OEGlobal 2023 Conference – Edmonton, Alberta

I had the pleasure of attending the OEGlobal 2023 Conference this year in Edmonton, Alberta. This was my first large and very international conference in some time. There were so many colleagues and friends on site and it was a remarkable program over the three days. As usual, the Global Open Education Graduate Network (GO-GN) ran a workshop with doctoral students researching in the area of open education prior to the conference, so many friends from the network were there and I had the opportunity to meet many of the new GO-GN’er s as well.

I was particularly impressed with the keynote speakers and performers at this event. Many of them representing the local Indigenous people of the area who had positive and important messages to share. I believe many of the keynotes were recorded and can be accessed on the conference website.

I presented with my colleague Constance Blomgren and two PhD students, Jody Barber and Sarah Hammershaimb, about current, emergent, and needed research in K12 open education. As part of the presentation, we asked that participants engage in an asynchronous Padlet activity to collect responses in advance of the presentation. We were interested in gathering responses to the following questions:

• What opportunities exist for open education in K-12 learning contexts?
• What challenges exist for open education in K-12 learning contexts?
• What examples of open education in K-12 can you share from your local context?
• What are the most significant research needs for open education in K-12?
• What lessons learned from higher education can be useful as open education in K-12 gains momentum?

We had a few interesting contributions to the Padlet and some useful feedback in the session as well. The Padlet is still open to contributions as well. You can view our slides below.

Sharing a gallery of some of the images captured from the conference below.