OEG Voices 61: Board Viewpoints at OEGlobal 2023 With Lisa Young and Cathy Casserly
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[00:00:00] Lisa Young: I think one of the things we'll be talking about a lot is AI. I hope we are talking about AI and how it's helping the OER movement, how we're leveraging it. I hope that we're talking about licensing within AI in a way that we can still stay true to open licensing. 

[00:00:24] Cathy Casserly: I feel like the open ecosystem, the different sub sectors of data and science and open education, have now blossomed enough and created enough stability and inroads that we now have to lift up the connected ecosystem of all the players. 

[00:00:44] Alan Levine: And yes, those are two special voices we are featuring in this episode of OEG Voices, the podcast produced by Open Education Global. Each episode brings you the voices from around the world of those interested in the potential of open educators. And both the people you hear on this show are special because they're members of the OE Global Board of Directors. We're starting a new program to hear a little bit more from the board.

They are going to be taking turns this year writing new posts every week to OEG Connect. And we also committed to bringing to you a few podcasts featuring the board members. 

This conversation was recorded in Edmonton at the OE Global Conference. I had a chance to sit down with a good friend and colleague I've known a long time from Maricopa Community Colleges, Lisa Young, who is vice president of the board, and also Cathy Casserly, who's been on the board for quite a long time and has a lot of experience to offer. 

We hope you enjoy listening to the voices of the board members. 

I do have to share that Lisa and I were sitting outside the conference center near a noisy street, and I used an old portable microphone, so the sound quality is not great. But the conversation was! 

Above the roar of passing vehicles, I'm here today with Lisa Young. Who's, my longtime friend and colleague from Maricopa. Also heavily involved in CCCOER and a board member. 

We wanted to have some conversations with board members about what are they seeing now for, for OE Global? Maybe what we should be doing or just what do you see as key right now for open education, given that we're at the conference? 

Yeah, I just asked four questions! 

[00:02:25] Lisa Young: I'm going to start on the side of what's impacting open education these days. When I think about some of the things that are happening in the U. S., we have inclusive and equitable access, which is where the bookstores are pretty much taking a lump sum dollar amount , adding it to student registration, including the books.

Students don't retain access to those books. If they are having a faculty member using OER, the students are still paying for the book. There's a lot of factors there that isn't great However, one of the things that is great on the faculty end is that they get all the ancillaries. They get everything .

And it's sold to the faculty in a really interesting way . Being able to continue to share the impacts of open education and building toolkits around the research so that we can look at the impact that OER is having on student success. Is it the same as publisher materials?



[00:03:13] Alan Levine: Even in your session this morning, I would say the kind of the old repository question came up, and it's still interesting that It's not a matter of figuring it out. We're still pursuing that. 

[00:03:22] Lisa Young: I think about back, Alan, 20 years ago, when we were hanging out, we were talking about reusable learning objects.

[00:03:28] Alan Levine: Yeah. 

[00:03:28] Lisa Young: And there were all the repositories, and very few are still around. However, like, We haven't tackled that, we're so distributed. And distributed models are sometimes great , but even if there's a single inventory database that we could, you know, leverage that, and then, you know, we've also been talking interoperability standards for so long.

[00:03:45] Alan Levine: So let's talk about the board. You're the vice president now of the OE Global Board. It's time to look forward possibly to some change or what do you see?

Speak for the board. What, what are you thinking about? 

[00:03:56] Lisa Young: Some of the things that we're really thinking about is the strategic plan . We have a great strategic plan that is still extremely relevant . Um, it includes a number of different things. It includes field building.

It includes research. 

But I think that there's like a lot that we need to really go into and look at a sustainable strategic plan that's really leveraging sustainability . And think about what our membership needs to be able for OE Global to help support those initiatives we've identified. 

[00:04:27] Alan Levine: What do you hope we are talking about next year? 

[00:04:31] Lisa Young: I think one of the things we'll be talking about a lot is AI. I hope we are talking about AI and how it's helping the OER movement, how we're leveraging it. I hope that we're talking about licensing within AI in a way that we can still stay true to open licensing. And hearing about ways that faculty and students are leveraging it for OER, for open pedagogy, and perhaps even in AI OER tool. I'm just throwing out the alphabet here. 

[00:04:59] Alan Levine: That's okay. Because I think it confounds a lot of people. I did hear from someone, they said that a lot of people talk about AI sessions, but there's so much to wrap your hands around. Where do we want to position ourselves to be able to not only just understand it, but be able to like collaborate around it?

[00:05:17] Lisa Young: Yes. And we have to have those conversations. So I hope that we're able to have a lot of those conversations throughout the year and come back and see what those conversations yield and be able to build more collaboration around that . 

[00:05:29] Alan Levine: How's it feel to be on the board? 

[00:05:30] Lisa Young: It's fun. I love the global aspect of it.

I love having colleagues from around the world from so many continents and for them all to be able to share their viewpoints. It's really continued to open up my mind and help me see the global issues that are occurring . As I've come to OE Global conferences over the years, I always have that moment where my mind just gets blown.



[00:05:51] Alan Levine: I know you were telling that story you went to Delft or Milan and the way you described it, like you almost got knocked over.... or just your whole perspective got shifted, in a positive way. 



[00:06:04] Lisa Young: Oh, Absolutely. It was actually Slovenia. 

It was my first time at an international conference and it changed the tapestry of my soul, it really did. 

[00:06:17] Alan Levine: I want to quote that. 

[00:06:19] Lisa Young: And so just seeing the impact that OER can have, I hadn't really thought about that. I had thought about where we are in terms of cost savings . At community colleges, we, as James put it earlier in the session today, you know, we accept the top 100 percent of students.

It was just really interesting to see how much we're able to do with OER, the impacts it has globally, both in the positive and the negative and the ways that we can leverage it to be more inclusive. 

[00:06:51] Alan Levine: Okay, three words to describe the conference so far.



[00:06:54] Lisa Young: Braided, Inspiring, and Networked. 

[00:06:59] Alan Levine: All right, there you go. Thank you, Lisa. 

[00:07:01] Lisa Young: Thanks, Alan it was fun! 

[00:07:02] Alan Levine: I want to say hello to Cathy Casserly and we're having some conversations with board members. They're just in the middle of the conference... I have a tendency to start with too many questions. 

How has the last couple of days been 

[00:07:18] Cathy Casserly: Well for me? I think I'll talk about the ambiance. I haven't been to the conference since before COVID. So nice to reconnect with people in person, just been following lots of stories, but to be here, has been wonderful.

And to see the way they've created an amazing program that I think has blended the Indigenous culture and the sessions in a meaningful way. I've been to a lot of conferences, a lot of open education conferences, and we don't always do it as well. And so I just think they've done a really magnificent job in that and trying to juggle the different strands and keep everyone highlighted, on an even keel.

So to me, that's really what stands out. 

[00:07:56] Alan Levine: Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. What's the state of open education right now? Because I get the sense sometimes there's some uncertainty or there's some feeling of like, is open changing? Where do you see it going? And where should OE Global go?

[00:08:11] Cathy Casserly: So two thoughts. One is AI is changing the landscape of the world and education along with it. So I think in particular, with respect to openly licensed content, there's a moment in time when we have to be proactive as a community to figure out exactly how we wanna participate in the AI ed space with the content that is openly licensed.

Because otherwise it will happen to us and we wanna be proactive. So I think clarity on that is of utmost importance. 

And then the second thing I think about, and it came out particularly with Cable's talk, his keynote yesterday, is that I feel like the open ecosystem, the different sub sectors of data and science and open education, have now blossomed enough and created enough stability and inroads that we now have to lift up the connected ecosystem of all the players. 

So where we worked on each strand just to get takeoff, which I think is what's happened over the past 20 years with open education, we've now lifted the field up. But unless we begin to integrate across the disciplines with open access and everything else, we're going to lose the possibilities too.

So I'd say those are the two big priorities for open. And I will say that open always feels fragile. 

[00:09:32] Alan Levine: Held together with sheer will and good intention. 

[00:09:35] Cathy Casserly: Yeah, well, because it's still not the dominant. It's still a subsector. It's still innovators. It's still not the norm of public dollars, and that's what a new innovation is.

It takes time to grow hold and grow root. It always feels fragile but I think, actually, I feel like it feels less fragile to me because of the huge participation across so many countries and so much activity going on in local universities and schools and colleges and teachers and practitioners and administrators, like the level of conversation around pedagogy and culturally relevant content.

We weren't having these conversations before. And so to me, we've also completely evolved as a field. 

[00:10:15] Alan Levine: Okay, as a board member, where do you think the organization should be steering its energy? 

[00:10:19] Cathy Casserly: Yeah, I think the organization has done an amazing job on a shoestring that all nonprofits do. And it's a small staff working really hard. I think the challenge is there's a lot of activities and programs that are historically owned now by OpenEdGlobal that are important for the community and the ecosystem is changing. 

So is there a need to devote some resources to this new future and have the bandwidth and headspace and time to explore and meet and partner with the right institutions?

And so I think that's probably the roadmap for the next year or two to figure out where and how OEG evolves with the larger evolving ecosystem. 

[00:11:02] Alan Levine: And while we have the "Global" in our name, it's a lot of work to be global. 

[00:11:06] Cathy Casserly: And a very small staff, a very small staff. So, you know, it's an impossible task. Let me just say that from the start. 

And for the organization, how do you keep people sane and the work prioritized and most impactful? I guess the one thing I've learned over many years of working is there's a point where you have to say no, and you can't take on more, and it's really hard to say "no" because you're interesting, and they're great people that you want to work with, and it's a good reason to work on A, B, and C, but you really only have bandwidth for D to do it well, and so to say "no" becomes probably the most important one word in the vocabulary. 

[00:11:40] Alan Levine: I'm terrible at this. 

[00:11:40] Cathy Casserly: Yeah, most people are! I think most people in this community, because we're so giving, we're generous, we have empathy. If someone needs help, we want to step in and help them. That's what this community does. And so at the same time, you still have to sustain yourself so that you can be here for the long run and not get burned out.

[00:11:57] Alan Levine: Any thoughts about the incorporation and the active conference vision of Two Eyed Seeing and Indigenous perspective and braiding? How do we keep at that and not lose that. It was definitely something that you feel in the air here, (uh huh) when people go back to their offices and their work, how do we still sort of keep that in our minds? 

[00:12:16] Cathy Casserly: I think it will resonate with us more.

I can imagine that there's so many conferences that happen now or regional meetings that they will bring some of these threads that they've seen showcased here to theirs. It's become so meaningful and it's something that we need and is appropriate .

So I think we'll see more of that in other conferences. And I certainly hope OEG will continue as the conference moves from location to location. I can imagine this will be a format and framework that has worked quite successfully, that hopefully will replicate again. 

[00:12:47] Alan Levine: That sounds good. Okay. So three words to describe the conference experience.

[00:12:52] Cathy Casserly: Connection. Awesome. And introspective. 

[00:12:58] Alan Levine: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Cathy, I look forward to putting all these perspectives together. 

[00:13:02] Cathy Casserly: Thank you, Alan. Appreciate it.