# Open Education panel at Dean's Graduate Conference


My [institution](http://www.oise.utoronto.ca) holds an annual graduate
research conference, where all students can present their ongoing
research in a friendly and welcoming environment. This is both an
opportunity to practice for students who are planning to present at for
example [CIES](http://www.tc.edu/cies2009/) or
[AERA](http://www.aera.net/Default.aspx?id=5348), but also a great
opportunity to break down some walls and learn about what other
departments and divisions are doing. Before I even enrolled at OISE, I
went to one of these conferences, and it gave me a great overview of the
kind of research conducted at OISE, gave me contacts among some students
doing interesting research, and was overall a great experience.

This year, I wanted to see if we could put together a panel on open
education, since I keep feeling that OISE as one of the world's premier
institutions conducting research on education ought to be more aware of
this growing trend. We ended up with a great panel, featuring three
presentations on open education, and one about institutional university
networks and cooperation. I put the two presentations I were involved in
on Slideshare, and linked to them below. Note that the audio is quite
poor, since I was recording with Audacity and my laptop's built-in mic.

In general, I found the presentation format challenging, because the
audience had no experience with open education. Thus, I was torn between
providing a general introduction to open education, and presenting my
cutting-edge research or ideas - all in 15 minutes (luckily we had three
presentations that could build on each other). It's good practice
though, to try to boil messages down and still make them comprehensible
and compelling.

[Kirk
Perris](http://cide.oise.utoronto.ca/people/profile_expanded.php?sID=4135),
who is writing his PhD on the open universities in India and China,
invited me to present with him on open education in China and India:

[Open Educational Resources in India and China: Reshaping Periphery and
Core?](http://www.slideshare.net/houshuang/open-educational-resources-in-india-and-china-reshaping-periphery-and-core?type=powerpoint "Open Educational Resources in India and China: Reshaping Periphery and Core?")

And I gave a presentation outlining some of my thoughts on evaluation
and accreditation of open education. I lent heavily from the work of
[Christine Geith](http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Cgeith) and [Philipp
Schmidt](http://www.merit.unu.edu/about/profile.php?id=577), but I also
began to think about how one would approach accreditation from a human
capital theory, or alternatively from what used to be called a
'credentialism' theory:

[A theoretical approach to accreditation of Open
Education](http://www.slideshare.net/houshuang/a-theoretical-approach-to-accreditation-of-open-education?type=presentation "A theoretical approach to accreditation of Open Education")

View more [presentations](http://www.slideshare.net/) from
[houshuang](http://www.slideshare.net/houshuang).

All in all, it was an interesting panel, with some great feedback from
the audience. I hope that this, and similar events, will help raise the
awareness of open education at OISE, and lead to more researchers and
graduate students wanting to do research on it, and perhaps also
participate in the movement.

Stian