Strictly Come Dancing is a popular television show where participants collaborate with choreographers and take part in a weekly dance competition on BBC 1. A panel of judges score the dancers. A range of dance genres are performed including waltz, salsa and tango.

Strictly Come Digital Dancing is a 7-minute alt-format session that draws on dance as a metaphor to explore how Learning Technologists have responded to opportunities, challenges and possibilities of open pedagogy. Given that “metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action”, using metaphors to understand open learning can be argued to be constructive (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980: p3). Building on a discussion of past approaches to open learning, how we want to ‘choreograph’ open education in the future, make sense of the “complexity, mess” and “not-yetness” will be framed through the metaphor of dance (Ross & Collier, in Veletsianos, 2016: p17).

In exploring current metaphors, we can create new stories and metaphors (Hanne & Kaal, 2018: p6). Speculative collaborative discussion will act as a participatory critical reflection to explore the future of open learning for example authoring, licenses and resources. Neostalgia can be defined as “the combined emotions of nostalgia and newness at the same time” (Urban Dictionary, 2013). Given that “…we make our experiences into narratives in our everyday lives…” understanding the past through the metaphor of dance and ‘pedagogical neostalgia’ can be a creative way to frame the future (Richardson 1997 in Barbour, 2011: p17). Participants engage by acting as ‘judges’ to vote for the best approach.

The final component of the session is an opportunity for both collaborative and creative agency as an invitation to a live open dancing session broadcast live on DS106TV with music. DS106TV is “…is a community-driven television station associated with the open online community DS106” (DS106TV, 2020). It could be argued that “in the world of media convergence, every important story gets told” (Jenkins, 2006: p3). It is also important to acknowledge that “…not all forms of participation are equally meaningful or empowering” (Jenkins, Ito & boyd, 2016: p1). Engaging in dance can be argued to be empowering for participants. The session will be a safe space for playful agency to explore open learning in a different way as a form of “transmedia storytelling” which can be defined as “…a new aesthetic that has emerged in response to media convergence…the art of world making” (Jenkins, 2006: pp20-21).

Participants can act as ‘judges’ to vote. In order to prepare for this, the presenter has attended online dance workshops, for example “telematic improvisation” (We’re All Bats, 2021). Perhaps the online pivot has had a considerable impact on open learning spaces. Physical bodies have been replaced representations of ‘presence’ through online tools. Could dance be a new form of “body literacy?” (Pastore & Pentassuglia in Boyd & Szplit, 2016: p115). Our perceptions of both location, space and time have been altered in “translocal” and “temporaral” capacities “…embodied and imagined…across multiple locations” (Rossi, 2020).