A Hybrid Model of Media Entrepreneurship Using Open Pedagogy Principles

Michelle Barrett Ferrier, Media Innovation Collaboratory
Geoffrey Graybeal, University of South Carolina

Abstract

This case study examines the use of open pedagogy practices to develop open educational resources and a community of practice around media entrepreneurship and innovation. The case study describes both online and physical space co-creation practices to build a knowledge base to test and revise the open educational resources. One emerging community of practice is developing in Ethiopia using a hybrid modality of face-to-face and digital delivery of the open educational resources. Internet shutdowns and rolling power outages across Ethiopia make development of an independent media sector a challenging one. The goal is to enhance the open education resources for a non-Western, professional context and co-create materials for media innovation in challenging digital environments. The authors adapted their pedagogy to ensure they stayed true to the core principles of open pedagogy: low-cost, low-risk, access to the materials, flattened design to ensure easy downloads of videos or content for offline reading and viewing, and adoption of digital tools that were free or open-source to build our distributed network. Finally, the case study also examines the use of various design practices that help to make visible open pedagogy and group sense-making practices.

Keywords: open pedagogy, journalism, media entrepreneurship, media innovation, community-led media

Suggested citation: Ferrier, M. B., Graybeal, G. (2024). A hybrid model of media entrepreneurship using open pedagogy principles. In T. Tijerina (Ed.), Pedagogy opened: Innovative theory and practice (pp. 128-155). University of North Georgia Press. https://alg.manifoldapp.org/read/pedagogy-opened-v1-a5/.

Introduction

Open pedagogy, according to the editors of this collection, is defined as teaching and learning practices and environments that promote equity, collaboration, and innovation and invite students to create and share knowledge with future publics, often in association with the use of Open Educational Resources (OER). Wiley (2013) defined open pedagogy as a set of teaching and learning practices made possible by free access and the OER 5R characteristics of reuse, redistribute, revise, remix, and retain permissions (Wiley, 2013).

Open educational resources allow students and instructors more control over the educational material, customizing it and sharing it in ways that make sense, as the material from the textbook can be retained, reused, revised, and redistributed. OER allows for customization and localization of resources and material that work for varying teaching styles and hopefully have students perform as well or better than they would have with an off-the-shelf publisher resource (Robinson et al., 2014). Open pedagogy and our OER resources also bring other affordances to our students, such as deeper learning and critical ability to evaluate and defend sources, write more concisely, collaborate with others around the world, provide and receive constructive feedback, enhance digital literacy, and communicate ideas to a general audience (Farazan & Kraut, 2013; Marentette, 2014; Karney, 2012; Ibrahim, 2012; Silton, 2012; and APS, 2013).

OER is also valuable in a dynamic environment such as media and technology to keep the materials current and relevant for our various practitioners. This case study examines the development and use of open educational resources around media innovation and entrepreneurship and communities of practice in a non-Western context. The case study also examines the use of various human-centered design practices that help to make visible open pedagogy and group sense-making practices. Finally, the case study describes both online and physical space practices to build communities of practice in media innovation and entrepreneurship using open-source technologies and co-creation strategies.

Previous research has largely been centered around use in a traditional academic setting, e.g. college courses, and focused on satisfaction of adoption from student and faculty perspectives as well as quality and performance measures. Some studies suggest that OER may indirectly improve student performance through increased satisfaction, engagement, and interest in the subjects (Colvard, Watson & Park, 2018; de los Arcos et al., 2014; Farrow et al., 2015; Pitt, 2015). Colvard, Watson & Park (2018) studied OER use and student ethnic origin and found a statistically significant difference in academic performance between white and non-white students in a university setting.

To help prepare students and professionals for the changing media environment, educators in journalism and communication courses developed and designed digital media and media entrepreneurship courses that were often experiential in nature, bringing venture creation experiences and product development skills to students (Pittaway, et. al. 2017, 2020, 2021). These courses also emphasized design thinking and hands-on development skills—key skills the new digital marketplace was looking for (Graybeal & Ferrier, 2023; Graybeal & Sindik, 2016; Hoag, 2008; Sindik & Graybeal, 2017). Media entrepreneurship education generally integrates traditional entrepreneurial format with media-specific information. Media entrepreneurship courses are designed to introduce students to what it means to be an entrepreneur and create their own company (Ferrier, 2013).

Educators previously cited the lack of teaching resources specific to the media and communication fields around technology, media innovation, and entrepreneurship (Ferrier, 2013), and researchers had been examining community-based physical and virtual practices for creating online communities. Educators created online groups to discuss new courses and skills for journalism and media students in computational journalism, technological innovation, and media entrepreneurship that helped educators with peer-to-peer exchanges on pedagogy and other challenges to teaching the new curricula (Examples: Facebook Disruptive Journalism Educators Network established 2011, the Media Entrepreneurship Facebook Group established 2014, the Journalism Entrepreneurship Facebook groups formed around the Scripps Howard Journalism Entrepreneurship Institute cohorts, and the Journalism That Matters Create or Die May 26, 2011 Facebook group) (Graybeal & Ferrier, 2023).

From these online communities of educators, media entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs, a learning community of more than 25 authors, more than 12 peer reviewers, and 12 faculty beta testers created an open educational resource, Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship, edited by Ferrier and Mays (2017). The modular resource is designed as a workbook, moving students through design thinking to venture creation in a 15-week design sprint. This first “community of practice” developed from the open education and open pedagogy strategies as described in “Free + Freedom: The Role of Open Pedagogy in the Open Education Movement” by Rajiv Jhangiani and Robin DeRosa and included communities, learner-driven education, access, and public contexts (Jhangiani & DeRosa, 2016).

A community of practice (COP) is a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly (Lave and Wenger 1991:98). Cognitive anthropologists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger coined the term “community of practice” when studying apprenticeships as a learning model – the term referred to the community that acts as a living curriculum. Many communities of practice rely on face-to-face meetings as well as web-based collaborative environments to communicate, connect, and conduct community activities (Edmonton Regional Learning Consortium, 2016).

Our initial community of practice snowballed as we reached into our emerging media entrepreneurial landscape and connected with other higher education institutions, business incubators and accelerators, and the larger entrepreneurial ecosystem. Our processes mimicked our co-creation philosophy “Nothing about us without us,” and we invited the voices of entrepreneurs, students, financiers, and others to contribute to the final open textbook. These ever-widening communities of practice ensured that our final product would not only be useful to our initial cohort but also find value beyond the media/journalism classroom in other venture creation programs.

  1. The first community of practice was born from the needs of several journalism educators seeking an accessible and flexible educational resource. The community of practice developed shared syllabi and resources and created an open educational resource: the Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship textbook published by the Rebus Foundation in 2017.
  2. The second community of practice became the beta testers of that open textbook, that is, the journalism educators and faculty members that took the first draft into the classroom. The community met weekly to discuss the upcoming draft chapter with the chapter author and discuss how to assess student learning.
  3. The third community of practice evolved following adoption of the OER, largely through new faculty members adopting the materials on its first release in 2017. There were at least two dozen initial adopters.
  4. The fourth community of practice developed from other specialized programs that appreciated the creation and development framework and open access of the OER and have adapted the resources for graduate, professional, and executive programs.

Within these communities of practice, journalists and educators have been practicing co-creating knowledge using a variety of open technologies for knowledge creation. Our goal was to help journalists, technologists, and educators navigate an ever-changing digital environment and co-create media products and innovations for community news and information needs.

The Development of Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Curriculum

College campuses and institutions of higher education have been building entrepreneurial ecosystems to address venture creation by students from a variety of creative industries. Higher education began to use digital tools to reach students through online and other digital modalities and began to think of how to make these spaces experiential, collaborative, and student-centered. Upheavals in the communications, information, and technology spaces would create shifts in what was taught within journalism and media programs across the United States (Ferrier and Batts, 2016; Ferrier and Mays, 2017). As digital spaces exploded in the early 2000s, more communication and creative industries were finding a need to re-visit their curricular offerings and determine what new emerging industries needed in workforce skills (Ferrier, 2009; Graybeal & Sindik, 2016). Disciplines and degree programs in journalism, business, art, entrepreneurship, music, theater, media, communication, information technologies, and other creative industries began to revisit how to bring access to education to new populations and make higher education more equitable.

Journalism and communication educators were also wrestling with new technologies and their ongoing impact on the work of communicators. Florida educators began curriculum changes in 2006 to address the emerging fields in digital media, interactive content, immersive and augmented media, simulations and other technologies like cloud computing, mobile technologies, and other transformations to communication like social media, video, and digital content creation and sharing. The University of Central Florida (UCF) attracted transfer students from a wide range of community colleges across Florida because of its unique undergraduate and graduate programs in digital media. In order to ensure that transfer students from all of these sources entered the program with the core knowledge of digital media principles, the university’s digital media department and UCF Regional Campuses embarked on a different approach—to work with several community college partners to develop consensus around a core set of competencies that would become the basis for a common set of courses offered across the state. The educators shaped the curriculum, first defining the student learning objectives, then second defining the skills and knowledge necessary to form the basis of a new discipline that brought a convergence of technology, media, journalism, and communication skills and knowledge (Ferrier, 2009).

In the intervening decades since courses on media entrepreneurship were introduced in journalism schools across the U.S. in the early 2000s, a community of practice developed around media innovation and entrepreneurship through educator training programs like Jan Schaffer’s New Media Women’s Voices grant program for women media entrepreneurs (Schaffer writes the forward to the Media Innovation & Entrepreneurship open textbook); Journalism Interactive, a rotating conference for educators working with emerging technologies; the “Create or Die” media venture creation gatherings of a nonprofit organization called Journalism That Matters; the gatherings sponsored by the City University of New York that focused on journalism entrepreneurship; and weeklong training programs for educators like the Scripps Howard Journalism Entrepreneurial Institute, housed at Arizona State University and sponsored by the Scripps Howard Foundation. From 2012 to 2019, the program brought together journalism educators for a weeklong training on strategies for teaching media entrepreneurship. Educators were expected to create and introduce new courses on media entrepreneurship at their universities after participation in the program (Ferrier, 2013; Ferrier, 2014; Ferrier & Batts, 2016; Graybeal & Ferrier, 2023; Hang & van Weezel, 2007; Hang, 2020; Sindik & Graybeal, 2017). Ten years later, we see many of the syllabi centered around courses with “media entrepreneurship,” “media innovation,” “disruptive entrepreneurship,” “digital media innovation,” “social entrepreneurship” and other course titles that have moved away from “journalism entrepreneurship” to the broader framing of innovation within the media, technology, and communication industries (Graybeal & Ferrier, 2023).

Our initial OER, the Media Innovation & Entrepreneurship open textbook, was outlined in a spreadsheet with potential chapters and contributors vetted, with an intentional effort to find diverse contributors and expand the “public contexts” involved in our community of practice. Feedback and dialogue from the community was solicited throughout the development process. Hypothes.is, an experimental tool itself developed by an open education publisher, was used for annotations in beta testing of the initial material and some peer review. Quizzes and interactive material were later added in subsequent editions of the textbook using HP5. Students could access the OER in multiple formats in digital and print, so that the materials could be downloaded, viewed on a mobile phone, or purchased through low-cost print-on-demand options.

In the second community of practice, the faculty educators became beta testers before our release and used the open textbook in their Fall 2017 classes in media entrepreneurship. Biweekly calls using Zoom were held so educators teaching the subject could develop pedagogical ideas for delivering the curriculum as it unfolded over the semester. These sessions included a mentorship “how I teach this” portion, which attendees found valuable.

Peer review was used to gather and incorporate feedback. Faculty were invited to biweekly calls with authors to ask questions, discuss the content, and allow authors to revise their chapters. A Google Form was used for submission of suggested edits (most were incorporated), and single anonymous peer review was used. The textbook also underwent two independent reviews by OER repositories before they were adopted into their knowledge base for use. The book is distributed on Amazon, but it is also available on open resources like LibreTexts and Center for Open Education (Ferrier & Mays, 2020). We also used the beta group to garner feedback from students themselves on the structure and language of the open textbook. Hypothes.is was used for both student and faculty feedback. Finally, the weekly calls allowed novice educators to get pedagogical suggestions and engagement strategies to use in the classroom and suggestions on how to implement the syllabi and textbook materials into a hands-on, experiential media innovation course. In addition to the textbook page, a project page with reviews was established along with a YouTube channel, blog post, and report page from the OER publisher, Rebus.

Since its release in 2017, the open text has been widely adopted by more than 36 universities for use in the curriculum to date with more than 2,000 downloads of the open textbook. Educators have used the open textbook in courses like “Journalism Innovation”, “Journalism Entrepreneurship”, “Media Innovation”, “Product Development” and other innovation and venture creation courses within the media/journalism/communication disciplines. Some courses, like existing “Media Management” courses, were amended to include “Media Management and Entrepreneurship” and included business venture creation as a final assessment for the course. The communities of practice members shared syllabi for how the OER textbook material could be incorporated into various journalism courses. While journalism educators made up the core of the implementation beta group, the book development was shepherded by a diverse group of educators from journalism, computer science, and business; entrepreneurs; students; college administrators; accelerator managers; venture capitalists; angel investors; and others. In short, the OER textbook includes the voices and stories of all parts of the media innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem (Ferrier & Mays, 2020).

The OER textbook has served as the linchpin and catalyst for the creation of new courses, but also additional communities of practice tailored to specific geographies. In Fall 2021, a group of African media executives enrolled in an Executive Master’s in Media Leadership and Innovation course at The Aga Khan University. The open textbook was used for the program and the chapter authors were solicited to present their materials each week. Textbook contributors led virtual course sessions with the executives enrolled in the program. Now, the book editors continue to update the book to deepen the international context on building news and information in other economies.

Case Study Using the Community of Practice/OER Approach

In Fall 2022, one of the editors of the OER material received a federal U.S. government grant for a national nonprofit, the Media Innovation Collaboratory, for which she serves as executive director. This grant led to the establishment of the Ethiopian Media Innovation Accelerator program in partnership with the United States Embassy-Addis Ababa. Brought together by the Media Innovation Collaboratory, the U.S. Embassy-Addis, Addis Insights and other local partners, the program by the Media Innovation Collaboratory created an apprenticeship model designed to build regional cooperative networks and strengthen the news and information ecosystem across Ethiopia. Our goal: Reimagine news, communication, and information in ways that sustain our communities to thrive.

The program also supports another of the objectives of the U.S. Embassy grant: To strengthen independent and state media through digital literacy—to learn about how to discern reliable sources of information, how to identify mis- and disinformation, and how to stay safe as a journalist building in digital spaces. Digital journalists in Ethiopia have been subjected to an ongoing crackdown in Ethiopia in 2022, some resigning their posts in state media and others enduring false arrests and long detentions of two to three weeks.

Our objectives with the Ethiopia program:

  1. Build local networks for sustainability, mutual self-aid, and digital resilience.
  2. Create localized solutions for communication needs of residents and the region.
  3. Develop deeper reporting and localized stories of critical issues such as climate change, economic sustainability, and global health crises.
  4. Build regional skills and capacity for news and information.

The Ethiopia Media Innovation Accelerator hybrid program which was conducted from February 2023 to May 2023, consisted of face-to-face engagement and virtual tools to connect for 11 weeks. To reach a diverse group, we produced our application materials in English and Amharic. More than 250 professionals, students, and media workers applied for the accelerator program. Participants were selected to reflect the geographic diversity and gender diversity of Ethiopia (Figure 1). Participants also came with skills and interest in deepening the news and information available in their communities and brought to our dialogues the key issues facing the residents in their region such as sanitation, corruption, gender-based violence, poverty, transportation, and other concerns. The word cloud captured the most often repeated words; however, it was not able to capture the Amharic words and characters that show as rectangle blocks in the diagram (Figure 2). The face-to-face Ethiopia Imagine Camp in Addis Ababa brought together more than 50 media workers, journalists, technologists, and educators to imagine new media innovations for community news and information. A diverse group came together from across Ethiopia to design and co-create communications that help residents to learn from each other in a hybrid face-to-face and online venture development program.

A map of the regions of Ethiopia and the location of the media professionals participating in the Ethiopia Media Innovation Accelerator Program. Program participants were selected from an applicant pool of more than 250 applications and provide diversity in geography, gender and working environment.

Figure 1: A map of the regions of Ethiopia and the location of the media professionals participating in the Ethiopia Media Innovation Accelerator Program. Program participants were selected from an applicant pool of more than 250 applications and provide diversity in geography, gender and working environment.

The image is a word cloud made up of the issues our Ethiopia program applicants determined to be the most prevalent or pressing in their region of Ethiopia. Information is the most prominent word.

Figure 2: Word cloud of issues across Ethiopia generated from the 250 application responses received for the Ethiopia Media Accelerator Program. Some respondents used Amharic to write their responses, and these were not properly translated in the word cloud program. The responses appear as rectangles in the graphic.

The 2023 program began in Addis Ababa with a face-to-face, four-day design-build sprint with Ethiopian media innovators and professionals (dubbed Imagine Camp). Participants created concept posters where they crystallized their concepts and pitched their media venture to the public (Figure 3). Coaching and development continued virtually for 12 weeks after the face-to-face workshop using synchronous and asynchronous tools, coaching the media entrepreneurs to build and launch their media enterprises. Our program concluded with a Pop-Up Awards Ceremony, where we celebrated the completion of the program and awarded cash prizes to five emerging entrepreneurs and their projects.

Concept Poster of educator Yordanos Gizachew of Jijiga University and the community radio laboratory she is creating for her students.

Figure 3: Concept poster of educator Yordanos Gizachew of Jijiga University and the community radio laboratory she is creating for her students.

In our bi-weekly, 90-minute co-working sessions, the objectives were:

  1. To demonstrate some community-oriented enterprises using applied technology that supports innovation and collaboration in community development and entrepreneurship, civic leadership, and public management.
  2. To create an innovation laboratory—a design-build workshop for journalists, communicators, technologists, artists, community activists, and others to reimagine new products and services for diverse communities.
  3. To engage participants in sharing ideas and concepts and developing ideas through intensive team building, idea development, design, and build sessions.
  4. To provide a showcase for projects in development by Ethiopian innovators and entrepreneurs.
  5. To provide instruction and coaching for media innovators/entrepreneurs to connect with each other and with alumni.
  6. To serve as a resource and mentoring hub for just-in-time education for media startups.

Table 1: Curriculum for the 12-week program

Week & Modality Days, Dates: Objectives Readings
Week 1
Addis Ababa
F2F Imagine Camp
Thursday, 2/9: Opening
Friday, 2/10: Grounding
Saturday, 2/11: Seeding
Sunday, 2/12: Nurturing
Chapter 11: Entrepreneurship Abroad: Cultural and International Perspectives
Week 2
Online
Monday, 2/13: Grounding
Thursday, 2/16: Grounding
  • Forward;
  • Chapter 1: Developing the Entrepreneurial Mindset;
  • Taking Risks and Building Resilience;
  • From the Field: Q&A with a Young Innovator;
  • What’s an Intrapreneur?;
  • Looking Ahead
Week 3
Online
Monday, 2/20
Thursday, 2/23
  • Chapter 2: Ideation;
  • Chapter 3: Customer Discovery;
  • Science Museum: Futurecasting;
  • 50 Ways to Make Media Pay
Week 4
Online
Monday, 2/27
Holiday, 3/2: Victory of Adwa
Thursday, 3/2
  • Chapter 4: Business Models for Content and Technology Ventures;
  • Ethiopian context, philanthropic entrepreneurial venture giving;
  • Telegram/WhatsApp Adoption;
  • Napkin Sketch/Business Model Canvas/social convas
Week 5
Online
Monday, 3/6
Thursday, 3/9
  • Chapter 5: Nonprofit Model Development;
  • Chapter 8: Pitching;
  • Community Radio: Frieda Warden, Pamela Morgan, Birgitte Jallov;
  • My Cell Phone Cinema: Engagement Work and Community Collaboration
Week 6
Online
Monday, 3/13
Thursday, 3/16
  • Chapter 6: Freelancing as Entrepreneurship;
  • Chapter 7: Startup Funding;
  • Solopreneurship: What does that look like?;
  • Successful Telegram, TikTok Ethiopian media
Week 7
Online
Monday, 3/20
Thursday, 3/23
  • Chapter 6: Freelancing as Entrepreneurship;
  • Chapter 7: Startup Funding;
Week 8
Online
Monday, 3/27
Thursday, 3/30
  • Chapter 9: Marketing Your Venture to Audiences;
  • Theatre of the Oppressed/Sociodrama & Community Radio
Week 9
Online
Monday, 4/3
Thursday, 4/6
Chapter 10: Product Management
Week 10
Online
Monday, 4/10
Thursday, 4/13: Good Thursday
Sunday, 4/16: Easter Sunday
Holiday—Easter Week
Week 11
Online
Monday, 4/17
Thursday, 4/20
Licensing and Registrations: Operations
Week 12
Online/Pitch Day
Sunday
Monday, 4/24
Thursday, 4/27: Online
Program
Program End

Adapting Our Open Pedagogical Practices to Ethiopia

Our design strategy involved creating the cohort bond through the face-to-face activities in Addis Ababa. Then, we used online technologies such as videoconferencing, cloud computing and other communication tools like Google Drive to virtually deliver instruction and coaching through the design/build process. The face-to-face Imagine Camp in Addis Ababa led participants through different design and dialogue practices to engage and build communication tools with and for communities. From the use of design thinking and small-group sense-making practices, participants were able to learn community-led design and action strategies to take back to their communities. Participants learned new ways of thinking, listening, systems thinking and creating with their communities from some of the practices we used in the program:

  1. Hosting and Group Processes: One of the goals of the program was to introduce participants to face-to-face and online engagement practices for hosting community listening and dialogue meetings and other design sessions. The program used processes like setting the room in a circle, engaging in small-group activities, and attentiveness to the whole person.
  2. Stakeholder Mapping: The Imagine Camp utilized several human-centered design and group processes to create cohort cohesion, knowledge sharing, and intelligence gathering. Stakeholder Mapping is a visualization tool introduced to participants to bring diverse voices and views together in small groups to tackle community issues. Using broad topics like corruption, poverty, violence and others, small groups worked together to make visible the system at work and how communication and power flows and where they may be able to effect change with their interventions.
  3. Concept Poster: Participants used poster board, visuals, and text to create a concept poster or advertisement for their business or media venture. These posters were presented in a gallery for others to provide comment, resources, and other feedback.
  4. Entrepreneurial Mindset—"Mad Libs” Pitch: In a quick round of pitches, participants have to fill in the blanks, describing their company and the value they intend to bring. In this “tweet-like” format, participants have to succinctly and quickly describe their concept.
  5. Field Trip: The Science Museum—Imagining the Future: The Imagine Camp brought participants to the newly opened Science Museum in Addis Ababa. The museum demonstrates the use of technologies in communication, surveillance, governance, and other commercial uses of artificial intelligence and technologies in home and city design. The Imagine Camp also provided a glimpse into the future for participants to imagine new ways future residents might get news and information.
  6. Make it Visible: The program also used graphic recording to create key takeaways from our work. The liberal use of low-tech tools such as markers, sticky notes, and paper allowed participants to contribute their unique experiences to the whole group sense-making activities (Figures 4,5).
During the training, the program participants learned human-centered design and design thinking strategies to design localized solutions to community news and information needs.

Figure 4: During the training, the program participants learned human-centered design and design thinking strategies to design localized solutions to community news and information needs.

The image is of a drawing by a graphic recorder of Day 3 of the Ethiopia Media Innovation Accelerator Program. In the drawing titled 'Imaging(sic) Something Better,'' our educators and participants are depicted engaging in human-centered design and theatre of the oppressed practices, to better understand the connection of journalists and journalism to community needs.

Figure 5: Graphic recording of our daily sessions during the Imagine Camp helped participants make sense of the system and key takeaways from the day’s activities.

The four-day Imagine Camp created many opportunities for participants to see their work inside the larger media ecosystem, learn, and apply new skills in listening, engagement, systems thinking, design, and hosting. Participants were asked to reflect on the face-to-face component, to determine what had been key takeaways and practices they would implement in their project or professional work. One participant wrote:

I found our stay in Addis Ababa to be better than I expected. Because the recruitment and selection of participants were different and their experiences and capabilities were very interesting, this is one of the things that made me love the training even more. I found it to be a platform of experience, skill, and knowledge. This boosted my motivation.

Or this participant’s reflection:

The Imagine Camp enables me to clearly identify my project goal in line with the very needs of the community I am targeting. It enables me to make a stakeholder mapping, to clearly identify the persona, the value proposition etc. The Imagine Camp was therefore very valuable for both my personal and professional career path.

Another media worker said,

As a journalist, I’ve come to understand that my reports should include original information in addition to the typical government requirements. I am aware that I must approach my work with a new perspective, especially in light of professional ethics.

Several participants expressed how their projects changed, but they changed too, during the time together imagining something better. One participant wrote,

It was a pleasure meeting with you at the Ethiopian Media Acceleration Fellowship Program and discussing the importance of freedom of speech, freedom of write and freedom of expression in the digital world. You have inspired me to use my resources to help create a better community through the use of digital media. Your appreciation and enthusiasm to learn have been eye-opening and motivating. I am thankful for your support in taking the first steps to start our journey together and am grateful for everyone’s commitment and open-mindedness to the digital media space. Looking forward to continuing the progress of this fellowship program and all the amazing opportunities it can bring.

Internet Shutdowns and Dancing with Uncertainties

As the authors embarked on the virtual 12 weeks of the accelerator program, they had to adapt to ensure they stayed true to the core principles of open pedagogy – access to the materials, low-tech design of the course content, flattened design to ensure easy downloads of content for offline reading and viewing, and digital tools that were free or open-source for our creation suite of tools. Government Internet shutdowns across Ethiopia, shutdowns on specific social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google services, and rolling blackouts which broke streaming connections forced much of our communication with participants to WhatsApp, telephone, and cloud computing for OER materials and conversations.

The program funded telecom data for all of the participants for a year so that they could participate in the bi-weekly co-working sessions. Participants have access to the learnings and co-created materials after the official program has terminated in May 2023. However, the participants still experienced connectivity issues for the synchronous portions of the program. Our program took place in Ethiopia right after a peace agreement was negotiated in the conflict in the Tigray region in 2022. Protests continue to plague the streets and the government response was to limit communication channels to disrupt organizing efforts. The cellular networks were overloaded during our stay in Ethiopia with residents and visitors scrambling to download virtual private networks to dodge the new Internet bans across Addis Ababa. To solve for the instability of the network, our online video conference sessions were recorded and uploaded to our shared Google Drive folders within hours to participants so they can view offline when they are able. However, we were able to use WhatsApp as a channel for communications of links to our shared resources, ensuring the program has an open channel for discussion and ongoing connection between participants.

The Ethiopia Media Innovation Accelerator Program team continued to adapt the program structure to ensure the safety and creative space to model open pedagogy, shared knowledge, and venture creation with the new community of practice in Ethiopia. We limited exposure of our participants by not identifying them by name or location in our materials or online mentions, unless we received consent. We added monthly check-in sessions with the cohort for the remainder of the year, to continue to share our learnings and support each other as we build our ventures.

What We Learned—Together

In our closing program evaluation, participants wrote of their frustrations with the connectivity issues and their frustrations with participation in our online bi-weekly sessions:

In our country, the internet connection is still locked because of political and ethnic conflict. It was a big challenge. To tell you the truth, I was very happy with the introductory training session held in Addis Ababa in person at the Ethiopia Media Innovation Program group, and I was happy with the package data gift that was given to all of our trainees so that we could attend the online training program. Especially on the first day, the questionnaire given to us to start the online training program was very interesting and made us look at our own inner vision. Therefore, when the online training came, it was a challenge for me because the electricity and network were frequently cut off in the area where I live. As a result, I was not able to participate due to network and electricity problems, which lowered my score by 1 level.

However, participants took advantage of the recorded co-working sessions and the open materials and notes from other participants. Even without a consistent connection, one participant diligently worked offline to complete the program: “I didn't receive the yearly internet package. Due to that I missed a few sessions. However, I decided to manage myself to listen to the recorded sessions and get back to the program. And submit all the assignments and produce a good pitch deck.”

Despite the Internet shutdowns, participants persisted to the end of the program and used the offline resources and the OER to continue to engage and produce the final deliverables of their community media ventures. From our original cohort of 50 participants in Addis Ababa for our Imagine Camp,

Twenty participants completed the post-program evaluation which asked participants to reflect on the whole program and the implications for their projects and professional work. Overall, participants ranked the program a 9 on a scale of 1-10 in program delivery and impact. In particular, participant responses to the following impact indicators show how participants’ confidence in their abilities to effect change have been altered as a result of their participation in the program.

On professional skills, program participants noted the following enhanced skills from participation in the program: leadership skills, communication skills, listening skills, self-awareness skills, self-confidence, resourcefulness, decision-making skills, problem-solving skills, project management skills, business management skills, human-centered design skills, entrepreneurship skills, journalism skills, teaching skills, creative skills, science competence, technology competence, engineering competence, mathematics competence, digital safety and resilience, cloud computing skills, distributed work skills, artificial intelligence, humanity and respect.

Our second goal was to build a resilient independent media network in Ethiopia. We measured our impact by the level of engagement between our participants. All of the survey respondents had made contact with someone in the program, and they planned on keeping in touch after the program ended. In addition, participants noted the feedback they received from fellow participants and the program team as pivotal to their engagement with the program. Many of the participants have already launched their community projects in Amhara, Oromia, Somali, Sidama and Afar and Tigray regions of Ethiopia. Several participants are building professional organizations to continue to support the growth of the independent media sector in Ethiopia. The newly formed Ethiopia Business Journalists Association was created by one cohort member, and another created a new women’s journalist network through the International Association of Women in Radio and Television, supporting our program goal of building networks for mutual aid and learning.

Conclusion

These key insights may help others building OER resources and communities of practice or engaging in co-creation practices in communities. Sustaining our communities of practice helps to continuously infuse and update our OER with new knowledge to remain relevant, current, reliable, and accurate:

  1. Group Sense-Making Activities. Consider the knowledge and experience you bring and honor the situated knowledge of others. Create opportunities for group sense-making and solutions generation.
  2. Listen deeply. Bring a whole systems view to co-creation practices, by making visible the stakeholders and the issues at stake. Use engagement and hosting skills to bring new people to the table.
  3. Make the invisible visible. Discover the factors that affect the capacity of community members to connect to each other and the geographie(s) in which they interact. Assess the constraints and assets of local infrastructure, making visible the gaps.
  4. Build support for digital resilience and mutual aid. Journalists are under attack in digital and physical spaces as a result of their work (Ferrier, 2018). We purposefully did not publish our participants’ names or details of their locations, for their safety and protection. We encouraged an environment of mutual care, sharing resources, support, and assistance through our WhatsApp group channel.
  5. Anticipate disruptions and threats. Building independent media innovations in a state-controlled media environment can be dangerous and disruptive. Participants used their new skills in deep listening to collaborate with local partners and their new digital literacy skills to create alternative platforms for communication and delivery of news and information.

This case study shares the difficulties of building shared communities of practice and OER materials in a challenging digital environment. We learned from prior work in media deserts that our work must confront and interrogate local geographies, infrastructure, politics, and local cultures (Ferrier, 2023). Both physical and digital geographies must play a role in our calculus of how and what communities need to thrive and how to build a safe space for civic communications.

One participant wrote:

Some concrete practices and ways of thinking and seeing that I learned at Imagine Camp that I can use in the future include viewing problems from different angles, being aware of the context of my work, and leveraging the power of collaboration. I also learned to think creatively and innovatively, to consider how every aspect of a project can be tightly optimized, and to use effective visuals to tell a story and create powerful user experiences. Additionally, I learnt the importance of taking time for self-reflection, to gain clarity on my motivations and purpose. By utilizing these techniques, I can develop best-in-class project solutions, foster meaningful partnerships, and actively shape the kind of world I want to live in.

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Author Bios

Michelle Barrett Ferrier, Media Innovation Collaboratory

Michelle Barrett Ferrier, Ph.D., is executive director of the Media Innovation Collaboratory, an incubator for media, communication and technology solutions. Dr. Ferrier is the immediate past president of the International Association of Women in Radio & Television International and founder of TrollBusters, an educational service for journalists experiencing digital harms.

Geoffrey Graybeal, University of South Carolina

Dr. Geoffrey Graybeal is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Graybeal is the former Undergraduate Curriculum Program Director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute in the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University.

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Pedagogy Opened: Innovative Theory and Practice is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.