Thank you and best wishes - my journey continues!

[Krysta]

Hello ABOER friends! 

I'm writing with some news to share. I have decided to leave the University of Alberta and return to management consulting (my new role starts on June 13). After eight years working in open education, it's time for a change! I am incredibly grateful for the relationships I have built, the experiences shared, and the many many lessons I learned. The open education community is so unique and beautiful. It has been a life changing experience that I will take with me in my future work and in who I am as a person. I deeply appreciate the work being done by this community from advocacy to the licensing choices you make on your publications. The shift in awareness and interest I have observed among instructors and post-secondary administrators over the last eight years is substantial. 

I thought it was timely to share how I got into OE, because I want to inspire others who think they need to be (x) to do this work. 

I discovered open education while doing some work for the Faculty of Education. I saw the term and said "that looks cool, can I sit in on that meeting for free?". That was the first steering committee meeting for the Campus Alberta Open Education Resources grant. I was blown away, surrounded by advocates and teachers who had a vision for OE in our province. I learned a lot working on the ABOER program from every person on that committee, from my colleagues at the UofA Faculty of Education, and most of all from the grant recipients. What an incredible opportunity to be surrounded by educators advocating for change and discovering open education as it unfolded before me in the form of grant applications. Even the simple task of collecting updates from grant recipients became the funnest part of my day because these open educators were so connected to the vision of how OER would benefit their students' learning, public access to knowledge, and/or other instructor's teaching practices. 

I remember Todd Nickle, who is no longer with us, and his readiness to provide a project update written and verbally so I could ask questions and get excited about the project with him. :) 

After working on the ABOER program I was fortunate enough to be asked by the UofA to launch a grant program within their Centre for Teaching and Learning and expand the conversation of services and capacity for OE across campus. Thanks to the support of UofA's dedicated librarians, the library partnered with CTL to offer me a full time role. Eventually institutional support expanded to the point where my role was 100% in CTL and there were dedicated OER services in the Library, too. My role at UofA has allowed me to work with instructors and students on designing open pedagogies and community collaborations while witnessing the launch of a provincial OER publishing program (OEA) and numerous community-driven events to learn and collaborate, together. Of course, we always dream for the next big thing, but OE sure has matured in Alberta since 2014! 

The moral of the story is, I am not a librarian, a post-secondary instructor, an educational developer, or an instructional designer. At times it was difficult to make sense of where I fit. The times I made progress and saw results were the times where I ignored roles and organizational charts and simply spoke with people who knew other people who knew other people who do the work. 

I have made many connections and friends through my time working in open education, and I'm sure I'll dip in here and there. This is part of who I am now, no matter what job I am doing. Thank you to everyone for the important work you do to support open education. Please don't hesitate to reach out, anytime, if I can ever be of support to you. Even a simple "do you know someone who does this" is still welcome in my inbox. 

Take care, be well, and stay open! 

Krysta McNutt