Next Steps

Paul’s Shoes Getting Ready for Next Steps

As I write this it has been twelve months since I kicked off a leader succession planning process with the Open Education Global Board of Directors. What a journey it has been. Special thanks to the OEGlobal Board and staff for joining me in pursuing an action based agenda instead of going into a holding pattern. I’m super proud of all the things we’ve done this year and over the five year duration of my tenure.

I'm thrilled to welcome Andreia Inamorato dos Santos as the next Executive Director of Open Education Global. Big congratulations from me. I’m pleased to hand off a high performing Open Education Global and its amazing team of people to her and vow to help her be successful in every way I can. 

I have been getting questions about what I’m up to next so I thought I’d share a few of the things I’ve been thinking about.

Andreia starts part time in mid November, transitioning to full time at the start of December. I continue my current role as Executive Director of Open Education Global through to the end of Dec-2022. I like the overlap period between Andreia's start and my departure as it gives us time for onboarding, smooth hand-off, and support. A gradual transition rather than an abrupt one. Through to the end of December I'll be focused on that. 

Starting Jan-2023 I transition to being an independent consultant here at paulstacey.global. The .global domain is an upfront expression of my continued interest in working globally. 

I started paulstacey.global as a place where I could iterate a calling card, represent my work, and think out loud about what I'll do next. My thoughts are still evolving but here is where I’m at right now. 

I intend to continue working in open education. In particular I’d like to work with senior executives who are planning and implementing open education initiatives. Open education has largely been a grassroots movement so far. Now that open education has proven its value and benefits I’m looking to help policy makers and senior leaders add their support through policy, strategy, partnerships and sustainable funding. The open education ecosystem will thrive when top down support meets bottom up adoption.

Much of open education to date has been done as projects. I'd like to work on large scale open efforts. Efforts that position open at the centre of an endeavour not on the periphery. Efforts that seek to transform education.

I'd like to work on initiatives that weave together different forms of open into an overarching strategy. Open Educational Resources, Open Pedagogy, Open Access, Open Data, Open Science, Open GLAM, and Open Infrastructure all share a similar set of underlying principles. I believe there is value in strategically combining them and think their sum as a whole is greater than that of the parts.

Open education is multi-faceted involving things like open licenses, enabling technologies, and special practices. I’d like to continue to work on all of those including emerging work around Artificial Intelligence, micro-credentials, repositories, open pedagogies and other innovations.  But I especially want to work on the people side of open education. I want to ensure the motivations, recognition and rewards of being open are fully recognized and enabled. I want to work on helping make collaborations, partnerships and knowledge exchange really happen. I want to continue to build open communities and global networks that connect people together.  I want to work on making open education inclusive, accessible, and adaptable in ways that empower teachers and learners.

While my focus will continue to be around open education a lot of my recent thoughts include doing work outside of education.

I like the growing awareness of the benefits of digital public goods. Open education is a form of digital public good. But there are lots of other things that could be open digital public goods too. I’d like to work on initiatives that are intentionally aiming to generate open digital public goods that not only have local and regional value but global value too.

I'd like to work on defining and communicating the economic and social benefits of open. Some years ago I co-wrote a book called “Made With Creative Commons” exploring the many ways organizations across multiple sectors successfully go open while sustaining and growing their enterprise. I’d like to build off and extend that work with the aim of showing value co-creation as a primary means open generates value, not just financial value but value for humanity.

I have lots of ideas about what I want to do next. I look forward to next steps on my journey with Open Education Global and with all of you who seek my help. Feel free to reach out to me by email paul@paulstacey.global or via Contact.