Creating and Extending Open Education, with Terry Greene

[00:00:00] Bonni Stachowiak: Today on Episode 364, Terry Greene joins me, and talks about Creating and Extending Open Education.

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[00:00:10] Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential.

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[00:00:21] Bonni: Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches, so we can have more peace in our lives, and be even more present for our students.

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I’m so glad to have Terry Greene joining me for today’s episode. He’s an eLearning Designer at Trent University. He’s also the host of two podcasts, Gettin’ Air: The Open Pedagogy Podcast and Check the O.L.: Liner Notes for Groundbreaking Online Learning, co-hosted with Anne-Marie Scott. He holds a B.Ed. in Elementary Education from the University of Alberta and an M.Sc. in Instructional Design & Technology from the University of North Dakota.

He’s interested in both the cutting and trailing edges of uses for technology and education, especially those that increase the human element in technology-enabled learning intent. Those are probably the more open ones. Terry Greene, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:01:41] Terry Greene: Thanks for having me. I’m honored to be on this list of guests. I’m excited to chat.

[00:01:47] Bonni: I am somewhat intimidated, as you know, by having you here because you are such a superb interviewer and storyteller through that process and other processes. You did such an amazing job with preparing episodes. Anyway, I’m just glad I got over myself. You’re here and I’m so glad to be having this conversation. To start out, we have so much to share today. To start out, I’d love to just go big and ask you how do you come up with ideas?

[00:02:16] Terry: I think you just have to wait for them. It’s very strange to say but Gardner Campbell, my favorite keynote ever was the opening keynote for that OpenEd 16 in Richmond, Virginia. It was all about insight. The insights came from– They just came from letting them happen like there’s actual gamma rays happening or gamma waves. I don’t even remember but the whole story was based on this inside a smokejumper hat to save his own life in a forest fire that the others didn’t listen because it sounded so crazy.

It worked. He started a fire to save his own life and the others perished. Obviously, that’s terrible but the insight was unbelievable. The answer to me is you just got to keep taking things in, follow paths you’re interested in it, but wait for the insight to happen, and then act on it when it comes.

[00:03:16] Bonni: I’m going to have to look and see if that’s avail– I suspect that’s probably available somewhere [crosstalk]–

[00:03:20] Terry: I believe Robin DeRosa Periscoped it. I don’t even think Periscope is a thing anymore. Basically, live stream from your phone. It’s actually a decent version. I think I’ll be able to find it.

[00:03:32] Bonni: Oh, my gosh. Before we started recording, you even just– once again, this is not new for me or you [chuckles] because you do this thing all the time. You notice that this is Episode 364. Then, you said, “Hey, you’re one episode away from being able to have someone listen to an episode every single day for an entire year.” What you just shared about Gardner Campbell’s insights for you reminds me a little bit of the Mary Oliver quote about, “Pay attention, be astonished, tell about it.”

I think some of that, what you’re describing is reminding me a little bit just of the importance of paying attention before you even– I think sometimes we just try to go straight for it, have the idea. I don’t see that with you. That pressure is almost like you can live without that pressure, just pay attention, and then see what emerges. I don’t think I ever would have noticed that about– [laughs] You constantly seem to be paying attention and then being astonished. You seem to be a person full of joy in those noticing of things and then telling about them.

[00:04:39] Terry: I think that joy is a keyword of something missing in education a lot that doesn’t have to be. I do look for that, wait for it, and share it when I see it.

[00:04:51] Bonni: Well, we’re going to get to hear about a few of these projects and creations of yours. I know that– I shouldn’t say I know that. My suspicion is you don’t do anything alone. [laughs] There’s always other people involved. This first project that we’re going to talk about, I know, is definitely one of those ways. Let’s just back up a moment and have you start by telling us what is a patch?

[00:05:12] Terry: A patch, I think, is a piece of a bigger thing, like a patch of land is a piece of maybe a bigger farm, or a ranch, or something, a patch on your jean jacket, like a Wu-Tang, or a Led Zeppelin patch is probably a piece of a collection showing a greater collection of things I think.

[00:05:37] Bonni: What’s a patch-book?

[00:05:39] Terry: A patch-book is a collection of works by not just one person, but many people, everybody choosing one topic that they are drawn to share their take on. If you get 20 people to do that, you have 20 patches, put them together, you got a patch-book.

[00:06:00] Bonni: Finally, or actually, not even finally, [laughs] the next question, what’s an open patch-book?

[00:06:06] Terry: The “open” part means it’s– I think that’s part of everything there that is shared openly with an open license, creative commons license, and everybody understands that before they contribute to it. This open patch-book, well, this to them is meant to be a community quilt of learning or teaching that you get enough together, put them together into one thing, and it covers not everything, but covers you for that topic.

[00:06:38] Bonni: know that creating an open patch-book had some unexpected benefits for you. Would you talk a little bit about some of the fruits of your labor? [chuckles]

[00:06:50] Terry: Yes. Well, first of all, it’s the act of collecting patches and connecting with people who want to contribute has grown my own personal professional learning network greatly, which has been very beneficial. This is in 2019. Here’s a promotion of being a self-promoter once in a while, not overly, but I saw a nomination for him, for the Open Education Global, OEGlobal Awards, the Open Pedagogy Award, and I was like, “I think the patch-book might be in there as a something to consider for that award. Why should I wait to see if someone else would nominate me? I’m going to nominate myself. It said self-nominations are welcome,” so I did.

I won the Open Pedagogy Award for 2019, from OEGlobal, and just so happened to be in Milan, Italy. I was able to go abroad, my 18-month-old daughter with me. It was like the end of 2019. It was literally a couple months before Milan got ravaged pretty bad by COVID. The timing was very lucky because it was just before. It was the last trip I ever took. [chuckles] It was really neat, like not only to get the award, but to see the people who do Open Education at a global scale in person and hang out. It was awesome.

[00:08:22] Bonni: You, like me, like podcasts, you not only listen to them, but you also create them. Would you tell us about a couple of your podcasting projects?

[00:08:31] Terry: For sure. The main one is called Gettin’ Air. It’s the Open Pedagogy Podcast. The idea is to connect with someone who does work in Open Education and get them some airtime to share with my audience about their work, and the projects they’re working on, and what they’re excited about, and how they do their Open Education thing, which is really cool because I get to connect with them, meet them, and even grow my network there that way, too, which is a self-serving thing about it. Also, I think for those who listen, they get a sense of who out there is doing interesting work that they might want to connect with on projects and stuff. That’s the idea with that one.

[00:09:15] Bonni: Then, what’s the other one that you are doing with Anne-Marie Scott?

[00:09:18] Terry: Yes. Anne-Marie Scott’s a deputy provost at Athabasca University, which is Canada’s– the Open University in the UK. It’s Canada’s Distance University. Basically, I was, the last summer, just building online courses like crazy. I had a lot of free time for my ears, was just listening to a lot of hip-hop, and rekindling my love for it that I had at a young age and lost it for a while.

Then, I started thinking, “I want to learn more about hip-hop to catch up on things.” I came across a book called Check the Technique, which is, basically, the writer, Brian Coleman, wanted to tell the stories of how the most groundbreaking hip-hop albums came to be. So, connect with the producers, the artists, the emcees, everything, and just tell the story. There’s two books of it. There’s a volume two and I just devoured it and it was so interesting. I started to see connections between that and creating an online course, which is what I was focusing on doing, and how technological hip-hop was, how groundbreaking, innovative, and collecting things from the past, and sampling it.

I saw that you could do that in developing online learning. I ran the idea by Anne-Marie Scott one day saying, “Could there be a similar book here not for hip-hop but for groundbreaking online learning?” She said, “It sounds cool. Let’s write a book.” I said, “This is going to be fun. Let’s do that as a podcast first, just to start to connect.” This is a podcast trying to work its way into a book.

At this point, we have eight online learning experiences covered, two more planned for our first season. The course is at Laura Gibbs, the online course lady who just– That’s her Twitter handle, who just keynoted the OER and the domains conference. She does just amazing lead works the way myth and folklore are woven together. She developed the course the way the internet is woven together. There’s so far ten different projects that are mind-blowing how they’ve done it. That’s the idea. We’re podcasting our way to a book by collecting the stories of the most groundbreaking that we think of online learning experiences in its history.

[00:11:54] Bonni: If you think back to the work that both of these podcasts have represented, both for starting out for open education, and for online learning, so you get to have two answers here, what’s an often confused idea, concept, technique, something that people are generally confused about as they begin their learning journey in either of these domains?

[00:12:22] Terry: Maybe with open education is that it’s binary whether I’m open or not. That’s totally untrue. I like to think most educators are ajar. They’re slightly open as long as you’re sharing stuff. I think there are people in the open education around that are too militant about what open means and you just get stuck in mud that it’s silly, like, “Are you willing to share some of your work?” I think you’re an open educator, whether or not what you’ve shared properly fits the five hours of open or not, maybe some of us that are already in there that understand that can help you get there, but not shutting the door.

I think you can really turn people off real quick if they’re like, “Oh, that’s not fully open.” I’d be like, “Well, then, I’m not fully open. Bye-bye.” Some people would be like that and I won’t blame them. I would say, yes, everybody here that thinks they’re in the open education world should just be– and they mostly are, absolutely, welcoming of people in, even if they don’t want to call themselves on open educator, but just want to dabble. That’s great, I think. A point of confusion with online teaching and learning?

[00:13:36] Bonni: Oh, yes.

[00:13:37] Terry: I think the point of confusion is– I don’t know if it’s confusion but the debate is often asynchronous versus synchronous and how to do that well and why one might be better than the other, one might be harder than the other. We were talking about it before we recorded. I put my hat in the ring for the debate if we were to have a debate about asynchronous versus synchronous.

[00:14:11] Bonni: All right. We have one last project and last set of questions. Tell us about the MOOC that you’re doing to extend [chuckles] one of your other projects.

[00:14:22] Terry: I spent a couple of years on a secondment to an organization called eCampusOntario, which serves all the public universities and colleges of Ontario, which is the largest province in Canada to at least 45 institutions. The institution is there to serve the enhancement of teaching and learning online and with technology.

For the most part, they’re trying to provide shared services and a portal to online courses and stuff, but they made one course themself to offer called Ontario Extend. The idea is that you– it’s a micro-credential. The idea is if you finish it, you get the Empowered Educator badge, meaning you are empowered to teach in the 21st century. You are empowered to teach with technology. I was the program manager for that program when I was at the campus.

Now, I’m at Trent University in Trent Online. We’ve been hyping up the idea that we would run a cohort of the MOOC from Trent, but inviting anybody in the world to join us to do it together. You can do it anytime you want because it’s an open education resource. It’s got an open license. You could go and do it on your own anytime, but it’s more fun to do it with friends.

Doing it together, we’ve invited people from all over the world. There’s people from all over Canada, in the States, there’s some people coming with us from Africa. It’s not huge, we call it a lowercase m, mOOC, meaning Open Online Course, but we have people … every day doing daily stretch warm-up activities where we just get people thinking about what’s their favorite book to do with pedagogy, what’s your favorite icebreaker, stuff like that.

Then, people also share their work so you’re not– It’s an open-education resource seat in open pedagogy. If you do some work, you don’t just submit it to a Dropbox and nobody sees it but the person giving you feedback, everybody sees it if you’re comfortable with that.

We’re trying to model a way we think you might want to teach yourself, and also do things that will be useful in your teaching. One of the activities is to create a visual concept map of your syllabus. It sounds like a great idea and it sounds easy, and it is a great idea, but it’s not easy. Everybody in the middle of it starts to realize, “Oh, I’ve got to reject some things here because it doesn’t make as perfect sense as it did in my mind when I was developing this outcomes or whatever.”

To be able to see each other do that has just been very valuable. It’s been around Extend, the idea of it has been around for almost five years now, but it hasn’t gotten stale at all in my opinion. I think I’d like to plan to rerun this MOOC every spring as off-season training, for teaching with technology, has been teaching ourselves. We’re just learning a bit about it.

That’s what we’re doing right now. If we share the link, it would be great. People could jump in. You’d be jumping in late but you can still dabble with us and check things out.

[00:17:35] Bonni: I love the constant reminders that so many projects, big and small, in open education have that there’s not as many rules as there are in so many other contexts. I’ll still never forget that Alan Levine, of course, often posts mini assignments as the best– I’m not even wording that right but from a course that people may have heard us talk about before on the podcast, DS106.

One of them, I didn’t even remember what it was, but it was like, “Take a picture of yourself,” or something like that and such and such a thing. I totally didn’t get it. I did it. Then, I posted it openly. Then, when I saw everybody else posting it, I was like, [singing] “One of these kids is doing their own thing.”

It was that first moment of embarrassment and I just started laughing at myself like, “What do you have to be embarrassed of? What is wrong that you felt like you so had to get exactly what it was he was trying to have [chuckles] you doing?” That’s really not the point of it but it was a freeing thing. It’s hard to explain that I could have both of those feelings at the same time, but it’s what I love about all of that.

I also love this idea that things that are tried and true, for lack of a better word, don’t get stale. We don’t have those conversations enough. Every conversation that we have around those things is new and fresh and current versus the things that we’re told are new and fresh and current so rarely are and they’re just recycles of things that keep coming back. [laughs]

[00:19:09] Terry: The daily stretch thing I mentioned is directly inspired by the DS106 Daily Create. That’s what we’re trying to replicate, the fun of that. I did hundreds of those and I align a lot of the creative ability I may have with technology, teaching with technology, and developing courses with technology from that daily practice. I owe a lot to that practice and it’s very worthwhile.

[00:19:33] Bonni: By the time this airs, I will have had a interview air that is feeling, at this moment, a little bit uncomfortable to air because it was just a whole world I didn’t know anything about and someone emailed me to say, “I don’t think your value is necessarily were showing up in the ways that you think you were,” just because it’s a world that I don’t know a lot about, but it feels so vulnerable to do that and yet, every time I’ve ever taken those kinds of risks, those are the times that I hear from the most people that say, “Thank you so much.” One time, I cried on the podcast about course evaluations and that is still, to this day, that was years and years ago, but still, to this day, the most I have ever heard from people in writing about just how I connected with them. Yes. Living out in the open feels terrifying sometimes and also exhilarating at the same time.

[00:20:20] Terry: It does. That’s why I say just be ajar if you’re not fully comfortable being totally open, just a little bit as much as you’re comfortable, and then maybe a little more next time.

[00:20:30] Bonni: Yes. Well, this is the point in the show where we each get to share our recommendations. I wanted to share about– speaking of OER, an open course that actually a colleague who is attending a conference shared. This is by Carrie Gits of Austin Community College library services. The course is ACC Learn OER. It is a wonderful introduction to open education.

This is from the description of it, ACC Learn OER is the result of the author’s SPARC Open Education Leadership Program, Capstone Project, and she writes a special thanks to Austin Community College Administration, TLED, and library services for their support of this project. It just is a wonderful, wonderful short course to go through. It has 10 different modules, everything from understanding open educational resources, why use OERs, and introduction to open licensing, finding, and evaluating OER accessibility, and a whole bunch more.

It’s just a wonderfully accessible course to get in there and learn some of the vocabulary, some of the ways things work, and I think a really easy way to get in and start to learn how you might be able to incorporate OERs. Just as Terry was describing earlier, I think this really lives up to many of the principles involved in open education, such that she says, you can just take it. It’s built on Google websites, so you can take it, and then make a copy of it, and then you could edit it for your own purposes. That’s what oftentimes these licenses allow us to do.

I was noticing– [laughs] I was laughing at myself because I was noticing, she said in her instruction, she says, “Make a copy of it and then you can put it in your own Google Docs.” At first, I thought, “Oh, gosh. I hope she doesn’t have it–” For the fact that she had to say, “Make a copy of it,” I was like, “Oh, no. This is going to be bad.” I thought when I clicked the link, it’s going to be like 2,700 edits because I didn’t remember. Well, I’m laughing at myself because, of course, you can set it up where someone has to request to make an edit of it. She doesn’t let anybody just go in there, but she’s just trying to help us if we don’t already know that, to go in and make a copy of it.

I did want to mention to people that there is another way to do this. If you had a set of Google Slides or Google Docs, or really anything Google that’s created that way, if you were to go click on your web browser bar at the top, and you were to go all the way to the end of that link, you would see something like a backslash followed by either “edit” or it depends on what you’re doing if you’re viewing it or editing it.

That’s a little trick that in so many of the Google sites, I mean, all of them that I’ve ever heard of, that if you were to take away everything after that final backslash, that is the link, so getting rid of the word “edit,” getting rid of any other additional numbers, whatever variables are there, but keep the last backslash there, and then, type the word “copy.”

If you then copy the link– all of it, not just the word “copy,” but you copy that entire link instead of someone having to know how to go make their own copy. It just does it. That link produces a copy of it inside of if they’re logged into Google Docs, for example, or logged into Google Slides, produces that copy there. Then, it saves them a little bit of a step.

The other one that you can do in the same trick is to the same idea, getting rid of everything after that final backslash, not the word “edit,” so take the word “edit” out, anything else that’s after it, and put the word “view.” It will automatically bring that Google Slides, for example, into the presentation mode and as a much more browsable easy way without the interface of, “Wait. How do I run this?” Or constantly having the slide show another side. That’s a couple of little tricks that you can mess around with Google links that take away just a tiny, tiny bit of friction, something for you to experiment with.

[00:24:45] Terry: Well, I can add a third to that if you’re at a two and this only works in Chrome, but you click this new tab and you just write “doc.new,” new Google Doc, if you need to just take some quick notes, there it is.

[00:24:58] Bonni: I would say so on Google Chrome, open up a new tab, doc.new?

[00:25:02] Terry: Yes. New tab, type into the bar, the URL bar, “doc.new,” and a new one will show up.

[00:25:10] Bonni: That’s really cool. I didn’t know that. Thank you for sharing that one, too. Yes. I’ll have this in the show notes in the recommendations segment. Terry, I know you have some things to recommend for us as well.

[00:25:20] Terry: I’ve already recommended half of this and this might sound weird, I think, and this also, this might fit better for being an instructional designers more so than a teacher, but my recommendation is to look for parallels to what you do to create the learning experiences and environments that you create. Look for parallels in the things like the fun entertainment, maybe things that you’re passionate about.

For example, the Check the Technique Book, I was learning about how some of these great hip-hop albums were made. That’s part of my recommendation, but also, I really like David Cronenberg movies for weird– really weird horror films. He’s got probably 25 movies out. Get a DVD or a Blu-ray and watch it with his commentary. Find out how they made things happen.

I just found this other series of books that I just ordered. I can’t actually recommend them. They’re good, yes, because I have read them, but it’s deeper background stories from some album. I’m into hip-hop, so that’s the albums I’ve ordered. It’s called the Thirty Three & 1/3 series. There’s like 140 of them from all kinds of genres. Pick an album that you love and go and read about how it came to be and that maybe you’ll be able to draw some inspiration from barriers they had to get around, weird people they had to collaborate with to make this piece of art happen, and maybe you’ll find some inspiration in your actual work to draw from, I think.

[00:26:56] Bonni: You’re reminding me of a book that I did already recommend, so I won’t put it on the recommendations, but it’s called Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio. That’s a graphic novel by Jessica Abel and the forward is by Ira Glass. As someone who I know loves podcasting, it is so fun to get a behind-the-scenes look at some of the– how this American Life, some of the just amazing magnificent work, what were some of the behind-the-scenes? What trouble did they run into with some of the interviews? They had to go back and what did they learn about interviewing along the way? That’s a great, great one. I’ll put it in the show notes, but yes, I did recommend it a long time ago. It’s so, so great.

[00:27:43] Terry: Well, I want to check it out. You’ve had Martha Burtis on before? It’s just a funny reminder that when I had Martha Burtis on and she played the recording with her partner, he said something like, “Who’s this guy? The Ira Glass of Ed-tech or something?

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I was like, “Sounds good to me.”

[00:28:00] Bonni: Yes. One of the greatest compliments I ever had regarding my podcasting is that someone once said that my interviewing style reminded them of Krista Tippett, who does the On Beingpodcast. Those are the compliments that will just take all the way with us. [laughs] It’s just the greatest, just the greatest.

[00:28:16] Terry: Oh, yes. Well, I think, honestly, being asked onto this podcast, it does feel like probably like what it must have been like to be a comedian in the ’80s getting asked on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson or something like– it’s like the thing to be asked on as an educator, the … This is such a privilege to get to chat with you.

[00:28:41] Bonni: Oh, and I feel exactly the opposite. It’s so funny and weird that– Isn’t that so funny and weird that I was nervous just to want to do justice? I’m so glad about all the things we had a chance to talk about. I also just love that I do feel comfortable in the sense of just knowing you and how open that you live in the world. It’s just a treasure and also fun to get to see your family growing up, too, [chuckles] all of that, and just these little slices of your life that you share with us. Thank you so much for being the guest today.

[00:29:10] Terry: Thank you so much. It was great.

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[00:29:16] Bonni: Terry Greene, thanks a lot for joining me for today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed, Episode 364. For those of you listening, if you’d like to access the show notes, they’re probably already in your podcast player, but if you are unable to locate them or they’re not there, head on over to teachinginhighered.com/364.

I’d also love you to consider signing up for the weekly Teaching in Higher Ed update. Those notes can come straight into your inbox once a week, and also other things such as quotable words, other recommendations, and other good nuggets.

So, head on over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe to subscribe. If you’d like to connect with me on Twitter, I’m at Bonni with no E, bonni208. Thanks so much for listening. I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.

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The transcript of this episode has been made possible through a financial contribution by the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). ACUE is on a mission to ensure student success through quality instruction. In partnership with institutions of higher education nationwide, ACUE supports and credentials faculty members in the use of evidence-based teaching practices that drive student engagement, retention, and learning. 

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.