 Hi, everyone. Welcome to this session. We're really pleased to see you here today. My name is Beth Pitt, and I'm here with my colleagues, Rob and Paco, and we're going to be talking about building open research community and values with the global OER Graduate Network, GOGN. So thanks so much for joining us, and I hope you're having a great conference so far. So what we're going to cover today, we're going to be talking about the community of care that we've developed, particularly over the past two years, and in light of obviously the COVID-19 pandemic and the way that this has changed what we do as a network. And we're going to be exploring the different ways that we've done this. And really importantly, we're going to be hearing from our members as well as part of this presentation. So what we'll be doing is talking about what we did, how we did it, and talk a bit about the open values and practices as well. And as you can see here, we're going to be kind of going through different aspects of what we've been doing as well. We're going to be taking a look at the equity, diversion and inclusion. So Paco will talk a bit about that. And Rob will also talk a bit about our collaborative research publications. So what is GoGN? So GoGN, as I mentioned at the start of this presentation, stands for Global OER Graduate Network. We were founded in 2013, so almost 10 years ago, by the late Fred Mulder at the OU in the Netherlands. We're funded and supported by the Hewlett Foundation, and we currently have 138 members and alumni based in 40 countries around the world. In this phase, we have a focus on building our membership, particularly in the global south. And since 2018, 32 members have completed their doctorate. And as you can see here, the aims of GoGN are to raise the profile of our membership and of research into open education, offer support for those working in this space, conducting doctoral research in this area, promoting equity and inclusion, and also developing openness as a process of research and encouraging open research practices. So who are the GoGN team? So as you can see here, this is the team. We're led by Professor Martin Weller. There's myself and Rob and Paco. And we're also supported by Piley that you can see on the right hand side. So this is the GoGN team. So what changed over the course of the pandemic? So as you may be aware, the focus prior to this was really on our face-to-face workshop, which we would hold annually in conjunction with a major conference. So we would hold a workshop for a day, two days before a major open education conference, for webinar sessions, and also have quite a wide developed process on, developed presence even on social media as well. So what changed really, obviously, like many organizations, we shifted to online events only going forward. We've kind of increased the variety of these. So one of the things that we'll hear a little bit about from our members in a moment is, we changed and offered a wider variety of online events, including new member research specials, really kind of trying to make making people feel part of the network of just joining, giving people the opportunity to share what they're working on. We also increased support for conferences and memberships of reclaim hosting, membership of ALT, supporting our members to participate in conferences such as OpenEd and OU Global, co-production of community resources, and we'll hear a little bit more about that shortly. Fellowship scheme to support an increasing number of alumni. As I mentioned a moment ago, we're approaching our 10th anniversary. So obviously a number of our membership, obviously, as people go through their PhD and become alumni once they've completed their doctoral studies. Where next, what could we offer people to support them in their next phase? So we have fellowship scheme and Paco will tell us a little bit more about that in a moment. And also increase visibility at online and face to face hybrid open education conferences, as I mentioned, Paco will also talk a little bit about our diversity, equity and inclusion work as well. So moving on. As I mentioned, this has really been an iterative process and involves listening to our membership and trying out different types of support. You can see here that 81% of respondents, so these are our member and alumni in our 2021 survey, felt that the network supported them very well. And this is an increase on 71% in our 2020 survey, and we'll be serving our membership again shortly, so look out for our annual survey results in December at our end of year celebration result event. So we're going to take a deeper look now at our survey feedback over the last couple of years to kind of reveal some of the values highlighted through our membership feedback. And these are taken from our 2020 and 2021 annual reports you can find these on the website. If you want to take a closer look can also maybe explore some of the survey results in more depth. So starting off here. These two quotes really encapsulate representation and commitment to sharing. You can see in the first one here from one of our current goji and members. They say, I love that you reached out to me about presenting at one of the webinars, I don't think I would have volunteered at this point in my research. This is a really great piece of feedback for us. This is about kind of encouraging our membership to be involved, particularly our new members. We're going to best serve our different membership. I'm talking at the end of September we had another of our new member research specials yesterday, really getting our members and encouraging them to share their research and supporting them to do that with the network. The second quotation here is around commitment to sharing so you can see here. We have alumni feedback saying hugely valuable emotional support and affirmation of our area of research was available from mentors throughout the journey. And they go on to talk about opportunities to connect and give back a welcome. So this is something that comes out has come out in other feedback as well that we've received and we'll see in a moment around the emotional support that the network gives. And also that people once they've completed their doctoral studies are really looking for opportunities to kind of give back as this alumni respondent says here, which is really fantastic that people feel that commitment to the network and commitment to sharing. The second set of quotations here from the survey that I wanted to draw on illustrate again the emotional support, but also equity and representation. So you can see here in the first first quote here from a go chain member. They say I suddenly do not feel alone in my doctoral journey. It is encouraging me to submit more academic writing consideration and nudging me along in my studies. One of the things that it was touched on the previous slide is that obviously we're a global network and we're connecting people working on open education topics and they may be the only person in their institution doing that so that kind of support and connection. As this person says here, they don't feel alone in that journey, which is really fantastic to hear that we're supporting them in that way. They also kind of mentioned about the academic writing and as Rob will talk about in a moment, the opportunities to kind of get involved with collaborative writing as part of go Jen, but also other ways of sharing research so we've had Wikipedia, editing training, and we've been running editor phones or starting to run editor phones going forward to support improving open education articles on Wikipedia, going forward. The second quote here is around equity and representation and someone talks here about the network itself with strong human bonds amongst its diverse international members and how this member says it's the strongest asset that we have as go Jen. So I think this isn't really fantastic to hear that the network, you know, is the bombs and connections that people make through being part of go Jen. I'm now going to hand over to Rob, who's going to tell us a little bit more about the collaborative work and research reports. Thanks for. Thank you back. Hi everyone. I'm Rob and I lead the collaborative research outputs for this phase of go Jen. And these kind of things is a relatively new activity for us it's only been in the last sort of two three years that we've been doing these kind of collaborations. And part of the idea was to give people more experience of exploring and navigating the world of openness together so as a network, but also as a function of open educational practice and as a way to coordinate and share what typically PhD researchers don't necessarily share. So I'm starting with the research methods handbook for instance. The idea here was to provide a very accessible guide to doctoral level research methods. If you have any experience with supervision of doctoral students or of research in general. It's often methodology that is the thing that people feel at least confident with at least comfortable with. The idea that we had with this was to get people to share things they wouldn't normally necessarily share about how their research was going and what kind of methods were effective, where did they hear issues or stumbling blocks. Normally when research is published. The method section has the kind of the four final final consumption presentation on it. And in a way we were interested in exploring this is an idea of open practice. The research methods handbook was very well received. And it's had many thousands more downloads than we anticipated it would have based on the size of our membership. And I think this reflects a wider need for research guidance way beyond just open education. But I feel that by making things open and accessible, it definitely made it quite a successful volume. In the following year we published the conceptual frameworks guide, which is very much a kind of sister publication which focuses not so much on methods but on conceptual frameworks and theories and how they're used in research. And again, the members will share their own experiences of how things like conceptual frameworks and theoretical frameworks have operated in their own research. And again as an exercise in sharing was quite successful. In the flagship publications we have the research review which we publish each year. And here we give people the opportunity to review some recent publications in open education research. And the idea here is partly to have that experience while you're still a doctoral student, but also as again as an educational practice to build a collective understanding of what's going on at the cutting edge of research, and explore the potential for network leverage. And, you know, can we can we all benefit if we operate as a network rather than collection of individuals. We also publish an annual review of activity and the GoGM network, which comes out at the end of each year. And I feel that in terms of our theme of a community of care, these kind of collaborations have been quite successful in helping members to feel part of something bigger, and also having a focus, which hopefully helps people in their doctoral research and beyond. So that's the work we've been doing in this strand. Thanks. Thanks so much Rob. Also want to highlight before handing over to Paco about our special GoGM issue of the Journal of Interactive Media and Education. So you can find articles from across the network in this special collection. So please do check that out. I'm going to hand over now to Paco who's going to tell us more about the work we've been doing around equity, diversity and inclusion and the fellowships. Thanks so much Paco. Thank you very much, Paco. So the project in this case, the EDI phase tries and is still going on trying to identify how open research communities such as GoGM can be more diverse, equitable and inclusive. This project is being led by Karina Bosru, and it has had two phases and one implementation, which is currently going on. The first phase of this project was focused on open educational practices and open education in Africa and finding from this stage has helped to identify for a second phase. Basically, in this first phase, it was led by a colleague, Judith Petem, including an interview with eight experts in the area in the African context. While phase two was carried out by Vivian Vladimirski in early 2020, in this case it happened to be in between the pandemic so plans have to be changed, but she had the opportunity to interview 12 experts from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Uruguay, and building some guidelines and ideas such as rights and awareness of the global zones within the OYO initiatives, as well as helping global scholars or early career PhD students to produce papers of high quality in English, as well as well as assisting in the proofreading of papers or articles and promoting and holding theoretical discussions of open education in the regions. The possibility to support and attend conferences and expand in the global south as well as offering virtual spaces and facilitating in that difficult communication sometimes for traveling, and as well providing and mentoring those students who might not be that fluent in the use of a second language such as English, as well in terms of promoting and having a more present of GOG and the global south. And following that those ideas, we started a colleague program early this year, trying to connect mentors and mentees in order to support and those who wanted to produce content in English language for conferences, etc. Unfortunately, there wasn't a huge demand in this case. It was difficult. I think mostly in the focus in this case was the global south in Latin America. So, understanding that people are really busy. So, basically we have changed the focus of the colleague in order to produce a handbook that synthesize all those guidelines from phase one, phase two and consider next steps to join other voices from the global south. Next slide please. In terms of the fellowships, fellowship scheme has already been finished and I meant to support GOG and alumni after finishing the PhD and the idea for those fellows that you can see in the screen and three different phases. They could take different activities. They could decide if they wanted to undertake a piece of research that was targeted in OER, OEP or related research. Maybe overview of OER in a region, identification of strategic events, fostering connections with the networks and promote GOGN. And the idea and expectation from them was to produce a report at the end of the fellowship and three, in many cases have been more block inputs in the GOGN website. And currently, so we have those three courts with them, they have a space of six months to work on their proposal and they have provided as well feedback and shared experiences and have the opportunity to present in a conference. And currently have all the reports back and we are currently producing that handbook that we will release with experiences from all the fellows. Thanks so much Paco. So moving on now to OER 22. And as I mentioned at the start of the presentation. Pre pandemic, we would have a kind of annual event that was obviously being on hold well earlier this year. We decided to kind of explore face to face events again and we brought together a number of GOGN members and alumni to London for OER 22 where we were co chairs, GOGN were co chairs at that conference. And this was really an opportunity for us to to see whether people wanted to come and be part of a face to face event and it was really great to see to see everyone and to hold this kind of one day workshop prior to the conference. So we have 29 sessions involving the team members and alumni across OER 22. There were 25 non team sessions including a showcase, which featured lightning presentations from our members and alumni, as well as an end of conference plenary. We also had 20 individual GOGN is presenting across the three days so it was really fantastic to be involved in this way in OER 22 and we're looking forward to future face to face events and bringing colleagues together again. So hopefully as we move through this presentation we've kind of touched on different aspects of GOGN's community of care, and hopefully you can see that openness is really at the heart of GOGN in terms of what we do our practices and the kind of values that we have. Our commitment to sharing, improving representation, equity and diversity, criticality and increasing autonomy. And I want to just briefly touch on how GOGN as an example could maybe inform other contexts so this is really a kind of lessons learned on part of the presentation really. So one of the things is about understanding your audience or audiences and that their needs may change so as I mentioned people at different stages of their doctoral journey when they join the network and as they go through their doctoral study obviously their needs change. As I mentioned earlier in particular in relation to the fellowships we have a growing number of alumni in the network, as well as obviously the impact of COVID on people's personal and professional lives so really there's always to be very aware of people's individual needs and circumstances and that they may change and that they will change over time. One of the other things to bear in mind is also we're a network or a global network and being very conscious of which voice or voices are not in the room or, you know, looking at different ways to engage with different members and alumni. Tailoring opportunities and deliberately seeking feedback as well so through the survey mentioned the kind of annual survey. So really it's about having an open to feedback and kind of encourage people to reach out if they have suggestions or feedback, good or bad about what we're doing. And also to respond to that in an agile way, listening and adjusting what we're doing according to feedback that we're getting from our members and alumni. So really it's about having a not one size fits all approach and having a diverse offering. It's about different things that we offer members now and obviously different things appeal to different people as well. So it's about offering different ways to engage with and be part of a network or or initiative. And then also raising the profile of the network and its members so looking for different ways to kind of do that and we talked a bit about about some of those through this presentation. And then also reacting, go into the wider education community and beyond. So, how can you get involved so firstly if you're watching this and you are a doctoral student working on education topic, please do join the network we would love to have you as a member. So please do reach out to us. You can see the address mark with a handle as well here, and I'll be further details at the end of this presentation. If you supervise doctoral students or you're aware of doctoral students working on open education topics, please spread the word. Likewise, if you're watching this well you're an expert and you have an interest in open education, we have a friends and experts list. So please keep in touch with what we're doing and opportunities to be involved. So please do join the experts and friends list as well. We're also as I mentioned several points in the presentation approaching our 10 year anniversary and we would love to hear how we can better serve a wider open education community as well going forward so please do use this hashtag or reach out to contact us and let you know, let us know your thoughts. Also look out next year for further activities around the anniversary as well. So thank you so much for listening. It's been really great to share more about what we've been doing with you and I hope you have a wonderful rest of the conference. Thank you.