An online Adobe Connect conference (https://augradconference.athabascau.ca) hosted in Alberta on Sat., Oct. 28, 2017 (started at 9:00 am MST), was an extensive mixture of keynote speakers, paper, and poster presentations. In my opinion this was really excellent example of distance education in action.

However, my spirit dropped when I heard at the end of the conference wrap-up that next year it would return to a typical conference where you physically show up.  Breaking boundaries, was short lived. Logically distance education is about being at a distance, not face to face.  The Adobe conference attendance was paradoxically (ironical?) far less than the AU population that could have attended, not unlike attrition rates in MOOCs (but I digress).

There were only two presentations from the EdD program and one from MEd. I hope there were many more that submitted abstracts than what I saw in the program.

I admit to doing a presentation for the reasons of promoting http://epub-fhd.athabascau.ca/ and OER philosophy. I am not sure if I succeeded in impressing the conference audience with the point that epub-fhd.athabascau.ca is a remarkable project externally developed with internal AU patrons…a win win situation for all stakeholders - especially students. Other provinces recognized the value of open e-publishing but Alberta seems to be out to meetings?

Anyway, it has been many months since my last confessional, and I pray that the Landing lords will forgive my rant de jour.

Amen.
s.