What are my hopes?

Releasing my wildlife conservation courses as Open Educational Resources (OER) could increase my impact as a conservation educator. In this post, I further explore my hopes and aspirations. Imagining success helps me to focus my energy on the right steps into open education for me and my startup, VerdantLearn.

What do I hope for? What does success look like? What do I stand to gain?

For me, success would be hundreds of thousands of conservation practitioners able to more effectively conserve and advocate for biodiversity, while feeling more fulfilled and supported in their work. In addition, those recruited to available jobs would be better qualified, and better represent the diversity of people who have a stake in conservation. Ultimately, my grandiose aspiration is that biodiversity and ecosystems are better protected because I release my resources as OER, not just in one small corner of the world, but globally, across cultures, and tackling a wide array of threats to the natural world.

My second aspiration is to build a community around my open resources, of both learners and educators. As I was reminded when listening to a recent episode of the OEG Voices podcast, there is no clear boundary between being a learner and being an educator, especially in open education. We are all learners, and everyone is capable of teaching. Collaborative learning works best when we acknowledge the limits of our understanding, humbly look to others to help us surpass those limits, and share what we know with generosity. As a community of wildlife conservation professionals and technical experts, together we can improve the learning materials and activities, ensuring they make sense and are relevant to all of us. Together we can work to keep them current in response to advances in our understanding of conservation solutions, useful technology, and evolving analytical methods. I’m still figuring out how this devolved responsibility might work, but it gives me hope that once out there, my OER could develop a life and longevity of their own, no longer limited by my time, imagination and expertise!

In my most optimistic moments, I believe that adopting open education will revolutionise my capacity building work, and power the success of my startup. From a self-centered perpsective, it could enhance my reputation and access to partnerships; help me identify co-creators; relieve me of the burden of forever updating courses so I can concentrate on better ways to make a difference, and attract clients to my paid-for services. Commercially-speaking, you could consider OER an extreme form of content marketing, allowing learners to see the knowledge and enthusiasm they would have access to if they decided to do a tutored course with me. I hope to demonstrate that it’s possible to build a commercially successful company whilst releasing learning materials under an open licence. By documenting my thought process and the practical steps I’m taking, maybe others can learn from my actions, decisions, mistakes and achievements.

I hope to succeed, but if I fail, at least it won’t be because I never tried

Tune in next week when I’ll be sharing my fears about diving into open education, and the risks it may entail.