OTESSA Conference
May 27 – June 2, 2023
Call for Proposals Closed.
Late submissions will be processed and accepted based on available room in the program.
Be inspired…
Join us to hear from the following scholars and practitioners as they share about our conference theme Reckonings and Re-Imaginings.
Keynote Speakers
Glenda Cox
Dr Glenda Cox is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT: http://www.cilt.uct.ac.za/) at the University of Cape Town and her portfolio includes postgraduate teaching, Curriculum change projects, Open Education, and Staff development. She holds the UNESCO chair in Open Education and Social Justice (2021-2024). She is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Students as Partners (joined in 2022). She is passionate about the role of Open Education in the changing world of Higher Education. Dr Glenda Cox is currently the Principal Investigator in the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) initiative. Her current research includes analysing the role of open textbooks for social justice.
Bianca Masuku
Bianca is a Junior Research Fellow in the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project and drives the research arm of the initiative. She is currently a PhD candidate in Anthropology at UCT. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology and Psychology and a Master’s in Social Anthropology from the University of Witwatersrand. Her work has revolved around gender, sexuality, youth and health, with a great interest in how young people experience, interrogate and contribute to the worlds around them. Her doctoral work explores understandings of TB in the township of Khayelitsha through a youth-based community engagement project. Her research background and varied research experiences fuel her current interests in open education, open educational resources, open textbooks and social justice with a keen interest in the inclusion and recognition of student voices
Sarah Elaine Eaton
Sarah Elaine Eaton, PhD, is an associate professor at the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada and an Honorary Associate Professor, Deakin University, Australia. She has received research awards of excellence for her scholarship on academic integrity from the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education (CSSHE) (2020) and the European Network for Academic Integrity (ENAI) (2022). Dr. Eaton has written and presented extensively on academic integrity and ethics in higher education and is regularly invited as a media guest to talk about academic misconduct. Dr. Eaton is the editor-in-chief of the International Journal for Educational Integrity.
Her books include Plagiarism in Higher Education: Tackling Tough Topics in Academic Integrity, Academic Integrity in Canada: An Enduring and Essential Challenge (Eaton & Christensen Hughes, eds.), Contract Cheating in Higher Education: Global Perspectives on Theory, Practice, and Policy (Eaton, Curtis, Stoesz, Clare, Rundle, & Seeland, eds.), and Ethics and Integrity in Teacher Education (Eaton & Khan, eds.) and Fake Degrees and Fraudulent Credentials in Higher Education (Eaton, Carmichael, & Pethrick, eds.). She is also the editor-in-chief of the Handbook of Academic Integrity (2nd ed., Springer), which is currently under development.
Faculty Profile: https://profiles.ucalgary.ca/sarah-elaine-eaton
Personal Blog: https://drsaraheaton.wordpress.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrSarahEaton
LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/drsaraheaton
Nick Bertrand
Nick is a proud Kanyen’keha:ka and member of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte. He is a father, partner, uncle, and educator. Sharing truth alongside messages of hope and resiliency through the vehicle of education is what interests and drives Nick.
Nick has worked in education for over 17 years in many roles including: a high school OCT certified teacher, a school board Indigenous Education Lead, and more recently as an Education Officer in the Ministry of Education. In September 2015, Nick was seconded to the Ministry of Education where he had the opportunity to work collaboratively on the development of Ontario’s curriculum strategy for the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Nick currently works in the Indigenous Education Office within the Ministry of Education and also works independently to support the recruitment, hiring, and retainment of Indigenous Peoples in the private sector workforce.
Grounded by the incredible support and generosity of Elders, Knowledge Keepers, community, family, and friends has allowed Nick to share space in a variety of educational settings. To move along a reconciliatory path, Nick has always believed that the foundation of this journey is rooted in strong relationships built on respect, understanding, and reciprocity.
Paul Prinsloo
Paul Prinsloo is a Research Professor in Open and Distance Learning (ODL) in the Department of Business Management, College of Economic and Management Sciences, University of South Africa (Unisa). He is a Visiting Professor at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany as well as at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), a Research Associate for Contact North/Contact Nord (Canada), a Fellow of the European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN), member of the Executive Committee for the Society of Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR) and serves on several editorial boards. His research focuses on student success in distributed education contexts, the ethical collection, analysis and use of student data in learning analytics, and digital identities. He was born curious and in trouble and nothing has changed since then.
His blog is accessible here and his Twitter/Mastodon.social alias is @14prinsp
Invited Speakers
Watch this space for more announcements!
Jennifer Wemigwans
OISE University of Toronto.
Jennifer Wemigwans, PhD, is from Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory on Manitoulin Island, Ontario. She is a new media producer, writer and scholar specializing in the convergence between education, Indigenous knowledge and new media technologies. Her book A Digital Bundle: Protecting and Promoting Indigenous Knowledge Online (2018) explores the prospects of Indigenous Knowledge education and digital projects in a networked world. Dr. Wemigwans takes pride in working to invert the conventional use of media by revealing the potential for Indigenous cultural expression and Indigenous knowledge through new technologies, education and the arts. She is an Assistant Professor in the Adult Education and Community Development Program at OISE University of Toronto.
Nadia Naffi
Université Laval
Embracing the Metaverse: FormationMeta and the Future of Immersive Learning Experiences
Delve into the exciting world of FormationMeta, a groundbreaking 14-week exploratory project spearheaded by Laval University’s Chair in Educational Leadership on Innovative Pedagogical Practices in Digital Contexts – National Bank, in partnership with Laval University Library and OVA. This innovative project provided Laval University’s learning experience designers and instructors with an authentic experience to cultivate their skills in designing and developing immersive learning experiences within virtual reality and the metaverse. Engaging students from diverse disciplines such as educational technology, art, and game design, the project harnessed the power of StellarX.ai software to create bespoke immersive training tailored to the library’s clientele.
Presented in French, this talk will unveil emerging recommendations to enlighten educational teams eager to embrace immersive learning experiences. The speaker will address pressing questions, including the current possibilities and future technological advancements, such as generative AI, essential skills for developing learning experiences in the metaverse, and strategies for training expert groups in education and educational technology to create immersive experiences that effectively cater to learner groups while adhering to ethical, equitable, and inclusive principles.
Photo Credit: Concordia University
Isabel Pedersen
Ontario Tech University
Shock and Awe: Generative AI composition, cultural adaptation, and postsecondary education
The launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT was a dramatic event making generative artificial intelligence a mainstream phenomenon. Data journalist, Katharina Buchholz explains that “ChatGPT gained one million users just five days after launching in November” of 2022 (Statista, 2023). Generative AI can produce stylistically correct sentences, paragraphs, and documents across a multitude of genres. It can produce professional-grade visual images and video. While heavily debated, one could argue that generative AI ‘creates’. Consequently, generative AI can help students create art, write, or collaborate with other students. However, generative AI can complete all of these tasks for students without requiring much human effort, disturbing the general premise of learning to compose. At the same time, its creations are vulnerable to producing false information and discriminatory results due to the training sources. This presentation argues that shock instigated by large tech companies, releasing these products through the rhetoric of hype and fear, is fuelling mass adoption rather than a measured approach. Educators, students, and university administrators are faced with handling the cultural adaptation to AI generators that challenge traditions of human creativity and formal education. Drawing on media studies and rhetoric (Pedersen and Iliadis 2020), digital literacy studies (Duin and Pedersen 2021), and critical AI studies (Bender, Gebru, McMillan-Major, and Shmitchell 2021), this talk points to the process of re-imagining learning expectations in university courses amid the onslaught of generative AI emergence.
Keywords: Generative AI; digital literacy studies ; critical AI studies; rhetoric; artificial intelligence (AI)
GO-GN Panel
Open University and University College London
Researching at the edge of openness: reflections from GO-GN members
GO-GN, the Global OER Graduate Network, brings together a core group of current doctoral researchers working on open education topics, along with the GO-GN team at the Open University, alumni, other researchers and fellow travellers through open space. And though we travel without uniforms or transporters, like members of Starfleet GO-GNers do go boldly, attempting to push the boundaries of knowledge in the field. Recognising the multiple senses in which education can be open, we approach the concept of openness from various angles and use a range of methods.
In this panel discussion members of the network will reflect upon the what, why and how of their doctoral journeys, and invite session participants into our conversation.
Keywords: doctoral researchers; open education; openness; reflection
Anne-Marie Scott
Unaffiliated
5 Things You Need to Know Before You Buy Edtech
Drawing on experiences of over 20 years in higher education technology, working across commercial and open technology contexts, this talk proposes that the procurement of educational technologies is fundamentally flawed both as a practice and as a process. Institutional processes such as procurement tend to be absent from conversations about digital education, often acknowledged as problematic but also outside our sphere of influence or domain of expertise. On the basis that pedagogy and technology are entangled in complex ways, in fact the opposite should be true. The educational technologies we use are not tools, and should be treated as matters of quality when we consider what good digital education might look like, and what we think the purpose of education is.
Consideration of ethics are often absent from procurement of technology, largely based on instrumentalist assumptions about the neutrality of technologies. Public sector procurement “best practice” also forces us to use poor proxies for our educational values, purposes, and contexts, and creates new risks and liabilities for institutions, at the same time as it seeks to minimise others. Whilst this talk will explore potential solutions to current procurement process and practice, the question that remains outstanding is whether we are simply buying and/or using too much educational technology, and whether, in order to achieve more environmentally sustainable and just forms of education, we should be embracing a de-growth approach to educational technology more generally?
How much procurement of edtech, however well executed, is too much?
Keywords: edtech, ethics, procurement, technology, degrowth
Nicole Johnson
Canadian Digital Learning Research Association/ Association canadienne de recherche sur la formation en ligne
Digital learning trends in Canadian post-secondary education
Join Dr. Nicole Johnson, Executive Director of the Canadian Digital Learning Research Association/Association canadienne de recherche sur la formation en ligne (CDLRA/ACRFL), as she shares how digital learning trends are changing over time and discusses what this means for the future of post-secondary education in Canada. Since 2017, the CDLRA/ACRFL has conducted annual pan-Canadian surveys to track trends related to digital learning at Canadian post-secondary institutions. In particular, since 2020, the CDLRA/ACRFL has been investigating the ongoing impact of the pandemic on course delivery and teaching practices. Through her independent research and consulting practice, Dr. Johnson has also worked on multiple other studies related to faculty experiences with technology, categorizing learning experiences by modality, and the future of higher education. In this presentation, Dr. Johnson will discuss challenges faced by institutions (and the post-secondary sector as a whole), what the future might hold, and recommendations for the sector.
Keywords: digital learning, learning futures, learning trends, online learning, hybrid learning
Alec Couros
University of Regina
Harnessing the Power of AI in Education: Opportunities and Challenges
In this presentation, Dr. Alec Couros will explore the exciting possibilities and impact of AI in education, focusing on tools such as ChatGPT. With the ability to provide personalized learning experiences, AI has the potential to transform the way we teach and learn. However, its integration into the classroom also raises important ethical and societal concerns. Dr. Couros will examine both the opportunities and challenges of AI in education. Participants will leave with a better understanding of the potential of AI to positively impact student learning and success, as well as the considerations and challenges that must be addressed in order to fully embrace it in our learning environments.
Keywords: ai, edtech, technology, generativeai, pedagogy
Bonnie Stewart
University of Windsor
Digital Education in an Age of Data: What Do We Do Now?
Keywords: Digital education, data privacy, enclosure, equity, risk
Randy LaBonte
Vancouver Island University & Canadian eLearning Network
Design Principles for Digital Learning and NSQOL Standards: Commonalities & Differences
Join this session to gain an understanding of design and organization principles to help inform quality in K-12 online learning teacher and leader practices. Learn about the Canadian-based online learning design principles and their commonalities and differences to the US-based National Standards for Quality Online Learning (NSQOL), application to pedagogy and practice, and how the elucidation and clarification of design and organization principles help inform leadership and administrative policy for quality online learning.
Keywords: design principles, quality, K-12, online learning
Terry Greene
Terry Greene, host of the Gettin’ Air podcast on VoicEd Canada, is Senior eLearning Designer at Trent University, working towards better technology-enabled and open learning practices for Ontario Post-Secondary Education.
Stephen Hurley
Stephen Hurley is the Founder and Chief Catalyst at voicEd Radio. Combining a life-long love of radio and an intense 30-year career in public education, Stephen is passionate about finding ways to enliven the public square with vibrant conversations about learning, teaching, schooling and education in its broadest sense. He recognizes that among the nearly 7 000 audio pieces that he has helped to produce in the voicEd Radio space, the most powerful have been those that invited guests to talk across differences and disagreements. Stephen is now working hard to shift the voicEd Radio energy to a cooperative model in the hopes of increasing both sustainability and impact.
