and we're live. Hi Loom. I'm handing over to you now as the session chair to introduce Rajiv. I think we're just having a little bit of a lag with the internet. So Rajiv, I'm going to go ahead and just introduce you myself and it is an absolute pleasure for everyone here at OER by Domains21 to welcome you as our closing keynote. We have had two fantastic days of conversation and debate and now we're ending up with the curious contradictions and open-ended questions which is going to be a wonderful session. So in the comments I can already see a few people saying hello and I hope you keep comments and questions coming over. Rajiv, I'm going to hand over to you. Welcome to your keynote. Thank you very much Marin and hello everyone. Bonjour tout le monde. Namaskar and especially Ramadan Karim. It is such a joy to be with you all and a real honor to be part of this incredible conference where I'm sure you'll agree every little detail has been really shouting out that this is really an open community production. I'm really grateful to be joining you from my home in North Vancouver, British Columbia which is located on the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Squamish Nation. Today I hope to share a few curious observations and raise a few uncomfortable questions. I don't claim to have definitive answers to these questions but I'm rather hoping that we as a community are open to grappling with any discomfort together honestly and thoughtfully and that we will in fact resist the temptation to rush to problem solve by offering nice neat finite discrete and therefore incomplete answers. Here's what I would like to talk about but before I do I do want to say that I am dedicating my talk today to my grandparents and you'll see why I'll talk more about them as we go. Here's what I'd like to talk about. What does it mean to be open? Who gets to decide what is open enough? Is being open always a good thing? How can being open also be closed and how can being closed also be open? Can one employ closed means to achieve open ends or in fact co-opt open means to advance closed ends? Or if open frankly is the means then what really is the end? And as I raise these questions I will reflect on my own experiences and observations as a practitioner, researcher and advocate but I will also draw on lessons I've learned through collaborating with many wonderful humans and truly outstanding organizations within the open education community. But before I begin I'd like to situate myself in the context of my own journey and as I do so in fact I'd like to invite you to reflect on your own as I think there is a lot of power in knowing and understanding your origin story as an open educator. I've been very grateful to call Canada home for the past 23 years but I didn't grow up here. I grew up in Bombay in India. It's a mega city of about 25 million people in a country of extremes. Mumbai as it's called today is home to one of the largest slums in Asia but it's also home to the most valuable private residents in the world. My childhood was a bit atypical because it was one of privilege. Here I am with my mother and my sister. English was my first language my language at both school and at home and here I am with my grandfather on my 10th birthday. You can see I'm rocking my yellow suspenders. Our family was reasonably wealthy and I did not really want for anything but privilege is a funny thing because I think it's hard to understand sometimes. I often think about it like you know if you if you asked a fish to describe water you don't really recognize what you have until you lose it at least in part and that's exactly what happened. My family unfortunately suffered a series of financial setbacks. We lost our home and my father passed away and the future that was so secure suddenly became desperately uncertain. This is when my maternal grandparents took me and gave me a home. This is me with them at 17. My grandfather who in fact was a freedom fighter during India's struggle for independence shared many stories with me including about the times when he and his colleagues laid down on the roads to block the passage of British trucks in the docks. Some years later when I wanted to pursue a higher education they were the ones who invested in me and made it possible for me to move to Canada to study and I remember very clearly just how much I struggled during those early years to adjust a life in a new country far away from my family and very very full of microaggressions and some not very microaggressions but thankfully one thing I did not struggle with was my studies because I knew that every semester that excelled that I made you know the dean's list these letters of commendation would be sent to my grandparents in India and I knew I wanted to make them proud. A year and a half later as you can see in the picture on the bottom left my grandparents came to visit and by this time I had managed to find a job I'd start to be able to pay my own college fees and it was the summer in Vancouver which I have to say is a spectacularly beautiful time to visit here and my grandparents spent three wonderful unforgettable weeks with me before going on to visit with my grandfather's brother in the United States but then my grandmother decided that she wanted to go home early so they cut short their trip they flew back to India seven days after landing in Bombay my grandmother passed away and 10 days after that my grandfather passed away. Now by itself I don't think that this story is that unusual because this was a couple who had been married for more than 50 years but what I think is unusual and why this story is so bittersweet for me is that it is rare to get to spend time with people who matter so much to you just before they pass and if I can tell you anything it's with confidence that if it were not for my grandparents faith in me for their support of me I would not have moved to Canada to study I would not have become a Canadian citizen I would not have become a university professor or administrator and I certainly wouldn't be speaking to you today and I'm sharing all of this with you because when people say that education is a vehicle for economic and social mobility that it is a tool with which we can unlock human potential I have to say this idea is not a theoretical concept for me it is very much my lived experience this is why I haven't been naturally drawn to conversations and labor around widening equitable access why when I learned about open educational resources I ended up working on three open textbooks and psychology thanks to the affordances of open licensing these have since been adapted and reused around the world there's a couple of them the one on the left I was pleased to see recently there's a New Zealand edition is the most recent one this is also why I like to think of OER as permitting a kind of temporal collaboration but it's with an unlimited number of unknown future collaborators it is a gift that keeps giving and in fact it gets more valuable each time it is re-gifted but when I realized that I could bridge my ongoing scholarship in teaching and learning with my passion for open education of course I was delighted and I have to say I benefited greatly from the mentorship of people like John Hilton from the open education group and from studying the work of people like Shiranika Karunanayake from the open University of Sri Lanka and Martin Weller and his team at the OER hub as an aside I will say that I got to fulfill a bit of a dream of mine you can see on the bottom left by co-publishing with my wife Serita whose scholarship I think many of you in the open education community are coming to know more but it was through Martin Weller that I found my first publisher Ubiquity Press which in fact had published his own brilliant open access book the battle for open and that first book open the philosophy and practices that are revolutionizing education and science was in fact intended to be a primer for those new to OER open pedagogy open access scholarship and open science practices the generosity of spirit of members of this community in fact is something that I think is really stood out for me through that project and since as so many incredible scholars and experts agreed to contribute so you have you know Robin DeRosa and Scott Robeson talking about open pedagogy and Anita Walls just the amazing Anita Walls from Virginia Tech sharing a librarian's perspective on OEP Mary Burgess talking about the BC open textbook project Cable Green on open licensing and policy and of course Martin Weller and his dream team at the OER hub on the evaluation of claims about OER and I have to say there's very few people I think who are more generous in spirit than Martin Weller who when I landed in London in order to attend this conference in 2017 he walked to the offices of Ubiquity Press he picked up the very first print copy of the book and he met me at a pub to celebrate this book is now nearing 25,000 downloads something that really for me illustrates the the power or the impact of open access publishing but I also want to mention here three organizations that I've worked closely with because each of them for me exemplifies what is what is really best about the open education community I will begin for sure with BC campus which is a leader in so many ways not just with their impressive work with harvesting adapting creating open textbooks but also in especially I would say in how they've woven inclusion and care into all of their work from you know championing accessibility within OER to providing free childcare at their events to strongly supporting indigenization and decolonization efforts across the sector in British Columbia I also want to highlight the incredible community and capacity building work of the open education network where David Ernst and Sarah Cohen have provided what I think is admirable moral leadership to this growing international community of partner institutions from developing and refining models of faculty development and open education to enhancing the the discoverability of OER to fostering what I think is is an amazing collaborative environment where colleagues from different institutions readily share their challenges and their strategies the OER for me is a real beacon in a world where privatization and open washing are increasingly part of the landscape and I will pay tribute to the OERU to the Open Educational Resources Universitas where Wayne McIntosh and his colleagues have provided a truly visionary model of international collaboration to provide access to truly open online courses with openness pervading every element of the ed tech infrastructure and radical openness being a defining feature of all of their decision making and finally I will highlight the generosity of my many collaborators especially my partner in crime fighting Robin DeRosa she makes all of my ideas better she clearly lifts all of my work and she's very patient with me when I keep coming to her with new dreams and new ideas the open pedagogy notebook is one of our projects and it's meant to serve as a living library that illustrates what open pedagogy can look like in practice this would never have been born without her partnership and absolutely without it would not have happened without steel wax staffs technical support as well Robin was among the co-editors in another book project open at the margins along with Mahabali Catherine Cronin and Laura Chernovich published by the simply wonderful Rebus community this collection represents a starting point towards curating and centering marginal voices and non-dominant epistemic stances in open education it includes the work of 43 incredible and diverse authors whose perspectives challenge the dominant hegemony now you will note that there are several themes that have emerged across these experiences organizations and projects I think there's collaboration mentorship generosity inclusion care vision criticality and community and for me this is what makes this work special this is what makes this community unlike most others jim you might agree with me when I say it's probably why we sing karaoke so much because this is a community in which it is more comfortable to practice vulnerability it's also I think what occasionally baffles people who wonder why the choice of a particular conference keynote speaker from an organization that is perceived as being out of step with these values can lead to pushback from the community or why a conference sponsor that is in fact actively working against these ideals can cause such consternation why such a fuss but to me this is not really not a surprise at all it is merely the community asserting and reasserting and reasserting its values which brings me to my first question what does it mean to be open I'd like you to think about this sit with this question for a few seconds I'm going to pause and I'd like you to share your own thoughts in the chat as well as I'm as I'm attempting to tackle this question you know when people talk about open education definitions and discussions often focus on open licensing or at least they begin with open licensing especially creative commons licensing right and I get this appeal because open licensing is relatively easy to describe and it certainly has been instrumental in advancing open education over the past 20 years but I want to ask whether open licensing is merely necessary or whether it is sufficient for something to be truly open can openness be boiled down to the so-called five hours that are enabled by open licensing the free and unfettered ability to reuse revised remix retain and redistribute or do we mean something more than this is it about engaging certain practices is it about free access is it about engaging in public scholarship or is it about something even deeper and more amorphous such as a set of shared values or norms and if so what are those values agency equity care justice I recall that Mahabali and Mia Zamora described yesterday in their workshop that justice is something that can emerge when one works to address systemic equity issues while also embodying care in how we do this but in case you're not familiar with Sarah Lambert's exceptional scholarship I really want to recommend that you read her 2018 article in the Journal of Learning for Development in it she shows how the open education literature is aligned to social justice principles right from the first UNESCO definition of OER but she also shows that the principles of social justice somehow became lost along the way being either hidden or weakly implied or simply absent in most of the influential texts that have shaped the modern open education period of course Sarah doesn't just doesn't just highlight the issues she also proposes the following definition open education she writes is the development of free digitally enabled learning materials and experiences primarily by and for the benefit and empowerment of non privileged learners who may be underrepresented in education systems or marginalized in their global context she goes on success of social justice aligned programs can be measured not by any particular technical feature or format but instead by the extent to which they enact redistributive justice, cognitive justice and or representational justice now redistributive justice involves the allocation of material or human resources towards those who by circumstance have less. Recognitive justice involves the recognition and respect for cultural and gender difference and representational justice involves equitable representation and political voice. I'm going to keep quoting over here from Sarah's paper because it's so wonderfully and clearly I think helpfully illustrates this distinction with the example of an open textbook. Sarah writes providing a free textbook to learners of color in the American two-year college system is redistributive justice in action it reduces the costs it increases the chances of success for learners who by circumstance have less they are marginalized in education workplaces and more broadly in society but how open she writes is the textbook for marginalized learners if indigenous Hispanic and learners of color are invisible inside the textbook and perhaps invisible in the whole curriculum the editing of such a textbook to include images and cases featuring more diverse communities businesses and people would be an act of cognitive justice but what if the textbook features people of color but does not value their perspectives, knowledges or histories what if the textbook takes a white colonial view of black lives if black stories are told solely by white voices the development of selection of a new version of a textbook or perhaps a new resource altogether written by people of color where they are free to represent their own views histories and knowledges now that would be an act of representational justice to give voice to those who are often not heard. Sarah's incredible and her words I have to say immediately bring to my mind the words are of another incredible woman Arun Dutty Roy who wrote that really there's no such thing as the voiceless that are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard this brings me to my second question who gets to decide what is open enough again what do you think even if we focus on on simply simply the question of open licensing for a moment I think this is a complicated question open licensing is many things it's a legal mechanism to increase access and amplify impact it's an invitation to collaboration and derivation it's a key that unlocks new pedagogical possibilities but I've also seen it used as a stick to beat people over the head with and a litmus test for purity we know for example that there are six possible creative commons licenses to choose from depending on what particular combination of attribution share like non-commercial or no derivatives is included and of course I'm not talking about the public dedication public domain dedication tool here we know that these six licenses vary in their degree of openness as illustrated over here we also know that the two licenses that include the no derivatives clause do not permit the revision and remix of a given resource which effectively disqualifies it from being considered OER so we have six licenses but really only four that most most folks in the field point people to right there but even then I sometimes honestly I see rude gestures shall I say made in the direction of the non-commercial of the share alike licenses CC by is really the way to go is the implicit and sometimes the explicit message and now of course I understand why CC by is powerful why it is encouraged as the default license but I also think we need to be open to the whole spectrum I would hate for the message to new practitioners to be that yes there are six licenses but really only four and even then we will judge you if you use any of these three as someone who's been working for years to grow the community of open education practitioners at my own institution I never wish to narrow the door through which we can invite people in not every educator wishes to needs to or has the bandwidth to revise or remix a resource and sometimes the decision excuse me is not even left to individual educators as some repositories refuse to include resources that include some of the more restrictive permissions which I think means that the option to adopt that resource is either being taken away from them or at least obscured through making that resource less discoverable these are decisions design decisions I can also tell you that that if you are working with colleagues who are interested in creating or adapting or you are it is helpful to widen that doorway to I've seen enough open textbook authors who begin with a more restrictive license later choose to republish their work under a more open license to believe that presenting the full continuum of open licenses is a pragmatic approach but that also respects the agency of authors and speaking of author agency I think it's been most interesting to have conversations of the years with with OER creators about their motivations for selecting a given license sometimes I think these choices are based on their hopes on their aspirations and at other times they're based at least in part on their fears particularly of exploitation by commercial actors this is precisely why we see so many adopt a non-commercial license the notion of the irrevocability of an open license can be scary to newcomers it's important to acknowledge that and most educators I think wish for non-privileged learners to benefit from their work and that includes facilitating the reuse and revision of their work by fellow educators but they do not wish for their intellectual labor gifted freely to the world to be monetized by commercial textbook vendors interestingly this exact same fear sometimes leads people to select a share alike license the thinking here is that because any revision to their work or any remix of their work would have to be published under an identical license they believe that this would serve as an effective deterrent against commercial vendors ever touching their work now as a psychologist this is fascinating to me because this illustrates how different motivations can sometimes lead to the same choice of license it also shows how a choice to remain a little closed can sometimes actually be a defensive move in an exploitative world the psychology of open licenses is I think interesting because it comes with its own set of unwritten rules or injunctive norms as we would say on the one hand as I've said there is the provision of six licenses with the implicit discouragement of many of them and on the other hand there's the provision of the cc0 public dedication tool that does not require attribution but with the implicit encouragement to provide attribution and in some ways you know this I have to say this reminds me of cricket it's a sport I adore but it has many examples of actions that are technically permitted but implicitly discouraged if you follow the game you'll know that running out the non-striker who is backing up too much is one example of a behavior that is held up as within the rules but against the spirit of cricket and just as the spirit of cricket provides the context and culture for that sport it is the values I think of open education that provide the context and culture for open licensing the final thing I will say about licensing is this you really cannot judge a creator by their license and I think shaming or coercing people integrator openness is hardly in keeping with the values of open education if we're serious about respecting the agency of authors and creators I think we need to respect people's choice of license I'm not sure we can subjugate agency to openness and still describe our approach as open but let's take a step for the back maybe and let's ask the next question is being open always a good thing again give it some thought now don't get me wrong I very much believe in the potential of open education to be a force for good but I think it is important to remind ourselves that not everything can be open nor should it be open and I'm talking over here about the ethics of openness I'll provide you with two concrete examples the first comes from a dear friend Tara Robertson she's an activist and a diversity equity and inclusion practitioner here based in Vancouver I will always remember Tara's powerful talk at OpenCon 2017 in Berlin from which I will now quote with her permission over the last couple of years she said I've come to realize that this isn't an absolute openness and that there are sometimes what it's not appropriate or ethical for information to be open to all last spring she said I learned that reveal digital a non-profit that works with libraries digitized on our backs a lesbian porn magazine that ran from 1984 to 2004 it had actually been online for several years before I learned about it for a brief moment I was really excited porn that was nostalgic for me was online then I quickly thought about friends would appeared in this magazine before the internet had existed I was worried that this kind of exposure could be personally or professionally harmful for them there are ethical issues with digitizing collections like this consenting to a porn shoot that would be in a queer print magazine with a limited run is a different thing to consenting to have your porn shoot be available online Tara goes on when reveal digital digitize this collection the content was licensed under the Creative Commons CC by license this license of course allows feminist porn to be remixed in ways that could appropriate the content and demean women now I'd like you to contemplate this case as you read the words of one of the queer women who modeled for this magazine and who spoke with Tara she said when I heard all the issues of the magazine are being digitized my heart sank I meant this work to be for my community and now I'm being objectified in a way that I've no control over people can cut up my body and make it a collage my professional and public life can be hijacked these are uses I never intended and I still don't want now on the one hand I've talked about how some of the magic of open licensing is that it is an invitation to an infinite number of future potential collaborators but on the other hand this case to me demonstrates how openness without respect for agency can do real harm another example has to do with traditional knowledge indigenous intellectual property is not adequately protected under the Canadian copyright act for example indigenous knowledge such as you know songs or histories and traditions fall outside of colonial notions of ownership according to the Canadian Federation of Library Associations who holds legal copyright to that knowledge or cultural expression under Canada's current copyright act is often contrary to indigenous notions of copyright ownership indigenous knowledge may be found in published works as a result of research or appropriation and in these cases the author of the published work holds that legal copyright to that knowledge or cultural expression while indigenous peoples would see the authors as the people from where the knowledge originated as in western notions of copyright indigenous peoples regard the unauthorized use of their cultural expressions as theft respecting the ownership of indigenous intellectual property is one of the reasons why the development of traditional knowledge labels has been so valuable developed through through sustained I would say partnership and testing within indigenous communities across multiple countries the TK labels allow communities to express local and specific conditions for sharing and engaging in future research and relationships in ways that are consistent with already existing community rules governance and protocols for using sharing and circulating knowledge and data the TK labels identify and clarify community specific rules and responsibilities regarding access and the future use of traditional knowledge this includes sacred and or ceremonial material material that has gender restrictions for example seasonal conditions of use and or material specifically designed for outreach purposes to learn more about the traditional knowledge labels I recommend that you visit local contexts.org the link is at the bottom next question how can being open also be closed this one may come a little quicker because I think we often talk about the importance of things like technical openness including for example providing editable files when you publish OER so that you're not just legally permitting but you're also technically facilitating the revision and remixing of your work but a lack of technical openness is only one way in which one can engage in open education while still being somewhat closed consider for example if we create and share videos that are not captioned images that do not include alt text or if we use color schemes for graphs that are indistinguishable for those who have color blindness or if we assume that everyone has reliable internet access and so we do not make OER downloadable or available offline or if we publish OER but we participate in active data extraction from users by requiring account creation or tracking users behaviors through invasive data analytics I've already seen at this conference so far I mean Nicole Allen, Emily Carlisle Johnston, Grant Potter and Marie Scott, Luke Walzer are among those who have already talked about the different elements of this and why we need to support and sustain open ed tech infrastructure I do urge you to watch their excellent presentations but when we work within systems and norms I think that uphold exclusion at every turn it is incredibly easy to engage in openness on the surface and in content while working against it in structure and process it's like saying that everyone is welcome to use the sidewalk but not bothering to design or install curb cuts or curb ramps or worse still saying that everyone is welcome to use public benches but in fact deliberately adopting a hostile design that prevents the homeless from sleeping on them and for those who think that you know we just keep raising the bar when it comes to OER that gosh it now you're saying it needs to be technically open oh it needs to be accessible all right needs to be downloadable oh goodness and it needs to respect data privacy too my goodness I'm going to suggest that the degree of discomfort you're experiencing is likely as a symptom of the privilege you're enjoying if you do not use a wheelchair then you may not wonder about why curb cuts are essential but of course as with curb cuts when we make our systems more inclusive it benefits everyone whether it's parents pushing strollers or teenagers on skateboards now of course one other unfortunate feature of the status quo in open education is our over reliance on voluntary and uncompensated labor or at least severely under compensated labor now as I've written I believe that this perpetuates an implicit form of redlining one that reserves the capacity to create or adapt OER for those who already enjoy positions of privilege such as the tenured or those who can afford to forego the extra income and as a result what we're really doing is despite the best of intentions the ideologies biases prejudices associated with those positions of privilege inadvertently become reflected and over represented in the available OER this goes back to what Sarah Lambert wrote about in terms of recognitive and representational justice under compensation does perpetuate and exacerbate this but I'll also tie it to this idea this has been said and noted many times if you're not at the table then frankly you're on the menu this also connects with the beautiful quote from Desmond Tutu that Mahaa and Mia shared yesterday at their workshop I believe he said that he's not interested in picking up the crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master I want the full menu of rights this is also why design justice is so important as Sasha Konstanzer shock writes design justice is a framework for analysis of how design distributes the benefits and burdens between various groups of people design justice focuses explicitly on the ways that design reproduces and or challenges the matrix of domination which includes white supremacy heteropatriarchy capitalism ableism settler colonialism and other forms of structural inequality design justice though is also a growing community of practice that aims to ensure a more equitable distribution of design's benefits and burdens meaningful participation and design decisions and the recognition of community-based indigenous and diasporic design traditions knowledge and practices what I'm saying is that we don't need tokenistic inclusion in OER ah we have a couple of you know people of color color who've authored open textbooks in our publishing program well you know that's a start but did you compensate them for their label or did you use openness as another strategy with which to exploit them with the very best of intentions and did you respect their agency and choice of license or did you attempt to squeeze as much open openness out of them as possible even without any compensation now I know these questions may seem harsh but one of the responsibilities of a platform like this is to pose the questions that others cannot without fear of facing retribution springs me to my next question how can being closed also be open and I think this is a trickier question because certainly many of us are big believers in open ed practices but also open ed tech infrastructure but I do think about cases where agency comes up against openness for example you can think about the decision by Audrey Waters some years ago to install a script on her website that would disallow digital annotations as much as many of us enjoy the use of digital annotations and in fact many of us believe that organizations like Hypothesis in particular are a model for a more ethical approach to ed tech hers was a decision that I intuitively and immediately appreciated up and applauded as she wrote in her post which explained her decision I took comments off my websites in 2013 because I was sick of having to wait through threats of sexualized violence in order to host conversations on my ideas my blog my rules no comments I've made this position fairly well known she went on if you have something to say in response go ahead write your own blog post on your own damn site so I find the idea that someone would use a service like Hypothesis to annotate my work on my websites particularly frustrating she wrote I don't want comments not in the margins not at the foot of an article mostly I don't want to have to moderate them I have neither the time nor the emotional bandwidth and if I don't want to moderate comments that means I definitely don't want comments to appear here or that appear to be here that are outside of my control or even my site this isn't simply about trolls and bigots threatening me although yes that is a huge part of it it's also about extracting value from my work and shifting it to another company which then gets to control or even monetize the conversation final piece of this blocking annotation tools does not stop you from annotating my work I'm a big fan of margin earlier she wrote I am I write all over the books I've bought for example blocking annotations in this case merely stops you from writing in the margins here on this website it's a breathtaking piece and Audrey's decision once again demonstrates the critical importance I think of agency of control so whether this agency is exercised by creators applying a share alike or a no derivative license indigenous communities asserting that certain traditional knowledge is not meant for public consumption students engaging in open pedagogy projects but choosing to not openly license their work or disallowing digital annotations on one's own domain agency in my view is a key and critical value of open education now by now it should be clear that it is possible to use closed means to achieve open ends and and of course we've seen with the ample demonstrations of open and washing including the enclosure of we are into platforms that have registration walls or pay walls that some commercial entities from you know commercial textbook publishers to some student success companies also actively attempt to use open means to achieve closed ends but I'd like to finish with the reframing of this question as I really don't think that open should be the end at all open for me is the means to an end and I'm not sure what you think the end should be when I think about the end that open serves to me this this resembles the values that Sarah Lambert wrote about social justice this is why I hold in such high esteem the scholarship of Cheryl Hodgkinson Williams and Henry Trotter who draw on Nancy Fraser's social justice framework to better understand we are you're right Fraser endorses the notion that justice is the first virtue in that it is it is only by overcoming institutionalized injustice that we can create the ground on which other virtues both societal and individual can flourish by extension Fraser conceives of social justice as parity of participation as both an outcome where all the relevant social actors participate as peers in social life and as a process in which procedural standards are followed in fair and open processes of deliberation and we said this both the outcomes and the processes can be socially unjust they write in three ways which Fraser terms economic maldistribution cultural misrecognition and political misframing now when I find this framework most helpful is especially in distinguishing between responses to injustices that are merely affirmative and those that are truly transformative for example on the economic dimension reducing the cost of education by adopting open textbooks in place of commercial textbooks is a positive if ameliorative response transformative responses would do more to address the root causes of economic inequality such as providing stable power supply adequate access to functioning computing devices and affordable and stable connectivity and rural environments on the cultural dimension one could use we are from the wrong context as is and even do harm translating we are into local languages I think would be a step forward as an ameliorative response but a truly transformative response might include remixing we are critically to engage with and challenge hegemonic perspectives and finally on the political dimension you might look at IP rights intellectual property rights and ameliorative response would be to ensure that educators have the copyright for their own teaching materials allowing them to openly license them if they wish and share them publicly if they wish but a transformative response would be perhaps to alter IP legislation itself to allow for educational resources properly attributed to be shared and copied without formal commission permissions or obligatory fees Mahabali Catherine Cronin and I sought to extend the Hutchkins and Williams and Trotter framework to broader open educational practices and as you can see we tried to articulate contexts in which despite the best of intentions open educational practices may be neutral or even negative such as for example if it's done without student agency or choice to opt out of public scholarship if it reproduces hegemonic knowledge or if students are let's say not appropriately informed or equipped on how to engage in open practice and its risks such as when you have marginalized students who are targeted and harassed as part of online open scholarship open educational practices can certainly be ameliorative if they address let's say economic injustice by producing resources and scholarship that become accessible to populations who would not otherwise be able to afford access but practices like this can either be instructor centered or learner centered they can be content-centric or process-centric and primarily pedagogical or primarily social justice focused and these are the lines along which we will see the difference between open educational practices that are ameliorative and those that are truly transformative in the latter case it's marginalized groups that are involved in the design of the content and processes and both epistemologies and structural academic gatekeeping may be challenged this once again connects with the notion of representational justice that Sarah Lambert wrote about to go back to the image that was on my title slide and thank you Brian Matthews for your wonderful work and allowing me to do a bit of a meta remix over here this I think is what I've been wondering about out loud today I know that openness can be leveraged for justice clearly particularly if we go beyond ameliorative uses to more transformative uses and if we go beyond redistributive justice to recognitive and especially representational justice and as maha and Mia described justice can be served when one works to address systemic equity issues while also embodying care in how we do this but of course openness may also do harm on the other hand close practices can certainly do harm but we also see cases of where being closed is actually a more just choice ultimately I suspect that choice itself is the key word over here as without the agency we are stripped of the power to toggle either of these buttons to set the menu instead of being fed crumbs of compassion to be welcomed instead of merely being included and to serve justice instead of merely being open I will leave you with the words the powerful words once again of Arun Dati Roy another world is not only possible she is on her way on a quiet day I can hear her breathing thank you very much everyone I'm really eager to hear your questions your comments your reactions thank you very much thank you Rajiv that was beautiful and and you know I choose that word really thoughtfully before we go to questions I just want to say that you are luckily a man who needs no introduction and the courage and wisdom of ending with questions in a world that tries to find sticking plaster answers has been really moving and once you get to see the comments then you will see that I'm left with that sense of balancing justice and care openness with respect for agency and the thoughtful practices of love and care that are in all the minor gestures what this space has provided and what you have encapsulated beautifully is yes we embrace discomfort yes we are able to do that because we're in touch with our own vulnerability for what you've given us today's love thank you thank you thank you very much Lou questions then wonderful comments and Marin is in the background picking up a few of those comments to put on the banner but have you got questions for Rajiv virtual hugs for sure yeah I have to say that the cricket reference was a was a bit of a hat tip for a couple of people but especially I want to say hello to Tom for really for being my constant companion yeah there was a real little club going when the cricket reference came up for sure yeah people definitely in the hats back it's just love it's just love flowing in Rajiv and you know sometimes that is amazing Sarah whose work you have so beautifully described Sarah is asking what is next for Rajiv and KPU in terms of open and justice you know it's a really good question I feel very lucky because my institution is quite serious about open education I mean it's part of our strategic plan we have a dedicated office and staffing for it we supported in a number of ways and Sarah thank you again for we had a bit of a back channel coming up to this conference for for being comfortable with me talking about your work like this I think there's a number of things I think we have a long way to go you know in some ways KPU is lucky to have support and structures to be able to to support this work but we're still working within you know systems and broader structures that are are hostile to a lot of this and and and so I think that's part of the challenge is in in not just doing work in open but doing the work in the right way and so you know I think we have a ways to go we've been doing a lot of work with OER and an open pedagogy of course the next major focus for us that we're developing is open education research which is something we also need to be informed through ethics and so we're looking forward to that piece but I would say you know just a constant critical re-examination of our practices ways in which we can keep improving I would say we have a long way to go but we're lucky to have you know if you know Arlie Cruthers she's an unbelievable colleague our open education teaching fellow Uruj Nizami incredible our open education strategist and many others so I think we're lucky to have the criticality but I think this is the this is the this is the place for us now is not just to be able to provide the opportunities but to you know gently start to tweak the structures in a way that the institution won't overreact to in a way that draws everybody to justice instead of merely openness and it's a bit of a challenge for sure when you're engaging in culture change like this but you know I think we're lucky I would say we're a privileged institution in that we have this kind of support for openness and for me it's about navigating how we can now move on to try and do the hard work so that other institutions can point to examples of how this can be supported and supported in the right way yeah no makes total sense thank you for that and Lorna's got a great question as well you talked about the the labor and the cost of labor how do we acknowledge and reward the labor of openness great question and I am listening hard yeah and I have to say I'm going to go back to the caveat at the start I really don't claim to have definitive answers to these questions what I do think is that we need to keep doing better I mean part of it is is you know there are places that do things like if you're within a higher education institution like the University of British Columbia having you know the creation of OER be acknowledged for tenure and promotion well that's a start being able to compensate your authors through through you know whether it's stipends or time usually it's time that's more valuable than anything else to educators that's another piece but you know I think it's it's a I think this is a multifaceted question and I think agency goes back to this in terms of you know we can really go in with great excitement with the best of intentions that but when we want you know a more inclusive team of authors we might already be approaching that conversation with a very sort of a pigeon hold mindset that and this may be not fully conscious even but that we want these people so we can diversify our collection but they're not there to diversify your collection they're there to represent their knowledge their epistemology so I think part of it is making sure that that folks have the freedom to in fact engage in openness in a way that is true to their sense of justice and so I think that's a more subtle and more important perhaps a way to look at this then simply looking at time and money and recognition and that sort of piece but yeah I think this is a really difficult question Lorna and I think we all have to address it more and I think a lot better yeah yeah and the nuance of that is really important isn't it it's about a feel and an emotional wake as much as anything else. Maren I think he's going to allow us one more question before we thank you and you don't want it you know rather one more from you than the co-chairs banging on so Laura Pascini is asking what small steps or action can open ed folks start doing to examine their own OER work and open practice anything you can suggest for us. Gosh I mean I think there's many things but I would say I'll borrow and learn here from from Wayne McIntosh and you know I mentioned this earlier I think the vision of the OERU is is really staggering and I really think everybody needs to learn more about how they work over here but one of the reasons why I'm so constantly inspired by the OERU is because they don't miss the smallest detail when it comes to thinking about openness and so I looked at their example in many ways and part of that is is you know I think they have embraced the ethos of open source software and that you know release early release often but I mean that really means vulnerability that means humility that means you're open to criticism you're open to you know all kinds of negative things sometimes and that's difficult but so I would say you know creating an environment where others are allowed others that you're inviting can can practice vulnerability in a way that is safe in a way you know those who can participate in your project in a way that is respectful who can communicate with the voice being theirs I think that's all part of it but you know I think you can look at the the infrastructure the technologies the methods but I think a lot of this has to do with vulnerability and for me if we want that vulnerability we need to find those ways to make sure that vulnerability is not as risky as it is right now and so I think anything we can do in terms of small ways to create an environment that is more hospitable for vulnerability is an environment that upholds openness in the small and important ways but thank you for your question Laura. Thank you. Thank you Rajiv for that sometimes you know at the end of I'm a festival girl and sometimes at the end of an outdoor gig it's just a perfect moment no encore is needed the sun starts to set and you just know it's as good as it could be and you've ended our two days as good as it could be thank you from my heart and from all of us for coming along. Thank you very much Lou and I'm so grateful to the organizing committee for this opportunity and for all of the learning that I've been able to do with all of you over the last few days thank you very much everyone you did it again you did it again you did it again well this was like seeing the rolling stones for the first time for me I have to say oh my gosh happy conference everyone we yeah wow I can't believe we're here there's been so much work and planning and prepping and orientating leading up to today and yesterday so thank you as the banner says to all of our participants speakers chairs sponsors partners organizers scholars educators anybody who has made time for this event we appreciate you we see you we thank you I'm just I'm honored that so many people from so many different time zones have joined in I will be sitting with this event for quite a while after the fact I feel like I have so much homework to go back to and see all of the sessions that I didn't get a chance to watch live so I'm really looking forward to that somebody else start talking because I otherwise I'll get emotional I want to say a huge thank you to to all to Marin in particular I'd like to just thank everybody who's been working in the background on stuff so all the producers that have been working behind the scenes on stream yard and getting all the youtube things working so seamlessly and I just want to thank my co-chairs domains people the OER domains X domains we've been also working with you all and just to everybody big love to all the participants it's been such an emotional two days and I'm not sure I expected that I feel a little bit like oh I came into the fairytale world I follow the trail of breadcrumbs what's it gonna be like well it's been like this it's been I think Marin you've put in the you put on the banner there it's been a blast it's been an absolute blast and I would like to thank everyone who has contributed in any of the spaces Lauren your beautiful discord which has just been gorgeous all of the twitter chat that joe has encouraged us throughout to get involved with all of the chatting the sessions I've been oh bathing in we also amazing not to cut you off sorry about that we do also need to make a special shout out to Michael Branson Smith and Tom Woodward for their wonderful help on the conference display site that is their handiwork just in putting it together and helping with all of our last minute requests to do things like time converting it's been so cool to watch them work on the back end um so yeah thank you new music joe so it's not very often I managed to shut myself up so my hand is absolutely buzzing it's been a fantastic two days I've cheered amazing conferences amazing sessions I keep wondering worrying about what I've missed which is the sign of a of a fantastic a conference it's been so good though to have the the domains the domain streams alongside the ORE OER streams because it actually it knits together it knits together so perfectly and it's been great to see everybody all the social stuff has been fantastic clearly I would like to give you all hugs and and a lot of my friends that I've met and I've even met some new friends as well so real good conference experience and I think the main thing is when all this winds down what a great asset base we've got to take back to our countries to our institutions and back into our classrooms to keep driving this OER thing because it is it was so nice that we ended talking about justice and empowering because that's what this is all about so just amazing so thank you all and thanks for all the supporters and thanks for all the folk that came along it's just been amazing I agree and I just maybe want to try an experimental thing with everybody out there I think we all did it I mean the co-chairs all everybody but everybody who came so I'd like to have a little sing along right now and it's very simple very simple it's just we say we did it again we did it again we did it again we did it again we did it again we did it again we did it again everybody get it again we did it again get it again come on people we did it again i guess not all that oh yes I know there Hey! Sorry, I just thought we had one more time before we wrap up. So, over to you, for final words. Oh, I was just gonna say, also a thanks, there was a banner going around talking about the all team working in the background. And yes, absolutely, this conference would not have happened without them. All of their emails, announcements, organizing, Emma Jane, our advanced manager, all of the other folks to help coordinate in the background, thank you so much. Seriously, we see you, we hear you, and we thank you. We're still all right, guys. Is that correct? Yeah. Anything else? Any final comments from co-chairs? I wanna thank the people in the comments who did it again. You folks didn't really do it too well again. They did it again. They did it again. Show it, show the comments. They did it again. They did it again. They did it again. They did it again. They did it again. They did it again. They did it again. Thank you everyone for one more time. Bye everyone, thanks for coming. Bye. See you next year.


Stars remember Sandy Mokwena, his light will never fade. SCANDAL Actors Keigematsu Christopher, Brighton and Goma, and Kajiso Majipi have joined thousands of South Africans in paying tribute to veteran actor Sandy Mokwena, describing him as a giant and pioneer of the acting fraternity. Sandy, best known for his role as Brayeti Kumalo on the E.tv soapy, died in a Johannesburg hospital on Wednesday. The channel revealed to Chwisa L.I.V.E that Sandy was sick prior to his death but died of natural causes. Actor Kajiso Majipi, who has been on the show with Sandy since its debut 13 years ago, was heartbroken by the news and told Chwisa L.I.V.E he felt as if he was in a daze. There is so much to say but so little words. He was a mentor to me, but so much more than a mentor. He held my hand through it all step by step. He was a veteran but he was so humble.   We will always remember him. Kajiso said he would forever be grateful for the love Sandy showed him and how the veteran always told him he was proud of him. I remember the weekend I was getting married. He put his arm around me and told me to go get my own wife. He laughed but I knew what it meant because he would always tell me he was proud of me. Poor me, that meant the world. Kajiso's fellow actor Brighton and Goma added that Sandy brought an energy to set that was contagious. I wish I had the opportunity to work with him longer but the moments we shared were great. I am privileged to have worked with him and often stood in awe of his acting. He lived a full life and we will remember him in our hearts. Kajiso joined the soapy less than two years ago but said she had always been inspired by Sandy's craft. Growing up, he was one of the actors I wanted to meet and emulate. I finally got the opportunity to work with him and it was such an incredible experience. His light will never dim because we will carry him in our hearts.


I can give you political parties with the young members who are members of parliament or senators. We have young people who are in parliament. If you get into a table where people are discussing 1 million, don't come with your tensionings. Do you want to mention one member of parliament in the name of a young person who will be suffocated in the next decision table? How many young parliamentarians do you have in parliament? If you count them, do they have the power? They don't have the power because of the number. There is this number. You must use the power of the number to negotiate over the power of the resources. Do they have the resources? In the parliament, do they have the numbers? I think from the young parliamentarians and the young people in leadership of political parties have the platform and they have the negotiation ability. They have the platform and the negotiation ability. But the problem is they have carved in. They have been able to go by the status quo. Most of the young people especially say in parliament, most of them are just walking the direction that was. They have left their philosophy, they have dumped their mind and now they have gone by how the system has always worked. And therefore they might be young in age but they are not necessarily representing their age at the table. When they get to the table, they are representing selfish interests and they are representing the opportunities of growth because we have actually become a selfish society where everybody is actually basically thinking about themselves. You've mentioned them dumping their ideologies after their elections. How can that be solved? That can be solved Ram No. 1 if we are able to open up the space for young people.  The space isn't there. The space isn't there. That's what I'm telling you. As Kalmax puts it, that a party nomination goes to the highest bidder. Now, political parties have also become smart enough. They have known that it is popular for you to have the youth. It is popular for you to have women. It is popular for you to have people with disabilities. But then what they do is that they craft a way to have these people but people who are only congruent to what they want. Not necessarily those who merit. So we'll have a young person in a political party getting a nomination to a certain position. Not because they qualify for it but because they have been able to be molded to agree with the powers that be. And therefore then they are tagged the title these are youth representatives in the party. But actually there is no youth representation there and that is now the problem. And why can they have their position is because they don't have capacity. Ram today if you join a political party and you want to vote for president, you need to give IBC one million. You need to give your political party maybe five million. Does a young person have that money? No they don't. The question that I would like to pose to you and it's why two five four. For you the youths what is it that you believe or you think that you can do to bridge this gap as a young person? We are talking about young Kenyayang parliamentarians. It exists. How can we bridge this gap? Give us your take. The hashtag is the stand. We will be subling your thoughts as we continue. Kalmax. You know when you are a puppeteer of the leadership you will never have authority to speak. You will never have authority to represent anyone. The so-called young parliamentarians who are the puppeteers of those let me use the word crooks because by the time they were being led to those positions there were some other people who were being sacrificed. So they know that they are serving the interest of the people who took them there. So how will you complain or how will you even get to a table of people who gave you the space? So that is why the space is too suppressed to a point they don't understand what to do next. The only thing is just to be there as cheerleaders.


Hi there, my name is Melanie Mark, I'm the Minister for Advanced Education, Skills and Training. My Nisqa name is Lahakwiskak and I'm the mother of two daughters. I'm at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in its January 2018. Last year I reached out for your feedback about current policies that exist at all 25 public post-secondary institutions regarding sexual violence and misconduct. This is a serious issue and one that we have zero tolerance for for everyone attending any of the post-secondary institutions. I want people to feel safe when they go to school. I want people to feel safe on campus, but in order for us to have a robust and solid policy framework I need to hear from you.  I want to hear your voice. I want you to tell me as Minister what I can do better to make sure that we're preventing this issue from happening on campus. So to give me your feedback please visit our website. You have until January 29th to weigh in and give me your opinions. I just want to thank you for taking the time to address this important issue. It's 2018 and quite frankly I hope that there's a time that we don't have to be talking about this issue. Thanks for your time.