So depression is the most common mental health condition that is leading globally currently. I am Dr. Varneshree Bir. I am a consultant psychiatrist from Manipal Hospital, Sarjapura Road. I am here to answer your question about depression today. Depression can affect any age group, including children. It can be adolescents, adults and old age group as well. Most of the parents do ask me, is my child affected with depression? Can they get depression as well? Because they do say that children are not actually stressed. They do not have any responsibility to take care of. Why are they stressed? But the answer is yes. Children can also get affected with depression. It is most commonly seen. It can be due to different causes. It can be because of any stress that they are going through in their school. It can be about their academics, that is about their studies. They can be multiple factors into it. Risk factors include genetic factors like your parents or someone in the close relatives in the family is having depression. Then the chances of you getting depression would be very high. And most commonly chronic stress, that is nothing but long-standing stress. Every day there is a lot of stress that you are dealing with. It can be something that is related to your work life. It can be things like that is related to your personal life or it can be relationship stress. You are dealing with it since a very long period of time. Grief. Grief is one of the most common causes. Grieving can be something like secondary to any major loss. It can be death in the family or of the loud ones. It can be a major loss like in the finances or in the business. It can be loss in any other aspects of it. And trauma. Trauma includes like it can be a major accident like a road traffic accident or it can be other forms of trauma that you do have gone through in terms of loss again. Before visiting the doctor for depression you will have to understand that it's just not about feeling sad for a day or two. It is just not about feeling sad of some event that would have occurred. You will have to wait to experience this low mood feeling very sad maybe throughout the day and for a significant amount of time. It can be for weeks together. So that does not mean that some has to wait for months together to see a doctor. The answer is a no. One has to always understand once they start experiencing the symptoms like low mood, lack of interest in doing any of the activities there is lack of motivation. No matter what you do like exercise yoga or seeking a help from the family or from friends. I think so that is the time where you will have to see the doctor and get that help immediately. To manage the symptoms I think most importantly one has to firstly meet the doctor or a therapist. Follow the instructions whatever has been given by a doctor. It can be about taking your medications regularly. It can be about taking your therapies regularly making sure that you're regular on all of this so that you do not miss a dose because if you miss a dose there's not going to be continuity in the treatment or in taking the medications and there are a certain other most important factors to manage the symptoms that is called as self-help. Take a good self-care in terms of sleeping well, eating well and also physical health becomes very important in terms of exercising doing a yoga. So did you know that naturally doing exercises in the morning or any time of the day would help us to stay relaxed and calm? I think every day your routine has to be added with something like exercise. Exercise can be in any form it can be walking, any form of this has to be added to the routine. Last but not the least to manage your symptoms you need to seek help from your friends and family as well. You'll have to start interacting with them, build a social circle around you. These are the factors that helps you to manage the symptoms.


Good day mate, 40 here. So prior to the 1960s people used to trust their soul to their clergyman. They used to trust their body to their doctor, their money to their accountant. There was a much higher level of trust and expertise in authority. So I think one reason that you and I have so many different views on COVID is because underneath that are all sorts of beliefs, many of which are unconscious. So starting with the 1960s people develop much greater skepticism of what people in authority were saying. And we develop greater skepticism about whether people in authority were trustworthy, whether they were telling us things that are accurate. And now we're in 2021 and public health authorities are proclaiming one thing and a few weeks later they're proclaiming something very different. And so how then shall we live? So here's my self-perception. My self-perception is I don't automatically trust anything and I don't automatically disregard anything. So Elliot Blatt, if he tells me something I don't automatically trust it or distrust it, it would have to depend on what he told me. What was the context and then how much relative value I accord to his opinion in that area. So if the Centers for Disease Control proclaim something, I don't automatically trust it or distrust it. I'd want to know more. What's their proclamation based on? If we're told that the CIA has universally agreed that Russia dramatically interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. Just because the CIA says it or the FBI says it or the president says it, I don't necessarily agree or disagree. I need to know more. If the New York Times or the New York Post say something, I don't automatically agree or disagree. There are very few people who I tend to automatically take seriously. So I guess Steve Saylor is one person who comes to mind. But aside from that, no matter the source, I don't automatically take it seriously or un-seriously. Like every source of information for me has to be examined critically. So for example, peer-reviewed academic studies published in some Harvard publication. I don't automatically trust or distrust that because the power of peer-review, it's only as good as the peers doing the reviewing. So a lot of peer-review is absolutely useless and pointless. It's just people in the same profession scratching each other's back. And then other peer-review is really important. So I try to think critically about everything I'm talking about. Anyway, you're going to have a good laugh about this.    I haven't been streaming much the last week or two because I've been paying so much attention to someone called the Kiwi Health Detective. The Kiwi Health Detective. It's a woman in her 60s. And I just think she's really wise that she's got a YouTube channel. Her name's Kin Knight. So a week or so ago, I was reading a book on the Alexander technique. And this book, the author mentioned that she'd suffered from very bad chronic fatigue syndrome. And she'd recovered from it by something called Mikkel therapy. So Mikkel therapy was started by a Scottish doctor, David Mikkel. And he would get his patients to kind of plumb their deepest fears and their deepest concerns.  So they were sick but happy and turned them into unhappy but well people. So I was fascinated. This is like Luke Pawn. So I started researching Mikkel therapy on YouTube. And one of the first results was this Sheila Kim Knight. And so I've been watching a lot of her videos on YouTube and she has an e-book. Isn't that great? She's got an e-book and she's got an e-book called Essential Health Beliefs. And I think this e-book is really wise. And it has applications for the different ways that you and I regard COVID. And the different ways you and I may regard money and prosperity and politics and authority and religion. I think these ideas in her e-book have a lot of applications. So she says we all have beliefs that run like software in our consciousness. So these beliefs and assumptions, they may be conscious or unconscious or somewhere in between. But we have all these beliefs about how the world should work. And they can be passed down through us, through our parents and relatives, where we're born, our profession, our religion, etc. So if you grow up in New York, you may have strong opinions about the way life should be, which are going to be quite different from someone growing up in our back Australia. So we also have common beliefs about health. So here are some examples of common beliefs about health. I need to drink eight glasses of water a day to be healthy. Or if I go out in the rain without a hat and a jacket, I will catch cold. If I travel on a plane and people have a cold or a flu, I will catch it. Or carrots are good for my eyes. Or if I don't get vaccinated for COVID, I will get COVID. If I don't get vaccinated for flu, I will get the flu. If I get an infection, I have to take antibiotics to get better. This is a belief that I think I inherited from my upbringing. Disease is a punishment from God because I haven't been good enough. That's essentially a belief that I inherited from my upbringing. So when I'm sick, I feel like this is some kind of moral shortcoming on my part. Smoking causes cancer. A virus caused my chronic fatigue. It's in my genes. There's nothing I can do about it. So Elliot says, I believe the weak are stacked up like codewood and they are dragging us down. But Elliot, you're talking about the weakness in yourself.  There's a weakness in yourself, a vulnerability in yourself. You know that when we take that awkward angle on anyone, including Elliot Blatt, we find vulnerability and weakness. So this is a safe place where weak and vulnerable people can come and share. This is a safe place for you.    This is a safe place where you can share these thoughts and these fears and these feelings because I think a lot of us, a major barrier that we have to prosperity, whether it's financial prosperity, romantic prosperity, social prosperity, I think a major barrier is that there are certain emotions that we are afraid to see and to confront and to deal with. And so we don't prosper so that we can avoid seeing and confronting and dealing with certain painful emotions.  Elliot says he doesn't hate the weakness inside himself. He just wants to encourage himself to be strong. Well, this is a safe place, Elliot, for you to encourage yourself to be strong. So Kim Knight says, our health beliefs determine how we interpret our symptoms and then what actions we take to resolve our health problems. That's right. So some people, if they get sick, they feel like, OK, I need to go to the doctor. Or if they got back pain, I need a radiographic study. And other people have the action. I'm never going to the doctor, right? And other people say, I'm going to the chiropractor. Other people have the health belief that all chiropractic is bunk. So Elliot says, is it a good idea to lionize weakness? No. Is it a good idea to have a positive relationship with reality? Yes. Is it a good idea to recognize that we're all weak and vulnerable? Yes. Is it a good idea to recognize our own weakness and vulnerability and frailty and stupidity? Yes. OK. So people tend to seek out health care that's congruent with their values. So for some people, that means doctors. And for other people, that means naturopaths. And other people, that means looking things up on Google. Other people, they turn to Dr. 40 at 40 University. All right. We have these beliefs. And these beliefs determine what kind of care we seek. So some people have the belief that the depression and anxiety and mental illness is primarily a biochemical problem. So they're going to want to turn to psychiatrists for a biochemical solution to feeling down or bad. Other people believe that depression and anxiety is a result of not being good enough, of not having a close enough walk with God. Other people recognize that depression and anxiety is some unwanted habit that they picked up in childhood in reaction to certain circumstances. Alia says, is learned helplessness something we should encourage or discourage? It's something we should generally discourage, but also recognize that there will always be stages in our life where we're helpless. You cannot escape vulnerability. Everyone will have a time when they are helpless, when your back goes out, when you've got 104 degree temperature, when you're lost. Helplessness is one inevitable stage of life. You cannot escape the stage of life of helplessness. Now, should we encourage people to spend more time in a state of helplessness than is necessary? No, I don't see a lot of upside to that. So I think some people have the attitude that wealth, prosperity, illness, good things in life, that they just happen for no reason. You might just get sick for no reason whatsoever, or you might just make money or be poor for no reason whatsoever, that these things just happen to you. I notice a tremendous amount of passivity online. My this isn't right part of the internet. I notice on the one hand you've got all these keyboard warriors who want to take over the government and change the world at the same time they combine extreme political beliefs with extreme passivity in their own life. So my therapist said to me, do you think you might be so radical and extreme in your political beliefs because you're so passive in your real life? So we all have like a skyscraper of our beliefs. And then what happens when you encounter a reality that does not fit with your perspective on life? When reality blows down the skyscraper of your belief? That's when you have what could be called a spiritual emergency. I just heard of this term spiritual emergency. Do I consider my beliefs to be extreme? I'm not sure. But I love this term spiritual emergency for when what we encounter in life just does not fit with our beliefs about how life should be. And so some people have a nervous breakdown or you can call it a spiritual emergency or you can get plunged into depression. But I think we all thinking people go through stages like this and to develop a new way of thinking that works we often have to let go and destroy our old skyscraper of beliefs. So often with our level of consciousness we have to demolish our old level of consciousness if it's not up to snuff to take on a new level of consciousness. So it can be very awkward to be in this in-between period between one subtle belief system, the new belief system, the old level of consciousness, the new level of consciousness, it's like painful while your neural pathways and your consciousness and your beliefs are getting rewired. Yeah, see rather you just have a belief that America had an obligation to free the world. So if you want to install new virus software on your computer you usually have to remove the previous virus software that you had on your computer. Sometimes your computer doesn't work until you wipe it and you do a complete rebuild. And so as we travel from one bank of the river to another bank of the river now we're sometimes caught in the rapids and it could be quite awkward. Would I rather live in Kabul or Wuhan? I think I'd rather live in Wuhan. So what you believe to be true can change, right? So what we believe to be true basically accords with our level of awareness and consciousness which is always changing. So, Kim Knight says, in the West we have three core healthcare approaches. We've got emergency solutions for acute conditions, the ER surgery. Then we've got healthcare that addresses symptoms and then we've got illness prevention. So you're going to choose your healthcare solution according to where you find yourself in terms of which level of symptom or illness you're experiencing. So whether you'll choose healthcare approach one, two or three and also according to your level of awareness and belief. So for some health perspectives, symptoms of the enemy, they need to be wiped out with medication or with surgery as quickly as possible. So a lot of people say, I just want to be rid of my symptoms. So most of our problems are just symptoms of deeper problems. If you're watching this show, you're a smart person and if your problems really were your problems, you'd be out to deal with them. But because your problems are merely symptoms of deeper problems, your solutions to your problems don't work. That's why we have to do the deep work of 40 University. So you can look at symptoms as the problem. I've got too much credit card debt. I'm fapping for an hour to pornography every night. I can't seem to hold down a job. I can't seem to sustain a relationship. These are all symptoms. So you can look at symptoms as the problem. My neck and back are stiff today. Those are symptoms. So those are symptoms of something that's physiologically going on with you. Maybe certain positions that you've been in today have led to this. Or it may be something, some unresolved emotional or ideological tension inside of you or it may be people that you're dealing with. A crystal healing pill. Your pancreas acts up every now and then, says Robert. That's the symptom. But what's really going on? Do we just say, oh, this is a symptom. Do we just deal with the symptom? Or do we regard symptoms as our friend? Do we regard symptoms as part of the solution? I've come to view my under-owning as my friend because it made it painfully, obviously clear to me that I had completely changed the way I approached life and money and earning of prosperity. So as long as I realize I'm an under-owner, I have to keep becoming open to new ways of approaching the topics of money and prosperity. Like as long as I was bedridden by chronic fatigue syndrome or a bad back, I can be grateful for that symptom because it's making me confront that the way I was approaching life is inadequate. So we can see symptoms as the problem. Skin itching. We can see symptoms as the solution. Symptoms can be seen as a positive sign of intelligence from the body trying to bring our attention to something which needs addressing in our life. Now, I think a lot of the reason that we have symptoms is because we're so afraid of addressing certain things. They're just so painful. So for me, it's like I've tended to run my life on selfishness. I didn't want to confront this when I became willing to, okay, let me see if I can move from 95% selfish to 90% selfish. Let me kind of up the hours in my day where I dedicate myself to being of service to others. Then things started to spiral in a positive way. Robert says his skin itchings is a symptom of food allergy, but he can't get a referral for a food allergy doctor. So yeah, so from Robert's perspective, if you've got symptoms you need to go and the symptoms are annoying enough or painful enough or dire enough, you need to go to the doctor to get relief for the symptoms. But we're going deeper here. We're looking at symptoms as clues about something we need to address in ourselves and in the world around us. Not just something we need to get a bandaid for a solution for. So there's the pathology model where we focus on managing our diseases, try to eradicate symptoms as quickly as possible. Or we can sit with the symptoms and try to understand the root cause of our symptoms. So the pathology model essentially looks at the physical part of the person. But we're not just a physical entity. We're also a spiritual entity. We're an emotional entity. We're an energetic entity. We're a mental entity. So for true healing to occur, guys, I'm going to quote the great Kim Knight here. We have to treat the person, not the illness. We don't heal an illness. We heal a person. We don't heal your bank account. We heal you. We don't heal a health condition. We don't heal under-owning.  We don't heal chronic anxiety. We heal the whole person's life. Robert says, I need a referral to a food allergy doc. And the guy I called himself a doctor tells me via secretary that he only offers referrals to other such doctors who have already seen him. Dude, you're treating the symptom. You're not treating the person.   It's not just your skin is itching. It's not just the pancreatic attacks. We have to go deep. You've got these beliefs that there are doctors out there who will cure your symptoms. And you're just looking at the physical part of your being. You've got symptoms. And symptoms you're seeing as the problem. Step one for healing is sometimes it's to see a doctor often it's to see, okay, what is it in my life that I don't want to address? What painful emotional issues am I afraid to look at? What painful realizations am I trying to avoid? And so my body is constantly distracting me with pancreatic attacks or gallbladder attacks or digestive attacks or skin problems or asthma or chronic fatigue or headaches or back pain. My body is constantly trying to distract me to distract me from confronting very painful emotional truths about my life that I don't want to look at. All right, do you want to interpret the message that is being sent to you by life by your body or do you just want to get rid of the message? All right, symptoms are intelligent and necessary conveyors of information. So rather than always looking outward for solutions, maybe it's time to look inward. Maybe we need new levels of awareness and new habits to return ourselves back to balance. And then our body will no longer need to continually manifest all these painful symptoms to distract us from these painful emotional truths that we don't want to face. And Robert says when I have gallbladder attacks rather than address painful emotional truths I had my gallbladder removed which fixed me for decades. Ah, but then all these other things just kept popping up so it didn't really affect the picture. So what's the healthiest attitude to have vis-a-vis COVID? I don't know. Today's stream is brought to you by Dr. Berg's gallbladder formula. I used to have gallbladder attacks. Then I started taking some Dr. Berg's gallbladder formula extra strength whenever I was eating a meal with a sufficient amount of fat in it. Gallbladder attacks. Yeah, Robert says the gallbladder surgery fixed me for decades but then you had all these other problems. Like all these symptoms are trying to point you towards some painful emotional truths that you don't want to confront. No, you had other problems as well. But you get to distract yourself with all these physical ailments until you're willing to look at yourself as a whole being. You got to check out the Kiwi Health Detector. Oh, no problems for decades. It's just great for decades. I don't buy it, bro. So are you ready to identify and to take away what is causing your body to go into imbalance? What is damaging your body so that you can self-heal? We're going to seek out, for decades, no abdominal pain. Yeah, but you just had heart pain. You had the pain of a broken heart, bro. Here we go for holistic healing, not just dealing with symptoms. Different healthcare approaches will address different levels of your being. Your choice of healthcare is going to depend on your belief system. We're going to gravitate to certain forms of care according to our beliefs. Here's step number one for healing. My first responsibility is to myself. Number one, your first responsibility is to yourself. Second responsibility is to your partner. And then all else follows from that. You shouldn't put anyone else before yourself. Your first responsibility is to yourself.  You need to get sunshine every day. You need to be outside every day.  You need to have inner and outer fulfillment every day. You can think, oh, these physical first responsibility sounds incredibly selfish.  So 95% selfish is average. Aim for a 90% selfish and you'll be an ascended spiritual master. So Robert's perspective is, oh, physical symptoms are random. Illness just appears. It has no deeper spiritual or emotional meaning. Your body is infinitely intelligent. Symptoms always have meaning. So Robert's belief is, oh, I have to have outside intervention. I have to have medication or surgery to change the pathology or the chemistry inside my body. You can understand that your body has self-healing mechanisms that will often heal you without external intervention as long as you give it the right conditions. You may think, oh, I need drugs or surgery to change the physiology in my body. Well, often you can get well without drugs or surgery by addressing the mental and emotional and energy aspects of yourself. Like, oh, I don't trust my body to heal without outside intervention in the form of medication or surgery. Look, often you can completely trust your body to heal as long as you remove what is preventing your body from healing. Like, oh, I'm a victim of circumstances. My body is a victim of circumstances. The only option is medication or surgery. Now, maybe your body opened up to a virus because you wore it out so much to the point where your immune system could no longer hold the virus at bay. All right, so now it's time to check not just your health beliefs but your beliefs about prosperity and your beliefs about life. Let's do this together. Okay, so complete this sentence. I will get ill if I. All right, so I was raised with, I will get ill if I reject Jesus, if I reject God, if I'm a selfish SOB, if I'm a bad person, if I reject God's healing love, I will get ill. That was part of the ethos that I was raised in. So please finish this sentence. I will get ill if I. What are your beliefs about what will cause you to get ill? Or I will be impoverished if I. All right, so I will be impoverished if I don't concern myself with helping other people with being of service to other people. So I will be prosperous if I devote myself to being of service to other people who can pay me really well for that service. People get ill when they, what, don't see a doctor? What are your beliefs? People get ill if they eat irresponsibly, if they don't exercise, if they don't get enough sunshine, right? My path to prosperity is being of service to other people who pay me well. I teach the Alexander technique for $100 for about 45 minutes. People pay me well to teach the Alexander technique. People pay me well to write and edit documents for them. I'm not, I'm not a millionaire, right? I'm just, I'm on the improve. So a number of lessons I teach a week, it varies from like zero to 10. So in order to heal illness or in order to heal poverty, one has to and complete the sentence. When it comes to healing, I believe it is possible too. I deserve to get well because. I don't deserve to get well because, right? Symptoms of the enemy, they're random. I have no control over them. I need outside intervention to clear them. Yes, I declare all my income to the IRS. What do you believe that symptoms are your friend? Symptoms of your ally? That symptoms have meaning? That's something to tell you? You just need to understand why they are there and resolve the root cause of the symptom to regain health. You know the specific beliefs and emotions that relate to your symptoms. Okay. So I'm thinking about our, our sphere of the, the internet, right? We're the dissident right here, right? Marginalized people are attracted to marginalized movements. All right. So what kind of people are marginalized? What kind of people like me right now talking to my phone and then you watching some dude talk on his phone after reading an e-book by the Kiwi Health Detective, right? What kind of people are marginalized, right? But people are raised with abuse, not necessarily sexual. I mean, I was like smacked around quite a bit as a, as a child, right? I'd be bounced off walls, right? So if you're watching this and all likely you were raised with abuse, you internalize the abuse, you abuse yourself, you abuse others automatically and you can't even help it, right? It's just become wired into your software. And what's another trait of marginalized people are attracted to marginalized political movements? We're people who don't trust easily. We tend not to trust because we're abused in childhood. We learn we can't trust people in authority. So then we become attracted to marginalized, distant movements like the distant right. So if you're watching this, you don't trust because I tend not to trust. Why do we not trust? Because we were raised with so much abuse, right? We don't deal well with authority. We have an instinctive negative reaction towards authority, a distrust of authority because when we were growing up, authority routinely abused us. That's why we're here talking right now, right? Marginalized people attracted to marginalized political movements are people who don't trust, don't deal well with authority. And we're doing all these crazy things to try to keep ourselves feeling safe, right? We can't risk trusting again because we were hurt so often in the past, right? We can't accept authority because authority abused us so often in the past. We can't face disappointment again, right? We've been disappointed so often that we can't deal with that pain of more disappointment. So remember how hard it was for me to finally get through the Orthodox conversion to Judaism process because I did not trust authority, did not trust the rabbis. I thought they were trying to screw me over. I did not trust anyone in authority. It was really hard for me to put myself into that process again and again until I graduated. It was really hard for me to train to become an Alexander Technique teacher because I knew I'd be in a relatively small room with about the same 10, 15 people over the course of three years and I thought for sure I'd alienate them and I wouldn't last and I didn't trust authority and I didn't trust the power that the system would have over me, right? So if you're watching this right now, you probably alternate dramatically between I'm afraid to speak my truth. I've just got to keep it all bottled up. I can't speak my truth. There's no safe place to speak my truth. And then speaking way too much truth to way too much power in inappropriate times and places and ways, right? That's another thing I noticed about marginalized people are attracted to marginalized movements. They make these radical shifts between, I can't speak my truth. I'm being completely squashed and silenced by authority and then speaking like way too much truth than is in yourself interest or speaking way too much and you have a greatly exaggerated understanding of how much truth you are dispensing. Is Alexander Technique teacher some kind of official title? No, it has no legal standing. Everybody can claim to be an Alexander Technique teacher. There are Alexander Technique teacher unions. So the Alexander Technique teacher unions have varying requirements and they have various disciplinary procedures to keep people in line. Just like medical doctors can lose their medical license for spreading misinformation about COVID vaccines. Wow, congratulations Potato. He is now an Alexander Technique teacher. So why do people here have so much suspicion of the CDC and Anthony Fauci and public health authorities and politicians imposing mask mandates because we all here have an instinctive lack of trust in general and a fear and distrust of authority in particular because we've been abused so often, right? So we probably alternate radically between afraid to speak by truth so there are probably all sorts of circumstances and places where we should be speaking truth and where not and then on the other hand, speaking like way too much truth at inappropriate times in inappropriate ways. So press 1 if you're afraid to speak your truth. This is a safe space for you to speak your truth. All right, another characteristic I noticed of people on the distant right is that they downplay the importance of feelings.  So what kind of people put a very low value on feelings? People are abused as kids and they were afraid to confront and deal with their feelings like trying to keep the quadrant of their feelings pressed down. So press 3 if you downplay the importance of feelings. So I notice amongst the distant right there's this widespread downplaying of the importance of feelings and this callousness towards hurting others and callousness towards themselves and their own feelings being hurt and this attitude of, you know, what's wrong with you you are displaying feelings, you're some kind of pansy.  Like from my upbringing anyone who'd say something like this was some kind of pansy, right? You just have contempt for anyone who speaks this way. But there are a lot of very successful people who when they're told you hurt my feelings they take that seriously. Maybe that's something I need to look at. Like I was raised to despise weakness. I was raised to despise feelings and that doesn't work. I mean you talked about feelings in my childhood and you'd get beaten up behind the dunny. And I wonder what percentage of our fellow distance here have good relations with their parents. I sense that with marginalised people the word that perhaps best encapsulates them is estranged. And marginalised people and addicts tend to be estranged from their families, estranged from their communities, estranged from their country, estranged from their schooling, estranged from the powers that be, they just tend to be estranged. So marginalised people, you know, if you're here on my show you're afraid to trust your fear and hate authority probably you're estranged from your family and you have this ton of pain inside, this quadrant of emotions that you're afraid to look at and so to keep tamping down these emotions your body is serving up distractions with gallbladder attacks or back pain attacks or itchy skin. Where are the women hanging out? They're hanging out in yoga studios, bro. This is a safe place for you to speak your truth and to share your emotional pain, right? So marginalised people like holding down this ton of pain inside themselves because they don't have other people who they can appropriately share it with. They're afraid to trust anyone, they're afraid to speak their truth or they speak way too much truth. They turn their frustration and pain and anger inward as well as outward. They create limiting beliefs about what's possible. Hey, I'm only worth $11 an hour. They feel powerless, they feel despair, they feel trapped. I can't hand hold down a regular job because I've got this skin problem, man. So I'm going to have to work from home. I've got these health problems, man. I can't hold down a regular job. A lot of marginalised people, they're on disability, right? They feel powerless, they feel despair, they feel trapped. I mean, think about our own Leponius, right?   Marginalised people try to avoid adult responsibilities such as getting married and having kids and moving ahead in their profession and earning good money. Marginalised people tend to be paranoid, distrusting. They push other people away. They make excuses for why their problems are everyone else's fault or society's fault. They downplay the importance of their own feelings and other people's feelings. They resist taking action to build a more prosperous life. They do things and they can't stop doing them. They tend to have poor boundaries. They tend to have unrealistically high expectations of themselves and other people. That's why they're constantly being disappointed by others so they have high expectations leading to disappointment and cynicism nor because there's this pressure cooker of emotions that people are afraid to face and so they need all this drama to constantly distract themselves. They need the dopamine hit of getting into internet drama, fighting with people online, right? So we have a pressure cooker of emotions inside that we haven't dealt with, that we haven't confronted and we're stuck in life because we know to progress we will have to face and deal with painful emotions and we fear the vulnerability that will accompany that. Awesome advice, Luke. Too bad you cannot go back in time and offer it to your 20-year-old self. Well, I can be a good friend to myself right now. Robert says, I am a leper, not easy to get work. Armahood says, I'm too boring to be marginalized. Potato says, it's been my impression that Christians are mostly raised to worship weakness. Well, maybe some Christians some of the time, but that's not endemic to Christianity. I want to get both sides of abuse together for mutual healing. Where do the marginalized women go? They go into psychotherapy. They go into yoga. They go into 12-step programs. They go to Al-Anon. They go to Love Addicts Anonymous. They go to Coda, Codependence Anonymous. Bye-bye.


Wow. Okay, we've got a great crowd of folks and I'm really so excited to talk to everyone today about this project. This community, this emerging platform that we've been working on now for a while. So I'll get started. And For those that just joined, you can see a link in the chat there. If people could keep reposting it again and again for the new attendees, I would really appreciate it. And that's a place where you can Add your name. Tell us a little bit about where you're from. So we have a sense of who's in the room and you can add in your own thoughts under the notes and question section as we go through the content. Great. So I we're here to talk about building an open scholarship knowledge base together. My name is April collaborative Sharon My background is in epidemiology and I've been working in open research and open scholarship now since about 2014 2015 And I'm really excited about this collaboration that we've been working on and there's going to be a lot of exciting stuff coming out Around this work in the next few months. So I'd like to invite everybody to get involved if this seems like something that you would be interested in. So we'll talk a little bit about specifically what that would mean. But first, let's do a little bit of housekeeping and that note document is available there for you guys to add your questions as they occur to you. But you can also use they have this Q&A feature built into the zoom platform itself. So you can also add your Questions in there and at the the last 15 minutes of the webinar. That's our current plan is to have the last 15 minutes to be a time where we'll just focus on those questions and get As many answered as we can. So we're going to start with like a little bit about what the open scholarship knowledge base is And why we're doing it. So I'm going to talk and my colleague Felix Hennigar is going to talk a little bit about the origins of why we're here. And then we're going to dive into how to get involved and help us to make this even better than it's already Become. So we have Aaron Buchanan. We have Flavio Azevedo and we have Megan Simmons. Joining us today. So thanks everyone for coming. So let's start with the what, why and the how of the open scholarship knowledge base. So in short, we're a community and we're a community of people who are advocating for something together a shared vision. So we're working with researchers educators as well as anyone else that's just interested in opening scholarship and our aim is to build a knowledge base and the purpose of building this knowledge base is so that researchers and other stakeholders librarian students Students can more easily learn open scholarship practices and also more easily apply them to their research. So we're focusing on building a platform and a community of contributors to organize open scholarship information, the resources that are out there. That talk about the what of open scholarship, the why of open scholarship, the how of open scholarship. All of these aspects to open scholarship so that people can more easily find the resources that they need and can more easily apply those resources to their own questions and their own problems. Um, so this is an open community. So people can come and they can use these resources, but they can also contribute And they can curate. So this helps us to ensure that we can keep these resources up to date. And that we can create sort of these modular learning resources for people to bring either into a course or workshop or something like that, or for them to learn Um, themselves and like a sort of a self learning self paced sort of way of learning. Um, so the open scholarship knowledge base is a community, first of all, I think the community part of it is really central to making this knowledge base actually useful. Um, it was spearheaded by some volunteers at the Society for Improvement of Psychological Science and it's a community now, a growing community of diverse individuals who are aligned with a shared goal to make learning and applying open research practices easier. Um, and this is working to solve a problem that we have all faced ourselves. So we're trying to solve a problem that we understand that we are trying to solve for our own Um, our own selves and our own community. So researchers, teachers, funders, librarians, everybody who is interested, invested in opening up scholarship is welcome to join the community. Um, either by editing by curating and by contributing to this shared community research that we're resource that we're building together. So we'll talk a little bit more about how you can Join us and how different ways of getting involved a little bit later. Um, but the other aspect of the open scholarship knowledge base is that it's an ongoing project. The project is to Um, curate the existing resources and fill in gaps that exist in an open scholarship resources together to make them more easily Uh, uh, discoverable and more easily applied. Um, and and to to sort of ensure that all of these knowledge gaps are are filled and that people can, um, you know, actually make use of that information for themselves. And then finally at We're building a platform and this is something that we're going to talk a little bit more about In the how and why We're we're going to be creating a community led community designed hub that will contain modular open educational resources um, so we're going to be talking a little later with Um, Megan Simmons from the OER Commons because this first iteration of the open scholarship knowledge base, we're going to bring This work that we've already started onto the OER Commons in the coming few months And that can be a place where we invite you guys to get involved and help us to make that Hub as useful as possible For your needs. So, um, next I'd like to invite My colleague Felix uh, Felix if you want to talk a little bit about, uh, why This project started since you were there from the beginning. Uh, that would be awesome Sure thing april. Um, thanks a lot. It's been a privilege to work with All of you on this project and it's a great thrill to see so many people here today So why are we doing this? Why are we building this platform? I think the common motivation and observation has been that adopting more open and transparent Scholarly practices can be a daunting task for colleagues looking to change the way they work and that's often due to knowledge gaps So there's a barrier to adoption Because many of us might not be familiar yet with the evolving best practices that Change so quickly and open questions can lead to uncertainty and make things harder than they might be otherwise So thankfully, there's really many excellent resources out there already that educate and empower researchers that provide practical guidance and help But it can be hard to keep up with them at times unless you follow the literature closely Or are very involved for example in social media So what we'd like to do is bring together fellow scholars with common questions around open scholarship And the resources that can help answer those questions And so we're looking to increase the visibility and accessibility of open scholarly knowledge And to collect and curate and celebrate the materials that are already available out there And create new ones based on the gaps that we identify So, um, yeah, I think that's our mission in nutshell on what we hope to accomplish And it's great to see so many people on board Back to you April Thanks so much Felix. Yeah, so just a reminder if you have questions Um about anything that we talk about you can throw them in the q&a Um section of the zoom meeting or you can put them into our webinar notes and we'll Um, we'll address them at the end um Great, so I'm going to do super briefly just a little bit what we've done so far For the most part, uh, it's been, um, uh driven by the smaller group of Early volunteers who have, um, you know documented what they think the needs are they've, um, You know, we've we've built some sort of social infrastructure Trying to figure out the best way to work together since it is primarily community led It's mostly volunteers. We have to find ways to Actually keep things moving as people are, you know, able to chip away in their free time So, uh, we hold monthly community meetings and I don't invite anybody who's interested to attend any of those their open meetings We also have subcommittees that focus on different different aspects of the knowledge base That are currently meeting every month as well And we we have communication channels including slack That we're using to to, you know, keep in touch with each other Um, so we've worked to sort of lay out what our goals are to try and stay focused on what we want to do first And as well as what we want to do in the longer term Um, we've developed a code of conduct. We've worked on a metadata schema We started to collect amazing resources already And we've tried to as much as possible engage other groups That are working on similar issues and one of those groups is Going to talk a little later Flavio is going to talk about FORT We've also tried to figure out what would this platform look like what's most important at the beginning as we start to build this so we Wrote some user stories. We thought about the technical requirements and especially the tech subcommittee meeting Lately has been thinking about okay. How do we actually start this as a prototype and We're very fortunate that uh, Megan Simmons is going to talk about what that might look like And um, and what we're might be able to do with this early prototype that we're going to build in the coming months Um, uh, so the prototype is coming. We know kind of what we want to do Um, and now it's the exciting time where we get to actually make it happen So if that's the part of a project that you get excited about too, this is the time to join us Because we're going to be doing a lot of designing. We're going to be doing a lot of playing around Figuring out what are the possibilities with um, actually bringing this into the real world Um, so the purpose of that prototype is to illustrate the value of what we're doing and the promise of what the knowledge base could be So it gives someone people something concrete to engage with To try out whether or not this is improving the discoverability of these resources To see how we can keep improving that prototype to Make these resources more and more discoverable It's a place where we can also author things collaboratively and we can curate the metadata We can tag things we can organize things in ways that make them more easily discoverable Um, and so uh, one of the other steps of this is to create this As a project that invites in a wider community. So part of that is going to be Coming up with processes for people to get involved in very specific ways And to document those and to test them out And make sure that people that come to our community know right away You know where they can get involved and dive in um, and um, we're going to also use this platform as a way of You know bringing in more diverse communities people from different disciplines different regions Hopefully also people authoring in different languages And we're going to be doing in the next few months More events including a virtual hackathon. So if you are excited about these types of open, you know, collaborative Events that's a great way for you guys to get involved. We'd love to have you Join an upcoming event So that's kind of our background. That's how we ended up, you know, where we are today and um, uh, let's go into a little bit about how you um, uh Might be able to get involved and this is the main Sort of purpose of this webinar today is to sort of you know shout from the rooftops that we you know We welcome what you have You know your interests in this area, whatever projects you're working on Um, if there's some alignment there like we we really want to bring in um You know some diverse perspectives. So Please get involved. So I'd like to introduce now Aaron Buchanan who is another longtime volunteer and Tell us a little bit about what you've uh done Aaron and what people can do if they're interested in joining Yeah, so I'm Aaron. Some of you might know me as the stats of doom girl. So I have A very unique interest in this Sort of knowledge base because I've been doing this sort of thing and might as well join the team right so, um joined last year at sips So are my sips sure to also promote because some of our open hackathons are part of sips Which will be free and online for everyone since we can't meet in person Um, and what we've been doing so far is having these monthly subcommittee minis. I'm on the tech committee and so What each group does is work on a specific section of the important components to making this thing work So obviously there's a lot of issues on How do we show content? What content do we need? Uh, so I saw someone asked in the q&a about The quality of content. So there's going to be an editorial group that helps manage Those sort of issues with quality and moderation There's a content based group on what what content do we need? How do we fulfill our user stories and how do we get what the community needs? So not leaving things out that You know, we just don't think about because we're in our own little research areas Uh governance committee, which I don't actually remember what they do, but they do awesome stuff Um and helping manage such a large project because there are so many pieces The tech committee has been working probably the most I think right now I'm also partial because I'm on it But helping pick that platform that will deliver this Knowledge base to you guys And which I think megan is going to talk about at the end. I'm super excited to see it myself But I really want to highlight too that there is no experience necessary In delivering messages Reading messages, you just have to be interested Because having a broad array of people Help us will allow us to Get the knowledge pieces that we may have forgotten about or we don't know that exist But also provide those broad perspectives that really make this a well rounded project Um, so while we have these committees, there are definitely Parts that you can contribute to even if you don't want to join a committee So you'll be able to contribute on the website that we're going to hopefully see the prototype for And or you can join us on slack to contribute to the management side of things So I want to provoke join us any way possible. Come watch us be goofy at sips because I'm goofy all the time And um Help us make this the best product it can be Back to you, April Thanks, Erin. Yeah, that was that was perfect. Yeah, so um There is lots of ways to join You know, you can join if you want some ongoing, you know Ways of like really digging in and helping make this something that you think works for your Interests for your needs for your community's needs. You can join a subcommittee But there's also a lot of other ways to get involved. Um, you can add a resource Um, you can see here this contributor resource. All of these links are also in our webinar notes if you want to find them there Um, so that's a simple way if you know Of somebody who is making really great materials already or if you are Please add them and we'll make sure that they end up in the um knowledge base um, you can also come on and and um, you know, help us review and improve resources. So, uh, You know, once this is like, you know, migrated on to the oer commons You know, there there will be ways and Megan will talk a little bit about this for people to Um remix things for people to um really make something their own and improve upon the resources that exist now As well as um authoring A resource so that's a really exciting thing that we haven't done a lot of so far as a group yet But I know there's a lot of interest in it and there's a big need for that so, um If you want to Join and you know say you want to help us test the prototype you could Click on this link here and sign up there. If you don't know really what you want to do But you just sort of like want to be kept in the loop Um fill out this join oskb link here That's sort of a place. There'll be a little check Boxes and you can pick which things sound interesting and we'll just keep you in the loop and you can join as you Have availability and and based on your interests um So another way I think this is especially important since we're working on building a knowledge base another way of getting involved is if you are already working in a group that maybe Has a lot of resources or perhaps you're aligned in some way with our aims of opening scholarship um then reach out and We'll find some way to pull our resources to work together to make sure we're not doing redundant work And so I'd like to invite Flavio to talk a little bit about His initiative as well as um his experience Trying to work with the oskb and joining the oskb in the last few months All right. Thank you for this introduction April. So One of the ways oskb tends to achieve its full potential Is through partnerships with similarly aligned organizations and projects that Is very broad. So One of the reasons why this is important is to as April said is reduce redundant work Sometimes different organizations have the same ideas roughly or they intersect a lot and instead of doing somewhat comparable efforts Efforts can be made so to share resources in the community that is interested Once there is this aligned projects. So This can Be due to to being on the same discipline for example to different organizations within psychology Aiming to promote sharing data for example, it may be project related say for example Projects sharing the same goal or topic related For example replication initiatives, right? So one Example of this coordination with oskb is fort Just as a bit of an intro in a nutshell fort stands for framework of open reproducible research training Any aims to provide a pedagogical infrastructure designed to recognize and support Teaching a mentoring of open reproducible science tenants That are intended or at the same time with prototypical subject matters in higher education basically aggregating What we learn from open and reproducible science into our teaching So fort strives to be an effective evolving and community driven organization That aims to raise awareness of the pedagogical implications of open and reproducible science and its associated associated challenges Think of curricular reform How we deal with epistemological uncertainty methods of education, etc so fort also advocates for the opening Of teaching and mentoring materials as a means to facilitate access discovery and learning For those who otherwise would be educationally disenfranchised So oskb and fort are aligned in several aspects we think And one in particular That has allowed as a partnership The desire for it is The curation of resources so for fort this means equipping scholars with high quality pedagogical tools For open and reproducible research practices in teaching and mentoring. So we have a given Go that also fits on the same Mission as oskb So for us instructors can then adapt successful and Implemented pedagogies to help ease the tradition transition and to reduce The instructors burden in adopting this new Better educational practices so Uh, obviously oskb has a much larger scope in that respect So what fort is doing so that we can adapt and partner is to Um We are currently revising our 700 resources database so that is compliant with oer Commons, which is the database that they are using Uh, and so that we can facilitate sharing. We are also aligning our metadata meaning that we We enrich our data set and and put it in a way that this passing from one to the other is seamless and we We will also might have a community within oer commons hub, which Ideally will be adding fort resources into oskb As well as enriching their data That is there that other people put but that are that fit the educational pedagogical mission of fort So we will also bring that back, but it will be the same database So that's it and I hope this is useful and I'm really excited for this partnership Awesome. Thank you. So there's some links there. Um, they're also in the notes Where you can learn a little bit more about fort as well as sign up to Work with them. So, uh, yeah, we're really excited about that Um, awesome. So we've talked about it this whole time Uh, we are really excited. This is a very new Sort of thing. It's just the last, you know, a couple days that we've gotten confirmation for sure that This is going to be moving ahead um the Tech subcommittee has been working a long time on trying to think of where this prototype could live at first um, and We're really excited about what We can do with the oer Commons hub. So I'd like to Invite megan simmonds. Um, she's going to talk a little bit about You know, what what it is and what it could do. Um, and she's also if you have questions For her she'll be able to answer them after She finishes her presentation as well So I'm going to stop sharing so that she can Um There you go. Let me know if you have any. Yeah Thank you so much. Um, actually I want to put it on gallery view real quick. I just want to see you all. Um It is so great to be with you all I am such a fan of your work and you all and I'm just really honored to be uh able to support you and in the wonderful work that you're already doing So, um, my name is megan simmonds. I lead training and design for a nonprofit organization called iskme We have one of those wonderful long researchy academic names, which i'm sure you're all familiar with because we originally started out as a research institute really focused on knowledge sharing And over the years our work has expanded and 12 years ago I joined the team to lead our training and design work and Really be a touch point out to our global education community so my role in this project is to support you all and Work with my team at iskme to make sure that we Create something that's of value to your community and make sure people are trained up and have a good plan and You know everything just goes wonderfully and smoothly. So so that's that's that's the hope. Yeah um, and you know, I just want to say to so my plan is to Actually take you into our digital library and show you, uh, you know, what's possible um, but I also before we jump into that I just want to kind of acknowledge the times we're in right now and um, I'm I'm working from home right now in my my house in Santa Cruz, California just south of our offices and um an interesting thing that I'm seeing you know across projects right now is Uh, this real uh desire to connect and collaborate and share and curate resources Which is already kind of what you want to do. Um, but I think this is a really uh special time to kind of catapult this work forward And so I think this is actually a really wonderful time to be launching something like this And you know, we're here to to help you make it successful. So, um I'm going to share my screen right now and actually show you our digital library and my plan is to Just give you a brief overview. Obviously in the coming, you know weeks and months and years Who knows how long we'll we'll be we'll be together. Um Uh to just kind of show you what's what's there. What's possible. I want to highlight a few examples and also Uh showcase really some interesting innovations I'm seeing from faculty and researchers to address some of the current needs and challenges that we're Having right now with school closures So, um, let me just share Real quick my browser. Hopefully everybody Can see uh, okay. Thank you Um, so this is oer commons. This is our digital library. Uh, that has many different tools to facilitate collaboration Uh, we started this digital library. Um, with some funding from the hulet foundation back in 2007 And the hulet family foundation was Uh, one of the first, uh stewards of oer Um, and they were funding a lot of higher ed Uh institutions and sharing and creating full courses and instructional videos and lectures and things like that And they wanted a central place where people could access these open educational materials Uh, and so these are all, uh, as I'm I'm sure you're all aware, you know, these are all freely available You know, either under the public domain or they have some kind of Open licensing such as creative commons and over the years, uh, the site has Changed to adapt to the needs of our global community So if it's been a while since you've been on the site, there may be some new things or if this is your first time This is this is what it looks like today And most people when they come they, you know, do a search here, you know on the search bar Maybe they want to narrow it down by subject or education level Or educational standard We also have advanced search options. I'm not going to go through that. I'm kind of assuming that You all can, you know, do that on your own time But I do want to show the tools that we have to facilitate collaboration And in particular, uh, we developed these hubs a few years ago because People wanted basically their own space within the library to collaborate, curate and share resources together So we basically created wings of the library if we want to kind of compare it to a physical library Where people can, um, come together around a project or if it's a regional effort or consortia To create collections, collaborate in groups, author and co-author together So that's what I want to focus on here today is our hubs. So, uh, this is what we have today for our hubs So maybe some of these, uh, hubs represent your interests or your your areas But, you know, they depend on, we work with a lot of different departments of education for k-12. We work with Different higher ed initiatives. We have some international work here We have some specific thematic or material types, uh, that have projects here And you all will have your own hub soon too Um, I want to just showcase, uh, one in particular. There's a lot to look at here So if, you know, anyone's welcome to poke around and see if maybe there's An area of interest, uh, that I know April, uh, with her background, uh, might be interested in this Nordic University Health Hub They've been doing some really interesting work around public and global health and medical sciences Um, but I want to just show this project that we've been working with with all of the community colleges in the state of michigan And so there's 28 of them and they came together to create this hub Really to address some of their needs they had With transitioning their courses to use, uh, open educational resources And they identified Their, uh, high enrollment courses as a priority and that's what you see here. These collections are Curated resources for their different, uh, high enrollment courses So if this is their wing of the library, their collections are basically what's on the shelves of their wing of their library So this is what their librarians and faculty have said use this for these courses Now in addition to those shelves or, you know, collections, we also have groups And that's this particular hub decided to have groups by college. So each college has their own workspace within the hub where they can collaborate and, uh, So I if we're using the physical library as a as a comparison I see the groups as like a circular table in the wing of the library where faculty and librarians and content specialists and researchers are coming together to collaborate And I wanted to just highlight Lansing Community College real quick because um, they've been doing some really interesting, uh, work with, uh, psychology resources Not only curating them but, uh, creating them as well And their librarian really spearheaded this work Uh, and her approach which I love she said she wanted to curate a bunch of resources and present kind of a buffet To the faculty and say look look at all these resources that have been, uh, you know curated for you You don't have to reinvent the wheel and then work with them to identify which ones would work best for them And maybe what gap areas, uh, they might want to create resources for So she created these folders within her group to start to curate different resources for the different departments And in the psychology department Those of you that are psychology faculty and researchers, maybe you've seen some of these The open stacks, uh, psychology textbook is one I know a lot of people use NOBA psychology has some great resources But they also have curated, uh, and created, uh, their own resources So this actually is one of their faculty Dr. Mark Kelland who He, um, was fortunate enough to get a sabbatical that he could devote to creating Open textbooks. So this is what he created. And so when you click on a resource you get this, um, Description page here where you can see what kind of license it has And if there's, you know, any specific evaluations on here, uh, and then when you view the resource Uh, it takes you directly to the resource this resource was created on the site So you're still on the site. Some resources take you to, you know, other sites or, or universities or, um, other websites So, um, this is his, uh, textbook and, uh, So, you know, you can check it out. It has, uh, these different sections. He also included a journal where he documented His process of creating this, um, and he did this within our authoring tool Uh, so that, uh, it's kind of nice. It's pretty easy if you want to remix this You can just simply click remix this resource and basically what happens is You get your own version of his textbook that you can now edit his original one stays the same But you basically get a copy of it that you can edit and publish and will be forever connected to to mark So, um, I know there's some of you that are creating things. So I just wanted to show you that There are some really great, uh, tools here to support that Um, I wanted to just share one other thing or actually two other things, uh, that I've just seen Faculty and researchers really, uh, step up in the time of this pandemic to Uh, work together to create resources and this particular project is Something that was also created in our authoring tool by anthropology faculty from eight different universities around The u.s. I believe it was initiated by faculty in, uh, at columbia university and rice university and basically what they wanted to do was start to Create mini lectures, uh, where anthropologists faculty and researchers are presenting Their research in short little, uh, video lectures and then also including supplemental materials to go along with that So this is page, uh, her she's presenting Any of you that are into anthropology, I highly recommend checking this one out But she did some really interesting research in Papua New Guinea and she's Presenting that and then she has, uh, some different activities associated with it So, uh, I thought this was a really great example of just how, uh, you know, uh, faculty and researchers are meeting this moment right now to Come together and create something that can be used, you know, across institutions One other resource I wanted to share is the clinical practice support that and this is, um In the spirit of kind of, you know, putting your first draft out there This is something that i'm working on with teacher education faculty. So it's definitely not perfect. This is kind of our first draft And this is basically, um To meet a challenge that now that teacher, uh educators And their students, uh, can't physically be in schools How can we recreate this or facilitate this in a virtual space? So, uh, having them observe various videos of teachers, uh, reflecting on that And then planning using some lesson plan templates. So, uh, there's some really exciting things happening Uh here to meet some of these immediate needs So I know you all have a lot of ideas of what you want to share and I've already done some great work But I wanted to just, uh, share a little bit of inspiration for For how folks are addressing some of these needs So, um, I know I showed a lot, but I just wanted to kind of, you know, give you give you a sense of What's there and what's to come and you all are our fellow, uh Curators, digital librarians and instructional designers and advocates and leaders So we really want to work together with you to make sure That the hub is a good representation and support for your for your communities and what you want to do So, um, with that, I'm happy to take any questions or if you want to see anything else. There's so much to see here Um, but uh, there, um, you know, we'll have more more opportunities to to connect and work together in the coming months Thanks, Megan That's perfect. So we are now this has never happened to me before Exactly on time A round of applause so, uh Let me start with uh, we do have a question in the q&a and then I'll go to the notes and we can take a look and see what people have shared in there Um, so the first question is from david mower His question is uh, do you have a quality filter for allowing resources into the system? Which is an excellent question because it's one of the things that especially the editorial subcommittee And the content subcommittee has been talking a lot about Um, and um, I think Megan can probably chime in a little bit as well about what is already built in to the system, but I think um, the short answer, uh, david is um That we do want to have a layer of some sort of editorial and review in the knowledge base Um, and that does not necessarily mean that we will not accept other forms of content but that we do want to be able to sort of add a layer of You know, you know, this has been reviewed. It's been given feedback. It's been updated It's it's, you know, something that is considered Trusted within the community for a way for that sort of to be um, you know, people can search through those resources specifically um but uh, currently we're we're working through out, you know, where is the line between that and um, you know, having a space for people to Have some rough drafts there for Open collaboration and stuff like that as well. So it'll be a little bit about Being able to organize our materials so people can easily tell the difference between the two As well as know how to give feedback on something that, you know, does need some improvement Um, and so Megan if you want to add a little bit about I saw they had an endorsement feature as well as What else would there is two different ways? Yeah, so there's A couple different layers first is our team of digital librarians are Um, always assessing things that get submitted. Um, and I can share that criteria with you all if you're interested in digging in on that so that's that's, you know, kind of our first line of quality control And uh, you know, just to be clear our digital librarians aren't Uh, you know experts in every single subject and every single thing that gets submitted So it's kind of, you know, a general quality evaluation Um, but we also have, you know, in the spirit of open and OER and open source this crowd source methodology and way that We um Can give star ratings to resources We have specific rubrics and quality evaluation tools from achieve to assess We also have endorsements that people can give so that's something we can talk about If uh, you all want to have your own specific endorsement so that you can put them on the resources and say, okay This gets our stamp of approval Um, we also have ways within the collaboration we do in groups to Put some kind of approval measures in place so that before something that gets submitted to a collection or from a group gets evaluated by an administrator or curator of the group But yeah, you know the spirit of um, you know putting out your first draft and continuous improvement and iteration of resources and peer review And feedback that is so much of what we're all about. So Um, you know, we really try to facilitate that and encourage that because a lot of people could just kind of focus on the resources, but I think one of the most exciting parts of open educational practice is Uh, the shifts that we need to make to improve how we design resources how we collaborate how we evaluate and how we advocate so That's all part of it too. So the materials are really important But I also think the professional learning and development that can happen through shifting your practice to a more collaborative approach is Is where we see a lot of a lot of benefit and value add. So, um, you know, we can talk about However, many kind of restrictions or restraints or, you know, I'm boxes to check Uh in in terms of our workflows once we start to design the hub But that's that's a great question and something to think about if you want to be more kind of open and just kind of see what happens and, you know crowd source it or if you want to, you know, put in some specific You know endorsements or um evaluation metrics so that You know, there's there's more quality control. That's totally it's totally up to what you all want to do Yeah, and I would I would just like to Uh Invite people that are interested in these types of questions To consider joining our editorial subcommittee Because that is the bulk of what we're talking about. We do want to have people who's are focusing on You know, ensuring that the resources are relevant that they're appropriate Well, we will as a community sort of come up with our, you know ideas about what's important And those that subcommittee will be managing a lot of those sort of questions. So yeah, please join Oh, and one other thing. Sorry. I just thought of something else We've seen in terms of authoring and remixing content in addition to Quality evaluation rubrics We've seen people create templates that can be kind of a starter for folks that want to create resources And, you know, we can even have like links and an instruction there to really help guide people in creating high quality drafts And within our authoring tool, I didn't show this, but I'm happy to if people want to see it We actually have an accessibility checker. So for those of you, uh, that are, you know, working, uh, with, uh, you know, students that or colleagues that use screen readers or, you know, need to access content in epub three format That's braille ready. We have a checker within our Authoring tool that you basically click on to check your content and it will flag anything that does not That isn't accessible and give you tips on how to make it accessible and you can either ignore it or you can Fix it.  I've learned so much in our collaboration. We work with cast and their universal design for learning on this And, um, you know, I always kind of just wanted to make things look pretty but now I know like That's not necessarily accessible. So I've learned a lot, uh, you know, through the accessibility checker just on You know, how to really design something so that my students, um, can can use it Um, so that's another kind of quality control measure that we have in place But I'm curious if if others have, um, you know, kind of other quality considerations Maybe that's something we can talk about another time Um, because we can certainly put those kind of supports in there. Oh, yeah, thanks april and this is just, um A slide with some of the links we have us in our notes to You know, just quickly, uh, you know, one of some of the things that I that I showed But I know we have a few more minutes. I'm happy to, you know, show anything else you want to see or or answer any other questions Awesome, yeah, and and, um, just to follow up on what you just said if people do have things That, you know, from their experience, they know we should be considering when we're talking about You know, uh, curating these resources including quality Um, and you can either join us, you know, fill out that those, um, you know, links that I shared earlier Um, uh, or you can leave those thoughts here in the thoughts and questions as well And because we're going to review this as a group and see what sort of feedback people Um have left us. So let's take a look and see if we have questions in here I'm so excited that there are so many of you interested in this Um, are as excited as we are about it Uh, let's see. Notes, notes, notes, notes, notes Maybe we don't. Oh, here we are. Questions Okay, so this first one There you go Is the fort 700 resources database open already and you've already answered that Right That that was you No, okay. Well somebody else knew I stuck the link in there. I knew where it was So That's great. Okay. So what is the acronym that megan is using? Oh, this is this is why I love collaborative notes Some of the questions can just be answered by the other people in the room Um, so yeah, and if you want to hear more about that organization, I'm sure megan would love to hear from you Um and talk about it Um, would data management training materials be in the scope because there's this awesome Data management training resources from isaap. Yes. So, um, one of the things we've been working Towards and we've actually spoken to these people at the, um, isaap data management training resources clearing house Is one making sure all our metadata is aligned to begin with and two eventually to have sort of our Eventually our platforms communicating with each other So when a new off when a new resource that falls into Um isaap's area of interest comes into the open scholarship knowledge base that that can actually be Like pushed and pulled into their database and vice versa. That's sort of a, you know, a longer term goal for us But the first step is having the metadata be aligned um, yeah, we've talked we talked to them and The other way that we're thinking about aligning with those sort of groups is some of them might want to do what fort's considering doing And being a group within the hub Um, so yeah, definitely want to be collaborating. If you know other groups like that awesome group at isaap's that You know, let us know because we want to make sure we're not missing You know anybody quality control resources Um of resources. Yes. So this is something we talked about a little bit from uh david moer's question Um, we will have a few different things going on mechanisms going on that should um, at least ensure that there's a certain level of You know reliability and guard against misinformation Um, and then within that have some resources that are really more formally um, you know edited and endorsed Um, what licenses does oar common support for materials sharing in this database? That's actually question. Um, Megan. Do you want to answer that? Yes, um, and maybe I'll just share my screen. Well, oh actually, okay. I won't never mind um, so Yeah, so we um, you know our authoring tool that I showcased, uh, you can select uh different licensing um creative commons like I mentioned is one of The most common ones that people use and within using a creative commons license You always get attribution. So that means you get credit and then you can select if you uh want People to you know use it for commercial purposes or if you want to allow derivative works So if you want to allow people to remix and modify your resource Um, we also have, you know resources that are in the public domain. We have Fair use resources in there. We also have custom licenses in there and All of this is in that metadata of the resource so you can you know see the The license and click on it to learn more Um, so so that's how we have it designated um, and we also have You know other like international license like the GNU license um So yeah, I know that there's folks from all over the world here. So if you're using an international license that is You know allows for it to be openly shared and used You're welcome to share as well. So There's not just like one one set of licenses because any of you that dig into copyright There is it's a it's a whole world unto itself But we really try to simplify it in the metadata the description on the resources So it's easy to know how you can use it But everything is freely available, you know, you don't have to pay no login things like that It's just the license may say like if you can You know make derivative works or remix it some of the videos don't allow you to do that But you can use them and download them and things like that. So Yeah, we can do more we can do a deeper dive into licensing too if that's of interest to the community Um, yeah, no, that's great. So I think uh in the last couple of minutes I'm just going to try and touch on those last three questions um The next question is to what extent does oar commons aim to be a global resource database and how is that reflected in governance? So, um, just want to distinguish a little bit the oar commons Uh platform versus the oskb So oskb, we do have aims of being a global resource and in terms of governance governance is still, um, probably are Currently earliest in the stages of working together subcommittee if that makes sense There's a lot of work to do there to make that like to to think in the long term of how do we What what challenges with barriers? What sort of ways do we need to work through to make this a truly go global? Collaboration so if you're interested and if you have experience in that, please You know fill out that form and say you want to join a subcommittee and we'd love to hear from Your ideas on how to do that Open science MOOC Absolutely, this is great as some people um from our community. I've worked on that as well. Um, and part of our greater Mission is to make all of these lovely resources You know to point to them from the oskb so people can find them if they don't know about them Um, and then uh, just quickly. I know this is quick, but we're kind of at time right now Is what aspects of openness do we aim to cover? I think our current focus right now has been on a lot of those things that are mentioned in the question reproducibility data methods stuff like that um, but we do believe in those other aspects of inclusive inclusivity um, and um open approaches to collaboration. So, uh, we want to include those things as well um, and Really welcome if you have experience in those areas are interested in that please Um sign up. We've got these three little Ways of signing and joining. Um, so I really would love to hear Um, you know all of your ideas on what you think uh, you're excited about what challenges you think will face Um, any anything you want to do to to join us. We're really uh looking forward to growing the community um in the coming months Uh, okay, so I know I went through the questions quickly at the end, but um, uh You can shoot uh me an email at oskb at cos.io with any other questions that you have and I hope to hear from uh, you all in the coming months. Thanks so much For your time and thanks all panelists for coming today Uh, you know the year what keeps this, you know going so I really appreciate all the work that you've done Um, so I don't want to go over time. I will leave this slide up And I will say uh, thanks again Have a good day and uh, see you all at the next community meeting