 Thank you so much. One of the awful things about this wonderful conference is making choices about where to go. I usually want to be in about three places at once, so thank you all for being here. I still feel quite moved by Lorna's keynote this morning. I just thought it was a wonderful encapsulation of a lot of the key issues that really drive us, Lorna. You embody and also you express the values that certainly move me around open education. In preparation for today, I went back and read a few blog posts from the last couple of OER conferences. I've been coming since 2015. Last year there was a particular conversation at the end of the conference with four previous chairs. Everyone agreed that each OER conference kind of moves beyond, significantly moves beyond the one before, but was only able to do that because of what happened previously. I think the conference is quite unique in my experience because it's a place for real critical conversations, and it has been for some time. I'm just so delighted to be here and to be a part of it. When I read back those blog posts, I wanted to link back just to a couple of ideas that I've been meaningful for me about previous conferences. I guess taking your lead, Lorna, two years ago in my presentation about open education, I really made links between openness and participatory culture. I used the example of the marriage equality referendum in Ireland, which even though we're two years on, the world has changed so much since then. It's quite amazing, really. I thought it was this beautiful example of the way people used participatory culture built on open practices to have their voice to create civic change, which is what happened. I drew on Henry Jenkins and others' work in participatory culture asking, you know, to what extent are we enabling students to develop the practices, the skills, the identities that they need to really engage in participatory culture, to develop their voice and their agency so that they too can co-create knowledge and culture. And that's, I think, a key question underlying openness as far as I'm concerned. Also shared in 2016 and shared by many people since then is this one particular work among a huge body of work now in critical approaches to openness, and that's Richard Edwards. And, you know, even the examples Lorna shared this morning, I think, really call this to mind is an important question becomes not simply whether education is more or less open, but what forms of openness are worthwhile and for whom. So that continual negotiation as open educators and practitioners around when and how openness is appropriate in different contexts really underlies these critical approaches. So with that in mind, and that is kind of the soup that I was swimming in and thinking in, I engaged in my PhD research, which I just completed and submitted last week. So this is why you'll hear a few people. It would have been nice to have more than two days after submitting and having to travel here, but hey, newly minted, I suppose I am. One other aspect I'd say of these critical approaches is last year, OER 17, the politics of open was quite transformative, I think, for a lot of people, because not only were critical approaches woven in a lot of the work people were talking about, but they were foregrounded. People were talking about gender, race, geography, just inclusivity at a very deep level. So it was the object of our conversations, not just the subtext. All in all, this was a slide of mine from 2016. What do we mean when we're talking about open? We mean many things. It's not universally experienced, and I think that's very clear. It's complex. It's contextual. It requires digital capability and agency. It's both descriptive and aspirational, and I think this is why people sometimes struggle with defining open, because it's a goal, it's an aspiration that we move towards, but it also describes what we do in some ways, like when we talk about OER. And critical discourse is essential, and I often quote Trezi McMillan-Cottom when I talk about critical approaches, that we really need to move from access to equity and justice. And I think many of us in this room are engaged in that work. So when I started my own PhD research, I began with that question, which was really about individual practice around OEP. So in academic settings, like my own, in which the use of OEP is not required, requested, expected, or specifically supported, why do some educators and not others choose to use open educational practices? And the question was actually even broader than that, because there have been some wonderful studies of open educators, characterizing open educators, but I chose to do an interpretive study of educators across the whole spectrum. So the educators who were boldly open and being an inspiration for others, to those who wanted nothing to do it and said, no, thanks, don't talk to me about social media or any of those things. I think the only way we should interact with students is via email and the VLE. And then people in the middle, maybe people who had stepped up to more open practices and stepped back, or people who were just slowly emerging in their open practice. I really wanted to understand what was happening in the movement along that continuum, if you like. So what I studied was meaning making and decision making around openness. So not how did people understand my definition or our definition of open, but how do individual practitioners, what does open mean to them, how do they define it themselves, and how do they use that then to make their decisions about openness. And then those that do use open educational practices, I tried to understand their practices in a little more depth. So needless to say, there was a very complex continuum of practices, of course. But, you know, encapsulating just some of the studies in this very complex mix of digital practices, looking from less open to more open, these are not meant as poles by any means or a binary, because surely we are beyond thinking about openness in terms of binaries. But if you think of those two things as poles of continuum, four things really emerged and they were practices around digital identity, digital networking, digital tools for teaching that people chose, and use of where we are. And it was very, very interesting, as I said, some people were clearly at one end or the other, some were moving, some, you know, of course it depended on context for individuals. But one of the most important things was that many people perceived potential benefits of openness, but they were outweighed by their perception of the risks of openness. So we do not have a policy at our institution, like many institutions do not, Edinburgh is an exception and there are others. So that lack of policy spoke very loudly. So there were people who were trying things and thought, you know, if something goes wrong, I'm not really sure if the university will have my back, and maybe they won't, but who cares? And other people said the same thing and said, I don't know if the university will have my back, I have no idea what the policy is, and so I'm not going to do that, I just don't think it's safe. So my work now is really going to be moving more into policy. But everything on the right column really characterised the people who were what we would call open educators. So they had resident identities using the visitor resident continuum. They used social media both personally and professionally, used the VLE and email, of course, but also used all kinds of open tools and social media. There was actually in fact very little intentional use of OER, because we have no policy around OER at our university. And again, hopefully that will change. But those people who were in that right hand column, these were the dimensions that they shared. So if we want to say what makes an open educator in the context that I studied, one Irish university looking at academic staff broadly defined, full-time and part-time permanent and not permanent. These were the dimensions that those people shared. And the pink semicircle is the one that roared out more than all others. So this whole notion of balancing privacy and openness. If people felt that they couldn't safely do that, they would not choose to be open. But those who did had found ways. And of course, you can see the link between the pink and the orange. They're very connected. So the people who did manage to that balancing act were people who had the digital literacies or capabilities to know that I can use this tool for that and that tool for that and a different identity here and so on. And thereby kind of manage that tension between privacy and openness. The outer circle were things really more relation to how people teach and how they think of themselves as teachers. So most of my 19 participants valued social learning. I'm not saying that the open educators were the only ones that valued social learning, but the ones who were open also embodied some notion of challenging traditional teaching well expectations in some way. So some people talked in the mode of having humility as a learner, wanting students to see them as a learner as well as a teacher. And there were other ways that people did that. And I can talk more about that later. One complexity around this. I don't want to go into too much depth. Okay, five minutes is the inner circle operates at two dimensions. So if you if you like, we often help staff develop their digital capabilities as individuals. But what stops people sometimes from engaging and say using social media with students is well, how do I do that as a teacher? You know, how do I manage my personal self and my teaching self and so on. So I think we need to think about those two levels of helping staff do that. And then the same with balancing privacy and openness. Because again, that seemed to be a barrier for many staff. One of the things that I thought to include in my study was I really wanted to speak to students as well, because I felt like this pedagogical interaction that's going on when we engage in open practices is is between, you know, educators and students and others. So I wanted there to be a student voice and unfortunately it wasn't as as deep as I would have liked it to be. But I did follow up interviews with two of the 19 participants educators and then surveyed their students. And what what arose were many, many more tensions. So there were some assumptions both overt and latent made by educators around how open they think students are or how willing they might be to engage in social media or what tools they use. And those were often unmatched by what the students came back and said. So the students in open responses, I asked them to just describe their digital identity. The majority of them used words like quiet, reserved, hidden, private. So they totally understand the perils of loss of privacy. And we're managing that in their own way. So when their lecturer came in and said, let's use Twitter without maybe asking them about it. Most of them didn't engage with it. Because there was no kind of pre work around that. So, you know, I really think this it kind of reinforces what I what I would say my my findings are kind of in one slide really is that I found that practicing openness is complex. Of course, it's always personal. Because once we step outside the bounded space of the VLE and we were identified with our role, our digital identity is personal. So our personal values around privacy around who we are as a teacher, our philosophy of teaching and so on come into play in how we enact openness. It's contextual. So it's very different. We might decide to interact with our students in very different ways if we're in engineering or if we're in social work, or if we're, you know, a adjunct member of faculty or someone who has tenure, all these kinds of things come into play. And finally, it's continually negotiated. So really even the people who have been open for some time, probably all the people in this room, we all know that really every every tweet, you know, one of my participants said it's a lot of work for one tweet, or she's tweeting, every time we engage in openness, we're thinking, you know, will I share this? Will I use that hashtag? You know, is all of those questions. So this notion of continual negotiation is work that people are doing, and it's not recognized and supported to just a very small extent, I would say, particularly at my institution. So, you know, I think my work and the work of a lot of you who are who, you know, there's so many people in this room whose work really inspires me and I've learned from feeds into, you know, this that Audrey Waters expressed so well is that we really need to rebuild institutions, if we are working within institutions, the value of humans' minds and lives and integrity and safety. So holding on to those values of what openness can enable and but also keeping in mind the importance of helping people to care for their private selves, protect their privacy to the extent that they define it and they wish to and so on. And that's difficult work, but I suppose it's occasions like this where we share our work with each other that can embolden us to go out and do that work in our institutions. And Henry Jenkins said this back in 2013, if we truly value participatory culture, we must recognize the right of individuals to choose not to participate, you know, and I think we could replace participatory culture with the word openness there also. It's, you know, they're very similar. So we always, students, staff, everyone must always have the option, you know, not to participate, not to be open and that needs to be okay. And finally, in the face of all that, all those tensions and risks and awful things that are there. Since November 2016, I think I've used this slide in every single one of my presentations because, yeah, we face enormous constraints in the work we do, in the culture that we live in. But I think, you know, open education is a place for so much hope. And again, it's occasions like this where we can kind of draw strength from each other. So, you know, I just, I always would like to end on a hopeful note and look forward to hearing what you all have to say. So thank you. Stand next to the mic and we're doing all questions at the end or- Let's do questions now while, is that all right? Yeah, that's fine. Fresh in your mind. And I've been asked to give people time to wait for the microphone because this is being streamed. And if the microphone doesn't get to you, then I will repeat the question. Okay. So, any questions for Catherine? Yes, Donna. Thank you. That was, is this on? Can you hear me? Yeah. That was wonderful, Catherine. Thank you. I really like what you were saying about the humility of the learner and how teachers felt it was important to communicate that. So, I wonder if you could just say a little bit more about that? Yeah, one person voiced it in that way and then, you know, several people talked about that and I was able to code it in that way. And it was people who felt it was very important for them as a teacher to show themselves as a learner always. And they weren't really connected to this role of being the expert in the room. So, those are the people who opened up their classrooms and said, well, we're going to invite Henry Jenkins or Lauren Campbell, you know, in to talk to us today. And they wanted to ask questions of those people as well and wouldn't be afraid to make mistakes, whether they were technical or around content or anything with students and also engage with students around things like, you know, what social media tools are you using? How are you using them? What are they good for? What tools could be used for this class now? What would you be willing to use? You know, and I think that it came out quite strongly in the open educators. And I don't know if that, if any of you kind of reflected on that, do you feel that in yourselves? I'm not sure. I'd love to know how the, what I presented from my educators resonates with other people's experience. Hi, it's Yoram. Thank you for your talk. I wonder, did you find and talk to educators that turned away from openness? Yes, very interesting. Yes, I did. There were, I'm thinking of one person in particular now, because I can tell the story, probably better than saying there were a few. It was someone who had engaged with you, who had used Twitter to, it was in a kind of an English literature class and students were being different characters and tweeting. And A, there were some context collapse among students and other people entering the conversation with a bit of teasing and things that he wasn't prepared for, but which he felt he dealt with. But B, he said, it just became such a tension on him that he wasn't sure if he was using it right. And if he wasn't sure if he was engaging enough, just this real weight of, you know, I'm not really sure if I'm doing it right. And I don't have the time to kind of spend, to make sure I'm doing it right. So I think I'm just not going to do that anymore. So kind of two things really. Do you think that today's social media platforms are working as they should in terms of open education? And no. And I think, I wish Alan Levine was in the room. A few of us spent the last day at Coventry and Alan Levine was sharing some open source alternatives he has to many of the tools that we know use, Slack and PowerPoint and all these things. Now obviously there's a big crisis from the heady days where we all thought social media connects the world to realizing that, you know, our data is being used, is sold, you know, in ways that we can't even see, can't even know. So it's another thing that I think many open educators who did use open tools before now feel that that's not a legitimate ethical choice with students. So yeah, and these are the kinds of conversations that I have with other open educators all the time. So at the moment, if people do elect to use it, it must be in conversation with students and also the work that's done on the front end is around how to protect your privacy, the importance of digital identity and so on. So that's the work that certainly that I would do as a practitioner with students, but I am ambivalent about it for sure. Okay. It's gone up to the back there. Sorry. Okay. Tony, it's coming back. Thanks, Catherine. At the weekend, as Luna's already said, Chris Bourg did a pretty amazing speech at the Creative Commons summit and she talked about openness as a privilege. I wonder whether that surfaced in your research, that sense of, you know, privacy and being able to balance those things that you described is a privilege that some people have and some people just don't have. Yes, indeed. Yeah, great question. I watched Chris's talk as well. It was quite amazing. And Sava Singh as well talks about this, privilege in a number of ways. You know, at a very elemental level, there are people who chose to be open in the early days of open and I count myself in that group who have this network of educators that, you know, we can now all go into Slack and all these other spaces because we have our networks. And if we then encourage our students to go into the same tools in a very different environment, there's privilege there. And there's privilege just in being the, you know, in the white, you know, patriarchal heteronormative culture. If you're any of those things, you are less likely to experience risk or abuse online, you know, on any of the open tools. So again, I think the most important point is just to be open to clarity about that with students. Because the alternative to not being open though is recognizing all those risks and then fleeing from participatory culture and the open web. And then we have no voice there. So, you know, it's navigating that, negotiating that, modeling how we negotiate that. And it's live, you know, as these things arise and helping students do that. Because, you know, our students will leave institutions as whatever, you know, nurses and social workers, whatever, as citizens in increasingly open networked and participatory culture. So unless we're helping them within our disciplines and our institutions to engage in those practices and protect their privacy and understand the risks, then we're failing, I think. Catherine, I'm going to have to stop you there. But I think that was a really important point we ended on. Thank you very much.