 Okay, this is something we've been looking forward to for a very long time. We decided to plan one of the keynotes at the conference to be a keynote with a difference. So I'd like to introduce you to Taskine Adam, Judith Petta, and Caroline Kuhn. These three women are from the global south, but far beyond that they are women who are engaged deeply with questions of peripheries, global versus local tensions and possibilities, and inequality, both within contexts and across contexts. And Laura and I both feel that this doctoral work that all of these three scholars are engaged in, they're doing this in ways that illuminate key issues around open education for us all. So what we've done is we've structured this keynote panel in a way so that we're going to ask each of the panelists to share a little bit about themselves and their work, and then we'll open up for questions so that you can ask questions individually and together. But really briefly, before we ask you to introduce yourselves, we would like to explain, as we do with all the keynotes, why we invited each of you. So Taskine Adam started her professional life as an engineer, founding projects and a startup. She changed tack, however, and her current work is rooted in a conviction that historical injustices, cultural imposition, and economic dependence play a pivotal role in education. Judith Petta has a background in sustainable human development. She works as a lecturer and a mentor, and one of her many goals is changing the lives of girls in Kenya through education. And finally, Caroline Kuhn has been a teacher for her entire adult life in first-name mathematics, more recently in educational technology and sociology. And she is motivated in everything she does by a passion for combating structural inequality. So welcome to all of you. We're so delighted that you could be here for the keynote. And we'd like to start by asking you to please introduce yourselves. Thank you so much, Catherine and Laura. So if any of you came to my presentation earlier, I talked about the embodiment of knowledge. And in many ways, my research is an embodiment of my life experiences, firstly, growing up with the inequalities in South Africa, and then being a student at the elite university of Cambridge. So my research intersects with the conference theme at two levels. So the first one is at a philosophical level, where I talk about digital neocolonialism and MOOCs. And so I define digital neocolonialism as a colonization of online space by hegemonic powers, which could be corporates or countries, as a means of indirect control over marginalized groups or countries. And the second angle is something that's much more practical, where I look at building an inclusive framework for online education that draws on theories of decolonization and social justice. That's linked to my work in South Africa, my fieldwork in South Africa. I'm from Kenya. I'm passionate on the issues of improving quality education among the rural dwellers. Personally, I grew up in the rural, in the village lifestyle. In the rural, we have a lot of challenges, a lot of differentiations. And the first time I saw electricity, when I came to the United Kingdom, to the main city, so there's no power, there's no electricity, and therefore there is no internet. But life has to continue. Education must be attained. You like it or not, there is nothing you can do with education, which is power. So I attained all my education achievements through chances. From well wishes, because of my background, growing up as an orphan was not very easy. But I am where I am because I had the passion to ensure that people attain quality education that is going to provide social transformation, of course, making people live decent lives. My PhD study is very related to the theme of this conference, differentiation in the youths and access to open educational resources. And this is within three countries in Africa, Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa. And this conference is very important for me because I'm going to share with you on how we can enhance quality education through equity, inclusion, and diversity. And I am Caroline Kuhn. Thank you for this invitation. It's incredible for all of us. So I was born in Venezuela, but I have German parents. And in Venezuela, having German parents and having a German upbringing is a privilege by default. I think that made me very, very uncomfortable. I never felt I was in the place where I wanted to be. And that inspired me always to, I think, to pursue what I could in order to see how I could do anything for that inequality where I grew in Venezuela. It's a very unequal country. That same inequality and that same really unevenness in society brought me then to Europe, back to my German roots, I would say. And very funnily enough here in the UK, well, not here, but in the UK, I engaged in my research in the same issue, a bit different, but how can we raise students' voice? How can we hear to these kind of marginalized voices that little people pay attention to? And to whatever conference I go, there is very little always done a wrap students voice. So I think that my values just they are, they don't have frontier. And so I think with that, I end this first part. Thanks so much for that. Can you each tell us about some of the challenges that you have experienced and faced? Okay. So in my research, I'm challenging whether openness is innately and unquestionably good or unquestionably beneficial. So one of the main concerns for me in terms of openness is that in its well-intentioned philanthropic attempts to strive for universal free education to all parts of the globe, we often assume a one-size-fits-all model to diverse populations from different world views and different material contexts. And this can actually amplify injustices because the producers of online content actually lie predominantly in the West and the global saw they're seen mainly as recipients and they don't have the financial means to become producers of content. So this leads to something that's quite foundational in my PhD and that is placing open education historically. So by this I'm referring to the historical imbalances that are embedded in education systems and how they are now carried over and amplified in online open education. So often when we try to fix problems such as lack of diversity online without actually reflecting on how these imbalances came to be and how they continue to impact us. So we actually end up addressing the symptoms rather than the causes. So when I'm talking about these injustices, I'm not just talking about the material injustices such as lack of access to resources. But what I'm talking about is epistemic injustices such as what counts as knowledge and whose knowledge counts. And here I would echo the sentiments of Jan Derry when she highlights that while we are continuously improving our online pedagogies, little question is given to the question of knowledge, meaning our epistemologies. And this is what I want to bring to the forefront of openness. Now looking at open online education production such as a heat map produced by Aras, Suzanne and Len, they really highlight the inequalities of open educational publications. And these maps are crucial in highlighting inter-country inequalities. However, we really have to be wary of the information that these maps hide. And as the authors allude to, many of the publications come from just a handful of institutes within these countries and they don't actually represent the thoughts and views and practices of the country in general. Now adding to this, we often fool ourselves into thinking that if we have representatives from many countries, like the panel right now, we have included diverse voices. But this is actually not true because in the age of globalization, we have elite and well-educated in all countries, just as we have marginalized voices in the US. So what I'm really trying to say is we need to look at inter-country divisions in class as well. And we need to focus on including marginalized voices on their terms. And that is something I'll get to in a bit. I'm challenging the fact that people normally assume Africa as a country. Indeed, Africa is not a country. There is a lot of differences between the African countries that we really have to understand. And the openness has not embraced differentiation among African countries. And in fact, focusing on the universities that we have, we do not practice similar educational systems. They are very different. The focus to any curriculum is very different. The approach to research is very different. And therefore we cannot just assume there is no universal understanding of openness in all the African countries. And indeed, such barriers that we experience like the barrier to legality, the barriers to access, barriers to use and reuse. All this gives us an indication that African countries are not the same. While these barriers exist, how then can the uses who come from the global south, go beyond just reading and using the resources that are out there for their use? How then can we rebuild and also adapt these resources to help us in solving our local problems, identifying our local solutions to our local problems? And just to put you in context, my context is a very small sample of 20 students. And so it's just to, yeah, that you're aware that what I'm talking is in that context. So the question is, what does open look like in my context, which is a higher education institution in the UK? And it's really a fantasy. Students wanting to engage with digital practices is not enough. I think that there is a need to look deeper and what is really constraining that. And four things came out of my research. One of them is the conflicting emotions, anxiety, stress, not knowing what to do, uncertainty. And so those learning spaces are spaces of struggle more than any other thing. Technological infrastructure. So how do we go to these new tools? How do we speak these new languages? How do we embrace new roles and new norms? How do we communicate? What's sharing? How do we do that? All of that is a constraint. And necessarily, they know how to overcome that. We know from research that students have three ways in which they can approach learning. Normally, it's surface learning what they do, strategic if we are very lucky. And in a way that is a problem when you want them to dig deeper and to explore and have an explorative mindset is not there. It's not obvious. And it doesn't happen all the time. And to finish with, I would say, and the talk this morning couldn't be better for our talk this afternoon. We are really the institutional culture and the institution is in a jail, I think, in this kind of marketization. I don't know how to say it, or as it's best. The way in which we would need a culture that supports embedding, modeling these open practices is really difficult. We I think we don't have we don't have it. So yeah, that's my context. Thank you. One of the things that Laura and I wanted to ask each of you was your work is arising in very different contexts, geographically the granularity of the work as you talked about Caroline. So but you're all bring forward this notion of the praxis of openness. So we're just wanted to ask you to highlight how you're doing that in your work specifically and maybe really highlight what you're doing in your doctoral research. Um, so in responding to the challenges that I raised earlier about trying to include more local, more nuanced voices into into openness, the question then becomes how so how do we include how do you recenter local in this big expansive place of openness, and where there are millions of locals to center and privilege. So in answering this, I've drawn up the areas of social justice, decolonization and liberation. And I particularly focus on the work of Jonathan Johnson. So what I do here is I draw parallels between his work in decolonization of education in South Africa, and I've mapped it onto the online space. So in the first movement, we talk about this absolute movement to replace all things Western and colonial for with with local ones, for example, African knowledge systems in order to rebuild one's own knowledge base. Now, such a movement is crucial in establishing, developing and strengthening marginalized worldviews. However, it can also lead to essentialism and nativism. And as Cheryl mentioned earlier, sort of throwing out the baby with the barb water. Now, in the second movement, it's slightly different in terms of recentering one's education around local knowledges, such as Afrocentric knowledge systems, while still acknowledging other models relative to it. So this suggestion is much more useful in the online, open online education space, where if, for example, a move comes from Brazil, it can embody a Brazilian worldview within that. And you see more mooks like this popping up off late. However, the question here then becomes this idea of this romanticization of the local and indigenous knowledge as something that is beyond critique. So in the last model that I look at is that looking at knowledge more as something entangled in a way that is not regional, but something that is traveling across space and through time. So in this type of model, there's more of an emphasis on the concept of the principle rather than the region that it's from. And in this type of model, a diverse participant who is actually the feature of the model rather than the challenge. Additionally, this type of model will produce room for critical engagement and for dialogical learning, where ideas can be shared inter-cultury and evolve. However, what is really crucial and what is important is that the first and second movements need to happen first before we can get to the step. Because it's important for these marginalized voices to first be acknowledged and established before we can take them to a stage of critical engagement. And this is the concept that Gayatri Spavak calls strategic essentialism, where the one first privileges the marginalized voices before they come into engagement with others. So for me, if dialogue is futile, if we don't actually have a plurality of voices existing in the first place, and how I see it is that it's a three-stage process rather than alternatives. So another crucial point on a different note that I want to make is that we need to understand to what extent local knowledges and pedagogies can want to be open. And here, while we need to look at more, or while we need more local and indigenous knowledges online, I also want to draw attention to the idea of adverse incorporation, where certain ways of knowing, certain epistemologies don't actually fit into the rubrics of openness at all. As a, for example, I want to draw your attention to Marabitul Hajj, who is a Mauritanian scholar, Islamic scholar, who to me represents this pre-modern Islamic pedagogy. Now, in this type of, in this epistemological foundation, it's entirely different where just sitting with the teacher, being in their presence, following them around in their daily life is counted as valuable learning because one would be blessed by their spiritual presence. And here, the connection between the student and the teacher is one of the heart and the soul and not just the mind. The teacher is not just the source of knowledge, nor are they the facilitator of knowledge. They are the embodiment of knowledge. And who the teacher is is much more valuable than what or how they teach, how they teach. And so now my question to you is, how do we even begin to bring such pedagogies into openness? The foremost that I would propose is the fact that we need to embrace differences. There is power in differential. When we all accept and appreciate that we belong and they belong, and we are one, then I believe we are moving towards achieving the strength of openness. Now, fairness is a value that we cannot ignore irrespective of where you start from. And acknowledging the fact that individual levels of support are needed at any level. And remember the fact that we are from different backgrounds, brought up differently, our beliefs and practices are also different. And therefore, when we come up with support, we need to understand what form of support do I provide to whom and how do I provide this support? Are there strings attached? We need open and free support that are not binding people. Now, integration of open educational resources and cognitive justice in teaching and learning is a powerful tool to enhance openness. Now, I will talk about cognitive justice. I believe to the fact that knowledge rests in people. And when people are properly understood and respected, you get that knowledge for free. And you get the best. And when we have the best, and you include them in the processes of coming up with solutions, then we are going to respond or come up with policies that are responding directly to particular or specific problems. Now, equal collaboration and ownership is another key factor. When I feel respected and I feel I belong, therefore I own. When I own, I will never let go. Therefore, another model of socialism that I really would like to strongly support is what we call the social inclusion. We need to understand that we are both from different contexts. And therefore, whichever solution that we come up with to solve a particular problem, I need to be part and parcel of. We need to embrace and involve the marginalized. We need to appreciate the fact that we are not the same. And once we do this, then we come up with solutions that are going to respond to the needs of the people on the ground. The local communities are very open and free. The knowledge they are in from our great grandparents was shared for free. And there were no strings attached to this knowledge. I would rush to my grandmother to tell me how I will be a wonderful woman to my husband. How will build that family? I would pay nothing to my grandmother. Can't we get to that level where I am felt or I believe that I own the knowledge that I share. I own the knowledge that I get out there. Then I adapt this knowledge and then reuse it to help me solve the local problems that I face. Therefore, building up the quality from the local perspective is the way to go to solve solutions that are sustainable solutions that are giving dignity to life and those that are going to last longer and will build the generations to come. So going back to the micro picture, which is my research and responding to the challenges I have seen in my in my data and in my students and in my group of people that students aspire to a better and more sophisticated digital practice. They acknowledge the need and they want to improve that. So the way I have thought that could be done is rethinking and redesigning curricula, but paying special attention to space. I think space is a really important construct and is a really important thing that we should think about. Actually, I think what what we what I see in my maps is disjoint spaces between the personal space and between the institutional space and you will see that. So these are the maps that I got from my participants. As you see, that is the visitor resident approach that David White and Arisone Cornu did in 2011. Thank you, David White. If you're around, it's a great resource to work with and students map the tools with which they engaged and they then explained why they did it and what motivated them to do what the maps say. And what we can see here is how incredibly populated the personal space is and how incredibly scarce and discerning the academic or institutional space is. And that really caught my attention. Why is this so? Why why why do we see these maps that don't have one tool, even? And it really is is a thing that I'm putting all my intellectual energy into finding out why that's happening. I think that this euclidean vision on static and space as an empty vessel that we need to fill with tools, in this case. And with actions, it's very, very problematic. I think that space should be seen as an opportunity to share meaning with the lecturer with so the academic space and the personal space should be sharing meaning. And we shouldn't see and I go back this. I argue for something a bit different. So what I am proposing and I have drawn on social theory for this and the social theory of space and human geography, which has been incredibly useful. I have kind of used that theory to do virtual spaces, but I think it has been quite powerful. And so I think we should craft learning spaces. Sorry, I lost it. And we should also crafting learning spaces with tools and resources is complex, new ones, relational and emotional. There is a lot of this stress and anxiety and preoccupation that I think we need to take into I think that learning spaces should be emergent and spaces for coming. And coming means learning as becoming. And that's the way I envision learning. I think learning is that process of becoming a person and that is different in different stages of our life. And becoming as co-intentional as Paolo Freire said in his work early, the pedagogy of the oppressed. And I think there is a lot of power to exploit there. And there should be a transition between space and place. And I won't read this quote, but it's a quote that talks about how that transition can be achieved. And what it really tells us there is that so that's social theory of space. And it's about natural spaces become social spaces, which is what we want to we want to achieve. Once people begin to use it, boundaries are put on it and meanings are attached to it. The air over dirt, which I like very much becomes a plot and the user obtains control over the bounded space. And I think this is what we really would like to achieve. A space, a digital space that is open, that is populated, that is active, that relates and that is meaningful for that person that is enacting that space. And this is a work I'm doing and visioning how can we conceptualize these open learning spaces for a variety of students. And topology of spaces is very helpful in this case because topology is the strand of mathematics that studies the invariant properties of spaces that have continually been changed in shape or in size. And so that begs the question for me, at least, to think about what are these invariant properties for open learning spaces? And these seven duplets are, as I have called them, are the answer, the tentative answer that needs a bit more work to do. But it's what I have been thinking about. So I imagine that brings us to the last question. Yes. The last question, and it's really unfair to do this to you, to ask you very briefly to speak about your vision. And then possible in a sentence, I know, and I know that people are going to be picking this up with you because I can see how riveted everyone's been. So if you can do that in a sentence. Well, no, it's true. OK, so for me, we think we need to approach the future of openness much more cautiously. And I think we'd be preaching to the choir here because everyone knows about the lack of diversity online. But what I think we really need to be wary of is how these knowledges are brought online. And this really boils down to who owns the means of production and who owns decision-making power. Specifically with my work on MOOC, MOOC platforms, you see there's a well-intentioned aim to try and include more diverse voices. But what happens is actually this MOOC form of localization just as McDonald's has the McSpicy Paneer and the McAlloo Wrap. Now we have these diverse MOOC platforms, but actually what we have is a Western oligopoly of MOOC platforms. And we don't actually allow for space of diversity of platforms. And for me, this leads to an idea of commodification of culture. So I'll just leave that to you as my challenge of really how are we going to bring these online? What is the most ethical and moral way? Now, for me, as one presenting the voices of the people who are marginalized, all the unheard voices, I advocate for equity unbound. Working together without boundaries. And friends, I want to tell you from a personal experience that boundaries create sphere, boundaries limits. And of course, it frustrates. As an open scholar, I felt like climbing the walls to get to an open conference because of certain boundaries. And I just got here just in time because of boundaries. And therefore, I believe so much that if we embrace equity, then we appreciate and understand that I am because you are and you are because I am that spirit of coexistence that we're going to achieve a lot. And I'll close this with Brian Matters, illustrations who are just brilliant saying that open is an attitude. But I don't think it's an attitude that is natural, that we're just arise because life is nice. I think we need to work on it. I think we need to design for open. So for that attitude to open, to arise and to flourish in a space that is thought and designed for that openness in a way. And we have a last slide, which is again, Brian, thank you very much for your beautiful work. And just saying that there are a constellation of pathways and the pathway that whoever is here takes is wonderful. If it's with the intention of really as you did this, trying to really blur the boundaries and try to that we all in the lecture hall and the three of us get to this one vision of being open, really the default mode of learning and of existing, I think. So thank you very much. I am very sorry that the program was not going to allow us to have questions for now, I think, because there are sessions after this. But I think thank you seems a really inadequate thing to say for what you've just shared with us. And I'd like everyone to just express their appreciation to our panel. The door is open. Killer sperm, blue and humpback. 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