Starting a discussion among those who see the need for a new vision for higher education - as outlined in the HEPI blog ‘Calling for a bold new vision for higher education’.
1 Like
Welcome to our community @DickHeller , look forward to discussing the future of open education with you here.
A little bit of vaguely education-related good news to balance our the bad news about what’s happened to OER Foundation;
Hi Dick and all, really excited to discuss this with international colleagues very soon.
1 Like
Here is a list of the initial ideas posted in response to the blog. People may want to respond to these or offer other ideas. All very open at this stage as we develop ideas!
I think we should reflect on key work that has already been done around the world before we set off to reinvent the wheel.
…distributed leadership opportunities like the scheme I lead.
I am leading on the embedding of environmental justice and sustainability across the entire UG curriculum…envisage the value of legal knowledge input onto some of the other models of change
The creative university becomes recursive in the best sense: always returning, but never the same; always iterating, but never fixating; always polyphonic, always experimental.
…ideas on: (1) governance structures that improve sustainability decision-making (my research area), (2) process suggestions for inclusive cross-sector dialogue, and (3) smaller actionable interventions alongside systemic transformation.
…how such an important discussion could be framed and mediated by technologies which are implicitly sovereign and uncompromised .. this discussion would benefit from ensuring it doesn’t undermine its own credibility by accepting dependencies on the very technologies which have largely led to the need for this discussion.
…interested in joining the conversation regarding knowledge equity and how this might be imagined across a life span.
…how we move to flexible, responsive and more equitable learner pathways; to universities as validaters of learning that happens anywhere (real-time ROL) and more… these represent product and process adaptations to the age keeping unis purposeful and on mission
Focussed facilitation by experts of group engaged discussion may be a productive approach.
Transformation leading to equity and deeper access to and distribution of diverse knowledge in HEI would be good.
One risk in moments like this is moving too quickly to redesign without first creating the conditions for collective sense-making … success will likely depend less on architecture alone and more on how institutions cultivate trust, restraint, and shared judgement under pressure… dialogue that explores not just what we change in higher education, but how we create the space to think well when stakes are high.
How about a LinkedIn group and discussion, where particpants can ask questions and raise issues to kick off chats?
Hear, hear.
This seems to contradict the sentiment above. LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft and hosted in their datacentres, which even if they’re physically located in Aotearoa, remain under US jurisdiction because of the US CLOUD Act. There are plenty of sovereign and uncompromised technologies available for group discussion. Many of which are offered under the iridescent.nz domain, hosted right here in Aotearoa by @lightweight and the team.
Exactly what kind of group discussion style do you have in mind? Public or private? Open membership or invitation-only? Ephemeral, like a chat room, or enduring, with permanent archives kept for posterity?
FYI we also have a sovereign BigBlueButton service that can be used for webinars, and a PeerTube service that can be used for hosting the recorded videos from them, allowing people to comment on videos with their fediverse accounts.
EDIT: Are you familiar with the Open Science Network? It’s a collaboration between research scientists and the team developing the Bonfire fediverse software, with the goal of developing a decentralised network for scientific communication.
Thank you @strypey. The comments I posted were made by those who responded to Adrian and my ‘Call for a bold new vision’. We are hoping that a group might evolve that can continue discussions and even advocate for change. It would be up to the group to decide on details as it evolves - if it does evolve! The reason that we are on this wonderful irridescent forum is just the one you mention - a desire to move away from BigTech towards a decentralised open digital infrastructure. Dave Lane kindly gave us access to this forum as well as BBB for web conferencing. I do actually have a mention of Bonfire and the Open Science Network in my forthcoming book.
In the meantime, I am hoping that we can gain further members of this forum and continue the discussion.
Oops! I missed that context, the apparent inconsistency makes much more sense now 
FYI you can make a paragraph into a block quote on this forum by adding a “>” (without the quotes) at the start.
So it looks like this, and is more obviously a quotation
I’m very excited about the potential of the Open Science Network. Thanks to posting quotes from the piece you linked in yours, about Open Acess policies. I’ve been having some relevant discussions on the fediverse about liberating scholarly publishing from the oligopoly.
What’s the geographical scope of your aiming to gather more people here to discuss this? Just Aotearoa? Oceania? Asia-Pacific? Global?
One other suggestion @DickHeller , could you get the webweavers at hepi.ac.uk to add a link to this discussion at the end your article there? That way people energised by reading your article can click through, create an account, and comment. Rather than suggesting the creations of a discussion group on a DataFarming platform ; )
Thanks again, @strypey We really want to start a discussion about how to transform higher education, so have no fixed ideas about who might want to engage with it - as many as possible!
I agree and also that this is relevant to making sure that underrepresented populations are included in the research in the first place. Lots of potential.
I can ask, but I think that the blog is now more than a week old and do not expect much more traffic. We have 13 responders to the form and I have invited all to join this group and hope that we can generate interest among those as well as any others.
1 Like
