Image by OEGlobal CC-BY

OEGlobal Announces New Board of Directors Leadership

The Open Education Global (OEGlobal) Board of Directors is pleased to announce the election of a new President, Vice President, and Treasurer to the Board of Directors on September 1st, 2023.

The changes to the OEGlobal Board Office Bearers include:

Connie will serve as Vice President of the Board along with Lisa Young, who was voted Vice President of the Board in January 2023.

At the same time, Cathy Casserly (USA) and Martin Dougiamas (Australia) were re-appointed as Board Members.

The OEG Board of Directors would also like to sincerely thank Lena Patterson (Canada) and Willem van Valkenburg (The Netherlands) for their service as President and Past President of the Board, respectively.

Lena Patterson served as President of the OEG Board of Directors from 2021 until 2023 and will continue her involvement with OEGlobal as the Past President of the Board until 2024.

Willem van Valkenburg has served on the OEG Board of Directors since 2013. From 2019-2021, Willem served as President of the Board of Directors. He completed his term as the Past President of the Board in 2023.

Meet the newly appointed Board Members

Perrine de Coëtlogon (France) works on Open Education and Digital Identity at the Directorate for Pedagogical Innovation of the University of Lille. She represents the French authorities in the European Blockchain Partnership and leads a public transformation project to gather an eWallet diploma and micro-credentials. She is also in charge of developing open education activities and policies. She has participated in OEGlobal since 2016, when she co-hosted the Open Education Leadership Summit in Paris. She has been a board member of OEGlobal since 2020 when she launched the OEGlobal Francophone online conference and network.

Perrine holds a Master of Law from the University of Paris Saclay (France) and an LLM from the University of Potsdam (Germany). She was a lawyer at the Paris Bar from 2002 to 2009 and the General Secretary of a public interest grouping promoting open education resources in health and sports sciences from 2009 to 2015. Perrine was then a digital expert (Europe and International) at the Ministry for Higher Education, Research and Innovation from 2015 to 2018. She joined the University of Lille in 2018 on Blockchain and Open Education.

“We look forward to advancing the vision and mission of Open Education Global (OEG). Adopting a collaborative approach, we will work with the OEG Board members, staff, members and partners to accelerate mainstreaming of Open Education within education systems worldwide. We strongly believe in the power of Open Education to transform education practices and address pressing societal challenges.”

Perrine, Connie, Lisa and Marian
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Constance Blomgren (Canada) is an Assistant Professor of Education at Athabasca University, Canada’s Open University. Her background as a K-12 teacher in rural, remote, and northern Canadian locations now informs her research and interest in open educational resources and open pedagogy for K-12 teachers and learners. She curates the BOLT Multi-author blog that houses videos and podcasts regarding open pedagogy and OER for K-12. Her research on strengthening K-12 teacher awareness and using OER and open practices was published in IRRODL and Open Praxis. Connie is interested in visual and multi-literacies, participatory technologies, teacher-professional learning, and open pedagogy.

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Hsu-Tien (Marian) Wan (Taiwan) is the Associate Dean of the Office of Information Technology at Taipei Medical University (TMU). In 2017, she founded the Digital Initiative Center at the College of Interdisciplinary Studies at TMU, whose vision is to promote the best practices of OER, e-learning, and MOOCs. Marian holds a Master of Computer Science and a Bachelor of Pharmacy.

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Cathy Casserly (USA) is the founder and president of Casserly Consulting & Coaching. She is an experienced leader and a focused strategist who challenges entrenched thinking and positions individuals and organizations for accelerated performance. Her work spans the U.S. and international arenas and involves consulting partnerships and executive coaching with philanthropic, nonprofit, corporate, startup, and learning organizations.

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Martin Dougiamas (Australia) founded the open-source Moodle LMS (used by over 60% of all higher education in the world). Martin has a mixed academic background with multiple post-graduate degrees in Computer Science and Education and two honorary doctorates (from Spain and Belgium). He continues to focus on researching how technology can support teaching and learning in open and human ways, primarily when it supports the UN’s sustainable development goals.

“Congratulations to the newly elected office-bearers and re-appointed board members. The diversity of experiences and expertise embodied in the Open Education Global (OEG) Board of Directors is remarkable. We look forward to working with the OEG Board, staff, members and the open communities on the implementation of OEG’s strategic plan to ensure mainstreaming of Open Education Practices worldwide.”

Marcela and Igor, Interim Co-Executive Directors

OEG Voices – Latest Podcasts

OE Global Voices

Welcome to the home of podcasts produced by Open Education Global. These shows bring you insight and connection to the application of open education practices from around the world. Listen at podcast.oeglobal.org

OEG Voices 074: Tony Bates and A Personal History of Open Education

Join us for a wide ranging conversation with Tony Bates covering his long and on ongoing span of being active in open and distance education. We start from his being part of the very first days of the Open University through his years based in Canada but working globally being integral to the development of online learning through the web. He has long been publishing open textbooks and sharing his perspectives on his own website. We go right up to present day where Tony is active in exploring the role of artificial intelligence.

We were inspired to have these conversation having seen where Tony has been publishing on his blog his “personal history” now up to it’s 26th installment:

I am writing an autobiography, mainly for my family, but it does cover some key moments in the development of open and online learning. I thought I would share these as there seems to be a growing interest in the history of educational technology.

Note that these posts are NOT meant to be deeply researched historical accounts, but how I saw and encountered developments in my personal life.

Tony Bates blog

In the OEGlobal Voices studio with Tony Bates (left) and Alan Levine (right)

Listen in for Tony’s insightful energy, critical perspective, and humor as well as his lived stories of experience through a long era of online and open education. Plus, you will find a surprising bit of extra history on how he might have influenced some other students he knew in primary school who went on to be famous.

In This Episode

FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by AI Actions in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.

Podcast Show Notes: OE Global Voices Episode 74: Tony Bates

In this enlightening episode of OE Global Voices, host Alan Levine is joined by the remarkable Dr. Tony Bates, an influential figure in the realm of open education.

Episode Highlights:

  • Introduction to Tony Bates: Discover the journey of a legend in open education, from his beginnings in England to key contributions at the Open University and beyond.
  • Open Education Insight: Tony discusses the limitations and potential of open education resources today, sharing insights rooted in his extensive experience.
  • Founding of the Open University: Gain behind-the-scenes knowledge of how the Open University was envisioned and established, expanding access to higher education with innovative methods such as integrating print, radio, and TV.
  • Role in Online Learning: Learn about Tony’s pioneering role in developing online learning approaches and his transition from traditional educational systems to digital landscapes.
  • Publishing and Open Resources: Tony candidly shares why he embraced open publishing, emphasizing accessibility and the benefits of keeping educational resources current.
  • Reflections on Artificial Intelligence: Tony offers a balanced view of AI’s potential and risks, particularly concerning big tech companies’ influence.

About Tony Bates:
Tony Bates has been a transformative presence in education, contributing through teaching, leadership, research, and writing. He’s known for his candid take on the state of education, often sharing personal anecdotes from his storied career.

Get Engaged:
Listen as Tony Bates reflects on a career filled with innovation, humor, and lasting impact. Follow up on our discussions about educational technology and AI.

This episode is accompanied by the musical track “Distance” by Anitek, fittingly chosen to reflect the expansive themes of Tony’s work. Visit OEGlobal Voices for more episodes and join our community discussions at OEG Connect.

Don’t miss this journey through impactful education landscapes with Tony Bates. Subscribe and engage with us for future insights and conversations.

(end of AI generated show notes)

Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 74

What happened was that I actually saw the internet for the first time in Vancouver when I was visiting a friend. I thought this is the best way to use computers in education, not this, programmed learning stuff, which I didn’t really like because it wasn’t in my view, achieving the higher level cognitive skills that you’d want from university students. It’s all about memorization and so on.

So I thought, yes, we can use computers for communication between students and between students and instructors, that’s great. And a colleague, Tony Kay and I we tried this out on a social science second level course called DT 200.

Tony Bates on early vision for online education

From very interesting things like audio, we found that generally, you know, this is a generalization, doesn’t apply to everybody. But most people that we researched found audio more personal, that they felt they got closer to the lecturer through listening to an audio, a radio broadcaster or an audio cassette. The other thing was that we found that cassettes, actually changed the design principles because students could stop and start. You could build that into the design of a cassette. And then the learning effectiveness went right up.

We had a perfect laboratory situation where we had exactly the same program in audio and radio and exactly the same as a recording. Then we could look at what students learn as a result. We could then change the design of the cassettes and see what happened then and look at the results. Because we had such large numbers of students, we got very statistically significant results.

Tony Bates on early research on use of audio for learning

My take on it, I’m fairly pessimistic. Mainly because my real concern these days is about the power of the big tech companies. I fear it will be taken over by the big tech companies. We’ll see their share prices and stocks go up and the money will go to the venture capitalists. And we’ll all be worse off as a result.

That’s the negative part about it. Now on the positive side, I think yes, in medical research, in legal affairs, it will be very good. I met a colleague, a good friend of mine actually, who’s trying to do research on whether AI can actually improve on the instructional design process.

Tony Bates on Artificial Intelligence

We are counting on more blog posts from you, Tony!


Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called Distance by Anitek licensed under a Creative CommonsAttribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

This was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast. This is part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our showsWe have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descriptbut our posts remain human authored unless indicated otherwise.