described me perfectly:

“The ‘flipped academic’,is an academic who informs first and publishes later, seeking usefulness as well as truth in their research and striving to publish only after having had an impact on students and society” (Briton, 2012).

3) What gives you hope these days?

The OER community continues to give me hope. It’s a community that emerged organically and in the UK from funded OER projects. It’s a real testament to that community that despite the funding of OER dropping away that with the wonderful support of ALT the OERconf is as vibrant as ever.

We should be proud of our achievements and as this conference shows we can continue to give hope to each other on a daily basis.

4) Who are you learning from lately?

I continue to be influenced by Paulao Freire – every time I go back his work I come away with renewed vigour and a sense of belief that our collective work as a community on critical (digital) pedagogy is so vitally important in open education.

Having recently been been invited to become a Visiting Fellow at the Co-operative University (https://www.co-op.ac.uk/Pages/Category/co-operative-university) I continue to be impressed by the work of the co-op college, under the leadership of Cilla Ross, in rethinking Higher Education which aligns very much with the ethos of OER.

5) In your opinion, what should we all be caring about? Why?

I’d like to draw upon the co-op college values and principles which ethical principles include:

  • Honesty
  • Openness
  • Social responsibility
  • Caring for others

These are attributes we should care about greatly, they are values which should underpin our educational philosophy and shape they way we teach (and learn) as a collaborative educational experience.

6) What do you hope to take away from OER20?

Increased awareness of the ways in which we can design “care” into higher education curriculum.

Shared by: @digisim