Hi everyone and welcome to the closing session of EsmarConf 2023. We hope that you've enjoyed this week as much as we have. It's been such an interesting set of presentations, workshops, tutorials and panel discussions and it's been really fascinating. It's been so interesting to see all these talks and I really hope that you've enjoyed them as much as I have. I also wanted to mainly spend this final session just saying thank you. A huge thank you to all of you for tuning in, whether you're watching this live or in catch up, maybe later during this week or the week after the conference or maybe you're just catching up later this year in 2023 or in the future. Thank you so much for coming along and taking part. It wouldn't be the same without you. I also just wanted to go through some of the numbers again. I think in the end we ended up with 27 presentations, 6 special sessions, 10 workshops, 9 panel discussions, 59 tutorials and more than 150 organisers and presenters. Just take that in, that's a huge amount of effort, a huge number of people who've provided in excess of 50 hours of presentations. That's a huge collective effort and it's really going a long way to help make your lives as evidence synthesis or meta-analysis easier by increasing access, accessibility and understanding of tools and frameworks related to evidence synthesis and meta-analysis, much of which is related to working in R. So this, as with the last couple of years, of ESMACON represents a huge amount of effort. It really can't overestimate and thank enough all of the people who've been involved. That includes a huge team of people who've helped in some way in the organising team. Thank you so much to all of you. This wouldn't have happened without you. Also, thanks to our workshop organisers, all of these people have worked together to provide between 90 minutes and up to I think 6 or more hours in the case of Wolfgang in workshops. These interactive workshops have required a huge amount of planning and effort. So thank you so, so much. We really are excited about this really important resource that's available. And our workshop from last year, you'll remember from Alison Bethel is one of the most accessed videos from ESMACON for 2022. So we know that this much more expanded programme that we've been able to provide this year thanks to all of this group's effort is going to continue to be really, really popular. So if you haven't checked out these workshops yet, then please do. And if you have, I hope you will join me in sending some virtual thanks. And if you do want to join in on Twitter and express your thanks, then these are the people to tag and say thank you to. I also wanted to thank again our funders. We're still provided with funding from Code for Science and Society this year that helped us to provide bursaries for caregiver and resource constraint support. So thanks to that final pot of money that we've been able to spend this year. And to our donors, we've had donors over the last year or so and all of you who registered and were kind enough to provide a financial donation during registration. It's a really huge amount of support and it just goes to make next year as accessible and equitable as possible. So a huge thanks. If you've appreciated this year and didn't donate when you registered, please do feel free to donate again. You can visit opencollective.com. Esmar Conf and provide a donation there. If you want to register again but provide a donation, you can do that anytime registration will remain open throughout the year. And that will then provide you with an invoice that you can claim back to provide institutional financial support if you want to and you have the budget for that. But thank you so much. I just wanted to sort of end up by talking about Esmar Conf 2024. I do think Esmar Conf 2024 is going to happen. It's been a huge amount of effort to get Esmar Conf 2023 out, but I think we're still keen. So it's going to be happening in spring 2024 most likely. So keep an eye out for announcements over the summer. With more presentations, more workshops, hopefully more tutorials and maybe more people getting engaged as well. Only time will tell. But if you found it enjoyable then please do spread the word and help us to grow the family of Esmar Conf even more. We want to see more of everything basically. So we will also be sending out a survey to everybody who's registered to ask you what you think we could do better or what you liked as well to get feedback so that we can continually improve. If you want to provide specific anonymous feedback then you can do that by following this link bit.ly.esmarconf.feedback. As I said, please consider donating. And if you want to, you can join the Esmar Conf team. You can find us on Twitter at ES Hackathon and send us a DM or tag us in a message if you're keen to get involved. You can send us an email at ESHackathon at gmail.com or Neil Hadaway at gmail.com. And as I said before, spread the word. Please do remember that all of the recordings for the last three years Esmar Conf 2021, Esmar Conf 2022 and this year are going to be fully online on our YouTube channel and free forever. So you can watch those and catch up whenever you want. They'll also be added to the Esmar Conf 2023 videos will be added to the database of videos on the Esmar Conf website that's esmarconf.org and you can find those and search across the videos either through the program or by searching for specific words or titles or abstracts and you can filter different stages of review processes and different types of tools as well and find all of our workshops, tutorials, panel discussions and presentations across all three years there will be adding this year as soon as possible. So do continue to use that resource if you want to come back to it and find videos on a specific topic or a specific package and spread the word as well. Everybody is free to use those videos however they want. And finally, closing up the session and closing up Esmar Conf is Ellie Ackle from the American University in Beirut Medical Center who's going to be telling us a bit more about living systematic reviews. Over to you, Ellie. Hello, my name is Ellie Ackle. I'm a professor of medicine at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. It is my real pleasure and honor to be presenting today at the 2023 Esmar Conference. The question I will be addressing is whether living evidence synthesis have delivered on their promise or tried to make the case that yes, to some extent they did. However, they could deliver on their full potential if we can improve their processes and their tools while complying with the principles of open synthesis. I have no financial conflict of interest to declare I do have some intellectual conflicts of interest related to some of the content I will be sharing today. So after talking about the concept of living systematic reviews I will review the living systematic review work during the pandemic and end with discussion of challenges and potential solutions. In this 2017 paper we discussed the why, what, when, and how of living systematic reviews. In terms of the what, living systematic reviews are systematic reviews that are continually updated incorporating relevant new evidence as it becomes available. You could tell from that definition that it's on the optimistic side promising to continually update the search and incorporate the evidence as soon as it becomes available. Something we realized after the pandemic experience that it's not as easy done as said. In terms of the when we had defined three conditions for taking a living or taking a systematic review into a living model. One is that the question is of sufficient importance to decision making. And this is exactly why the living systematic reviews became a la mode during the pandemic because policymakers has so many questions of importance to them and they wanted quick answers. The second condition is that the certainty in the existing evidence is low or very low, meaning that adding new evidence will likely or potentially improve the certainty of the evidence. And three is that there is new research evidence in the pipeline. The how is, you know, this is one representation of the how you don't have to worry about the details. I'm just trying to show that it could be a very complex process to conduct living systematic reviews. So the pandemic was really a stress test for the evidence synthesis community, similar to many other communities like the trial list community, the guideline methodologist community and the policymakers. So how did the evidence synthesis community respond. So they responded by deploying many of the tools that have been developing for a while like network meta analysis, social intelligence crowdsourcing that responded with the rapid methodology because when the pandemic hit, the policymakers needed quick answers. So we use the rapid systematic review methodology, but we also use the living and the living helped us because there was a deluge of information. There was information coming out on a regular basis. We needed the living process to make sure that the evidence synthesis is updated. So yes, living evidence synthesis were essential for the success of living guidelines. And without living evidence synthesis, we could not deliver on living guidelines. And there were many living guidelines during the pandemic developed by organizations like the World Health Organization, but many other professional societies trying to advise clinicians and public health workers in terms of how to deal with the pandemic. However, the living evidence synthesis have not reached their full potential. And I'll give you some data about this. We recently published this paper about the life and death of living systematic review. This study was not restricted to COVID-19 living systematic reviews, but many of the published reviews or included reviews address the pandemic. Just to give you an idea about the methodology, you could see here that in terms of the availability of the protocol, almost a third or a little bit than a third of the living systematic reviews did not have a protocol mentioned or reported. More than 30% of the living systematic reviews did not assess the certainty of the evidence. More than half did not use grade tables, which are standardized table to present the statistical information along with the certainty of the evidence. And only 4% engaged stakeholders. So these are kind of indicators that the methodology was not as optimal as it could have been. When you look at the peer review process, looking at the percentages, about half of the protocols were peer reviewed, but then the percentages go lower for what we call the base version of the living systematic review, which is the first version that is published. 0% indication of peer review for the partial updates. And when we had full updates, which is a fuller report of the living systematic review, it was also a third for which we had evidence of peer review. Interestingly, when we explored how reliable was the update in terms of sticking to the plan period to update. So we calculate the ratio of the actual period to update over the plan period to update. And there was variability in the plan periods for update, but as you can see that that ratio was very close to one, meaning that whatever they promised in terms of how frequently they would update, they were able to deliver maybe with a slight delay. I would say 12% delay in terms of period of update. And I would say that's very impressive. But this is for the actual updates. What we analyzed next was the time period since the last update. So since the last published update. And when we did the ratio of the how much time had elapsed since the last update over the plan period of update, we've seen about more than doubling of the period, meaning that if they had promised that they would update within let's say three months since the last update on average, the period that had elapsed was more than double of that time. To make it maybe a bit clearer, we have this graphical representation. So the midline is when the last update was published. And each dot is the one, a publication of one version of each systematic review or living systematic review. So I missed to say that each line represent one living systematic review. So and again, this line is when represents the latest updated version. So here, as I said previously, you can tell that there was a regular update of the living systematic review. Overall, this is where the ratio of one comes in. For most of them, there's regular update was very close to the plan period of update. But then for many of them, since the last update, a significant period of time had lapsed without any update. And for about 40% of those living systematic reviews, three, three times the plan period of update has elapsed and no update has been published. And it's interesting that none of those living systematic reviews had any indication in the latest version that they might not update or they might have, they might have to stop the updating. So the conclusion of this is that people have done really well whenever they updated, but at one point it came a time where they stop updating without any notice. This is another graph from that study that shows the quality of those systematic reviews assessed with the Amstar instrument, acknowledging that the Amstar instrument is not designed specifically for living systematic reviews. But you could see that on many of those questions, the percentage of living systematic reviews that met them was not very impressive. And when we stratify the results by rapid living systematic review versus non-rapid, the blue bars that represent the rapid show that you have lower quality for those living systematic reviews where they were conducted in the rapid mode. So the challenges are what we describe first as the living fatigue. And this is where people have kept updating on a regular basis. Then at some point they went missing in action and we're calling this the living fatigue.  They had diverted their attention from other projects and they need to go back to those projects. So this is the living fatigue. And then as we've shown, there's a problem or a challenge in maintaining the quality of those living systematic reviews. The other challenge that we've seen is that the flow of evidence from trial lists to evidence synthesizers to guideline developers was not as smooth as we wanted it to be. So as the guideline developers, we would learn that a new trial relevant to one of our recommendations is published just by through a press release.  And then it took months until the trials were actually published for the systematic reviews to assimilate them for the guideline developers to use them in developing the recommendation. So that was a real challenge, that flow of evidence that did not allow appropriate translation of the evidence into recommendations, into influencing practice. And actually practice was just moving ahead because as soon as clinicians heard the press release, they were changing their practice and the recommendations came months later to catch up with the changing practice. So potential solutions are first more pragmatic models of living evidence synthesis, better organization of the health universe and describe this a little bit. The principles of open synthesis, which are extremely important and better collaboration between the actors in health. So this is our reconstruction of the process of living systematic review. On the top, you will see that the standard living systematic review methodology is one that is linear developed protocol, you run the search, you go through the different steps, analysis, dissemination at one step or at one point you might update. In the living systematic review, which you see over here, it's more of a cyclical approach. It's the coil concept where you have to go through different cycles. And these different cycles require lots of coordination in terms of the processes, understanding the evidence that is coming out, publishing the evidence and ensuring that adequate access to that latest version of the systematic reviews. And we've seen a major challenge with people landing on a version that is not the latest version. And all of these processes require improvement in the flows, requires improvement in the tools for extracting the evidence, analyzing the evidence and managing it, sharing it with the public, etc. In terms of the what we call the evidence universe, we published this paper just at the time the pandemic was starting towards a series about the future of the evidence ecosystem series. And we talked the evidence synthesis 2.0. One of the major concepts in that paper is that currently once new evidence is generated, it's dumped in the universe of evidence, meaning that it is put in a database, and then with some mesh terms and some tags, and then when people have to search for evidence relevant to a Pico question, they end up with tons of literature to go through. A more ideal approach would be to organize that space or evidence space into sub spaces where as soon as a study or a publication comes out, instead of just throwing it into that large database, you would have for each Pico question or for each population, you would have a space where you would say this is where this study fits in. So at some point if someone would like to conduct a systematic review that would easily go to that cell that contains all the relevant studies and without having to do a search that is nonsensitive, they would just pick those studies and take terms of the next steps. So this is a work that would need, you know, some technology tools, appropriate platform to organize that space of evidence to make it more easy to search. Probably another important or even more important concept of the concept of open synthesis, which became even more important during the pandemic. So this is an ice grab that represents all the components of evidence synthesis from open collaboration to open discovery to open methods and the availability of free accessible tools, data, open code, open access, obviously open peer review, and then being transparent about the declarations of interest. So having these would be important. I mentioned earlier the problem that we faced during the pandemic in terms of guideline developers in terms of having the data shared by the trial list in order to have timely recommendation generation. So having these concepts will help with that free flow of information in a way that would benefit the intended population. So I'll end up by talking about the importance of collaboration between the major actors and there are many actors. We talk about knowledge users, knowledge generation community, so these are the trial list, the knowledge synthesis community, the systematic viewers, the guideline transmission community, and also the knowledge translation community. So these actors have to work together to make sure that the end goal of serving the community and the society, the public, in terms of guidance is achieved. Currently, these different actors have disconnected goal and the goal is really to publish their products. Again, the example of the trial list during the pandemic, they get the paper out with significant delays, they publish it in a highly cited journal, journal with high impact factor, and they celebrate. This is their achievement. We've published in Journal X, and that's it. They get the credit for doing that. They don't get the credit for handing this information to different synthesizers. And this is really important. So what we are calling for is that these different actors have a common goal, which is delivering the needed knowledge to inform decision making. And this is really when they can declare victory. So the trial list should be able to declare victory only when they make sure that their data has been delivered in the right way to inform decision making. So we've heard a lot during the pandemic about this is not a sprint. This is a marathon. What I would say, this is a relay race. People have to work together. They have to deliver that information. And if you see that relay, that's not easy. This is where the work of the developers of tools and processes is really important to make sure that this is happening. At this point, I would like to thank you for your attention. I hope that next time we can meet in person and discuss further how we could move things forward for the good of everyone. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Eli. That was a really fascinating insight into living systematic reviews. Well, that's it for us for this week and this year. Thank you so much for tuning in. We hope that you've had a thoroughly interesting and fascinating week. Please do continue to dive into the materials from this year and indeed all of the materials from last year as well. We hope that you continue to enjoy them and find use in them. Thanks to everyone who's taken part and helped made this happen. And we look forward to seeing you in 2024. That's it for now. Bye-bye.


Today we're going to continue with the theme of my previous videos where we're looking at how yeah You can create software real easily and fast But it's those little changes little things that you do that make it that much better and you can do these things forever The software is like art You know the whole saying of art is never done never completed. It's just abandoned software kind of same way It could always be improved But I'm going to show you a real-world scenario here on some software that we use where I work Okay, so this is basically what the form looks like on the web page we use It's obviously the actual one has a little bit of CSS to make it look slightly nicer And it's embedded in a page with menus and stuff around it But this is what the form looks like you choose what type of a time you want off Here would be a list of names and you choose who you're sending it to When you want your time off to start and and notes and I do like a lot of times in forms to you know I say in general in the previous videos you want to limit what they can input But it also is nice to have a comments area where they can add something some sort of note to who it's being sent to in case the form doesn't You know contain some information. They want to give you so that's not bad The problem I have with the one that we have it's not the main focus of this video is the notes are required Which is weird when I'm spending time off. That's like I shouldn't I don't there's no requirement for me to tell them Why I want time off so lots of times I just end up gibbering in here or I'll just put a period or something There's got to be something in that box or or they won't let me submit it but the main problem is this top drop-down option and There are going to be times where you want to have a default option in your drop-down menu But this one has caused problems in the past not huge problems But when we first start using it what would happen and I've done this myself even after I knew it was an issue I'd come to the page. I click on here I'd select someone's name I put in my end I start time my end time and type something in for the notes and submit it and Never change this and it's just something. I don't know the way. It's designed. I'm not the only one There's an issue with people forgetting to change that and the thing is it defaults to education leave Which is probably one of the least I mean people take educational leave, you know for continuing education But most people are probably use vacation and personal time We're probably the first two that people are going to use but it defaults to education and again after even knowing this problem I've submitted stuff Forgetting to change that and then I get a message from the person. I submitted to going hey you select educational leave Obviously, that's not what you want. What do you want to use? Do you want to use vacation time or personal time? And and then I feel like an idiot because I know I know to change this But for some reason I forget and I'm not the only one so how could this easily be fixed well, let's look at the code and I wrote up most of this just to look like the one but the actual drop-down menu the select option is Copied from the actual website. So this is what it looks like all they would have to do is something like this Put in an option with nothing or a value of null and then when you go to submit it have it check is That null or is it something else? There's a few different ways to do it, but not have a default option So when you come in here, it's blank and you can't submit it until you choose one of the other things Again, that's that's a tiny thing and this is a company that this is what they do They they make software that this set software for fire fighters Emergency response units and I think a lot of nurses staff and stuff like that. It's basically they do calendar stuff And so smitting time off as part of that and I would think that would be an ongoing issue And you would think one of the developers would go Oh, hey, let's just change it so the default is null and you have to choose something or you can't submit it Yeah, so again one little line of code in my opinion would have made this a lot better and and caused issues because this is still still happening I I still have many years of work, and I would not doubt that at some point during this I'm going to do that again. I'm gonna accidentally forget to change that so yeah the little things can make software better So there you go That was a quick example of a real-world scenario where one little thing can make something better And again, I'm not blaming them for writing it that way It's like when you develop a software maybe you don't thinking. Oh, this shouldn't default to education But you would think as time goes on that companies would complain someone would go Oh, this is an issue. I mean to fix it again. Maybe companies aren't complaining I'm sure my management a lot of times probably they don't care enough that whoever communicates with the software company It's not their issue because they might not be the ones that are collecting the time off You know two different people so they're not bothered by it. So it's not being fixed either way if you are a software developer think about little things like that and That's it. Thanks for watching films by Chris comm. That's Chris the K check out the link in the description as always I hope that you have a great day


Let me ask you about, when I came to your office yesterday, it was like an office I've never been to. Let me be real with you, y'all was in there having a good time.   I already done figured that out. I already told my wife I'm going to rock with him.  But at the end of the day, I got there man and just the way you carried yourself man, thank you. Come on, let's go. That ain't it. Man, hey man, we over here man, we at Dr. Rose, Aesthetics man, it's about to go down. We about to go in here and check him out man, check that wall out right there. Did you already even saw it? We got it. You see the picture right there? Don't, don't, don't right there. That's dope right there. Get that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You got your company running as a aesthetics, right? What? You like that stuff? You like that stuff? How fake are you? How fake are you? You see how fake I am? Look. Fave ain't fair. I passed the exam, it can't be fair. I'm gonna interview tomorrow, but I'm a very curious person. Good. Let's go. Who? Who you looking? Who you see? I don't. No, because it made me feel like I belonged. Comfortable. You know what I mean? Thank you. So that's, that's a, that's a dope thing, but how did you come up with that to get away from the traditional ways that offices are being ran because I know you seen them? You know, and this is how you can go like, you can mix both, right? Because you know, they always say you can't work as a family because it crosses lines, but that's when you have to find God. You know, in order to get that structure that you will find in a Fortune 500 company because they operate off principles. You know, we operate off love, sometimes love don't have principles. You know what I mean? Because we love our people, so we want to bring them up with us. So now you got to find God in order to operate with principles in love. You know, to know that, hey, these are the boundaries to set in front of me, to know that, hey, everything has a consequence, everything.  That's the one thing I'm Seattle because when you treat everybody you work with as family and stuff, sometimes people can, you know, not look at you as the boss anymore, they're looking at you like, oh, I'll come in late, I'll do this, I'll do that. It's like... But that's when they start respecting your leadership. You know, yeah, you're right, I'm not the boss, I'm your leader, you know, which means I have the bosses provide pay, I provide abundance, you know, I provide a lifestyle to say, hey, this is healthy over here, this is good, if you want to stay in this area, this is going to always be here because teeth, you manifest light through teeth, through smiling, speak more into light every day, smile, that's what smile stands for. So it starts with a smile, right?  And that's why I can always say, you know, one lane is good.


Hello everyone! In this video, we are going to make a miniature version of the Tollgate and barriers that many of you must have seen on highways and in parking lots. For making the Tollbooth, we'll need a Vive, two IR sensors, silver motor, pallet chart papers, corrugated sheets and six male-to-female jumper cables. Let's begin by creating a plot for our Tollbooth. Take a corrugated sheet and paste a chart paper on top of it. Draw a line of 10 cm width along the centre of the base. Paste a strip of black chart paper of 60 cm cross 10 cm on the marked lines. This will act as the road. Now, draw a line of 1 cm width along the centre of the road. Stick white tape on the marked line for making the divider. Check the tape on both the sides of the road as well. With this, the road is ready. Now, let's begin with the assembly of the Tollbooth. We will use two small pieces of size 8 cm by 6 cm of the corrugated sheet. Leaving 0.5 cm from one side, draw a rectangle of 4 x 3.5 cm. Now, cut along the edges of the rectangle. Make a window in the second piece as well. At the centre of the base, paste the support for the Tollbooth using hot glue. Now, paste the walls to the base and to the support using hot glue. Now, let's make the Toll barrier mechanism. For that, we'll need a servo motor. First, let's test the servo. Connect it to evive's servo channel 1. From evive's menu, select controls, then servos, then servo 1. Set servo motor angle to 0 degrees using evive's potentiometer 1. Now, for making the barriers, take a single-sided servo horn and attach a thin strip of corrugated sheet to it using hot glue. Now, let's paste the servo motor at the open end of the Tollbooth using hot glue. It's the barrier, that is servo horn onto the servo head. Now, to sense the entry and exit of the vehicles, we are going to use two IR sensors, one for entry and the other for exit. But first, let's test the IR sensor. Connect VCC or fire sensor to evive's 5 volt pin. Connect ground of IR sensor to evive's ground pin. Connect signal pin of the IR sensor to evive's digital pin 3. Observe the value at pin 3. From evive's menu, navigate to pin state monitor and select digital pin states. Observe the value at pin 3. The default value is 1, but when we bring our hand close to the IR sensor, it changes to 0 and it changes back to 1 when we take our hand away. Similarly, test the other IR. Now, let's attach the IR. Attach one of them at some distance ahead of the Tollbooth and one at some distance behind the Tollbooth. Now, let's move on to the connections. First, let's connect the IR sensor. Connect VCC of both the IR sensors to the 5 volt pins of evive. Connect ground of both the IR sensors to the ground pins of evive. Connect the signal pin to evive's digital pin 3 for sensor 1 and pin 2 for sensor 2. Then, connect the servo motor to evive's server channel 1. Let's make a code in Pictoblox. We are going to write the code in the upload mode. The program will start executing as soon as evive starts up. As soon as the first IR sensor, which is connected to pin 3, senses the present of a vehicle, the servo angle changes to 90 degree and the barrier opens. As soon as the vehicle crosses the barrier and goes past the second IR sensor, which is connected to pin 2, the servo angle changes back to 0 degrees, thus closing the barrier. Once done, upload the code. You can also display the number of cars or vehicle passed and the status of the barrier by making a few changes in the code. Make a variable for storing the numbers of the vehicle that passed by and initialize it with 0. Use display blocks to display number of vehicles passed on evive's screen. As soon as the vehicle will approach the sensor, it will sense the vehicle but the gate will only open when the car goes past by the IR sensor. The barrier will then open up and the status gate opened will be displayed on the screen. Similarly, as soon as the vehicle goes past by the IR sensor 2, the barrier will close, the status gate closed will be displayed and the count of the vehicle passing by will increase by 1. Thanks and don't forget to give it a thumbs up. Let us know what you'd like us to make next in the comment section below and for more such interesting projects, subscribe to STEMpedia and follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. See you soon.


Welcome everybody. Welcome to the Future Trends Forum. I'm delighted to see you here today. We have a terrific guest with a wonderful project and I'm really looking forward to our conversation. Ever since the forum launched in 2016 we've been thinking and rethinking how to redesign higher education. We've had guests after guests who have been here to show us their ideas, their plans, their aspirations for how to redo universities around the world. This week's guest has a very, very exciting idea and it's one that doesn't come out from the usual directions at all. Professor Anke Schwitte has a book on creative universities which, if I read it correctly, wants us to rethink universities by starting with by radically rethinking teaching and the teaching and learning experience to empower students and to give them a lot of creativity and so doing unleash a powerful critique of the university and to start transforming them as a whole. If you'd like to get a copy of the book, look at the bottom left hand corner of the screen where it says creative universities.  There's always this dramatic moment. I need a drumroll or maybe the Star Trek transporter noise, but either way here we are. Greetings. Hello. Good afternoon and good evening I should say. It's very good to see you, Professor Schwitte. Thank you. Thank you. How are you doing this evening? I'm good. I'm good. Thank you so much for having me and you all here. I'm getting some feedback. Is that me or can you hear me well? I can hear you just fine. Brilliant. Good. Good. Well, I'm really glad you can join us this evening and as I mentioned to you beforehand, while it may be very dark where you are, I think your book is a brilliant ray of sunshine. It has so much going on. But before I get into that, let me ask you to introduce yourself in the peculiar way we do here, which just ask what are you working on for the next year? What are the big projects and ideas that are top of mind for you? Yes. Yes. Thank you so much. So what am I working on? I'm based in Brighton in the UK in case you're wondering why we're talking about it being nine time over here. It's just gone seven o'clock and it's very dark. I teach at the University of Sussex, which is on the South Coast. So at the moment, we are teaching and I'm teaching one of the modules. I talk about a lot in the book and I'm also kind of getting ready in the next term to teach my activism module and I'm sure I'll talk about both of them later. But the other exciting thing is that I've actually just launched a spin-off project from the book, which is researching student housing cooperatives in the UK. And it came out from some of the students I interviewed for my book, who were involved in setting up the Sussex University Student Housing Cooperative. About three years ago, it's the first one in the southeast in the UK. And since then, I've learned there's a few others up in the north of the country. And the interesting thing for you all is that the UK movement is very much inspired by student housing cooperatives in North America. And there's an organization called NASCO that some of you might be aware of. So I'm learning a lot about student housing cooperatives in the UK and incidentally, Berkeley, where I did my PhD, has the largest student housing cooperative in the US, which is really interesting. So I'm working on this research project, which is really, really inspiring and fascinating. That sounds fascinating. It really does. There's a lot to dig up there. A lot of radical history. And I know you're very interested in alternatives to modern or to mainstream economy economic models. So that's definitely a counter for that. Oh, good. I'd love to see how that goes. What I'd like to do is to ask you a few questions about creative universities. And then I want to get out of the way and let the audience really have at it. Because this is an exhilarating book with so much energy that I just can't say enough about it. My first question to ask you is, again, if I understand this correctly, your focus here is on the teaching and learning experience, especially in empowering students to be as creative as possible. What are some of the most exciting ways of doing that that you've been seeing lately? Would it be the kind of the physical hands-on maker space work that you're talking about? Is it breaking students into small groups? What are some of the most exciting dimensions of that? Okay, that's a great question to start us off. Yeah, I would definitely say for me, creativity and making our teaching more creative definitely has a strong connection to the use of arts and design methods. I'm very interested in the use of design for teaching and for international development, which is my field in general. I think allowing students to work with their hands, think with their hands through playing with material, through creating a right atmosphere is a really good way to open up their creativity. So when I do design workshops, I make sure that before the students come in, tables are set up with lots of materials, anything from, you know, Play-Doh to pipe cleaners to Lego to blocks. So students, when they come into room, they immediately realize they're being invited for a different kind of teaching session. And what's quite interesting is students' reactions because I hear so often when they open up a kind of Play-Doh, it's like, Oh my God, so that reminds me of my childhood. And immediately, it's kind of this, you know, this, this time in their lives when they were very playful and allowed to be playful. And it kind of just sets the stage for a more playful and fun experience. For me, fun is definitely a big part of that. Another element is allowing students to bring in their own experiences. That's a really big part for my kind of teaching where I definitely believe students hold great knowledge in their own experience, kind of on and off campus. So making space where I ask students continuously, you know, what does this mean to you? How does this resonate with your own, with kind of learning and life experiences is, is another way in which you can allow them to bring kind of more of themselves into the classroom. And I think then finally, the imagination, I talk a lot about using the imagination and imagining or reimagining how things could be in my classes and always say, I want to create spaces where students can still be critical and will probably talk about that, you know, being critical and doing critical teaching is really important. But I try and complement that with this kind of creativity and emphasis on reimagining things. So that's kind of three strategies that I use. Fantastic. And these are each so powerful. I was really impressed by how, you know, among other things, the celebration of students differences and what they could do, but also the return to childhood in that sense of playfulness, creativity, openness, beginner's mind. I think this was very exciting. We have a question that came up in the chat. I just want to run this past you before I get to ask you another question, which is, how do you do all this online? If you don't have the physical stuff to play with, how do you do that online? That's, oh, that's a great question. And maybe I can just really quickly say something about, I did the research for this book before COVID and I'm a big believer in in class teaching, in person teaching. That's my favorite way of teaching. And then I went on sabbatical in early 2020. Great timing. Great timing. Great timing. Ready to write this book. And going, so I didn't have to teach, but, you know, seeing what my colleagues and the students were going through, going into lockdown. And I really kind of questioned a lot of my book and my publisher was really, my editor was really helpful working me through what this all meant. But then coming back into teaching, I found ways, I think most obviously, and I still do this, I use a lot of padlets and gem boards in my teaching. I actually think those tools, gem boards are really easy to use, kind of Google gem boards, padlets. And I've, in some cases, realized that it's, it's easier to use them. So I've actually kept them in in person teaching. We know we did all our teaching on Zoom and small group discussions, kind of well facilitated. And I was actually, I've always been skeptical of, of using technologies, but I was quite positively surprised by online teaching, hyper teaching, I think is a whole different kettle of fish and it's never worked very well for me. But doing pure online teaching as we had to do for a while, it actually went rather better than I had expected it to go. Well, I'm glad, I'm glad. I can second the vote for padlet and gem boards, which are really, really easy. The questioner, Lisa Durf says that you are a woman after her own heart. Then let me ask a second question, which is, how do you, how do you translate all of that work? I mean, the hands on play, the sense of imagination, the critical imagination, bringing their experiences in? And then how does that lead to, first, a critique of the university and the world? And then secondly, how do you, how can we turn that into an energy to redesign universities as a whole? Yeah, a little question there, little question. Not bad. So I think in order to answer that, maybe I would like to bring in kind of the second part of my subtitle, which is looking for alternatives. And in the book, I talk a lot about how can we kind of move away from mainstream ideas, for example, about sustainable development teaching or about, you know, employability agendas. And again, this is the UK context. So I don't know to what extent it is as relevant in the US. But for me, asking students to reimagine economic systems or ecologies or even their own kind of academic subjectivities is always very much tied to think about radical alternatives. So alternatives very much in the sense of non mainstream or heterodox. And I make sure that in my teaching in my reading lists, I introduce students to kind of writings in this area to provide them with the knowledge. But then when we do our creative exercises, I always kind of try and push them and ask them, you know, how can we move into that direction of, of thinking about alternatives. I see it as a critique of, of the neoliberal university, the marketized university system. So I have one of my chapters really engages quite critically with the employability agenda. And with this idea of that students are coming to university, you know, to, you know, kind of be more successful on the job market. And I'm saying it's really important. We are, we are, of course, preparing our students for life after university, we have to do that. But if it just becomes very instrumentally about kind of core skills and core competencies and employability skills, that's not what the larger purpose of the university is about. And I teach at Sussex, which is a very, has a very kind of radical history. It was one of the first kind of post World War Two universities in the US, has a very kind of activist history. And we can talk about to what extent that is still alive. But within that context also reminding students of this history and continuously talking about social justice, equality, some of those those primary values, they run through kind of my teaching and the teaching of my colleagues very much and being engaged and critical and responsible and ethical citizens in that sense is kind of another premise that runs through teaching. I love that having the history, the identity of your university, which is a relatively young one, right, if it's from 1970 or so. Yeah, just to celebrate it our 60th anniversary. What's the, the name the Play Class University, right? Played the first, yeah, one of the first Play Class universities, which is in contrast to, you know, the Oxford State kind of the very much the Red Brake University. So they used big glass windows in their construction. And I think there were about six of them that all opened around the same time. No, it's very interesting to have that kind of to be able to turn the history and identity of your university into part of the class. Friends, I want to stop asking on good questions and leave yield the floor to you all for your questions and your comments, because she's obviously has a whole bunch of great things to talk about. And all kinds of ideas that we want to share. But just just to remind you again, the bottom of the screen, you should have the raised hand button. If you want to join us on stage, use a question mark to type in a question if you already have. And also I didn't mention them before, but we have Wesson Radomsky here to help you with any technology needs. So if you have any problems with audio or video, Wesson is there to to assist. So we have one quick question that came up from John Hollendick, who is coming to us from Wisconsin, miraculously not buried under snow and ice. And John has a word choice question that is a very deep one. He asks, whoop, hang on a second, let me press the correct button. Why do we still use the term pedagogy, child study to educate, tell people what to learn? And I don't see evaluation addressed in the table of contents of your book. How does it play with your creative university? I guess those are those are two different questions, the term pedagogy and the question of evaluation and assessment. Yes. Maybe I can start by saying, I don't have an education background. I'm an anthropologist by training. I teach do most of my teaching on international development. So while I obviously engage with some education theory in the book, I don't have a deep kind of grounding in that field. And I didn't write it from that perspective. So pedagogy for me, I talk about pedagogy and I talk about us as educators, but pedagogy for me, probably came from the use of critical pedagogy to think about to think about kind of the, I guess, at the heart of my book is a proposal for a critical creative pedagogy and the critical element of that comes from the critical pedagogy tradition of Polo Freire, Sarah Almslow over here and other people. So I think my use of the word pedagogy comes from there. I did not associate it with child studies, even though I do talk about people like Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, Mr. Lotzie, in terms of kind of some of the forerunners, but I wasn't aware of kind of that connotation necessarily. So for me, it was, yeah, I used it because of kind of this critical pedagogy tradition that I'm drawing on. Then the question of evaluation, is that assessments? Yes. Yeah. That's a really, that's a really good one. And I actually have a, I think it's, it's in a footnote or something. So maybe I can just say that the book is very much written from my own teaching practice. I've been teaching for about 20 years in the US in New Zealand and now in the UK. And the book is really a reflection on my own kind of pedagogical journey. And that's why I talk a lot about what I'm doing, because this is really the ground I'm standing on, because this is the only ground I was able to write from, even though I interviewed a lot of students and my colleagues and I went into my colleagues' classrooms to do observations. But a lot of the activities that I'm writing about are from my own classes, and they are mostly non-assessed because I felt it easier for students to be more comfortable, to be creative, to be imaginative as soon as you introduce an element of assessment. There is a certain worry that that comes with that. Having said that, there is a couple of larger projects I'm writing about. And one is my colleague who does, who uses serious games, who asks students to design serious games in a class on kind of disasters and development. And then my own class on activism for social justice, where students design activism campaigns, and that's actually quite significant elements of the assessment. So in each case, it's 30% it's a group mark for 30%. And I explain how it's really important to be really, really clear and supportive for how these different kind of forms of assessment will be evaluated. And of bringing students or my colleague with the serious games, he brings students into the class and each year they are doing kind of a collective design of assessment criteria. Also, just we decide my urban futures module to bring in an assessed imaginative element. So I'm going to do next term and I'm not quite sure how it's going to go. But I felt, yeah, I felt it important to kind of, you know, walk my talk a bit more and actually put more value on these through assessments. So it's an experiment. But I know if it's assessed, I know students need lots and lots of support and reassurance because this is not where they're used to. They're used to writing essays. First and foremost, maybe, you know, few related, but asking them to do kind of creative exercises, they need to be very well structured and very well explained and supported for them to be assessed. That would be my comment on that. I really appreciate the candor and richness of your answer because that's a deep subject to pull apart, especially within an institutional context. And John, as always, thank you for the excellent question. Friends, if you're new to the forum, that's an example of the text question. Again, just on the bottom of the screen, that's that little question mark. Now I want to give you an example of a video question with our friend Peter Wallace. We're going to bring him up on stage. Let's make sure this works. Hitting the button and hello, Peter. Can't hear you.  Now I'm on now. Now you're perfect. Okay, great. Sorry about that. We've got the technical challenges. Well, thank you very much for talking with us today and for the for the provocations and for rooting this in your own practice. I think that's like always really meaningful. I work, or at least my my academic work is in open education, open educational efforts, that involves students in co creating a creative activity of co creating materials that other students can learn from is kind of at the core. And my my core question for you is how do you see critical creative pedagogy as you practice it breaking down or challenging or interfacing with the the powered dynamics that are inherent in classrooms. And there's an ongoing discussion in the chat about workplace too. And I was just reflecting on how success in the workplace also requires navigating power dynamics, expectations for work, things that play into assessment in the way that we think about it.  And I think about this from a design lens, because that's what I do for work. And often the worst designs are produced in highly power loaded hierarchical environments. So anything you'd like to to share on that, particularly in the classroom, because I'm I know you're you're thinking about it mostly in that way, but community too is a really interesting space for that. Yeah, yeah, no, that's, it's a really good question. Power relations, you know, do exist. And I think as much as co creation, you mentioned co creation, it's a really, really important concept at Sussex. There's lots of co creation initiatives. There's money available for students to become co creators. So it's definitely something that's that's on the agenda. And I think co creation, if it's done in a meaningful rather than in a just a tokenistic way, if students really have the possibility to shape the curriculum, the reading list, including assessments, although in the UK, this is very highly formalized. And you have to go through lots of hoops to change assessments and stuff. I think it's a bit more open ended in the US if it's still like when I taught that depends on the school and my experience. But yeah, okay. Yeah. But but co creation. And I think it comes back to what I said earlier about making space for students to bring in their experiences and really say, I you know, the experience you have, you know, coming here to university, the experience you have outside the classroom, but also in the classroom are really valid sources of of knowledge. And I want you to bring them in creating a space obviously that's safe enough for students to do so. So presentations, you know, that might be quite conventional, but I think there are a good way for students, especially if students can maybe put together their own presentation groups, choose their own topic. I often recommend students for presentations and also essay choices, pick something that you that you love. So for example, in my urban futures class, they have to write a research essay on the city of their choice. And I often say, you know, either choose a city that you know a lot about or that you really want to that's meaningful to you in some way because it will make for for a better essay. So really, in a genuine way, saying your knowledge counts in the classroom and then making spaces. So I have a co-creation week where I just give it over to the students and say this is your week, you pick the topic, you pick the you pick the format and it's always amazing what students come up with. But I'm under no illusion that this gets rid of power relations because, you know, I do put together the curriculum, I do the assessment, but also kind of, you know, I talked about creating a safe classroom space.  But what about their bodies, their emotions, their senses, their experiences? And yeah, I can maybe, can I can I bring an example? Can I do you have a bit of time? Absolutely. Well, I mean, this is the one in my urban futures class, as I said, Sussex is very closely located to Brighton and in their third year when the students take this module, they all live in Brighton.  And that's a good example with the padlet because before COVID, I would ask students to build an artifact and bring it into the class. And I have to say, I think it's the beginning of class and students are really like, so that wasn't very successful. But then during COVID, I just created a padlet and say, take a picture of your artifact and put it on, on, put it on padlet and write a small story around it. And it was amazing. And I actually have a blog post on my website, because I have a writing blog there. And I've kept the padlet, I've kept it on the padlet because it works so much better. But from that kind of really, you know, students as Brighton residents, we then we write a collective Brighton manifesto, we do a Brighton 2050 scenario exercise. And now they also have to reimagine a particular neighborhood and we're going to go on a field trip. So for me, that's an example of again, handing it over to students, putting it on their crown saying you're telling me how you live in the city. So again, that's one way in which I want you to open up the space, which goes maybe some way to, you know, addressing power relations debate. My very first chapter is actually about kind of we making academic subjectivities because I think it very much starts with how do we think about ourselves as educators and about our students and our positions. And I'm very aware that I'm writing from a normative point of view by saying, you know, we should make our teaching a little bit more creative. So also being really explicit about the agendas we have. You know, I don't know if that answers your questions, or I have a few ways in which I, you know, kind of try and bring in students more as knowledge creators, but the power relations are there. Yeah, as you said, by the simple fact that I'm going to assess them. And that's assigning what they're going to do. And at least in the US more so, they're paying to be there and you're paid to be there. Like that's a very real power relationship, right? But there's a lot of interesting things in what you said, they're still very, at least for me, very interesting threats too. Because it starts, it starts me thinking about citizenship and locality. It starts me thinking about, like you said, embodiment, because power relations often demand, at least in traditional school contexts that are divorcing from body. And I think that's a, yeah, that's a really meaningful thread to pull on. So thank you for your answer. Thanks very much. I'm sure that there are many other questions like I could keep asking, but thank you. You're welcome. Well, I'm really glad. Thank you, Peter. Thank you very much. And again, if you're new to the forum, that's an example of a video question. And no, you don't have to have a beard in order to come up on stage. You know, although Peter's is coming along very nicely. We have more questions on coming in from a whole bunch of directions. And we just put some of these up on stage. Here is one from Tom Hames, who asks, should we still think of universities as a physical place? Or as a continuum between virtual and physical places? Or is it time to stop thinking about reading at the university? Yeah, this is reading at a this is and when you say that in the context of the UK, it's always kind of the oxbridge where students are reading at or reading a particular course. We don't we don't use that language at Sussex. I think I think, as I said, you know, in person teaching is still my favorite mode. And I think the physical infrastructures of students are actually really important. And I've out of another project that came out of this book is a small group of faculty at Sussex across all different schools, who are thinking of how to use Sussex campus as a more explicit space of pedagogical possibilities. And I have to say, so we have this really interesting architecture, you know, basal spence. A lot of the buildings on campus are, how do you say, listed because of innovative architecture, which is brutal modernism. So, you know, have it or hate it. There is your split opinions on that. But we are also located in the middle of a national park, the only university in the UK to be that. So we have an amazing natural ecosystem.  And we have an earthship house. So I think there is a lot of value in thinking of that physical and the natural environment and the history that goes along with it and the relationships also as spaces of possibility. So for me, I think the physical university is quite important. For example, in my chapter on design, designing futures, I talk about resource politics. And it became very clear to me, as I said, I did my PhD at Berkeley. And during the time spent quite a bit of time down at Stanford, when they set up the D school, some of you might be familiar with, you know, the House of Partners School of Design at Stanford. So I was there very early on when it started. And then when I wrote the book, I went back there for a visit. And it's an amazing creative space. It's the spaces amazing, the materials are amazing. The, yeah. And then, you know, coming back to Sussex, we don't have those kind of resources. We don't have spaces like this, we don't have, you know, the facilities. And also I did some research in Bolivia as part of this book. I'm a Latin Americanist by training. And in order for me to think about alternatives, it was important for me to go outside of kind of the UK context. And looking at some of the, especially the public universities in Bolivia, the lack of resources is even more stark. So I think physical infrastructures and spaces and materials also remind us of the inequalities that exist in the resourcing, you know, especially amongst kind of different universities. I guess they come back to kind of Oxbridge, Oxford and Cambridge here in the, in the UK, which have massive endowments versus Sussex relatively young and nothing to speak of. And I know in the, in the states it's, it's similar. So it it's really interesting questions to think about when we think about the material aspects of, of universities. You know, having said that, as I said, I do see much more value in online teaching before COVID than I thought I would. I know that's a question, but Oh, it's a great question. And thank you, Uncle, for the answer. We have another question, which fits right into that. And let me bring this one up so you can see this. Or right between those two polls. This is from Phil Blingard. Please, can Uncle share with us her experience, which caused her to be uncomfortable with hybrid viewing it as inferior to pure remote? I think the main reason is, and that comes back to resources, the technologies at Sussex was, is, is very poor. So we have a standard, you know, kind of, kind of screen up on the wall. And we, we were using Zoom, but it was a very one way, because with hybrid teaching, the students on Zoom could never see the classroom. So we can see the students. And I found it personally really difficult to facilitate people, physical people in the classroom and people online at the same time. I just, I had a couple of classes where I had ATs. And that was much better because they could monitor the, the chats. And, and when I didn't have ATs, which are kind of teaching assistants, I would always assign a student and say, you monitored the chat to make sure that that, you know, when students are asking questions and invite students to, you know, kind of, to unmute themselves and talk if they want to. But it's never really worked for me. And that maybe says more about kind of my teaching village, although I know from my colleagues, there is a sense. And the steer at Sussex is at the moment, I don't know what the, what it's like in the US, but we are in person only. We do not do hybrid teaching anymore at all. We are not allowed to basically for all kinds of reasons. We still record our lectures like we used to before. But I think the general sense was it was a quite a poor learning experience. And it's really interesting because the students are now asking for hybrid learning. They want to have, you know, an open Zoom session running.  So now this comes from the students. And again, I think it raises really interesting questions about accessibility and inclusivity. And we are very much kind of grappling with that at the moment. But whenever I've tried it, it wasn't very, I think satisfactory either for people in the classroom or on Zoom. I think that's my experience. Well, Philip, thank you for the really good question. I appreciate that. And Anka, thank you for, again, sharing so much of your experience with that. In the US, it's all over the map. We have a growing number of entirely online teaching. We have a big return to face to face, but also some un-yet-documented bubbling up of hybrid and high-flex in different ways. We have more questions that come up based on different points. And here's some pushback from Kiel Doomsch, who was asking this. Again, this is in many ways a question from the US. I take huge issue with Dr. Schwitte is minimizing the importance of job training in college. Most students need to get into the working world quickly. And college is too expensive and time-consuming. Yeah, no, I mean, absolutely. Thank you for putting back on that. And I think I hopefully I did preface my saying, of course, we have to prepare our students for getting out into the work of world after after university. You know, student fees are massive. My oldest one just went off to college and took out his first loan and is paying interest rates right from right from day one. So I'm absolutely aware of that. I think the way the whole employability discourse and practices have shaped up over here in the UK. It's it's really instrumental. It's all very much about kind of workforce readiness. And I do believe that that universities have a larger mission around kind of, you know, educating critical and ethical citizens and to think about kind of a wider project of social justice. In my case, and coming coming at employability kind of purely from a these are the employability skills, you know, kind of teamwork, communication skills. I think they're all really important. And of course, I'm building them into my into my teaching and make sure that students have the opportunities to develop those skills. But I think kind of just focusing on that becomes very instrumental. And then it becomes kind of, you know, workplace factories. And there's there's a massive debate around that in the literature right to what is the larger purpose of universities. And I think the economic reality of of many students and their parents, a lot of our students are working to sometimes even three part time jobs to make ends meet. You know, we have a massive student housing crisis which partly informs my project and the maintenance loans that students are getting, in many cases, doesn't even cover their rent for the month. So I'm absolutely aware of the economic constraints and on the need to go and find a job. And I'm not at all saying that's not our responsibility. But I think at the moment, it seems this employability focus seems to eclipse other more emancipatory and more transformative ways of teaching. And I think that's what I'm I'm questioning if it becomes too, too dominant. Thank you. That's a pushback further. I'm I think those questions are really important. Thank you. And you'll see some of the forum folks like he'll have a gift for deep questions that really that really go very, very far. And Anka, you definitely have a gift in answering them very, very well. Thank you, friends. We have about 15 minutes left. So I want to make sure that you have your chances to ask questions. We have a few more in the queue and I've got one more for myself, but I want to make sure that everyone remembers to to raise their hand as they have as they have a thought. This is one from our friend Giselle. And she asked a question about your own background, your own past, which is your LinkedIn profile mentioned your research on crowd sourcing platforms. Can you share more about that? Yes, yes. I just give you a really quick biography, because I think it's important to understand where I'm coming from. So I actually grew up in former East Germany, so being exposed to kind of ideas around socialism, which wasn't working, then went to Canada for 10 years, studied anthropology, and during that time actually traveled to Latin America and worked with Indigenous people in Latin America and kind of land movements. And then I got accepted into the PhD in anthropology at Berkeley and arrived in the year 2000, and it was the height of the dot com bubble, and I was all prepared to go back to Argentina and do more research, and I was just so amazed by what was happening around me trying to understand this, so I changed my entire PhD project and ended up doing a corporate research. I was a global citizenship program, so kind of inclusion, you know, at the time it was about bringing telecenters and connecting remote locations. So that got me really interested in the role of technologies in development. And then part of that was an organization called Kiva.org, which some of you might know definitely your students will know because it's very, very popular. It's a crowdfunding platform around kind of microfinance where people can give small amounts of money that gets channeled to Kiva entrepreneurs, and that got me interested in crowd sourcing. So I had a project and also moving to the UK then DFID which was the development organization at the time, they had just launched a massive crowd sourcing platform with IDEO, the big design company again back in Silicon Valley, so it's all interconnected. And I studied that because I was quite interested in technology in the role of design in terms of development because by then I had pretty much shifted into development. And that was an interesting project kind of doing a lot of online research again doing research with IDEO and then I was able to visit some of the projects that this crowd sourcing platform supported. It was crowd sourcing in terms of the funding all came from DFID and the crowd sourcing in that case wasn't money it was people contributing ideas and developing, presenting different projects which were done with the help of IDEO designers were being developed, were being kind of awarded that design support. And again I was then able to visit a number of these projects underground. I'm always quite interested in the interface between technology and what's actually happening on the crowd. So that was my crowd sourcing crowd sourcing project. I've done research in lots of different areas as you can tell but yeah, that's what that was. And all over the world I knew about Berkeley in Latin America I didn't know about Canada. In New Zealand, five years in New Zealand two people were all over Thank you, Giselle for the really good question. Giselle runs excellent website foundation and has really good thoughts about webinars. We have another question that is coming in from Charles Findlay at Northeastern University and he asked the question again this is about how to do this creative work within an institution. We still have admissions deans lists and scholarships etc based on grade rankings. Is non-grading grades a part of reimagining the university? Can I just ask what non-grading grades are? Is that kind of a pass-fail? Charles, if you want to answer either in the chat or if you want to turn your camera on if you can and just I'll beam you up on stage or if you can type in another question to clarify while Charles is doing that I'm going to try and ventriloquize him which is always risky but this is thinking about, oh sorry he says no grades, just evaluations that's one option so instead of giving somebody a 90% or a B+, instead you give them a written evaluation which describes how well they did. I've never thought about that what it would mean to completely get rid of grades so I need to take that question away I can't actually it's not in my book so it's not part of creative universities at the moment but I need to think about that thank you for that question It's quite an option Steven Ehrman mentions narrative transcripts as at Evergreen State College and I think Hampshire College has this as well which is also a 1970s institution oh good question very good question and then I have a question myself which is the prerogative of the moderator which is to say if we take a university maybe Sussex, maybe anything and we unleash your idea on the faculty and the students so that all the pedagogy start transforming and we start following your lessons that you derived from Paulo Freire we have the future imagining that you've drawn from David Staley and others and you have the radical critique the post-colonial approach the what's the right word? Pluriversity approach with all this going on what does that institution look like in about 10 years but it's still be recognizable as university or would it be something completely no and different that's a good question that's a bit of future thinking I think I'm not saying to do away with universities I think I'm talking about opening up universities in quite radical ways and my conclusion is actually it's very short and it's a series of capstone projects where I really take my ideas onto a larger scale I think it would be a much more kind of equitable university so I talk about the thought experiment what if we made education free again how would that actually change accessibility to the university what we introduced some universal basic income scheme for the university to address some of those economic challenges so I think I would hope most of the ideas in the book are purposely quite small scale because I really want people to read this book and say oh I could maybe see myself experimenting with that in my own classroom it's really written as an invitation to experiment and to try these things out but thinking of it on a larger scale as you're asking me to do I think it would reaffirm that the public function of universities to educate kind of citizens ethical citizens adhering to certain basic values but I I think they would still be recognizable as universities I mean talking about student housing co-ops I've learned quite a bit about cooperative universities like Mondragon university there might be different models or there are people talking about the ecological university a university that is much more embedded within the community and has these much stronger connections to community organizations and even industry kind of in the area so I think it's it's a there are definitely more radical ways to rethinking universities but I think I would like to hold on to this idea of university because I think there is there is a lot there that we can take forward and we can reimagine yes I don't know if I answered that really well but you have and thank you that's a fun way to think about this I'm just my mind is starting to go off sideways in the idea of an ecological university and I have to put my mind back I can't do that yet it sounds terrific like an example in these capstones I said what if we design campuses around allotments a garden as a space of learning as a space of coming together as a community of producing food, of learning about ecosystems and biodiversity and what if that became the heart of a campus and we build around this so that's kind of one idea that I you know check out there at the very conclusion of my book well if Sussex is if your forest is partly edible then you could really kind of hidden university there secret garden college which would be very nice we have people working on that as we speak we have to keep up with you but before I can't let you go yet because we have still more questions Kiel connects his earlier point with your grading point and wants to know what you think about smaller credentials like certificates or micro credentials yes I know I know that some unis are thinking about it I haven't really I haven't really thought about that but maybe if it allowed you know a group of students that can't do the whole kind of three or four years maybe that's a way of making universities more accessible I think at the moment micro credentials from what I can tell are actually just a way for universities to make more money because they come up with short courses and certificates and that allows them to charge a lot of money to certain groups of professionals which is probably not the gist of the question so if we think of it as a way of breaking larger degrees up into maybe bring it more into kind of this idea of continuous learning or kind of you know adult learning I think there are real possibilities of reimagining that but I haven't kind of put enough thought into it to kind of you know have a coherent answer but I think it's certainly if they were to be again developed as alternatives rather than as additional sources of income for universities then I think there's potential there very good Gil another really good question and Anka thank you again I appreciate your honesty and thinking through this with all of us together we have friends I think that's all for your questions I have one for myself and I wanted to this is actually about something that comes up in your book that we haven't talked about yet and my Spanish is so bad I'm going to wrangle this you're talking about an approach called Buen Vivir did I get that right? Yes Buen Vivir in your description that sounds like on one hand a very practical very political way of organizing a classroom discussion on the other hand it sounds like it's plugged immediately into a decolonizing pedagogy do I have that right can you say a bit more about that? It's more of the second so Buen Vivir I introduce it into my chapter on repairing ecologies where I do start off with a critique of sustainable development education and then talk about alternatives such as deep ecology and ecocentrism and then introduce Buen Vivir as an epistemology and an approach to think about kind of the ecological system of which humans are part alongside other species from a decolonial perspective because it's a concept that was developed by indigenous people from South America in the Andean region and that's kind of where my Bolivian research comes in it has quite complicated politics around it especially because it now has become part of the global development discourse so any of you are Latin Americanists and are familiar it's very complex but I present it as a concrete example to introduce students to do kind of epistemologies from the global south I use kind of Boa Vitura Susa Santos's idea here but also to show them how these ideas can develop in a particular place amongst indigenous people and then can then be appropriated by the global development machinery as it's kind of happening but also and that's where the classroom comes in and I also said we can think of some quite creative exercises so for example when we think of and Boa Vitura was championed by Evo Morales who was president of Bolivia and he had a big people's congress around that which is at the heart of this concept and I said if we think of this event and the document that came out of that and we could read it against documents produced by the UN around development and then we are students to role play and to think of designing a space in which these could be debated alongside each other or read against each other and think of the performance that goes along with that so again it's quite specific to my field of international development so it plays both of these roles but it's very much about this idea of decolonizing some of our thinking around kind of education for environmental education for sustainable development but I also say that we need to introduce our students to the basics of complex systems thinking because that's obviously very important but yeah so that's when we were in a nutshell well thank you that helps it really stood out to me and I wanted to learn more and you just helped me learn more right away unfortunately I have questions about your approach to gaming and everything else but we're out of time we've had a dynamic hour and I'm afraid we have to wrap things up Uncle what's the best way to keep up with you and your work are you an active Twitter user or newsletter? I am on Twitter semi-active so creativeuniversities.com I have a blog which I set up actually as a writing blog while I wrote the book where I talk about kind of new projects and upcoming things there's also a resource section where I kind of provide worksheets and resources for some of the exercises I have interviews with fellow educators so I think the website is probably a good place to engage and Twitter is where I mostly announce talks and things can I ask you how can is this chat being saved somewhere since I haven't had any time to read I can save it right now I can save it right now just with good old control all in copy and paste I can do that right now for you brilliant thank you this has just been a delight for your book, for your thinking for your generosity of time and energy with us I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do next especially on student housing and thank you so much for having me it's been really really enjoyable nice to meet you all I'm so glad, thank you but don't go away yet friends I do want to second Anka's praise of you because you all ask such great questions and if you want to keep talking about this we just mentioned Twitter use the hashtag or tweet at me or ping my block or we have more discussions about this if you'd like to look into our previous sessions on pedagogy, redesigning classes on gaming, on Paolo Freire just go to our archive tinyurl.com and you'll see a whole bunch of videos there looking ahead we have a whole bunch of topics coming up just go to forum.futureofeducation.us to learn more and if you want to share with me any of your work or ideas just send me a note by email and I'd be glad to talk with you and to share it with the community above all thank you all friends for thinking together I really appreciate this conversation I really appreciate all of you and I hope your fall semesters are going well please drop a line if you just want to chat in the meantime keep working and above all take care and be safe we'll see you next time online bye bye


Ladies and gentlemen the railroad hour and here comes our star-studded show train The Association of American Railroads brings you Paramount Pictures great musical success holiday in starring Gordon Macrae and his celebrated guest Dorothy Warren show Acquire is under the direction of Norman Lube off and our music is prepared and conducted by Carmen dragon Yes tonight another thrilling musical success is brought to you by the American Railroads the same railroads that bring you most of the food You eat the clothes you wear the fuel you burn and all the other things you use in your daily life And now here is our star Gordon Macrae Thank You Marvin Miller and a good good evening ladies and gentlemen Well, sir lovely Dorothy Warren shoulder and I have a wonderful invitation for you It's inscribed with the musical magic of mr. Irving Berlin and you're all invited Trouble Wearing thin Down the road and come to holiday Merry Christmas same to you Can you tell me where I can find the owner of holiday in mr. Jim Hardy Jim Hardy my best friend I wouldn't go any place without a wonderful boy. Oh, would you tell him that Linda Mason is here to see him? Oh, he'll be delighted to see you. I know because I'm Jim Hardy Forgive me darling place.  Yeah But tell me what are you doing way up in the wilds of Connecticut on Christmas? No, I heard about holiday in and I wanted to see it.  What do you do? Sing a little and dance a little. Wonderful. Come on over to piano You know, I've written special music for each holiday and Well, this sort of gives me a chance to keep a little promise I made to myself promise. What kind? Well, I said I was going to sing this song at the end of night. Now I've got somebody to sing it to and sing it with Just like I used to know You try it, I'll prompt you just like we'll have our grand opening New Year's Eve There's only one proviso in this herbal contract. Do you ever hear of Ted Hanover the famous dancer? Sure. Well, one of the reasons I checked out of New York is that every time I find the girl She's suddenly the only girl in the world for a Ted Hanover So I well, I just want you to steer clear of mr. H. Oh, don't worry. You know something Linda It's beginning to look like a happy lovely new year Places packed. He said holiday it wouldn't work Ready for your number, honey. Yeah, look at the clock 1159. Well, I told you it's almost time practically next year One minute to say goodbye before we say hello Let's start the new Swax the old that's it. Happy new year, Linda. Happy new year. Jim. I'll see you out on the floor. All right You dance with me. I beg your pardon Mr. Hanover your Ted Hanover my dancing partner left me. So I'm slumming in the haylofts of Connecticut. Let's dance. Oh, Mr Hanover I can't music music please. Please mr. Hanover. It's in my contract This Ted Hanover I had Ted Hanover on a new partner Ladies and gentlemen, are you surprised? Good morning? Morning. Good holiday in Ted and the holiday is over Jim Something happened last night. I met a girl. I've got to have her as my dancing partner girl Girl everything was a blurt in the New Year's Eve excitement. I didn't get her name I Jim you got to help me out. Who was she dancer, huh? Oh I remember must have been that girl in the evening on the belt in the back It's just like a girlfriend of mine can swail a schlep kiss And swearly used to play the pinball machine down at the corner drugstore. Hi girl three weeks in a row Hey, she'll be here at holiday in the next time you're open She will yeah, what is the next holiday? Oh nothing more in January February February 12th Lincoln's birthday. I'm sure to find her here then Mr. Lincoln, why was you born? Come in your dressing room Happy Lincoln's birthday. Yeah, I'll say Linda I've decided a number will go better if we do it in the disguise in the Character makeup character makeup. Oh, what's the matter? Well for a month and a half I've been dreaming about how how pretty I was going to look tonight You'll have plenty of times to be pretty here. I'll help you put on your makeup Nobody will recognize me. He ain't at the truth The 12th of February any baby boy was born Abraham Abraham That is why we celebrate this blessed February date Abraham that's why we celebrate this Blessed February date. Oh, are you still there in New York Danny? This is Ted Hanover Look as my agents. You've got to help me find this gal goodness knows how long I'll have to wait for another Jim's blasted holidays when when Day after tomorrow's another holiday I'll stick around We'll return for act two of holiday in in just a moment You know all signs point to the fact that this year Santa Claus is going to be busier than ever before Here's one important bit of evidence one that may be familiar to you Oh That you Harry you're home from the office early tonight. Oh, yeah a little but I'd give you a hand getting some of the Christmas presents wrapped send out Now, what's new? Well, we got another flock of Christmas cards today Gosh, I don't know when we've ever gotten such a bunch of them so early Looks as if it's going to be a banner year for us in Christmas car Yes, and it looks as if it's going to be a banner year for everybody the post office department has called on the nation's railroads to move an Estimated five billion seven hundred and sixty five million pieces of Christmas mail this month That's an increase of more than five percent over last December Why it's enough as a matter of fact to give every American including members of the armed forces serving abroad More than thirty six gifts and greeting cards To do this tremendous job the railroads which normally move about 99% of all non-local parcels and letters must provide enough mail car space To make up the equivalent of almost sixty three thousand standard size mail cars over sixty feet in length That's almost enough to reach direct from your home to Santa Claus's headquarters, and that's not all St. Nick's other helper the railway express agency Expects to handle 30 percent more packages this month than they handled last December Naturally both these teammates the railroads and the railway express agency have been working night and day to provide the extra Equipment and facilities needed to handle this tremendous Christmas load They have spared neither time nor trouble to see to it that you and your family and friends Receive as promptly as possible the Christmas cards and presents that will we hope bring you the merriest Christmas of all Two of the Lawrence and Lee version of Paramount's holiday in Starring Gordon Macrae as Jim Hardy and Dorothy Warren should as Linda Mason The in looks so romantic with all the Valentine hearts, and I posed for those cubits myself Here's something for you. Oh, Jim. It's the most beautiful Valentine. I've never seen such a big heart. Well open it up Why it's music. Mm-hmm dedicated with love to miss Linda Mason read what it says It's not my watch you're holding It's my heart it's not the ball Why do things like this always have to happen to me where have you been I've been looking for you since New Year's Eve for me Mr. Hanover you're my new dancing partner. Where do you want to go Havana real Hollywood? No, I'd like to stay right here at Holiday Inn.  I don't want to hold up your career But come home soon, huh great wired Mr. Jim Hardy holiday in Midville, Connecticut Rebet booking in Florida for our new act makes it impossible to be there for Washington's birthday. See you Easter best Linda Mr. Jim Hardy, thank you Regret booking in New York makes it impossible to get there for Easter Well, if she won't come here, I'm going there. I couldn't spend another holiday without you Would you take my arm and join me for the day?  It's ready to start Never saw you look Why it's so pretty before never saw you dressed Why it's so lovely. What's more? You're going to be next holiday Linda Tim buck to Tasmania Why we brought Mr. Dunbar to holiday and Jimmy boy He's one of Hollywood's top directors and I'm offering you all the opportunity of a lifetime. It does sound awfully good Jim Well, I don't know mr. Dunbar the whole idea of holiday in would make a wonderful picture, honey And we'd like to start a sensation a new dance team Hanover and Mason There's a power for you Linda didn't even give you first billing. How about it Jimmy boy? We're all heading for Hollywood the land of milk and money Well, I'd like to sort of keep this little place just the way it is now.  They want you to write the music. I'll send it to them now work here Is that the deal you wanted or should I have thrown in my shirt, too? Dear mr. Dunbar. I've just finished the last of the holiday in songs. It's for Thanksgiving and here It's turkey time. Sure enough. I made a record of the subtle hunk of cranberry sauce I pause in this letter to give it another spin to make sure all the notes are in the right place I've got big yacht to sail from shore to shore Still I've got plenty to be thankful for Yeah, you really know that I've got like what? No private car No carpet on the floor Still I've got Plenty to be thankful for you know, you're better off than I am Clyde You need glasses Lips to kiss me someone to the door who is this boy? Needs are small I buy them all at the five and ten cents store I'm not gonna send this record to Hollywood. I'm gonna send me All right, miss Mason will take the final shots and the set of holiday in I think you have the mood Your holiday success was empty. You've lost the one man you love, you know usual hope already for rehearsal Oh, let's let's shoot it, please. All right. It's a take Lights on the Christmas tree. All right dolly in for close-up one Linda Mason alone in the holiday in all right ready Roll them cut your floor to take you look mighty pretty lady Take me back to the real holiday in wait a minute for every Everyone every holiday in the year and all the days are between Then every day will be Christmas Dorothy Warren-Schull will be back in just a moment and meanwhile our hearty thanks to all in Suley Bill Johnstone and our entire company holiday in was dramatized for the railroad hour by Lawrence and Lee The railroad hour is brought to you each week at the same time by the American railroads Marvin across the nation more and more people are enjoying the opportunity to hear good music at first hand For example the great symphonic orchestras of our major cities spend a good deal of time on tour Traveling thousands of miles by railroad each year to bring the entertainment and inspiration of their music to people all over the country The record for orchestral travel has been set by the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, which is now celebrating its golden jubilee season Like the four-year-old railroad hour the Minneapolis Symphony is dedicated to bringing America the finest music And that's why on its 50th anniversary the railroads are happy to salute this truly great orchestra Thank You Marvin and now here again ladies and gentlemen is the charming Dorothy Warren You know it's a real holiday time treat for me to be on the railroad hour again Well, we missed you Dorothy, but we've been watching you on television and applauding you on the stage at the San Francisco opera Why thank you Gordon, you know, I'll bet the show train has a load of Christmas cheer cheer for next week Well, you bet you have Dorothy you got to listen for our railroad hour Christmas party I'll be the host and Dorothy Kirsten will be the hostess and there's a special package. We're wrapping up for all the kitties It's the nutcracker sweep and we have a hunts that'll help make this a happy holiday I'll set the radio right alongside my Christmas tree and by the way We're expecting you back two weeks from tonight to help us ring in the new year. I'll see you with bells on Good night, Gordon. Good night, Dorothy. You were wonderful Well, dear friends, it looks as though we're ready to pull out and so until next Monday night when you're all invited to our Railroad hour Christmas party. This is Gordon McRae saying goodbye Holiday Inn was presented through the courtesy of Paramount Pictures whose current release is the Technicolor production road to Bali Starring Bing Crosby Bob Hope and Dorothy Lemur Gordon McRae can soon be seen starring in one of the Technicolor production the Desert song Our choir is under the direction of Norman Louvaux and our music is prepared and conducted by Carmen dragon This is Marvin Miller saying goodbye until next week for the American Railroad now keep tuned for your Monday night of music on NBC Hear the voice of Firestones on NBC


Well we took the textbook funds that we would have spent purchasing textbooks and we were able our superintendent and district leadership and our Board of Education supported us reallocating that fund, those funds to professional learning. So every year the funds that we would have used the proportion of the overall funds that we would have used to purchase textbooks, we then give back to our teachers to design a budget for their own professional learning. So that professional learning includes things like, well time for them to look at their curriculum and their OER choices, making sure that those were the proper choices. They have time to bring in experts, so they have funds for that, I mean they have funds to bring in experts, they have funds to attend conferences and share. So I have next week my middle school math team will be traveling to an OER summit to go open summit in California to share their work with other teams on middle school math for example. So when they're there not only will they share what they know, but then they'll network with other middle school math teams who can share their learning and that networking is just so powerful. Well we've really just embedded OER into our curriculum processes. We have an ongoing curriculum cycle and a lot of other processes that match that, things like textbook adoption. We have budget lines and processes for textbook upkeep every year. So what we did in terms of OER was really try to take a look at existing structures and see well if we're going to get rid of let's say buying more textbooks and doing textbook replacement, how can we take those same funds and just pay our teachers to do OER upkeep. So it's not like we're creating necessarily brand new processes from nowhere, we're looking at the systems we have in place and saying how can they be tweaked and how can they evolve to match sort of the new norms and new expectations. Right now we have grant funding and we realize that's going to go away so we're trying to do the bulk of everything right now. We have the workshops going on, we had them in the summer, we had them in the fall and now we're going to be doing what we call inspired designers and the inspired designers are going to meet this summer for three days with the state level content specialist to create, develop, curate new resources, open educational resources, they will be exposed to the different considerations like I mentioned and use the word Cape to describe them. And then from there they will also become ambassadors. So our cohorts will be our ambassadors all the way through, they have sent in professional development plans which the grant funding has been able to support and then from that point on after we lose the grant funding we are hoping that the message has gotten out, all of our resources, webinars, et cetera, et cetera will be created by them and then after that keep that message going.