This being #openeducationweek, as organizers of this year’s Open Ed conference, we decided it made sense to speed up our process a bit so that we could announce the conference themes and keynotes during this auspicious week.
And yesterday we quietly did; this year’s theme is “Beyond Content” and the first two of three keynotes were announced too – we are very pleased that both Carolina Rossini and John Willinsky have agreed to speak in Vancouver in October.
But in a twist, we have reserved the final spot for you, potential attendees and supporters of open education in general, to vote on. Below is the poll (also listed in a few spots on the conference site) which is seeded with some of our dream speakers (there are no guarantees we can actually get any of them, but we can ask) and space for “write-in” candidates too
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But while I’ve got your attention…the complaints about conference proceedings, keynote choices, etc., seem to have gotten even louder lately, though they are hardly new.
The challenge we’re always met with, though, is the perception, rightly or wrongly, that for academics (and people in academic institutions) to be able to travel to these events, they often need to be able to list a publication or presentation that has been accepted into the conference proceedings in order to get funding, thus precipitating the classic “stand and deliver” lecture format conference presentation.
All of us at OpenEd 2012 are brainstorming ways to accomodate this real need and yet break out of that mould, but we could use your help too – what suggestions do you have for Open Ed 2012 on ways that we can innovate the programme and yet still help people meet some of the requirements they have to travel? What would YOU like to see at the conference this year that you haven’t seen before? Let us know! – SWL
Have had a lot of discussions about this in organising the PLE 2010 and 2011 conferences.
What we have done is to separate out the two formats of papers and publications etc and presentation. So – academics often need a publication in traditional format to get funding. That is fine. But that does not mean that is has to be presented in traditional format. So we have been grouping papers etc. and then allocating a moderator for each session who works with the presenters to develop more innovative and interactive formats for the conference. Not everyone has been happy, but in general the feedback has been very enthusiastic. It does require some time input – moderation is no longer just a task of turning up and chairing a session.
Last year we published all submissions in an open access repository and then have tried to republish selected papers in special journal editions (once more a lot of work 🙂 )