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title: Open education in times of Covid19

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# Open education in times of Covid19

1. What is La-Conga Physics, its story and motivation.
    * The problems particular to Latin-America: gap in digital and internet access; competition vs collaboration, brain drain, low budgets for confereces and collaboration oportunities. 


2. What we have learned regarding Open Education and Open Science during Covid19. What practices arrived to stay? 


3. How can Open science solve some of these issues faced by developing countries.
    * Importance of capacity building for spreading the concepts and good practices of Open Science and Open Education. 
    * Diversity as the base for Open Science and Open Education. Identify needs and possibilities with the local communities (-> Intersectional feminism approach), e.g.internet access, students reality, content in Spanish

4. How are we approaching Open science and Open Education in LA-CoNGA
    * Transforming the scientific culture from the classroom and through the participation of teachers in projects like LA-CoNGA
    * Open training materias
    * Promoting international cooperation in Open Science initiatives
    * etc

5. A shout out to other Open science/ Open education projects that have inspired us (The turing Way, The Carpentries, Metadocencia, etc).

6. Outlook: What is next.




# Low level story line:


## 1

Excerp: This is the story of how a group of European and Latinamerican physicists organised themselves to create an transatlantic open community of advanced physics. It is a story of successes and dropbacks that becomes even more relevant in the current times, where virtual colaboration has become the norm. All the more to support and motivate similar efforts in other knowledge fields in order to build better and stronger conections between the north and global south with aims of decreasing the knowdlege gap and promoting globaly the values of open science. 

* What is LA-CoNGA physics (NEED TO ADD A GENERAL PARAGRAPH HERE)

The first courses of LA-CoNGA physics are about to start this January y Más allá de las cifras, los datos y los indicadores sobre la evolución de la siniestralidad, el camino que nos ha traído acá y los valores de esta comunidad son de indudable interés que merece ser analizado. Si miramos el camino recorrido por el retrovisor podemos sacar algunas conclusiones.


LA-CoNGA physics is an Erasmus+ project, an European-Latinamerican network of 11 universities, 9 research institutions and 3 industrial partners (2 of them being in the data science field) in advanced physics. We aim to create a set of postgraduate courses in Advanced Physics (high energy physics and complex systems) that will be common and inter-institutional, supported by the installation of interconnected instrumentation laboratories. This program will be inserted as a specialization in the Physics masters of the 8 Latinamerican partners in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. It will comply with the Bologna protocols and is based on three pillars: courses in physics theory/phenomenology, data science and instrumentation. 




It is often the case that science is key to the development of emerging countries.  Research in fundamental science is at the backbone of this effort, by building communities of highly skilled scientists and technicians, by improving scientific education, and by fuelling technological innovation. Universities in Latin American countries have a substantial tradition in various fields of fundamental research, with significant recent evolution in some of these fields. This is the case for the field of experimental particle physics and cosmology, the science of understanding the smallest components of matter and the origin of the universe, have undoubtely grown in the last few decades. The relevance of HEP is not confined to fundamental scientific knowledge only. Due to its specific requirements,  research in HEP catalyzes state-of-the-art technological developments, and yields many practical outcomes in electronics, information technologies, applications in medicine, open-access collaborative tools, and many more.  


* How did is start? A network of latinoamerican scientists around the world (HELEN - CEVALE2VE background)

The growth of the field of high energy physics in the region started in the early 2000s when a few academic institutions joined large experimental collaborations linked to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, and
other regional astroparticle collaborations as the Pierre Auger Observatory (PAO) and the Latin-American Giant Observatory (LAGO). European-funded projects like the High Energy Latin American European Network (HELEN) and the European Particle Physics Latin America NETwork (ePlanet) where fundamental in this boost by linking more Latin-American institutions with the research program at CERN. Thanks to these programs a few hundred scientists and students from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela received financial support for scientific visits to CERN and research institutions in Spain, Italy, France and Portugal. 

* Why did this network came to existence?: an existing scientific collaboration in some cases with key individuals at universities facing similar problems
* 
In just a few years, many of these students completed a PhD in HEP, most of them in European institutions and in LHC experiments. In 2014 a group of these now researchers (particularly from Venezuela) started a new project called CEVALE2VE (Centro Virtual de Altos Estudios de Altas Energías in Spanish), which was a virtual research and learning community with the initial goal of promoting and spreading interest in HEP in Venezuela. The efforts started within CEVALE2VE had fruitful outcomes, a HEP course (done with purely volutanry efforts) ran for 4 editions with more than 70 students joining from institutions in Venezuela, Colombia and Peru, and many of these CEVALE2VE students continued on to a career in HEP.


* The context of doing HEP/international scientific collaboration in LATAM: small universities without resources (instrumental and human level), lack of incentives for collaboration even at the local level)

However the consolidation of these efforts proved to be difficult given the fragmentation of the Latin-american scientific community, episodic funding and subcritical mass in trained human resources. Furthermore, relying on purely volutary efforts it is not sustainable in the long term, or fair to either the students or the volunteers.  


Building upon these experiences, the network they created and thanks to the co-founding of the Erasmus+ project of the European Commising, LA-CoNGA physics community was born. 


* The barriers of doing science in LATAM... Go from the HEP barriers to the general barriers to science (brain drain, large socioeconomical inequalities, ) to make the connection to the need of open science

## 2

On top of all the difficulties descrived above, the current events with the SARS-Cov2 pandemic have been extremely dificult for the region. LAtinamerica has been severly affected by the pandemic in terms of mortality, extended lockdowns, economic downtorn, and many more. It would be expected as well that academic institutions have also severely affected and particularly unprepared.

The extended lockdowns have meant that students unable to access universities, laboratories and places of reesearch, courses content not available beyond hand-written notes. The unoptimal internet conection for some particularly poor regions have made even more dificult for students to follow online clases and learn in a synconous manner. 

Of course these problems are not just related to LATAM, around the world students are facing challenges and disruption in their of their learning and research activities. The could be an unique oportunity for Open science that by desing can solve some of these chanllenges.

LA-CoNGA physics was envisaged as open education project promoting open science values as a response to all the challenges linked to latinoamerican science described above and incidently prove to be a very useful design for these pandemic times. Making content, tools, instruments and methods openly available for students regardless of their . Creating an environment of shared data and connected instruments. Creating an inckusive and welcoming community where newcomers can start collaborating in an easy way. 


*   
## 3 

* Open education for those who have been historically excluded from access to knowdlege and education
* Open data and software that can allow researchers with less resources to build from an existing base and like this contribute to the global effort of advancing of science.  
* Citizen science to close the gap between our academic institutions and the society

## 4

LA-CoNGA physics adheres to the principles of open science and education:
* The content is created and made available following the FAIR (ref) principles
* Interconnected labs will support the  
* Syncronous and asynchronous communication is used to overcome internet accesibility issues. Videos and slides are made available, syncronous discussion sessions are organised but also forum discussions are possible
* Reproducibility, transparency and openness are the base of the data science pillar. We teach our students how to use the correct tools to work with large amounts of data but also create an environment where the reproducibility of their work, tasks and projects is inculcated and applied from the first day
* Students will participate in citizen science projects with the local schools 
* Training in open science

Se comprobó que la transparencia en la información ayuda a crear un clima de confianza, no hay nada escondido, no hay secretos, es un problema de todos y los datos deben estar a la disposición de todos. Sobre tráfico todo el mundo opina, pero había muchos que hablaban de oído y al disponer todos de la misma información, poco a poco fue elevándose el nivel del debate. Por fin se había superado la vieja cultura de "la información es mía y solo mía" y así me hago más importante.

* How are we approaching Open science and Open Education in LA-CoNGA

  * Transforming the scientific culture from the classroom and through the participation of teachers in projects like LA-CoNGA
  * Open training materias
  * Promoting international cooperation in Open Science initiatives etc

## 5


* A shout out to other Open science/ Open education projects that have inspired us (The turing Way, The Carpentries, Metadocencia, etc).

## 6

* Outlook: What is next.

La lección es que, hoy en día, sin los medios de comunicación es imposible el cambio de comportamientos, que son unos aliados necesarios. Y se pasó de la tradicional desconfianza mutua a la colaboración y complicidad compartida. Todos ganan y hasta se dice que entre tanta información frívola o banal, con la seguridad vial, los profesionales de los medios se sienten útiles a la sociedad. 


Visto en perspectiva, la fórmula para ... fue la de construir un discurso en el que todos se sintieran cómodos y que el ciudadano percibía como razonable, la adopción de medidas para dar credibilidad al discurso y, al final, la movilización social. Esta fórmula puede servir para muchas otras políticas públicas.






