Open Learning News and Updates

Student Spotlight: Sarthi Sodhi, OER Assistant

In their own words, here is what one of our OER Assistants has to say about their term in Open Learning.

Sarthi Sodhi 

Please introduce yourself.

I am Sarthi Sodhi. With a background in business, I am currently in the Strategic Global Business Management course.

How does this placement relate to your program?

Living in a digital world and overlooking the Global aspect of businesses, resources is a challenge every business strives to manage. Open Educational Resources from placement point of view helped me enhance my resource-building skills, especially working on different kinds of media and digital products. The position helped me get better with software, analysis and teamwork skills that are always needed to become a global leader.

My previous placement working with the office of research enhanced my data collection and sourcing skills, which should help me and researchers with any research projects in the future.

What’s one thing you’ve learned about open education so far?

It was fascinating to know how little knowledge people, including me, had before I joined this position. I've learnt that OERs are free, open to use (available digitally), and demand driven. Such resources, which are always trying to inculcate people’s interests and don’t include costs are always highly appreciated.

Is there anything about open education that surprises you?

What surprised me the most was lack of awareness and the huge catalogue of subjects OERs cover and offer. Their interactive and fun ways of imparting learning to the users is something that is highly valued by all.

You’ve been working on a wide range of projects with the Instructional Designers on our team. Can you tell us about one of these projects and what interests you about it?

The vast years of experience and technical know-how those different individuals in the Open Learning team brings is unmatched. I worked on multiple projects but one of them was assigned to me where I worked on adding QR codes to the cover images of different OERs the college have. For this, I had to use Adobe Photoshop, which I hardly had any hands-on experience in the past. I personally enjoy learning and working on high demand industry-software and I am grateful to the OER team for providing such exposure.

As a student, can you share your thoughts on one of the open projects our team has worked on and why you think students could benefit from it?

From my experience of conducting an OER awareness booth at the Conestoga Kitchener Downtown campus, a lot of individuals had interests in language-based OERs especially French and English and in practical skills and business-related OERs such as Logistics and Supply Chain. This shows that the student’s learning is not just restricted to the classrooms but goes beyond towards their needs in the immediate near future.

What else have you been excited about during this placement?

In the past, I have worked on freelance media projects but never in a professional setup involving resources. This position was an opportunity for me to understand the workflow and communications in such departments. As always, I was excited to meet new people and learn something from them, not limiting myself just to the work but taking my learnings over and beyond that.