The National Forum's Seminar Series I’ve always been a big fan of the National Forum’s Seminar Series. The events bring like-minded people together, focus on a topic of interest and sometimes engage with guest speakers. I have attended several, while was fortunate to be part of a team who delivered one also. I’ve been to a few seminars this year, always coming away from each more informed, or wiser in some way. However this one was different (in a good way!). In recent weeks, I had my eyes on one of the seminars entitled “Visual Thinkery: Simple Techniques to Improve Visuals in TEL”. However, with my schedule, I wasn’t sure if I could make it. The day before, I made the decision to register. I’ve since mentioned numerous times how much I enjoyed it. It was insightful, engaging, active and most importantly…fun! "Visual Thinkery: Simple Techniques to Improve Visuals in TEL" The session was hosted by Waterford Institute of Technology, by Hazel Farrell and Ken McCarthy, while the invited speaker was Bryan Mathers (@BryanMMathers) (of ‘VisualThinkery.com’). In advance, we were instructed to bring a pencil, pen, A4 page and a scissors – I haven’t been asked that for several years! After raiding my children’s stationary box, I joined the meeting. Bryan Mathers engaged us all with some a very creative icebreaker, where participants could remix and share messages of what means hope to them. Bryan then brought took us through a slideshow – an extremely visual one that captured everyone’s attention. Immediately, you learned about Bryan’s abilities and his talent. He listens carefully to conversations, in order to create visual representations – also bringing in humour and expressive characters to support the messages. Listening is key. He showed us examples of his work, tools that can support working in this space as well as providing an insight in to his process associated. Then the fun began…. We were split in to breakout rooms…with about five people in each. I was very fortunate that Bryan was also in my group. We each sketched and did a bit of a ‘show and tell’ slightly mortified at our initial efforts. Once we had started drawing, I did feel things became easier, our confidence grew. I mentioned a few thoughts I had as part of our breakout’s discussion – the reason I mention this will now become clearer! Once the breakout session was complete and we returned to the main room, I switched off my camera. With my apple airpods in my ears, I went downstairs as my young son had a zoom call with his class and I wanted to get that set up while still listening. I could hear Bryan discuss the breakout room he was in and how he found it interesting to hear the group’s thoughts. Then it happened. “Ronan, would you like to come off camera and mention what you said in the breakout room?” asked Bryan. So….there I was…..in the kitchen listening to this in my ear, with my son beside me. Over the course of a few milliseconds….I raced upstairs, in to the office, threw myself in to the desk chair, switched on the camera and came of mute – before I then mentioned my thoughts from the activity. I was probably out of breath! (I did get the school zoom call going after that!). Before our break, Bryan showed us how to create a fictitious persona, with such incredible detail. We learned about a lot about “Sorcha”, her background, her needs, her wants – this persona would shape our next activity! Following our break, where we were remixing postcards for fun!, Bryan showed us how to make a mindmap of what we would say to that individual person based on the persona developed. Fascinating to see him work (he had a visualiser so we could see him sketch everything in real time). Further breakouts allowed us to create our own persona and mindmap – pressure for us all – and also the wonder if our created personas were a reflection of ourselves in some way!!! Just what would a psychologist think of us considering our creations?! There was no talking in my breakout room – this wasn’t specified, it just happened as people were really committed to the task at hand! We returned to the main room having barely spoken a word! We were then treated, again via Bryan’s work under the visualiser, to what a ‘zine’ is and how we could create one. Bryan took us through making a zine from start to finish, all based around the fictitious persona he had created. Then, it was our turn (here’s where the paper and scissors came in to play). Again we returned to our breakout room for 10 minutes this time. Silence again. We were concentrating purely on making our zine, considering the wording while also trying to consider images of to sketch around the theme of each page. In the end we did it. In about twenty minutes, we were able to create a persona, develop a mindmap and create our own individual and unique zine! Incredible. So how did I feel as the session concluded?
How did it help me?
Uploading an OER by Ronan Bree is licensed under CC BY-ND. (see I am following on from my last post, and getting more familiar with open licensing!) So there you have it! A morning of both professional (and personal) development, which I so glad I was able to attend. Thanks to the National Forum for supporting the organisers to host this event and also to Bryan Mathers for an enlightening morning. You can view more of Bryan’s work online at ‘VisualThinkery.com and can follow him on Twitter @BryanMMathers) - you won’t regret it. Below you can see my mindmap around someone who wants to develop and upload an open education resource (OER). Here I was also trying to capture what I might need to tell them. This acted as a template for the image you viewed above that brought it all together visually! But it's nice to see the thought process and working behind my final product, hence why I included it below. UPDATE [November 2021]:
See Bryan in action below. This is a recent recording of his TEDx talk held in Galway in November 2021 I have a background in science research, a field where work you are focused on developing or discovering a novel finding or understanding. It’s exciting when this happens, an amazing feeling when months or years of work on a certain project accumulate to become a novel finding, and something potentially publishable. As soon as this occurs (and it’s worth pointing out, there is never a guarantee it will), your goal becomes to try and publish as soon as possible so as not to get “scooped” by another lab. The concept of another lab many miles away working on the same protein, or even possibly the same exact region of the same protein, may sound impossible, but I’ve seen it happen on more than a few occasions. Hence, it is not abnormal for many to keep their cards close to their chest with regard to recent exciting results coming out the lab, speaking in more general terms about their work. Meanwhile, researcher presentations at International conferences regularly centre on research that has already been completed, with the paper already accepted at a journal, but perhaps the issue would not yet be released. Hence, with no fear of being ‘scooped’ at this point, you can be more open and the conference can provide an ideal avenue to present and potentially build collaborations. You need to earn the trust of another laboratory in order to collaborate, and once this occurs, you can reap the benefits of openly sharing ideas, exchange visits, different viewpoints, access to new equipment and so on. I’ve been fortunate to have been involved in several fruitful international collaborations that all yielded opportunities and outputs, so I have witnessed the benefit of openly sharing in situations like this. When it comes to publishing your work, the aim is often for a journal with as high an ‘impact factor’ as possible. Many of these journals can exist behind paywalls, requiring paid subscriptions, sometimes covered by your institution. I can clearly remember during my postgrad hearing about PLOS, the Public Library of Science initiative, a concept around making science open access to ensure research findings were free to all, available to everyone. It was big news, and gathered a lot of attention. In fact, 34,000 scientists from 180 countries signed the founders’ (Harold Varmus, Patrick Brown and Michael Eisen) open letter back in 2000 about PLOS. In 2003, ‘PLOS Biology’ went on to publish its first article – and it had 500,000 visitors….within a few hours of publishing! It has since grown from strength to strength and added new discipline specific journals and applies a CC-BY attribution license to everything it publishes. In fact, now, it even offers to share aspects of the peer-review process, with author and reviewer permission. In Teaching and Learning, I have become much more aware of openness on many levels. Sharing practice, resources and research openly is important for everyone’s success. There are so many people currently doubling up on efforts, and there is potential to ensure that knowledge is freely accessible and available to all. Even when you think of science research above, it would be great to have your work read by as wide an audience as possible, however the impact factor league table will always play a role here, especially as it may impact future funding opportunities. In T&L, there is a global movement towards ‘open’, but a change in mindsets and practice can take time. In fact many conferences at national and European levels can be focused primarily on open education, with guest speakers from other parts of the world ‘zoom’ing in to inform, guide and support this concept. Since its establishment in 2009, Ireland’s All Ireland Journal of Higher Education (AISHE-J) has always been an open access journal, ensuring that all research, reflections and developments in the space are free to all, immediately following publication. Across Ireland, the National Forum's has prioritised open education. You can read more about this on the National Forum's site linked here with guides, toolkits and webinars available. So from reading this piece, you may have gained an insight to the science world, one that is often guarded to protect discovery and potential intellectual property, and the changes that have occurred around open research publications such as that outlined with PLoS and its many associated journals. Personally, I feel that I’m currently navigating through a more broad transition to open, and as every week passes and I reflect on my meetings, my notes (I’m a notetaker!), conversations and webinars, I am noticing the word ‘open’ has been popping up more and more ovr time. I look forward to developing this open approach more in the coming weeks, be it around open education practice, open education research and open education resources. |
Ronan BreeEducation Developer,Science Lecturer, Archives
March 2023
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Any opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer.
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