November 13, 2018
Preparing professionally for this sabbatical has been a long road for me, but a good one. In the area of interest to me, open education/open credentials, I have been impressed with the approach that many in the European Union take, and I could perceive that they thought about the issues differently than we do in the United States. I wanted to understand their perspective, so I knew I wanted to do my sabbatical somewhere in the EU. This was reinforced for me in 2016 when I attended a conference in Bologna, Italy, and met many great colleagues there. That conference started a two year journey for me of serving on the IMS Global Digital Credentials Executive Board and developing many connections.
I knew that I wanted to apply for a Fulbright award, which would help to pay for travel and housing. I had heard about the Opening Up Slovenia initiative, and so I contacted the Slovene embassy about contacts for a potential sabbatical in their contract, and was put in contact with Viktorija Florencic, a faculty member at the University of Primorska in Koper. She was very excited about the possibility of me coming to her department, so Stephanie (who was accompanying me) and i visited her department as part of the Bologna conference trip. They threw down the red carpet (actually the Slovene beach towel, but that’s another story) for us, and it seemed like a really good opportunity to work with them.
This week I was able to go to Europe to begin some of the work for my sabbatical that I will be doing in January. The main event was to present at the IMS Europe conference, as IMS is one of the main venues for discussions on my research area of open credentials for open education (I am currently on the IMS Executive Board for Digital Credentials). The conference happened to be in Utrecht, where we will be living in January, so it was an excellent opportunity for me to scope out the area for the family ahead of time and also start conversations with my Dutch colleagues about the research I would like to do. However, how to fund a trip to Europe when I’m going to Europe for real in just a couple of months? I had some travel money at BYU, but did not feel I could justify a $1200 plane ticket. A blessing came, though, when Stephanie was coming back from her girls weekend trip to Boston and was able to get bumped to a later flight and pick up an airline voucher for $450. We then found a killer deal on a flight to Amsterdam for just a little more than the voucher cost. I was in business!
But cheap flights are not always, er, desirable. It came with a 12 hour layover in Philadelphia on the way out and a 17 hour layover in Helsinki on the way back—and I had to fly out of San Francisco, which was convenient because I was taking a group of students to San Francisco on a field trip to visit IDEO and the Stanford d.School the weekend before the conference. So it made sense to package it all together. But this meant in order to get the cheap tickets that I would be gone a total of 9 days from the family for an IMS conference that was only 2 days. I needed to make those other days professionally useful. After making some emails and requests, I was able to visit with some colleagues in my discipline at the Open University in the UK and at TU Delft in the Netherlands, as well as my colleagues at the University of Utrecht. All told, it has been a VERY helpful trip for me professionally with excellent learning opportunities, good networking, and I think good opportunities and ideas for research.
So it all worked out well, but the schedule was a bit nuts. Here was my itinerary:
Friday, Nov. 3: Fly to San Francisco and visit the d.School and IDEO
Saturday, visit the Children’s Creativity Museum in the morning, say goodbye to my students, and work on my laptop in the hotel lobby for another 8 hours. Then catch a
midnight flight (remember, these were cheap, but yucky times!) to Philadelphia.
But where to sleep when I’m arriving in the middle of the night? Well, I read up on how to sleep in airports, and brought along my camping mat and pillow and actually slept pretty well underneath the seats in the farthest terminal! I might have scared he lady sitting on the bench when I emerged in the morning however. ;-)
My Sunday flight to Amsterdam didn’t leave until Sunday evening, so I took the train downtown and had a lovely day visiting patriotic sights and the Edgar Allen Poe Home in Phillie. I also got to eat a Sammy’s original cheesesteak sandwich “wit”, or in other words, with peppers/onions. I wanted mozzarella, but they wouldn’t let me get away without getting the cheese whiz speciality, which was surprisingly good. That’ll teach me — always go with what the locals say.
I arrived in Amsterdam on Monday and immediately caught a flight to the UK. I then had to catch an hour long bus ride to Milton Keynes. Then I had to drag my luggage through the weeds on the side of the highway while walking over a mile to the campus dorms, where I was staying the night. This is the exotic life of the traveling professor on the cheap! Anyway, I got there at midnight, crashed, and slept in.
Tuesday was spent visiting colleagues at the Open University, and the visit was just wonderful. They are doing such good work there! I then caught an 8 p.m. flight to Amsterdam, and crashed, again around midnight after the time zone change, in a budget hotel.
Wednesday I took a train to TU Delft to meet some colleagues there and learn about their work in open education. I also got a tremendous tour of the Interdisciplinary Industrial Design and Engineering building and got to talk shop and curriculum with one of their excellent teachers. That was very inspiring, and I took home some ideas for my own design teaching. I then caught a train to Utrecht and crashed, exhausted into my airbnb bed.
Thursday-Friday I presented and attended the conference. It was nice to stay in one place for once!
Saturday I didn’t fly out until 7 p.m. so I spent the day touring Amsterdam! What a quirky city! I’m excited for my family to learn more about it with me. I spent much of the time in the Dutch Resistance Museum, which was about what Holland was like under Nazi occupation and how many fought against the Nazis in their own way and methods. An excellent museum about heroes, spies, sacrifice, and history. I absolutely loved it. I then flew into Helsinki and arrived at midnight. Where to sleep now? I walked around trying to find a place but that airport has the lights on WAAAAAY too bright. I tried a nice bench near some other airport sleepers, but it was too noisy and bright. I then found a couch in a closed restaurant. Perfect! I slept awesome there … until 4:30 when they started cleaning and getting ready to open. I then dragged my tired body to the sleep pods (I didn’t know where they were before, but I was desperate now, so I asked for directions and finally found them). I found that I could get them 1/2 off by waiting until 6 (it was almost 5:30 now) so I did some work until 6 and then slept another solid 4 hours. Heaven!
Sunday I took a train to the center of Helsinki. I wasn’t going to let a chance go to visit another country! I drive my family crazy with how much I try to cram in my sightseeing, rushing from place to place, but that’s how I enjoy doing it on my own! So in 3 hours I visited the Lutheran Cathedral (pic 2), the Catholic Cathedral, the Kampii Reflection Church (pic 1), and the Stone Lutheran Church (pic 3, this is the inside). They were all simply stunning examples of design, which is what Finland is known for—design acumen. I fought the father’s day crowds at Frazers (it’s father’s day for them that day!) and bought some Frazer’s chocolates, which were awesome, maybe the best I’ve ever had. Then realizing I was short on time, I ran, literally, through town with my luggage backpack to catch the train back to the airport.
Which means now, as I write this on the shuttle home to Orem, that I’m seriously exhausted. This trip home began on Friday, and it’s now 12:30 on Monday morning. And I teach today! Yikes! But I’m glad I went on the trip as it was of course fun personally to visit these sights, but it was also very helpful and awesome professionally. I feel I learned many things that will make our family’s transition easier in January.
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