I rarely get the opportunity to join a conference outside of my subject matter (Teaching English as a Second Language) or sector (not-for-profit, settlement, language) and for the past several years I have usually been presenting.  This will be the first time that I have gone to a conference and not known a single person. Although I am not without context as almost every presenter has one or more of the following: organizational website, blog, Twitter, G+, openly accessible research articles/books and/or have offered a MOOC that I have dipped into.

My only dilemma, choice. The streams for the #oeglobal conference include: innovation, evidence of impact, strategy, implementation, pedagogy & design, ROER4D & GO-GN Research. Which session to attend? I recently declared my learning goals for the OERu, Digital Skills for OER which generally covers my learning needs for Open Education – policy development, evaluation of effectiveness, and workplace learning. These are the sessions I think will meet my workplace needs.

Pre-Conference: A full day overview of Open Education. I expect to gain a vocabulary with shared meaning across the conference. I am also interested in the Policy section as I need to be able to frame the case for moving into the Open. As a language teacher I NEVER thought I would talk so much about technology. However, in my current workplace context I talk ‘tech’ every day: databases, software development, hardware, user experience, course design, social media not to mention the hardware and network/security considerations. With luck the technology portion of the day will give me some things to consider when making decisions to use technology in the Open.

Each room has multiple presentations. Pro – I can expand learning to sessions I may not have selected. Con – timing between presenters in other rooms may not align (moving between rooms not as easy as an online environment). (The grey sessions are ones that I am interested in and might sneak between rooms).

Day 1:

• 11:00 a.m. (Main Hall). Learning from the innovative open practices of three international health projects outside of academia. Looking forward to both the workplace learning and that this context is outside of HE.
• 11:00 a.m. (Main Hall). Adoption of Policy and Practice of OER: A Case of Wawasan Open University, Malaysia. Policy implementation and staff buy-in, perfect for my needs.
• 11:00 a.m. (Main Hall). Peer reviewed courses in OpenCourseWare at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid: towards a P2P assessment system for OER. This will be interesting to bring back to the team considerations for our own quality assurance. Interested if they curated OER too in their development and how they assessed (quick scan of article no, but must have been looked at outside of article, or future plans).
• 11:00 a.m. (Breakout Room 2, BlackBear). A Framework for improving the effectiveness of the Openness in OER Repositories and Open Educational Datasets. As a ‘user’ of repositories I want to find out how to recommend making these better! 
• 11:00 a.m. (Research Track, Aspen). Developing an evaluation strategy to gain insights into a multi-national project. Wondering if learning about this evaluation could cross over to my needs.
• 2:30 p.m. (Breakout 1, Lynx). Open Government Partnership as a platform for advancing open education policy. Perfect. I need language to talk to my funders about policy.
• 2:30 p.m. (Breakout 1, Lynx). Large Scale OER – A National Framework. Great, strategy exactly what I  need (maybe not ‘large’ but dream big).
• 2:30 p.m. (Main Room). Exploring the process of using OER to build transnationally accredited courses within the OERu partner network – and activity theory perspective. Not sure what to do, as I am currently following the #DS4OER course offered by the OERu, I would really like to make this session and meet Wayne Mackintosh f-t-f. OERu, you video tape everything, will you do this for this session?
• 2:30 p.m. (Breakout 2, Black Bear). Knowledge Co-Creation with OER: Unleashing the Creative Power of Open. Agree. Plus I always appreciate a session to play with concepts that are introduced, but I think I need to be in the policy ones…sigh.
• 4:00 p.m. (Breakout 2, Black Bear). Creating a community of practice to drive OER materials production and address the costs of learning materials in South Africa. Definitely looking at examples of CoP for OER!
• 4:00 p.m. (Breakout 2, Black Bear). The Open Textbook Network: Collectively Helping Institutions and Faculty Overcome Barriers to Adoption of Open Textbooks. This is a new network for me, so looking forward to learning more.
• 4:00 p.m. (Breakout 2, Black Bear). K12 OER Collaborative. While I am no longer in K12 system, happy to hear Cable Green live 🙂

Day 2:

• 10:30 a.m. (Breakout 2, Black Bear). All of the presentations in this room/time slot “Identifying Impact of OER” exactly what I need to make a case for moving toward Open.
  • OER Research findings.  Have been following OER Research Hub on twitter for a while, happy to see in person.
  • Ten years of OER policy in France: impact and outcomes. Again very happy to have more language around policy and its impact.
  • Open, ready, and agile: Developing a communications strategy for the Research on Open Educational resources for Development in the Global South. Looking forward to hearing from Sukaina Walji.
  • Grappling with the concepts of “impact” and “openess” in relation to OER: Current developments in the ROER4D Project
• 10:30 a.m. (Breakout 1, Lynx). Open Educational Practices, so sad to be missing the sessions in this room.
  • Showcasing: Open Educational Practices’ Models Using Open Educational Resources
  • Open Learning and the Personal Learning Environment 
  • Training Entrepreneurship through an Open Educational Practice. The StartUp model
  • Continuous Learning with OER
• 1:30 p.m. (Breakout 2, Black Bear). Institute for Open Leadership. I need this and am looking forward to hearing about the project (see: Open Policy Network) (Note: will this be similar to Friday’s session?)
• 2:30 p.m. (Action Lab, Den). Inclusive design of OERs using co-design. This sounds like interesting technology. Interested to learn more. As an action lab do I need to bring my computer to this one or tablet ok?
• 4:00 p.m. (Breakout 1, Lynx). Strategies to implementing OER will be very useful for me
  • Teacher’s time is Valuable Very interested to learn about the balance!
  • Using OER to Support Institutional Strategic Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Scholarship. Nice have to miss David Porter the day before so another opportunity 🙂 Also looking to hear about the strategy
  • A Qualitative Investigation into Washington Community and Technical College Faculty’s Use and Needs in Open Educational Resources Actually a research interest of mine, so really excited to learn more.
• 4:00 p.m. Sad to miss these sessions though – Moving Toward Open. Yes, I want to learn about the challenges and how they were overcome with real world examples.
  • Development of strategy for smart university
  • Free or open? Investigating intellectual property rights and openness for OER repositories in Latin America
  • Opening up MOOCs for OER management on the Web of linked data

 Day 3:

• 10:30 a.m. (Breakout 2, Black Bear). MOOC+: engaging the public in virtual panel discussion. Fascinating!
• 11:30 a.m. (Breakout 3, Den), Open Policy Network: Launched! (Note: is this similar to Thursday’s session?)

Needless to say I am looking forward to be going as a member of the audience to the Open Education Conference (#oeglobal). It was not easy to determine which sessions to attend. I hope that the breaks will allow me to listen in and join conversations for the sessions I missed.

See you soon, tweet to @mbjamieson and I will be following the #oeglobal hashtag.