Episode 97: Colin de la Higuera, Lucie Grasset, Virginia Rodes, and Marcela Morales === [00:00:00] Intro Music and Highlighted Quotes --- [00:00:03] Colin de la Higuera: There's some hugely positive experiences that are being talked about in the series. There's a lot of optimism. [00:00:12] Virginia Rodes: With this form that is, I think it's very approachable, very understandable. It came from conversation and it ended in conversation, but in a polyphony of conversations. And colleagues say when I saw the final version, I can feel these two teachers, drinking mate in the university and started to talk about this. [00:00:38] It was very good advice and I think it's improved the version. So thank you very much, Colin and Lucie. Podcast Welcome and Context --- [00:00:48] Alan Levine: Hello and welcome to OEGlobal Voices, the podcast that we produce here at Open Education Global. Each episode we share with you conversation style, the people, practices, and ideas from open educators from all around the world. I'm your host and lucky editor, Alan Levine. I'm most fortunate that I get to hear all of our conversations. [00:01:09] You're listening to the voices of Colin de la Higuera, Lucie Grasset, Virginia Rodes and Marcela Morales for episode 97. We're getting close to a hundred. This one was recorded March 23rd, so we could talk about the Sharing is a challenge article series published as part of Open Education Week, and coordinated by Colin, supported by Lucie and several others from Colin's team at the University of Nantes [00:01:34] The timing for this recording was chosen to align with the day that the article Virginia co-wrote for the challenge of Misuse, titled Between Openness and Responsibility, How to Make Good Use of Open Educational Resources. It was published the day of this recording. OE Global's executive co-director Marcela Morales, shares her perspective on openness as well as an author of the very first article in the series on Legitimacy. [00:02:01] So let's get to the conversation. Meet the Guests Worldwide --- [00:02:04] Alan Levine: Welcome to the OE Global Voices podcast studio, a big day for us, a big day for a lot of people. We're very excited to have this conversation, to talk about the challenges of sharing. We have a stellar group in our studio, and we want, of course, hear who they are, where they are. [00:02:22] How are you doing today? [00:02:25] Virginia Rodes: Thank you. Happy to be, to be here with you. [00:02:30] Alan Levine: Okay, and so where, are you? Where are you sitting right now? [00:02:34] Virginia Rodes: Now, I'm not Uruguay. I'm currently in the Edinburgh Institute for the Future. I am in on a research stay here, in the Center of Digital Education. So I'm very happy to be also here, working in the project on open education AI that I am currently focused on. [00:02:57] Alan Levine: Fantastic. So you can see the castle from where you sit? [00:03:02] Virginia Rodes: Yeah, I can see it. I can see-- not the castle because it's in the opposite side. But you can move in the university and see the castle. Yeah. [00:03:12] Alan Levine: Excellent. A wonderful setting. So now, we will shift to Nantes to hear from, we'll, first talk to, Lucie. Let's, hear from Lucie Grasset. Welcome to the show, Lucie. Let us know where you are and what you're doing today. [00:03:26] Lucie Grasset: Thanks, thanks for this invitation. I am Lucie. I'm from Nantes University. The building where we are used to be a factory. It's on the highland, in the river Loire, in the middle of the lower river. So it's very sunny today, exceptional for the season. [00:03:47] Alan Levine: And your role on the Sharing is a Challenge series, what do you get to do this month? [00:03:53] Lucie Grasset: I work with Colin and collect articles from the 27 authors that were collaborating in all these articles. So I collect them, we make the translation and we publish in three different blogs. [00:04:09] Alan Levine: That's fantastic and we're gonna hear more about the whole process. [00:04:12] But of course, frequent guest on the show, Colin de la Higueras great to see you again. Congratulations you have the finish line in sight for this month. [00:04:22] Colin de la Higuera: Oh, yes. We're a little bit more than halfway. It's great. [00:04:26] And so I'm a Colin de la Higuera. I am a UNESCO chair on open education and on artificial intelligence. I'm currently sitting actually in my house next to the sea and about 50 kilometers from where Lucie is. So she's actually getting to go to the office and I will be only going to the office, tomorrow. [00:04:48] Alan Levine: Okay, and we had a conversation earlier about sharing in flowers that I think was very appropriate. But we'll circle back to that, or maybe not. I also wanna welcome to the studio, my colleague Marcela Morales, and just wanna invite her because, she's important, but also she, works with and know Virginia very well. [00:05:07] Good morning, Marcela. [00:05:09] Marcela Morales: Hello everyone. Good morning and good afternoon, wherever you are. And it's just a pleasure to be able to be here and share this space with you and have a conversation about this wonderful work that has been done, led by Colin and Lucie and Solennn as well. And, so very happy to be diving into this conversation. [00:05:28] I'm currently in Austin, Texas. This is where I live now, in a beautiful setting in the north part of Austin. The weather here is amazing, i'm sorry to say, to those of you that are still in the cold weather. It's getting warmer and beautiful down here. So it's a pleasure and a perfect day to have this conversation with you. Why Sharing Is a Challenge --- [00:05:45] Alan Levine: Last year, Colin, like you, you had the 23 Reasons to Support Open Education. That was a huge success. First of all, what convinced you to do it again? How did you land on the idea of the challenges of sharing? [00:05:58] Colin de la Higuera: Okay, the do it again was because, even if it was exhausting last year, it was actually very rewarding-- rewarding intellectually we learned a lot, but rewarding as a team. There was a lot of teamwork and a lot of team exchange there. And, I think it helped people. [00:06:14] So where does it come from? it comes from a workshop where we were supposed to run a workshop on open educational resources, and they wanted us to do it in some ridiculous amount of time. Something like 45 minutes. Thinking we're supposed to both explain what the OER are about and then do the activity. That was just impossible. [00:06:34] So let's try and say it's not about OER at all. It's just about sharing. Since they're teachers, they'll probably understand what this is about. And it worked. if you said sharing for teachers, they very quickly understood what we were talking about and we didn't need to actually give them a full course on OER. [00:06:53] So we continued working in that line saying, okay, perhaps sharing is an interesting word. We can use it in a way independently of having to explain the Five Rs and UNESCO and whatever. And it's true. it's a word which resonates so much with teachers-- difficult to find a teacher who's in the game for something else than sharing. They're all in the game for sharing. [00:07:18] So that's where it comes from. And then little by little we understood that, it sounded nice, but it was much more difficult we thought, and that there was something like obstacles to sharing. And we then just listed the obstacles and off we went. How Topics and Authors Chosen --- [00:07:32] Alan Levine: Pretty much you put out a list of these to a group of, people. It was a little bit of a free for all right? People got to grab which one they wanted, and some people decided, "Hey, let's work together." That's an interesting approach. Does it work very well to have it set up like that? [00:07:52] Colin de la Higuera: So we had to be fair this year. Last year, we didn't have a clue what we were doing. So last year we put some things out at sort of nine o'clock in the morning in France, and then had some frustration from your part of the world saying, "Hey, when we woke up, the interesting topics had already been taken", which we weren't expecting this at all. We thought, we might have to give, we gave out some reasons. Probably we would have to write half the articles ourselves. [00:08:19] But within 24 hours, all the articles were taken last year. So this year we did differently. We actually, made it not public, half public to people saying, okay, the articles will be online at two o'clock in the afternoon, European time, which allowed people in Americas to actually play also. [00:08:42] And, in the first five minutes we already had three of the topic's taken, we were half open. I said, because I think you or others suggested we actually, broadly publicize this. And, we didn't want to, we'll explain perhaps about this afterwards. It's more like the sort of the relationship you want to have as an editor with the writers. [00:09:06] You don't have the same relationship if you actually know the writers than if you don't know the writers. So we wanted to keep it with. People we knew, but that was still about a hundred people. Behind the Daily Publishing --- [00:09:16] Alan Levine: Lucie, I get an email every day and it looks beautiful. It looks simple. And I know it's not. So it's quite a production with multiple parts, distributed authors. You've got the languages and then you're publishing across three different WordPress sites. [00:09:32] What does it take for all this to come together and work on a daily basis? 'cause from the outside it looks very smooth. [00:09:38] Lucie Grasset: Actually we decided to collect the articles a month ago. Even if it was quite difficult for the authors to write collectively. Some articles there are four people connecting and writing together. Once we collect the article, we read them. We dispatch in between our teams. There are also two other people in the team working on the article. [00:10:04] Solennn Gillouard and Erwan Louerat who are actually working together with Colin. So we are four. Each of us are responsible for a group of authors of articles. So we read it first and then we send some comments to help them. [00:10:25] Each article we want them to be as is in a blog, everyone manages, one style is okay. So it's was very easy to handle this part of, the work. [00:10:38] And then we need to translate it into different language. So for, instance the article from Virginia and Regina, it was first written in English. Then we write it in Spanish. So there were different versions. Once we have the final version in any of the language we manage, we pre translate it, using DeepL. And we have also people who are making sure the translations are correct. [00:11:09] Each of us are responsible for one blog. I am responsible for the UNESCO Chaire RELIA blog. Solenn is handling the UNESCO Unitwin blog. And Erwan is editing the one on the European Alliances UniWell. And those two last blogs, they have to handle the multilingualism in the blog, whereas me, I'm just under the French version, perhaps the luckiest. [00:11:40] Then once we publish it, also, there's a new thing we are doing. This year we are sending a newsletter to those who want to get every day the article in their own mailbox. So instead of just publish it on our social networks such as LinkedIn or Blue Sky, there are this newsletter. But also Erwan is taking care of the OEG Connect publication as well. And you, Alan as well, is you working on it. [00:12:16] Alan Levine: Oh, and thank Erwan please pass on my appreciation 'cause he's been fantastic to work with. Getting the emails every day I see that and then I wanna read the whole article. Threads and Early Feedback --- [00:12:27] Alan Levine: We are, I said midpoint in, in my question, but we're at the three quarter point of the series, what were your hopes and how does it feel right now, Lucie? [00:12:38] Lucie Grasset: It's a lot of work. Every week we are just keeping us moving just to manage and publish it and taking care of the social media networks. [00:12:51] But we are really enthusiastic about the quality of every article. We want to connect them in, all in between, making a thread. And also some articles are rep replying to each other. For instance, sometime they use the same image, like Gollum We have two articles, that take, this image of Gollum. And there were discussion as well with authors, but also the audience about this image. [00:13:19] And also, for instance the article today of Virginia and Regina about Misuse, I would like to connect with other articles beforehand. But also the article of tomorrow, which is gonna be an Obligation. And so sometimes quite linked, the subjects. And when we decided about the publication of each article, sometimes we want to harmonize and mixed different style, different languages and different conception. [00:13:52] Like sometime we have articles written by French speakers whereas we would like to have a mix, within the week of different perspective. We think it's quite great for the audience, even though they are, sometime they're reading not in the same the role as us. [00:14:15] It's a real pleasure. [00:14:16] Alan Levine: Congratulations on that. [00:14:19] What have you heard so far, Colin? [00:14:20] Colin de la Higuera: To be fair obviously we got the people who like us who are saying, "okay, brilliant, well done." And whatever. I'm not hearing if new people coming into this, I'm seeing the articles being reproduced because obviously they're all under an open license, so sometimes they're just reproduced as such on websites, without even asking us, which is fine, of course. That's the goal of the game. [00:14:43] Even if in your article you're going to argue that they could still let us know, but that's different. So yeah. not much more than that. [00:14:54] I think that we should then press our advantage to actually come out with the main ideas that have been introduced here. And here's where Lucie is saying these, what she's calling "threads", right? Saying, okay, this is the same idea. The same idea, And what's important is that a lot of these ideas are actually, some are old, some you could have probably found 20 years ago. even if they are revisited with new references, new examples and new reasons. [00:15:23] And some can be completely new. Some are obviously-- if you're talking about AI for example, these are new topics and requiring new analysis, new research and and the community to actually just keep on being innovative, which is good. [00:15:38] Misuse to Responsibility --- [00:15:38] Alan Levine: And, so much we wanna talk about, and we'll come back to this, but the star of the show is for Virginia. I asked Colin if we could get an author on the day an article was published. 'cause it, it seems very timely. And, just wanna congratulate you, on the article that just came out on the relationship of openness and responsibility. [00:15:58] I'm interested because the original topic was "Misuse." I'm curious about why that spoke to you and what made you flip it to the way you framed this article. So let's hear it from the author. How, did the cooking go to to make this meal? [00:16:15] Virginia Rodes: Okay. thank you for your words, but please, it's the team on Nantes that came, with us to try to connect all the dots of open education that needed to be connected, the different topics. I think we have a lot of new things regarding open education and open educational resources. [00:16:44] When I choose Misuse, it was because, it was a very important topic, for the university professors, colleagues that I interviewed during my PhD thesis a decade ago. This topic emerged as one of the biggest obstacles for open sharing, mostly regarding appropriation. This was the most important misuse that constantly emerged in the conversation. [00:17:16] As I am now approaching the topic of OER from the Artifical Intelligence perspective, mostly, invited by the Dubai Declaration on OER that focused on this issue. [00:17:37] Together with Colin and also with Regina we have a common interest, open education AI. I decided to see what is happening now in in this area. And that is the way, responsibility appears as part of approaching misuse. It's not only a problem of ethics when you use the, contents that have been developed by other people. Now, there is another actor in the landscape that is AI, Generative AI mostly, that, take part adaptations. And not considering, for example, copyright issues, because they are using every content for training this model. [00:18:34] This is one of the aspects that I see the individual perspective of ethics has to be transferred to responsibility, not only as an individual responsibility, but mostly as a problem of governance, a problem of accountability, a problem of stress. [00:18:57] Also problem of quality has to be expanded regarding misuse. But in focusing on these kind of things that has to be updated and in some way transform it has to be seen in a different perspective, so as to approach this huge problem we have. [00:19:18] Alan Levine: Excellent. I love the idea when I read it this morning that it was written as a conversation, because it gives it a little bit of a narrative arc and, but it also makes it feel a little bit more realistic. [00:19:31] Where did that idea come from and was this a real conversation or is it a summation of your experiences? [00:19:41] Virginia Rodes: It's a product of a lot of conversations I have been experiencing with a lot of experts, colleagues and friends, regarding this issue. It's a product of a conference I had for example, from Tel Amiel, panels that have conducted with Colin, with Javiera Atenas, with Antonio Moreira Teixeira from Portugal, with Paco Iniesto from Spain. [00:20:16] We were talking about this issue and misuse was one of these kind of emerging problems. And responsibility is one of the solutions we started to identify. So it's a polyphony, I think, of our voices that, were condensed into this conversation. [00:20:34] I think it's very important to point that the first version was in some ways structured as a more academic perspective. Because it was part of this framework we were trying to develop and new approach in this issue. And, Lucie and Colin told us to be more dialogic. And Regina came with the idea of a conversation. [00:21:03] With this form that is, I think it's very approachable, very understandable. It came from conversation and it ended in conversation, but in a polyphony of conversations. And colleagues say when I saw the final version, I can feel these two teachers, drinking mate in the university and started to talk about this. [00:21:29] It was very good advice and I think it's improved the version. So thank you very much, Colin and Lucie. [00:21:39] Lucie [00:21:39] Alan Levine: And it does achieve this because it says that like you can't come up with single solutions for misuse or any of these topics. And the fact that there's both this tension, but understanding between slightly different or vastly different viewpoints is really important, to bring out. [00:21:58] Do you have examples that you can share from your research, where you see this interplay at work? And I think it was touched on in some of the articles, getting away from openness for its own sake and licenses that makes it easy and it doesn't. [00:22:14] So any examples you can share of, how you see this playing out. Governance Quality and AI --- [00:22:22] Virginia Rodes: I think one thing is regarding governance. OER integral part of the work that teachers do because, creating content is a daily work in teachers' life. So OER should be very close for them. Early, from primary school to high higher education, everybody creates contents. And they are always shared with their colleagues in a closed form. So it should be possible to share in communities, to create communities of practice. But these kind of things should be a governance problem, should be oriented by a framework and policy that has to conduct these kind of sharing communities or networks. It depends on the approach or also depends of the weight of the community. [00:23:31] Another aspect that should be approached by governance is quality. Quality always depended on the creation, on the outsource. But now we have another actor in the building that is, Artificial Intelligence. [00:23:51] It has to be an approach of quality as a problem of systemic integrity and also academic integrity. But, also a governance approach because we have to include this kind of quality issue as part of the policies we have to design in the institutions and also at a national level if possible. [00:24:14] But because epistemic integrity now is a problem. We have to maintain the different systemics we already have as humanity. We have a problem of tightening this epistemic integrity to one voice, two voices because it's the most relevant are the ones that are currently being reproduced. [00:24:41] Also representation- this was a very important problem regarding adaptation or regarding the conditions that have been considered. For example, the visuals, the languages. But what about representation in this context, which kind of adaptation we have to do? [00:25:07] I think it's an opportunity for language translation. But there are languages that are not included now. And this is also a problem. It's an opportunity, but it's a problem regarding intentional design and review. [00:25:24] The other problem that everybody can experience every day is the enclosure of the platforms. We want to develop open content, but in closed platforms. And this should be approached, I don't know how to do it. Because we were talking about this a lot with Colin and other partners that artificial intelligence could be open. Can we continue being open in another year? [A] landscape that is approached by artificial intelligence nowadays, and a lot of misuse being done in this new landscape. How can we know about the misuse that is being done in this new scenario? Misuse is structural in this context. [00:26:15] Maybe openly licensed, but still circulated in environments that limit real educational freedom and restrictive conditions. It could be a problem. I can add more examples regarding the notion of provenance, the problem of data openness and unintended harm. [00:26:38] That's the reason why good intentions are not enough in this content. So responsibility is part of a new relevant approach that have to be developed I think. [00:26:52] Alan Levine: Absolutely, like a collaborative collective responsibility. Legitimacy and Series Connections --- [00:26:57] Alan Levine: I wanna give Marcela a chance, first of all, 'cause she knows Virginia very well. The way the topics are interconnected-- Marcela wrote the early piece on Legitimacy and all these topics end up interconnecting. [00:27:10] So any thoughts about legitimacy and responsibility, Marcela, or anything else you wanna add to the conversation? [00:27:16] Marcela Morales: Yes. Thank you. I think that's exactly what I was thinking Now. First of all how the entire series interconnected between the topics. Because I wrote the one for legitimacy and I was trying also to focus on the way that we as a community validate the openness like the OERs. [00:27:36] Which OERs are we validating and why? So I see like a very common connection with what Virginia and Regina wrote for this particular article. It goes back to the use of OER. How are we using it? How are we expressing it to the rest of the community and how can we encourage others to use it properly? [00:27:56] And so that's why I really appreciated Virginia's article, particularly because it's circling back to that. We are also passionate about the concept of Open within the community. There is nobody that you can talk to that wouldn't support the core elements of openness, but why these kind of efforts are so important, I think that we highlight that connection between this emotion of yes, open should be in everything that we do, but then how do we connect it to the how tos? How do I really do open? Can we guide people? That's where we as a community are sometimes, maybe having spaces of improvement of how can we lead people into the open practice itself, which is why I really appreciated this particular article, Virginia and Regina. You were so concrete at saying, yes, OER, the way that you open like OERs work because they are open. But how, we cannot have guarantee of the use without letting people know how can they use it. And I think that we find that thread in every other article of the challenge of sharing openly. [00:29:10] We know that it's a great idea, but there are many things that we can still improve of the open licensing. But it's not only that, as Virginia was saying. There's so many other smaller elements that play into the practice of openness that I think that it's fascinating for us to have this conversations and share them more broadly. [00:29:30] Alan Levine: And hopefully many more conversations will happen. so I wanna ask Colin to jump in too, because I, would think, and I'm, reading your face on the zoom here, that you're, thinking about how everything is gonna fit together because, it, it's, you've been guiding this and you also working on writing the summary, which is a daunting task. [00:29:49] But, what connections have you seen in the, previous or upcoming articles that tie into, misuse slash responsibility? [00:29:58] Colin de la Higuera: The challenge is that if you want people to converge somewhere, you also want them to explore the field. So we had to try and find these 16 starting points sufficiently separate to avoid everybody writing the same stuff. Yes, we've got these favorite topics and often these are the same stories. [00:30:18] So, that people did explore different stories we had two things. We had, starting points that were different, and then we had a nasty editor that would get back to them saying, "No, that's not what you're supposed to talk about, is it?" We had those two things. [00:30:32] So now if I look there's a number of small stories, but the key one is that "sharing should be shared", something like that. I know it sounds strange, but basically the days of amateurism where a guy could get up and say, "Hey, I want to share" they are gone. [00:30:52] And Virginia put it right-- AI has got a lot to do with it, but it's not the only reason that some of the other obstacles will come there. [00:30:59] This means that some of us are actually working in environments that are allowing them to share because an effort is being done. I know that this is the case, for example, in Nantes where we've got this Farbrique REL, a group of people who are there to help people produce REL it's gonna be the case. [00:31:16] And you will see it in an article published in the next few days, also in Quebec, where they are also having initiatives where the idea is to help people do it and sort out as many of the problems that Virginia has pointed out or that Marcela has pointed out so well. [00:31:31] Sadly, perhaps, but it's also a sign of maturity the days of just do it, they're gone. You need to be a team because the quantity of things that you have to look into is important. Again, the teacher who does this in the evening on his own, that's not gonna work. It has to have a team, other people who are involved. [00:31:56] So perhaps it's, the route to go from, OER to the digital contents that are promoted by the UNESCO Perhaps that's what needs to be explored. But something is changing. There's some hugely positive experiences that are being talked about in the series. [00:32:14] There's a lot of optimism. There's a lot of people who just open because open, but there's a lot of voices saying, " Do it with the team." Do it with the other guys, and ask your university or your school or your whatever to help you by putting up a bit of infrastructure, key people knowing what they're doing and so onwards. [00:32:33] Alan Levine: Okay. What’s Next This Week --- [00:32:33] Alan Levine: And so a preview, what, what's happening this week? What, what's coming out? [00:32:38] Colin de la Higuera: Lucie, go on. [00:32:40] Lucie Grasset: Tomorrow we'll have an article from Luc Massou. He is working in the French Ministry and he's gonna talk about Obligation. So it will actually link to some of the themes we were handling like in your articles about Legitimacy and Misuse. So that's why sometime I want to connect all those articles. [00:33:06] And then we will have another on Wednesday with an article from people from Italy, from Alessandra Gammino and Benedetta Calonaci --sorry for the pronunciation. I tried the Italian accents! They were talking about discoverability. It's great to make a very good OER and putting it online, but we want them to be discovered. That actually links also to [an] other article like Usefulness-- why are doing this if nobody can access to these treasures. [00:33:46] On Thursday we will have an article written by five French speakers one is from the Nantes University, Paul Lyonnaz and Sophie Depoterre is from Belgium, from UCLouvain. And two other people, located in Canada, Nadia Villeneuve and José-Miguel Escobar from the Fabrique REL. They will be handling the Time Consuming challenge. So it's really interesting article as well. [00:34:19] And then we will end the series with the article from Alan on Monday, the last day of March about Ungratefulness. [00:34:30] Alan Levine: Virginia. just curious how, it felt this morning to see your article appear this morning in the email and on the websites. [00:34:39] Virginia Rodes: I wanted to share this, wow. I'm very happy. I'm very happy to see all the articles have been published as part of the Open Education Week. The purpose of this initiative that the UNESCO Chair try to conduct a celebration of open education. I'm very happy to be part of all of these activities and I'm very happy that Colin and partners invited us to be part of. So thank you very much. I'm very happy. [00:35:19] Alan Levine: Oh, thank you so much and congratulations as well to Colin and Lucie and everybody else on the project. [00:35:25] So do I ask what might happen next year? [00:35:28] Colin de la Higuera: You can ask. . At this point, people are going to say that this was too exhausting, too tiring We shouldn't do it again. That's what normally will happen in a few days. It's a big ask on people. And there's a number of projects where we've been stranded because so much energy has been put into this. [00:35:45] But then we'll recover and probably find something. But, it's not that easy. You want to find an angle where you get people excited. You also want to do this work of getting people who are used to do research papers and say, "No, write a blog paper." Because it's different. [00:36:03] You're gonna have, probably hundreds, thousands of reads instead of having just a dozen. But of course, then you have to make those efforts to write it differently. And, yeah, we'll see. at this point we, we've still got to recap . We want to actually see if we can publish the results also as the volume of something, openly, obviously. [00:36:26] So we'll be working with all this. [00:36:29] Alan Levine: That's fantastic. [00:36:31] Colin de la Higuera: But I do think because Virginia is here, and I know her efforts are great in this moment to actually push the cause of research and open education. It's not research, clearly what we're doing here, but it certainly makes people understand why research is important, because all these problems are surfacing. [00:36:50] So if through an action like this when we help surface problems for which there are no answers, and therefore for which research is needed, I think we have achieved something. [00:37:02] Alan Levine: Definitely. Hobbies and Human Side --- [00:37:08] Alan Levine: And so I just like to ask because it's not work all the time, it's always good to know what you do outside of the work that brings you some, joy and passion. So I'll start with, Virginia because, you're the star today because you're the author. [00:37:18] So what do you like to do outside of your busy schedule of open education work. [00:37:23] Virginia Rodes: As a hobby I like to walk in nature. Nature is the most important part of my daily life. I like to see birds. I'm going to be the lady of the birds when I retire. I like to hear and photograph and see different kind of birds in different contexts. [00:37:48] I like walking a lot. I think this is the most important hobby nowadays in this part of my life because, hobbies were evolving during the different parts of my life. I also like a lot, cinema. I like films. My additional education is in Communication. [00:38:12] This is very important for me and to see different kind of movies that came from different parts of the world and show us different perspectives of problems that are currently part of the humanity. These are the most important of the hobbies I have nowadays. [00:38:32] Alan Levine: Oh, that's fantastic and I hope you're getting to see some of the wonderful places, the scenery where you are in Scotland. [00:38:39] Virginia Rodes: Yeah. I am showing it a lot. [00:38:41] Alan Levine: I would love to see a photograph. I remember I took a hike to the top of Arthur's Seat where you had that view. The Scotland landscape is magnificent. [00:38:49] So if you don't mind, 'cause I love photographs. I would love to see some Scotland. [00:38:53] Virginia Rodes: Yeah, of course I can share. Thank you. [00:38:56] Alan Levine: And Lucie, when you're not doing all this work, when Colin is not being the task master, how do you get to relax? [00:39:06] Lucie Grasset: I love nature as well. I love also gardening. I have a community garden in my village. I garden with people from different ages, , with children to advanced people. It's very enthusiastic and I like sharing seeds as well, sharing plants, because I mean it's magical. Currently it's Spring in France, so everything is blooming. I love it and I see all those little seeds grow. So it's bringing a lot of joy. [00:39:41] I love also the nature by the River Loire which is very nice. Just a month ago we had a big flood. So the landscape changed a lot. [00:39:53] I like reading as well. We have a reading group at the university. We share books and have a group to discuss books and different perspective. We have different point of view about one author. So it's also nice discussion. [00:40:09] Alan Levine: And before you came on, Colin was talking about the plants that you shared with him. And we'll get to him last, but Marcela, we give you an avenue. You're so busy with running Open Education Global, I hope you have some free time. [00:40:22] Marcela Morales: Yes, absolutely. I think that I align with Virginia and Lucie and really I think that the simple pleasures in life are the most beautiful ones. That's why I enjoy being outside, spending time with loved ones, cooking, having a good meal, having a good laugh. Really just spending time together. [00:40:42] That's the biggest pleasure in life, I think. So as we are now, hopefully we're gonna be in the same room in person sometime soon. [00:40:49] Alan Levine: Thanks for sharing that. And, Colin, you're a busy person too. What do you get to do when you're not working? [00:40:57] Colin de la Higuera: Yeah, I'm a little bit worried when I listen to all this because, some of these things I enjoy, but I realize that having a hobby is still something that has to be consistent with all the other things I've got do. So I think the things I like take too long, too much time. So I'll have to retire to go and do the things I really want. [00:41:14] But what I do and doesn't take me much time, not enough, is plant those seeds that Lucie can pass me. And that's, that's, very important. And yes, just being outside. We've had a very long winter here. Our very rainy season seem just to go on and on and just being outside and just sucking the little bit of sun is just absolutely wonderful. [00:41:37] And agree, cooking and talking to the cherished ones is essential. [00:41:43] Alan Levine: All very good. Retirement and AI in Teaching --- [00:41:44] Alan Levine: I won't put you on the spot, but I see these notes about retirement. Is that, happening? [00:41:50] Colin de la Higuera: Oh yeah. No, that's definitely. Basically I will still be around doing things. It's hard work, the university is-- well, people know it takes a lot of energy out of you. [00:42:01] All these things are great. This part is not the part I want to retire from. But the rest is tremendously difficult being in university now 'cause of the same thing the issues of AI. [00:42:15] One thing is intellectually thinking these things out and having to come up with solutions and reading and writing and imagining solutions. The other one is facing the students and having to teach and thinking, one second, what's happening here? This is wrong, and it is wrong. When you're thinking okay, perhaps I'm going to try and, I don't know, say, let's try and do the exams differently, and the administration said "No. You wrote two years ago that it had to be this way. So you're not allowed to change." [00:42:47] And you're thinking, come on, basically AI, it's only now realizing I have to change the way we're doing things because we have to move on. [00:42:56] Alan Levine: But still, congratulations again. This year's been so exciting to see. And, we look forward to this last week of the challenges of sharing. [00:43:07] Colin de la Higuera: Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you a lot. Closing Credits and Callouts --- [00:43:09] Alan Levine: Thank you for listening to this episode of OE Global Voices, the podcast from Open Education Global. Each episode features a different musical intro track selected from the Free Music archive. For today's show, we selected a track called "Share Your Project" by an artist named TimTaj that is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-commercial No Derivatives license. [00:43:32] You can find this episode at our site voices.oeglobal.org, and join follow up discussions in our OEG Connect community or wherever you interact with us in social media. [00:43:43] If you're listening, and would like to share your own open education work, or suggest to us a future guest that we should have on the show, please let us know via our website or email to voices@oeglobal.org. [00:43:55] Thank you again for listening.