Open Communities and Publications During the Pandemic

Another great session from day 1 of OERxDomains21 was entitled “Open Reading with Your Eyes Shut: Demystifying Foo-Foo the Snoo” presented by Mark Brown. The title was referring to Dr. Seuss, and Brown introduced the challenge of having so many open access journals and filtering resources for reliability! The National Institute for Digital Learning publishes a list of Top Ten Journal Articles. In 2020, Brown mentioned that their list included 28 authors, 60% men, 5 US-based articles/3 UK/Europe, only 2 articles single-authored. The first articles on the list contributed in-depth literature reviews and “taught us a lesson” and often uncovered “the fresh ideas” that may not be highly cited. In the chat, an attendee asked if the “fresh ideas” were looked for in other languages, and this question made me think! The top article on the “pandemic articles list” was an Educause article that was published early on and provided important tips for instructors. To me it is amazing that the top read was published early on in the pandemic! Returning to the title, Brown asked what we use to filter the literature and what tip would you offer other educators to help them locate the best journals to be reading? These are important questions that are difficult to answer. I probably can’t explain why and how I filter articles/journals… except for saying that I know when I “see it” yet know I have criteria and bias. The language barriers were addressed a little when Brown mentioned that an article on the list was published in a Spanish journal with a well-known co-author. Brown also acknowledged the “academic game” and importance of SCOPUS rankings for academic promotion. Several other questions prompted me to think about what I look for in education articles, my own biases, and what rankings really mean.

Another session from day 1 was entitled “Familiar Faces and Shared Goals: Evaluating the Impact of an Open Community during the COVID-19 Pandemic” presented by Kate Malloy representing a larger group. The Enhancing Digital Teaching and Learning project form Ireland started before the pandemic. The project focused on four pillars: not starting from zero, pedagogy first, discipline focus, and students as partners. I love the pedagogy first and students as partners pillars! The student voice has been included through student interns across different institutions! In February 2020 the #IUADigEd community was launched and focused on web-based conversations. Upon closing of institutions, the project committed to sharing resources on the website and signed the open COVID pledge for education to share webinar resources with the community. One of the campaigns the group launched was to avoid isolation and to have community members share their workspaces, for example. The project grew to about 700 members! Most members identified as teaching/academic roles as well as learning technology and librarians. Malloy mentioned they aligned the webinars to intently create infographics and resources that could be reused and remixed. Malloy also shared feedback on the challenges during the pandemic and how the community helped. Members came together and shared resources. A survey of participants and evaluation of the experience highlighted how the student voice and presence during webinars helped the community focus on student learning experiences. Improvements noted included lunchtime seminars that were conversations for one hour maximum that were not recorded. The strength of the community with the students is what I really took away from this session.

Black man with short hair and beard wearing white t-shirt and holding white tea cup while typing on laptop at wooden desk. Desk has two slices of bread: one with avocado slices and one with red spread.
How do you select open access journals and articles? How can we create open communities of educators during the pandemic? How can we include student voices? Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com