Open Education Talks 2026
A series of lightning talks focused on open education in post-secondary institutions co-hosted by the University of Calgary, Thompson Rivers University, Mount Royal University, University of British Columbia and University of Alberta, Canada.
Open Education Talks is a series of 15-minute lightning talks and digital posters about facets of open education. These talks aim to create an accessible, virtual space for conversations about open education. We welcome proposals from educators, students, administrators, librarians, instructional designers, and all other roles related to the design, delivery, and evaluation of open education in post-secondary institutions. We encourage student-led or partnered talks that showcase the critical role of student leadership and student-educator collaborations in open education.
Register to attend the 2026 Open Education Talks!
Talk Presentation Schedule and Format:
Five presentations will be featured every Wednesday in March 2026, totaling 20 presentations over four weeks. Each week will focus on a different theme, and each session will include consecutive 15 minute lightning talks, followed by a collective Q&A session. All sessions will be hosted online via Zoom. These sessions are not recorded.
A digital poster wall will be available on the our OE Talks website throughout and following the talks.
Talks Schedule: Every Wednesday in March 2026 from 12:00 PM MT to 1:30 PM Mountain Time
Crafting Magic, Conjuring Open Practices
Wednesday 4th March 2026 from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM UTC / GMT
“Ecologic” in the context of open education is approached here as a complex metaphor that, at very least, blends “oikos”, “ology”, “open” and “education”. Distinct metaphorical blends offer a myriad of ways of interconnecting open education and its milieus. Such metaphorical blends are forms of syntactical magic (“spellcasting”) that generate their own grammar (grimoire).
Bio-cultural metaphors are thus agents of biophillic organisation – they conjure open relations and situate actions. I want to focus on two “eco”-metaphors that describe open educational practices (OEPs) that I adapt when teaching art: “conceptual blending” and “jootsing”.
I will ask two key questions in relation to these approaches :
Q. What sort of enabling constraints (building-blocks) might blending and jootsing conjure, and which actions do they situate?
Q. How do eco-OEPs that incorporate blending and jootsing support the co-creation of open educational resources and practices in the domain of contemporary art?
Situating blending and jootsing in relation to more salient eco-educational metaphors – such as “shallow” and “deep” ecology, biophillia, (dis)enchantment, magical relations, technic, and panarchy – broaches how we conjure new boundary rationalisations, identifications and open organisational forms. At the same time, it reveals how engaging students directly in tricksterish practices of blending and jootsing leads to the co-creation of open practices and resources.
