Open Education 2011 - Strength in Diversity

Call for Proposals

Open Education encompasses a wide range of ideas and practices: open educational resources, open learning support, open credentialing, open access, open scholarship, open teaching, and others. Sometimes open education is enacted by a national government or as an institutional initiative, other times an open education practitioner can feel like a lone voice crying in the wilderness. There is terrific diversity in the field of Open Education, and this diversity is one of the field’s greatest sources of strength.

The Open Education 2011 conference brings together people working in this broad diversity of contexts to discuss the state of the art in Open Education and facilitate creative conversations across a wide variety of perspectives.

Open Education 2011 will feature conversations about innovative research and practice in all areas related to open education. This year’s conference strands include:

Open educational resources, opencourseware, and open content
Open tutoring, learning support, and question / answer services
Open credentialing, competency certification, and degrees
Open access and open scholarship
Open teaching and open courses
Innovative technologies supporting open education

Proposals within each strand can cover a range of issues, including: demonstrating the value of openness, providing practical how-to guidance, sharing innovative practices, achieving sustainability, political and policy considerations, evidences of impact, licensing concerns, ethics, and other issues.

Presentation Formats

Proposals for participation in Open Education 2011 should choose one of the following three formats:

Traditional Presentation – A stand-and-deliver talk, with or without slides or other supporting media. This format is appropriate for presenting new research findings and critical updates from high-impact projects. (20 minutes)

Open Science Fair – Poster presentations and demonstrations of software and other tools relevant to open education. This format is appropriate for presentation of initial results from ongoing research, important incremental updates from projects, and gathering feedback on beta software or wild new ideas relevant to open education. (90 minutes)

Questioning Our Assumptions – These sessions begin with the presenter briefly questioning a fundamental assumption of the open education movement. Appropriate questions might include, “Are OER widely reused?”, “Does open access to scholarship increase citation rates?”, “Are high attrition rates in open courses a problem?”, or “Do open textbooks save money?” The remainder of the session is spent with all participants discussing research findings, relevant projects or initiatives, and first-hand experiences relevant to the question. Each QOA proposal must name a notetaker who will produce a detailed summary of the discussion for publication on the conference website. (45 minutes)

Submission Instructions

Submit a tweet-sized abstract (140 characters or less) and a proposal (500 words or less) describing your session by Friday, May 13, 2011 via the online submission system. Acceptance announcements will be made during the week of Monday, June 6, 2011. All presenters are required to register for the conference by September 1, 2011. Presenters who fail to register will have their presentation removed from the program.

A link to the online submission system will be available on this page beginning Monday morning, April 4, 2011.

Optional Session Teaser Video

All presenters with accepted proposals are invited to submit a short video teaser for their session. We encourage presenters to be creative and have fun with the videos. This is your opportunity to convince conference attendees to choose to attend your session instead of the others! Video teasers will be posted on the conference website for viewing before, during, and after the conference.

Licensing

All materials submitted to Open Education 2011 must be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0). By submitting a proposal you agree to license the work you submit to the conference, as well as recordings of your session, under these terms.