Welcome to “Opening Up Education”. I created this Pressbook as part of my capstone project for the University of British Columbia Program for Open and Scholarly Education. The four-month course has been a real inspiration and is full of amazing information. The course models the open concept by providing the course materials for access at UBC POSE regardless of whether you are registered in the course. If you have a strong interest in this field, I strongly encourage you to look around the course content. I have also included ideas and materials from another excellent open access course, the Ontario Extend Empowered Educator Microcredential, specifically, the Curator module.
The goal of this Pressbook is to share my journey and understanding of the open approach in education to hopefully inspire and build collaborations. It will also be used as the base for an interactive workshop.
So why “open”?
This was a very new concept for when I attended a cohort run out of our college to help complete the Ontario Extend Curator Model. I was hooked! I never realized the amount of information that was available in such an organized manner under Creative Commons (CC) License. In fact, I did not have much know about CC. Moving onto the UBC POSE, the information was in depth and really challenged me to think about my teaching and drew me into thinking about open access and education from a social justice lens. I have much to learn but I am excited to share my “open” with you, the readers and workshop attendees.
Who am I?
I am a passionate educator, writer and entrepreneur.
With a diverse work background, today my focus is on teaching in higher education. My teaching brand is summarized best by my students: a teacher who kind is, patient, organized, effective, passionate, and fun. My teaching metaphor is a gardener tending and facilitating my students to help them on their learning journey, even the pesky ones that challenge us (the weeds).
The picture attached shows a wide variety of flowers to indicate the diversity in the classroom and if you look closely, you will see some weeds.
I teach undergraduate and post graduate communications mainly into business programs. While I have a diverse group of students, a large proportion is international, and I love this student population who bring unique challenges, insights, and experience that makes the classroom so enriched. Having travelled extensively and lived in three different countries, I am comfortable with being a global citizen and educator.
Also, an entrepreneur, I work online, with new immigrants, potential immigrants, and students around the world to pass the IELTS exam or improve their English and with business owners and employees to improve their communication skills. I develop articles and other written materials for companies and am an experienced grant and business plan writer.
When I am not teaching, I can be found in my kitchen trying out new recipes for my blog, 2MumsCook, writing articles for my Tales from the eTrenches blog. gardening, loudly watching Manchester United or just hanging out with my cats.
I can be reached at jsrivastava@conestogac.on.ca
