 Welcome to this Domains 21 session. I am joined today by Katarina Schultz and Christian Fradrich and they'll be here today talking to us about outside their domain introducing German higher ed to Domain of One Zone which is near and dear to my heart so please Katarina and Christian take it away. Thanks Jim we're very happy to be here and talk about our project and yeah it's a special occasion for us. Yeah thanks very much so what we have planned for for today for this session is we'll kick things off with a short presentation a couple of slides that Katarina will present and then hope to dive into a more conversational part especially with you Jim but of course not also with everyone participating and viewing this session so let me just see if this works now you should be able to see my screen now right yeah thank you nice yeah so first off we have a short presentation about our project it's just simply called Domain of One Zone because actually the concept is not very well known in Germany and that's one of the main goals of our project to make it better known in Germany and our project is funded by the University of Applied Sciences Hamburg Haavi Hamburg as part of a corporation of all or most or most Hamburg universities called the Hamburg Open Online University it all started at an event called OER camp meets hacks and tools the OER camps was a series of barcamps funded by the German Ministry of Education and Science and the hacks and tools was sort of a workshop where where people could bring their OER projects and work with coaches and it was also the opportunity to win funding and Christian and I were there it was almost exactly a year ago and we had talked about doing something on Domain of One Zone before and we spontaneously decided to pitch for funding and this is us during the pitch and yeah so we were a bit surprised because it was all spontaneous and we actually won a little bit of funding by Hamburg Open Online University the project has sort of the main task or one of the main aims is as I said making domain of one's own better known in Germany but also is when you translate something into German or any other language you also have to to suit it to the country and not only translated but also look at the differences and what the special what the culture needs and so we are sort of trying to adapt domain of one's own for Germany so we it started off with a white paper by edu course seven things you need to know about domain of one's own and we're trying to adapt this for the German culture for the German higher ed landscape yeah the main goal is to tell people how to do it so what is it because as I said it's not very well known so we want to provide material about what the concept entails and but also what they should know if they want to try to implement it at their own university and so we're looking at the at the concept from different perspectives pedagogy didactics but also cultural circumstances organizational aspects and but also the students perspective is very important for us we started out by taking a look at the concept through a series of conversations which we recorded in a podcast and we had different guests from different fields we had someone who is an expert on open education and works in is a professor in the field but we also we talked with the students and we also talked with people who are more in the strategic sector in German higher ed apart from the podcast we are also going to develop white papers and sort of guides or how-to's that you so you have a guideline if you want to implement the concept in your teaching what we'd like to talk about now is the challenges that we face but also we brought a couple of questions that we could would like to discuss with people who have experience with the concept and some of the the challenges we face is that Germany is a largely conservative or it has very conservative traditions the German higher ed landscape and but it's also largely publicly funded which means it's traditionally under funded and it also has a culture that is not very open to change and yes so we brought a couple of questions that we could discuss and we would also like to hear from you about your experiences and also your success stories so we're hoping there those are out there but one of the things I wanted to ask as we start this and I'm pretty interested in is over the last five or six years since about 2016 when a German contingent came to OER and I was actually at that conference there seemed to be a moment in the German higher ed landscape where it's like OER is something we need to pursue and I wonder like how has that developed and do you see overlap in the work you're doing with the larger push and funding of open educational resources so I'll start there and then we can address those questions as we move part of the reason why and I was at that conference in 2016 in Edinburgh part of the reason I think why at least more and more take up among the the German communities and around open education was especially to the OER conference I think were two things and on the one hand there was some funding available with OER info I think Jürgen Musmehlitz has talked a bit about that and the OER camp for example where we pitched this idea and then developed this idea of trying to convert ideas of Domain of One Zone to the German landscape that's basically OER the OER camp so this this kind of conference is financed or was financed by OER info in in large parts at least together with the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and that kind of enabled a more systematic take up of OER and open education principles in the German landscape in 2016 there was also the most recent coalition in the German government you all know Angela Merkel probably and in the coalition papers it was stated that Germany would try and develop an OER strategy that hasn't really happened yet now in the last six or seven eight months of this of this government being in charge it seems almost like a fig leaf approach to develop a OER strategy now at least from what I can tell but of course that they are starting that and they're starting with conversations around that and there I think a week before this airs we should have more input on how the consultations with different stakeholders went I think they're scheduled for mid-April which is also a first so the the Ministry of Education doesn't usually consult stakeholders in this kind of official manner when developing strategies so OER is playing a role but OER info the the project that I just mentioned that is kind of supposed to network different actors was not continued and ended by I think March no fall in 2020 I see some similarities I work in the field of open access so support for research publications and that's something that has also there have been strategies by the government and by by federal states and then recently I read that the Green Party they have in there for the coming elections so one of their claims is that open access should become the standard for research publications and that's exactly the same sentence that has been in strategies for 10 years or 15 years and so I have the same thing seems to be happening with OER strategy so it it doesn't really it's not really much happening there there's strategies but we don't really see a lot of structural change so one of the things I'm interested in is I mean it sounds to me when you frame the the broader public funded fairly conservative because that is public funds and you know the risks you take have a lot of implications more broadly for the nation so I'm wondering how do you see the main of one's own within the context of German higher education a lot of folks who I who will be talking about it and chatting about it and you'll hear about may use it as a form of a portfolio an experimental place to kind of narrate your learning over time places for faculty to share their research I mean but in the end we're talking about a website that you and maybe a community control and build and it's not limited to one technology but hopefully gives you access to several so in the context of the German higher ed landscape how would that or how are you positioning that as something where folks would be enticed or from my experience you have to be a sort of a bit you have to make sure that you don't come across as someone who wants to change everything because then people only think of the challenges and all the reasons why it wouldn't work so when you try to explain the idea most people say oh so it's like an e-portfolio because that's something that German universities have been doing not all of them but it's sort of they know about it and they can relate to domains from that viewpoint and from my experience I think it's best to try to start small and not to yeah try to change the whole landscape of a university that's that's right if you come across as the flag-carrying revolutionary trying to conquer a campus or an IT center at on a on a campus you'll be shut out but on the other hand I think that the very very very many things of the main of one's own kind of are great fits to the overall culture and strategy of public universities being publicly funded and I can hear like Robin DeRosa sigh in the back a bit of about your your higher ed sector is mostly publicly funded and that given given that domains enables you to claim your space on the public web on for everybody to be able to to access it if you allow them to if you if you enable that whatever kind of technology you use I think that's for example a great a great fit and can easily be tacked to different kind of strategic viewpoints that universities and higher ed actors sometimes have on the other hand what we ran into quite a lot by now is like this we've we've been there before we've done that before kind of feedback so many of you and I know you Jim you might remember this as well I'm pretty I'm pretty sure you do because I think I stumbled upon a couple of screenshots of a couple of like personal HTML designed websites that faculty and staff at a university had in the 90s and I think I'm not sure maybe somebody can will be able to dig it up or I might be able to find it I think I even saw that in a blog post by you Jim a couple of years ago where you kind of highlighted those HTML based websites that could look kind of freaky several of them were German actually and several of them are German we just we just ran a workshop with the university in Mainz in Germany and there was one oh yeah with the workshop was based in Frankfurt but there was one guy from the university in Mainz or who was based at the university in Mainz at their IT department and he was like well I don't know what you're talking about we basically shut down what you're talking about in 2018 so up until that point they had those sites up and running and not many people were able to claim that because it was kind of technologically not as accessible if you this this kind of disconnect and I think to some extent it even ignores that there's pedagogy there's organizational development evolved there's all these things that might have been ignored when this was around in the 90s yeah I think that's the problem from what that guy told us it wasn't they so they just gave them the space the web space and there was no support there was no there might have been technical support but nobody helped them and gave them ideas what they could do with it it wasn't embedded in the pedagogy that the teaching and learning so of course it doesn't work the the idea of the 90s web there's a a Russian net artist Olya Liolina who I'm really interested in and she just wrote a piece from from my to me talking about the changing nature of the web from a kind of my site my space my you know geosities to me look at me here I am and and how the me is always on another platform that you don't know and I think that point you're making about these faculty who actually were doing open education were sharing their courses were building out resources for students were running entire courses online in the 90s using html we're really aligning in kind of in some ways not only aligning but full-blown bulldozing a whole infrastructure of the web and open educational resources in place of these platforms in place of these vendor solutions in place of you name it and the point you're making which is really interesting because I was on a call recently where there was a school who was arguing we need to get rid of you know hundreds of html sites on an Apache server because like they're no longer sustainable and I have this voice in my head from Olya Liolina's recent you know article where I'm like that's a mistake like I don't know if this makes sense to start thinking of the web as a kind of a necessary singular progress where the idea of building and creating a sense in a presence that you have and that can be consistent and maybe not the brand that the university is going for is important and I think in some ways that space of a domain of one's own whether it's to reclaim or wherever is important because a lot of those faculty have become disempowered with the work that they did for many of them several decades so it's a really interesting question around how much power do we seed not only to the big platforms right but also even to central it of the work we've done over time and I think that really puts domains to me in a very interesting place because historically the need for it is there but I think that might be one of the big obstacles in Germany actually central it and central communication departments who don't really want to give not only students but also faculty they don't want to give them their own domains that's the first thing you hear at several universities why should we should central communication allow students to have their own domain when even we the faculty aren't allowed to have it and you talk to central it and when you're building a publication server like an institutional repository yeah but they can put on that server they can put anything they want who controls the quality and so that's I think that's big obstacle in Germany it's a question there and it came up recently I think Gardner Campbell blogged just the other day about this idea of how do we and why why do we have the power to seed so much of the cultural history of an institution and the thinking for faculty for students on these different technologies whether they're html sites from the 90s or say web a wordpress site that's no longer wanting to be supported by central it or whatever how do we give one group that much power to say no or to say goodbye and this isn't to vilify central it because they have a lot of real challenges in this changing ecosystem right like they have hard to keep on to their to their employees because so much they can make so much money elsewhere they have to outsource a lot of that to keep up I mean there's challenges at least I'm speaking from the US perspective but at the same time politically and policy wise these decisions are being made unilaterally about a whole history of web-based learning where I think in this moment during the pandemic we'd be like oh maybe it's important to hold on to a little bit of that long history to understand where we were where we are and where we're going but I find that stuff is just bulldoze kind of like cities during the 60s as they're getting ready for the next wave of gentrification it's really crazy part like I have two thoughts on that and the first one is is pretty short I think the the whole job description of the central IT is to be risk averse and not to and that kind of that deconstructs lots lots of innovation quite quickly actually I mean to to some extent you just hit a wall because the in the end any kind of security be copyright wise or anything else like that might be in the way or might be might need to be figured out and in that moment IT at this moment can say we're not doing this and that is because from my experience lots of higher ed institutions in Germany and sometimes elsewhere as well think of IT kind of as like the the executing branch kind of like a not no disrespect but kind of like the janitor of the university when it comes to the digital like you you just do what you're told and you you try not to cost as much you'll you have to be efficient and effective in what we want you to do but you kind of deliver the bare minimum at least in in Germany that's quite often the case and I have high respect for the people still doing that job because you have to keep a lot of balls in the air kind of you have to juggle quite a bit you have to outsource you you need to recruit people who can actually do the work while not being able to pay salaries that would be like industry standard so there's lots of balls in the air and then then we come along and ask people to hey wouldn't it be a cool idea if like the the first semester students got their own domain when they when they join our institution and they will just throw their hands in the air and tell you to leave the room and I can understand how they do that and I think it's a strategic and organizational development challenge then and it's not about IT anymore and this is something we've seen I think for for over a decade longer now of IT from the academic mission and at some points they're actually working at cross purposes given that idea of trying to keep everything controlled and some of the unknowns that come with IT and some of the larger kind of possibilities for you know what we see like systemic failure if an application doesn't work so that push for an enterprise singular application often means they're more concerned about one thing being reliable and not about a whole different garden of you know various you know herbs and flowers and plants and vegetables that you're growing so that you have a rich kind of well-balanced diet to use a bad metaphor so it is I mean and it's an ongoing struggle and on the other side we we in some ways reclaim hosting not to use this as a little commercial but don't ever put it past me is one of the things that actually happens is we find ourselves in that weird space where there is IT organizations that can't or won't do it and there's faculty and students and groups and organizations on campus that need to do it and so it just fits a need and IT doesn't mind because they don't want to be left holding the bag and they have other things to do and yet we're kind of situated in that we understand the needs and kind of deal with these applications and these server infrastructures on a regular basis so it's that kind of strange thing that I always thought I was going to be instructional technologist at a university for life but turns out universities are more interested in getting help from a third party often corporate situation and in some ways it's easy at least in America to velify the vendor and you know celebrate the university and what could be and I understand that struggle but at the same time the universities are the one who are looking for those alternatives because and that's the people who kind of are doing this because internally they're not getting support and so there's a weird struggle there and I wonder just how you are both working in some ways externally to try and rethink how folks can do it internally I imagine that presents some real struggles so what are some of the examples you use like when you go how do you frame it like how do you say here's what's happening wouldn't you want to allow your students of faculty to do this I think we're still on the way of figuring this out so we've looked at for example Coventry and because they kind of have this this great intro to what does domains mean on their website and I think that's a good example because it kind of enables us to say well this was started at least while they were still within in the European Union right so any kind of the the the UK sector at least is perceived sometimes as a bit more comparable to what we have in continent on continental Europe so that's one thing the e-portfolio was mentioned before like this this can be a segue into this whole thing and I think it's a classic but also linking it to institutional strategies and maybe even regional strategies like the Hamburg of Hamburg of Monline University does so claiming that learning and teaching should kind of interact with society as a whole and and making that more strategic maybe even not as easily graspable argument but those kinds of segues we we've tried out also and that's I think my last point to this is you can link the main of one's own to something that many people would say is kind of an almost an not an not an explicit goal of higher ed education quite quite often but like anything that can be linked to digital literacies or digital or or any kind of competence framework nobody ever asks a student after university well how are your Moodle skills how are your I don't know LMS skills but if you if you come out of university and you can I don't know work with WordPress you know PHP HTML whatever it is I wish I had been at a university running this stuff because my life would be much easier now and I think that goes for lots of other people in their job world but also in like the their private lives and one thing you can also start try to connect to when talking about domains is there are a couple of universities that try to do research-based learning so foshunders down that's a big thing in Germany has a sort of a strong it has strong advocates in Germany and so that's also where I come from from the open access viewpoint so trying to link student publishing to domains can also work there there are projects that try to have students publish also as part of their studies so that that's also something that some universities can relate to I have to say this has been an amazing conversation I want to thank you both for taking the time to not only promote the good word of domain of one's own far and wide in Germany but also just thinking critically about what it means to do something like this in a different context culturally politically etc it's it's super interesting and hopefully you'll find not only other people inspired by your work but also inspired by others so that the virtuous circle can keep on turning so thank you both for joining us for another great session and domains 21 big fan thank you thanks for making this work looking forward to the other sessions I'm not not