Sensemaking is Continuous…

Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

Congratulations on participating in the Making Sense of Open Education mini-MOOC. Whatever level you were able to engage was appreciated by the Course Team and other participants. It may have seemed like being underwater some of the time, but you arrived (hopefully intact)!

What happens next? You might well ask. Sensemaking of any kind is a continuous journey, part of lifelong and lifewide learning (with thanks to Chiara Carlino of Cineca in Italy for the recent introduction to the concept of lifewide learning). Hopefully you discovered that in many ways you are already an open educator, and that the formal definitions, models, concepts, and frameworks about open education covered in this course were names for practices that you are already practicing. There were far too many amazing posts, links, artefacts, and blogs to name, we have begun to aggregate a basic list using the following Google Sheet, please feel free to add anything that you believe might be useful for others, or use anything that’s useful for you in your ongoing practice. This element should be as complete as we can make it by Monday, June 18.

Link to #MakingSense18 Google Sheet of Resources

You can review the Twitter hashtag (if you use Twitter), #MakingSense18, review the discussion posts, and reflect on your learning by using a journal, or through blogging if that’s something that you do. You can also simply search the hashtag using a browser and you will be directed to a variety of blog posts that have used the hashtag.

A reminder that this course was designed as part of research project by Jenni Hayman. The purpose of the research is to measure and increase awareness and use of OER in Ontario, but this course provided an opportunity to interact with and learn from many educators in different parts of the world. Thank you for agreeing to participate.

There is a post-course survey instrument that will provide a pre- and post-MOOC comparison opportunity for the research for those that completed both the pre-, and post-course surveys. If you only completed one of the surveys, that’s also great. The more data, the more opportunities to learn about your perspective.

Here is a link to the Post-Course Survey, it should take approximately 5-10 minutes to complete: Post-Course Making Sense of Open Education Survey

The course shell will remain open until June 30, 2018, after which it will be archived as a self-directed course (and content) that anyone can explore.

If you wish to download, keep, adapt, the modules of the course for the future, you can use the following link to download the whole set: Link to #MakingSense18 Modules

What will we do next?

All the members of the Course Team will continue to do the work and practice they’ve been doing, sharing, always willing to engage in dialogue. You can find them most easily on Twitter using the list below. Jenni will be analyzing and writing her dissertation this summer and publishing it openly by October 2018 (with high hopes!). If you have any questions about the course badge or statement of completion, or anything else open, please email Jenni at jlhayman@asu.edu

Course Team:

Lauren Anstey, Western University @ansteypants

Claire Coulter, University of Guelph @CCoulter11

Irwin DeVries, Thompson Rivers University @IrwinDev

Helen DeWaard, Lakehead University, Barrie @hj_dewaard

Peggy French, eCampusOntario @livingkatstone

Maureen Glynn, Ryerson University @mgtheID

Terry Greene, eCampusOntario @GreeneTerry

Jenni Hayman, eCampusOntario @jennihayman

Joanne Kehoe, eCampusOntario @joanne_kehoe

Jessica O’Reilly, Cambrian College @Cambrian_Jess

Ali Versluis, University of Guelph @aliversluis

What will you do next?

Some of you have developed an open educator plan of action to keep moving forward with goals for new practice. If you haven’t voiced your goals, consider engaging with a colleague or collaborator to help keep you learning and moving along the open continuum of education. On reflection, you may decide that you’re not ready for open – or that it’s not ready for you. Consider returning to it in a couple of months time (perhaps looking over the modules again) to see how much you retained, and rediscover elements you may not have had time to explore.

With your new knowledge and skills, you might have an opportunity to engage in sensegiving, the process of sharing what engages you about open practice, with others that you believe might be interested. The sensegiving part of building community and finding like-minded, and even opposite-minded others, is a great aspect of open and has taken many in the open education community on journeys they never expected.

Please stay in touch, we look forward to meeting you in person whenever possible, and thank you for being a part of this learning and sharing experience!

Final Activity 

Fond farewells in the discussion forum or on Twitter.