 Okay, well hello out there. Can you hear me? Apparently live, I'm out of here the most behind your TV set. I'm in your TV set. I'm in your screens. I'm with Open Introduction Global. Welcome to the finale of our show, Open Introduction basically. So we can do this. And yeah, where did the week go? Very important because I believe it's so much attribution. Heaven of the clouds, music, open license has been like in my wheelhouse for a long time. Welcome everybody. I asked many friends and colleagues and they all said, yes, when I said, will you just come on and talk? And so this is what we've been doing for Open Education Week, just having people sit around and have open conversations. And so the first part is just asking, of course, the familiar where you are and where in the world you are, what you do, and maybe what you're hoping to do on your weekend. So I'm going to start with Karen because she was here first, Karen. So my check-in security, like I got to test my microphone. And so thank you, Alan. It's really great to be invited to be here and to talk with all these amazing folks. So I'm coming to you all from Northampton, Massachusetts. And what am I doing this weekend? Hanging out with some friends. We're going to just have some food, get in the hot tub, kind of just do fun things. Oh, I didn't know about the hot tub. Okay. I won't crash the party, but and then, yeah, the order at which people came in maybe. So and next up is Jenny Heyman, who again responded, yes, at my last minute request. Hi, Jenny. Hi, Alan. Thanks so much for the invitation. As Karen suggests, it's a great company to be in, to be with all these folks. I'm coming to you from London, Ontario, and I always like to acknowledge the land that I'm on. So this is the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee, Anishnabek, Wendat peoples, the Lenape peoples, many tribes and First Nations here in Canada. And I am very grateful to work on this land. I'm also part of the London Environmental Network, of which there are many Indigenous folks involved. And so I always look for opportunities to be what I call an accomplice to our Indigenous friends, whatever it is they need me to do that's helpful. I'd like to do that. What am I doing this weekend? Oh, it's Oscars on Sunday. And so typically we print off the sheets. We take a look and see what's what we've tried our best to watch as many of the films as we can before we start to make our judgments. My older son is a graduate and has a BFA in Cinema Studies. And so it's always a family interest point of interest to take a look at the Oscars. So that's our big do for the weekend. Excellent. We can ask everybody. I'd be terrible at the pics. I don't even follow it. And next to my good friend and colleague Heather Ross, welcome Heather from Colorado, not. No, I was I was there in November, which is when I got the picture. I wanted following Jenny's lead because I try and do the same thing I'm on. Three six territory, which is the traditional homeland for the Soto and the Dakota and the Dakota and the Lakota and the DNA as well as the Metis people. What am I doing this weekend? Well, I don't know about you, Alan, because I know that you're you're quite a bit south of us, but we might we're going to be watching for melt from the blizzard we had last weekend, because it's supposed to, I think, get to above zero. And otherwise it's family time. I've got my my teenager likes hanging out with us still. So we're taking advantage of that and enjoying it. So I guess that's kind of what my weekend is and decompressing after this week. Yeah. And five years. Of course, I used to be way farther south than you. But now I'm about three hours and you up in Saskatoon, you got way more snow than we did. We got some. We did. We got more than a foot. Yeah. That's impressive. And then I'm so happy to see Cynthia Roscoe. We had this funny thing going on about our emails that we forget to reply. And I just said, Cynthia, we haven't talked for a while. Will you come on on the Internet and talk with people? Oh, yeah, always. Alan says, come on. And I'm like, I'm there. And I also got to say I'm at a new institution. So as of this past summer, I'm an OER and electronic resources at Long Beach City College, which is actually kind of a homecoming. This is where I live. And I previously was at California State University Long Beach. And I'm really into, you know, the community aspect of community colleges. So being able to work with folks locally has been just amazing. The Long Beach Public Library here is so great. So I'm really excited in this new role, although completely overwhelmed and feeling a lot of imposter syndrome. And like, what am I doing? But I'll have to say this weekend, I am going to CSU Long Beach actually has its annual powwow this weekend. You know, California State CSU Long Beach is on Pabongna, which is Gabriel Inyo sacred land. And a lot of people come out every year to this powwow. So it should be really great. I'm taking my son for the first time. He's about a year and a half years old. I think he's going to have a good time. Excellent. It's so nice to see you. And here, again, so happy to welcome Rajiv Jangyangi, who was like all over the schedule of Open Education Week. So how are you doing today, Rajiv? I'm doing well. Thanks, Ellen. It's always such a treat to see everybody. And thanks for inviting me and everybody else to be part of the closing conversation for the week, and especially to be with such amazing company on International Women's Day as well. I want to acknowledge I'm joining you from the west coast of Canada, the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Squamish First Nation in particular. It has been a busy week, open at week, including at my home institution, Brock, sorry, there we are, where we've had a number of events even on Wednesday. But this weekend, certainly, yes, need to decompress to some degree. But as some of you on the call will know, this weekend is also another somber moment for some of us, because we recently lost a dear, dear, dear friend who is a real leader in open education. And many of us are meeting in fact tomorrow as part of a celebration of life as well. So the work of the legacy of a wind of rays will continue for decades and decades to come. But it's an opportunity for many of us to come together and spend time in company, in community, and in celebration. But beyond that, certainly time with the family, time with the boys. And I do need to hustle in advancing my notes as I prepare for the very exciting OER24 conference coming up in Cork in Ireland at the end of the month. Excellent. Thank you. And thank you for mentioning to Irwin, who was a friend of many of ours. And I haven't heard yet, but I know they were trying to get the goal of the scholarship fund at TRU, so it would be perpetual. Did they reach that? Or are they close? I don't know. Certainly, hopefully, I'll know more tomorrow. We'll spend time with the family as well. But I know there's many, many people who've contributed. So hopefully, we've hit that mark. So it will be an ongoing endowment. Yeah. Yeah. So Irwin was there on the ground floor of open education in BC and has been part of so many things and a great friend of many of us. And so I'm so glad you can be there with the family on that occasion. Yeah, thanks. I think it's funny with the more I think about his work, the more I think about, you know, to me in so many ways, Irwin is the epitome of what it means to be an open educator in the ways that are not visible in, you know, the quiet mentorship. A number of people who've been communicating in social media and other spaces about, you know, the impact, his kindness, his generosity, right? I mean, it's hard to estimate the full measure of one's impact. And with Irwin, I don't think we will ever be able to, but it's a beautiful life, a beautiful human being, and just obviously a huge loss for all of us. But you know, part of what I think we can do is point to his incredible work, not just in TRU Open Learning, where he built a lot of those programs, a lot of the curriculum, the work with the OER University tasks, institutional capacity building, teaching at Royal Roads, his research and scholarship. But just even if you ever had the privilege of being in a room where Irwin was jamming with a guitar with somebody in the room, you know, not just the skill, but the beauty and vulnerability of what openness looks like in practice. So yeah, he'll always be there in our hearts. Most beautifully said. Thank you very much. So folks, like what, let's hear some reports about maybe, or anything you want to share about what you've been doing this week or just more recently in your work. Maybe I'll ping it to Heather who's just up the road, University of Saskatchewan. Okay, so well this week, I think the big event for us was that we had a book launch for a new open book from us. And I, it is, I'm going to put it in the chat. You guys, I have to connect my YouTube account to comment apparently. If you go to openpress. I want to get it right. openpress.usask.ca, that's our press books address. And on there, you're going to see a book on cultivating change, a Prairie Guide to Sustainability, Teaching and Learning Practices. And this is something that came out of a two-year faculty fellowship that we ran, six faculty members from across the institution who came together to work on how do I, they integrate sustainability into their courses. And, but we did it with a mix of sustainability and, and open. And it didn't take long for them to see how open is actually a big part of sustainability, how they go together really well. And so they wrote chapters about their experience doing this work. And we put together this book on how to help people see how they can do that. We're running another cohort of that they're taking up, we're taking applications right now, but we're also just getting ready to kick off a different fellowship. We, we've got a bunch of applications we're going through to pick six new fellows on how to integrate EDI and indigenization into their courses with open. And it's another two years. And what they do is, and this is the same with sustainability, is the first year they work on doing it with their courses and making changes to their teaching. And then in the second year, they work throughout their unit to support others to do this work. So it's helping to build capacity, not just for these, these six instructors, but also throughout their units as well. And we're hoping to spread these, these important strategies and issues throughout the university this way. Well, that's a beautiful way and fits the whole sustainability model. Kind of, kind of love watching how that program goes. Thank you. Well, since Rajiv is on the time clock, I'll ask him to sort of let us obviously preparing and looking forward to seeing you in court. But like, what's, what's, what's all the things you're juggling at Brock these days? Oh, yeah, a few things. Thanks. And apologies folks. I have a meeting I need to head to it in 15 minutes. But yeah, we certainly just celebrated our latest round of cohort of OER grant recipients at Brock. So of course, celebrating that, getting that off the ground over this last year has been terrific. But a couple of things that I think are fun for us. Institutionally, we're building supports for open pedagogy as well, including, you know, Wikipedia assignments in partnership with a terrific new colleague in our library, Denise Smith, working with students who are cofront or who are in fact cofunding our OER grant program at Brock. Brock University Student Association is doing that. Huge thanks to them. Developing a full implementation plan because advancing supports for OER is part of our newly approved academic plan. All good things. But beyond that, I would say really excited about a project, a research project that is underway right now within the province of Ontario. So this is in partnership with Ecampus Ontario. And in fact, we are looking to work with every university, every college, every Indigenous Institute in the province to help assess the institutional capacity for OER to support open educational practices, as well as their maturity level as well, and to provide them with detailed guidance as well as a province-wide report. And so this is research in partnership with Robert Luke at Ecampus Ontario. Catherine Leshain, who is of course an amazing librarian at the University of Ottawa, and Oya Pako, a graduate student, an amazing graduate student of mine at Brock. So very excited about that project, which is supported by a federal grant here in Canada. But in the next couple of weeks, what we will also be doing is because we've translated the instrument, which of course builds on some of the intellectual legacy of Irwin de Vries and the predisposition of this self-assessment scale for institutions. We've adapted it, updated it, translated it into French as well. It's going to boat Anglophone and Francophone institutions. And we will be releasing that later this month under an open license on an open website, that instrument as well. So looking forward to all of that. But that's the exciting thing on my plate right now. Wow. Yeah, that's amazing. I remember you talking about this earlier, and it's going to be exciting to see that that come out. So thank you so much, Roger. Anybody else tell us what they're up to now? Jenny, you just did a talk this week, right? I did. Yeah, so I was very lucky to be invited to McMaster University by my great instructional design colleague, Joanne Kehoe, to do a session. It turns out this week is also SDGs week, and I feel like SDGs are kind of horning in on open education. I saw that. I tried. Yeah, yeah, but it works together. But what's nice is I was able to do a session that was both open and SDG related. So that was like it was able to tie them in, which is super fun. And so the session was really, it was about creating assessments using the SDGs and speaking of Rajiv. I didn't know this. So I'm putting together my assessment and just generally googling stuff. And here comes this book from Rajiv and his colleagues at Quantum Polytechnic around specifically showing the SDGs, the targets and indicators, and providing example assessments for each of those things. Thanks Rajiv and team at Quantum Polytechnic and in partnership with Montgomery College. And so I was able to give lots of shout outs during that session to the folks and the work that they had done because it provides high quality examples, right? When we were talking with faculty and trying to encourage them to think exactly, they're 16, 17, they're 17, but I feel your partnership is not such a strong SDG. There's 16 SDGs and you'd be very hard pressed in whatever you're teaching not to find an SDG as least one or more SDGs that align with what you are trying to encourage your students to learn in terms of social justice and global responsibility. And it's super engaging for students. They love learning about the SDGs. Many of them had not heard of it. And when you introduce it in a class as part of a course, even a small scale assessment or content, students get very excited because they start to feel empowered that they can create something or do something that will have a small scale effect on solving some of the SDGs. So I had about eight folks in person and another six or seven folks online for the session. So it wasn't huge, but folks were super engaged and really engaged in deep conversation about the SDGs and creating open renewable resources, sharing the work, whatever assessment they designed, whatever rubric they designed. So I'm going to figure out a way to support them to share their work. And it was workshop style. So folks got to work and had lots of great conversation. It was a really fun session. There were a few folks at this session who had not heard of the SDGs. So there was a public health educator at McFasture and a medical engineer educator who hadn't heard of them. And I'm like, oh, two of the greatest things to use at the SDGs. So we had really good conversations. And I love the small scale wins with open education. I really love it when you encounter folks who haven't heard of Creative Commons licenses, but who's in the spirit of attending the session are already open and generous educators. So you're just kind of informing them. Here's some extra next steps you can take in that idea and open mindset and apply them with your students as co-creators. So that was super fun. I really enjoyed it quite a bit. That's fantastic. I love the way you framed out the small scale because I think often we want to change so many things at big scale, but I find like many actions at that small scale are more effective. So interesting that you talk about scale, Alan, because that word keeps coming up over and over again for us at like every learner. Like we're supposed to be scaling things. And I always feel like it's a little bit of an illusion. And it kind of circles back to what I was going to talk about a little bit, which is one of the things we're trying to do is work more with AHAC, the American Indian Higher Education Council Commission, that obviously works with tribal colleges and universities in the United States. And they really are trying to work more in thinking about how they're using OER or want to have folks in their colleges and universities use OER, how they might be building an Indigenous repository. We're having really early conversations around that. One of our partners, which is Achieving the Dream, has done some stuff with OER and Indigenous knowledge. But one of the things that happens in our network is that we try to work with institutions and we get a lot of pressure, assuming none of my colleagues will be listening to this. I don't know, a lot of pressure to say, you got to scale that. You know, you need like 50, 100 institutions doing this. And the tribal colleges in particular are pushing back to say, no, our institution is unique. We have a special culture here that the folks in our university are thinking this way and have this kind of a need. And so if you want to really support us, if you say that you want to help us do stuff, then you need to be thinking that way. And I love it. I've just really been trying to amplify that message of thinking about what does scaling maybe horizontally look like, institution by institution. And we have so much to learn from tribal colleges and universities about how to do this work. What does it mean in open when even when we define student success, a lot of folks in Indigenous communities will say, success means contributing to our community, not getting an A in this class. And there's really interesting things to be learned from that when we're thinking about what is it that we're trying to do, help our students to do, and to be able to really think about success differently in contribution to community. I think that's what open really brings to thinking about the work in, you know, supporting students. Absolutely. For folks who may not be familiar, tell us more about every learner everywhere. I mean, it sounds like the thing you do want to scale. Yeah, like, everywhere. I think it was someone in the OE Global that said, really, Karen, because you're kind of only in the US. Kind of the hubris of an organization that's based in the United States. But we're part of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Ed, otherwise known as WCHI, and nested under WCHI's Cooperative Educational Technologies. And every learner everywhere is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve student outcomes for especially Black, Latino, Indigenous, and poverty-affected students. So that's the focus for the network. And so there's a lot of different ways that folks may go about trying to do that. And we have a partner network 13 different organizations that we try to bring together to create strategies for different so-called cohorts of institutions. And again, this idea of scaling, like bringing together a bunch, has been a real challenge. I think folks that are in the funding side of it are starting to see, well, maybe that approach that we had coming perhaps from a more business world doesn't actually work in colleges and university settings. But every learner's been around for, since 2017, I've only been the director causing trouble since June. And trying to think a little bit differently about what our work is and who we are and what we're doing. So yeah, that may be enough. No, that's good. I never get enough of hearing about you. I think the scale thing has that it's usually in the frame of taking the same thing and multiplying it, like just repeating. And if we go to some of our natural metaphors, in our last show, we had this great riff on the metaphor of gardening and the urban gardens and how it's a place where people informally learn from each other in small bits. So there are ways to grow things that don't involve massive replication, obviously. Yeah, large scale agriculture as opposed to the small organic garden. I think that that's a really good metaphor for how we should probably go about doing the work of transforming higher ed. And that's what the foundation and other folks talk about transforming education. So that sort of, you know, let's get out the pesticides and the fertilizer and grow a crop of a monoculture. And it's not actually working. The folks are trying to do that. It doesn't actually accomplish much of anything. So you know, it's good. Yeah, thank you so much. So Cynthia, like you're in this new role. What I love seeing is how many times you see people introducing or saying, I'm an OER librarian, like the growth in that as a key role is maybe, I don't know if we like step back and look at that, but that is quite significant. So what are some things that you're getting involved with or pursuing there at Long Beach? Sure. I can definitely speak to that. But I know Rajiv is leaving soon. So I don't know if Rajiv wants to Yeah, you know, my last job as an OER librarian is like, I'm a librarian who kind of does OER also not as other duties as assigned. So this was my first time in OER job that I am the OER librarian. So that's exciting. And I echo what everyone's saying and what I've tried to have been like, you know, in California for the California Community Colleges, you know, the scaling, it's always like, okay, we, you know, here's money to create a textbook that works for all 116 colleges, which in theory is great. But you know, we're also unique and like coming from a university setting, it's so cool to see like the majority of our students coming here, living here. You know, we have like every other place, you know, it's not just Long Beach, it's like North Long Beach. It's Belmont Shore, you know, like we have these very unique areas. A lot of history that's so unique to Long Beach that our students would really understand. I've seen, you know, some OER things where it's like, okay, we're just going to take this US based textbook and make it in, you know, another language. And there's a big difference between translation and interpretation, right? So that's something, US defaultism, English language defaultism is something I'm just, I've never been into and something that I've really struggled with when entering the OER field. So I've been done any big sexy projects, but mostly I'm just here learning, trying to see, you know, what I can do here. I've been taking some classes as a student and, you know, having to sign up with access codes and do the whole, I don't know how to say this nicely. Taking these classes that are just kind of like education in a box. And it's like, I could take this anywhere. Like I don't even need to take it at this college. I could just, you know, go to the publisher directly, sign up for this class. And then I mean, I don't need the college credits. I just want to learn. So, you know, the difference between learning and just getting a grade. And I'm finding that when I'm in these programs, I just kind of click through it. I'm so uninspired. I'm like, all right, let me get this A, I don't, yeah. So it's just a learning, still new, still learning. That's fantastic. And I mean, there's been a couple pulses of interest that I know in the library. We've had someone who's kind of asking this question about the connection section between public libraries and institutional libraries because they really have different motivations for doing OER work. And so I'm interested in sort of like carrying on some of that conversation. And just got Heather Blinker, who's our CCC OER new director, she's a librarian. And so she's bringing in a lot of those great questions. Yeah, there's Robin, who is actually the person in OEG Connect who brought that question. And Robin's been asking some some great questions along lines there. And yeah, and we got, you know, Heather connected us to Michelle Reed, who used to be at UTA, and is now with Library Futures, which is a fantastic organization. And so we're hoping to tap into her because they do a lot of research and valuable work in this area. So bring on the librarians is how I feel. Take care, everyone. Thank you so much. Appreciate all of your labor behind the scenes supporting this community, especially this week, but well beyond. Take care, everyone. We'll ask them next time to play a song, but he always has the instruments behind him. I like that. Oh, so yeah. So one of the highlights for me this week, too, is listening to Dave Cormier talk about a pedagogy of abundance that sort of connects a little bit to what we're talking about as well. Because I really, you know, I think about how open has sort of turned the way that we think about what we want our students to do in the classroom differently, like to go out and discover and create. And, you know, there's been an abundance even before generative AI came along, right, just with the internet. And that when we want students to discover and create, this abundance problem isn't a problem, right, like the way in which students go out and get information and learn and want to want to be curious about their world, want to actually be actively learning. And I really loved the things that he was talking about there, about the abundance. And I think that a lot of the ways in which people are kind of afraid of AI in particular at meaning that students are going to cheat, you know, they're not going to think for themselves and not going to learn how to write. And I think that students actually want to learn how to do those things. And if we don't get in their way with giving them really boring assignments that have high stakes with certain amount of points attached to them, they actually will do those things. Yeah, I was in that session too. And like I was really moved by it. And like a lot of it is just like anything that we're doing that involves students to look up facts and bring it back is like the wrong way. And I really liked his idea about, and like Dave has always done this kind of thing. And it's like, oh, it makes so much sense. It sounds too hard, but it makes so much sense. But what we have to do is teaching people how to deal with uncertainty, where as usually we try to go the opposite, right? Yeah. And I always feel like in my most optimistic moments that AI will, you know, interrupt things enough where these faculty was going to have control that like once once you can't have control anymore, then maybe students finally will have more control over what they're doing there. So these systems could really just, you know, again, in my most optimistic moments will really turn into places where people are there to discover and learn and create and solve the world's intractable problems. And instead of just get points and get criteria and get a credential and go do a job that's going to perpetuate what we're already doing in the world. So that's my optimistic side. I want to touch on something that Jenny said before about SDG week, and that it was like kind of honing in on or, you know, getting in the way of this being open week. We have, and I mentioned that we, you know, we're working on sustainability and EDI and reconciliation and internationalization and student wellness. And we're hearing, and obviously, when we think about it that way, we're hearing from people about, well, there's way too much, there's too many things that we're supposed to be doing. But we're thinking about it wrong because open, EDI, sustainability, student wellness, reconciliation, indigitization, internationalization, they all fit together. And instead of looking at them as separate entities that we have to go after this one first, and then we can get to this one. No, we have to look at things that let us approach all of them. And that's where I think open really comes in, because open is not another thing. Alan, I think about like computers, when computers were first brought into classrooms and stuff, I have to teach them that too. And no, it's the tool to help you do those things. And that's what open is, is it's a way to do it. If we can come up with totally different kinds of assessments that involve these, the, like you said, the SDGs every single subject is going to be able to find at least one. But there's also the, each of them also touch on sustainability and reconciliation and so forth. And open is just the way of doing that. And so great. I love having sustainability come into open week. Let's have student wellness come into open week. We did have Indigenous, I'm trying to remember exactly what the title was for this week, but we also had stuff around reconciliation going on this week. And let's bring it all together, because they're all connected. And we can't deal with sustainability without dealing with reconciliation. We can't deal with student wellness if we're not going to be talking about EDI. And so we have to stop looking at things as silos and open as being an add-on, because it's a path. Yeah, absolutely. And first of all, like we do not own the week, okay? No, we don't. And there was, there were some of these questions about, can we make it at the end of March? And then, and then, and then of course, you know, it's going to be bad for some other people. You're so powerful, Alan, you can do it. Oh, that's, that's, but the way I see it is like, it doesn't matter when in March or what week you do it. Like it doesn't have to be this week. It's just, this will be the week. And there's no reason why, like I just stumbled across SDG week, and it's like, this is fantastic. Let's, let's, you know, co-mingle these. But what you're saying is better, Heather. Like, let's not just chop these up into these little boxes of things that are important. Well, we, the book launch we did this week was around an open book that was created around the SDGs. And so we're pulling all of this stuff together and looking at, well, how, okay, how do I advance this through open? And while we're doing reconciliation, so we can't do sustainability right now. Well, you can't do reconciliation without sustainability. And so we, this is what the way we need to be thinking about things. Frankly, if I think about if we could pull that together and say open as a path and UDL as a path for those who don't know you, universal design and for learning for those watching, I know you all know. But that's a path and all these other AI, certain parts of AI, I have, I have my opinion about AI and ethical things, but these are all ways of doing it. And if, and if we put them all together, it's going to look like less to instructors who we want, when we want them to do this. Because it's not a bunch of things. It's one thing that it's all connected. It is kind of interesting, like what people think they're supposed to be doing. Like, what is the core thing that all these other things are getting in the way of? Like, I don't have time for that or I can't do that because I'm doing this. So what's, what really is the this exactly? And why is that? Context? What does that even mean? You know, like, so it's kind of an interesting thing. And, you know, we're a medical doctoral institution. So we have medicine, dentistry, nursing, law, engineering, vet med, all of these colleges that are accredited. So they have to align with national accreditation standards. And the students are expected, you know, we talk about I'm pushing open pedagogy on everybody. We should be doing authentic assessment. But at the same time, our students finishing medical school or nursing, they have to take multiple choice tests. And we're sending them out there, they better know how to do it. Systemic problems, you know, we act like these systems came from out of the sky, you know, we create all of them. And, you know, I get, you know, having been a stem professor for years, it's like, don't learn content just because you bark it at them either, you know, there's different ways in which that content can be learned. So. Oh, absolutely. So I was just thinking for our SG SDG, where people like, are there places that are looking at like declaring like, like a curriculum or a program as like SDG infused, kind of like the zero textbook cost degrees, like, will somebody do like an SDG infused, you know, certificate or training, like, so that it is woven in across, I don't know, I just thought of that. Well, I know that our school of business is looking at, at it being part of their, their overall plan. Yeah. And I think kinesiology might be looking at that as well. And so, yeah, they're looking at they wanted embedded in all of their courses, which is great. And one of the reasons that they want to do that is their students asked for it. Wow. Yeah. And we're seeing also whole schools, University of Waterloo, that, you know, sustainability is a lens for everything they're doing. And we're seeing that actually a lot at Kennedy and universities and some of the colleges as well. And you walk through the halls, so if somebody was talking in our SDG session, she's like, I walk through the halls and I see all the posters about SDGs and I hear about it as part of our strategic plan. And it's one of our institutional goals. But I have no idea what it means. And I have no idea how to put it into my course. I'm, I'm like, well, I'm glad you joined me today. Let's talk about that. So, yeah, we're seeing actually a lot of institutional buy-in in Canada. And I imagine this is happening in the US as well. In terms of this idea of SDGs as a, as a lens, as a graduate attribute. I understand the SDGs. I understand what part I can play as a human being in, in global health and global longevity. And so, especially around climate action, climate change, climate adaptation, students are very interested in that because this, you know, this undergraduate level group, let's say they're 18 to 25, give or take, are extremely interested in the planet staying around for a while. They're very interested in that. And so the idea of the SDGs becomes very engaging for them. But it's like everything else, Heather, you say, okay, well, now I have to do EDI, SDGs, indigenous revisions, I have to do reconciliation, I have to do all these things. How am I going to do it all? But it's, it's still just related, it's just a lens. And I wanted to talk about AI a little bit that way too. I'm, I'm, it's just a tool. And how you use it and whether, and how you vet it in terms of how you're going to use it is, you know, is up to you as an educator. It's just, it's like the internet. It's just another thing and all the hype around AI, you know, it's going to completely change how everyone does their work. And I'm not an Uber fan, but I am working on a research project with my good friend Judith Pettah from Nairobi, Kenya. And one of our new colleagues that Judith and I just met, Gelare Keshavars, and she's working at OISI, she's also teaches at Seneca College here in Canada. But the way that each of us talk about AI and think about AI, I think about it in terms of I teach graduate students instructional design. And so there's all kinds of hype around how AI can help create content and create, you know, create courses, liquidity split. As you say, Cynthia, the course that you get when you do that is pretty boring and not really very good learning. But kind of that's my use case, talking about how it can be used effectively and, and tied to human and caring pedagogy in those ways. Judith is, is talking about it in terms of lack of access. So she's in Nairobi, Kenya. And when we talk about, you know, I can't remember who it was, I think with Saul Khan talking about how everyone is going to have access to AI and like, hang on, Saul. Let's do it. Let's do a tally of who everyone is. And whether or not they have access to a device, never mind AI. And so Judith is thinking about this access point and whether or not, given mobile devices and other things that that lots of young folks in nations of Africa have access to, is AI and use of AI for their own learning and their own use a way of closing the gap in terms of the inequity of access that they have to education, to entrepreneurship, to all the good things that we tend to have in North America. And again, not everyone. That's all Khan says. So she's thinking about that level of access, whether or not it's a game changer or could be a game changer for young folks in nations of Africa. And then our colleague Gelre is English is not her first language. She's multilingual, which is amazing as so many are. And she uses AI right now to ensure that her communication with folks in her, she's got a busy administrative job to ensure that her communication that she feels confident and strong in her communication. And so it's a tool that helps create all those other things for her. She does lots of great work in terms of education and preparing education for others. So it's really kind of interesting the different use cases that we're coming across for AI, certainly open and certainly lots of other ways to use it. And I'd be interested just based on the little research project, we're going to do how many other use cases and individual ways folks are going to be using AI that come up. Yeah, well, I'm curious, and I'll let you go Heather, but for Heather and Cynthia, especially like who are on campuses, I'm really interested to hear like, I don't know how you summarize what the pulse or the temperature is in terms of what people, how they're just going, like facing this, you know, and like, you know, most of us feel rather overwhelmed in some ways. But I'm just curious as to like, how how locally your institutions are grappling. We are, but I think I'm in a minority in terms of some of my opinions about AI, but I do want to talk about, you know, I think that open goes great with all of these in the SDGs and everything, but I don't think AI does. There was an article that I was just reading the other day. I want to get this right. It was in MIT Technology Review, and it was from December. And making one, one AI image uses as much energy as charging your phone for one image. So how we reconcile, like we don't, let's make a whole bunch of things on SDGs, on the SDGs using AI. That's like saying, we're going to use a Kira get at all of our SDGs and have all these disposable cups and stuff like that. So I think that's something we need to keep an eye on and be aware that it's not just the issues that we're normally thinking about when it comes to the technology and access. It's potentially damaging to the people we're trying to give more access to, because those are the places that are going to be hit the hardest by climate change. The other article, because I was just in a session this week talking about it, was one from University Affairs from about a year ago, and I tried to put it in the chat because I did connect it, but it said it failed to go through. And it was about, that's the technology review one. Okay, then there's one from University Affairs about chat GPT. We need to talk about LLMS, and it goes into the issues around if the content being fed into it and the programmers of the AI are coming from a very Eurocentric background, then the materials that people are going to be able to access from AI are going to be from a Eurocentric background. And that's what's going to shape the stuff they create. So we have, I think it's a great discussion to have as part of EDI, and to pick it apart as part of EDI. But I think that when we're talking about increased access for people all around the world, we need to remember that this might be another way of colonizing. If we're sending just Eurocentric content all around the world, we have to think about not just, hey, what can we do with it? And I made a colleague at work laugh about this because it keeps reminding me of Jeff Goldblum's character in Jurassic Park, when he says that we get, they got so focused on whether they could do it, they didn't ask if they should. Yeah. Thanks for sharing the University Affairs one. Yeah. I was just going to say, I think all of those concerns are really important ones, and I think that what we really need is more just grappling with the critical AI literacy, part of what we're trying to do is build programs around how do we teach people on campuses about what AI is and what it means and what are the pitfalls and all of that. I think having those kinds of conversations about the pros and the cons and the uses and the abuses and you're right, Heather. The internet could also be accused of just bringing a lot of your Western-centric knowledge to, so it's part of the same problem. I agree. Yeah. But not necessarily the internet itself, it's our view of it through mediated systems like search and things which push information to the front. Right. Yeah. But it's the idea that we said the same thing about the internet. The internet is going to connect people and bring knowledge to people all around the world, but what knowledge did it bring and in what ways did it connect in some ways or accentuate a disconnection for people in certain areas. And I'd like us to not make the same mistakes this time around. Well, look who's in charge. Yeah. I mean, the internet was supposed to go. I believe that horse has left barn. I would, you know, I'd love to see it slow and I'm working on an article called slow AI, like slow food, because yeah, it could slow down a lot. And all those things that you talk about, Heather, so critical to think about. But I cannot, just realistically, cannot imagine a scenario where it's going to stop, where it's going to get shut down. I don't see that happening in which case. How do we kind of learn the background of how it's done and how we can use it for good and effectively by, you know, closing the types of content we're putting in and keeping it, you know, for examples, folks have talked about openly licensed GPTs that only uses content that are CC by or public domain. So, you know, the possibilities are extremely interesting for how it can be used to good effect. But yeah, I don't, I just can't imagine a scenario where, where I don't have to learn about it. I do understand. But I'm not saying I'm not saying that you don't have to learn about it, but I'm worried that we're learning about, I think that we sit down and we go, look what I can do with it. First, when we should be looking at the big picture before we sit down to do it. What's the conversations you're hearing, Cynthia? Yeah, thanks, Alan. I, you know, what I was going to say earlier was about critical AI literacy. And I think when the conversations first started, a lot of folks were, you know, not on the student side, but, you know, maybe not seeing where AI comes, you know, the things that that they're already using that uses generative AI. And so having a lot of commerce, you know, just having conversation about what it can and cannot do, you know, back to the whole like interpretation versus translation, you know, seeing how it performs in non English language materials, asking questions and saying like, Hey, you know, is this an appropriate response? Based on your own worldview. A lot of times people could see something that it generates, and they're like, Yeah, that makes sense. And then someone from a completely different background is like, Oh, this is super, you know, sexist, homophobic, racist, transphobic, you know, what have you. And it's so interesting to see that. And I think a lot of folks miss kind of can miss that stuff. Sometimes when you're in the majority group, it is not obvious. And so I've been really blessed to have these really nuanced conversations with people that are not like me. And I really value their input and giving everybody kind of a space to talk about those things. Again, nothing like big and overarching or sexy, but just just talking about it and providing space for all people to talk about it. I think it's been really helpful for us. I wonder some thank you that that's really a good approach that I think we need to think about and do. Like this idea that Oh, we're going to create like these workshops and like guides to using AI, which is it makes sense. But oh my God, every day I open up my my laptop here and something has changed or it's different or there's something new. And so yeah. And it's not, you know, I don't think the comparisons with the internet, the reasons that it works and there's reasons that it doesn't. Yeah, for sure. I agree with that. And I think that we're critical in AI literacy is critical, right? Like what does it mean to really look with a critical eye at what it can and can't do and where the biases are and where the energy use is happening. And I mean, those are the kinds of conversations and discussions for us to be having with our students across our campuses. And you know, how do we even get people to know what are the things that we need to be worrying about? You know, that's part of the criticalness of the critical AI literacy piece. So and it's a work in progress. And I think it is going to be, you know, continuing to influence how things are put together within our colleges and universities, our systems, our structures and, you know, again, that hope that it will shake people up enough to say this is what isn't working, you know, this is the emperor's clothes kind of coming off in the moment of what doesn't really work about how our structures are put together, you know, and maybe it will give us a chance to focus on, you know, solving the global warming, the global social warming, like all of the things that are happening out there that we're really just kind of ignoring because we're worried about a student's GPA and whether they're going to get a job. And I'm not saying jobs are important. I'm just saying that hyper focus is keeping us from doing more important work in the world. Yeah, I just want to pick up on something Heather said that I just really like. I think not what can I do with these tools, but what are they doing to me? Right? Or with me or for me, are they making me less intelligent? If I start to rely on these tools for doing, you know, what I might consider grunt work so that I can do higher level work, what am I sacrificing if I make that choice? And again, what kind of content am I exposing myself to unknowingly or unwittingly that is going to actually have an effect on how I think and how I, you know, and start to close my mind and, you know, put me into a bubble I don't want to be in. I want to be where Cynthia is. I want to talk with people who disagree with me all the time and who are different and have such different perspectives for me. I learned so much from those conversations with folks where they are not the same as me and they have very different perspectives. And I think, you know, that's a real risk with a lot of the AI that's out there now. It's very homogenous in terms of its perspectives in a dangerous way. And I know there's a UNESCO fellow. I'm sorry, I can't remember his name right now. It's all over my LinkedIn feed talking about AI for education and talking about this recent report that talks about how biased AI is in terms of gender and homophobia and all those other things in its current iteration. So yeah, I want to kind of think about as well what is AI doing to me rather than what I'm doing with it. I like that perspective. Well, you know, it's going to stop it, Jenny. Sadly, when the lights go out, oh my gosh, I can't say that. We have to end on a happier note than that. It's Armageddon Day. I've watched too many of those old sci-fi movies. Singularity. I'm talking about things that I'm watching. I'm watching Jamie Lannister, and I apologize for not knowing his actual real name, is doing something called the Optimist Guide to the Planet. It's on Netflix. But anyway, he is going to places around the world and visiting businesses and people who are making globally shifting sustainable ideas part of their real practice. So that is a very optimistic kind of thought to have. He's really doing some fun work, kind of shedding light on those folks who are small wins doing some great work. Yeah. And I just like to me, like this experience and talking to people this week, like that is where it happens. And I don't think it's a battle against these machines. I don't think it's going away. But damn it, I'm going to assert my humanity. And I'm going to, you know, I'm going to do everything I can to keep us somewhat optimistic, but and excited and get ready. But yeah, the things are shifting around on us. Make OERs while the sun shines as we're getting in the chat. So my sun is shining right now. And so again, like, we don't have to stop. But I know I want to be conscious that people have things to do. And you have those eventually those weekends to enjoy. And also just appreciate that you've been willing to come in. And this exactly is what I hope happens. Like, everybody starts off talking, taking turns. And then all of a sudden, we're jumping in. And I can't thank you all enough and applaud my guests here in the room on International Women's Day. I just make sure that I thank you all for the work that you do. Education is a place where at least we have made seemingly more strides in the gender gap. And I was always proud from my start at the Maricopa Community College is way long ago. It was already much more diverse than many places are now. And go community colleges. Awesome. Thank you so much, Alan. Yeah. I was just gonna say to Cynthia, I was just gonna say to Cynthia that I am a product of both a California Community College and a Cal State School. Applause. All right. And thank you to the thank you to the folks leading out there are gonna exit music and we'll go off to the end of Open Education Week. Thank you for being there with us.