Episode 72: Martin Weller on 30 Years at the Open University === Intro Music and Opening Quote --- [00:00:00] Martin Weller: But yeah, the web laid the foundation for all of it, I think that was so exciting at the time. I used to run a session at the summer school. We used to get people to write in HTML, which was a hand code HTML, put it online, and I think people often struggle with that. Like, I'm viewing it from my local hard drive, and then it's published live. But anyone in the world can see this. My family could look at this, if they can access it. And that's just kind of mind blowing. I've published something, and that just was such a kind of thing that was held by the elite, being able to publish things. It's like, suddenly you could do it. That's so liberating, Introduction to the Podcast --- [00:00:38] Alan Levine: We're here again, in the OE Global Voices podcast studio. I am your host for this, podcast and it's what we produce here at Open Education Global. What we like to do with these are to share with you conversational style, the people, practices, and ideas from open educators from around the world. So, I'm very fortunate to have, friends here and colleagues, mainly to talk about Martin Weller's 30 year trajectory in open education. He's had a lot of these sessions, and he's going to be very patient with us. We can talk about whatever we want here. But I just think, what you've done, Martin, and what you've contributed really is such a valuable piece. I just want to have, a conversation about, highlights, lowlights, things you see looking forward, And also want to introduce my good friend and colleague, Clint Lalonde, as a friend and colleague of Martin's as well. And I just thought it'd be fun to have three friends sitting around the table talking about stuff of interest. And just so you know, visually, because this is a podcast, both Martin and Clint seem to be wearing matching plaid shirts. I don't know what that means. So, hello, hello friends. Heh. [00:01:50] Martin Weller: Canadian uniform, Alan. Why haven't you got one? [referring to Clint and Martin wearing plaid] [00:01:52] Alan Levine: It's a little warm today, so I can't wear flannel. [00:01:56] Clint Lalonde: We coordinated that ahead of time. Meet the Guests: Martin and Clint --- [00:01:59] Alan Levine: So I first like to ask, just for both of you, where you are in the world. People usually say the city and location, but actually the physical setting. So, where are you coming into us from? And what do you see out your windows? So Martin first-- and welcome and hello. [00:02:15] Martin Weller: Alan. Good to be here. Like I say, I think everyone, you say it's good for me to indulge you, but I'm making everyone indulge me, really. Someone said to me this, my farewell thing was like, longer than Tom Brady's farewell season has been. So where am I sitting? I'm sitting in my office, my home office in my house in Cardiff in Wales. At the window, I can see some trees. When the trees aren't in bloom, you can see Castle Coch out through the window over there. It's a fairy tale castle that was built-- in, there's a good description of it in Metaphors of Ed Tech. If you're after this kind of thing. But yeah, it was built to kind of be a, Victorian folly which is kind of in the style of the kind of old German medieval castles. But yeah, you can see that out of my window usually. So there we are. Alan's been to it. [00:02:58] Alan Levine: Yes, I was going to bring that up. I have castles in my show notes both metaphorically and physical. And I used to always tease you that that's Martin's castle. [00:03:06] Martin Weller: That's right. I like to tell my American friends that when you become a professor everyone gets their own castle, you know, that's the way it goes. [00:03:13] Alan Levine: Good morning, Clint. So glad you could be here. [00:03:15] Clint Lalonde: I'm so happy to be here. Thank you. My physical location- yeah, I'm in Victoria, British Columbia. There's the city that I'm in and I'm in my home office in my house that I share with my wife, whose desk is back there full of plants. If this was a visual .Thing, you could see is full of plants. And then over my other shoulder, I have a treadmill. I share my office with the treadmill. if I look out my window right now, I see a lot of mess, because we are building a small backyard bungalow in our backyard, which is about 400 square feet. The intention is for my daughter to move into that house. We're at the final stages now and they are hooking up the services, which means they are digging trenches all throughout the yard. And so if there's heavy equipment while I'm talking and you hear it in the background, that's because they're digging trenches and, moving massive amounts of dirt around in the yard. So, that's my location. [00:04:09] Martin Weller: As long as it's got good Wi Fi, she'll be happy. [00:04:11] Clint Lalonde: Yep. Wi Fi, the most important thing that was number one on the services. I don't need water., Just give me wifi. [00:04:18] Alan Levine: Yeah, that's a saying right there. And we could come back to this because I think there's a pretty good metaphor there for the work that we do. Martin's Background and Education --- [00:04:25] Alan Levine: I also like to ask Martin, where did you grow up? And, what kind of student were you in your elementary years? What was school like for you? [00:04:33] Martin Weller: I grew up around London, so, although I live in Wales, I'm from London, originally. I went to, what we call a comprehensive year, kind of pretty, run of the mill, normal school. I don't know if you've seen my Instagram post today. My parents were also going through some of my old photos and showing some on my iPad. And I've got this black and white photo in front of me. It's like, did I grow up in the 1940s or something? I sometimes feel that about my school years. It's like, "oh, we didn't have this, we didn't have that." And about three people got O levels out of my year. I was the first generation to university, that kind of stuff. I come from a fairly working class family. I was a sensitive young man, you know, it's like you like to overthink things. Back in the day, I think school wasn't as good at training you how to pass things. My daughter's been really sort of coached into how to pass A levels and stuff like that, and we didn't really know what we were doing then, so it was a little bit random. So I think it took me a while to find out that I thought I belonged at university and then to settle in-- which is why I think, when I eventually ended up working at the Open University, I kind of felt at home there, you know. It's like I wasn't an Oxford graduate or something. I went to Hatfield Poly and Teesside Poly. There were polytechnics there before they became universities. So I think that sort of feeling about whether you belong in higher education is something that I can really sort of relate to. And I think lots of our students have that. In some ways it was a good grounding for where I ended up in my career. [00:05:50] Alan Levine: That's really influential. So when you went to university, what was your course of study? What was your interest? [00:05:55] Martin Weller: Wow. I started off doing marine biology, because, you know, Jaws is my favourite film. I like sharks, let's just study marine biology. But I dropped out after a year, and that's part of that thing about not feeling like I belonged there or something. So I dropped out by the end of the first term. Strangely then I went to work in a bank, in the city of London, realized I really wasn't suited to working in banks. That wasn't my sort of locale, really. And then went back to uni to study psychology. Luckily, that was before the days of student loans. I didn't accrue loads of debt to do that. Journey into AI and Open University --- [00:06:28] Alan Levine: How did you get started at the Open University? I just looked up and you started as a lecturer in Artificial Intelligence. How timely for now? [00:06:38] Martin Weller: Well, it's interesting because I did a master's in AI and then I did a PhD in applied AI. Then a job, came up at the Open University, someone was leaving and they needed a lecturer in AI fairly quickly because they were launching a course on it. And I got that job and, never looked back since. I was into, there's symbolic AI. which is expert systems and rule based approaches, which is what they thought was going to be the thing, that would create all these intelligent machines. But actually it's really difficult to represent domains in that way. The number crunching AI, which at the time was neural networks. And that's actually the thing that's taken off, just because as computer powers got big enough, it's just, crunch the numbers basically and search for patterns and repeat those patterns. And that's why people say, it's not really intelligent, but I don't know if that's a valid one. Yeah, so for years I've been dismissive about AI. And I don't worry about it. It's fine. And oh, no, here it is. But let's not talk about AI. I've been saying to people, when I go into meetings now, I'm going to have a big AI with like a cross through it sign. No AI chat allowed. [00:07:38] Alan Levine: Well, we will honor that. Right, Clint? [00:07:41] Clint Lalonde: I don't know. I was about to go down that rabbit hole actually, because I didn't know the differences between like symbolic AI and you know, that there were these kinds of branches and diversions in the world of AI, but I will not go there. I do wonder, like, what year was that when you started working in AI? [00:07:56] Martin Weller: 1995. I started at the Open University, I should say. The Open University in the UK. [00:08:01] Alan Levine: There's so much to talk about the Open University, but in the early nineties, how would you characterize it? How did the public see the Open University and how was it like to be there as a new lecturer? [00:08:12] Martin Weller: Yeah. It was great, it was founded in 1969. It was often called the second chance university. It's a national institution, deeply loved by the British public, or at least it was, and it still is, to a large extent. It's got real brand awareness. At the time, if you lived in the UK, you might remember we didn't used to send out video by '95, but in the 70s and 80s, we used to have programs on BBC Two. So when everything went off air, like overnight, there'd be TV programs from the Open University. It would usually be like some bloke in a big kipper tie and there's these kind of jokes about standing in front of a whiteboard explaining calculus and stuff. But people were quite affectionate towards that, I think usually because they were fairly drunk by the time they got home and it was the only thing on TV. And they'd watch these programs about Archaeology or whatever. But they were doing what you might call traditional, distance learning at that time. So they had printed units, sending out video cassettes, audio cassettes, what we call home experimentation kits, you know, but really innovative as well. I still think that idea of what we call open entry-- you don't need to have A levels or anything, anyone can come and study with us, was really a massive innovation, sort of social innovation, and we haven't seen anything like that for such a long time. And I'm thinking, and I'm not sure if we didn't have it now, if you'd get the kind of political buy in to start up something like that, because it was a really radical approach. [00:09:26] Alan Levine: Definitely. And especially like when you look now that this whole idea where students can design their degree and program, you don't see in many places. [00:09:36] Martin Weller: yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:09:37] Clint Lalonde: What does a lecturer in 1995 do when you're doing a traditional distance education course, because you started off as a lecturer. What did you do as a lecturer in a open course? [00:09:47] Martin Weller: You, You sound like my family, Clint. "What is it you actually actually [00:09:50] Clint Lalonde: Now we've got so much synchronous technologies. What did a lecturer do at a timewhen you were really kind of print based? [00:09:57] Martin Weller: Yeah, you would create courses, but, you didn't do any of the teaching really. So you would take a long time to write courses. I mean, that was part of the thing about the OU you have these course teams and you'd produce written study guides and course materials, activities, assessments, that sort of stuff. And it often takes two, three years to create a course, which would then go into presentation for eight years or something, and that would be supported by part time tutors or associate lecturers, as we call them there. So as the lecturer, you actually didn't do a lot of the interaction with actual students. We used to do summer schools. When I joined, it was part of your contract to do two weeks schools, which were legendary for all sorts of hijinks that go on inside-- "What happens in OU summer school stays in OU summer schools." But in some ways they were really good you we used to be surveys like the thing they didn't want to do school. But afterwards once they've done one that's the thing they found most valuable at the time where they felt like "I've been a student and it kind of really helped that sense of identity." Yeah. So in some ways, although I was partly responsible for the death of summer schools, we still do a few, but not many, with online teaching. And I think they were a really valuable part of that OU identity. Pioneering Online Learning --- [00:11:02] Alan Levine: I want to ask about how you got into open education, but in a way, you got there by being part of this organization. What was the thing that turned on or steered you into the field, quote unquote, of open education? [00:11:16] Martin Weller: when I went for my interview, for this AI job, I seen web pages. And in '95 it was pretty new. Then I said, have you thought about the internet and the I for teaching? And they mistook that for a deep, profound knowledge of all things. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And so like, you know, I've learned a bit of HTML, like, "okay, I'm now that I'm now the online learning guy. And on that AI course with having one tutor group that was fully online, and we haven't really done that before. And then after that, uh, with people like John Naughton, I don't know if you know John, so John writes for the Observer. We developed the first kind of fully, at least at an undergrad level, online course. I remember going into the production meetings, that people be there from the warehouse, from printing and everything, and all the editors be there. You'd say, ,"Right, Okay. So what are you making?" We said, "I think it's all going to be online" and about half the room just stood up and walked out. "It was nothing for us to do." And that was quite a telling moment. So in '99, we launched that course. And that was really successful. We had like 15, 000 students in that. And so I think I've brought lots of people in. And again, another anecdote I'd tell, which I've told lots of times, I was in a meeting someone had been there for ages and went, "you'd be lucky to get 50 people on that course." You know, so I think it's kind of interesting that kind of, you know, approaches and mentality people had. I got into online learning. And at the time, people like Tony Hirst and set up this internally called the open source teaching project. And the idea was really to kind of take those open source principles to teach and I think, like, just like in open source, you have community produced stuff, reusable stuff, Um, at the same time, other people were coming up with the idea of learning objects and people like David Wiley-- so when I saw what those people were doing, that sort of led into So it was via learning objects and stuff and then into-- OER really. [00:12:56] Alan Levine: We think primarily of online these days. Currently are, are there print courses and TV courses and like some of those older modalities still going on? [00:13:05] Martin Weller: Yeah, our relationship with the BBC now is that we are advisors, and sponsor stuff to things like the David Attenborough programs, but they're not linked to a direct course. But at the end of it, David was saying, you know, "Contact the Open University for a poster" or what we tend to do is have supplementary materials on OpenLearn, our OER repository and stuff. So that's that kind of thing. There aren't those kind of direct TV programs, but do still send out printed units. We've cut down a lot of print. It's mainly all in the VLE now. Um, some might send out books and things, but generally it's online. The Success of T171 Course --- [00:13:37] Alan Levine: Tell us the story and about what was T171, which is a major milestone for you? [00:13:43] Martin Weller: Yeah. So this was that big course I did with John. So it's called "You, your computer and The Net"-- So it was an introduction course to understanding computers. And It had three modules. The first was kind like just developing basic skills. One I wrote took a book by a famous book called Accidental Empires, which is about the rise of the PC industry. And I thought it was a really kind of compelling narrative about how people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs got started . And I think now it's a bit "bros are heroes" kind of stuff. I like the idea of using narrative to teach what was quite a kind of dry subject. So I'd say read chapter three when they talk about even the founder of Intel, and then we might go into how, microprocessors work. And I think that kind of helped a lot on how the internet works and the kind of history of the internet and stuff. Those kind of historical approaches to teach how the technology worked was kind of really powerful. Yeah, that, that course was really successful, loads of students it's interesting I meet people who join the OU, either as students or as tutors because suddenly we needed to get 600 part time tutors to teach on this course. Someone referred to it as a "success disaster"-- something gets so successful it threatens to kind of overwhelm you in a way, but that was very successful. [00:14:46] Alan Levine: Well, and I think you're being modest because I understand it was like 15, 000 students. [00:14:50] Martin Weller: yeah, that's right. Yeah, would run for quite a few years with those sort of numbers and stuff. Yeah, shifted the OU in quite fundamental ways, I think. It got rid of the argument about, "Can we do teaching online", you know, after that, that argument had gone-- didn't mean but you couldn't argue after that, students don't want to learn this way, or, you know, we can't teach our model now, there was enough demonstration say, okay, "We can do this." And students were coming out of that module and go, " Where's the next fully online course?" It kind of pivoted the OU towards online learning quite significantly, you know, jumped us a few years, I think. So it was quite a surprise to me to discover in, uh, 2012 that MOOCs were inventing online learning, you know, there we were [00:15:29] Clint Lalonde: I was as going to say, 1in 1999, 15000 students. Take that, Sebastian Thrun. Come on. [00:15:36] Alan Levine: But what a great segue. What made that successful that was different from the MOOC approach was like one supreme teacher, broadcasting too all, right? [00:15:45] Martin Weller: It was carefully written material, you know, and it goes through lots of iteration. So it's kind of had the usual OU quality. But I think there was just kind of a backlog with lots of people who wanted to study that way and wanted to learn about this kind of stuff. I remember saying at one time, my wife, my dad, and the vice chancellor were all taking this course. So if it's a disaster, I'll be divorced, disinherited and unemployed in one fell swoop. I think it was like a course that kind of zeitgeist thing, I think, but it was a good, you know, introduction. And I think lots of people just took that one course and then didn't go on to do degrees. But it's fine, you know, that was kind of, they just wanted that course, I think. [00:16:21] Clint Lalonde: How key were the tutors in that? That's one of the things that separates, I think, those early experiments probably from what ended up happening with the MOOCs, right? [00:16:29] Martin Weller: Yeah, they were really key. So we, you know, had a really good structure of the different forums that people will be using, called FirstClass that time, for our asynchronous forums. We couldn't have all the people in one. So we would split them up and there'd be a kind of like filter through. So we'd have these kind of-- we didn't call them super tutors, but like super tutors who the other tutors would then raise issues with who could then raise them with us. So we could filter down and respond to things. It seems obvious now, but being able to respond to things in kind of real time was obviously really new for us at the OU, because, you know, we've got printed materials, it goes out there. By the time we get feedback back and you change it, it's kind of two years down the line that you're kind of implementing that, and that's just sending out stop presses. So that was kind of quite novel as well. So students, a lot of them are new to the Open University, a lot of them are new to computing, you know, it's like, there's lots of kind of barriers to study there. And things like netiquette, as we used to call it, people had to get used to that, And, people writing in all caps or something, you know, and stuff. [00:17:24] Alan Levine: They still do, you know [00:17:26] Martin Weller: But they weren't doing it because they were angry. They just had all caps locked on. People say, that comes across as shouting. 'Oh, does it?" So the tutors bore a lot of that load, I think, trying to guide people through. But I think, when MOOCs came along, those cMOOCs and xMOOCs, I remember Stephen Downes saying, "The traditional model doesn't scale, only the kind of network model scales." And that's not true, you know, that model scaled, that kind of hierarchical approach, if you like, to a central module team down to tutors and it could have scaled further. There's probably limits to how it can scale, but then I'm pretty sure within the CMOOC approach, we didn't test it with a million people. We don't know if that scales. I think it's a myth that you can't scale the traditional approach [00:18:05] Alan Levine: Absolutely. [00:18:06] Martin Weller: And still give students a kind of meaningful, purposeful experience, which you didn't have with MOOCs. So they did have their personal tutor, they had their tutor groups and forums that were moderated, lots of interaction and discussion, you know. [00:18:19] Alan Levine: But of course, as you know, Stephen's never wrong. [00:18:21] Martin Weller: Well, of course. [00:18:23] Alan Levine: I was very intrigued to hear about this idea that you're teaching a technical course that was taught through narrative. So I commend you for that. But also I'm curious about the relationship. Like I knew John Naughton through his writing, through his fantastic articles. How was he to work with and what's he like as a teacher? [00:18:39] Martin Weller: John was a really good supporter to me. In OU terms, I was a young whippersnapper at the time, I think I was, like, 29 or something, and everyone in here was a lot older than me, you know, and I hadn't really done this kind of stuff before. And I was chairing the course, and people were like, "Is Martin really up to it?" And John was going, "No, it's alright, he's fine." John was really supportive, and guided me through stuff. We wrote together, and I used to go and visit him and he said, -- It's a phrase that someone else used. I forget where it's from, but you know, part of his role was to be an "absorber of uncertainty." That's a really good role , having that kind of mentor. I'm still in touch with John. You need that person who's like, "No, it's fine. Everything will work well", I think sometimes to other people. I've got older, more wisened. [00:19:17] Alan Levine: After T171, what was the next step in Martin's career? [00:19:22] Martin Weller: We're really going for it. So then I moved to IET office. I was in the technology factory. Then I moved to the Institute of Educational Technology and I worked with a very influential online educator called Robin Mason and another woman called Chris Pegler. Innovative Master's Course Design --- [00:19:35] Martin Weller: We developed a master's course, and that master's course is based around learning objects. The idea of how we use learning objects there was they were kind of independent activities within a week. We would say to people, " you should study all of them", because all learning objects are meant to be independent. We have what we call "narrative objects", which talk about what was coming up. That's where we could get around it. But we would also say ' if you only got time for a couple of things this week, then do these ones.' That kind of giving people that flexibility was really powerful. And it treated learners as grown ups. The UK eUniversity Platform --- [00:20:04] Martin Weller: It was one of the first courses onto the UK eUniversity platform, for anyone who remembers out there. So this was a platform developed by Sun Microsystems, who had no track record whatsoever of developing eLearning platforms, but funded by the UK government. The idea was to be a kind of portal selling online courses around the world. So again, a kind of bit of a precursor of MOOCs in a way, and what we later saw with FutureLearn, but accredited courses from universities. We were helping them develop this platform as we went along, and that was a completely learning object approach. We had to fill in pages by hand, manual "metadata. What is my "semantic density" today? [00:20:42] Alan Levine: Now we just ask chat GPT, right? [00:20:44] Martin Weller: Yeah, [00:20:45] Alan Levine: We we can jump around. I'm not gonna ask you to outline everything because you've extensively blogged everything that's happened. . Milton Keynes: A Unique Educational Hub --- [00:20:52] Alan Levine: But, first of all, what's so great about Milton Keynes? [00:20:55] Martin Weller: It has a bad reputation, Milton Keynes. There's a kind of tradition of distance education universities being put in quite out of the way, slightly miserable, sort of downtrodden towns, you know-- Athabasca. Athabasca looks pretty. I've looked it online. I've never been there. It looks pretty as well. Heerlen for the OU Netherlands. It's like, you know, no one in the Netherlands ever goes to Heerlen. They're not placing them in London or Vancouver or Amsterdam. Part of it is I think it's that culture of using the university to boost a local economy. Milton Keynes was a new town, new city, so it was deliberately constructed after the war. And it's built around quite a sort of US, North American grid system which you don't usually have in the UK. I lived there for a while and it's a nice place. It gets a bad reputation, but certainly when I lived there, it was hardly anywhere to go out drinking. There was like one pub or one bar and it was above a swimming pool inside a shopping centre. And you'd just sit there like drinking beer with the smell of chlorine. But now it's got a nice theatre district, bars and restaurants, and it's a really thriving place actually. And it's one of the places that during the recession that saw economic growth. So it's quite a nice place, very family friendly, good cycle paths. But yeah, I think it was part of that kind of economic growth thing that kind of led to it being placed there. [00:22:11] Clint Lalonde: I have a little bit of derision for Athabasca. I grew up actually about 60 miles from Athabasca, the town, in a town called Lac La Biche. And Athabasca was our big rival in all like school, high school sports and stuff. And I mean, it's a lovely spot, it is a lovely spot if you like the kind of wild and wilderness kind of place. The Power of Narratives and Metaphors --- [00:22:31] Clint Lalonde: But, I have a, not a fond spot for Athabasca. You've talked about the love that you have of narratives, obviously, and the importance of narratives in teaching. I want to talk about the connection between narrative and metaphor. And what came first, the metaphor or the narrative? Because anybody who reads your writing knows you love metaphors. Which came first and did one influence the other? [00:22:55] Martin Weller: I think in some ways, I'm not sure if they're flip sides of the same thing or whether they're the same thing. I read a paper once that argued disciplines, all subject disciplines, tend to be dominated by either narrative or metaphor as their kind of explanatory power. Physics is dominated by metaphor more and biology by narrative. So I've kind of always enjoyed playing around with those. And I think, with "25 years of Ed Tech", you can see that as a kind of narrative approach to understanding education technology and obviously "Metaphors [of Ed as a metaphorical approach. So they go together, you know, but often you tell a metaphor through narrative or you employ metaphor in narrative. I like the playful creativity in metaphor. . But people like Eamon Costello do really nice stuff around speculative fiction, so I think that's sort of a way of approaching the narrative idea as well. So, you know, both are valid. Journey into Book Writing --- [00:23:44] Alan Levine: Let's talk about books. What's great about writing books and why did you start, and why do you continue? [00:23:49] Martin Weller: I forgot to say when I was talking about my office, I've got a Brian Mathers art gallery up above me as we're talking. So I wrote my first book after that T171 course. I always wanted to be a writer, you know, that was my big ambition. I wanted to be a novelist, like the great American, British, Canadian novel or whatever, you know, it's like "serious young man." So I wanted to write a book and I wrote a book about e-learning based on my experience in that, and where I thought it was going. I think it was a bit kind of techno optimistic at the time, but we all were, e-learning was great, we were going to change the world. I think we were trying to convince people that it wasn't nonsense, and you could learn well this way. And it was actually valuable to a lot of students. There's a lot of snobbery about online learning. We saw, you know, during the pandemic, it's still there. So, I wrote that first, but then I was like, "I've written a book!" You know, okay, now I sit back, and I just wait for the riches to roll in. And of course nothing happens. Then about every two years, I get the kind of book writing itch again. So then I wrote a book about VLEs or LMSs because I've been the OU VLE director. And then I wrote one on digital scholarship, as I was getting into blogging and those kind of things and seeing the implications for academic practice. In some ways, they're a byproduct of the process that you go through anyway, you know, and partly through blogging, I think it's a kind of vehicle to explore those ideas, particularly in the past three or four books. I didn't set out to write them necessarily, they kind of came out of stuff I already had after a while. So I think there's something interesting here to pull together. Apart from a couple of them, I didn't really set out really to write a book, they are more by products of just where my career and interests were going. [00:25:23] Alan Levine: I was looking through the list of titles and you mentioned a couple "Delivering Learning on Net", " Digital Scholar". The first one I came across was the "Battle for Open". It's on my shelf. " 25 years of Ed Tech", the "Metaphors of Ed Tech". And I look at it and there's like a nice arc to that because it starts talking about the tech and you got into the bigger ideas. Is there some other kind of arc that you would describe? [00:25:45] Martin Weller: I think there's a kind of more getting more comfortable with my writing style and voice arc. I think both "25 Years" and particularly ' Metaphors of Ed Tech', I think I'm more me as a writer. I think the others were quite-- I tried to weave in a couple of jokes here and there, but you know, there's not that many VLE jokes to be had. So I think that kind of style of writing as I've become more comfortable with. And to be fair, Athabasca University Press who published the last two, they were, okay with that as well. It's kind got formal, sort of reference in style and things. They weren't sticklers for having a really proper academic authorial voice. It's like it could be a bit more playful. [00:26:20] Martin Weller: That's that's come through in those. . I think the Bryan Mathers artwork on the cover is a kind of a good reflection of that. I've been through crappy stock photography covers for all the previous books. I finally wanted something that I like. [00:26:32] Alan Levine: He's bright with that. When does something happen that says this is an idea for a book? Is there like a flash or just does it slowly evolve or...? [00:26:41] Martin Weller: I think there's a kind of momentum. At some point, I think "25 Years of Ed Tech" was a fairly straightforward one. Actually a few people said to me you should turn this into a book. Tressie McMillan Cottom said when she keynoted ALT "this needs to be a book, Martin." Okay, if Tressie says it, I'll do it. So I think that was kind of fairly easy. You know, I had the 25 Years, you can imagine, expanded those out more, talking and telling it and there's a book there. With Metaphors, I was thinking, I want to write a book and I wasn't quite sure what it was. I started thinking about metaphors and I just went back through my blog. My first sort of writing approach is just open up a Word document, and just copy and paste anything vaguely relevant from my blog into it, And before you know it, you've got 30, 000 words. Actually you don't use hardly any of those original words, but it's much easier to start from 30, 000 words, that you're tweaking and rearranging and reformatting and adding to, you know, than sitting down on day one right now, you've got to go and write 60, 000 words or whatever. [00:27:35] Alan Levine: I want to go to 25 Years because Clint is here. I want you to talk about the audio book and why the heck did you do that? [00:27:43] Martin Weller: Yeah, why did you do that .Clint? [laughter] [00:27:47] Clint Lalonde: Because it was a pandemic and I needed something to do and... The Impact of Blogging on Writing --- [00:27:50] Clint Lalonde: I'm glad that you mentioned the relationship between your blog and your writing, because that's something I've always been curious about, too. You obviously love to write and you've taken your love of writing and published long form books. And, so I wondered if like the blog was the place where you kind of work out these ideas or, you know, on a sort of a regular basis because you're a very prolific blogger. , I mean you're writing a couple of blog posts a week and have done for many, many years. Then taking that and turning it into book form, so there's obviously a close relationship between the two. [00:28:20] Martin Weller: That was part of the sort of momentum, the reason I wrote The Scholar Book because I found it really liberating to be a blogger. And I know not everyone's the same, it's like maybe that doesn't suit lots of other people, but I love kind of having those, you know, to explore those ideas and sometimes they're throwaway. Often they're throwaway. So I think sometimes they're completely rubbish and people say " that is rubbish", but often they're just kind of like ideas you have while walking the dog or something. Maren and I have conversations and stuff. I just like having a space to do that, because where do you go with that stuff otherwise, you know, it all just disappears, it's the ether. It's not good enough for an academic paper, or sometimes you might work it up for an academic paper. Maybe there's a conference paper or a fun conference session in it, but a lot of the time they're kind of like, you know, 10, 15 minute blog post that you write and just knock out there. And then sometimes you revisit them and often I go back to my stuff-- and I'm sure you have this, so you've both been bloggers a long time Yeah I wrote that that's quite good isn't it it's like I've written it I've forgotten I've done this yeah that's a good idea there you know. And you might want to revisit it. Do you remember a few years ago I think you joined in Alan and I think you showed me a way of automating it. I was like finding a random date and finding my nearest blog post to it and just going back and revisiting an old blog post and saying, "What do you think of it now?" And that's kind of quite a nice record to have. I think, you showed me this way. You can just put something in the line at the top. It creates a random post, but that's kind of really cool. Next year I think marks my 20th year of blogging. So who knows maybe there's a 20 years of blogging blog series. Who wouldn't want that? [00:29:48] Alan Levine: All right. Bryan Mathers, start the artwork. [00:29:50] Martin Weller: Blogging about blogging is the purest form of blogging. [00:29:53] Alan Levine: Don't know if it's fair. I'll ask each of you because, you know, Clint, you did the audio book project and Martin, you obviously wrote the source. Significant Moments in Ed Tech --- [00:29:59] Alan Levine: Pick a year that you think is your favorite or most significant out of the collection. [00:30:03] Martin Weller: I'll go first. I'll go with the web just because I think in some ways that is the kind of, you know, the starter for all of it. I thought the Bulletin Board System Chapter was fun. I think the web in some ways is the most significant. I think at the time I immediately saw the potential. I'm not saying "I'm amazing. I immediately saw the potential". Loads of people did, but lots of people didn't as well. I'm amazed people didn't see the potential. Particularly in education, that means we can do all this stuff, particularly for distance education. And there was still so many people who were just, " it's like CB radio. it's a passing fad." No, it's not. This is really significant. You don't often get those bits where you kind of hit something just right at the right time. I was there at the web, but I think that's the kind of that what it represented was that kind of removal of barriers and that's both the beauty of the internet and the problem as well. You know, it's like we thought that's great. Now anyone can say anything. And there was, Oh, no, anyone can say anything, you know, it's both it's power and it's problem. But yeah, the web laid the foundation for all of it, I think that was so exciting at the time. I used to run a session at the summer school. We used to get people to write in HTML, which was a hand code HTML, put it online, and I think people often struggle with that. Like, I'm viewing it from my local hard drive, and then it's published live. But anyone in the world can see this. My family could look at this, if they can access it. And that's just kind of mind blowing. I've published something, and that just was such a kind of thing that was held by the elite, being able to publish things. It's like, suddenly you could do it. That's so liberating, [00:31:25] Clint Lalonde: Yeah, I agree, the web was what got me really excited about about education, online learning. I was just excited about the web. Coming from a communications background and looking at it through a communications lens, it just seemed to be such a game changer. And I was the same. I don't understand how people did not see it at the time, but I can remember going into meetings too about how this is really going to change things. And coming off as, "It's probably hyperbole." I was also young and kind of brash and stuff, so it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, kid, "go take your toys and play." [00:31:58] Martin Weller: Those people are the AI people now and we're the old grumps going, "oh stop going on about stuff." [00:32:03] Alan Levine: Completely different. It's different. [00:32:06] Martin Weller: Yeah, it is different. [00:32:07] Clint Lalonde: Isn't it one of those meta narratives like, , it always comes around, right? It's always like what was in the past always comes around again. I was thinking about that as you mentioned 1995 and working in AI and I was like, yeah, that is one of the metanarratives that comes out in your work when you look at the historical view of how things continually come back. And that, for me, the significant chapter, and it's not, you know, not my favorite era in time in technology in the 25 Years, but it certainly was the MOOCs. I think the MOOCs was significant in that it really was an explosion of interest in online learning that we had not seen before. All of a sudden people were looking at this. I mean there was so much hype that went along with it, but also there were people who were looking at this now seriously and kind of going, "Hey, we've kind of been experimenting for a number of years and here is something that is really significant to our industry." So, yeah, not my favorite time to go through, but I remember as we went through it, when I look back after the web, it's probably the MOOC hype that happened in 2012. [00:33:09] Martin Weller: It was exciting though, wasn't it? Because we were part of it. We knew all the main players. They've been doing that experimentation and we'd been there. [00:33:14] Clint Lalonde: It's like people finding out about your favorite underground band, it's like the good and the bad that comes along with that. That's like, "no, that's my band, but hey, that's great." [00:33:23] Martin Weller: It's like, this thing that you're into is suddenly like the whole world is like piling on. It's like, "I like their older stuff." My daughter was in school and I think they were doing IT And the teacher said to them, "Oh, there's these things called MOOCs you can study." And she said, "Oh, my dad knows the people who invented MOOCs." And the teacher went, "I doubt it." And I was like, "No, I do, I really do. I've got to fly Dave and George and everyone else." [00:33:46] Alan Levine: Surprise the teacher. It's easy to dismiss because you say MOOCs are post peak, but you know, when you look internationally, it's still really important. People are actively developing and learning from, we call them MOOCs, but, you know, maybe not what we thought at the time, but they've kind of become part of the network. In some ways, it's still the web, but doesn't it feel like, "oh, darn it, what happened?" And what do you do with that angst? [00:34:15] Martin Weller: I stopped doing it but I was revisiting my, 25 years as a podcast and sort of rethinking it. And in one of the early Laura Pasquini, who did the random podcast is like, "Did we mess it up?" A question I keep returning to. It's like, we had this beautiful thing, man. messed it know. But in some ways, maybe that's inevitable, I think of, The Well, one of those kind "of early the kind of alt communities, you know, were grounded in a certain culture and stuff. And as soon as it's like mainstream, that's what happens, You know, it's like you can't have both, you know. "How did we get here from that?" [00:34:49] Clint Lalonde: Especially the social media piece. As I was thinking about like important, you know, moments in the 25 Years, I was just thinking about how social media, maybe not from like a teaching and learning kind of perspective, but how important social media and the rise of social media was to educators forming the kinds of connections that we have carried on to this day. And I always look back and just kind of regret, I mean, there's other ways that we are now kind of connecting and stuff, but just how badly social media went for some people and how that has turned into such a toxic environment when it started off as such a supportive environment. So, I mean, you can still find the supportive environments out there, but... [00:35:29] Martin Weller: Don't get Alan started on his Twitter's, not the town hall rant" again. And It was kind of, and maybe that's just what happens when, know, but I think that and they're kind of there's algorithms driving you know, the idea that makes you despair, doesn't it? It's it's. controversial headlines just, or things they know are wrong, just then respond and go, "that's wrong." Oh great, is this the world we're living in? It's like, you know, that counts as engagement, you rather than, I'm saying something interesting. just like, so I think, hey, perhaps other people saw it early on, but you know, that kind of, to the worst behavior, kind of the kind of "outrage engine", I think [00:36:05] Alan Levine: I could go on for hours here. There's so many highlights, and things you were part of that are gonna carry on. The Global OER Graduate Network --- [00:36:12] Alan Levine: The one that comes to me is GO-GN. What can you say about that and how you feel about like, leaving that in good hands and going forward. [00:36:20] Martin Weller: So, the Global OER Graduate Network was the project , we inherited really. Fred Mulder of the OU Netherlands started it with funding from the Hewlett Foundation. Fred was amazing at, um, getting funding and pushing through an idea and stuff, and I've never seen anyone, sort of, really push through and have a belief in an idea like he had. And then when he left the OU Netherlands, they didn't want to carry on, so he was looking for a home for the project, really. And we knew Fred, and he trusted us with it, so it came to us. Hewlett are just fantastic funders, you know, just, you can't ask for a better funder, they don't, they treat you like grown ups, you know, it's like, they do so many other funds, where they're just, the basic assumption is that you're trying to cheat them, and we're trying to stop you from cheating us out of money, kind of stuff, and you have to just record every bit of your time sheets and stuff, and it's just draining. You spend more time on that kind of admin of it than actually doing stuff, whereas Hewlett like, "We trust you" and, you know, and I think we are trustworthy. So we have these annual meetings and bring together usually with OE Global, sometimes with the UK OER conference. We bring together a number of PhD students who are studying OER around the world. It's interesting, when we first started, it was very much kind of OER, people looking at open textbooks, that kind of stuff, and that's really shifted much more to kind of open educational practice and social justice, which I think has kind of mirrored the kind of shift in the community, and actually been driven by a lot of the GO-GN people. A lot of those people have gone on to become quite significant in the community. But it's such a kind of great project to have, you know, it's like all these people are brilliant in bringing the students together. It's really meaningful to them. They make really meaningful connections, and you see them, it kind of very often, very powerful for them to allow them to finish or, you know, um, and then we produce these really good outcomes from it as well. So, Rob Farrow and Beck Pitt are going to be taking on. They already part of the group, but they're going to be leading it. Now that I go, when Rob's been leading on these co produced outputs, like we did the Research Methodology Handbook, which is crowd produced from the network. And we did a Conceptual Frameworks one again with fantastic Bryan Mathers artwork-- which makes that stuff in some ways that narrative kind of really helped I think make those dry or IT subjects approachable. I think Bryan's graphics really make quite complex research methodologies and central frameworks, epistemology, much more kind of approachable where you've got fun penguins assembling crazy looking cars kind of thing. And even if they don't really have much to understand, I think that the message they give is that, you know, this is for you. You're kind of welcome here and that kind of stuff. So I think that's going to be powerful. So I think, you know, just everything about that project is it was great. You know, so I'm very lucky to be involved. Final Reflections and Farewell --- [00:38:46] Alan Levine: And I should know what, what's the official last day? [00:38:48] Martin Weller: Well, officially I leave on the 30th of June, but I'm going on holiday before that. So the 14th of June is actually my last working day. In films, it's like if I was a cop, I'd be sitting out on some seemingly innocent call on the last day and it would lead to some there'd be some zombie invasion or something. That's what always happens. [00:39:07] Alan Levine: What's the musical track that's going on? [00:39:10] Martin Weller: Yeah I did create a playlist because it's called MARS-- Mutually Agreed Redundancy Scheme. So I've got a whole Spotify playlist about both things Mars related, like life on Mars, but also things that one might do post OU life. So I'll choose one from that. Maybe I'll do a radio show. That'd be fun. [00:39:30] Alan Levine: There you go. And, uh, and just because I know these things, so what's so great about dogs, hockey, and vinyl records? Yes. [00:39:43] Clint Lalonde: There has been a surprisingly lack of hockey talk in this podcast, [00:39:46] Martin Weller: The one thing I'm going to miss is going to conferences where I can take in hockey or football, uh, American football or baseball So we've seen some good games over the years between all of us. I started to think that people beginning to organize conferences near big events just to kind of make sure I'd be there. [00:40:06] Clint Lalonde: We need a World Cup conference, come on. [00:40:08] Alan Levine: All right. I just really appreciate you taking the time, Martin and Clint both to be here Thank you for putting up with my inane questions. I'll be working to edit this. It's going to take me a while cause I'm a slow ~Podcaster.~ But I want to say thank you everybody for listening. This episode of OE Global Voices, comes from Open Education Global. And, each time I do an episode, we pick a different musical intro track from the Free Music Archive. And for today's show, I found a track called a "Journey into the Great Unknown" by an artist named Squire Tuck [00:40:43] Martin Weller: I love it. [00:40:44] Alan Levine: and it's licensed Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial . And you'll find this episode at our site, voices dot oeglobal. dot org. And if you want, you can follow up with, conversations in our OEG Connect Community. Again, it's just an honor. Mostly when I think about the field and the growth and the tech and all the stuff, it's really about us , and the people and connections that we are able to make. And to me, that's, that's the most rewarding thing in all of this. [00:41:09] Clint Lalonde: Thank you, Alan. Thanks, Martin. [00:41:11] Martin Weller: Agreed. Thanks, Alan. Thanks for having me.