Episode 50 MIT Open Learning
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Alan Levine: Hello and welcome to OEG Voices. This is the podcast that we produce here at Open Education Global, and each time we do one of these we bring you people, personalities and, ideas of open educators from around the world.

I'm your host today, Alan Levine, and today is really a treat to have in the studio some colleagues from MIT Open Learning. And I don't think I have to spell out what the acronym stands for because I think everybody knows MIT. But we recently posted a short story noting the important connection between OE Global and MIT, and we kind of referred to them as Member Zero because that's where this organization started.

So we thought it was really high time to go back and talk to people at the institution that was a catalyst for us. So I'm pleased to have here in, in the studio first my colleague Una Daly, who has connections with MIT. Hi, Una. 

Una Daly: Hello, Alan. Nice to be here.

Alan Levine: Great. And we have our member rep from MIT, Curt Newton, who's the director of OpenCourseWare.

And we also have Sarah Hansen, who's the senior manager at MIT Courseware. And we also have Chris Capozzola, who's a senior associate Dean for Digital Learning. And we're just really looking forward to having a free flowing conversation about, you know, what, what's like, state of the art and what's happening now at MIT and, and, and there's so much to cover.

So I, I first wanna give a chance for everybody to say hello and tell us a little bit about your work and maybe how long you've been at MIT. So I, I'll, I'm gonna point first at, at Curt, cuz he's the guy who set this up and hello and welcome Curt.

Curt Newton: Thank you Alan. I'm director of OpenCourseWare. I've been with this program for over 19 years and it kinda blows my mind to to say that how long it's been It has gone by so quickly. I joined OCW just a couple years after it had officially launched. So some things had been figured out at that point, but a lot of things were still emerging.

And I've been in the director position for about four years now, I think.

Alan Levine: Fantastic. And, and we, we kind of wanna hear about the early days if we, we can, but first we'll say hello to Sarah Hanson who works for you at MIT Courseware. Welcome, Sarah.

Sarah Hansen: Thank you so much. Hello everyone. Yes. My name is Sarah Hansen. I'm the senior manager for the Educator Initiative, and I help lead strategic initiatives at OpenCourseWare. And I say that I have the best job at OpenCourseWare because I get to meet with faculty from all over MIT to talk about teaching.

When a faculty member publishes an educational resource on our platform, sometimes they also share how they teach with those materials before they've published them. And I get to interview them about that. It's really wonderful. And more recently I've been helping to lead with Curt and Chris developing relationships with other educators out in the open ecosystem to figure out how we can collaborate to push everyone's work forward.

Alan Levine: That's fantastic cuz I, I kind of wanna get to talking later about like how these courses actually come to be. And so like the, you know, how, how the courses are made the cooking metaphor and also to talk about those possible connections. But first we'll give Chris a chance to say hello and, and tell us maybe a little bit about how'd you end up at MIT, Chris?

Chris Capozzola: Sure. Well, first of all thanks to Alan and Una for, in inviting us to, to be part of this conversation. I'm Chris Capozzola. And I've been at MIT for about 20 years. I'm a professor of history. And before you ask, yes, you can major in history at MIT and we, you know, we, I've been teaching American history to students for a long time here and also working along the way with different facets of, of open learning. 

But just this past summer I joined Open Learning as the Senior Associate Dean. And so I, I would say, I think Sarah's wrong. I actually, I have the best job at OpenCourseWare because my job is just to just sort of you know, be the interface between the amazing staff who sort of developed the courses, publish them, polish them, share them with the world in these, in these sort of open ways that, that are so important to us. And I'm the interface between that and our MIT faculty, the ones who are in the classroom every day, kind of innovating sort of coming up with new stuff. 

And, you know six days of the week, that's that's a pure joy. And the seventh day of the week we get to, you know, roll up our sleeves and, and make sure that interface is smooth.

Alan Levine: Wow! First of all, like we already know that, that you all love your, your work there at MIT This is like Alan's question, you hear MIT you know, and it's like got such a great reputation, but what's it like there on an everyday basis? What's like something maybe we, you know, the world doesn't know about the, the inner environment there on campus?

Sarah Hansen: Could I jump in? So I do not come from a STEM background, and when I hear MIT, you know, I, I think STEM and thank goodness we have Chris telling us we can major in history at MIT. But I didn't know that before, before coming. And since being here, Math, science, the humanities, it's contagious here.

I don't know how to describe it, but you walk down the halls and you're just inspired by the work everybody's doing, and this really funny thing happens. You start to feel like you can do those things too. Like if I just have access to the right materials, I could learn this stuff. It's nothing I've ever experienced anywhere else.

It's completely inspirational. And I think through our work, that's what we're trying to share through OCW and other projects is that feeling of you can do this. You know, if you have the right materials, you can learn and do anything. And so I think that's something that maybe people don't realize until they come to MIT, that this energy is real.

Una Daly: Love that. Sarah and I, I know that you know, we really discovered that in Open when the open MOOCs came out gosh over, over a decade ago now and we had learners around the world who had access to these materials from MIT and other universities and so forth, and just we're just soaking it up.

So. Wonderful to hear that.

Curt Newton: Yeah. I, I love how you described that, Sarah. I would, I would add that the student body is amazing, right? And so much, so much of what we're sharing with the world, you know, is coming from that energy you know, the, the, the diversity of the student body. I mean, it's a, yes, it's, it's still a STEM dominated institution in a lot of ways, but, you know, half of the student body is women, drawn from all over the world.

They have, know, such broad interests. Yes, a huge number of them are majoring in some way and something to do with computer science, but also you know, like a majority of people play musical instruments and are, you know, you know the humanities and arts programs and the curriculum that goes on in that aspect of, of the community is also really rich.

And so, OCW being a reflection of the complete MIT curriculum, it's, it's really important to us to channel the breadth of things that are going on there too.

Chris Capozzola: I was gonna say a version of of of this is I like to tell people you know, sort of why our mascot is the Beaver. So Tim, the beaver, which is MIT, spelled backward, right? Tim is, is our mascot and beaver is first of all it's the engineering animal. It's always out there sort of building and, and, and experimenting and doing new things.

But it's also beavers are nocturnal. And which MIT is very much is as well. You know, probably every college is to some extent, but you know, we actually have the data to back this up cuz we know from usage of OpenCourseWare and our learning module system. We know that the students are, are on there at four o'clock in the morning you know, sort of doing, doing their thing.

And so, you know, that's why it's Tim the beaver. 

Una Daly: That's wonderful. And you know, it's interesting to hear that your student population has diversified so much and, and I know you have a really large global student population as well. And what, what are your percentages on that these days? I know, you know, things there was a little bit of a decline in recent years because we had some issues with, you know, the pandemic, Where are you kind of running on percentages with international versus, I guess, domestic students?

Curt Newton: this is in terms of enrolled students?

Una Daly: Yes. Yeah..

Curt Newton: Chris, do you know? Are you up on that?

Chris Capozzola: So on, on campus, our undergraduate population is about 4,000 students and they are mostly from the United States. You know, about 15% are international students. Of course we are sort of unlike some of our peers you know, we really have a really substantial number of first generation students people whose parents are immigrants from really around the world.

So, you know, so that 15% number is actually, you know culture a little bit higher than that. Our graduate population, which is about 6,000 students. And notice that all adds up to about 10,000, which is not that big compared to a lot of big research universities. But of our 6,000 graduate students, the majority are from outside the United States.

I think we would be hard pressed to name a country that is not represented in our graduate student population. And of course it has ebbed and flowed in the last couple of years. You know, for, for some, you know, obvious reasons, but but those numbers are, are really pretty solid.

Curt Newton: If I can just add from an OCW perspective something like 70% of the traffic to our website comes from outside North America, and so that kind of global connection is born out in the way that the world is coming to these resources as well. 

Alan Levine: Let's do some time travel. The birth of OCW Curt, you, you joined a little bit after, and, and Chris was probably on campus when this emerged. What was that like? And, and then maybe talk about like how that's expanded or changed or what it looks like now.

Curt Newton: Yeah, thanks. So I joined as what was called a department. . And these were staff that were somewhat embedded in different departments. You know, they had one foot firmly in the OCW organization, but they also had a, you know different sorts of relationships with departments. So, for instance, there were department liaisons like myself, who had recently graduated from, say, the architecture department, and they were deeply known of what was going on there.

And so a lot of what was going on in those first few years really was trying to realize this audacious experiment, you know, in reality. You know, figure out what it was actually going to look like. And so it was a lot of, you know, in a sense, kind of trust building with the faculty. Faculty participation is voluntary.

It always has been in OCW. But it had the emphatic backing from senior leadership. We put a lot of attention in the first couple years on, you know, really working with like the right sort of early adopters who could have. , you know, we could shake things out and have good, like peer influence.

So in the first couple years I joined I spent a lot of time out talking with faculty who had maybe not, not tried this out yet. They'd heard a little bit about it, they had questions, they were interested, you know what? What does it mean to share my stuff like this really out in the world? Working through their questions, their concerns sometimes we needed to come back to them again and again and again.

So we did that with, with patience and understanding. And that was really a wonderful part of the job, to be honest. You know the, the motivations that MIT faculty have in their teaching, they really do wanna have the maximum impact out in the world. They're also super busy with their students and their research.

And so a lot of the things that we did in those first few years were making sure that we placed a minimum burden on the faculty. You know, our team is gonna do a lot of the logistical heavy lifting. Right. What you've done in the course of teaching the class and creating those materials, just give us permission, hand them to us.

Be willing to have a little interaction as we're going through. Ask a few questions, be willing hopefully to like, review the draft of what we've put together and we're good to go. You know, hopefully not more than a few hours you know, spread out over a, over a handful of months and the rest of the work is done by our team.

We could only have this sort of team because we were fortunate to have, you know, the backing of a couple of big foundations the Hewlett and Mellon Foundation that provided the seed funding to like really ramp this thing up. And there was a commitment to get to a spot in a few years that would, you know, basically reflect the whole MIT curriculum.

But it was really a sprint in those first few years. And so there was a startup atmosphere. You know, there were late nights, there were big crunches, you know pushing the envelope and breaking the envelope of some of the technology. You know, there, there were those, you know, last week of a sort of production cycle, the content management system, you click a button, you just didn't know what was gonna happen.

Things are much better now. Things are more you know, sustainable, but that's kind of what the, the early years were like. And, you know, coming out of that initial energy once, once the plane was off the ground and we'd moved from like post-it notes on a wall to some database and other tools. You know, we're also able to start putting some energy into kind of the second part of the mission beyond sharing the MIT curriculum, which is helping launch this global movement.

And so beginning to invest in what became the OCW Consortium. A few more steps into what we now have as, as OE Global. So I was was not directly involved in the, in the launch of that was, but was thrilled to be able to observe that taking shape. So that's, that's one slice through what those first few years were like.

Una Daly: I wonder Curt, if you or, or someone else wants to address external feedback during that time period said that MIT was crazy, that you should be monetizing this. And here you were giving it away for free. You know, what were you thinking?

Curt Newton: Yeah, exactly. What's , what's, what's really in it, what's really going on? You know, it really is as simple as, as the pitch, you know. Or we're gonna give this stuff away because it's our, it's in our mission as an institution to advance knowledge, and we think this is the best way to go about it. I mean, the, the decision to launch OCW came out of a, it was frankly, like a decade long process as the internet was emerging.

You know, taskforce after taskforce, looking at questions of kind of MIT.com for profit. Distance learning things and each of those exercises came back with something that didn't quite land well, let's, let's let it shake out a little bit. Let's let it shake out. And the, the idea to launch OCW came out of yet another of those task forces where the, where the recommendation was not this is too much of a diversion from kind of the core sort of culture of MIT, where our investment is going. Given what's gone on with like the open source movement, what if we just get out of the way a little bit and give it away and see what happens? It wasn't clear what was gonna happen. It really was not clear.

And I think the impact that OCW has had and you know, the way that the, the open education ecosystem has evolved, just has exceeded everyone's wildest expectations from those first few. We could not be more thrilled,

Una Daly: Absolutely.

Alan Levine: It sounds like Tim would be proud of! 

Sarah, you're doing a lot of the work now, like what goes into making an OCW course because they're not just like all the same. Like when we look at the, the different materials that there's a mixture of modalities and types of, of materials that are provided.

So what does it take to actually produce one start to finish?

Sarah Hansen: Yeah, you're right. We have all different kinds of courses and that's kind of the beauty of OCW. So we have a team and we have digital publication specialists, my colleagues who develop relationships with faculty on campus, and they will recruit a course. They'll look at the materials. They'll actually work with intellectual property team to make sure that the items are cleared for a Creative Commons license.

And they will do their best to get those materials in a format that is remixable, if that's possible. We have a push to do more of that. They'll build it in our system and eventually that course needs to be reviewed again by faculty before it's published. And often at that point I will come in and ask if the faculty member would like to do an interview about their teaching.

That interview will either be in the form of a survey, a podcast interview, or we used to do a lot of video. Since the pandemic, we've moved more toward podcasts. And then eventually after a lot of QAing or everybody on the team looking at different aspects of the course, we sort of release it to the public.

And it's so exciting, Alan. We have like regular meetings where we will showcase the course that has just published, and we're all so proud that this resource is now openly available to learners all around the world. And Curt, maybe you have some additional insights into the behind the scenes publication process that I might have left out.

Curt Newton: I, I think that's a, that's a wonderful sort of overall arc of the process. Alan or Una, are there, are there things about that that you would have specific questions about?

Una Daly: You know what we find when working with colleges who are developing a lot of OER is that faculty who participate in these programs of developing OER for their courses, they improve their courses. And so I wonder, as you go through this kind of curation and ensuring that everything is open, are there improvements that occur during that time period with perhaps the faculty's teaching resources or practices? 

Curt Newton: We definitely hear that , you know, faculty in the course of teaching a semester, there's a degree of chaos often, right? You know the syllabus shifts partway through. Certain things are done literally like the hour before the class happens, and many faculty have related to us that just pausing for a moment, you know, the process of going through OCW publications is a really useful reflective practice exercise for them, and they're able to kind of look back, oh, so this is, is a more coherent extraction from the learning management system than we would've gotten, you know, raw there.

And it's a, a great basis for ongoing teaching. And it also works because many subjects pass around from faculty to faculty over the years to have that, you know, sort of version of record, if you will that, that people are able, able to, able to build upon.

Sarah Hansen: I would just add to that. It was a great compliment to our process when the other day, one of our favorite OCW professors Michel DeGraff he asked me for our interview that he did for an educator podcast, for our Chalk Radio podcast because he said he wanted to review it because he did a lot of reflecting during that interview and he was about to teach, you know that course again, that he was talking about on our podcast and he wanted to see what he said, how he reflected so that it could actively shape what he was gonna do next. And I felt like so honored to be able to create a space for very busy faculty members to do that kind of thinking.

Una Daly: That's wonderful to hear, Sarah.

Alan Levine: Some of my favorite ones are where we actually, well, not actually where we, like their personalities emerge. Like we, we see these en engaging people and they talk about experiments or they integrate, you know you know, something that from everyday life so it's not just all like you know, the, the material itself, like, does that happen naturally with, with your faculty?

Do you have to like, work with them to kind of find the way they wanna be represented in their courses?

Sarah Hansen: You mean like when, when we interview them about their instructor insights?

Alan Levine: Like sometimes, you know, when you see the course, there's of course the the recorded lectures, but then there's like the, the mini segments or the demonstrations or the things that kind of bring like a humanness to, to the teaching.

Curt Newton: In general, when we're having those upfront conversations with faculty to invite their participation and get started in the process, you know, we want to hear from them what their objectives are in sharing the class. An opportunity again to sort of reflect on the totality of the materials they've created and make sure that we're, you know, doing justice to what their objectives were.

So we absolutely wanna weave that into what we ultimately are producing and sharing. 

Sarah Hansen: Yeah, so when I interview them, I am so interested in who they are as people, and so I, I always ask those questions first, you know? How did you. How did this work? Where, where interests come from, what hurdles have you faced? So first we get to know them as people and then we get into their research and then we get into teaching because it all builds right on who they are as people.

And actually my whole goal in doing this is to help people outside of MIT feel like they're here with us, under the dome, walking down the infinite corridor with their favorite professor for 15 minutes between classes. Like I want them to have that same experience of magic that we get right here on campus.

And that all starts with getting to know the people.

Chris Capozzola: Yeah. And I, I think I would add to that, that that authenticity is not just in the sort of, you know, in the podcast, the educator insights offerings, but it's actually in, in the course materials themselves. Right. You know, we, we try to let that just sort of unfold as naturally as possible, you know, and that's why Open courseware materials don't have the feel of like a really polished kind of corporate education, you know, slick sort of thing. You feel like you're at MIT. Right. And, and our faculty are, they're, they're so different in the way that they operate in the classroom. And, and we try to kind of showcase that as much as we can.

Alan Levine: A lot of this conversation and the fact that Una and I work for this organization have a lot to say for what the, the impact of OCW was. But you know, we've seen over this span about how open education, has broadened. And so while that's going on, like what, what is the role in 2023 for open courseware, or an open course for, for the world?

I mean, obviously it's this great resource that you're giving, but like where, where does it fit into the ecosystem of all open education? If that's not too broad or ridiculous question.

Curt Newton: Not too broad, not too ridiculous. I think about it all the time. . I mean, in one sense, the core mission of OCW is as it was 20 years ago. You know, it's to like share the, you know, the materials, the experience of the MIT education as best we can at scale across the curriculum with the world, what that means in practice and the lessons we're learning from and have continued to shift.

You know, I'll highlight for instance, the, there was an assumption that the most of the users of OCW when this was launched would be other educators, you know, who's, you know, who's gonna dump in and like work with like raw syllabi and problem sets from an advanced physics class. Well, mostly educators, maybe some graduate students.

And the emergence of the, the curious, motivated, independent learner. How many people around the world are in that mode has has been one of those like wonderful surprises. The fact that OCW's a user community, fully half of them self-identify as just independent curious learners, and the other half are, you know, affiliated with an education institution and trying to span the needs across those quite distinct use cases continues to be a a worthy challenge

But we've seen that, that growth of like these different use cases continue, continue to evolve. I would say in the early days to do the curriculum sharing at scale, we did very little video. Video was very expensive. In the first few years of OCW there was no YouTube, right? We did Real Media, Real Player

Una Daly: I remember that.

Curt Newton: Yeah. Yeah.

Alan Levine: Can you even play those anymore? ? Yeah.

Curt Newton: OCW's presence on YouTube is by some measures more powerful and impactful on YouTube than it is on the website. We've got over almost 4.4 million subscribers on our YouTube channel. We think that's the largest subscriber base if any dot edu out there.

And that is the place. where learners go to learn stuff. You know, the, one of the most popular searches out there is, how do I fill in the blank? We know people are, are going there to learn stuff. And contrary to sort of popular perception that you gotta keep your, your videos five minutes long and have all kinds of splashy stuff, we got people who are going through an 80 minute video lecture on an advanced subject and sticking with it.

That's a, a wonderful sort of development to see, you know, especially I'd say in the last three to five years that's really powerful. Another development, you know, kind of attached to the, the growth of the independent learner, has been what has become MOOCs and, you know, credentialed learning outcomes from going through these open, open online experiences back in like 2009, 2010, before the blossoming of MOOCs , a year or two later MIT OCW experimented with a program we called OCW Scholar, which was to produce complete, start to finish linear, sequenced representations of, of a handful of like foundational subjects, you know, and gen ed stuff in the STEM fields.

And we did it. It was success. And just like a lot of MOOC providers have discovered, wow, it takes a lot of resources, to pull those off. And we were thrilled to be able to have that experiment done under our belt and hand it off to a program that like is a hundred percent about delivering those experiences.

So it's been, it's been good to sometimes let go of things like that. With regard to like where we are today, we've launched this new web platform, which is like mobile responsive, so many people that we're trying to reach the phone is their primary or only digital device.

It's really important to be able to reach that, continue to be able to expand the, the digital divide, you know, and make sure that materials are accessible to even those who don't have like reliable power. Not to say, you know, internet access as well and the kind of reconnection, if you will, with this like flourishing an education ecosystem.

The, you know, the work that folks around the OE Global Consortium are doing is so exciting to us, and we are frankly an in a mode of trying to catch up, and reconnect with you all. And really, you know, making some very intentional investments in that direction now. And thrilled to be doing that.

Sarah Hansen: Also in thinking about the role that OpenCourseWare can play in 2023, I think it can still play a role in situations of disrupted education where people need to fill in gaps between formal education experiences. I think it can play an important role there. And I also think the importance of culturally relevant adaptations of OER are particularly important now.

And so, you know, we may share resources, but it's really the role of experts in various contexts to adapt them to meet the needs of their students. So I know we'll talk about this a little bit later, but that's really a lot of where our attention is going and in learning from, you know, the ecosystem, as Curt mentioned, we really have our ear open to hearing how those powerful things are happening.

Una Daly: Thank you for that, Sarah. I know that I've had conversations with Sarah and Curt about that desire to bring a more equitable lens to open materials. And certainly community colleges have been a leader in that area with their OER. You know, it's representative of their students.

And we're finding of course, that that's quite effective when you're teaching with culturally responsive teaching resources. And so we're thrilled to know that that's a direction you're moving into. And I think that, you know, knowledge will go both ways this time.

Sarah Hansen: Absolutely.

Alan Levine: What's like on the, the horizon for what's the next step for OCW?

Sarah Hansen: Curt, do you wanna take it? I'm like bursting here. I'm so excited.

Curt Newton: I've been yakking for a while. I wanted see if Chris wanted to jump in on it. 

Chris Capozzola: I'm gonna go back to your, to the previous question. You had, Alan, just sort of tackle a little bit again, this question what's, you know, what's the focus of OCW in 2023. I wanna kind of just maybe amplify some of what Curt said and just say that the stakes in many ways have, have never really, never been higher for really has a special ability to put a stake in the ground for open and to be a voice and an advocate for all things open, right? Not just OpenCourseWare, right, but open access materials open, open source you know, code, open platforms, open protocols, all of that. And there is both a need for it and a real energy around it that I think we can really tap into. 

And the need is in part responding to the fact that there are pressures against openness, right? Commercial forces, political forces just burdens you know, financial burdens and other things on, on institutions of higher learning and, and K-12 education both here and outside the United States.

And also there's just an opportunity endorsing you know, sort of openness as a practice, right? The US government endorsing open science, all of these are really kind of important. And I think open coursework can be part of that conversation, but we can't do it alone.

Una Daly: Yeah, I'm really glad you mentioned that. Chris, we haven't talked about that, but sort of the changes over 20 years in terms of the Department of Ed and their endorsement and other federal institutions and their endorsements of open licensing of materials. Does anyone wanna speak to that? I, I, I don't know how MIT was involved in the pandemic related research, but it, you know, obviously the fact that it was openly licensed in the beginning, all of that research was, was just a, you know, a real boon to getting the vaccines out widely globally.

And I dunno if anyone wants to speak to that as MIT, the science institute of one of our, one of our premier science institutes in the United States.

Curt Newton: I I think we all celebrate that very tangible and impactful demonstration of what Open can do. I, I know it's, it's a thing that's referenced, you know, when we're talking about, you know, the power of continuing to expand and, and grow our, our open capabilities. You know, I'm thrilled to see, you know, things like the, the recent US White House announcement about, you know just pushing, you know, for stronger open access to research policies.

You know, MIT is absolutely in support of that, of that sort of thing. 

Una Daly: Yeah, I mean, 20 years ago that would've been very controversial. Right. So it's, you know, it is wonderful to look back and see those changes.

Curt Newton: Chris I think you're making some really important points about the opportunities there?

Chris Capozzola: I think that the opportunities are, are twofold, right? That first of all you know, we can see initiatives coming from things like the, like the US federal government, like the United Nations which is in many ways sought to tie its sustainable development goals to open open knowledge production and dissemination.

And, you know, MIT as an institution can really be in the heart of those conversations. I think that we need to do it in conjunction with other institutions, right? So not, you know, sort of doing it on behalf of but, but, you know, sort of in, in conjunction with universities that may not have, you know, the same amount of resources, may not have three, a three letter acronym that's recognized around the world.

Right? And I think that, you know, we, we need to kind of leverage this, this power at this particular moment to, to face some of the challenges we face ahead. 

Curt Newton: Yeah, if I could pick up on something there too that this is related in some ways to the recognition of the, the things that Open can do for culturally relevant pedagogy in community college. The recognition that we need the whole world to be able to contribute and access, not just to education, but also to the research enterprise.

And you know, so opening open, you know, to people who wouldn't historically have been able to access, to have their, their voices and their contributions get in there is I think, a, an essential thing to, to be happening. I'm, I'm so glad to see things opening up that way. I think about, for instance, the creative Commons and colleagues open climate campaign really focused on, you know, government policies and research.

And the necessity of bringing in, you know, community by community, the sort of on the ground expertise into that. It's, it's not unlike what we're trying to do in open education with open pedagogy practices. So really kind of resonant to me in a, in a powerful way.

Una Daly: Thank you for that Curt and you know, the open pedagogy is bringing your students in so they can share their lives and their lived experiences. That's an important part of what's going on socially. And we know that when students can see themselves in those materials, that they're more engaged, they're more likely to succeed in those courses.

Alan Levine: I wanna capture a threat here cuz I think Curt and Sarah were about to tell us something kind of new and exciting maybe when I asked about the, the next stage for OCW, I don't wanna lose that cuz I felt the excitement rising in the room.

Curt Newton: Yeah. Sarah, do you, do you wanna jump in on that?

Sarah Hansen: So we are pretty excited to begin a next chapter, which is really focused on collaborations with other people in the open ecosystem, and that's gonna begin with a lot of listening. We've brought a new colleague on board Shira Segal, whose job will be to listen to people in the open ecosystem, understand what their successes are, their challenges, their needs and to work with us to understand that and then to find points of connection where we can support the work of people in ecosystem.

We can shape what we do it when and if we can in response to those needs. And we're just really excited about two ideas and, well, three, oh my gosh, I can't, they, they like keep, keep bubbling up and , so like one of them, Una, you know, we're excited to begin working with community colleges to see if we can support faculty in teaching with resources from OCW, but more importantly, adapting them to make learning really powerful in their own settings.

We're excited to work with a few HBCUs to generate conversations about culturally relevant teaching and to develop some shared understandings and some future visions for long-term collaboration. And I'm really excited that in April faculty from Nigeria invited us to give a webinar on OCW. As part of that presentation, we'll have two case studies of faculty in Nigeria teaching with OCW resources. So I'm so excited to learn from them. So those are three examples of the kinds of ways we're trying to like, come out from under the dome to reenter the world and to really learn about what's going on and to get energized and inspired.

Curt Newton: I could throw a couple other things out. What Sarah's describing is to me, perhaps the most exciting thing that we're working on right now. You know, a couple more sort of technological things that we have our eye on that we're intrigued by, excited by, you know, one of them is the the content discovery situation for people, you know the way that materials like this show up in search and repository, the demands that that place is on, like human curators and the, you know, the challenges and the limitations that that puts on things. I feel like we're on the cusp of some really interesting things with some machine learning assistance on math I don't know what form it's gonna take.. 

There's things that are rolling out, which I'm sure many of us are, you know, following, for instance, the ChatGPT conversations and the way that information that one can get from trusted sources. We would like to think MIT OCW goes into the places where people are looking for information.

I think there's a lot of progress to be made there. I think 10 years from now, we'll look back at the way we did this stuff, over the past couple decades and like, wow, that was, that was rough and clunky. I look for that to be much more human centered, and usable. Yeah. Another sort of technology piece, if you will, the collaborations and the focus on equity for learners is just continuing to pay attention to the digital divide aspects of, of reaching people.

It is so easy for those of us who say, live in the United States and totally take for granted. In many communities, we got always on broadband and electricity is usually always on. We've held very important for OCW that our materials are in some, a bit low tech, right? You can download them, you can print them out.

They don't rely on them being on a, a high technology server to have the experience. Really important work being done from like an instructional design perspective on learner experiences that do have these kind of like tech underpinnings and the way that's gonna play out for the. OCW where accessibility is like a top priority.

It's really interesting to think about what that, what that might look into. And again, I, I imagine being 10 years out and looking back on this time and like, wow, we really made some big changes. I don't know what they'll be, but eager to see the kind of collaborations that might emerge.

Una Daly: Excited to hear about the collaboration. 

Alan Levine: It's exciting to hear about this new effort to, to be part of the ecosystem, and that's what we were hoping, you know, that this conversation would be part of facilitating, instigated somewhat by Andreia Inamorato's visit to your center a few weeks ago. And so that's what got us rolling and we, we certainly hope to, to keep on talking and figure out ways that OE Global can, can be part and plugged into what you're doing.

And we also hope that MIT is gonna be active during Open Education Week. I have to do a plug for that March 6th to 10th. And we'll be as you about that. But again, any, anything else like that you would like from a community to, to help you with, that's a very broad thing, but like where are the ways, or what do you think about the ways that people can plug into your efforts?

Curt Newton: Could I start by saying in one sense, keep doing what you're doing? You know, the, the inspiration that we are getting from, from all of these experiments and extensions and continuing to develop the sort of foundational ethos of open education is, is just so inspiring to us and we are learning. And it's important for those things to be grounded, situated in the, in the environments people are working in.

And then just sharing that back with us. I just really look forward to continuing to, to see this, this continued. 

Una Daly: See you all in Edmonton too in October. Come and share some of this great outreach work and collaborations with the whole community.

Curt Newton: I look forward to that.

Chris Capozzola: Indeed and I, you know, I would say, Another great point of overlap is, is that the word global in, in OE Global, right? And that in addition to, you know, tackling some of the challenges around sort of educational inequalities inside the United States, we're also really cognizant of ways that we can build community and engagement between the United States and, and our users all around the world.

And so that's, you know, that's really important and OE Global is you know, there are lots of people there that we, you know, we're gonna wanna connect with and, and will wanna be connecting in places like Edmonton.

Alan Levine: We're excited to make that happen. Again, this is another episode of OEG Voices produced here at Open Education Global. And each episode we feature different musical intro track selected from the free music archive, which is all Creative Commons license.

And so, since you know, thinking about today that we're here with a pioneering institution in open education, I found a track called Pioneer by an artist named Simon Matthewson, licensed Creative Commons. CC BY Non-commercial Share Alike license and you'll, you'll find this episode in a few weeks at our site, voices dot oe global dot org.

And we hope you'll engage in follow out conversation with our OEG Connect community. And again, it's just so exciting to be here. You know, I, I think we, we could go on for maybe hours, but we really appreciate you taking your time to, to talk to us and, and share what's going on at MIT and this whole spirit of openness is, is so strong there and still is.

And thank you for all you do there. 

Curt Newton: Thank you so much, Una and Alan. It's been a pleasure.

Sarah Hansen: Thank you so much.