Episode 64: Board Viewpoints with Martin Dougiamas and Paola Corti
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[00:00:00] Martin Dougiamas: And that's where I think AI will be really, really helpful as a kind of coach. That's what I'm working on, is how do we build the perfect coach that sits on your own device, 100% on your device, in your own private control. It knows as much as you want to tell it about yourself and give it access to all your things so that it's able to coach you really effectively into the places you want to go. And I think that helps us find purpose and meaning as individuals in this world. 

[00:00:41] Paola Corti: I'm sure that everyone who is listening to this podcast can find their way to see how helpful the global community is. This coordinating role that the global organizations are playing. can be supportive in many ways. Also, at the local level, practitioners or advocates or librarians or instructional designers, they need to have someone behind their backs, to advocate with let's say a higher voice sometimes. Knowing that OE Global is there can be really helpful. 

[00:01:28] Alan Levine: Welcome back. I'm Alan Levine from Open Education Global, and we're here for a new podcast in 2024. And OEG Voices is the podcast that we do to bring you the people involved in open education. We get to know something about them and just have some casual conversations. Every other month we're going to feature hopefully a set of two O E Global board members.

I'm really glad to welcome Martin Dougiamas here, all the way from Perth, Australia , talking to Saskatchewan. Canada. 

[00:01:55] Martin Dougiamas: Hi, Alan. A real pleasure to be here and yes, the world is getting smaller and smaller. I'm really enjoying not traveling as much as I used to. That's for sure.

[00:02:04] Alan Levine: The whole point of this is to bring you people like Martin who are Open Education Global board members, to hear their perspective because they're important to this organization.

First let's do the situational stuff. We don't have to ask you for a bio, 'cause everybody knows the things that you've done. But tell us where you are in the world and what it's like to live in that part of the world.

[00:02:23] Martin Dougiamas: So I'm in Perth which is on the west coast of Australia. It's one of the most isolated cities in the world. It's about 2 million people surrounded by desert and sea for a long distance. I grew up in Central Australia, a couple of thousand kilometers away from here in the middle of Australia.

And that was a real desert, red sand spinifex, in an Aboriginal community. And all of my schooling until I was around 12 was on School of the Air, on radio, shortwave radio, 

which they used to bounce off the atmosphere. And so, I was always very used to distance education. I've been in Perth since I was around 12 as I said, and drifted into computer science. 

Eventually Curtin University where I started to play with the technology and really push the boundaries of what we could do with a new web at the time, trying to bring together lots of ideas and tools into one open source platform that teachers could use for online education. And that became Moodle.

[00:03:22] Alan Levine: There's so many things I wanna start with. I've read about School of the Air and I've been to parts of Australia, but what was it really like to learn through the radio? What was the experience like for a student? 

[00:03:33] Track 1: it was really tremendous actually. It was a mix of live, synchronous connections over the radio. Probably every morning we had half an hour, an hour with the teacher and the whole class. And the class was spread out over a thousand kilometer diameter. The teacher was in Kalgoorlie.

So we would talk, we'd hear each other's voices and we'd go through some exercises. And the rest of the time it was correspondence. So there were big pads of paper, worksheets and books to get through that every two weeks were delivered in a Cessna four seater plane to me.

I'd finish them and send them back That's how we all did things then and it worked so well, that sort of self-study. I guess I learned to be quite self-driven and to run and decide what I wanted to do quite early. When I came back to Perth, I was actually a year ahead of everyone else at school.

I skipped grade seven and went straight into high school. ' I also used to read a lot 'cause there wasn't A lot of entertainment out there. I really got into science fiction, on my own accord. Somebody brought me a book once and I was outta the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis. I just got really into science fiction and had a library of thousands of books by the end and, have always been living in the future, always thinking about computers and AI and the internet and what it could be. And I knew we'd get there someday. And I'm just thrilled every, every year just to see that we are getting closer and closer with all this technology.

It's amazing.

[00:04:58] Alan Levine: That is interesting, those early influences, how , they played out in your life. I can see that happening. So you got into Curtin University and I wanna talk about where did this idea for Moodle emerge from? What was it like when you first started working on it? And where did you think it would go? I just asked way too many questions! 

[00:05:14] Martin Dougiamas: Really interested in computers. As the early internet back in the eighties and nineties, I was building BBSs. I wrote a BBS from scratch with dial up phones and got people connecting in my local area here, and eventually got that connected onto the early internet.

All of Australia at the time was on a single dial up phone line

[00:05:33] Alan Levine: Hmm.

[00:05:33] Martin Dougiamas: And that connection was getting very exciting and I was really into the internet. I became eventually an internet consultant working at the university. I was helping the university think about the internet and helping academics of all types.

And I could just see the tools weren't good enough. We were using WebCT a Canadian innovation, as you may recall. Great, great software at the time. Very bleeding edge, but it wasn't open source. And even though I could change it, I wasn't allowed to. And it was very frustrating having to call Canada all the time. 

And it used to break frequently. I thought I could do something a bit different here and I could do something from scratch. So I started playing around and got into learning more about education and communication. I did a Master's in Education and then a PhD and experimenting.

And that's how that grew. It was always open source. My baseline was this is the system that works. This is what allows people to connect, work together and share. It's a very academic approach of open sharing.

[00:06:34] Alan Levine: What was that entree to open source? 'cause that, that was obviously, again, a thing that drove you to do this.

[00:06:40] Martin Dougiamas: Before the dot com boom, in the late nineties, there was no commercialism on the internet. It was all open source. So all the old timers from those periods just assumed everything was this wonderful new, open, free place. That was the philosophy. And it's what led to the explosion and the creation of the internet.

It's all these people sticking in a computer here and a few wires and connecting it to the next person along who had a computer and a few wires, and that's how the internet developed. That's why we have this beautiful thing now.

[00:07:11] Alan Levine: At what point did you start thinking about more broadly about open education?

[00:07:15] Martin Dougiamas: Well, quite early actually. I was always very open. I had a course called Internet Overview, where I was teaching people the internet. I used to give a free seminar to hundreds and thousands of people actually all over my city. I was informing all kinds of governments and businesses. I was consulting and just sharing everything I could about the internet because it was new.

And you may remember in the early days everybody was worried about, "oh, you could get a bomb recipe, you know, terrorism's gonna explode." And , I had to counter that with, no, "this is a absolutely beautiful way to share information and learn." The openness, I mean, it comes back to physics actually. To make a copy of an electronic thing costs zero.

There is no production cost after you've made the first copy of it. it's electrons, it's, you know, negligible. And so , it makes sense that once you have digital things, nature wants them to spread and be copied. It's a natural thing to me that we do that. .

And also along with that there is huge crises in the world of inequality. All the SDGs that were showing even 20 years ago that I was sort of thinking about. How do we get that to everybody. And open education is a more intentional way of using that physics basis, production costs are zero or replication costs are zero.

Okay, let's get it out there. Let's bring people into and onto this platform. So I'm still doing that And so seeing what Moodle has evolved into, is it sometimes like scary how big it is and where it has gone? It's of such a large scale and you see people using it all over the world.

Yes, it's a huge responsibility for sure. And I've done my best. There's a company at the core of it to make it sustainable. And leading the whole project, I've been leading that for a long time. I feel a huge responsibility to do the best I can.

I always think there's more that we can do, and in fact, I'm stepping back from the CEO role, to get back to the roots actually and get my hands right into all this new technology, to be building new things. I'm stepping back from Moodle. It's actually because I feel like we need more of a push in that area, on the new technologies, to make a big jump rather than incremental steps forward.

[00:09:32] Alan Levine: That gets me to where I wanna talk about. So what are the new things that you're excited about and, that has your brain firing to get into?

[00:09:39] Martin Dougiamas: Well look, I've gotta talk about AI. It's a bigger impact to our species than the internet was. I believe it's going to be bigger than the internet. We needed the internet to connect things, but the amount of change to society will be larger. And that's a big statement, I think, when you see how we all got used to the internet in a couple of short decades and it runs everything.

You really can't exist in society without using the internet nearly on a daily basis. Yeah, I think this is larger and it really affects education because we've basically invented brains and built them out of sand and rock. Those brains are now directly involved and impacting our main activities, our purpose as well. 

A lot of people find meaning in work and the activities that we do. Now we find machines can do those too. And we are automating, or at least on the precipice of automating or being able to automate nearly everything, which is quite a large, a large step.

I really see a lot of positives in it actually. And, I'm simultaneously worried by old school thinking and capitalist commercial approaches to things, turning this into another bad thing. But I also see a lot of positives. So that's a big one. And I feel it like it needs a lot of work. What is open education in a future of AI?

The other big thing, I'm very focused on is the proliferation of devices that we have. The internet is now leaking into tiny headphones and fridges and all these different types of devices that are in our homes-- smart speakers, smart everything, augmented reality, all these new ways of streaming information around the world.

It's a big step forward from just websites and looking at things on a screen. However, they're all very useful in education. I think there's a lot of work we need to do on infrastructure to make education work better across all those devices, you know, seamlessly. 

[00:11:37] Alan Levine: You're gonna get a Vision Pro?

[00:11:39] Martin Dougiamas: Absolutely, I've been looking forward to Apple getting into that space for probably 20 years. I had a VR headset in 1996, a vFX1. I used to play Quake on it. There wasn't much else you could do, and Doom. It really showed me the future.

And I'm a big fan of augmented reality and VR. Still, has a long way to go. I feel like Apple's attention on it has made a jump into, you know, this actually looks really workable now,

so I'll get one as soon as I possibly can, but they're only selling them in the US at the moment.

[00:12:09] Alan Levine: Yeah, it's pretty exciting to see.

So, You've been on the board, of OE Global for a couple years. What's it like to be on the board? What do you do?

[00:12:17] Martin Dougiamas: So being a board member for anything is interesting because you just sort of drop in once every couple of months. You're helping to steer. You are mostly advising the director of the organization and being a support for them. That's been good. And we've had some very good leadership in Open Education Global which meant the job was fairly easy.

It was like "doing a great job, keep it up." In the last year or two, we've all tried to step up to be more involved and help set some of the direction a little bit. And I would still like to see a lot more growth in the area. 

Open Education Global, Firstly, it's a terrific concept and a terrific brand, right? It's a name.

I would like to see it be more the figurehead for the whole movement, the whole open education movement. There are many organizations and many other initiatives, and they're all great.

I would like to see more of them come together under the umbrella of Open Education Global and have a  more consistent and powerful approach to the work we need to do, which is, you know, advocacy. But also driving projects and driving infrastructure, creating the arguments in very many different places around the world for these things.

Because the opposing voices are the Microsofts, the Googles and the big education companies and the publishers who have big budgets, loud voices. And when it comes to the point of education actually happening, You really wanna make sure open education is a big voice in that discussion and helps the choices.

[00:13:50] Alan Levine: Well, please steer in that direction. I definitely agree with wanting to do a lot more of that. At the same time, it's rather daunting to talk about education around the globe. We try to touch as many people as we can, but we're definitely not reaching many more.

There's the work to bring together the Network of Open Organizations and that's starting to get a little bit of roll. Definitely push us in that direction to do more, to be that leader in the space. We've been very good at supporting and creating enthusiasm. But thinking about this fast moving speed train of artificial intelligence, it sometimes feels like who is in charge of this? It's going so fast. 

At the same time, the web when it came out, you could, view source and get an understanding of what's going on. And conceptually artificial intelligence is at another dimension of complexity.

[00:14:41] Martin Dougiamas: Yeah, it really is. That's why I'm shifting to my research role, so I can spend all my time thinking about these things and working on prototypes, which I am.

AI hits us in two ways. One is it supports us. It's an amazing tool. You can get it to help you with things. It's a very helpful thing, in lots of cases. You can generate clip art and you know what exactly what you want, whenever you want. But it's designed and also fundamentally a labor replacing thing. And you hear that phrase a lot, that AI is labor replacing.

Like it's just natural. 'cause we use our brains to do work, even if it's physical work. And AI will replace those things. So that affects education in that how do all the processes of education currently work? How are they affected? 'cause they're all people's brains doing things, teaching and learning and administrating.

So AI is gonna affect all of that. But also what are we even learning for? Because so much of education is focused on people gaining skills for work. If that work no longer exists in the future, we don't really need to be teaching those things or do we? 

The most interesting thing to me is you know, imagine the world in, it could be as little as 10 years, but let's say 30 years, where 80 or 90% of jobs are automated.

All the physical jobs by robots and all the information, white collar type jobs just by AI's running on the net. What are we gonna be doing? There's Maslow's hierarchy. It's, you know, a triangle at the bottom there. You've got your basic needs, about surviving and having a roof over your head and food and so on.

And then it gets higher up and more into the space of the fun things, let's say. And I really look at the top part of the triangle. All we'll have left and think about, what are we gonna be doing? And I think most of it is actually learning. Most of it we will be doing is learning 

things we want to learn, not because we have to, but because we're just following our interests.

I think it could be a golden age if we get it right, if we actually do solve those bottom two layers of Maslow's hierarchy, we could have a great time having more conversations like this, Alan, you know? And teaching each other things, taking up hobbies.

I do a lot of public speaking and I'm probably okay at talking about Moodle and things for an hour at a keynote. But in some avenues, like in a staff get together, I don't feel like I give a good speech. I don't feel like I'm good at public speaking. And I thought, well, I should do something about it. And I joined Toastmasters, right? Which is a very old organization that helps you learn how to be better at public speaking.

And it's been really useful already. So that's just a tiny little personal example of Working out that you needed some learning that wasn't necessarily part of a degree. It's like a little thing that you want to add to your life, learning experience, identifying it, getting yourself into that situation and making your brain do the work so that you do learn those things.

And that's where I think AI will be really, really helpful as a kind of coach. that's what I'm working on, is how do we build the perfect coach that sits on your own device, 100% on your device, in your own private control. It knows as much as you want to tell it about yourself and give it access to all your things so that it's able to coach you really effectively into the places you want to go. And I think that helps us find purpose and meaning as individuals in this world. 

I'm taking that far more individual centered approach rather than a learning management system. I think we'll still have learning management systems in the future, and you will connect to them when you need to.

But I'm very interested in the personal device now.

[00:18:20] Alan Levine: I'm going back to your story of that young man , and learning over the radio. That person now at the top of the pyramid, having that experience where they'll be able to go with that same spirit of curiosity and interest in doing more and understanding more about the world.

That's what I hope we can latch on to and create those sort of opportunities that propel people to go as far as you have done.

[00:18:42] Martin Dougiamas: We want everyone to be a lifelong learner, to think oh, there's more I want to know. Our job is to light that fire, you know? And that's an open education must have, I think, is how do you light that fire and get people interested so they can seek out more learning, more education. I think most people are like that in some way. 

We all go down our own rabbit holes, and maybe it's not interesting to other people, whatever we're getting into. Some people are just really into a particular sport or something, and that's fine.

But I think having everybody at least learning means that we're able to be adaptable as a species. We're able to solve the problems that we are facing of all the sustainable development goals, inequality and climate change. we're only gonna get there through curious citizens who are willing to learn.

[00:19:31] Alan Levine: How do you feel about us bringing the conference down to Brisbane next year, which of course is far away from you, but relatively closer than Edmonton.

[00:19:39] Martin Dougiamas: Oh, way closer, just the other side of the island. , I'm looking forward to it. Really happy it's coming here for a change. I have been traveling less. In 2019 I traveled the equivalent of 12 times around the equator in one year. 

And that was insane.

Too much travel, too much getting around this planet and I worry about the carbon impact. So I'm traveling way less now, but I will be going to Brisbane. That's something I can definitely manage.

[00:20:01] Alan Levine: I've been having interesting conversations with people who are changing this approach. Thinking, "Do I wanna be doing all that traveling?" And what is the cost to the world and what is the cost , to me personally? 

Edmonton was the first travel that I had done, since before the pandemic. At the same time when I got there, I actually underestimated how exciting it was to talk-- and see people who I hadn't talked to for a long time. 

It's not about going back, it's taking what was powerful and still doing it in a way that can be efficient to communicate this way .

I think we've learned that we can do a lot of collaboration, remotely and virtually. Sometimes I'm gonna ask you to stay up at 10 o'clock at night and sometimes I'm gonna stay up at 10 o'clock at night. 

[00:20:44] Martin Dougiamas: It's okay if we don't have work in the morning. And that's where I think virtual reality has a real part to play, as it gets better and better and much more accepted. You may remember in your youth, Alan, the dream of having video phone calls.

It was like in the future, it was a sci-fi thing, and now we just have so many options for doing a video call. We don't even think about it anymore, but it came true. 

And I feel like it'll be like that with virtual reality. You'll just grab a headset and stick it on, or it'll be built into the glasses that a lot of us are wearing

I've had some experiences that I felt I was in there. I was viscerally with the person . I Know it's possible and I think we'll get there.

[00:21:20] Alan Levine: Almost in a little bit more than a generation, but I remember the first time I tried CUSeeMe. It was like this big [gestures tiny height]. But you were talking to someone and they were moving and, we don't even think twice about it . Compared to world history, it's a blink of an eye that has changed. 

[00:21:36] Martin Dougiamas: In 96, I ran a conference, called the Cyber Mind Conference. It was at our university and I did some things that I think were quite unique and early. We had a RealAudio streaming of all the sessions. There was a physical conference happening at the university. People had traveled to be there.

So we streamed all of it to people who couldn't be there. And that was Pretty new at the time. But also we had a MUD, you remember MOOS and, 

[00:22:01] Alan Levine: Mm-Hmm. 

[00:22:01] Martin Dougiamas: muds. So that was a virtual reality in text. We didn't have wifi then, so we had blue ethernet cables running from the front of the lecture theater into the audience.

And we had a lot of people sitting on computers, 

In this virtual world. And they were keeping this interaction going between the people out there and the people in the room. 

We also showed on a second screen at the front, so you could see what was happening online at the same time. That was really the first time I got the sense that you can create an interactive environment that's exciting and interesting and everybody's learning, purely over, over the internet.

I've seen enough to know it's all possible. It's just a matter of making it easy.

[00:22:39] Alan Levine: I'm excited about all the things that you're pursuing your research and I hope you keep us in mind to figure out ways that the OE Global community can tap into that experience. 

Sometimes I like to ask, outside of the work that you do, what's really a rewarding thing that you do, away from all this stuff? 

[00:22:53] Martin Dougiamas: Well, look, your physical health's important. Everybody should be looking after their bodies. I go hiking. I live fortunately next to some bush, out the window 

here where there's kangaroos hopping around outside my house, literally. There's a stereotype that that's happening, but literally is happening in my house.

So I like exercising. I like, home maintenance. If you have a home, you know, 80% of life is maintenance. 80% of all things is maintenance, let's face it. But I like getting my hands into things and teaching myself new crafts, building stuff and fixing things.

I do a little bit of art. I make a lot of music too. I like producing music. Not a lot of it I've put out there public. It's more for my own benefit. I listen to my own music quite a bit when I'm in the car. I was a drummer back in my twenties and in a band.

But you will be seeing me a lot more around Open Education Global, because I'm not going to be CEO of a company anymore, which is extremely time . I'll be much more able to be involved. 

I've been watching what you are doing, Alan. I really love , seeing you out there, hooking up feeds and trying , all the new ways to get information flowing around the place.

And I'm the same. I'm always searching for the most. Ideal way to have my brain interface with computers. If I have an idea, I wanna put it in a notes place. So I'm experimenting a lot with, you know, personal notes and how that translates into a feed. Basically, so how that will stream out onto Mastodon and blogs and how we connect all those things, all that plumbing and wiring so that we create a situation you can live in. and your brain can do its random thing and you don't have to work too much to get it out there.

I can see you're interested in that too, just from what you're doing.

[00:24:32] Alan Levine: What are you using for doing your note taking? Are you a person into Obsidian? 

[00:24:36] Martin Dougiamas: I'm an Obsidian user. yeah.

And there's a lot to explore even in that one world actually, just turning ideas into, to-do items and having it connect to your calendar . That's what I think AI is gonna be really great at, a personal assistant. I've been fortunate to have a real life assistant for many years. She's an Australian who lives in Barcelona, and she's my executive assistant as 

CEO. That experience of having somebody who's dedicated to helping you and assisting you all the time, if they're really good at it, 

is absolutely amazing. And you realize why people who can afford it have assistants, because it's really a second brain that makes you three times more effective.

I think our computer should be a little bit more like that.

[00:25:20] Alan Levine: We're busy now with getting ready for Open Education Week. Do you have anything you're thinking about doing during that? 

[00:25:27] Martin Dougiamas: I didn't have much planned. they usually pass by so quick. I often miss them to be honest. This year I'll definitely try and do something. You'll see me around on the website and I'll be publishing my plans for this assistant during that week.

So, I'd love to have some feedback, from people on that too.

[00:25:42] Alan Levine: Last year we started doing, some live webcasts. I've been thinking about maybe seeing if we can get a, a board conversation going, but I'd love to schedule one with you. We can talk about the new assistant or do a demo or something or just have an informal conversation.

[00:25:57] Martin Dougiamas: And we'll also be releasing the new version of MoodleNet, MoodleNet Four. 

We've been focusing on quality because there's a lot of OER. There's a lot of OER initiatives. People make some things and they put them up on whatever site they have access to, and they end up being all over the internet. And they cannot always be easy to find. You don't know what the quality's like, or at least that's a subjective term of course, how high quality is it for your needs at that point in time?

moodleNet is focused on trying to provide a clearinghouse for that stuff and on the quality of OER. We'll talk about that as well.

[00:26:32] Alan Levine: My last question was gonna be, since it's the board viewpoint, describe the experience of being on the board in three words.

[00:26:39] Martin Dougiamas: Exciting. definitely use that one. It's very friendly. We have a very friendly group. And the third word I would think is... Potential. Yeah. I think we have potential and there's a lot to do still . 

[00:26:52] Alan Levine: I wanna thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us and we're excited to hear about your projects and especially that you have this opportunity to focus your energy, on research and development .

[00:27:02] Martin Dougiamas: And thank you too, Alan, it's really nice to talk with you actually, because you've been around my consciousness for decades, so it's great to 

[00:27:09] Alan Levine: Yeah, And I'm very pleased to have in the conversation stage right now, Paula Corti from Milan, Italy. Is that correct? Is that where you are right now?

[00:27:17] Paola Corti: I'm in Monza, actually, but it's nice to see you, Alan, online.

[00:27:21] Alan Levine: Yes. Yes.

[00:27:22] Paola Corti: It's quite late in the evening now in Italy, and I know it's early afternoon, right? 

[00:27:28] Alan Levine: Thank you for joining me. I don't like it so much when we ask people to meet in their evenings. When I recorded the earlier conversation with Martin, who's in Perth, I met at my 10 PM and so I'm making a commitment to try to flip that expectation because we don't really have the expectation.

When we thought this idea of viewpoints, that can mean many things. First of all, where you are in your world and if it can be done, the snapshot of the work you do in open education from that place.

[00:27:55] Paola Corti: I'm working, mostly from Monza or Milano, depending on what I'm doing. In Milano, I work at Politecnico di Milano University. And, I'm a project manager there. That's where I started getting in touch with Open Education and moving my first steps. In 2016, I attended my first OE Global Conference in Kraków, asking every expert in the room to be interviewed by me, because we wanted to create a MOOC about Open Educational Resources.

My proposal to my managing director, Susanna Sankasani, was, why don't we ask them directly to be part of this MOOC. They are the experts. I can put them together, but we can learn a lot from them. And everyone was so welcoming and so kind that we found places where to record short videos for me to interview them.

They spent time with me without even knowing my name. This kind of experience, I can tell you, because it's not only that we had a wonderful MOOC after that, but for me it was discovering a completely new context where some human values actually mattered and they still matter for me.

Three years ago SPARC Europe was looking for an Open Education Community Manager so I asked my Managing Director in Polimi if I was allowed to work part time so that I could join them. I was selected, so it's three years now that I have the privilege to work with librarians around Europe.

I'm learning a lot from them. Not only their skill set is perfect for open education, but as a practitioner, many of the questions that I had while working, they have the answers sometimes or the right approach to look for the answers, which is invaluable.

[00:29:54] Alan Levine: Yes. You don't have to sell me on the power of librarians, but it may be interesting to think about from that start in 2015 the role of librarians, in OER and open education, to me has been. You hear now of people working as OER librarians. That says a lot about where things have moved. Can you say, 2024, what have you seen that's encouraging from your start in the field?

[00:30:17] Paola Corti: Well, many things happened. I think that when we were talking about licenses, about resources with the license a while ago, most of the people really didn't follow the discussion. It seemed like it didn't matter so much. Or, we were not good enough to show the benefits of it also, depending on the perspective that you take.

There was a lot of fear. Some of it is still in the room, perceived as a challenge, most from content experts, I would say. But, hand in hand, you take them through the first steps, then they discover that it's not the nightmare that they believed it was at the beginning.

On the contrary, there's a huge global community available to support and answer questions when doubts arise, which happens very often. Every experience might be different from the previous one, but having the community available, reachable behind the scenes. Like in this case, you know, there is no distance. And everything happens very fast and people are ready to support. So that's what I think it's a big added value. Having librarians in this, given their service approach and their helping attitude, well, this makes a difference.

[00:31:41] Alan Levine: With your work with librarians, what are some issues or challenges , high on their list in 2024, that they're putting their energy into?

[00:31:50] Paola Corti: What we are trying to do now, at the European level at least, is to continue advocating for open at the local level in order to act on Action Area 1, raise awareness. of the UNESCO OER Recommendation. I would tell you that our focus is still on all the action areas of the UNESCO OER Recommendation.

Some of them see our community as more powerful to act directly. In other cases, for example, the policy level, we might be indirectly related to it. But once librarians are seen as the valuable partner they are, when they are invited to sit at the table, what they say and what they can bring to that table usually is key to progress.

So that's one thing. And the rest I would say is maintaining the good mood that we have in the room while we work together, which is very helpful to work together, sometimes when it's outside of the working hours for them most of the time. 

And also when something challenging happens, it might be a huge issue. It might be a small personal issue, but the community is there to support, to take the role of someone else and help out, giving them the free space they need to take care of other issues in their lives. And this happens at many different levels.

[00:33:25] Alan Levine: I hear through a couple of your strands a common thread of the human connection in all this, that it's not just all licenses and policies and rules and OER things, really what happens are the people behind the scene.

[00:33:37] Paola Corti: Definitely yes. 

[00:33:38] Alan Levine: We're this global organization and you're part of the global board, what are things that we can do in general to help create the things that librarians and educators might need or be able to tap into, especially connection wise, or just maybe not to feel so isolated.

[00:33:57] Paola Corti: Yeah. I think that this coordinating role that organizations like OE Global can play, being so open to listen to the regional needs. And in the in the regions themselves, the local needs. This is really helpful because knowing that there is a place where we can all meet and ask each other for support or advice is really important for the community. And I don't know if it is something that is clear enough, because sometimes we forget to be explicitly grateful, you know?

I'm sure that everyone who is listening to this podcast can find their way to see how helpful the global community is. This coordinating role that the global organizations are playing. can be supportive in many ways. Also, at the local level, practitioners or advocates or librarians or instructional designers, they need to have someone behind their backs, to advocate with let's say a higher voice sometimes. Knowing that OE Global is there can be really helpful.

[00:35:11] Alan Levine: On our minds, at least, we're coming up in a month to Open Education Week. I'm a little bit too close to the planning of it. But, what is it the meaning or impact of that for, say, at the institution level, like at Polimi? 

What is the reason to be involved with that? And how do you generate the interest among your faculty there?

[00:35:30] Paola Corti: It depends. If we have an opportunity to organize a learning event locally, and by locally I mean either in person or online, and, it fits the calendar of the university and we can make it open, that's the perfect case scenario. Otherwise, what we do is usually to take the opportunity to upload assets to the database that you provide, or links, now that it is also available . And I like it very much, honestly. 

So the Open Education Week is an opportunity every year to bring open in the discourse. This is really powerful because sometimes we don't have a lot of opportunities or the institution is not in the mood to progress. It has other priorities, there is something bigger happening, you know, many things happen at the same time. The Open Education Week is like an opportunity that you know is there. It's not making a lot of noise, but you can always , make it work in your context. 

Either by uploading your resources, or give more visibility to your events or also going back to the resources that other people share, and look for something that is very effective for a teacher, or someone working in the teaching staff,. They can see what happens when they reuse resources.

[00:36:57] Alan Levine: You went to the conference in 2016 and you've been very active in Open Education Global since I've been here. What is the view now as a board member? How are you looking at the organization now? 

[00:37:07] Paola Corti: First of all , since you know me, there's nothing new in what I'm going to say. At the beginning, I was really uncomfortable. This is a huge opportunity, you know, but I, I felt like I didn't belong. What can a practitioner say when so many wonderful experienced people are in the room?

For me, it's an opportunity to learn and to get to know the organization OE Global behind the scenes and see more closely, which are the challenges to make such an organization continue working. And, what I can bring with my usual [laughter] open and straightforward approach is the perspective of a practitioner.

If you want things happen, people in the room should have a voice and maybe that's why I was elected as a member of the board, to have the practitioner's perspective in the room. So I'm very happy to be there and to get to know more the staff members. that work in OE Global, because you see the result of their work, but you don't have many opportunities to work close to them all the time.

I'm happy to collaborate and to discuss with the other board members and learn from them. So, , a great opportunity, I think.

[00:38:26] Alan Levine: Well, if anybody asked me, I'd say more practitioners [Paolo laughs]. 

What are the meetings like? Are they very formal and structured? Is it brainstormy? I would imagine it's a pretty compressed agenda, and, you have to cover a lot of grounds.

But, what's the atmosphere like?

[00:38:40] Paola Corti: The atmosphere is very welcoming. At the beginning I thought that it was more official. I thought that I should control myself, but then knowing the people in the room and listening to them first, I immediately thought that you can speak up if you have an idea or if you have a doubt, if you want to bring your perspective on the table. That's what we are required to do otherwise it's better for us not to be part of the board , right? 

If any decision has to be made it's better for every member to speak up and we are all welcome to do so. The online meetings are very compressed but they are also very well organized, which is key to make the most out of the time we have.

Also, considering we are spread around the world and the time zones are really uncomfortable for some of us . I had one opportunity so far, and I will have another one in Cork to meet in person. Those meetings are longer and it's a real pleasure to meet in person because you have the opportunity to , do something different, taking the time to discuss longer when needed, and also get to know each other a little bit more, which makes working at a distance much more effective.

We are already counting on each other for specific activities or goals. We are also working in subgroups to make it more efficient, which is wonderful. But when we gather all together, it's an opportunity to listen more closely to the others. And it's always a discovery.

[00:40:12] Alan Levine: So, you have a magic wand, and you can create anything for this organization to do that maybe it's not doing. What would you want to see OE Global take on either topic wise or format wise, as a way to grow this organization?

[00:40:27] Paola Corti: It would be ideal to have the power to talk with all governments, who are not already part of the open education community and help them to have policies that at least invite everyone in the education field to consider open education as an opportunity and to do their best to contribute as a priority.

Not compulsory, but a strong invitation would be ideal coming from governments. And I think that OE Global is in the position to support that. It's a long road. I'm not saying that it's something that can happen between today and tonight and tomorrow. Sorry, but I think that as a recognized global organization it is important to be there and to show up when the decision makers are deciding, actually between continuing with the old style closed resources and considering, with a very practical approach, open education as an opportunity.

[00:41:38] Alan Levine: Are there places in the world or efforts that you would say have made some inroads in terms of that influence on policymaking, especially, from your perch in Europe?

[00:41:48] Paola Corti: Well, the Netherlands are doing great, I would say. They are progressing very fast and they are investing on open as a universe, not only open education, but also open science, open access, and everything that goes with the open hat. Germany is progressing very fast. France is also very involved into having a policy at the national level. I think that we have great experiences, but one that struck me lately, and you know about that, Alan, is what's happening at policy level in Ukraine, because even if they have a huge number of focuses under the radar, they are spending time considering open education at the national level.

We both have the privilege to know some of the people working on the ground to make this happen. I'm in awe of the efforts they are putting into this. I see the benefit that they see in it, also during this very sad period in their history. But, I think also that the global community is bringing them a lot of energy. They don't feel alone in this.

[00:42:58] Alan Levine: We know how remarkable it is considering the war conditions that they're operating under. That's really encouraging to hear what's going on in the Ukraine. 

It's really great to get input into your thinking and what's important to you. I like to ask what's something you do outside of work that, that gives you joy or just that you put your energy into.

[00:43:18] Paola Corti: I love to stay outside, so as soon as I can, I leave the computer at home. And I either go out running, even if it's cold, rainy. It doesn't matter. I struggle with hot weather, but not with the cold weather. 

And I love to go exploring the mountains. I think that exploring nature brings me that kind of calm joy that really recharges me deeply. Working life is often fast with a very, hectic rhythm. Even if you are sitting in front of this small rectangular screen most of the time, right? And now I'm standing up, as you see.

But as soon as I can, I go up any of our mountains, close or far. The Alps are my playground.

[00:44:06] Alan Levine: So you have some convenient mountains where you

[00:44:08] Paola Corti: Oh, yes, yes, yes. Definitely, yes.

[00:44:11] Alan Levine: That's wonderful. This is what we wanted to do. We want to just hear from the people who are on the board and introduce them to the community. Of course you're very open to being contacted by people. And I appreciate all the activity you do in OEG Connect.

I have my little game where I'm asking a different question of everybody. Just for the heck of it describe in the first three words that come to your mind when I say "artificial intelligence."

[00:44:35] Paola Corti: Oh, I would say "curiosity" is the first word. Curiosity. "Critical approach." It's two words, but I don't know how to say this in one word. Forgive my poor English. 

[00:44:46] Alan Levine: You're allowed to break the rules. 

[00:44:49] Paola Corti: And also "opportunities". I would stress the plural because when we had the internet revolution, it was a period full of fears, full of challenges also.

But imagine what we are doing without the internet. So come on.

[00:45:08] Alan Levine: Thank you for playing, but more than that, thank you for talking and I look forward to putting this podcast together. Hopefully we'll share it with the world next week.

[00:45:15] Paola Corti: Thank you very much, Alan, for having me and for being so patient with my poor English.

[00:45:19] Alan Levine: Your English is fine.

[00:45:21] Paola Corti: Oh, come on. 

[00:45:22] Alan Levine: It's mine, I worry about. 

What a fabulous journey from the kangaroo country, western edge of Australia, to Monza, at the base of the Italian Alps, to hear these voices and have these conversations with OEGlobal board members Martin Dougiamas and Paola Corti. Thank you, if you've gotten to this point, listener, for listening to this latest episode of OEG Voices.

It's the podcast that we produce here at Open Education Global. In each episode, we feature a different musical track, selected from the Free Music Archive. So, considering Martin is a success story from the School of the Air, and that Paula seeks mountain views, I found a track called RF Mountain Air by legacyAlli in the Free Music Archive, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial International License.

You can find this episode at our site, voices dot oeglobal dot org, and we hope you engage in follow up conversations with Martin and Paula and other board members in our OEG Connect community. Connect dot oeglobal dot org If you'd like to share your own open education work or suggest a future guest, please let us know. The more voices here, the better.