I have been in full OERxDomains21 ramp-up mode over the last few weeks. With Reclaim Arcade fully operational, I knew the OERxDomains21 conference would take over my professional life for a few months, and it has 🙂 Fortunately, I am loving it! Lauren Hanks and I are part of the conference organizing committee, co-chairs, as well as spear-heading the technical delivery. It’s been cool to see things more comprehensively as a result, and get a sense of ALT’s holistic approach to organizing this conference. My respect for the work the core team at ALT does (I’m looking at you Maren Deepwell, Emma-Jane Brazier, Fiona Jones, and now Christina Vines) has only grown deeper as a result of this partnership, and conference co-chairs Joe Wilson, Lou Mycroft, and Louise Drumm are a complete pleasure to collaborate with—so it’s nice to finally have the headspace to say as much on the blog of record.
The work I’ve been doing these past several weeks has been pre-recording sessions for the Domains21 track so that we can help balance and offset the delivery of live events by getting some of the talks in the can before the two-day conference on April 21st and 22nd. We should probably write more about the broader vision and technical details of the delivery and setup, but let it suffice to say for the moment that we’re using the metaphor of public-access television for the delivery aesthetic and part of that fun will be the pre-recorded sessions for the Domains track.
In fact, the first recording I did (and you can tell it was the first because it is a bit rough production-wise) was with Laura Gibbs (@onlinecrslady) to talk about her ideas for moving #BeyondtheLMS during the pandemic. Laura is an absolute joy to chat with, and her passion and enthusiasm are infectious. We chatted for almost 40 minutes a couple of weeks ago, and I’ll be sure share the entire session, but given that conversation was so good and Laura’s work so resonant of the challenges we face at the moment the committee asked her if she would keynote the conference on day 1, to which she so graciously said yes.
So we are doubly rich, we have a full recording of what Autumm Caines referred to as her “Prenote” (coming soon) as well as her live keynote on April 21st. In the meantime, here is a 7 minute excerpt from that Prenote to give you a tase of things to come:
Laura’s work with syndicating students blogs to a course hope is an approach near and dear to my heart, and she highlights how her online courses design helps center student work and great a broader sense community for all participants. What’s more her challenge to the status quo of grading is a refreshing approach to the often empty calls for rigor during a global pandemic. I’ll be sharing more from this discussion, but hopefully this provides just one more reason to register for the OERxDomains21 conference before early bird registration closes after Monday, March 15th. Also, Reclaim Hosting is sponsoring as many as 10 free registrations as part of the OER Scholarships, so please take advantage of that given they often go un-used and we cant even give away our sponsorship dollars!
Also of note is that the great Bryan Mathers is at it again, and we we have a bunch of intros and outros for the various video sessions that will animate the vision of an “open community production.” His work is everything! I’m deep in the pre-recording groove with two more sessions later today and as many as 20 more to come in the next few weeks. Also, as a result of this experience I will finally be ready to make the career jump to late night talkshow host. #OERxDomains21 #4life!
