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OEGlobal Announces New Board of Directors Leadership

The Open Education Global (OEGlobal) Board of Directors is pleased to announce the election of a new President, Vice President, and Treasurer to the Board of Directors on September 1st, 2023.

The changes to the OEGlobal Board Office Bearers include:

Connie will serve as Vice President of the Board along with Lisa Young, who was voted Vice President of the Board in January 2023.

At the same time, Cathy Casserly (USA) and Martin Dougiamas (Australia) were re-appointed as Board Members.

The OEG Board of Directors would also like to sincerely thank Lena Patterson (Canada) and Willem van Valkenburg (The Netherlands) for their service as President and Past President of the Board, respectively.

Lena Patterson served as President of the OEG Board of Directors from 2021 until 2023 and will continue her involvement with OEGlobal as the Past President of the Board until 2024.

Willem van Valkenburg has served on the OEG Board of Directors since 2013. From 2019-2021, Willem served as President of the Board of Directors. He completed his term as the Past President of the Board in 2023.

Meet the newly appointed Board Members

Perrine de Coëtlogon (France) works on Open Education and Digital Identity at the Directorate for Pedagogical Innovation of the University of Lille. She represents the French authorities in the European Blockchain Partnership and leads a public transformation project to gather an eWallet diploma and micro-credentials. She is also in charge of developing open education activities and policies. She has participated in OEGlobal since 2016, when she co-hosted the Open Education Leadership Summit in Paris. She has been a board member of OEGlobal since 2020 when she launched the OEGlobal Francophone online conference and network.

Perrine holds a Master of Law from the University of Paris Saclay (France) and an LLM from the University of Potsdam (Germany). She was a lawyer at the Paris Bar from 2002 to 2009 and the General Secretary of a public interest grouping promoting open education resources in health and sports sciences from 2009 to 2015. Perrine was then a digital expert (Europe and International) at the Ministry for Higher Education, Research and Innovation from 2015 to 2018. She joined the University of Lille in 2018 on Blockchain and Open Education.

“We look forward to advancing the vision and mission of Open Education Global (OEG). Adopting a collaborative approach, we will work with the OEG Board members, staff, members and partners to accelerate mainstreaming of Open Education within education systems worldwide. We strongly believe in the power of Open Education to transform education practices and address pressing societal challenges.”

Perrine, Connie, Lisa and Marian
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Constance Blomgren (Canada) is an Assistant Professor of Education at Athabasca University, Canada’s Open University. Her background as a K-12 teacher in rural, remote, and northern Canadian locations now informs her research and interest in open educational resources and open pedagogy for K-12 teachers and learners. She curates the BOLT Multi-author blog that houses videos and podcasts regarding open pedagogy and OER for K-12. Her research on strengthening K-12 teacher awareness and using OER and open practices was published in IRRODL and Open Praxis. Connie is interested in visual and multi-literacies, participatory technologies, teacher-professional learning, and open pedagogy.

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Hsu-Tien (Marian) Wan (Taiwan) is the Associate Dean of the Office of Information Technology at Taipei Medical University (TMU). In 2017, she founded the Digital Initiative Center at the College of Interdisciplinary Studies at TMU, whose vision is to promote the best practices of OER, e-learning, and MOOCs. Marian holds a Master of Computer Science and a Bachelor of Pharmacy.

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Cathy Casserly (USA) is the founder and president of Casserly Consulting & Coaching. She is an experienced leader and a focused strategist who challenges entrenched thinking and positions individuals and organizations for accelerated performance. Her work spans the U.S. and international arenas and involves consulting partnerships and executive coaching with philanthropic, nonprofit, corporate, startup, and learning organizations.

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Martin Dougiamas (Australia) founded the open-source Moodle LMS (used by over 60% of all higher education in the world). Martin has a mixed academic background with multiple post-graduate degrees in Computer Science and Education and two honorary doctorates (from Spain and Belgium). He continues to focus on researching how technology can support teaching and learning in open and human ways, primarily when it supports the UN’s sustainable development goals.

“Congratulations to the newly elected office-bearers and re-appointed board members. The diversity of experiences and expertise embodied in the Open Education Global (OEG) Board of Directors is remarkable. We look forward to working with the OEG Board, staff, members and the open communities on the implementation of OEG’s strategic plan to ensure mainstreaming of Open Education Practices worldwide.”

Marcela and Igor, Interim Co-Executive Directors

OEG Voices – Latest Podcasts

OE Global Voices

Welcome to the home of podcasts produced by Open Education Global. These shows bring you insight and connection to the application of open education practices from around the world. Listen at podcast.oeglobal.org

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OE Global Voices
OEG Voices 078: Significant Impact OER Award Winner Frontiers for Young Minds
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OEG Voices 078: Significant Impact OER Award Winner Frontiers for Young Minds

Put this episode of OE Global Voices on your “Must Listen List” and be prepared for waves of inspiration and awe for Frontiers for Young Minds, an outstanding project that publishes on the order of 250 papers a year on complex areas of science. But more importantly, these papers are written for kids and reviewed by kids in a process that, when you hear it, will make it clear why Frontiers for Young Minds was recognized with a 2024 Open Education Award for Excellence in the Significant Impact category.

Frontiers for Young Minds https://kids.frontiersin.org/

Frontiers for Young Minds believes that the best way to make cutting-edge science discoveries available to younger audiences is to enable young people and scientists to work together to create articles that are both top quality and exciting.

Distinguished scientists are invited to write about their discoveries in a language that is accessible for young readers, and it is then up to the kids themselves – with the help of a science mentor – to provide feedback and explain to the authors how to best improve the articles before publication.

This unique process produces a collection of freely available scientific articles by leading scientists, shaped for younger audiences by the input of their own young peers.

https://kids.frontiersin.org/about/journal/

In this episode we will learn more about the journal and its publishing process, but also dive into an example of how a paper on the science of secrets was drafted by clinical psychologists at Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands), reviewed by kids in the Science Club at Disley Primary School (United Kingdom) mentored by neuroscientist Caroline Lea-Carnall at the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) and then published in the Frontiers for Young Minds journal as Shhh! What Are Secrets and How Do They Affect Us?

In the podcast recording studio with top row, left to right) Laura Henderson and Hedwig Ens (Frontiers for Young Minds) and bottom row,Caroline Lea-Carnall (University of Manchester), Ildikó Csizmazia and Minita Franzen (Erasmus University Rotterdam).

In This Episode

FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by the AI “Underlord” in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.

In this episode of OE Global Voices, host Alan Levine delves into the inspirational story behind the award-winning project, “Frontiers for Young Minds,” which uniquely involves children in the peer-review process of scientific articles aimed at young readers. Alan engages with key figures including Laura Henderson, head of the program, along with contributors and reviewers Caroline Lea-Carnall, Hedwig Ens, Ildikó Csizmazia, and Minita Franzen. They discuss the project’s origins, its mission to make complex scientific concepts accessible and engaging for kids, and the enriching experience it provides for both young reviewers and established scientists. The conversation highlights the project’s significant impact on science communication and education, celebrating its collaborative spirit and success in fostering a new generation of science enthusiasts.

  • Intro Music, Opening Quotes, and Welcome
  • Meet the Guests: Laura Henderson and Team
  • The Origin Story of Frontiers for Young Minds
  • The Review Process: Kids as Gatekeepers
  • The Impact of the Project on Kids and Scientists
  • Future Plans and Closing Remarks

(end of AI generated show notes)

Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 78

 It was very interesting to see their thinking was about the whole idea. There were places where we [thought] this might be an important part to share, but there is not really much research on that so we cannot say anything.

So I just didn’t [add] anything in the article. And then kids were like, “Okay, but can you tell us something about it? Is there research on it?” I liked that feedback.

They also picked up on the positive things — this made us enthusiastic to continue to incorporate their feedback. And we really thought we are contributing and doing something that younger readers also find very important.

Ildikó Csizmazia on responding to the reviewers

One of the great privileges of our work is that we work with the most engaged, the most passionate people, the researchers, the science mentors, the kids themselves. It’s a kind of self-selecting group who come to be part of what we do. And the real common thread is always that passion and that engagement.

So it gives us energy and thank you to everybody who’s been part of our process, the people here on this call today, so Ildikó, Minita, Caroline, but also all of our authors, science mentors, editors, young reviewers who’ve been part of our process over the years.

We’ve worked with about 900 editors and 9,000 plus young reviewers in 65 countries and however many authors, it’s, an incredible number of authors.

Laura Henderson, Frontiers for Young Minds


Our open licensed music for this episode is a track calledScience Summit by Serge Quadrado licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

Finally, this was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast, part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our showsWe have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descriptbut our posts remain human authored except where indicated otherwise.