OE Global Voices 77: Patrina Law
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Intro music and highlight quote
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[00:00:00] Patrina Law: I think the impact data was the absolute bedrock of everything that enabled new projects to happen. I was able to say this proportion of our learners are in this demographic, we need to do this particular thing for them.

And, yeah, and, or we're not meeting this particular need, or look how many students have signed up as a result of their journey through OpenLearn. Look at the inspiration, look at the impact we're having on our own students, because whilst they're studying formally, they've got access to all this material that can guide them through their decisions, through their, degrees which module should I take next?

And I'll go into a sample of it on OpenLearn. How can I better skill myself for the workforce? Oh, I'll go and look on OpenLearn. So all of that data that came together was the thing that gradually drove the strategy and enabled us to make decisions, I think, that were the best use of our budget.

Welcome to OE Global Voices
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[00:01:03] Alan Levine: It's time to record another episode of OE Global Voices. And this is the podcast that we produce here at Open Education Global. And for the show, we share with you conversationally people, practices and ideas from around the world. I'm your host, Alan Levine. And I'm most fortunate because I get to be part of all these conversations.

Just last week, we announced the winners of the 2024 Open Education Awards. That's always exciting. And as a sign of how much excellence happens each year through this recognition program, I'm still catching up on conversation with last year's winners.

Conversation with Patrina Law
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[00:01:39] Alan Levine: And we're really pleased to share with you a conversation now with Patrina Law, who won a 2023 award for leadership, and has been part of other award winning projects over the last few years, and has been on the show before.

We're going to talk to Patrina about her years at the Open University, leading OpenLearn, and there's much to talk about, but we also want to hear about her new role with the Royal Society for the Arts. So welcome to the studio, Patrina. How are you today? .

[00:02:08] Patrina Law: I'm very well, thank you, Alan lovely to be here.

[00:02:12] Alan Levine: And because we have a global audience we start usually asking where people are in the world and they'll give a map location, but if you can also describe, because people listening can't see what's the setting where you are right now?

[00:02:27] Patrina Law: Okay, so I'm working from home today. It's half past five in the evening in the UK and I'm in I suppose about two hours north of London. I'm near Oxford, if England, so roughly around that area. It's very lovely. A bit of an autumnal day but geographically speaking, yes, in the countryside as we would say.

Farms around and a lovely village where I live.

[00:02:50] Alan Levine: Sounds nice. I've been to that part of the country and I really enjoy it.

Patrina's Background and Education
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[00:02:54] Alan Levine: And where what part of the world did you grow up in?

[00:02:58] Patrina Law: I was born in London. And had very traditional parents and I stayed in London, had my schooling there and then I lived and worked in Australia for a year and then I moved to Oxford and have now migrated slightly out of Oxford, so yeah, but I have done, I was very lucky, did lots of travelling in my youth, was very adventurous, had no fear or anxiety about anything at all and would go and do anything at the drop of a hat.

So yeah, I was always a grafter, worked very hard from very early age, had the jobs that enabled me to have hobbies. So yeah, always been a grafter, but very lucky that I used to prioritise travel with any spare cash I had.

[00:03:36] Alan Levine: That's fantastic. And we can talk about that, but as a student in your early years, what kind of student were you? What did you think of school?

[00:03:44] Patrina Law: I would say that I didn't- at the time I just accepted everything for what it was, but I have a four year old and a 14 year old at the moment and I think their education is truly wonderful and I look back at mine and realize it was probably a bit shabby and particularly uninspired. Certainly my secondary school, so that's K 12 in the States It was a lot of teachers waiting to retire but it was what it was.

I remember our history teacher would come in and he'd wheel the TV in so he could watch the cricket and we were just told to read from books. So my own education, I think I was desperate for something to really light me up and I think my school education was. pretty flat, to be honest with you. I had a lot of fun with my friends, but I would have given anything to have the education that my kids are having now in the British state system.

It's so interesting. The curriculum is so interesting and mine wasn't. So that's all I'll say about that really.

[00:04:38] Alan Levine: That's because you had a hand in helping shape that curriculum, actually. Interestingly I looked at your LinkedIn profile and I noticed your your education started in higher ed in Geology, which was my major too.

Journey to Open Education
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[00:04:51] Alan Levine: So how did you go from science, Geology to get into education and at the Open University?

[00:04:57] Patrina Law: I could ask you the same question, how you ended up in open education. But I think for me, I didn't want to rip rocks out of the ground. I wanted to save the planet. So I did Geology and Environmental Science together. And I was very interested in writing about science. I wanted to get into the whole public understanding of science.

And I think the public understanding of science bit, which was part of my master's degree, was the thing that kind of brought me into open education, How do you say something? How do you translate something which is deeply technical or scientific to make it publicly accessible? And as a parent of a child with a chronic health condition, I'm really aware that I'm so privileged that I've got a science background and I can interpret that as the best, to the best of my knowledge.

But there's so many other families that are in the same position as me and they don't potentially have that sort of a background. They can't make that interpretation. I can access or could access when I was at the Open University, journals and papers. that are not otherwise available to the public, which were shut down.

And so I do reflect on it now as an adult and just think, yeah, I'm so glad I got that science background because I can help my child. And so I do think there is, and I think that was a bit of a catalyst for me to looking at the landscape and just thinking we need to be able to say things in different ways and open things up in different ways so that they have meaning for people.

So a bit of a stretch there, but yes, I think, as I say, I didn't want to dig oil out of the ground and I ended up. public understanding of science and then into open education.

[00:06:25] Alan Levine: Very similar. But I'm not the one in the conversation here. It's about you, Patrina. But interesting, though, that you speak as though like the idea of, but open education wasn't even really a term or a concept at that time.

[00:06:37] Patrina Law: It wasn't, but the idea that it was the job of journalists to make material more open and understandable was really important.

And how do you do that? How do you work with journalists and others to write material that can be understood? How do you take away yeah, how do you level it down if you like just so that it's applicable to people because the public understanding of science was so important in national debates and just health as we understand it now and interpreting health and everyone's on the bandwagon now for interpreting what we need to do about our health

But I think at the time there was the debates were when I was studying with there were debates, public debates about HIV, about the use of crop pesticides and gene manipulation as well in crops and how journalists could get that so wrong and people's perceptions of it was, skewed and the Internet access was just not embryonic, but it got underway, but there wasn't much out there for people to get their hands on that was reliable.

So I suppose there is that sort of link there for me where now I just think you can get your information from any source, but actually really quality educational information that is made more accessible is such a powerful thing to give to people.

[00:07:47] Alan Levine: I can see that coming through in the work that you did that we'll talk about.

OpenLearn and Its Impact
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[00:07:51] Alan Levine: How did you come to be working at the Open University?

[00:07:54] Patrina Law: To put it bluntly, I got made redundant from a charity that I was working in that had run out of money, which is a shame. And I took a job at the Open University and worked for some time on the learning management system. And that's how I got to know the lovely Martin Weller. And started off from the technical end, if you like.

I'm very interested in the technical side of things and knitting together all the different systems. To see how we can make a really good online learning experience for Open University learners. And obviously open, the openness side of the Open University is such that anyone can study with the Open University in the UK.

You don't need formal qualifications to do undergraduate study. So that was a real interest to me, and then just as I moved through my career at the Open University, I tried lots of different things, but when I settled into the Institute for Educational Technology, I started working on projects that were funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation into Open Educational Resources and Hewlett as well, and Hewlett Foundation.

So those really opened my eyes, and I was very lucky because I was involved in working on projects that were trying out the use of Open Educational Resources for people in community colleges on the east coast of America. And the Bridge to Success project, and that was really seeing what you could do if you reversioned formal education content, opened it up online and made it available to colleges.

And the interesting thing about that project really showed us that there wasn't one way of reusing OER. There were lots of different ways you could use it in a hybrid way in the classroom. Some people wanted to study. Online, self directed, other people needed support and there was that real choice about the OER, how the college dealt with it and how the learners dealt with it.

So I went into it there and then that was roughly speaking around the time that OpenLearn was born and that was born out of a two year grant from the Hewlett Foundation anyway. And that was around for several years before I then joined the team. But I was desperate to join the team in some ways because I could see that we had this amazing thing going on with regard to giving away a proportion of all of our formal taught curriculum on OpenLearn.

And I wanted to know what difference it was making. And I'd come from that research background in the Institute of Educational Technology to see what these projects, individual projects on OER were doing around the world, but really actually what was our own OER doing. We were starting to reach the sort of millions, the one or two millions at that point.

But we didn't really know what people thought of it, what they were doing with it. And I was really keen to get my hands on that and to run some big research projects.

[00:10:20] Alan Levine: Yeah. And there might be a few people out here who don't know what OpenLearn is. So what's the offering that it does? And what is, what's its relationship to the formal education programs at the Open University?

[00:10:32] Patrina Law: It was run, as I say, from that two year grant originally from the Hewlett Foundation. And it was, the idea was to release 5 percent of the formal taught curriculum as OER. And that was quite a bold thing to do. Some of our staff, our academic staff, were not keen on that idea. Giving away the crown jewels. How can we possibly do this thing?

And after two years it had to sink or swim and it had to demonstrate that it could be a business as usual activity. I wasn't involved in it at that time, but thankfully the people who were persuaded the university that it should be kept going. Because actually a number of people that were looking at the platform were also making an inquiry into the Open University for formal study because the Open University is open to everybody.

And also the university has a relationship with the BBC. And the BBC has to have, when we do work with the BBC, so that will be a co- production with them. There has to be a call to action at the end, and that would take people into this platform. And it wasn't called OpenLearn when those things were combined, it was Open2. net and then OpenLearn, and the things got put together, those two platforms got merged, so you could have a single hub for all of the free learning activity that was going on, whether it was broadcast or OpenLearn, so it seemed to be a sort of happy combination of those two outputs, the BBC output coming in from the broadcast side and then the online world as well.

And then actually, in the last five years, those two things have dissociated again. It is just OpenLearn on its own. But OpenLearn's grown enormously. It's not now just about 5 percent of the taught curriculum. It is so much more. And it has digital certificates and digital badges. It reaches millions of people every year across all demographics globally and has different languages associated with it now too.

So yes, it's really taken off, shall we say, but I think that business model element to it, which was. not its original intention has the thing that's enabled it to survive when times have been lean.

[00:12:25] Alan Levine: Yes.

Challenges and Achievements
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[00:12:26] Alan Levine: And it's probably unfair to ask about, some of the favorite projects. I know we talked a little bit previously about the the the award for the resilience with the Ukraine, the resources for the Ukrainian citizens, both in English and Ukrainian, which is fabulous.

But can you just say, like, when someone says what's the work you're most proud of or that stands out as the most successful that you saw in your time at OpenLearn? Can you rattle off a few? You've mentioned some already.

Okay,

[00:12:54] Patrina Law: I think there's two sides to that. I think the first side of it was having the freedom to develop the team that develop all the content. And I was very lucky that I had a really fabulous team when I was there of really dedicated and enthusiastic folk who were very good at making open educational resources.

And I think probably I would put that as down as one of the great successes because they had the skill set to work with academics who in some senses were often dealing with very challenging subject material or very deep subject material that was aimed at undergraduates Level Two, Level Three undergraduates, and they had to rework that material and make it accessible to all, and so I and they made wonderful animations, they made great videos, they made great audio they turned that material into real living, breathing, fantastic, engaging learning content, so I think one of the successes for me, although I can't say that it was all my doing, but as a team, was the team.

Genuinely. Sounds a bit cheesy, but it's true. They were great. And everyone was so enthusiastic. I was lucky to be working in a bit of the university that everyone wanted to work in. So whenever we had put out a job vacancy, we were deluged with people who wanted to be part of the team. Because it was a fun team and everyone felt deeply attached to and proud of what they were doing.

And I think part of the reason for that pride in their work was it's very easy to get a very quick feedback on what you're doing. Whereas if you're making gigantic modules for some students that take years to produce and you never see those students or see that feedback, it's quite hard to get that sort of feedback look on how's that worked, but you get that very quickly on OpenLearn and working in the open.

And I would say the second achievement, if I had to think about all of the things that I did, it would be the research. So the research drove the commissioning, the platform development, and all the kind of digital products that we pioneered through Moodle. And I think the data spoke for itself. It was so exciting, wonderful to run really big surveys with large data sets with large numbers of people to be quite surprised by what people wanted, didn't want.

And people obviously voted with their feet in terms of what they wanted to read, what they wanted to study. But yes, I would say it was that access to the big data sets, running those surveys and then developing. new digital developments on Moodle was probably the second most exciting thing.

[00:15:09] Alan Levine: So what does it take to lead that? That's a humongous effort. I'm almost scared thinking about it. Like I'm here at my desk and I'm responsible for all this. And so how did you like personally and professionally manage it and come to a style that, that, that made that successful?

[00:15:26] Patrina Law: I think it was, I think it started with the impact. I think being able to, when bidding for pro-- project resource, I think the impact data was the absolute bedrock of everything that enabled new projects to happen. I was able to say this proportion of our learners are in this demographic, we need to do this particular thing for them.

So yeah data all the way.

[00:16:26] Alan Levine: And of course the people, the team that you mentioned is.

[00:16:29] Patrina Law: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:16:30] Alan Levine: obvious one. Was there ever something that you remember standing out as a reach that OpenLearn had that just said, oh my god we're affecting people here, or look at we didn't expect to reach this particular, population of learners, or just to be surprised.

[00:16:46] Patrina Law: Yes. I think two things that stand out for me in that regard.

Digital Badges and Inclusivity
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[00:16:50] Patrina Law: I think probably the first one for me was when we first pioneered digital badges. And we did surveys. We do, we used to do end of course surveys, start and end of course surveys, but were basic very simple, using a standard survey system that you could get very easy graph, not a statistician.

So it was easy just to see sort of simple results where we run these end of course surveys. And when you compared those initial pilots, so those-- we've got loads of courses on maths, and then we've got this course with this digital badge on maths. It's got an Open University brand associated with it. You get the certificate as well, but you had to pass tests to get this thing.

Like online tests, all self directed learning on OpenLearn. Can't afford any tutors, there's too many people learning on it. But anyway, and it's free. That demographic just jumped out. It was so surprising compared to everybody else. Around 40 percent of those early learners on those first digital badge courses in England, in English and Maths, declared a disability.

40%. They were from a lower socioeconomic background in terms of their household earnings. It was real standout stuff compared to the other demographic that was looking at those equivalent sort of courses that didn't contain the badge. And that was a complete shock. It was a nice shock. I was shocked to find, but it was like, oh my goodness, this has a real appeal to people who do not have formal qualifications and who otherwise have been excluded from education for lots of different reasons.

And so that pilot data was enough to make you really sit up and say there's something really important about rewarding people for their self directed learning in open educational resources. what is it that sparked them here? And it's the reward. It was the, I've got this badge.

This is really going back early days of digital badging. But it meant something, it was a real token. So there was that.

And then I think the other thing was actually one of the first early research studies that we did. We identified that a large proportion of our learners declared a disability. And I was convinced there was going to be something I said, let's look at that group and ask that group who've said they're happy to be contacted again. What are their particular likes and dislikes? What are we doing wrong? What would like they like to see more of? What are your motivations for studying OER? And actually the results of that study came back that in fact all of those learners, and we're talking several thousand people, came back and said exactly the same thing as everybody else on the platform.

&quot;These are my motivations for study. I want to progress. I'm a student. I want to progress in my career&quot; and all those reasons you would expect. But the one key difference was, and this is going back to 2016, was actually &quot;I don't want to study online like this. I want everything in different formats. I need that alternative format. I need to take this learning offline. I need to deal with it in my own way. My reasons, my motivations are the same, but I need to deal with the material in a different way.&quot;

And that was a wake up call. And off the back of that work, we-- I was very lucky, we worked with the IT Learning Development Department to create offline formats.

So they weren't, but they weren't just PDF. There was Word. And then there was. Ebook formats and anything else and SCORM formats so you could re upload them to other LMSs if you were an educator. And for me that was a really big moment, but that data enabled us to persuade our colleagues and budget holders that we needed to make that development because we were otherwise excluding that group from having a meaningful learning experience.

And out of that spawned a how do you make that offline learning experience as rich when you've embedded loads of rich media into it? What do you do with it? And then we started the syndication work. We've got all these PDFs and Word documents and eBooks. Where are we going to put them?

Let's put them on Amazon for free. Let's put them out on Google for free. Let's take them to as many places as we can because we've made them. So I was very lucky, really, that we had a very sit forward attentive set of Directorate that enabled us at the time to create those alternative formats.

[00:20:47] Alan Levine: I have to say like in everything you're describing like there's not a fear of taking on something new or wanting to change. It's not oh, we're successful here. Let's just keep doing that. So the spirit and the support in the organization for innovation says a lot about the Open University.

[00:21:06] Patrina Law: Yes, at the time, I would say that really did exist. It was really wonderful to see. But also, I should say that when we were developing Moodle for OpenLearn, and when the core LMS team were developing Moodle for the students, we benefited from each other's developments. So we were contributing to the Moodle community, but actually If I had developed something for OpenLearn, then certainly with alternative formats, the core LMS team benefited from that and vice versa.

So some of those things became joint projects because they were just as applicable to open online learners as they were to our student body as well.

[00:21:43] Alan Levine: Yeah, and--

[00:21:44] Patrina Law: Being in an open university with online delivery at its core helped that sort of development side. But that open group, that quick feedback was really good.

[00:21:54] Alan Levine: All right.

Transition to the Royal Society for the Arts
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[00:21:55] Alan Levine: So let's shift gears. You're doing work now with the Royal Society for the Arts. Obviously a lot different. Tell us about that work-- at first, explain for the audience again about the Royal Society. Like people might know the RSA acronym, but what do they do? And what are you doing there?

[00:22:12] Patrina Law: Yeah, sure. So I've worked at the Open University for over 20 years and an opportunity came up to take Voluntary Redundancy and whilst my heart broke to leave OpenLearn after 10 years, I felt that actually there was a world in which, and I could see it coming through on LinkedIn all the time, charities who want to take their expertise and their knowledge of their particular thing out to the world, but not really knowing quite how that education and learning and online learning thing works.

Or perhaps they don't have the core staff to manage it, but they need to do it. What do we do? Do we just put a course on Coursera? Or have we run it? How do we deal with this great knowledge that we have on our particular subject? So I could see this sort of drip. And it was in the back of my mind, I was thinking I could probably take transferable skills to a charity, maybe move out of education and to take that to, which is where I'd started.

I'd started off working in the charity sector anyway. So the Royal Society of It's actually called the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. And it's got a curious name because it's 270 years old. And it is the most wonderful charity. It does have a royal patron in the form of Princess Anne.

But it has done great work for 270 years in really supporting social change in Great Britain. Although it is an international charity now, it has reach in other parts of the world, but ostensibly it's been in the UK. And it has awarded and promoted great design and innovation over the years to support everybody.

So a couple of crazy examples that I've learned about. So you can see I've drunk the Kool Aid since I've been there. It's been six months.

For example, we used to send children up chimneys to sweep chimneys. And little boys used to go up-- terribly dangerous activity-- to go and sweep chimneys in the Victorian times, and the RSA sponsored, or, crikey, what was it, there was a design that was put forward by someone who was a fellow of the RSA, or something like that, that developed this kind of crazy brush system, that you could shove up a chimney, that meant that you didn't have to send children up, and then eventually, That changed sending children up into chimneys.

So they were connected with that. From an education perspective, they've been heavily involved in ensuring that exams exist in the country, so everyone has a fair chance to take an exam for something to get into university. So they were the early pioneers of setting exams for everybody. They made sure there was street lights, street lighting outside museums so that the working person could go to museums in the evening.

They enabled people to get certificates. in the kind of 50s and 60s for skills. So this is like typing, bricklaying, all those kind of real core sort of vocational skills. And I've always been about that sort of skilling education of the-- of Joe Public, basically, of people who were otherwise perhaps excluded.

They do many amazing and gigantic social change projects, but their mission is to create a regenerative world where people, places in the planet, flourish. And so that really looks at bringing people out of economic inactivity, supporting positive social change. And within that, there's an element of that's educational, that drives skills.

And I knew about the RSA because digital badging sits at the heart of the Cities of Learning Program, which is something that the RSA started, which is creating pathways of learning in cities that's relevant to cities in terms of what their skills gaps are and where they need people to be working to enable their local economies to thrive and awarding those pathways to learning with digital badges.

And I was aware of that because I was always waving the flag to say you want some of these OpenLearn courses in those pathways because there's all this wonderful free stuff, particularly the enduring skills like communication skills and teamwork and, all those great things employers want all those soft skills, those enduring skills and saying that you can use these in these pathways of learning in the RSA, the Cities of Learning.

And so I knew about that project. And so the opportunity came up to take on a role in lifelong learning at RSA, and that's what I've done, so I'm now running with an amazing team of commissioners and staff at the RSA, the UK Digital Badging Commission, which is looking at the fact that Open digital badges have proliferated.

So just millions, 200 million plus and counting, digital badges have been issued ostensibly to reward non- accredited learning. So looking at those people who are educated through non standard routes, people who really need that non- accredited learning to recognize their skills but they've proliferated.

What makes a quality open badge? What makes... what can we create that's reliable, that an employer will trust? How can we really take them forward as a recognised thing? I have to say as well though, part of the passion with digital badges always was a little bit of a layer of frustration there for me too, because I felt that badging Open Educational Resources, that everyone was going to do it.

OpenLearn, we did it on OpenLearn for years, still do. And I always felt that just surely most OER endeavours are going to be badged now. And I always felt that if I could have just cloned myself, I would have gone off and tried to pioneer or change the, or steer the OER movement in some way to really couple with with the OpenBadges movement.

Because so much of OER is really aimed at just everybody. And it's, a whole point of it is to be totally open, but to have sat forward and undertaken some learning yourself, I think you should be rewarded for that at some level. And digital badges seem to be that happy marriage. So it's great to be working in open badging again for the RSA, for all the right social good reasons as well.

[00:27:45] Alan Levine: You're getting there, but characterize the initial, when the open badges first started and there was that excitement and to now it sounds like it's getting them tried to get them not more established, but always increasing the recognition and the scale of it.

The Future of Digital Badging
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[00:27:59] Alan Levine: So how is the Digital Badging Commission going about this process?

[00:28:03] Patrina Law: It is just looking at the UK, although we're aware that obviously open badging is a. is an international thing. I became aware of obviously the Mozilla Foundation who first sponsored the Open Badge concept and then the 1EdTech organization that owns the Open Standards in education. I was involved with them because the Open University was a member of 1EdTech and they took on the Open Badge standard in around, I think, about 2016, 17, something like that.

And it was brilliant because they managed these open standards and the university was already absorbing all the open standards and it worked with Moodle. So it seems like the great place, as an organisation, it seems like the great place to own that open badge standard.

But for me, as far as I can see, and certainly 1EdTech are trying to get a grip of this as well that you can write a really bad badge. that's just I turned up for this thing. And it doesn't describe anything about the skills you learn, and maybe you didn't learn anything, you just turned up for something.

And you can also issue a digital badge that says a lot about what you learned, your level of mastery, the the association with a particular framework or standard. You can now have endorsements in a badge. It can be a very powerful thing that describes something you've learned that's outside of the formal education sector.

It doesn't have to be, it could be inside the formal education sector, but I would say the vast majority of digital badges are awarded outside of formal learning. They recognize they can be an adjunct, you can be doing your Chemistry degree or your Bricklaying course at college or whatever it might be, but then you've got your badges that say I'm a great communicator. I'm a great team player.

Or I've actually just got this thing that makes me a good care worker or something like that. But the add that creates a richer picture of you as a person. And so I think what's happened is that other countries have moved ahead in relevant and connected technologies such as digital transcripts.

So you, you'll leave school ,college, university, potentially in the future now with digital transcripts, certainly people are way ahead of this. And again, 1EdTech oversees the standards for those open standards for those things. And they are describing the thing that you did, that formal education. And it is a one track system.

We also are aware that there are a number of players who've come about since Open Badges who want you to be using them to issue your badges, to store your badges, to share your badges. So there's been, there's a kind of competition between these kind of big providers now.

But I think what the Badging Commission is trying to bring together is a world whereby you could imagine that your formal record of learning and all your non formal achievements, whether you've earned them through OER or wherever, whether it's a training course, whatever it might be, that you've earned a digital credential for can be stacked inside and alongside your formal learning.

So you have got this digital record, your transcript from college, wherever everything else you've learned through life, whether that's training from your employer, that's that picture of you and you have the agency over that you can say what you want to share or hide, depending on what you're doing.

It speaks to the skills based hiring agenda as well. People looking at people who don't have college degrees to say, what other things do you have that make you employable? What have you learned along the way?

But within all of that, there are a couple of problems. We can all imagine that utopic picture of your wonderful open badges stacked alongside your formal credentials. But what do employers think of them? And I think they're potentially a bit confused. They don't know what they mean. They've already got to try and contend with all the myriad of qualifications you can earn as it is. What are these badges? Why would I trust them? What makes them a quality endeavour? Some of them are just, I turned up to a talk.

Why should I care about that? So it's getting employers on board and creating some means of ensuring that a-- an open badge can be trusted. Now one I'd take are doing great work in this area as well, just to create a framework so that you can as an issuer ensure that you've got everything inside that badge in the metadata that said this is a quality badge.

But how do you get people to trust that? What's the digital handshake that says, I know that this is a quality badge? So that, there's a whole ecosystem, there's a hearts and minds thing that's got to happen with employers, and there's a tech piece that's got to happen as well.

How does an employer read a badge? How does a school read a badge? And it's a big-- it's a systems change that needs to happen. But I think at the heart of that, and that's probably why the RSA and the Ufi VocTech Trust that are funding it are working hand in this project is because they can see a great potential that it can really support people who need it the most.

[00:32:36] Alan Levine: And I heard earlier when you started your ambition to get the whole world on board with this. So I can believe, and I can see that line from like changing the world of chimney sweeping to what you're talking about there. There is a direct connection.

So what's it just--, I don't know if you can characterize like moving from an educational institution to this charity organization for you, like on a working basis, like what's the environment like and how is the work different or the same?

[00:33:06] Patrina Law: It's very different actually. I think the thing that I've taken with me, and obviously OE Global is global by its very name and it's a wonderful, warm, lovely place for people who work in Open Educational Resources.

And I would say the same is true for people who work in Open Badging, Digital Badging. Everyone seems to know each other by now. It's a very small pond and a very positive and happy pond. People are really chipping away at trying to make a difference. They see this great role.

I think for me, it's nothing like the charity I used to work for because it's a very grand charity. It exists in a beautiful house in London. It's been in this particular building for 250 years. There's beautiful artworks on the wall. It's a really beautiful historic place to be. When I go into London to spend the day there for work, I'm just so fortunate to be in this particular space and a lot of the charity work does happen inside this incredible building.

So I would say it is very different. I think for me, the difference is that when you work amongst educationalists in education, you're all leaning on the same door, but you all have that kind of baseline knowledge of what it is to be working in online distance learning for adults. And I suppose working in the RSA now, there's a few people around me who are learning designers.

But it's really reminded me how exciting and interesting a world it is. Because when I start talking with other people about open and distance learning and the power of reward and motivation and all the rest of it, it's lovely to get really warm feedback from people who don't work in that sector.

That's not, they're experts in something completely different. And so for me, I think working in a much, much smaller environment, there's not hundreds of thousands of people that work there. There's about a hundred and something. And it's lovely to be able to have that kind of infectiousness about why I think great learning design and sharing and open badges and all of that kind of world is really exciting, as I say, because previously we all just sang from the same hymn sheet, yes.

But also I suppose the thing I missed a little bit just to add to that is that I did have an incredible freedom in terms of being able to have a team of developers. We've got this idea for this thing. We've got some data that backs it up. Can we develop it? Yes, off you go. And I think when you're working in a much, much smaller charity, obviously you can't possibly expect to have that kind of level of freedom.

So yeah, big difference there.

[00:35:22] Alan Levine: Yeah, but I hear the same ambition and motivation and drive. And honestly, Patrina it's infectious. Obviously it's great to get an award and we just, recognize this year's awards. Anything you can say about that how it means for you to get the recognition.

And yeah, we have a badge. Hopefully you got that finally, but

[00:35:42] Patrina Law: I got my open badge and I got my lovely trophy as well. Yes. Yeah, it was, I think I was in a state of shock for about a month. I genuinely hadn't-- I just couldn't believe it when I got the award, actually. I know everyone, it's a classic thing to say, but I just was gobsmacked. And so proud of the team and everyone that I'd worked with over that period of time.

Again, total cheese, it's the kind of thing that everyone always says, but it genuinely really shocked and surprised me. I absolutely didn't expect to win at all. And so yes, I was truly delighted, but I think the impact that it had at work at the time was really reflected on the team in a very positive way, being able to say-- I think when you're in a large institution and you're competing for funds and all the rest of it, it's easy to get lost, especially when you've -- You've been heard saying the same story over and I think something like the OE Global Award when it came along for me in particular, I know that we'd won other things as well for the Ukrainians and our Resilience Award and all of that.

I think it was really a moment to say, there's a world of open educational resources and we've just won this award. That's a big deal. And and that was a really good thing to have at a time when I think it was needed. So it had a very positive impact, I think, on the team, on our status, and it just shone a little bit of light and thanks on everyone who goes the extra mile in the OpenLearn team to make it a success.

[00:37:10] Alan Levine: And obviously it's great to get an award. That seems pretty obvious. And yeah, I can remember like I remember the nomination. It was very strong. So someone took the time and cared enough to give that recognition. And in many ways, I don't know if people realize it like it's almost or even more rewarding to give the recognition that results in someone getting the award.

Make your pitch to our audience to, to nominate someone next year. How about that?

[00:37:40] Patrina Law: Oh my goodness. Absolutely. Yeah, I think it do you know, there were a few reasons why I'm not saying give someone an award so that they'd leave and go do something else. Like it's the catalyst, just leave your job. I don't mean that at all, but actually I think there are lots of different factors that enabled me to apply for voluntary redundancy and move on and make that change. I didn't have to apply.

But actually there's a tiny nugget, undeniable nugget in there of a bit of self worth. Sometimes you just scratch your head thinking why am I doing this? Does anyone care? And as a boost to my confidence and my self esteem, it was massive.

I feel emotional. saying that, but it's absolutely true. So if there was one thing I would say when it comes to nominating other people is that I think sometimes when you're working away at something and you're going, to the extra mile to do it, and you know it's for some social cause and it's really important to you, perhaps it's easy to forget that you're valued in that work, and I think if you were thinking of nominating someone, think about the personal impact on them, because If they deserve to feel good about themselves for five minutes a week, a month then do it because I think for me that self esteem boost was much needed.

And and as I say, had an institutional impact that was a very positive as well.

[00:38:58] Alan Levine: All right. So I have my last question. So obviously you're very passionate about your work.

Personal Reflections and Closing
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[00:39:03] Alan Levine: You work a lot, but outside of all that, away from this, what are the things you do that are most rewarding for activities away from work?

[00:39:11] Patrina Law: Away from work. I'm a trustee for another educational charity as well, which I enjoy very much. I'm a massive gardener. If only it could be summer 12 months of the year, that would be fabulous, but I love gardening very much. Every year I hold a charity plant sale for-- to raise money for my son's charity.

And it's become a bit of an obsession and I'm now totally obsessed with propagating plants and in fact we had a little team exercise for fun this week at work which was I said to the team if you could award yourself a badge for something that you do that's a secret that you think you're really good at, what would that thing be?

And the team came forward with my colleagues came forward, this is very funny and interesting and insightful things that they thought they should get a badge for, but for me it was the ability to propagate plants. Now I'm not saying I'm really good at it, I have a limited success rate, but yeah, I think if there should be a badge out there for people who are beaving away to propagate plants to give to their neighbours, that would be the one I'd go for.

[00:40:08] Alan Levine: Oh, I'm right with you. I'm looking out at my gardens and things that I spent the weekend working on expanding and it's very rewarding to do that work and see results even, when things don't work out, but generally they do. The earth provides and thank you for that. That's a wonderful I might borrow that activity idea that you described

[00:40:27] Patrina Law: yeah.

[00:40:27] Alan Levine: Give yourself a badge for something that you think people don't know about or recognize.

[00:40:33] Patrina Law: Yeah.

[00:40:34] Alan Levine: Oh, it's been a joy as always to talk with you, Patrina. Again your energy is infectious and I encourage people to keep their eye on the work going on in the, with the Digital Badging Commission that Patrina is working on and with the RSA.

And we thank you for people who are listening that you're tuning into this episode of OE Global Voices. And each episode we do, I try to find a different track from the Free Music Archive because it's Creative Commons licensed music by artists themselves. And for this conversation, I tried to find some tracks about leadership. I found one, the music is really nice and upbeat and calm, and I hope Patrina enjoys it when she hears it.

It's called Let the Flames Lead the Way by an artist named John Shoemaker, and it's licensed Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial.

And you'll find this episode when I publish it at voices. oeglobal. org. And if you want, you can follow up with conversations Patrina in our OEG Connect community. I know Patrina is there and and we look forward that you go there to congratulate and communicate with this year's award winners.

And if you have an idea about sharing your work, I think someone out there that you should talk about because we are Open Education Global, but the globe is big and it's-- we don't know everybody. So we certainly take suggestions. And I just really want to thank you again, Patrina. I just enjoy the chances we get to come have these conversations and hope there's more in the future.

[00:41:59] Patrina Law: Thank you. And thank you, Alan, because everyone loves you and what you do and how you just remind us all the time with your emails about your great work and bringing the whole community together. And you realize you're going to have to explain to the world now what you did after studying geology.

[00:42:13] Alan Levine: All right. I'll tell you privately after recording, but yeah, it's a funny path. Thank you very much again,.