Episode 70: OE Award for Homelessness in Canada === [00:00:00] Kristy Buccieri: I would add to that as well, when we teach this course, one of the things that students comment on the most is the impact of the lived experience stories and the inclusion of those particular case studies , that's really what they take away as being, the key learning for them. [00:00:21] Cyndi Gilmer: You can see the people through the stories, right? And you can see the challenges. it just brings them to life. Welcome to OE Global Voices --- [00:00:36] Alan Levine: It's time for a new episode of OE Global Voices, the podcast we produce here at Open Education Global. It's May 23rd, 11 a. m. on the East Coast, where my guests are coming from. Each episode of this podcast, we share you conversation style, people, practices, ideas from Open Educators from around the world. It's been . quite some time since we announced the winners of the Open Education Awards for Excellence. Well, actually, it was way back in August of last year. We have in our studio a team representing a fabulous project, and we're continuing into 2024 to catch up with our award winners. Often it provides an opportunity to find out what has happened with their project since that time of the award. And it's also timely because we have nominations open for the next round of the awards. We hope these conversations will motivate our listeners to nominate someone to be in this position next year. So in this show, we're going to hear from a few of many collaborators on an OER, "Understanding Homelessness in Canada from the Street to Classroom", which won the award for Significant Impact OER. As we listen and welcome our guests into our home here on the air, I think you're going to get a sense this project could have also gotten the collaboration award and maybe every other award in the set. Introducing the Guests --- [00:01:51] Alan Levine: I want to welcome everybody. We have to do introductions and we have five guests here. So, I think I'll start and I'll call on Stephanie first, and then she can pass the baton. So welcome Stephanie. I've been talking too much. Let's hear your voice. [00:02:05] Stephanie Ferguson: Thanks so much. My voice, hopefully it's fairly normal. I've been sick for the last week and a half, so I apologize if it's a little rusty, but, I'm an e- learning designer with Trent University and, I'm from Peterborough. [00:02:16] James Davy: And how about next, say hello, please James-- we have two here, James Bailey? I'm person with lived experience in homelessness, and currently I'm an intensive case manager with the Opiate Team at Four Counties Addiction Services Team in Peterborough. [00:02:32] Alan Levine: Excellent. Welcome, James. And then I'll turn it over to Kristy. Oh, I didn't even ask. I'll probably butcher your name, Kristy [00:02:37] Kristy Buccieri: it's Kristy Buccieri, so I always say, think of a ghost, think of a cherry, "Boo Cherry." I am an associate professor of Sociology at Trent University, and I also have been overseeing our Criminology program. [00:02:49] Alan Levine: I am just outside of Toronto in the Durham region and joining me today as well is my trusty cat Autumn, who you can't see, but is sitting on my lap as she was during every recording for this particular project. Autumn is a team member and, my dog Felix will probably jump at some point, And then, we'll go over to Cyndi. Welcome, Cyndi. [00:03:10] Cyndi Gilmer: Thank you. My name is Cyndi Gilmer and I am a Nursing professor at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. I live on the traditional territory of the Mississauga Anishinaabe and the territory covered by the Williams Treaty down in Port Hope, Ontario on beautiful Lake Ontario. [00:03:27] Alan Levine: And then we also have in the studio with us, James Bailey. Welcome, James. [00:03:31] James Bailey: Hi there! My name is James Bailey. I am a multimedia e- learning design specialist, that works at Trent Online. Stephanie and I actually work quite closely together. and I also live in Peterborough, Ontario. [00:03:44] Alan Levine: Fantastic. So how did you all come to be working together on this project? What's the story of the origin? The Origin of the Project --- [00:03:49] Cyndi Gilmer: Oh, Kristy, you have to answer that one. [00:03:51] Kristy Buccieri: Yeah, this is an interesting story and I guess came together just by sheer chance and luck. We had just started a new Criminology program at Trent University. As part of that we were planning on having a course in homelessness and we wanted to do that online. So at the same time during COVID, the Ontario government released a virtual learning strategy which had some funding tied to course development. And so we applied for funding. We received that and decided to think about developing the course, doing it in a way that would be engaging and accessible and open. We had group conversations and decided we would reach out to some researchers and get their opinions on what they thought should be included in the course. Through these conversations, we said, well, if we're already talking to researchers. Why don't we record those? Why don't we embed them? And then that turned into the talking textbook, that turned into a video series, it turned into a podcast, and really just became this, grand, multimedia mixed approach that readers, listeners, viewers can access from a range of different perspectives. And so it was really having a group of people in the room doing what they do best. So everybody brought their particular skill set and through our conversations together, we went from this idea from let's do a chorus to let's do this huge project that has exploded in the best possible way. / [00:05:18] Alan Levine: Did Kristy cover everything there? [00:05:20] Cyndi Gilmer: She didn't cover her brilliance in coming up with the initial idea and her ability to go, what do you think, and people to go, yeah, we're in. [00:05:29] Alan Levine: Yeah, that's very important. Canadian Observatory on Homelessness --- [00:05:31] Alan Levine: So tell me a little about the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, because that's obviously a very important entity. [00:05:39] Kristy Buccieri: I think probably, I'm best positioned to speak about the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, because they are where I did my doctoral training and have a long relationship with. They are based at York University. They are led by Dr. Stephen Gates. Essentially they're a partnership between researchers, policy makers, people with lived experience, front line workers, trying to move the needle essentially on homelessness and trying to shift towards prevention. They do that through knowledge mobilization, through education, through advocacy. And so we worked with them as a whole, but in particular with Steph Vasco, their senior director of communications, to draw on their resources and embed them into the book. Likewise, they've used the book as the basis for some of their training on their learning hubs. And so that's where the relationship came in and really was mutually beneficial because we could draw on their resources and they also can use the material that we created to help advance their education aims. [00:06:42] Alan Levine: Obviously, the category 'Significant Impact OER' because of the importance of this issue, like in 2024, there's stories across the nation of the cost of housing and it's making the situation even worse. what are you seeing regionally now? Current State of Homelessness in Ontario --- [00:06:56] Alan Levine: What's the state of homelessness in Ontario? [00:07:00] James Davy: I work closely with a population who are homeless Peterborough. lot it is the escalating cost of housing, compared to, social assistance, for instance, will pay. combination of basic needs and housing allowance at $733 month, which doesn't cover cost of even securing housing. So basically it's a recipe for homelessness and we're seeing a lot people, who are on social assistance who are homeless. A lot of seniors who are on social assistance who are homeless or living in shelters in their senior years. [00:07:37] Cyndi Gilmer: I think it touches every community. Certainly it's not just an urban challenge. You often see the picture of homelessness with a person lying on a grate in the winter trying to stay warm. I live in a more rural community and every community is touched by what some of the literature calls "hidden homelessness", especially at this time of year, you start to see folks who are camping on the beach and who just can't find affordable housing and the income even from government is just not cutting it. It's, it's not cutting it for housing, let alone when you're deciding whether you or your children are going to eat, this week as well. So it's, it's pretty, pretty rampant across Ontario. And my understanding is that that's fairly typical for the whole country. [00:08:19] Alan Levine: Very true. Definitely where I am in Saskatchewan as well. It's not just a city issue. One of the most compelling features that I saw in the book was the use of the scenarios and the video stories. Initially there was some ideas for interviews, but, how you went about it and, how you dealt with a challenge to ask someone, especially who has lived homelessness to share their experience. And so how did you set that up to be a comfortable, act to be able to ask someone to put their story out there? Creating Realistic Scenarios and Artwork --- [00:08:47] Cyndi Gilmer: So for the scenarios. They're sort of composite work. The scenarios took into account, real folks stories that were, gathered primarily from, Nicole and James, our two lived experience experts. We wanted them to ring true and not be trite. what you might think of first, but that they would come across as real people. So it's that experience of the two outreach workers out in the community talking to folks, combining stories. And at the end of the day, I think that the touchstone was when, you know, either Nicole or James going, "Oh my goodness, I think I know that person", even though it was a composite, right? That, that it rang really true. For the scenario piece, that was at work out in the community, pulling together information. And then for , the artwork that we had, again, James and Nicole reached out to the community and had folks who, who were interested in sharing their story , through art. And so we had got some wonderful original art, that, you know, was quite impactful as well to be able to include. [00:09:53] Kristy Buccieri: I would add to that as well, when we teach this course, one of the things that students comment on the most is the impact of the lived experience stories and the inclusion of those particular case studies , that's really what they take away as being, the key learning for them. [00:10:09] Cyndi Gilmer: You can see the people through the stories, right? And you can see the challenges. it just brings them to life. Audience and Accessibility --- [00:10:15] Alan Levine: When you set out with an audience in mind, can you touch on who you were thinking, this would address and be useful to? I guess obviously, teaching situations, but to me, it's written to be a lot broader. [00:10:26] Kristy Buccieri: Yeah, initially we had set out with the idea of making it specifically a course tied to this program at Trent University. And we looked at some technical issues that emerged, like, well, if we're using it at Trent University, we have a specific LMS, so we use Blackboard. But if we wanted to make it open and accessible to other universities, if they don't use Blackboard, it may not transfer the same. And so, shout out to Terry Greene, who said, "why don't you use Pressbooks?" And so that's how we really got into using Pressbooks as the platform. And that opened up the avenue for us to be able to say, well, what can we integrate into here? We can use YouTube and we can use Spreaker as the podcast. And so that, I think, opened up idea audience by nature of just what we could do and who we could reach. While we started out, again, with this sort of small idea. With the tools at our disposal, we were able to open it up and say, let's open this conversation beyond the classroom." , That's one of the things I think that we talked about in the title was initially the title was, or the subtitle was "From the Classroom to the Streets." And Nicole said, why don't we make it "From the Street to the Classroom"? And so we thought that made a lot more sense. [00:11:45] Cyndi Gilmer: And I can add to that, with the layout, we did look at different disciplines because we're thinking about classroom level. We spoke with different experts on different disciplines, we collected research or references and information.We've had folks, for example, in Nursing, who've just used one or two of the modules. I'm, on a board of directors for a hospital and they were wanting to learn something about homelessness. So we shared the link to the book. Many of the directors who, are living in a community where they see homelessness, but they only hear the community voice of what the community thinks homelessness is. It was a nice reference and an ability to become a little bit more knowledgeable about what the research says about homelessness, what these experts say about homelessness, including our lived experience experts say about homelessness. So it's broadened quite significantly. [00:12:34] Alan Levine: And so for your collaborators who have the lived experiences, do they feel like it really gives a sense about what it's like, or what, the population should know about being homeless? [00:12:44] James Davy: Being homeless isn't safe, And I'm not that far out of of my lived experience in homelessness. It's within the last ten years. And, you don't rest, you don't sleep. you're constantly on alert. it's dangerous situations. not a pleasant existence and you do what you can to stay safe. I don't know what else to say.It's not a place be [00:13:07] Cyndi Gilmer: In addition, to James's comments, my local, anti poverty homelessness support agency, Greenwood Coalition, of which Nicole Whitmore was one of our collaborators, they've been using the book as well. Nicole comments, because of her input to recognize the trueness of the case studies. She does comment about how, supportive that is for the real world, if you will. [00:13:31] Alan Levine: Thank you, Cyndi. Feedback and Global Reach --- [00:13:32] Alan Levine: What have you heard back from, in terms of feedback from other people, organizations, institutions who may have adopted thisdo you get a lot of feedback on the OER? [00:13:42] Kristy Buccieri: We have an email address and a contact form in there, and we have an option for people to fill out, a review form and also just to contact us directly. We have heard from a number of people who have used it, who have adopted it, who have been teaching it. I think it has spread far and wide and perhaps much further than we expected. I was pulling some figures this morning, and I asked James to pull some of our podcast figures as well to go along with it. For instance, we have 751 listeners to our podcast, 15, 229 views on our YouTube videos, and over 31, 000 readers, and the countries are broad. We have Canada, US, Australia, UK, New Zealand, Pakistan, Japan, South Africa, Germany, China, India, Philippines, Singapore. It goes on. That's just a list of some of them, but I think that it is picking up and it is going farther than we expected. We had targeted Canada, but it does seem like there's perhaps an interest and a need to have these conversations more globally. [00:14:48] Alan Levine: I love the idea that you have a podcast, going along with this. Podcast and Multimedia Approach --- [00:14:51] Alan Levine: What was the decision to do that? And can you give us a sense about, what you include in your podcast episodes? [00:14:58] James Bailey: Maybe I can speak to this a little bit. So, to take a step back for a moment. In total, all the videos that we have for this project is 271. Basically we took all of our interviewers, cut up all the clips into individual questions, and then, created videos, 271 videos, around each specific question. As we were moving through this project, we had an idea. we said, "Hey, why don't we make this, accessible for auditory learners?" Why don't we have that availability as part of the project? So, I of course agreed, to this idea and, we came up with a little bit of scripting, began to shape, we had Cyndi, actually do a intro and a outro narration. We had her introduce, each interviewer, and then from there we were able to kind of craft and use the audio from each video into the podcast episodes. The podcast themselves are more or less a reflection of the videos, just in a much longer format. [00:15:58] Alan Levine: how did the organization of the book in general like come about as a design process? There is a really consistent structure that I admire in each chapter. Design and Structure of the Book --- [00:16:06] Stephanie Ferguson: I guess since I'm the e- learning designer, I'll take that one. but yeah, it was definitely, again, a team effort. Kristy would do these beautiful drafts. And, basically, I would try to turn them into these book chapters. It's really important for me that, there is consistency in the format, in the layout. Because as Cyndi said, some people might just take one chapter and they're not seeing all of the book at once. So I wanted them to be able to jump into the chapter that's relevant them and have it speak for itself. That's what I really love about this book, it's addressing, a very serious issue, but it doesn't read like an academic journal article. That's, important in its own right, but it's not going to reach as many people as this can, right? it's designed to be attractive to a broader scope of people. It's all about understanding homelessness. People see it, it is everywhere, and people make their own judgments or those judgments based on reality., like facts.The more that they can explore and access resources like this that are open, the more they actually understand it and, become more maybe compassionate and maybe more helpful to finding solutions to this issue. [00:17:11] Alan Levine: And now, looking back on it, do you sometimes say like, "Oh, we should have done this, or I'd really like to add this?". And is there any updates in the future happening? [00:17:20] Stephanie Ferguson: As far as like wishing we had done more, I mean, Kristy kind of touched on this, snowball effect, but I would describe it more like an avalanche, a beautiful avalanche, You know, even the number of researchers climbed, Everyone just said, yes, we want to be part of this. We knew we wanted videos, but then, Make it into an actual channel and organize the channel into chapters But also by authors or by researchers. So if you're particularly enjoying, one perspective you can tune into them The podcast? It just seems like a logical thing to do because more and more students and people are just listening to podcasts when they're walking and stuff. So making it more accessible to everyoneI think it's great. For the scope of this project, I think we did quite well, it's tackling everything, as far as updates. We're always looking for input and ways to keep it relevant, updated and improve it. [00:18:11] Alan Levine: Such a tremendous effort and, so happy to see that this was the one that our review committee,chose to represent Significant Impact. And I think that says a lot about the way we wanted to make the award more than a bookish concept as well. and I appreciate. the flexibility of having those different components make it useful to other people. Encouragement for Future Projects --- [00:18:32] Alan Levine: What would you say as some encouragement for other people who may,want to take on this kind of project? [00:18:38] Kristy Buccieri: I would say first and foremost, make it a team effort. Because the team really is what makes it something special. , It was referenced that I would write the chapter, I would write the first draft, Cyndi would revise it, it would go to the team, and the magic would happen. I always say without the team, it would be a 700 page Word document on my computer,. And I guarantee you 31,000 people would not have read a 700 page Word document that was on my computer. So the team is really what makes it come to life. It's really where the ideas come in. If we had looked back and said, the amount of work that would go into it, do we want to take this on? It probably would have been terrifying. But because we moved forward through it, everything just led to the next step. It was a lot of work for sure, but it all was logical, and it all came together. So, walk the path, walk it with other people, and definitely take advantage of your team strength. [00:19:35] Alan Levine: I think I have my pull quote for the article. Thank you very much. Personal Reflections and Hobbies --- [00:19:39] Alan Levine: If you're willing to share, like, what is something that you enjoy doing when you're away from this work? What's something that recharges you, or at least helps you find balance and especially, addressing issues like homelessness? [00:19:49] Cyndi Gilmer: I can start if you want. You can tell by the color of my hair that, I'm an older. member of the team. And I have four wonderful grandchildren, two teenagers and then two very young- two and three weeks. I look at them and I think about the world ahead of them. As much as you can recharge when you're interacting with teenagers or babysitting wee ones, I think to myself, yeah, there's still a lot of work to do, going forward to make this world a better place. But, I just wanted to think that and the fact that I play golf very poorly. [00:20:19] Alan Levine: Excellent. I've been told there's a kayaker in the room. [00:20:22] Stephanie Ferguson: That'd be me. Yeah, I live, in Peterborough, you know, we have the Otanabee River and some lakes nearby within driving distance. I live on the dead end street and the river is right at the end of my street. I like to go kayaking or paddle boarding water is just calming, and it always, brings me back to a good place, if things are getting stressful. The weather is awesome now, so it's the beginning of the season, and I'm looking forward to it, because for too many months, kayaking is not an option. [00:20:50] Alan Levine: And, either of the Jameses? [00:20:52] James Bailey: I guess for a year round activity or hobby, I should say. I'm kind of involved with, a bit of an electronic music community online. So, us putting together music mixes and stuff that helps me really get back to my zen and such. that helps me detach away from work and all that. [00:21:08] Cyndi Gilmer: Sounds like work to me, James. [Laughter] [00:21:11] James Davy: Well, if you know me, [00:21:13] Cyndi Gilmer: I'm betting you really like it. [00:21:14] James Davy: I of work within 12 step program supporting people just like myself, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous. I know it sounds similar to what I do, but, it allows be aware of my history, my background and where I come from and enforces that I do not want to go back there. And,in my alone time, I cook, I read, I walk and, you know, think, think about, how grateful I am that I've been able to get to where I am today. [00:21:43] Alan Levine: Thank you very much for sharing that, James. And, Kristy, I understand you, you're supervising PhD candidates. I have a source, [00:21:52] Kristy Buccieri: I love working with students and I think students always bring such a passion to the work and it's for me a bit selfish because I get to learn all kinds of other fields that are tied to my own but maybe expansive. , It's always amazing to get that student perspective as well. Conclusion and Final Thoughts --- [00:22:08] Alan Levine: Well, I can't thank everybody enough for spending time with us to hear about the Homelessness in Canada OER, and I want to thank everybody listening. This episode of OE Global Voices. it's coming to you from Open Education Global. And for each episode, now I'm a little bit pressured because we have a musician in the room here, but I pick a different musical track. And I found a track today called "Welcome Home" by an artist named Cambo and it's licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license. And you'll hear it when I send you the preview of this episode. This will be on our, site voices dot oe global dot org. And we hope that you engage in follow up conversations in our OEG Connect community. Now that we have the nominations open, for the awards for 2024, we like to say that everybody wins because we surface hundreds of projects, through the nomination process and we wanna see more, this year. Thank you so much. team for joining me and putting up with my questions It was just very meaningful for us to meet you and get to know you a little bit better. thank you for the work that you do. [00:23:14] Stephanie Ferguson: Thank you. [00:23:14] Kristy Buccieri: Thank you. [00:23:14] Cyndi Gilmer: Pleasure.