14 Taking it One Step at a Time

I want to take a moment to remind everyone that a shift to OERs and co-creation with students can be slow and gradual. You don’t have to change everything about your teaching all at once. You can create one piece of open content, one open experience or one renewable assignment, see how it goes, and then move on from there. Your steps might even look like the ones in this photo, and that’s OK!!!

Embrace “not-yet-ness”

Amy Collier’s concept of “not-yet-ness” also calls on educators and students to “be brave”. Trying things you’ve never tried before, sharing your thoughts and ideas before they are perfectly polished, being open to the diverse thoughts and opinions of others all take courage! We would like to encourage you to be brave, be open and put yourself and your unfinished, unpolished thoughts out there.

“Not-yetness is not satisfying every condition, not fully understanding something, not check-listing everything, not tidying everything, not trying to solve every problem…but creating space for emergence to take us to new and unpredictable places, to help us better understand the problems we are trying to solve.” (Amy Collier, 2015)

Embrace Wabi-Sabi

I know this is quite similar to the concept of not-yet-ness, but I wanted to include it anyway. Our society’s favoring of perfection and completion is a form of rigidity that disenfranchises difference. I have promoted the notion of Wabi-Sabi in learning and in design. Wabi-Sabi is the Japanese aesthetic that values the imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. Incompleteness and imperfection invite participation. Impermanence welcomes change and renewal. We learn far more from failure and mistakes than from success. Appreciating and seeking constructive critique is a rare but powerful skill. Most importantly, potential has far more power than perfection in bringing about positive change.

The Three Dimensions of Inclusive Design: Part Three by The Floe Inclusive Learning Design Handbook is licensed under CC BY 2.5 CA.

Video: The Secret to my productivity

If you have 5 minutes, this video is absolutely worth watching. OERs are constantly changing and evolving, and this approach fits so well!

The Secret to My Productivity on YouTube

OE Lab

We hope that many of you might be getting closer to the stage where you can begin to work with the OE Lab! We are currently working on a readiness checklist so you can determine if your project is at the stage where our talented OE Lab students will be able to support you.