tag:open.umn.edu,2005:/oen/blog/categories/office-hoursOpen Education Network Blog - Office Hours2022-11-22T17:29:53Zhttps://open.umn.edu/assets/common/favicon/favicon-1594c2156c95ca22b1a0d803d547e5892bb0e351f682be842d64927ecda092e7.icohttps://open.umn.edu/assets/common/oen_logo-8333e15dfea29982154feac5548a2c83e2deb688d477f3e84686d42ad1e57fb2.pngtag:open.umn.edu,2005:Spina::Blog::Post/802022-11-29T22:54:41Z2022-11-30T19:09:53ZNovember Office Hours: Reflections on Community<div>Watch the <a href="https://youtu.be/d_RLSd0bYR4">video recording</a> of this Office Hours session, or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.<br><br>Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please <a href="mailto:joh20849@umn.edu">contact Tonia</a>.<br><br></div><h2>Audio Transcript</h2><div><br><strong>Facilitators:</strong></div><ul><li>Apurva Ashok (Director of Open Education, The Rebus Foundation)</li><li>Karen Lauritsen (Publishing Director, Open Education Network)</li></ul><div><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> Hello everybody. Welcome to another Office Hours, our final Office Hours in fact. My name is Apurva Ashok, as many of you know. And I am the Assistant Director and Director of open education at the Rebus Foundation. Rebus is a Canadian charity that helps educational institutions build human capacity in OER publishing and open education more generally through professional development, through the sharing and offering of free resources and more. <br><br>I use she/her/hers pronouns and I am joining you today from Toronto, from the traditional territories of many nations here, including the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, the Wendat peoples and the Mississaugas of the First Credit. I am grateful to be joining you all from this space and might encourage those of us who are here to share your own territorial acknowledgements in the chat. <br><br>And I am joined today by my colleague, Kaitlin Schilling, who is based out of Winnipeg, in Manitoba. And I’ll pass it over to Karen to introduce herself, the OEN and the OEN team. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thank you, Apurva. Hi everybody, I am Karen Lauritsen, publishing Director with the Open Education Network, which is based at the University of Minnesota. We are a community of professionals who are working together to make higher education more open and equitable. I am based remotely in the central coast of California, which is the ancestral and current home of the Northern Chumash. <br><br>And I am joined by my colleagues, Barb Thees, who is Director of community engagement at the OEN and Tonia Johnson, who is the digital content strategist at the OEN. And this is a bittersweet session, as we’ve all used that word a few times together already today. This is year five of Office Hours and our final 59th session, we almost made it to that nice round 60 number. <br><br>And so, normally at this time I might say, “Here is how Office Hours works, if you haven’t been before.” Which seems a little silly because today’s Office Hours is a little bit different than typical. And I’m delighted to see more people joining us as we get started here. So today, since we’ve done our introductions at least with the Office Hours team, we invite all of you to say hello to one another. <br><br>We have a couple of questions for you to get started and then we thought we would reflect, not just only on the Office Hours experience that we’ve shared together many of us once a month for the last few years, but also on the open education community more broadly. Where we were five years ago as a community, and even in our own sort of individual professional lives and careers, where we think we might be five years from now and so on. So Apurva, have I left anything out?<br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Well one member of I guess Office Hours team who isn’t here today many of you might not have seen on our calls over the past five years but has been a really vital member has been our transcriptionist, Mei, who actually is based out of the UK. So she is someone who works tirelessly to make sure that all of the captions for the recorded sessions are accurate, including all of the right terminology around open textbook OER publishing or institutions from our various speakers’ affiliations around the world. <br><br>So we just also wanted to give a shoutout to Mei, who has been with the Office Hours team in some ways for the past five years. So, thank you, Mei, for what you are doing and I’m sure you’ll be working on this session. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Hi Mei, thank you. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: No, I think you captured the rest pretty clearly, Karen, so would be great if some of you felt comfortable unmuting or just dropping into the chat where you’re joining from and if you can actually remember your first Office Hours. Have you been here as a speaker or an attendee? And Karen, do you remember yours, while folks are thinking?<br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Yes, well, I was chuckling at Cheryl’s note in the chat about how OER can appear in automatic transcriptions, it’s so true. So I was looking at our YouTube playlist and trying to jog my memory because I am the old hat here, since the first Office Hours session. I have been a co-host for most of them. And while I can’t claim to remember the session truly, I will say that looking at what is currently number 54 in our YouTube playlist called Recruiting Open Textbook Authors. <br><br>I feel like this topic in itself kind of illustrates how far we’ve come. I don’t normally get this question that much anymore in terms of like oh, how do we attract faculty to our program to writing? I mean certainly there is still a lot of issues there in terms of pay and release time and commitment involved and what’s involved in making an open textbook. But the growth has been so phenomenal, that there really is I think, and correct me if I’m wrong please, but I see a lot of momentum. <br><br>A lot of faculty who are stepping forward and saying, “I want to do this.” And a lot of colleagues who have been down that path before and can lend a hand to people who might be just emerging on that path. So I do sort of more generally just remember getting the conversation started, being really impressed with how willing people are to share with one another, which you know, we hear time and again, and is truly one of the most I think rewarding and gratifying things about working together in this space. <br><br>And I’m also struck by sort of perennial many of the issues are when looking at the YouTube playlist. We’re still working on making things more accessible, we’re still working on finding a smooth workflow. Just recently Amy and I were talking about plans for keeping textbooks up to date, which was a really early session. It looks like number 15. So there is just a lot of things that we’re continuing to work on. So that’s kind of a non-answer, Apurva, but just some reflections on some of the early days. What about you?<br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you, it’s helpful to hear where it all started. I recall attending my first Office Hours in May of 2017. I had just joined Rebus as a coop student, while I was completing my publishing degree. And the first session I attended was about accessibility workflows in open education. And I remember Josie from BCcampus, Josie Gray, Christa Greer, who was at the University of Washington at the time, Michelle Read. <br><br>And I think Jess Mitchell from the IDRC, Inclusive Design Research Center, here in Toronto talking about remediation and the hours spent remediating STEM textbooks in particular. My eyes were wide open, sort of taking it all in, learning about the term accessibility for the first time and five years later, it’s such a central part of my workflow. So I always found the Office Hours sessions to be great learning opportunities for me. <br><br>So thinking back to when I was an intern at the Foundation, to now, it was really a great chance to learn from experts who have been integrating these practices into their workflows for so long. And it sounds like some of you have been here for most of the haul as well from 2018 onwards. Did any of you want to share some of your first sessions or memories of your first sessions, like Karen? Jonathan says, “The first one on his calendar was from Feb 2018.” Go ahead, Amy, I see your hand up as well. <br><br><br><strong>Amy</strong>: Yeah, I’m Amy Hofer, Statewide Open Education Program Director with Open Oregon Education Resources and I don’t remember my first Office Hours, but my most memorable one was about invisible labor in open ed. And I was joining from a bus on the way to Salem to like talk to some committee or testify at a hearing or something like that, and it was just very apropos. And I was like, “I’m just joining by chat, I can’t talk, I’m on a bus.” So yeah, thanks for all the timely topics. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Yeah, and shoutout to our speakers for that session, Esperanza, Melissa, Ali and Monica as well, Monica Brown. Yeah, many people have joined Office Hours from strange commutes, locations, buses, cars, airports, I think as well. That was a good one. Anyone else who can remember their first Office Hours?<br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Jonathan, does your calendar have any further details?<br><br><br><strong>Jonathan</strong>: It says Barriers to Open Textbook Adoption, common questions and concerns explained, which sounds like it’s right in the core of what we’ve been doing for a lot of the time. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: That was a word I was going to use, too, core. And I think there’s a lot of you who’ve attended both as speaker and as guest over the years. Any thoughts on kind of what, if any, relationship between those two roles sort of informed your what am I trying to ask? Was it different being a speaker versus an attendee? Was it kind of the same? Did one prepare you for the other? Any thoughts on that?<br><br><br><strong>Cheryl</strong>: I’ll say that I prefer being an attendee to being a speaker. You know, I’ve been doing this for a long time, but I still don’t feel like an expert. And so, it feels awkward to be in that ooh, I’m an expert, I’m a speaker role. And I feel like I learned so much more from other people who were doing this work. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thanks, Cheryl. Jonathan?<br><br><br><strong>Jonathan</strong>: I don’t know, so a pet peeve that I have is about how the internet seems to have divided people from like the writers and the readers, you know? I mean, Facebook is a horrible platform but it’s there because people want to be writers, they want to put things on the web, they want to make things, they want to share things. And you know, somehow the ability to be authors in this incredible new communication medium has somehow been kind of taken away from us. <br><br>Look at the implosion of Twitter going on right now, people just write HTML everyone could put whatever the hell they wanted on any website, you know, you can get one for $35 from Reclaim Hosting. And so, in a certain sense I think the fact that and from my perspective, unlike Cheryl, I feel perfectly, I’m happy in both worlds in this community, here and in other aspects of community being both an author and a listener and a speaker and a reader, all at the same time. <br><br>It's because this is a community that believes everyone should have all those roles, and I have felt incredibly supported in those roles. And so, many of the people here have been my teachers and mentors in so many of those roles, and I feel I probably said things over the years that have been useful to them, too. Because it’s a community that wants everyone to be able to be speaking and acting, which is what we’re here for after all. <br><br>So I guess I disagree with Cheryl, a little bit oddly, because I respect everything she says, but that I feel like it’s a great example of both sides are great, so I don’t even remember when I was a speaker or when I was not. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Sorry, I was just going to say, that’s one of the things I think we’ve tried to foster in Office Hours and throughout the community is that sense of everybody can contribute something. We all have our own experience and our own context, but there is something about your name is in the description, you are going to give a five-minute intro that for a variety of reasons some people are more or less comfortable with. <br><br>But as someone else who was new to open education and started co-hosting Office Hours as I was learning, it was a very welcoming and comfortable environment to not know things, and to be able to say, “Who here has done this before? Or tried this? Or tried something similar? And can maybe guess?” And I really appreciate that and I see, elle, you have your hand up. <br><br><br><strong>elle</strong>: There I am, okay. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Here you are.<br><br><br><strong>elle</strong>: Hello everyone, apologies if you hear construction in the background, I’m coming at you from a hotel. So speaking of buses, planes, trains and automobiles and also speaking of hats, I am missing the captain’s hat. So I just wanted to make a quick shoutout for that. But I really think the idea of authorship and collaborator really is an important one, right? When we’re working on this open process because I have done some of the speaking roles and being the subject matter expert. <br><br>But I find it’s actually more helpful speaking to the work everyone has done on this platform to use it as a hey, there are some good people who are doing work out here. You’re not just siloed in your one little section, right? Or you’re not the only one working on this particular text or this particular challenge, right? There’s a lot of I still think you know, harkening back to the accessibility pieces, which I am fully versed in, I would say. <br><br>But even then, you know, I feel like it’s a better collaboration and a better process for workflow, especially when you’re connecting with other authors to be in that co-work space, right? Yes, of course, I might know the intricacies of WCAG or you know, the little tips and tweaks to make Adobe PDFs work just a little bit better. But that’s just what I bring to the table, what everyone else brings is so much more. <br><br>And we can get so much more done, I think, if we think about blending those barriers, or crossing those borders for lack of a better metaphor. I think everybody should get both their author, creator and their participant passport checked and stamped more often. And you know, I think there is a new thing, speaking of Twitter, there is a new thing that was big on Twitter just recently in some circles about AI and text generation and things about that kind of creation when we’re thinking about open pedagogy. <br><br>And having a platform to have those discussions, what are the benefits, especially in like assistive technology for those types of things, but what are the pedagogical opportunity costs that students might be missing out, and having a place to have that open dialogue I think is a great space. So I want to thank everyone on the call here but also everyone who’s participated in open Office Hours. <br><br>And I always point folks towards your direction, that’s what I was trying to get at, is like a resource for collaboration. Not just my particular sections, right? So thanks everyone. Pleasure to be a part. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thank you, elle. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you. Kaitlin, I see you have a hand up as well, so I’ll pass it over to you. <br><br><br><strong>Kaitlin</strong>: I thought it might be easier saying it instead of typing. Yeah, I think I said in the chat I couldn’t quite remember my first Office Hours, but one thing I have loved over the years is being newer to open felt really overwhelming, because it’s such a big space and there’s so much to know and there’s all these people in different places all over the world. <br><br>But starting to come to Office Hours, and having such a safe space to be vulnerable, whether that’s with my emotions or my struggles in open or just me as a human, or just not really knowing all of the answers because none of us do. And the warm welcome Office Hours has given and everybody who has attended Office Hours, I’ve learned so much, I’ve grown so much as like a person, but also as like an educator. <br><br>And it’s been really great, and I’ve learned a lot and I think that’s such a testament to the open community to be able to have these rich conversations together and really share that hey, I have a gap in knowledge here or I really have expertise here. So being able to collaborate and support one another has just been one of my favorite things. It’s definitely made this work feel less lonely over the years, so very much appreciated. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you, and I also just wanted to pick up as elle was saying earlier, when they talked about the collaborative effort this has been. I think from our organization names Rebus Community and the Open Education Network, that those were the key values that we wanted to stay true to with the Office Hours series was it’s not just a place where people can come and share their stories and workflows and processes. <br><br>But it’s really a space for people to come together, where speaker and participant and attendee and author or faculty member and designer really can share more about their roles and sort of come into a space where hopefully they’re all welcome to speak or listen. And it sounds like that’s what these sessions have been for many of you. I also maybe wanted to do a little bit of reflecting and ask people where do you think the open education community was five years ago versus now?<br><br>You’ve heard from me, when I started attending Office Hours sessions, I was a coop student, so I’ve had a lot of reflecting on my own journey, versus where are folks now and how do you feel the needs of the community have changed in the five years since? We’re still talking about accessibility for instance, but are we doing it in different ways? And there was a question in the chat about you know, will we continue to offer something similar in the future? <br><br>And this is really our chance to take the temperature of those of you who are in the room today. We have a survey going out to anyone who isn’t able to be here synchronously live. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Sometimes too when thinking about kind of those bigger questions, maybe it’s helpful to think about even your own sort of job description five years ago versus today or your feelings five years ago at work versus today. Have there been any major shifts or changes that come to mind? Kaitlin. <br><br><br><strong>Kaitlin</strong>: I think for me one thing I’ve noticed definitely more of an emphasis on DEI, however, at a deeper level. And I think the conversation around what open pedagogy is, what open education is has gone from hey, this is a great chance to make free resources for students and save students money. And it’s really gotten, there’s been critical lenses applied to it, there’s been so many different lenses and perspectives brought to the conversation around what open education is and how it can be used in different ways. <br><br>And I think that’s been the really nice thing is kind of getting deeper and deeper into these conversations to ensure we’re not replicating the same types of systems over, but we’re really challenging each other and ourselves to really push beyond those systems and create something new that’s going to benefit everyone more than student savings. So I think that’s one thing I’ve noticed over the years. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Yeah, same. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: And Amy says so too, that resonates with her experience as well. And I see thumbs up from folks who are on the call. Have any of your individual needs changed? And in the survey that Karen has linked to in the chat, one of our respondents has noted a need for just more time. More time in their role to attend sessions, but also be fully active in deep conversations, so that’s what they’re sort of seeing as a shift from five years ago to now. <br><br>If any of you are using this as you chance to state some individual needs or organizational needs based on where you work and in your roles, feel free to do so. And I might tap on Barb or Karen to share what you observed in your exchanges with the OEN community members and in conversations and dialogue you’ve had with them. What are you hearing as sort of the pulse of your membership at this time?<br><br><br><strong>Barb</strong>: All right, Karen. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: I saw you unmute. <br><br><br><strong>Barb</strong>: Yes, I would just agree with what has been shared already, and then just kind of the excitement around maybe the different stages in the evolution of programs where it started with adoptions and now we’re kind of going into newer frontiers, diving deeper into the open pedagogy, into the publishing, into the curation, editing kind of thing. So a lot of members are talking about where they once were and where they’re headed and kind of both the excitement around that, that they’re gaining that traction. <br><br>But then the what does that mean when we’re all kind of in this new frontier together? And it’s been fun to, I think, coming back to the spaces like this are so important in the unknown so that’s what I would say. Karen, do you have any thoughts?<br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Yeah, thank you, Barb. I am so glad you said that because I just went right to thinking about you know, the size of the OEN five years ago versus how much it has grown now. And sort of that as a snapshot or a portrait of the momentum that we have, but you’re absolutely right. And what Barb said speaks to the strategic planning that the OEN undertook in the last year or so, just really thinking about people’s journeys in open education landscape, in creating and supporting the adoption and use of OER. <br><br>And building on that and thinking about some of the other parts of this conversation. We’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about how to support those institutions and people at those institutions who don’t have the same resources as other better funded institutions, for example. And so, we’ve been developing new infrastructure, we have a couple of pilots going, or rather one pilot underway, another sort of we’re on the eve of rolling out that pilot. <br><br>And that’s with Manifold and Ketida which is the new name for Editoria. And so thinking about how we can offer infrastructure and tools for people who want to be publishing and ultimately supporting anyone who wants to be creating OER. Because that adds to the vision that we all share, which is you know, being able to create a more equitable higher education by providing more resources, engaging students in the creation of those resources. <br><br>And so, really just exploring those different pathways in addition to staying focused I think on affordability issues, which continue to be so real in where we’re all at today. And what about with Rebus?<br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: I like that you used the word infrastructure, because we also are thinking along those terms. And I think in the early days a lot of the work we were doing with our community was to understand things at perhaps a more grassroots level and really break down the puzzle pieces of OER publishing or open initiatives more generally. I think more and more so now we’re sort of seeing a need to invest in people as infrastructure. <br><br>And really support the capacity building and sustainability work of the people who are holding up the programs and again making sure that open is not just something that is a category or small portion of a single librarian’s portfolio, but is instead something that is woven into the greater fabric of the post-secondary system, whether it’s at a single institution, whether it’s at a two-year college, a four-year college, a system of universities and colleges or really embedded in policy. <br><br>So I think we’re seeing the need now for more support to develop that type of expertise. And there’s actually a question in the chat where I’m scrolling back up here, because folks are talking faster than I can scroll. What sources for faculty training as a cohort or sharing of experiences would you all suggest? Because there seems to be an interest at Rumyana’s university, which is Evangel University. <br><br>Are there options and models that you would encourage they look at? Okay, Cheryl is dropping a ton of resources in the chat, did you want to speak to any of them in particular, especially the learning communities and how they’ve been effective at your campus, Cheryl?<br><br><br><strong>Cheryl</strong>: Sure. Sorry, I’m feeling under the weather, so I’m going to stay off camera, but I’ll try to talk. Yeah, the learning community is a bit more effective than trying to program say workshops. We have a lot of trouble unless we have the budget to pay to attend OEN style workshops, we have a lot of trouble getting people to show up. So forming a learning community and a community of practice has surfaced people that we weren’t aware were interested in OER. <br><br>And we’ve been able to develop those resources and a lot of our textbook authors have come out of those learning communities. So yeah, I think as far as faculty resources for training about OER, I would recommend starting with the OER starter kit that Abby released, and then the workbook that she and Stacey worked on. For program managers, I recommend the starter kit for program managers that Apurva was involved in. But for faculty, I would start with the other starter kits. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: And I might add to that and say it really depends on the type of training you want your faculty to have, because we’ve had this conversation I think in a previous Office Hours about the number of professional development opportunities there are in the open field, whether it’s about licensing, about publishing, about technical training that faculty want. So really being able to have those conversations with those faculty members to gauge their interest. <br><br>And then seeing as Cheryl was suggesting whether there are smaller learning communities that you could create so faculty have the opportunity to jump in and learn about whatever their area of interest is rather than only having one option and nothing else. I think the fabulous thing about the open education community in general is we have a ton of options. We have something for everybody here. Book clubs sound like a lot of fun, I know the CCC OER has done a few successful runs of different book clubs, as have other organizations. <br><br><br><strong>Cheryl</strong>: I’d also recommend, sorry, recommend looking at what infrastructure already exists on your campus, as far as learning communities, or are there book clubs. With our learning community we were able to piggyback on existing faculty learning communities that had support from another unit as far as marketing and outreach. So that really lightened our loads. But there may be existing groups that you can partner with. <br><br>And that’s been helpful too in terms of other outreach and training instead of me offering a standalone workshop going to say the interest group for instructional designers and being invited to do a presentation to that specific group. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: And tapping into existing networks in your region, I know the Midwestern higher education compact hosts a lot of free webinars and has professional development opportunities. So if the infrastructure as Cheryl was suggesting does not exist at Evangel, you can still look to these other networks within your state or within the region that you’re in and tap into hopefully their opportunities, their larger budgets, larger networks, or folks. <br><br>All right, and we’re doing a lot of future thinking right now, which I like. Jonathan, you have a question in the chat, you ask if there are so many professional development opportunities and so many people interested in this, could this be a sign that we should be doing more of this type of training or education around open in more standard parts, like in grad schools, professional schools, like medicine and law? Or even in undergraduate education in some way?<br><br>I think so, if you’ve ever spoken to me about post-secondary education, you would hear that I would love for teacher training and awareness of OER to become a standard part of doctoral programs, so it’s not just research focused, but teacher focused as well. I think Rebus and OEN have been singing the praises of the train the trainer model and train the future teachers model. <br><br>And as elle was saying earlier on in the chat, involving student representation to co-create OER can be tremendously powerful and we’ve seen how student advocates can really help further this cause in so many ways, so looking at ways to bring undergraduate student representation as well into our conversations is pretty critical. See resounding definitelys in the chat as well. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: I can’t stop thinking, Barb, about the climate group that you’re involved with also at the College of Education and Human Development at the U. It’s related to Jonathan’s comment, I wonder if you just want to share a little bit about it because I think it’s a nice potential model for doing what he’s describing in the chat. <br><br><br><strong>Barb</strong>: Yes, and now I’m reading Jonathan’s comment, I’m like trying to drop things in the chat. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Sorry, you’re doing so much right now, yeah. <br><br><br><strong>Barb</strong>: Yes, okay. So I love making these connections as well, and it’s been really fun, like Karen said. I’m volunteering with the Center for Climate Literacy at the University of Minnesota. And I just got involved because I’m interested in climate, right? But it’s been fun to see what’s happening around climate action in the open community. And I’ve kind of brought that to the conversation with the Center for Climate Literacy, who’s now connecting with some of those open education initiatives. <br><br>And just generally around open science sharing and that kind of thing. So bridging that gap I think is something that we don’t talk about a ton. But I really appreciate you bringing that up, Jonathan, because it’s really exciting when that happens. And I think there is a lot of energy around that and particularly from folks who are not engaging with open in terms of textbooks on their campus. So it’s fun to like get them through that path and who even knows what that could then lead to, circling back to what we’re all working on here. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thanks, Barb. And then Amy is saying how interesting it is, she’s been wondering whether Oregon’s next targeted pathway course development project should relate to climate. Yeah, that sounds great for sure. It’s all interconnected. Well, we’ve talked a lot about what we imagine or think the next five years could look like, as more visions occur to you or just even keywords about what that could feel like or look like, feel free to drop them in the chat along with any other resources connected to the conversation. <br><br>We did want to share with you the Office Hours archive, which Tonia did at the beginning of the call, so that you can always reminisce. We’re not far away in terms of the transcripts and the videos that are there and accessible for you. And then, I also shared earlier the survey that we have been doing about Office Hours. Cheryl, I see your hand is up. Please. Or maybe that was left over?<br><br><br><strong>Cheryl</strong>: Sorry, my brain is not functioning either. I’m having trouble typing and unmuting. I was just going to share a little bit from the textbook affordability conference that I attended last week. And Steven Temple and I did a panel session that was moderated by Bob from University of Wisconsin Stout, Butterfield. And on library bookstore partnerships, so there were a lot of interesting things that came up about OER at the conference. <br><br>More about OER than I’d ever heard at that conference before which is primarily attended by bookstore people and vendors, a few librarians. One of the things they talked about was the growth of the equitable access model, which was kind of an expansion of inclusive access and UC Davis came up with the name equitable access, and it’s basically an all-in-one price. And at the conference we really heard about how they expect a lot of growth in that model. <br><br>And I know on my campus we’re working on rolling out a version of it that’s not called equitable access, but it leverages OER and library licensed materials to lower the overall costs for students. So as a community, I think that’s really something for us to pay attention to and really step up working with bookstores to partner on these. But there were other interesting trends related to OER as well, like what’s the future of a book.<br><br>And they had a futurist talk about the growth in artificial intelligence and augmented reality and virtual reality and at what point are we going to cease you know looking at a book as something very specific with chapters. And yeah, there was also emphasis on the sustainability trend that you were mentioning in terms of advocating for digital textbooks and how that’s been resonating with students especially, that it doesn’t use print, it doesn’t have to shipped. <br><br>And the sustainability angle in relation to digital textbooks was not one I had really seen until this past year, but UC Davis is heavily using it to promote their equitable access program. So I think that’s something to watch for, too. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thanks, Cheryl, that’s really interesting and it is a good reminder to stay abreast of the conversations and the strategies that publishers and others are using to be in this space. I was looking for the right phrase. Yeah, I see more conversation here about what you were talking about. There is a lot of investment in this Apurva is saying, just yesterday there was a call for proposals from Google as they plan to invest $25 million in AI projects, which is related to what elle was saying earlier. <br><br>Also open science is a great connection to open. How can we develop or support sustainable repositories that include lab and data notebooks as well as the machine learning models alongside the abstract article? Absolutely. Thank you, Cheryl. Are there other things as we kind of round the corner on our hour here? Looking to the future, concerns you might have or excitement you might have. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Go ahead, Kaitlin. <br><br><br><strong>Kaitlin</strong>: Just because I looked at the Center for Climate Literacy and that blew my mind, and now I’m just like, my head is spinning with ideas. I think one thing about open I would love to see going forward something I think about a lot is one, the digital inequity that a lot of people face. A lot of people don’t have access to digital resources, so how does that intersect with open?<br><br>But also, using OER in post-secondary or higher education, there’s still that gap of access, how many people can’t access post-secondary education and how open educational resources can be used to increase literacy in various topics, such as climate outside of like a traditional academy. So thank you, Barb, for sharing that because I’m now just like oh cool, what other ideas can we get spinning? So that’s one thing I think of, like how can we push this for bigger change, in the biggest sense possible?<br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thank you, Kaitlin. I’m also really excited about that project, it’s fun to see it developing. And Amy and others, if you work on climate related projects, love to hear about them going forward. Amy also would like to hear more about what the OEN and Rebus are thinking in terms of professional development. So I can start and then Barb, if I could hand it to you since we’ve been talking a little bit about some professional development plans in our group and over the last few weeks. <br><br>So we are going to have professional development and communities around the different tools and infrastructure that we’re developing, so for example, the Manifold pilot has a group. And we monthly talk about some of the issues in Manifold, how it can be leveraged for open pedagogy, how you use the tool, everything in between. We’ll be doing the same with [Cotita 0:44:17] and then, the overarching umbrella with the publishing cooperative, we’re currently forming an advisory group. <br><br>And so that group is going to inform the type of professional development opportunities that we offer based on what’s happening in the community. We do have a monthly teatime in the publishing cooperative that the advisory group may decide to change, continue, expand. And then there are broader OEN initiatives underway, outside of sort of just the publishing space. And so, with that maybe Barb, if you want to say a few words?<br><br><br><strong>Barb</strong>: Sure. And we’re in the throes of developing what this looks like. Amy was in a focus group yesterday and shared some really great feedback, so I just want to give a shoutout to her. But one of the pieces kind of on a more broad scale, different topics within the OEN is we’re looking at expanding workshops that we’re offering, both on a number of different topics. <br><br>Again, OER adoptions like we’ve always done with our faculty workshop that I dropped in the chat earlier. But then looking at engaging faculty through a similar workshop but different topics, like introduction to open ped, introduction to publishing in some of these other pathways that we talked about. And what we’re really excited about in addition to that is offering it more at scale, so that we can offer some general workshop at the OEN ourselves. <br><br>Talking about the common good and some of these members of our organization, our community that have more limited resources or capacity to be running things on their own that we can help provide that at a larger scale where faculty can then take part if there aren’t actually those professional development opportunities happening locally at their institution. So a little glimpse, we’re working on that now, talking to members to help refine what that’s going to look like and how that could best serve our community. So stay tuned for more. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Exciting things in progress there. On the Rebus side, folks are welcome to participate in our textbook success program. So this is a professional development package not just for faculty, but also for instructional designers, technologists, librarians, administrators. Really anyone looking to build capacity for their open education publishing initiatives at their institutions. <br><br>Jonathan and Kaitlin are both alumni and facilitators. So we’re really trying to adopt that model that so many great organizations in open are doing, letting folks who have tried and tested experience doing this work teach the next set that are coming in to try it out again for the first time. We also host webinars again on a variety of topics related to open education, as well as offer consulting to folks. <br><br>We are actually in the midst of a strategic planning process and would love to hear more from all of you about what you would like more of. Amy and Rumyana, I appreciated in your comments in the chat how in some ways you even see the Office Hours as a professional development opportunity whether it’s to come and speak as a guest speaker or come and listen and connect and network just as a participant and attendee. <br><br>And as we’re sort of thinking ahead to the next five years or more, what would you like to see more of? That was one of our survey questions, we’re happy to read some responses from there, but would love to hear from you all. In the future you’d like more… Cheryl says her faculty OER authors would love to hear how to do peer review on OER. Others have talked about wanting papers that talk more about processes, more formal presentations, where they can learn.<br><br>Internally on the Rebus team some ideas have been around just podcasts for instance, to highlight newcomer voices to OER or often unheard voices who are working in the open education process. Mentorship opportunities for people again who are new to the field. More webinar series like this one, around open publishing. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: And these are areas too where we can imagine the OEN and Rebus Community collaborating in the future, maybe there are you know, peer review for OER guidelines or methodologies that we can co-develop. This is on a list of topics that I’ve heard listening to the community over the last several months, thinking about the advisory group. So there’s definitely more to come. Tools to support workflow and project management. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: And everyone’s favorite methodologies. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Yes. Tools are a funny thing, they’re so valuable, but I also feel like they’re sort of mythological in their promise. If we only had the right tool, it would somehow be easy. But I think it’ll always be a little hard. We do have the open textbook builder that is a part of Ketida, which is designed to help support authors in thinking about and planning their book before they start writing. <br><br>So that’s an element, I think, of the production process that we hope to support with this tool and with some workshops around the tool. But then, we need tools that will remind people in a friendly way, nudging tools, writing tools. Yes, Amy, so in terms of the Ketida pilot, we are on the edge of our seat, and basically the Coko Foundation said that they needed to make just a few more updates to make sure that Ketida was stable before we started the pilot. <br><br>And so, last we talked it should be ready in January or February and so as soon as it’s ready, I have the documentation ready. I even have a draft email to the OEN. So really excited about getting that started. elle, I have a group of authors I introduced to Discord now, and they love it. It depends on how the tool fits and extends your thinking instead of creating just another tech barrier. Please. I was just going to say we keep looking at Discord, talking about Discord, that’s really great to hear. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Yeah, a lot of the conversations we have at Rebus and with folks around tools is similar to our conversations we have just around licensing. What do you want to do? What are you hoping this will achieve? Who are the people involved? What are the accommodations that folks might need? And then go from there rather than here’s this tool that I like, now let me try to fit all of my wishes and desires into this single pre-selected tool, but rather we work the other way round. <br><br>So what do you want to achieve, let’s survey the landscape and go from there. And be willing to change if the tool doesn’t meet our needs or maybe some of their privacy concerns or data sharing policies change. Again, we’re always careful of a human first approach to the tool, so it’s not just selecting the tool for the sake of but selecting the tool that’ll work as elle is saying for the humans, rather than creating a technology barrier. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: I love being reminded of that. I still so often will try to like cram my thinking or my needs into a tool and I’m like, why is this so terrible? And then someone will remind me, is this the right tool? Like why don’t you think about what you want and need to do first? It’s like oh right. Okay, well, we spent an hour together, these are really great signposts in terms of what we’re still dealing with, where we want to go, what we might be able to do together. Thank you so much for your contributions. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Yes, thank you all and I appreciate everyone who’s filled out the surveys so far. A few people have noted how even though they haven’t been able to attend as many Office Hours sessions over the year and years that they wanted to, it’s always been an affirmation for them about the work being done in OER. <br><br>Just to know that these sessions are happening, that people are sharing their documents and resources and ideas and that this is licensed for the world to access freely afterwards. So thank you all. Do we have any final questions for our group, Karen? Or are we on to our bye for nows?<br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: I think we’re onto our see you laters. We did have one question kind of at the ready that we can close with, which was when we see one another again, what do we hope will be different or the same within open education? Maybe we’ll chew on that. And I am confident that we will all see one another again soon. But in the meantime, thank you again, it is always lovely to come together and I’m looking forward to doing it again sometime soon. <br><br>I’d also like to thank Apurva and Kaitlin and the Rebus Community for partnering with us on this, it’s been such a joy and pleasure. And even though a monthly series is a lot to organize, it has always gone so smoothly. So it’s really been fun and thank you. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you, too. And I might ask Kaitlin or Tonia to perhaps drop into the chat a link to the Office Hours archives on YouTube where people can access all 58 plus one recordings, as well as links to our respective blogs where we have audio and chat transcripts and for some sessions even summaries of our long conversations over the past five years. <br><br>And I’ll also extend my thank you back to you, Karen, the OEN team, as well as everybody else who has just helped grow this community and been so willing to come, learn, share and connect. So thank you all as Karen said, this is a see you later. Hopefully you will hear more from Rebus and OEN respectively, but also collaboratively down the road. <br><br>And I hope we get to meet in person someday, and if not, you’ll find us on our various social media websites forum list serves and online. So take care everybody and thank you for joining this hour. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Farewell. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Bye. <br><br><br><br><br>END OF VIDEO<br><br></div><h2>Chat Transcript</h2><div>00:07:25 Kaitlin Schilling: Grateful to be joining you from the traditional and contemporary shared lands of the Anishinaabeg, Dakota Oyate, and Ininiwak, and the Red River Métis in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Happy to be here with you all!<br>00:08:21 Amy Hofer (she/her): !!!<br>00:08:27 Apurva Ashok: As a reminder, all Office Hours sessions are recorded, captioned, and transcribed. We also save the chat! Anything can be anonymized, just contact us at <a href="mailto:contact@rebus.community">contact@rebus.community</a>.<br>00:08:57 Tonia J Johnson: Open Education Network OH Blog: <a href="https://open.umn.edu/blog/categories/office-hours">https://open.umn.edu/blog/categories/office-hours</a><br>00:09:14 Tonia J Johnson: Rebus Community OH Blog: <a href="https://rebus.community/category/otn-rebus-office-hours/">https://rebus.community/category/otn-rebus-office-hours/</a><br>00:09:41 Tonia J Johnson: Open Education Network YouTube OH Playlist: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWRE6ioG4vdahUrKaiHvsCA2J6NQLysU6">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWRE6ioG4vdahUrKaiHvsCA2J6NQLysU6</a><br>00:10:36 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: automatic transcriptions do not like the OER acronym!<br>00:11:00 Amy Hofer (she/her): Yes so many acronyms<br>00:11:39 Apurva Ashok: They also don’t like my Indian English accent 😄 Grateful for Mei for correcting all these errors in our official recordings.<br>00:12:46 Rumyana Hristova: I am based in Springfield, Missouri. Extremely grateful for Office Hours! I must have started attending OH some time in late 2018.<br>00:13:11 Apurva Ashok: You’ve been with us for nearly the entire journey! Thank you :D<br>00:14:08 Karen Lauritsen: Rumyana, thank you for sharing so many sessions with all of us!<br>00:14:42 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): Ha, my calendar says the first one I went to was in Feb 2018!<br>00:15:15 Kaitlin Schilling: That was a good one, Amy!<br>00:17:16 Kaitlin Schilling: I can't quite remember my first one, but I do love being able to go back and watch them - so many relevant topics!<br>00:19:12 Tonia J Johnson: Loved "Legitimizing Burnout in Open Education Roles" - so much honesty and connection in that conversation.<br>00:19:39 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Good points, Jonathan! I've always appreciated your perspectives<br>00:19:43 Kaitlin Schilling: +1 Tonia<br>00:20:25 Barbara R Thees: What stood out most to me was along those lines as well- the willingness to contribute, learn together, collaborate and share within the open community.<br>00:23:57 Rumyana Hristova: I love the format of OF! Once a month (not too time-consuming) with various speakers with great experiences, sharing great resources, which you can't hear anywhere else! Are you thinking of some other form of OER professional development in the future?<br>00:24:53 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: So true, Kaitlyn!<br>00:25:03 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Sorry, Kaitlin!<br>00:25:08 Apurva Ashok: @Rumyana - We are, in fact, but would love community input to help shape/guide where we go next!<br>00:25:38 Tonia J Johnson: Absolutely, Kaitlin!<br>00:25:45 elle (she/her/they): Yes, Kaitlin. I have connected with some great international experts especially in STEM accessibility in Germany, the UK and Australia<br>00:28:25 Karen Lauritsen: Here’s the survey Apurva mentioned: <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeNF552EKTIstKZJSaFQY3zThtEoN3_lrhprDbZiGtn5ic5sg/viewform">https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeNF552EKTIstKZJSaFQY3zThtEoN3_lrhprDbZiGtn5ic5sg/viewform</a><br>00:28:52 Amy Hofer (she/her): Great point Kaitlin, that resonates with my experience too<br>00:30:32 elle (she/her/they): Yes, speaking to the DEI efforts we now carve out intentional spaces for student representation for co-creation of OER.<br>00:32:48 Rumyana Hristova: What sources for faculty training as a cohort, sharing experiences, would you suggest? There seems to be an interest in such kind of training at my university, Evangel University, a Christian university.<br>00:34:23 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: @Rumyana - OER learning communities have been effective on my campus. I'd be happy to share resources<br>00:35:07 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: OER Starter Kit (Abbey Elder of Iowa State University), <a href="https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/oerstarterkit">https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/oerstarterkit</a> OER Starter Kit Workbook (Abbey Elder & Stacy Katz), <a href="https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/projects/the-oer-starter-kit-workbook">https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/projects/the-oer-starter-kit-workbook</a><br>00:35:38 Kaitlin Schilling: Hope you feel better soon, Cheryl!<br>00:36:42 Amy Hofer (she/her): Oregon’s first book club meeting to talk about the starter kit is Friday 🙂<br>00:36:56 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Resources from University of Arizona’s OER/Pressbooks Learning Communities (Cheryl [Cuillier] Casey and Cheryl Neal), <a href="https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14Jl61dXbviZtqQNI0zfL1UP414vLOnGX">https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14Jl61dXbviZtqQNI0zfL1UP414vLOnGX</a> “OER Learning Circles for Instructional Improvement” by Karen Pikula (2020 Open Education Network Summit), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDAzdaF1v3w&list=PLWRE6ioG4vdZbJGUCc0XquZi23EHXXLKM&index=5">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDAzdaF1v3w&list=PLWRE6ioG4vdZbJGUCc0XquZi23EHXXLKM&index=5</a><br>00:37:01 Karen Lauritsen: Ooh, book club! Fun, Amy.<br>00:37:12 Barbara R Thees: OEN Certificate for Open Educational Practices for faculty-librarian pairs: <a href="https://open.umn.edu/oen/certificate-in-oep">https://open.umn.edu/oen/certificate-in-oep</a><br>00:37:16 Amy Hofer (she/her): Not my idea - responding to what the point people want!<br>00:37:27 Kaitlin Schilling: That sounds really interesting, Amy!<br>00:37:31 Karen Lauritsen: Look forward to hearing how it goes.<br>00:38:39 Kaitlin Schilling: Great point, Cheryl! "no need to reinvent the wheel" --one of my favourite phrases in open 😄<br>00:38:42 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): I wonder if there are so many PD opportunities and so many people interested in this ... could that be a sign we should be doing more of this training/education (about open) in more standard educational paths: grad schools, professional schools like med/law... even in undergrad education in some way?<br>00:39:34 Kaitlin Schilling: That's a really interesting point, Jonathan. I wonder what that could look like<br>00:39:39 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: definition in iSchools, for future teachers & professors<br>00:39:47 Barbara R Thees: Here’s the link to the OEN Faculty workshop that has been mentioned. The workshop that introduces faculty to OER, and OEN members are able to invite faculty participants to review a textbook in the Open Textbook Library after participating in the session: <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1BtHKrINZ9-9tKi3IpK639CW9wwaGtPddZfUnIHcIgIY/edit#slide=id.g8fb33e01fb_1_210">https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1BtHKrINZ9-9tKi3IpK639CW9wwaGtPddZfUnIHcIgIY/edit#slide=id.g8fb33e01fb_1_210</a><br>00:39:48 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: *definitely*<br>00:41:36 Apurva Ashok: hear hear!<br>00:42:22 Amy Hofer (she/her): So interesting Barb! I’ve been wondering whether Oregon’s next targeted pathway course development project should relate to climate<br>00:42:41 Barbara R Thees: Love that idea!<br>00:42:46 Barbara R Thees: It’s all interconnected!<br>00:43:11 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): There is a very interesting new climate OER coming out of Massachusetts soon (in the ROTEL grant portfolio).<br>00:43:19 Amy Hofer (she/her): Thanks Jonathan!<br>00:43:34 Apurva Ashok: Yes, I was thinking about Larry’s book! :) We’re on the same page Jonathan<br>00:43:41 Barbara R Thees: Ooh I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled for those resources!<br>00:43:45 Kaitlin Schilling: I love the idea of connection making across different sectors/topics and open education<br>00:43:55 Barbara R Thees: What’s the title, Apurva?<br>00:44:15 Barbara R Thees: Multitasking is hard! 🙂<br>00:44:27 Apurva Ashok: Conversations with the Earth - <a href="https://forum.rebus.community/c/open-textbooks-in-development/conversations-with-the-earth/485">https://forum.rebus.community/c/open-textbooks-in-development/conversations-with-the-earth/485</a><br>00:44:30 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): "Conversations with the Earth"<br>00:44:34 Barbara R Thees: Thanks!<br>00:46:44 Apurva Ashok: And there’s a lot of investment in this too - just yesterday I saw a call for proposals from Google as they plan to invest $25M in AI projects advancing the SDGs<br>00:47:13 elle (she/her/they): Open science is a great connection to open. How can we develop or support sustainable repositories that include lab and data notebooks as well as the machine learning models alongside just the abstract article.<br>00:47:15 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Tactful, Karen!<br>00:48:18 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): Several organizations including Creative Commons and SPARC have a big open science thing going right now, partly in support of the UNESCO Open Science Recommendation.<br>00:48:37 Amy Hofer (she/her): +1 to Rumyana’s question earlier about what OEN/Rebus are thinking about for the evolution of this PD?<br>00:48:55 Karen Lauritsen: Sure, we can say more on that, Amy.<br>00:49:00 Karen Lauritsen: Also: <a href="https://climateliteracy.umn.edu/">https://climateliteracy.umn.edu/</a><br>00:49:33 Amy Hofer (she/her): Thanks for the climate related links! I’m searching through all our catalogs to try to figure out which courses might be most relevant statewide for OER development<br>00:50:01 Barbara R Thees: Shameless plug- it’s Give to the Max Day today here in Minnesota, and the Center for Climate Literacy is raising funds to support their work: <a href="https://crowdfund.umn.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=1668">https://crowdfund.umn.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=1668</a><br>00:52:43 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: I would love to be able to steer our faculty to these workshops<br>00:53:07 Kaitlin Schilling:<a href=" https://rebus.community/textbook-success-program/"> https://rebus.community/textbook-success-program/</a><br>00:53:26 Barbara R Thees: That’s great to hear that there would be interest in this model at your institution, Cheryl!<br>00:54:22 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: @Apurva - our faculty OER authors would love to hear about how to do peer review on OER<br>00:55:33 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: how to find peer reviewers, how to use tech to do reviews<br>00:56:03 elle (she/her/they): Tools that support workflow and project management. Many folkx don't have the exposure to applications like slack, basecamp, etc.<br>00:56:07 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: methodologies, yes! the word my brain couldn't think of<br>00:56:22 Amy Hofer (she/her): +1 Elle. A lot of interest in Oregon in that area.<br>00:57:01 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): I love "mythological in their promise"!!<br>00:57:27 Amy Hofer (she/her): Any update on when we can pilot that one Karen?<br>00:57:40 Barbara R Thees: A whole toolbox full!<br>00:57:44 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: And often our faculty don't want to learn new tools<br>00:57:54 elle (she/her/they): I have a group of authors that I introduced to discord and now they love it. It depends on how the tools fits and extends your thinking instead of creating just another technology barrier<br>00:58:13 Apurva Ashok: Great perspective, elle<br>01:00:19 Amy Hofer (she/her): Thank you for hosting for 5 years Karen, Apurva, and teams!<br>01:00:27 Barbara R Thees: Thanks, everyone! So good to see you all.<br>01:00:41 Karen Lauritsen: ☺️<br>01:00:43 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): Yes, agree with Amy, thanks so much for hosting/building/supporting this community!<br>01:00:56 Kaitlin Schilling: Thank you all for sharing ideas and hopes and memories! I hope we all get to chat again or work together soon :)<br>01:01:03 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Thank you to the OEN & Rebus for organizing these!<br>01:02:18 Tonia J Johnson: Open Education Network YouTube OH Playlist: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWRE6ioG4vdahUrKaiHvsCA2J6NQLysU6">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWRE6ioG4vdahUrKaiHvsCA2J6NQLysU6</a><br>01:02:27 Kaitlin Schilling: Thanks Tonia!<br>01:02:33 Tonia J Johnson: Open Education Network OH Blog: <a href="https://open.umn.edu/blog/categories/office-hours">https://open.umn.edu/blog/categories/office-hours</a><br>01:02:45 Tonia J Johnson: Rebus Community OH Blog: <a href="https://rebus.community/category/otn-rebus-office-hours/">https://rebus.community/category/otn-rebus-office-hours/</a><br>01:02:56 Tonia J Johnson: Thanks everybody!<br>01:02:59 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Thanks<br><br><br></div>admintag:open.umn.edu,2005:Spina::Blog::Post/792022-11-21T15:06:18Z2022-11-21T15:07:51ZOffice Hours: Five Years of Open Conversation<div>Office Hours has been a monthly opportunity for the open education community to discuss open publishing and related topics since 2017. After five years, the 59th and final Office Hours session co-hosted by the Open Education Network (OEN) and <a href="https://rebus.community/">Rebus Community</a> was held in November 2022.<br><br></div><h4><strong>Reflections on Community</strong></h4><div>The series finalé, <em>Reflections on Community</em>, explored how open education has evolved over the last several years, honored the informal conversations the community has shared together at Office Hours, and looked to the community to inform the future. </div><div><br></div><div>“Office Hours began as a space for open textbook producers and users to share lessons learned, and in the five years it has been running, it has stayed true to this core value,” said Apurva Ashok, Assistant Director and Director of Open Education at Rebus. “The informal nature of the conversations has really let people share their successes, challenges, and vulnerabilities, and through doing so, I hope we’ve helped them thrive.”<br><br></div><h4><strong>It’s About Sharing</strong></h4><div>The Office Hours team worked to provide a relaxed, welcoming atmosphere that would be conducive to sharing. Conversations typically drew input from diverse roles in open education and various levels of experience which, in turn, led to a wide range of applicable advice and resources. </div><div><br></div><div>“Office Hours has been a good introduction [to open education] for me,” said Phoebe Daurio, Grant Project Manager for Open Oregon Educational Resources. “I’m pretty new to the field, and…I’ve appreciated the welcoming feeling. It seems easy to enter, speak, and contribute. I’ve learned from the speakers, but I’ve also learned a lot from the participants and what they’ve shared.”<br><br></div><h4><strong>Revisiting Office Hours</strong></h4><div>Over the years, the series has featured 145 speakers who’ve addressed a variety of open education issues. Almost all sessions were recorded and are archived on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWRE6ioG4vdahUrKaiHvsCA2J6NQLysU6">Open Education Network YouTube channel</a>. A sampling of popular Office Hours sessions includes:</div><ul><li><a href="https://youtu.be/ho9nLUOhkfE">Memorandums of Understanding, Contracts & Agreements</a></li><li><a href="https://youtu.be/rUiyiAT0uMQ">Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in OER</a> </li><li><a href="https://youtu.be/5PJnTPKFbbQ">OER Course Markings</a> </li><li><a href="https://youtu.be/fL9Ep56IFH0">The Invisible Labour of OER</a></li><li><a href="https://youtu.be/pRlssPKHC1I">Evaluating OER for Accessibility</a></li><li><a href="https://youtu.be/UoQ8mYNvVmk">Tenure and Promotion in OER</a></li></ul><div><br></div><div>You can also find Office Hours audio and chat transcripts posted on the <a href="https://open.umn.edu/blog/categories/office-hours">Open Education Network Blog</a> and on the <a href="https://rebus.community/category/otn-rebus-office-hours/">Rebus Blog</a>.<br><br></div><h4><strong>The Power of Partnership</strong></h4><div>“Office Hours has been a productive and rewarding five-year partnership with the Rebus Community,” said Karen Lauritsen, OEN’s Publishing Director. “I’ve learned so much from Office Hours guests and attendees, and I’m thankful for our time together as a community.”</div><div><br></div><div>Apurva agrees that it has been a valuable partnership that made Office Hours possible. “Office Hours is a testament to the partnership between Rebus and the Open Education Network,” Apurva observed. “We recognized early on that we are both values-driven organizations with common goals, and used Office Hours as a means to align our efforts in small ways. I’m fairly confident that this won’t be the last time we collaborate!” </div><div><br></div><div>____________________</div><div><br></div><div>We’d love to know what the Office Hours series has meant to you. If you’d like to share, please take part in this <a href="https://forum.rebus.community/t/office-hours-reflection-survey/8106">short, anonymous survey</a> to let us know what you’ve learned from our community conversations, how the series informed your practice, what’s on your wishlist for future programming, or additional comments. Thank you!</div><div><br><br></div><div><br></div>admintag:open.umn.edu,2005:Spina::Blog::Post/772022-10-10T17:08:55Z2022-10-10T17:19:06ZSeptember Office Hours: Trauma-Informed Pedagogy in Open Education<div>Watch the <a href="https://youtu.be/tqJ-5M-fkMM">video recording</a> of this Office Hours session, or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.<br><br>Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please <a href="mailto:joh20849@umn.edu">contact Tonia</a>.<br><br></div><h2>Audio Transcript</h2><div><br><strong>Speakers:</strong></div><ul><li>Apurva Ashok (Director of Open Education, The Rebus Foundation)</li><li>Karen Lauritsen (Publishing Director, Open Education Network)</li><li>Janice Carello (Associate Professor and MSW Program Director, Pennsylvania Western University)</li><li>Caitlin Gunn (Pedagogy Lab Dir. and Senior Researcher, The Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies)</li><li>Mays Imad (Assistant Professor of Biology, Connecticut College)</li></ul><div><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> Hello everybody, welcome to another Office Hours session. My name is Apurva Ashok, I use she/her/hers pronouns. And I am the assistant director and director of open education at the Rebus Foundation. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Rebus’ work, we are a Canadian charity, and we’re simply trying to help educational institutions and educators build capacity in all things OER. <br><br>Whether it’s OER publishing, setting up open education initiatives or just trying to work on their own professional development to be serving their students in more meaningful ways. Today, I am actually joining you from the traditional territories of the Lenape. Typically I’m based on the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the First Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples.<br><br>And I am just grateful for the flexibility of movement from one space to another and to still be able to connect with all of you in the open education network. And I think that’s a good segue to the OEN organization. And I’ll hand it over to Karen to tell you more about our partners behind this event, the OEN, and our topic for today. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thank you Apurva, as always it is a delight to partner with you, Kaitlin, and the Rebus Community on Office Hours. I am Karen Lauritsen, I am the publishing director with the Open Education Network. And we are a community working together to make higher education more open, equitable and accessible for students. I am joining you from central California, which is the ancestral and contemporary home of the Northern Chumash. <br><br>Today, we are fortunate to be joined by three guests, and all of you, to talk about trauma-informed pedagogy in open education. As usual, we will hear briefly from our three guests, around five minutes each. And then once they’ve finished introducing their perspective and views on the topic we will look to all of you to have this conversation with us together. This will be our sort of Fall session. <br><br>We’re going to take October off for Office Hours, there’s so much going on, it’s conference season. And then, we will do one more final session on November 17th. So I think that covers our preamble, so I’m going to just briefly introduce our three guests and then I will hand things over to the first one. Today we are joined by Mays Imad who is Assistant Professor of Biology at Connecticut College.<br><br>We’re also joined by Caitlin Gunn who is Pedagogy Lab Director and Senior Researcher with The Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies or BBQ+. We’re also joined by Janice Carello who is Associate Professor and MSW Program Director at Pennsylvania Western University. Thank you all again very much for joining us today. And with that, I will hand things over to Mays. <br><br><br><strong>Mays</strong>: Hello, hello everyone and thank you so much for inviting me. Thank you for allocating the time and this space for this topic. And I think when I think about open education, and I think back to my years when I was a faculty senate representative at Pima Community College. We also had a student representative and at that time the student rep was, we would meet, and she was communicating with me how much, how unaffordable the textbooks were. <br><br>And we launched, I think, a multi-year campaign slash initiative to investigate, to learn about open education, to investigate what it would. And throughout the process, it became more and more clear to me that open education is about liberation. It is about empowering those who don’t have because of the system and because of the structure of the system don’t have access to things that are necessary for them to move forward. <br><br>So that’s just the context of my introduction to open education. Now, how does it connect with trauma-informed education? Well, as my dear colleague and mentor, Janice, talks about that trauma-informed education is really it’s not new. And it’s very much aligned with a lot of the anti-oppressive lenses. And it is meant to empower and elevate. So in a sense, learning about trauma-informed education, learning about trauma and trauma-informed care, for me it is important, if not necessary, that becomes part of the open education agenda. <br><br>Why do I say that? Well, I’ve been working with students and colleagues for years. And when the brain is under the influence of the strong negative emotions, our tendency is to sit back and recluse and even think that I’m the only one feeling that way. And it can be really lonely and it can be really, and the default is to go and think in a deficit way. It must be me, it must be this, it must be…<br><br>And so I always talk about empowering through education, educating about what is trauma? And while we don’t define ourselves or others by the trauma they’ve encountered, it is important to empower them through the knowledge of what trauma does to the body, to the brain. And also, what are some of the things we could do to regulate and co-regulate so we don’t get stuck in that trauma and move beyond it? So I’ll stop here, and what is the protocol? Do I hand it back to you, Karen?<br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: We’re casual protocol here, but we will hand things together to Caitlin. <br><br><br><strong>Mays</strong>: All right. <br><br><br><strong>Caitlin</strong>: Thank you for that, Mays, that was wonderful. And it’s perfect because I’m about to talk about collective trauma. And so I feel like that really just neatly ties into my perspective on this. Which is often in discussions of pandemic pedagogy or engaging students online we get a lot of tech tools and tips for digital classroom management. <br><br>And that’s pretty much the extent of the engagement with the way that Covid and racial unrest and political turmoil and even climate change have had a huge impact on our students over the past several years. Many students in higher education have never been in college for example without those conditions. And so, what we’re really looking at is an experience our students are having of undergoing collective trauma. <br><br>And our flexibility, our adaptability, our patience as educators will really be tested in new ways going forward and have been for the past several years. As you likely know for our students, that trauma can show up as different emotional states, changes in the way that they think and process emotions or information. And an avoidance of trauma triggers, which is tricky, when a lot of their trauma triggers are set against a backdrop of higher education. <br><br>So it’s quite a bit for us to navigate how to engage students and make them feel safe enough to learn, so that they can actually take in information and not get stuck in fight or flight or with avoidance kinds of responses. So all that said, I usually give some basic advice to educators about navigating this moment of collective trauma. The first of which being higher education can be a very structured, bureaucratic place. <br><br>Do your level best to create the most flexible environment for your students possible, and do not see that as a lapse in rigor, but rather see that as a way to increase the rigor, because students will learn better that way. This is a big one for academics and librarians especially, releasing the notion of perfection, imperfection isn’t just something we now have to tolerate under these conditions. <br><br>It’s a vital stepping-stone towards knowledge. Viewing perfectionism as the enemy of growth and knowledge is really a lesson for this moment. So emphasizing compassion for self and others. But what does this all look like in the classroom? Here are some ways that you might navigate some of these very traumatized students and the way they’re learning right now in the room. <br><br>So I’m a big proponent of mindfulness and breathing practices, ground students before beginning class, in the middle of class, after difficult subjects. Related take lots and lots of breaks. Five minutes to review this reading, 10 minutes to stretch, water breaks, camera off breaks. Our attention spans are not what they were and they are not built for this moment. So really meeting students and yourself where you are, especially when you’re in digital classroom spaces is really crucial. <br><br>I like to use pedagogy that engages the senses, this can help students feel more connected to their own bodies and to others. And that can be really simple. That sounds maybe a little abstract but it can be playing music as students come into class or as they free write. It can be a pause to have students look at an image or a video periodically. Lots of body movement can be helpful shake out the limbs, jumping jacks, dance break, wiggle in the chairs, whatever. <br><br>Help students get back into their bodies, trauma can very much take us out of our bodies so those physical movements can really help students re-engage. And my favorite one personally is laughter, it’s the best one. Get students loose and laughing, you can foster connection, ground students in their bodies, so play games and share memes and do all of the silly things that under conditions like these where everything feels like it’s urgent and a crisis and something is wrong. <br><br>Stopping to slow down and be playful with our pedagogy is actually going to increase the effectiveness of that pedagogy, not just be a waste of 10 minutes of class. Sometimes folks can think of it that way. And as it relates to open education, I know at the Pedagogy Lab, one of the things that we’ve been experimenting with is delivering information through different mediums than just the written word. <br><br>Students are tired, and burnt out, they’re tired of writing, they’re tired of reading. And instead of forcing those things out of, for the sake of tradition, it’s really about meeting students where they are. We’ve been doing a lot of like short audio content on various themes that they’ll be covering in college classrooms. And that seemed to be very effective for both the scholars creating those works and for the students taking them in. <br><br>So I’m definitely in the discussion curious about other ways you’ve found to engage students beyond traditional articles and textbooks and I’m hoping to take some of those insights away and back to my classrooms and my peers. So thank you for having me. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thanks so much, Caitlin, and over to you, Janice. <br><br><br><strong>Janice</strong>: Thank you. I’m really excited to hear from Caitlin and Mays, it’s so great to get these different perspectives, and that’s been one of the greatest things about doing this work around trauma-informed teaching is to be in conversation with other educators as we figure out what trauma-informed teaching means together. The approach I’m going to take is more of a storytelling approach. <br><br>So I’m going to share a little bit about my background and how I became interested in trauma-informed teaching, what it means to me, and some questions that I’m continuing to navigate in terms of what open education and thinking about it from somebody who does training and research around it. If someone would have told me 30 years ago I’d be doing the kind of work that I am doing and engaging in public speaking, I would have surely thought they were joking. <br><br>I am a high school dropout, and I am the first in my family to attend college. I had no idea how to navigate explicit or implicit college norms or how I was going to pay for college. I’m also very introverted and I have social anxiety, so this was not the kind of career that I had envisioned for myself. Nevertheless, I persisted, my first master’s degree is in English, I spent about 20 years teaching composition, creative writing, literature, and academic success courses. <br><br>And learned right away in my first few semesters of teaching that the students who were most likely to struggle, to have difficulty adapting to college, to get bad grades or to drop out were those who had some type of a crisis happen or who had some type of a trauma history though I wasn’t using the word trauma then. I also learned that teaching was hard, I was working as an adjunct and I was questioning whether or not college teaching was actually a good fit for me. <br><br>Because I was facing challenges that I had not anticipated, and that I had not been prepared for in my graduate training. Like what do I do when a student discloses childhood sexual abuse? Or homelessness or some other past or current suffering? I had no idea, nobody prepared me for that. What do I do if I have to fail a student with an A average because the attendance policy that I inherited said that’s what happens when they miss too many classes that are not excused?<br><br>What do I do when a student curses at me or threatens me because I won’t change their grade? Access to education is very important to me, as you can imagine, as a high school dropout. So if teaching didn’t work out, I wanted to be able to do something to help college students succeed. I had worked in the States here with students in trio programs, like the educational opportunity program. <br><br>And I saw that those students who had financial and academic and personal support succeeded. So I decided to enroll in a master of social work program, thinking that I would become a college counselor of sorts, right, if teaching didn’t work out. In my MSW program, I learned about trauma and trauma-informed care and teaching and learning and life made sense to me in a way that it never had before. <br><br>I learned about ways in which traumatic stress affects learning, some of the things that Mays was talking about, how it affects the brain, right? And that when people feel threatened, their prefrontal cortex goes offline, and they are prepared for survival, they are not prepared for optimal learning. I learned how to recognize signs of stress in students that my colleagues have mentioned, and I didn’t take it personally then when students missed a lot of classes or they were non-responsive or disruptive or that perfectionism that Caitlin mentioned. <br><br>I learned how to recognize signs of stress in myself, including that perfectionism, headaches, sleeplessness, feelings of guilt or helplessness in the face of student suffering. I learned that trauma-informed care was originally developed by folks who recognized that standard operating procedures were sometimes unintentionally causing more harm than good and making it difficult for people who had experienced various forms of violence and victimization to stay engaged in services. <br><br>And so, I started interrogating my own teaching policies and practices and applying trauma-informed principles to my course design and delivery to try to make space for students and for myself to stay engaged in teaching and learning. And very happy, I saw immediate and positive results, fewer of my students were failing. I stopped feeling like I was failing my students all of the time. <br><br>They were getting better grades, we were having better class discussions. And then, I was having better relationships with them because I stopped inadvertently engaging in power struggles with them and I could convey compassion and care and that I was on their side even when we were in conflict. So I discovered that I didn’t actually need to become a counselor or a social worker to help students succeed. <br><br>That I could actually make a difference as an educator. I enrolled in a PhD program then and tried to acquire research and other skills that would allow me to go beyond my own classroom then with these experiences and collaborate with other people who were interested in bringing a trauma-informed approach to higher education. And when I graduated in 2018, there was still not a lot of info on trauma-informed teaching in higher ed. <br><br>We saw a lot about trauma-sensitive schools at the K12 level, not a lot in higher ed. And then, of course in 2020 Covid hit. And higher education was in crisis, as everything was in crisis, and it wasn’t just some of our students who were struggling or some of our faculty and staff, it was everyone who was struggling. And since then we’ve seen more investment in student and educator wellness. <br><br>We’ve seen more of a commitment in many colleges to diversity, equity and inclusion. More interest in universal design for learning and best practices in online education and more interest in trauma-informed care. So I’ve had the opportunity since Covid to collaborate and be in conversation with hundreds of adult college educators who have a wealth of wisdom and experience to share. <br><br>And it has been an honor to be in conversation and to collaborate with them. And so, as I participate in these conversations some questions that I’ve been thinking about in terms of open education too, thinking about the work that we’re doing and the ways in which we’re working together to develop trauma-informed approaches in higher ed. And questions like okay, so how should I disseminate my work?<br><br>And what do I call it? Like there’s controversy over that. How much can I provide for free? How do I pay my bills if I’m doing that? What’s appropriate? How do I amplify the voices of others who are doing this work and similar work, as Mays pointed out? Trauma-informed is one way to do this, but there’s lots of forms of anti-oppressive practice. And how will I continue to move forward in this work and move this work forward? And with those questions, I will end my intro. Thank you. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you, Janice. And I also just want to note that Janice has put together a list of resources that we will share with all of you in the chat, if possible. If not, you can always find a record both of this conversation and other resources shared in our forum discussion space, which is where you can also continue the conversation beyond the hour. <br><br>Thank you so much all three of you for just introducing this topic and also for the emphasis that you’ve made, both on how trauma-informed pedagogy is something for us to keep in mind not only for the students that we teach, but for us as the educators, librarians, teachers, who are doing this work day in, day out. <br><br>Now is really the time of our Office Hours session where we turn the conversation over to all of you, our attendees, our participants. Feel free to post some comments or questions in the chat. Share your reflections, if you’d like to, by unmuting your microphone and using your voice here as well. I do want to note that Mays has another session that they need to head to shortly. So in about six minutes or so Mays unfortunately will be stepping away. <br><br>But I think is willing to come back to questions or come back to the discussion in that forum space afterwards. So if you have any pressing questions for Mays, use your time now. Kaitlin is noting in the chat that the session has been validating and healing as well as informative and they so much appreciate all of the sharing. It is a lot to process, and I will note on my end I appreciate I think the larger notion that education is care. <br><br>So that question of why should we even be talking about trauma-informed pedagogy in the first place has been answered very clearly in that notion. Caitlin, you gave us a lot of concrete suggestions about what folks can do in the classroom to work with students. Janice, you gestured a little bit to that idea of reflecting on your own teaching practices. And Mays, as well, you talked about some of the triggers that you’ve seen in folks who either have experienced trauma or who are aware of this. <br><br>Do any of you have suggestions for educators to do that moment of sort of reflection and pause, who might be coming to this anew? Folks who have never had training in their career as educators, teachers, librarians. What sort of questions should they be asking themselves at this point?<br><br><br><strong>Mays</strong>: That’s an excellent question and I want to thank my colleagues for what they shared. I always start by saying learn about trauma. Not from an academic or like a scientific, but just from a human perspective that trauma is very much part of the story of life, part of our stories. So learning about it, at least for me, even though I had done my training in neuroscience, but when I began to learn about trauma and how it shows up and how it stays in the body and how... <br><br>I really started having self compassion, like that’s why I am doing this. That’s why that happens. And it was those moments of self compassion that without even me intentionally, they extended to others. As Janice said, that she began to see, to recognize it in herself and then in her students. And I think right now educators are carrying a lot, and I often say, “Who’s helping the helpers?”<br><br>And so, maybe watch I don’t know, like something on YouTube or pick up a book or an article and learn about trauma. And then, and I always also say that we don’t need to have training. This is about I think one of the most powerful tool to help with healing is to let someone know that you see them and that they matter. It’s the relational, it’s the laughing with someone. <br><br>Caitlin talked about laughing, how important it is for the health of the brain. And so, I say, “Be yourself, empower others by letting them see your humanity and elevate theirs.” So that’s what I usually begin with. <br><br><br><strong>Caitlin</strong>: You said what I could not say that eloquently, it was perfect because all that was going through my mind before you started speaking was I don’t know an educator working right now who could not be benefitted by regular therapy. So that just addition onto what was said there I think is important, just taking care, and understanding the self will help you understand how you show up in your classrooms. <br><br>And yeah, I saw something in the chat about especially as you’re dealing with other educators, especially as you’re dealing with faculty. There’s so much, everything in those dynamics can be so loaded and can trigger things in your own academic trauma that you didn’t even know was there. And like again, most educators do have a lot of academic trauma, so sorting through that. <br><br>Having a space outside of the academy or outside of your workplace where you can process those feelings. And sort of pick apart those dynamics so that you understand how you’re operating and why is just really crucial for how you show up. <br><br><br><strong>Janice</strong>: I love that, because we go to therapy not because there’s something wrong with us, but because we deserve that space to recover. And we will get triggered, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of kind of when and then how we make space for that, for ourselves and for our students so that we can recover when those kinds of things happen. And thrive, right? And one way then that’s been helpful for me I find that helping to reflect on those trauma-informed principles, I kind of de-mystify it. <br><br>If you take a look at the trauma-informed principles, there’s no checklist. Caitlin had all those great strategies and they may look different in different spaces and that’s been the biggest challenge I found in talking with educators. Like how we operationalize this? What does it look like in higher ed? It looks like these principles. And what’s great about these principles like safety and trust and support, those are all things that we tend to have, we share those values in common. <br><br>And when we start thinking about how do I create this space, well let me think, what might safety look like in this situation emotional safety, social safety, physical safety, academic safety? How do I build that in? Because there’s not one right answer, but it provides a framework for us. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thank you for all of those thoughts and ideas. I am turning back to the chat and looking at Kaitlin’s question about whether or not any of you have experienced pushback from trauma-informed pedagogy and practices from students or other educators? And if so, how you approach that kind of pushback and maybe open a conversation. <br><br><br><strong>Caitlin</strong>: I get pushback all the time about the rhetoric of trauma-informed care and teaching, but sort of Janice was implying if you don’t label things that way, you very rarely get pushback to the principles themselves. So if you’re in a classroom space and you’re trying to instill trust and connection and relationships and getting in your body. And we took a stretch break today, very few people will challenge that. <br><br>But if you come into a space and say, “Hey I think we should implement trauma-informed care and learning in this space.” The words themselves tend to disrupt or cause friction. But just as there can be a power in naming things, because here we are all under the umbrella of wanting to know more about this topic and how to learn. There’s also a power in un-naming things. <br><br>You can operate within a framework without being particularly explicit that that’s the framework you’re using to folks who might pose a challenge to that kind of work in the classroom. But I like to be sneaky with it, so that might just be me. <br><br><br><strong>Janice</strong>: It’s not sneaky, it’s motivating, it’s how do you tie into the values they already have and find those commonalities. I don’t think I’ve ever, one of my colleagues jokes every time we do a presentation together I always get pushback and it’s usually around the coddling variety. Why are you coddling students? Why don’t you value academic rigor? As if flexibility was somehow synonymous or that people think that trigger warnings are about not having the conversation instead of no, we are going to have the conversation. <br><br>And here’s how we’re going to make space for you to be able to take care of yourself during that conversation. Yeah, appeal to their values, sometimes just talking explicitly with people about well, what do you call it? And then, any conversation that I have like if I’ve been invited to do a workshop or a training, I’m asking folks, “What are you already doing that’s congruent with these values?”<br><br>Because I know you’re doing it. And then, when they see that I’m not here to try to point out anything you’re doing wrong, I’m here to talk about what are you doing that’s working, and how can we share that knowledge with each other and build on it. And oh, by the way, as Caitlin was saying, this is congruent with what you already value, we can keep doing this. And then defenses are down a little bit. And I still get some pushback, but it’s not as much. Caitlin, do you also get the variety of pushback of it’s not my job?<br><br><br><strong>Caitlin</strong>: Yeah, I think that is number two to the coddling comment. And I’ll never quite understand it, but I do know that when I focus more on making sure that people understand that they’re valued as educators and that they are doing things right, that that lessens the struggle. It’s less thick, the tension is less thick to get through to get them to effect change. And in turn, that can help with some of the exhaustion that somebody mentioned in the chat. <br><br>That constant battle of this is important, you should care, this is important, you should care is not actually super effective. And it’s burning you out, right? So it’s a delicate balance about when and where you choose to challenge resistance and how you do it. It’ll save you a lot of energy in the long run if you understand the pushback for what it is, which is oftentimes insecurity, nerves, defensiveness about one’s own teaching. <br><br>Fear that there is something that folks don’t understand yet or are not doing well. Just general fear of critique, fear of embarrassment, and if we recognize that that’s what it is, it’s much easier to approach because we approach that kind of defensiveness in our students all the time. So it’s really just treating every space that you’re in like a pedagogical opportunity instead of just your classroom can be helpful in that way. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: I appreciate what you said, Caitlin, about using different words. This has been a sort of recurring theme in terms of it being an effective strategy in achieving your goals without sort of setting off controversy or unproductive conversation and just talking about things in a different way or as you said operating within a framework without being explicit about it. I wonder you were both just talking about where some of the pushback comes from. <br><br>Do you ever have the sense that pushback is coming from that person’s own trauma and that this is a very sort of scary intimidating approach that maybe they’re not ready for? <br><br><br><strong>Janice</strong>: Yeah. <br><br><br><strong>Caitlin</strong>: Yes. I definitely do think that. I think that comes back to that academic trauma that I was mentioning earlier, where vulnerability in these spaces is not rewarded. Not knowing is something that’s not rewarded. So a lot of that fear around just not letting people know that you need help, that you want help, that there are things you have yet to learn, there’s growing you have yet to do. <br><br>For an environment that claims to be all about that kind of education, it can be very hostile when people are open about their own lack of knowledge or understanding and need for improvement. So a lot of the pushback is very self protective and justified self protection. So you can’t come in condescending about why someone might respond that way. You have to come in with a great deal of empathy for why someone would be self protective in a hostile place. <br><br>Like that’s a very natural, understandable reaction to any sort of perceived challenge here. Yeah, Janice, I’m sorry, I’ll pass it to you. <br><br><br><strong>Janice</strong>: No, same. I don’t know if Mays is still on either, but if she is, I hope she’ll join in. One of the eye opening things for me when I first started learning about trauma-informed care is that in their seminal text Harris and Fallot talk about not reproducing abusive dynamics in relationships and the importance of then changing culture. And so to be able to look in the mirror as an individual or as an institution because we get pushback at the institutional level when we try to take it beyond our classrooms. <br><br>How do we do that? How do we tie it to strategic goals? Right? Because there’s absolutely going to be that defensiveness. Mays is still is on, I want to make sure that she has time. <br><br><br><strong>Mays</strong>: Thank you. I have experiments running the whole day, so I’m in and out. It was several years ago I was teaching a physiology course and it was... So I actually don’t know the question, but I’m going to, I’d like to say something, I think I know the question, I don’t know. So I was teaching a physiology course, and it was an exam day. <br><br>And I came in, and a lot of my students they are [inaudible 0:35:34] students, they’re older students, they work in multiple jobs, they are refugees, they are human who come with a lot of complexities, like we all do. And they’re also on the margins. And I remember coming in, and I saw and I just looked, and the students did not look all right. As a matter of fact, one of the students looked like they were and I said, “Are you okay?” <br><br>And it was like the fear of this exam and how if they did not do well everything else depended on that one exam, whether they got into nursing school or not. And I remember thinking is what I’m doing ethical, to give them these high stake exams that a lot of times are not really testing what they learned? They’re testing did they memorize or not? <br><br>Knowing that in fact after that I started we did as a class looking at the cortisone level, measuring the cortisone level what happens right before an exam and measuring our sympathetic, parasympathetic activities. And what I found, and I wasn’t surprised is a lot of it was like they are putting them in a high state of anxiety that is not conducive for memory collection or learning. <br><br>And really, that kept me up at night, that I was not just part of a system that was obsessed with rigor, whatever that meant. But it was a system that wasn’t kind, that didn’t say, “Now, let me see what is the optimal way to assess whether you learned or not? And if you didn’t what can we do to optimize?” It was really to weed out students who... <br><br>So to me it was a matter of, and I was you know, I’m always like, I was worried to change too much in my class because I was worried that my colleagues would say I wasn’t rigorous enough, I wasn’t this enough, I wasn’t scientific enough. But it reached a point where I couldn’t live with myself. I was seeing the role I was playing in making people’s lives more difficult. <br><br>And to me, I couldn’t keep… And eventually, I began to listen to the students and let the students, it was really the students who empowered me to do what my heart was telling me this is the right, the ethical, the humane thing to do. So I’ll stop here, I don’t know if this was addressing the question or not. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: This was helpful, and it reminds me of Janice, you talked about failure and how with your story that you shared a trauma-informed approach in the classroom helped you and your students fail less. I think it also has to do with redefining those terms, right? Failure is not just as you said, Mays, a letter grade or a number grade. Success is also not just submitting an assignment on time, but it’s feeling that sense of safety, feeling that sense of I guess empathy. <br><br>To know that as you were saying earlier that you are not alone in these experiences, in these emotions, to make your way around this. In that spirit of we’re not alone in this, I relate very much to the question that Amy has asked in the chat. Amy says that the conversation so far has been resonating with her experience in Oregon, where professional development participation is down because she says everyone is so tired. <br><br>Do all three of you, any of you, have additional thoughts about when you are working with a classroom of educators, educators as your students, so for instance faculty in OER workshops? Do you have any thoughts around working with this subset of particularly hard students to work with?<br><br><br><strong>Caitlin</strong>: For me it’s creating the same flexibility that I would create in a classroom of college students. That means this is actually a really great example. I can imagine an educator who just didn’t have the space today but wanted to hear this conversation laying down with headphones on and listening to it later. Just giving lots of opportunities for the information and for the knowledge to be absorbed in different ways at different times. <br><br>I’m a big fan of asynchronous work, I’m a big fan of different sort of mediums, video, audio, all those sorts of things that can help meet people where they are, so that they’re not continually fitting into the same mold just in digital space or just in another way that continues to burn them out. And grace with ourselves as we might do less PD than we’re used to doing outside of these. <br><br>We just have often less capacity and less of an attention span these days. And that’s okay, how do we make the most out of the time and space that we do have to give? And not trying to hold ourselves to a standard that really no longer exists in this world that we’re living in? It’s really adjusting to our current climate and our current situation and not well, past five years ago I could have done X. This is not that time. <br><br>This is not pre-2020. Things are going to look and feel different. You are going to be more tired and strained and it’s challenging. And no perfect PD format is going to change that, so how do we work within our new parameters is really what I spend a lot of time thinking about. Because ultimately I would rather have folks come away with smaller bites of information and skills and things like that. <br><br>Than trying to enforce the same levels of professional development as we have in the past and then not really implementing or learning much of it. So those are just my preliminary thoughts on that as someone who’s sort of perpetually exhausted, those are my thoughts on that. (Laughs)<br><br><br><strong>Janice</strong>: I’ve been doing a ton of training since the start of Covid. And what I tell people is I’m going to give you strategies, but when I talk to people collaborating beforehand a lot of this is motivational. And I’m going to normalize what you’re going through, and I go through often will go through the stages of disaster and what that looks like so people understand why they’re feeling exhausted. <br><br>Because we are at that disillusionment phase of what happens during a disaster so that helps to normalize it. Again, tapping into what people are already doing, because we know about burnout that we often experience that when we feel like nothing we’re doing is making a difference and that’s the point that a lot of us are at. <br><br>And so, helping people to identify those small things that they’re doing and reinforcing how guess what, those relationships you have with your students and all of those things that you’re doing helping you see that that really makes a difference. And then, there was a great Tweet that was out a few months ago and I’m forgetting the name of the person who tweeted it. <br><br>But they were talking about going into a faculty meeting and their dean charged them with doing the bare minimum and finding joy in order to get through these times. And that has become my mantra, bare minimum, find joy because folks like us who are doing all of this, our bare minimum is a lot. Right? So things like that and amen to everything Caitlin has said. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Bare minimum, find joy. I am repeating that often. New mantra, absolutely. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Mays, I saw you go to unmute, so I’m going to let you share whatever you wanted to say. <br><br><br><strong>Mays</strong>: Bare minimum, find joy and the same flexibility as Caitlin said that I afford the students I do to myself and my faculty, I afford that. I think we’ve been through a lot. And whether the term is collective or mass trauma or this or that, we haven’t stopped to process the grief, the insurmountable loss. And that’s a lot. That’s really heavy. And we carry that with us, we lost colleagues and loved ones and students. <br><br>And the cashier at the drug store that we know. And, and, and… And you know, we’re living in a world of ongoing and relentless racial injustice, oppression of many kinds. It wears heavy on us with relational. And in the midst of this I am part of a system that is about urgency, everything is urgent and deadline and this, and this. And just the body is not really designed to be able to do all of that without stopping to metabolize, to process what happened. <br><br>And so, I am just, I don’t want to, because what I notice is that when I don’t slow down my body says, “I’ll make you slow down.” I don’t want to get to that point. I want to be kinder to my body. So in the recent months I’ve been trying to really figure out what does it mean to grieve? And what does it mean to do justice by the wounds that I’ve had but also I’ve picked up over the past three years?<br><br>And why it is important to do justice by them and really to share that with my students and with my colleagues. Yesterday we discussed an article about the power of tears and what’s the composition of tears? What is the chemical composition? And the students were like what? Like one student said, “You know this makes so much sense, that’s why when I cry I feel so much better, and I should express it.”<br><br>Yeah, we should express it. And so, allow the space to be human, to feel, to cry, to laugh, to fall apart and come back together. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: And to hopefully not hide that from one another as well. I think in our field, that type of vulnerability is seen as weakness, as someone who is not doing their job well. In fact, I shared with someone on my team there is a spot in my house that I like to go sit down and take a breath in the days when things are a little bit too busy. And it’s good for us to share not only what we’re experiencing, but also how we’re able to reset, pause before again our bodies make us do so, as you said. <br><br>I’m looking at our time, we have about eight minutes left. And I do want to make sure that anyone else who has questions or comments or thoughts is able to take a moment to unmute and share or ask in the chat. And I am happy with 30 seconds of silence while we do that. And I wish I had music prepared, Caitlin, for this background. <br><br><br><strong>Kaitlin</strong>: If I can ask one more question, if that’s okay? Because like I said, this has been really great and trying very hard not to cry throughout it. But maybe it’s good that you cry, right? Do either of you, or not either, all three of you have any tips I guess? I think the one central piece was showing that self compassion. And maybe any tips or advice for individuals to have that, the chemical reaction of tears got me. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Yeah, do you have suggestions for how we can show that kindness and grace to ourselves? It’s hard to do and I think it’s probably going to look different for everybody depending on our personalities, our stories, our behaviors, but maybe what would be helpful I know for me would be to hear how you all show yourselves some self compassion. And with that, I might be able to draw inspiration and hopefully, Kaitlin, you can too. <br><br><br><strong>Janice</strong>: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking about. I’m curious as to what people do, because it can be hard to even admit that you’re not always kind to yourself or to recognize ways in which. So part of it’s even I have difficulty crying in public, I don’t think I cried in front of other people until I was in my 30s and giving my permission for that is a challenge. Recognizing and working on my self talk is really super hard. <br><br>Taking time off to prioritize my own needs instead of the needs of other people is super hard. Saying no (laughs) is super hard, so it’s figuring out, and I love when Mays talks about the body. I am terrible, like as much as I can tell you what’s going on in my body at any given time, I can’t always tell you that I pay attention to it and use that information as a signal that I need to do something else. <br><br>And I can interpret crying as a way that my body is trying to comfort myself. That I know that when I feel anger here or I feel sick to my stomach that I need to go take a time out and then honoring that need instead of answering more email. So I guess a lot of it, if you look at a theme in some of mine is really thinking about boundaries and self care as boundaries to help improve the relationship that I have with other humans in the world. <br><br><br><strong>Caitlin</strong>: Yes, to boundaries. I was, Kaitlin, sort of taken to a place where I was least kind to myself and least extended myself the least amount of grace. And what I was doing at that time was really not having much of an identity outside of myself as an academic or an educator. And that will produce for me at least the most miserable result. When I don’t feel whole or like I’m showing up in other parts of my life with other people in my life. <br><br>Like I’m Caitlin independent of the structures that I’m a part of. Because they’re not, you know, folks like that are in this group are trying to carve out spaces that feel safe, that feel good, that feel beneficial, but they’re not designed that way naturally. And so, if you give too much of yourself to those spaces, you will begin to treat yourself the way that those institutions treat you, which is extractive and exploitative and never enough. <br><br>And that’s not sustainable, it’s impossible. It’s not healthy for you, it’s not healthy for the folks that you are hoping to guide and teach. So when I find myself too overwhelmed in certain environments, I really need to do a lot of conscious thinking about how I can give less of myself to that environment and more of myself back to me and back to my family and back to my weird chihuahua and back to all the things that matter to me outside of the space of academia or even the space in the classroom. <br><br>Because even when it feels good, you’re in the classroom a lot and it feels so great or you’re working with the populations you’re working with and in the moment you’re so energized and like this is great, I want to just give more of myself, it’s a trap. It’s a trap. There are lots of things that feel good in that moment will leave you so depleted and if you want to do it forever, like I know a lot of educators do, we just cannot live that way and be good to ourselves at the same time. <br><br>My heart goes out, I can’t watch people be hurting right now, it’s just a really tough, tough period of time and it’s not easy to be good to yourself. But yeah, so important. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Mays, did you want to share as well what you do to practice? No? You don’t have to. I just want to make sure if you did. <br><br><br><strong>Mays</strong>: It’s so beautiful, this. You know. There’s a lot emerging about the science of the heart and how the heart has its own brain. And actually the heart sends more messages to the brain than the brain to the heart. And when the heart is in a state, when the brain is in a state of anxiety and turmoil, it’s the heart that helps relax the brain. And so, I have been practicing self compassion, I have been trying to be kind to my heart, to do justice by my heart. <br><br>And for me I imagine my heart as a kid, as a child that wants to play. That wants to just get out of this office and go and just stand in the sun. And when I do this, imagine like my heart as a child that really wants to connect, and I see like elements of compassion. I also sometimes, I think when it’s most difficult for me to have self compassion, I look for a witness, a close friend, a sister, someone that I speak with them and they help me. <br><br>It's almost like the compassion they give me, my mirror neurons will then pick it up and say, “Oh okay, I could do that.” So the relational. Yeah. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you, I don’t have words to respond, but my body wants to come and give all of you a hug at this stage. I am seeing in the chat a lot of gratitude coming in from everyone who has listened. And I think Karen and I both have that to share with you three speakers for just taking the time for not saying no to this conversation and for sharing all of your words. Mays, for being in many experiments, including this one, at the same time. Thank you. <br><br>We are at our hour together, and I don’t want to take up more of anyone’s time. It has been a pleasure as always to connect with more of you as Karen noted at the start of the session, we’re also mindful of the many things everybody has going on and the urgency of the moment. And we’re taking a break in October, give yourself a chance to do whatever you need to do, whether that’s attending conferences or not. <br><br>And hopefully, we will see you again in November, on November 17th to regroup for Office Hours, and we’re just going to be reflecting on community. So that’s our topic to close out our year of Office Hours programming. As always, stay tuned for the recording of today’s session, which will be shared on YouTube as well as all of the resources and conversation from the chat. So thank you all again. Enjoy the rest of your day, enjoy your weekends, and I hope we can all be kinder to ourselves. <br><br><br><strong>Caitlin</strong>: Thank you all, this was wonderful and so healing. Thank you. <br><br><br><strong>Mays</strong>: Thank you. <br><br><br><strong>Janice</strong>: Thank you. <br><br><br><br>END OF VIDEO<br><br></div><h2>Chat Transcript</h2><div>12:55:03 From Caitlin Gunn (she/hers) to Everyone: I’ll be right back!<br>12:57:04 From Karen Lauritsen to Everyone: BRB<br>13:03:06 From Apurva Ashok to Everyone: <a href="contact@rebus.community">contact@rebus.community</a><br>13:03:37 From Karen Lauritsen to Everyone: <a href="https://open.umn.edu/blog/categories/office-hours">https://open.umn.edu/blog/categories/office-hours</a><br>13:03:46 From Apurva Ashok to Kaitlin Schilling (Direct Message): all good!<br>13:15:47 From Amy Hofer (she/her) to Everyone: I love all these suggesitons!<br>13:23:55 From Apurva Ashok to Everyone:<br> <a href="https://forum.rebus.community/t/office-hours-trauma-informed-pedagogy-in-open-education/7723">https://forum.rebus.community/t/office-hours-trauma-informed-pedagogy-in-open-education/7723</a><br>13:24:41 From Karen Lauritsen to Everyone: Please share your questions and reflections!<br>13:25:16 From Karen Lauritsen to Everyone: Now is the time!<br>13:25:30 From Kaitlin Schilling to Everyone: This session was incredibly validating and healing, as well as informative. Very much so appreciate you all sharing! (still thinking of questions hehe)<br>13:27:29 From Kaitlin Schilling to Everyone: Have any of you experienced push back from trauma-informed pedagogy and practices, from students or other educators? If so, how do you all respond?<br>13:27:33 From Amy Hofer (she/her) to Everyone: this is resonating with my experience in Oregon where PD participation is down because everyone is SO TIRED. Do the panelists have additional thoughts about when your students are educators, for example faculty in OER workshops? 🙂<br>13:29:20 From Louann Terveer to Everyone: Thank you for sharing your experiences! I am still trying to translate how this carries over to supporting OER / open pedagogies creation. +1 to Amy's comment and question!<br>13:29:30 From Apurva Ashok to Everyone: Thank you! That was lovely.<br>13:31:00 From Caitlin Gunn (she/hers) to Everyone: Because we are human often living through inhumane situations<br>13:41:00 From Caitlin Gunn (she/hers) to Everyone: Now THAT is some good pedagogy<br>13:46:25 From Amy Hofer (she/her) to Everyone: Thanks Caitlin, really helpful thoughts!<br>13:47:46 From Apurva Ashok to Everyone: ICYMI, our last Office Hours session was about Legitimizing Burnout: <a href="https://forum.rebus.community/t/office-hours-legitmizing-burnout-in-open-education-roles/7378">https://forum.rebus.community/t/office-hours-legitmizing-burnout-in-open-education-roles/7378</a><br>13:54:36 From Louann Terveer to Everyone: *trying to let go of "perfection” - so hard me…<br>13:58:04 From Kaitlin Schilling to Everyone: Thank you all so much for this session and for providing such a safe space for vulnerability. Beyond grateful for today ❤️<br>13:58:25 From Anders Tobiason to Everyone: Thank you all for a really excellent conversation and great ideas<br>13:59:26 From Caitlin Gunn (she/hers) to Everyone: I can't tell you how much I love that!<br>13:59:31 From Apurva Ashok to Everyone: hear hear!!<br>14:00:02 From Louann Terveer to Everyone: So much gratitude to be invited into this space with a group of caring and wise individuals, thank you!<br>14:00:25 From Karen Lauritsen to Everyone: Yes, indeed.<br>14:00:58 From Jesika Brooks (she/her) to Everyone: Thanks, all, for the great talk. I appreciate everyone's willingness to share!<br>14:01:41 From Amy Hofer (she/her) to Everyone: Thank you!<br><br><br></div>admintag:open.umn.edu,2005:Spina::Blog::Post/732022-08-31T17:59:20Z2022-09-12T20:49:08ZAugust Office Hours: Legitimizing Burnout in Open Education Roles<div>Watch the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymV0SEOqkX0&list=PLWRE6ioG4vdahUrKaiHvsCA2J6NQLysU6&index=1">video recording</a> of this Office Hours session, or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.<br><br>Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please <a href="mailto:joh20849@umn.edu">contact Tonia</a>.<br><br></div><h2>Audio Transcript</h2><div><br><strong>Speakers:</strong></div><ul><li>Apurva Ashok (Director of Open Education, The Rebus Foundation)</li><li>Karen Lauritsen (Publishing Director, Open Education Network)</li><li>Jess Mitchell (Senior Manager, Research + Design, IDRC)</li><li>Lisa Petrides (CEO + Founder, ISKME)</li><li>Angelique Carson (Shared Collections Librarian, Washington Research Library Consortium)</li><li>Doug Kennedy (Assistant Professor, Integrative Health & Wellbeing Research Program, Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing, University of Minnesota)</li></ul><div><br></div><div><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Hello everybody, welcome to another Office Hours. My name is Apurva Ashok, I use she, her, hers pronouns and I am joining you all today from Toronto, which is actually on the traditional territories of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the First Credit, the Chippewa, the Anishnabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. I am very grateful to be living out the last days of summer or what it feels like on this beautiful land. <br><br>And I just want to welcome you all to add your own territorial acknowledgements to the chat, this is just one small part of my practice and of Rebus’ to support decolonization, reconciliation work in Canada. And I look forward to doing more in my role at Rebus and in my personal role where I live. A little bit about Rebus, we are a Canadian charity that helps educational institutions build human capacity in OER publishing and in open education in general through professional development.<br><br>And we’re excited to have partnered with the Open Education Network for the past five years to offer these Office Hours sessions. Karen will tell you a little bit more about Office Hours, about the OEN, and our fabulous line up for today. So over to you, Karen. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thank you very much, Apurva, it is great as always to be here with you and Caitlin and the Rebus team. I am Karen Lauritsen, I am publishing director with the Open Education Network. We’re based at the University of Minnesota. And as many of you are part, we are a community of professionals working to make higher education more open and equitable. Office Hours as Apurva mentioned has been a five-year partnership with the Rebus Community. <br><br>We talk informally on a monthly basis about things that are on our mind. But of course it really helps to know what’s on your mind, so please always feel free to offer suggestions for future topics. Today’s topic was inspired by the reality of our lives, particularly over the last couple of years and what we’ve heard from the community about burnout and fatigue. And the desire to try and lean on and support one another to keep going. <br><br>So we have four guests joining us today, I will introduce them briefly in a moment. After we hear from them, we will really turn to you for your questions and for you to start the conversation. Before we do that, I will let you know that I am joining you from central California, on the coast and this is the traditional and ancestral home of the Chumash. And recently, I learned about a very cool project they are currently working on with other community members and elected leaders here in California. <br><br>And that is to establish the first marine sanctuary. They started this campaign in 2013, and the nomination has just been accepted by the national oceanic and atmospheric administration. So this is something that the Chumash have been working very closely with our community on recently, and I’ll just drop a link in the chat in case you’re interested in learning more. <br><br>So without further ado I will let you know who’s here with us today in terms of our guests. We are joined by Jess Mitchell, who is Senior Manager in Research & Design at IDRC. Lisa Petrides, who is the CEO & Founder of ISKME. Angelique Carson, who is Shared Collections Librarian at the Washington Research Library Consortium. And Doug Kennedy, who is Assistant Professor Integrative Health & Wellbeing Research Program at the Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing at the University of Minnesota.<br><br>Now, I know I introduced some of you using acronyms, so please feel free to elaborate on those acronyms. And with that, I will hand things over to Jess. <br><br><br><strong>Jess</strong>: Hey everybody, thanks, Karen. Thanks, Apurva, thanks for having this event. I think it’s a great way to bring people together. You mentioned being part of a community, Karen, I’m kind of thinking that that is the way we move so much of the work forward that needs to happen. I am on Anishnabeg, Haudenosaunee and Wendat territory here in southern Ontario. I’m just down the road from the Six Nations, the Grand River Reserve. <br><br>And I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about this little Turtle Island we’ve got here. And as I spend the time thinking about decolonization and equity, the more I read, the most recent thing that I was reading Patriarchy Blues, Frederick Joseph, a fine, fine read. He makes a wonderful point which is when we do this work, we have to look to the most marginalized. It’s back to that if any of us isn’t free, none of us is free. <br><br>And the most marginalized that he’s talking about, and I think that I’ve been thinking about lately are Black CIS women and Black transgender women, also indigenous women. The most precarious, the most diminished, the most leaned upon, the ones who are doing all the lifting. So I spend a lot of time thinking and trying to use whatever voice I have as an awkward ally, a White person, to try to carve a space out there. <br><br>I was involved in a project earlier this year, and I feel uneasy when people talk about projects that were passion projects or you know, these sort of projects of the heart because I don’t want it to seem like some projects aren’t passion projects or projects of the heart. And also, sometimes it seems to diminish the legitimacy of the project if you align yourself too closely with it using something like your big organ, your heart. <br><br>We did something around humanizing learning and we thought of that quite broadly, brought a group of people together and really wanted to create that community of practice. One where people could come and figure out what it meant to bring their whole selves, not in that way where it usually happens, where the wrong people hear it. But that way where marginalized voices can be heard. <br><br>The project brought a lot of leaders together, in some cases, some might say the usual suspects together in Ontario higher ed institutions. And those folks used that platform to bring in fellows, so we brought in again, thinking who are those who are most precarious? Who are those who are experiencing the most difficulty in general? But also specifically during the time that we were in, which was Covid year one and a half, two. <br><br>And we reached out to sessional adjunct precariously employed faculty, graduate students, those people who are again, doing the lifting, doing the work and aren’t resting with a safety net underneath them. And we brought them together and did some co-design sessions where we talked through a number of topics and themes that we thought were important to this work of humanizing. I will say when we started the project there was very much this project mentality. What are our milestones? What are our deliverables? <br><br>What are our due dates? And actually, even got a little nudge from one of the participants who described himself as a nervous squirrel and wanted to know what we were doing. I resisted and pushed back as much as I possibly could because I don’t like having a defined path in what we’re doing. It’s very tightrope walk between having a purpose and leading the purpose rather than letting others lead it or contribute to it. <br><br>So long story short, something happened in our weekly meetings. At first the group didn’t want to meet weekly, they thought it was too much. We’re still meeting weekly the project has long ended, and what we did is we created a community and that community really came together with our whole selves. In the outcome of the project, that is the Pressbook that we created, we have a reference to the musical Rent, and we ask, "How do <em>you</em> measure a year?"<br><br>And in that year that we all spent together, a lot happened. We had deaths. We didn’t have any births, but we had a couple of attempts at potty training that didn’t go so well. We had brain surgeries; we had citizenship ceremonies. We had kids going through pandemic quarantines, parents juggling their own schedules and their own workspaces. And it’s that stuff that we so quickly forget. <br><br>We had somebody with a self-described elite level sleep apnea. So we were entangled, folks; we were situated. We were in our contexts; we were being human together. And we had some interesting outcomes from that, that I think moved this work forward. We talked about pedagogy of care, pedagogy of trauma, trauma informed pedagogy. And I’m at this point now I think where I want very much to approach everybody with an expectation that you’ve lived a life. <br><br>You’ve got trauma, how can we do this thing together? And how can we help lift each other up? How can we make our experiences with each other positive? And how can we do this without this kind of zero sum approach where I lift somebody else up, and somebody else doesn’t feel lifted up. I think that there’s enough to go around. <br><br>I want to focus on the most precarious because I think for hundreds of years there has been a deep injustice. There are scars, there are wounds. I’ll stop there for now, I hope I haven’t killed the mood. And I’m going to pass it on to Lisa. <br><br><br><strong>Lisa</strong>: All right, thank you, Jess, for really setting that context of kind of where we’re all starting today, right? This is what we’ve been through in the last couple of years. And I want to speak a little bit in my role as CEO and Founder of ISKME, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management and Education. Our work is about making learning and knowledge sharing participatory, equitable and open. <br><br>Because we in fact believe that the development of equitable and inclusive learning environments contribute to the creation of a more just society. So we embed that in our mission, you might know one of our key initiatives which is around the digital public library OER commons. And we have several communities of practice, of people who we do basically we help them stand up their own libraries and do their work and we help train them to do their professional development and whatnot. <br><br>So we’ve been all remote since March 2020. And not only really with all of these partners helping them grapple with this move to remote learning, all this work with how do we focus on the people that we serve? To how are we doing as an organization? Are we okay? I liked your, not I liked it, but your list, Jess, of things, just rang true. Let me add in California, add fires to that, we had several people displaced because of fires and it’s been a rough time. <br><br>So really when I saw this topic, I was like yeah, this do more with less kind of attitude basically it’s a scarcity model and we need to just kind of toss it. Maybe you can do more with less for a hot minute, you know, when you’re I don’t know, you’ve had some staff changes or there’s a new project and you haven’t ramped up yet. But the idea that we seem to sort of resist that and say, “No, that’s not possible, we can’t do that.” <br><br>So what does that mean? It means first of all that we have to just change that narrative of doing more with less and say is it about prioritizing? How do we help each other prioritize what’s most important? How do we educate to be human? What does that look like? It’s interesting, even in our team meetings, of course, which changed dramatically when we were all remote, we were about half remote before the pandemic and now fully. <br><br>And part of it is just being there and showing up. I would say to people, “You don’t have to blur the background of your screen unless you want to. You don’t need to put up some nice cheery background. Have your kid who’s sick, or your dogs who are providing comfort.” Or I live with my mother who’s 88 years old and has dementia, who can just wander into screen and ask me how to brush her teeth. Right?<br><br>It's modeling that, as a manager, and saying, “It’s okay, let’s just be here, it doesn’t matter.” How many people have you seen someone grabs a cat and says, “I’m sorry. The cat ran in front of the screen.” Like, how do we just be here and be human and do our work? I think that’s been such an important part of what I’ve tried to model as a manager. And I’ve certainly seen it really have an impact in the way we can sort of relax into the work. <br><br>Understand that work is important, it has a strong mission, but we can’t get into the sort of deadly downward spiral of doing more with less and just thinking we have to keep doing, doing, doing and for what? Now, part of it specifically I think most of us here and those of you who are in the room with us today, we’re working in this space of open education. And while it’s relatively new field in some ways, I know that it can be very discouraging. <br><br>Maybe you’ve been at this for a couple of years, and you’ve seen something take hold, and then it’s not working and you’re trying and you’re trying and you’re trying, and you’re just burning out. You’re saying, “Ah.” And we’ve seen some amazing people, I think, leave the field for things that are maybe not as I don’t want to say meaningful but don’t have such a passion involved in it or a value of social justice and change and transformation in it, because it takes too much to maintain that. <br><br>I think what I’ve lived, and you know, we’ve been doing this for my organization and me of course, for almost 20 years in open education. And I’ve seen so many things kind of come and I’ve seen a lot of negativity. I’ve seen bad things happen. I’ve seen amazing things happen. I’ve seen transformation happen. When you start to see all of the different lifecycles of the change I think there’s not so much of this impetus to say, “It has to change now and if it doesn’t, I’m leaving.”<br><br>And that causes us to want to just burnout, burn ourselves out, because we think we have to give it all every day. And actually, what we have to do is sort of give to ourselves every day, and then just show up and do the work. And it doesn’t mean that you do it with any less care or intensity, there’s just a sense of how you can do it. I like to say that I’m a really good plodder, and that’s with a D, D-D-E-R. <br><br>But you just kind of keep going and doing the next right thing and that’s really what has kept me and I think our organization going and actually thriving. And we’ve seen also too with the great resignation, we’ve had people cycle out of our organization and amazing people cycle in. And there is something to be said for time and age and wiseness, and all that good stuff. <br><br>That you do just kind of sit back and say, “This is the work. Are we adjusting appropriately? Are we making the kinds of changes we need? Are we reflecting? Are we self-reflective? Are we critical of our own work and trying to do it better?” As long as you’re doing a little bit of those every day, that’s how you show up. That’s how you show up for your work. That’s how you show up for life. That’s how you show up for change, whether it’s personal or professional. <br><br>So I’m going to stop here, and I am going to pass it over to Angelique. <br><br><br><strong>Angelique</strong>: Thank you, thank you so much. I got some chills there, especially there is something to be said for wisdom and age. And I’ll tell you what, I’m ready to hand it over. These Gen Z kids, I love them. They’re not having it, and I applaud it. Take it, please. Again, I also was really enthused about the topic for today. I and everyone has been having these conversations, the Washington Research Library Consortium really had its annual meeting. <br><br>And our plenary speaker spoke about morale and the ambiguity of our lives, and what this means for us now two years later. And she spoke about several items, one item I walked away with, which I was surprised I’d never heard of was professional awe. And so much of that informs what we do. And if you haven’t heard of it either, it means like your work is so noble and so good, that you will over service at the risk of your own health because the work needs to get done. <br><br>And I think in a service industry, with the service community that we have, we have professional awe or we are likely to have it. And one of my colleagues was like, “Well, I’ve never had professional awe.” And I was like, “Well, good for you, because that is exactly how I entered into this field, as a BIPOC librarian my first institution was an HBCU, historically black college and university.” <br><br>And I’m not wearing any wings, but if you’re a librarian at a school that has historically serviced our most vulnerable populations, teaching someone how to do the most minor task will transform their academic career in an afternoon. And you have that with you, it is a unique sense of responsibility. And I don’t want to sound dramatic, but you’re not just here to get a job done, you’re here to get a job done for your people. <br><br>And this is never not important. I love their faces in front of me, and I want to do everything for them I can on every given day, knowing how much it took them to get there. When I was a young student myself, and I was like well, everyone’s getting back to school now, of course, and I’ve been watching the students come back to the University of Virginia, Jefferson’s university, that was my undergrad as well. <br><br>When I came to UVA, I was a BIPOC student, first generation, low income. And for my first English 101 class, there was a draft we had to turn in, and I turned in my draft handwritten on paper. My high school did not have a computer lab. I had never written a paper out, I did not know that when you turned in a paper, it was typed. I remember, bless her to this day, I wish I remembered her name, the TA just graciously took my work. <br><br>I think they were still spirals on the end of it, where I’d torn it out of my notebook, and I remember I think a student saying something, “Wow, I didn’t know we could do that.” And not having any idea what they meant. So how can we take care of ourselves, when we are who we are in the service that expects that? And the professional awe is just is our standard, we are not hedge fund managers, there’s a reason we’re in this room together. <br><br>And when I first entered into librarianship, I was at the Southern University of New Orleans. And at the time, 40% of Louisiana State residents did not have internet access. That was about 10 years ago, I promise you, it’s not better right now, and I could tell you why. But that’s another topic (laughs) I don’t want to get upset. But so, that kind of vulnerability on that campus where you already are told routinely in small ways and digs that you don’t belong there. <br><br>I recognize that, and it has informed a lot of my work. I want to be able to show up for my students, even if they weren’t in exactly the same position as a BIPOC student at a predominantly White institution. And of course, I don’t want to take away that you also have those experiences, you do not have to be a woman of color to have these experiences. We know that poverty is not unique in this country. <br><br>But there is something very unique to the experience of students of color on these campuses with the history of academia as it is, it is not open. We all understand that it’s history that depends on knowledge gatekeeping. So I wanted to say that BIPOC librarians carry this with them in a unique manner. And I know that other librarians who come from marginalized communities, vulnerable communities carry this with them as well. <br><br>So it has been since that plenary presentation, four months ago, professional awe has been on my mind and how it’s informed my work and what are we going to do to take care of ourselves so that we can ease it or give ourselves some grace? Which is going to be so necessary to give others grace. And when you’re talking about just showing up the best we can, showing up as we are, we’re really talking about vulnerability, right? <br><br>Now, vulnerability is not how I got here, being vulnerable in spaces is not a good idea for me. It hasn’t been when I was in school, it wasn’t in high school, it wasn’t when I was looking for work, and it isn’t now. Women of color do not walk into spaces and say that they don’t know how to do something or that they need help. That does not serve us, and I do not operate that way. <br><br>So that is my struggle. And I don’t come here with an answer, I just come here really with food for thought. And something that I am working through myself and maybe it resonates with you also. I can say this, you know, I was speaking, I was listening to a fellow colleague the other day and she was like, “You know what? There are those who will consider themselves allies.” And she goes, “Well, says who?”<br><br>Who said you’re an ally? Who says that you’re doing the work? Who else did you check with? Are you simply depending on your own assessment? So in order to make spaces where we can have meaningful, uncomfortable conversations that will lead to areas where we can be vulnerable, I will have to take a risk to be vulnerable in some spaces. And we will all have to take a risk to be vulnerable to say, “I don’t know. I’m wrong. Teach me this.”<br><br>And reduce our defenses so that we can listen. Every day this week you could call me an ally to my LGBTQ sisters and brothers, but a year ago when I was learning and understanding what it meant to add the pronouns I was right, I’m on. Tell me what I need to do so that I can do better. But I had to be taught and I had to be self-educated, and I had to ask others if you think that you are a safe space for all of us to learn more and do better together, we’re also going to have to question are we actively doing that?<br><br>You mentioned a moment we just need to show up every day, there’s a saying in Louisiana on the bayou called stick and move. Literally putting your big stick, they don’t call it that, I’m clearly not from the bayou, although I lived there for many years, into the water to move your pallet along. Stick and move, and it’s the everyday work. Being anti-racist is not being a good person, being anti-racist is challenging yourself every day. <br><br>So I’m just here to say that it’s been on my mind a lot, I’m very grateful for this discussion. I want to learn how to allow myself to be vulnerable in spaces and I want to figure out how we can create spaces as well. So it’s going to take vulnerability on both sides, it really is. And that’s hard for everyone and that to recognize us as well. But there’s a lot of defense, we’re good people, of course we’re good people, we’re librarians, we’re the best people. <br><br>But being a good person is not going to get us there. Being good is not what’s needed, challenging yourself and being uncomfortable and I know that I’m saying things that we all know. But that’s also something I’m realizing for myself how I’ve had my shoulders and my shackles up, my hackles, I think the word is, they’ve been up. And I’m going to have to reduce, I’m going to have to lean back a bit. <br><br>So I can give myself some grace and maybe make room for others. It’s hard to make a shift like that when it has been so successful for you and so necessary. But I don’t know of an alternative, and so when we talk about like having uncomfortable conversations to make space, to be vulnerable, I think the question is going to have to be that just being good is not going to cut it. <br><br>And we’re going to have to be vulnerable and that’s what I’ve been thinking about for the last four months. And so I’m going to pass it along, and thank you so much for your thoughts, that was just simply tremendous, thank you for sharing. <br><br><br><strong>Doug</strong>: Okay, so I think I’m batting. There’s always a real virtue in being able to go last because I’m really moved and also it helps me get a gauge of the room. I’m not a librarian. I’m a human scientist on a clinical trials team and I spend a lot of time in my teaching talking about the two taboo topics of bodies and emotions. So this topic of burnout and how we work in higher ed is really relevant. <br><br>Before we get into that, and even with the topics that are resonating, I just want to say I’m coming from Minneapolis, I’m from the University of Minnesota and close to the shores of the Bde Maka Ska. And we acknowledge that as a land grant university, that we are built on the traditional homelands of the Dakota and Anishinaabe people. And especially as land grant university it is vitally important to acknowledge the people whose lands that we live on, learn, and work as we seek to improve and strengthen our relationships with tribal nations. <br><br>So thank you for the invitation and for letting me speak today. I’m excited about this conversation. And before I tell you a little bit about some of this work and about what I’ve been thinking about it, the themes that really just sort of stood out for me, and I guess this is why I’m excited is I’m hearing things about how we show up. The impact that we have on our students, that it is deep that we choose this work, focusing on what’s important<br><br>The passion that we have for working with young people, again, not to be like a hedge fund manager, we are working with living human beings and all their complexity that they show up with in our classrooms, in our offices. Decoding schooling and helping students really understand that it’s a culture and that I would say too in a lot of my work, working with other professors, helping them understand how they’re teaching, the institutions they inhabit may not be a language that their students speak. <br><br>In fact, Angelique, when you were talking about there’s a gentleman who works with our YMC equity innovation center that I have lunch with, we used to do it every two weeks before the pandemic and we’ve kept it virtually. And he’s done a lot of our work or helped with our community engagement work. And that was his experience, too, going into University of Wisconsin and turning in a paper and never, ever having anyone say, “You know what? This is the way we do it.” <br><br>And that experience is not uncommon for the students that in a large university of 60,000 students that’s not uncommon. And so then, it begs the question of what is our role within it? And I would say as instructors, as faculty or as people that are working with students in student facing positions that it is us. It is our responsibility to take it up, it’s an act of disruption and equity and transformation that needs to happen. <br><br>And then, the last two things I’ll say that have been really, really resonant were that in these positions we have, we’re kind of like a bucket. And it was Ajahn Chah, a meditation teacher some of you may be familiar with that had said, “In these professions where we work with other human beings, especially when we take on whether it’s their pain, their trauma, their troubles, their struggles, we become like a bucket and we get filled up with that.”<br><br>But we have to make sure that there’s a hole in that bucket, too, right? And it’s that, how we have that hole in that bucket and how we can recharge because the students will be there again and again and again, and we have to show up. How we show up matters is vitally important and that that work is active, it’s not passive. It’s not an app on your phone that’s like oh, I got another meditation app like no, it’s really about doing the work day in and day out. <br><br>And I think sometimes with some of the pop culture buzz around this work it seems that you can just do it. But it doesn’t tell you what happens after it. It’s like when you say you’re sorry, and you realize that okay, there’s still that hurt that is there and having to work through that. I think this is really, really important. So why I’m bringing this up is that the work that I do is really asking questions around the how, how do we operationalize this?<br><br>How do we do the work? And for me, with my work in community engagement and my clinical trials team, it’s about helping researchers do the internal and intrapersonal work to then show up better. That it’s okay. That the work that you’re doing inside and how you show up, so it’s again it’s getting at that being able to notice it’s facilitating awareness that’s really important. <br><br>So just to give you where that’s going and some of the thoughts around it, is that when we’ve seen even the New York Times had an article on the difference between burnout and depression and how do you tell the difference. I’m really excited to see that there’s more attention on this. You hosting this conversation today, there’s an excellent book by Amelia and Emily Nagowski on burnout, it’s fantastic if you haven’t checked it out, it’s wonderful. <br><br>Sites like the Mayo Clinic have lots about what burnout is, great podcasts like 10% happier. Because it’s countering that sort of mentality that I think we see both in the private sector where my partner works, and then in higher ed that you can just grit through it. Toughen up, and if you’re not tough enough to do 80 hours a week as an NH funded scientist, then you really have no business being here. <br><br>And for those of us that have been in these positions or that we attained this level of education and being able to do it, yet we can grit through. We may have a big enough engine, if you will. But just because our engine can continue to move forward doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s doing it efficiently or optimally. So you could maybe have just a couple of cylinders firing, it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily good for you. <br><br>And we need to ask some questions about it. And the other piece too that just raises some interesting questions too is that we maybe in environments, teams, departments, things like that that are toxic for a whole host of reasons. And some of the life hacks and things like this that come out assume a lot of privilege that we could just leave, right? And if you have means and maybe if you’re like in my case you’re almost 50 and you’ve got a bunch of academic degrees and some financial stability, sure, you can do that. <br><br>But that is not afforded to many. And then, the other piece too is around that sometimes our environments we may be doing deeply impactful work, and it’s tending not to be all toxic or all happiness and unicorns. So how do we learn how to surf those waves? And so amidst all the pop culture pieces around well just do this hack, just do this piece, we really need to start to think about well then how do you do it? <br><br>Because inevitably those things, well just for a jog or just take a walk or find meditation whatever that means really become another rock in our knapsack that is just weighing us down. And I think for those of us that in especially in these student positions that starts to mean as we get more and more burned out that we’re not showing up well for people in front of us or that we start to see people as numbers or units or grades, assignments, things like that. <br><br>So what I hope we can start to talk about a little bit today and what I’ve found pretty useful in some of the work that I’ve been doing is getting at the reframing piece. That we know a lot about the body, we know a lot about how exercise or meditation can affect the brain, can affect our parasympathetic nervous system, things like that. But a lot of times the structures that we have in place are well, exercise happens at the gym, for example. <br><br>Or meditation has to take place in a certain way of doing this or that. So being able to restructure that and finding those minutes. And then also getting very, very clear about what’s important versus not. There is a lot that’s there, I will confess to being a high functioning trainer for the majority of my life, and these are hard lessons learned that have been complemented by my academic work. <br><br>But when we think about this reframing, especially with students, and we’ve had jump in enrolment numbers as administrators made different decisions around things, for good or bad. When we’re with the students, understanding well what’s important right now, as the student is in front of me talking about a topic, talking about a need that they have, talking about a struggle and being able to show up in ways that are important, that that student feels heard, listened to, valued and that they can continue to learn. <br><br>So there’s a lot here that I’ve been thinking about with the topics and I would be more than happy to engage for a long time about this, because I love my research, but I really love my students. And I’m looking forward to questions. So lots to talk about this and we can get into specifics around stumbling your way through. So thank you for inviting me, I look forward to this discussion. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Well, thank you Doug, Angelique, Lisa and Jess. I know Karen has put an invitation for comments and questions. But first, I wanted to just thank all four of you for your vulnerability and for sharing your stories and sharing your perspectives on this topic. Jess, you talked about bringing your whole self to work and not having a zero sum approach to all of this. I have four pages of notes, so this is what I’m looking down at, as you’ve been chatting. <br><br>Lisa, you talked about the importance of modeling and being human, I think that’s what I’ve taken away. Angelique, you flagged the importance of how good just won’t cut it, how vulnerability is really the beginning for us to work through this as a community. And Doug, for you, as you were chatting, again, I’m walking away with the challenge that we might have around determining what is important and what is the place to start and what isn’t. <br><br>I have a lot of thoughts and personal experience with this particular topic, but I will pause, and send an invitation back out to everybody who’s in the virtual room with us. If you have questions or comments or thoughts or scenarios, please feel free to post them in the chat, Karen and I will read out your questions. You’re also more than welcome to unmute your microphone and join in on this discussion and the conversation. <br><br>And that extends to all four of our guests, too, so please feel free to continue this conversation with one another instead of just having Karen and me direct and lead. And I’ll give us a pause, hopefully a comfortable pause, where you can reflect and take a moment to say anything you might immediately want to. <br><br><br><strong>Lisa</strong>: There is something that comes to mind for me, it’s sort of the juxtaposition of what both what Angelique and Doug talked about. I’ve left a toxic workplace before and some others did too. And I had a certain amount of privilege that enabled me to do that, but I watched others who didn’t and still left. And of course had consequences because of that. So I just want to paint that picture for a minute and say sometimes you have to leave a toxic situation in our workplace. <br><br>It's there, there’s many examples of it. And it’ll make you sick, literally, from a health perspective. And I think part of what Doug, kind of what I got what you’re saying, especially when we think about the privileges, how do we help others who we see need to do that? Right? And what kind of how do we, you can’t see my hands, but you know, like how do you hold somebody who needs to step out of that and help them across? <br><br>What can we do to assist? I think we do need to encourage each other to walk out of a toxic environment. And on the opposite side of that is the being vulnerable, right? Which as a trained academic and I’m a former professor, too, it’s like that was not something that you were ever encouraged to do. And you were penalized for it, being a woman in the workplace or being a person of color or anybody else from a marginalized group. <br><br>Yet at the same time, if we stop being vulnerable even in those environments, that’s toxic to ourselves, too. So there are kind of these strange, as you were talking, it seems maybe it’s the same side of the same coin. I was thinking it was opposite, but there’s something there that is again the essence of what it does mean to be human, right? That is something that we bring that is part of the make-up of who we are. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Please jump in, Doug. <br><br><br><strong>Doug</strong>: Yeah, so Lisa just maybe as a way of kicking this conversation at least in one direction and this doesn’t answer everything but there is this really important skill that we do with our students. Or at least in the courses I teach and I teach courses on meditation intersection with culture and knowledge, where they’re competing, where they complement each other and also the mindfulness based stress reduction. <br><br>I teach an academic version of it, so if we’ve got more time we can go more into the research. And as we’re talking about working both with students and then also with other researchers, my earlier work on teachers and burnout and then educators and their cultural capabilities, it’s that somatic awareness, that body awareness, right? That when we’ve probably been in higher ed, it’s like you’re in the swirl, that maelstrom of minutia that kills us. <br><br>Or pressing deadlines, and we can see ourselves being less and less effective or maybe starting to dehumanize our colleagues or all the things that we see in burnout. But being able to detect that as almost like that early warning system, to be okay, exhaustion is here. Impatience is here. Noting that in the body. And then using that as that early warning system to say, “Okay, I can take a break here.”<br><br>That means I can walk for my lunch, or I can go to the furthest coffee shop or even the furthest restroom just to get up and move and come back can be really, really valuable. Or being able to in those meetings knowing where our vulnerability can have a very strong back, but it can have a soft front as well, to know okay, I’m absorbing it but I am not moving from my position here. <br><br>Or I’m absorbing another person’s misconceptions, misinformation. But that bodily awareness can then be really useful in terms of giving us those internal cues as we start to face outward, as well as for greater self-care. <br><br><br><strong>Jess</strong>: It’s funny because there’s so much of this work that is in direct opposition. Everything you say and its opposite. So we want to create safe spaces, but we know that we can’t create safe spaces for everyone. The best we can do is create brave spaces, and that takes work. That takes some good work, some good facilitation, some awareness of self and body and space and coming into a space in a certain way. <br><br>But we also know that some of the biggest personal growth happens when we step outside of our comfort zone. So we’re in conflict in a lot of ways, everything we say and its opposite, I think is true. And I made a new year’s resolution to my wife this year that I was only going to deeply collaborate with people who understood nuance. And didn’t think of the world as this black and white, yes or no, you’re either a good person or a bad person because we’re all both. <br><br>And we all need to really spend some time sinking into context and understanding context. As you said, Angelique, making yourself vulnerable in certain situations is a very bad idea, detrimental to you. So now you’ve got this world of bumper stickers coming at you, you’ve got to be vulnerable to do this work, you’ve got to be… I’ll tell you some bumper stickers. This stuff travels at the speed of trust. <br><br>And that was one of the things that I just really firmly believe that if you come in and the other bumper sticker I would put on my car is it’s sniff-able. I can tell you’re just full of shit. I can tell when you’re not being authentic and when you really don’t care about people, when your policies don’t line up with the words that are coming out of your mouth. You tell me you’re really all about equitable education, but you also tell me you’ve got a policy about late assignments. <br><br>Which is it? You tell me that you’re all about humanizing students, but if I come to you and tell you my third grandparent has died, you’re going to judge me. Well, which is it? And how are we sitting and understanding our own role in these spaces and whether we make them brave or not? It’s very self-satisfying work when it’s done in that smelly way, but when it’s done in an authentic way as so many of you pointed out, it means discomfort, it means continuation of the work, it never ends. <br><br>It's not like check that off, I did my deep thinking on Thursday at 4:00, now I can go back to being patriarchal, White supremacist, fill in the blank, not care about the planet, just care about profit. And I think that we wind up creating these zones of further bifurcation. And just this space, this gulf between people who want to talk about these things in a deep way and those who just aren’t aware of them at all. <br><br>I’ve been doing this work for years now, and I’m struck by just how many of these 101 conversations that I keep having about diversity, about equity and about inclusion and how so few of the communities that I am working with are ready for those advanced conversations and the really deep stuff. Digging into the ethics of it and the practice of it, and that’s what we tried to do with this project is not skirt away from the really gnarly, very difficult situations. <br><br>You’ve got one Black student in your class. You’ve got a person with a complex disability in your class. What are you going to do? So instead of saying words in a syllabus and then maybe not holding them up in the policies that are in the very same syllabus, how do you walk that talk? How do you stay consistent? How do you continue to ask questions, not just give answers to things that nobody’s asked? <br><br>How do you listen and how do you show up in this way that isn’t so predetermined and so reinforcing of the power dynamics that we so quickly assume? When I walk into a classroom and I put my bag on the desk, there’s a lot that goes on in that millisecond. All of a sudden, I’m supposed to be the knower. So one of the things that I love about these kinds of conversations is they fundamentally should change the way we think of pedagogy. <br><br>And fundamentally change the way we think of ourselves as educators and who we’re educating. And whether or not we know who the heck we’re educating, have you ever educated somebody who’s been a refugee? Would you know? Have you ever educated somebody who’s grown in generational poverty? Would you know? Have you ever educated somebody who didn’t have money to pay the bills for their utilities that month? And would you know? <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: That takes me back to Doug, when you said that quote around this is the way we do it. So much of our work is about challenging specifically that statement. And really coming up as Jess and Angelique, you and Lisa were describing adaptable modular constantly changing ways of doing it. I’m going to be mindful of time, so I don’t want to keep chatting, so I will pause again to see if others who are in this room want to jump in on the conversation. <br><br><br><strong>Angelique</strong>: I don’t know if anyone, I can’t see, but I wanted to comment really as a follow up to what was just made. Even when we are here collectively doing the best work, and I feel that in my heart, this work is my professional pleasure, and it’s the most meaningful part of the work I do. And even in this environment, amongst fellow information providers and librarians. <br><br>When you talk about how long we’ve been having these diversity 101 conversations, how long is the conversation about diversifying this profession been going on? Decades. Decades, at least 40 years, probably more, like at least maybe 40 to 50 years of literature review we provide information on diversifying the profession and how to court, how to recruit, how to make them stay. <br><br>And our numbers aren’t any better. 40, 50 years later the numbers aren’t any better. And if I was not in an HBCU and I’m not now, I am as isolated as I ever was, the day I stepped on the campus of University of Virginia and even amongst the best people. There are assumptions that I have to counter to assure everyone that I am capable of the work that needs to be done. <br><br>And so, I think just constantly holding ourselves accountable is really going to be the only way forward. And when I tell you that I’m trying to imagine how to make my work better, easier, more enjoyable for myself, I am still actively trying to figure out how to be vulnerable professionally. How to stop and say, “I don’t know this. I need help.” I don’t say I need help. I say, “Can I have an extension?” <br><br>I say, “Can I do it later?” Or I say, “Can someone assist me?” I have never turned on a project, are you kidding me? You don’t do that, not if you want acknowledgement and success and confidence in the work that you can produce. So I really appreciate this discussion. I have been learning a lot about how I operate since our own primary discussion and again, no solutions to offer, just musings and observations. <br><br>But thank you for the comment, and it does directly involve how we’re going to consider and couch pedagogy as well. The conversation is just so much bigger. But I don’t even know if we are even prepared yet to even really have these conversations. Is anyone really having meaningful uncomfortable conversations? Has anyone actually watched that happen? I haven’t. <br><br><br><strong>Jess</strong>: Well, we are. <br><br><br><strong>Angelique</strong>: Well, we are, yes. But outside of us. And I’m glad that we are. <br><br><br><strong>Jess</strong>: I do every day because it’s sort of like you said, it’s the privilege that I have of doing this work. And I mean, you probably know what this is. I regret wearing this now. I was wearing this because my hair was very floppy. I think I’m going to go for just floppy hair. Because it perpetuates so many things, I try really hard not to wear branded things when I come on a call. <br><br>I just took off a hat that had a big "T" on it, with a wave running through it. I went to Tulane University in New Orleans and it’s very different from SUNO as an institution, it’s very different from the other institutions in New Orleans. It is a university that has a town gown issue, I would say, a pretty substantial one. A history, like so many of the private universities. I had troubles there, I had troubles. <br><br>I still have troubles. We should critique our institutions. And when I come in wearing something like that, it’s worse than the bad hair that I’m carrying with me. But I think that it’s these conversations and the willingness to step into that. You mentioned so many schools in New Orleans, I could have gone through this call and not said a damned thing about that hat. <br><br>But this is what we’ve found in the project is that this stuff is here, folks. You walk into this room with a backpack on your back, every single one of you. Your ancestors, your experiences, the scars, the discrimination, the positive experiences, the negative experiences, the person who cuts you down and said, “You don’t belong here.” And the person who rose, held you up and said, “I really like the way you read. I love that you love books.”<br><br>I mean, and those are those moments where we get an opportunity to call out those elephants in the room and the things. I’m mixing metaphors here, I’ve got backpacks and elephants. But the point is we’re carrying stuff, folks. And if we don’t see each other fully, if we can’t have those conversations fully, then we’re not doing much more than that 101 conversation. And I don’t mean to say 101 isn’t important, it is. <br><br>But I had a really big lesson a couple of years ago where I was in yet another 101 conversation and a Black woman stood up and she said, “I am so sick and tired of having to have these 101 conversations with you all. It’s time. Do it. It’s your time, you’ve got to do the work. I can’t be the only one here lifting.” And I think about her every time I think about having the 101 conversation again. <br><br>And so, I want to push, I want to push further and feel more uncomfortable, I want to take off my green hat. So thank you for that, Angelique. I see you. I see your bayou self. <br><br><br><strong>Angelique</strong>: I see you, too. <br><br><br><strong>Doug</strong>: So, Jess, I think that point is really important and Angelique too, the 101 conversations that happen a lot. And that becomes that check a box, to get back to that authenticity spot. And our community partners smell it out and I remember being able to step into it, so like I’m not saying our team has done it well. But the uphill battle to have three years where we putting money towards sustained professional development for our team ongoing with community partners to push that, it is a long slog.<br><br>A lot of times departments are going, “Well, it’s not important.” But it can be done, but it takes just ballparking that, you’re looking at years of sustained thoughtful development if we’re going to move it. And then, the vulnerability, the trust, how your team is interacting with each other to build that, it’s multifaceted, it’s messy, it’s hard. And it takes a lot, a lot of time. <br><br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Well, thank you all for a very valuable hour together. It went by quickly and as always we really appreciate you joining us and being as frank and vulnerable as reflective as you can be in this moment. I’d especially like to thank Jess, Angelique, Doug and Lisa for talking with us today and sharing their reflections based on their roles and their contexts. And we will be in touch soon about Office Hours and in the meantime, wish you all the very best. So thank you again, and farewell. <br><br><br><strong>Angelique</strong>: Thank you for having me. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you everybody, look after yourselves. <br><br><br><strong>Lisa</strong>: Bye, thank you. <br><br><br><strong>Doug</strong>: Thank you everyone. <br><br><br><br>END OF VIDEO<br><br></div><h2>Chat Transcript</h2><div>00:21:15 Douglas P Kennedy: Dakota and Anishinabe<br>00:21:29 Kaitlin Schilling: grateful to be joining you all today from the lands traditionally known as Win-nipi (in the Cree language meaning ‘muddy waters’), now known as Winnipeg, Manitoba, the shared traditional lands and waters of the Anishinaabeg, Dakota Oyate (oh-yah-day), and Ininiwak (In in o wak), on the homeland of the Red River Métis and Treaty 1 territory.<br>00:22:09 Kim Carter she/her: Grateful to join you from the traditional territory of the Anishnawbe, Haudenosaunee, and Neutral peoples.<br>00:23:28 Karen Lauritsen: <a href="https://chumashsanctuary.org/about/">https://chumashsanctuary.org/about/</a><br>00:29:17 Karen Lauritsen: <a href="https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/onhumanlearn/">https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/onhumanlearn/</a><br>00:31:39 Apurva Ashok: The mood is hopeful, for me, at least!<br>00:31:53 Angelique Carson: Same here!<br>00:40:31 Cheryl Gerken: a great article: <a href="https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/">https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/</a><br>00:52:39 Karen Lauritsen: Now that we’re hearing from Doug, our fourth and final guest sharing thoughts on the topic, please consider what you’d like to ask one another and talk about together.<br>00:54:06 Karen Lauritsen: I think this is the book Doug just mentioned: <a href="https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/">https://www.burnoutbook.net/</a><br>00:54:44 Apurva Ashok: And the one Jess mentioned earlier: <a href="https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/">https://frederickjoseph.com/patriarchy-blues</a><br>01:05:22 Douglas P Kennedy: So key—speed of trust<br>01:06:27 Douglas P Kennedy: Education happens in the contact zones; ability to stand in the angry gaze of another<br>01:15:54 Cheryl Gerken: I appreciate and benefit from these powerful conversations and everyone's ability to express struggles and perspectives. Constantly learning from open sharing and frankness.<br>01:16:08 Apurva Ashok: As we near the end of our hour, and folx may need to step away, I want to say thank you for being here! We are always listening for suggestions about ways to continue this conversation, other topics, or speakers to hear from. Please let us know: <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform">https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform</a><br>01:17:38 Kaitlin Schilling: This has been great! Miigwech (thank you) for you all being so open and vulnerable with us. I hope to be able to continue these conversations with y'all :)<br>01:17:47 Kim Carter she/her: Thank you for the conversations. This was my first time joining and I am walking away with a lot to think about.<br>01:17:55 Mélanie Brunet: Thank you!<br>01:18:01 Nicole Swanson, CARLI (she, her): Thank you for this amazing conversation today<br><br><br></div>admintag:open.umn.edu,2005:Spina::Blog::Post/712022-06-29T19:58:56Z2022-06-29T19:58:56ZJune Office Hours: Happy Five Years of Office Hours<div>Watch the <a href="https://youtu.be/JX95h87R3lY">video recording</a> of this Office Hours session, or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.<br><br>Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please <a href="mailto:joh20849@umn.edu">contact Tonia</a>.<br><br></div><h2>Audio Transcript</h2><div><br><strong>Speakers:</strong></div><ul><li>Apurva Ashok (Director of Open Education, The Rebus Foundation)</li><li>Karen Lauritsen (Publishing Director, Open Education Network)</li></ul><div><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Well, hello everybody and welcome to our 56th Office Hours and also our Office Hours session that marks five years of Rebus Community and the Open Education Network coming together to talk about various topics in open. My name is Apurva Ashok, I am the Director of Open Education and the Assistant Director of the Rebus Foundation. <br><br>I am joining you all today from a very warm Toronto, from the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the First Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. I am grateful to be meeting you all here, celebrating with you all here today and I’ll just note that this particular acknowledgement is just one of the many ways in which my own practices and that of Rebus support decolonization and reconciliation work. <br><br>It’s something that I’m always going to be mindful of and grateful for all of you in the community to continue to push us to do more towards. Karen, I will pass it over to you to introduce yourself and I encourage the others to post as Kaitlin has in the chat, a little introduction about where you’re joining and the lands you might be Zooming in from. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thank you, Apurva, and hello. Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us for a very happy five years of Office Hours. My name is Karen Lauritsen, I’m publishing director with the Open Education Network, which is a community of people working together to make higher education more accessible and equitable. And I am joining you from San Louis Obispo, California, where the fog recently burned off.<br> <br>This is the traditional home of the Northern Chumash, and I am very grateful to be here and to be on this land. So in today’s session, we are grateful that all of you have joined us. And we hope that we can have a fun time together reflecting not only on where Office Hours has been over the last five years, but also where all of us as open ed professionals have been.<br> <br>Because hopefully, this series has been a reflection of your work together as a community as we’ve listened to one another and explored different issues that we’re all working on in this line of work. So we cannot have done it without you. And today we’re going to have some fun trivia that we’ve pre-prepared for all of you. And we hope to talk about some of the challenges and rewards of the work as it is today, maybe some of the challenges that we feel we’ve made some progress on in the last few years, and what we hope to accomplish as a community looking forward.<br><br>And so with that, Apurva and I thought that we would start with some of our own brief reflections. So I’ll go ahead and kick us off. I was looking back at the Office Hours speaker session spreadsheet that the Rebus team has kept such great track of everything, which I’m very thankful for. <br><br>Because otherwise my memory would not recall that our first-ever Office Hours, I double checked... (I’m not giving away a trivia question.) ...was February 6th, 2017. And one of the things that I think about when I reflect on Office Hours is the opportunity that I’ve had as a professional to partner with different people in the community who live and work in slightly different spaces.<br> <br>And so, when we kicked off, I was co-hosting with Liz Mays, who was working at Pressbooks and also at Rebus, and we had a great run together. And then, Liz moved on, and I started working with Zoe Wake Hyde, which was another very enjoyable period in Rebus Office Hours. And now, of course, I’m working with Apurva, and I’ve learned so much from working with the three of them and just really enjoyed the collegiality and relationship that comes from working with someone outside of your immediate organization. <br><br>But I feel like partnerships can sometimes they can be challenging. How do you have a great partnership? But this has been a really special and I think well-functioning partnership, so I’m really thankful for what we’ve been able to do together. And so, with that I will hand it over to Apurva, and if need be, I’m sure there are more reflections I can share, too. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you so much, Karen. It’s really lovely to just hear from someone who was there from the very beginning. It’s hard to believe that 2016 was when we started these sessions. And I’ll just echo I’ve enjoyed collaborating with you and so many other people at the Open Education Network to offer these sessions. <br><br>I was also looking at that spreadsheet earlier today. And I was amazed to see that we have had 137 speakers from various roles in the open education space, in the education space, in the academia space, publishing space come speak to us throughout the years. Folks who are part of the community, guests who have just come in to share their expertise with all of us in the open education world. And that’s pretty exciting. <br><br>And as Amy is saying in the chat, “Time has flown." And yeah, it’s hard to believe that 137 speakers have come in over the years. For me, the Office Hours sessions have always been an informal space for the community to come together and have a conversation. So I really appreciate how the sessions have been both an event where you could learn about a tool that you’ve never heard of before, then talk through a particular challenge that might be very specific to your role in the libraries or in the institution.<br><br>I just appreciated also the suggestions that have come in from the community. I think we started off with a series of topics that we thought would interest the community, but since then it’s really been soliciting input and feedback and suggestions from all of you about what you wanted us to discuss next. <br><br>Looking forward to hopefully five more years of Office Hours, and I might stop there. As you said, Karen, I have plenty more reflections to share, but I might go round the room and if you feel like you have something to share with others, please raise your hand, feel free to unmute and let us know what Office Hours has meant to you. <br><br>Susan notes in the chat that she likes lurking and learning. That’s lovely, it’s also a great space to listen and learn. And Karen has been so nice as to put in a form to solicit more topics if you have ideas for Office Hours sessions or speakers in future. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: And there’s also a couple of people here who’ve been both guests, and by guests I mean like you to came to Office Hours and showed up, but also featured speakers. And so maybe if you have any thoughts on what it’s like to come to an Office Hours and just be there, versus come to an Office Hours as a speaker, I’d be interested to hear about that experience.<br> <br>Or maybe there’s just a hunger for trivia. Thank you, Tonia, this has been her introduction to all things open education. Tonia recently celebrated her one year with Open Education Network. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Congratulations, Tonia. And Kaitlin, I saw you unmute, so please jump in. <br><br><strong>Kaitlin</strong>: I think Tonia said it pretty well. Such a good introduction to everything open, but it’s also like I always leave inspired. Every time, I leave inspired because you get to meet people from maybe open communities that you’re not familiar with and learn about different things and how open works outside of the box, which is really nice. So it always gives a never-ending flow of ideas and inspiration. So that’s a big one for me. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: And generally a lot of people, I think we’ve had over 1,500 participants or attendees at Office Hours sessions over the years. Many more who have RSVP’d, and probably more who have watched recordings shared on our YouTube channel. But it’s pretty powerful to see how many individuals and how many different nodes and networks we’ve been able to tap into over the years. <br><br>When I first started out with Office Hours I was completing a co-op at the Rebus Foundation as an intern, so it was very much my introduction to topics like web accessibility or learning about Creative Commons licensing. Being able to talk through production workflows with folks. Jim notes that they are a first-time visitor, so welcome, Jim. It’s lovely to meet you and love to learn more about the work you’re doing at Rhode Island and the OER initiative there. If there’s anything that you want to use this space in coming months to tap into and speak about. <br><br><strong>Jim</strong>: Well thank you. I have been involved from the beginning in Rhode Island and we formed a statewide taskforce when the governor announced an OER initiative. And I started because I was interested in saving money for students. But it occurred to me early on that it’s about equity and opportunity as much about money. And our students come from a variety of needs and sources. And they need more help than the students I had when I was at Providence College. But speaking to, I forget who was it, Leigh, about your wine, I can appreciate it because when I’m not playing librarian, I’m a winemaker. And sometimes it’s the high point of my life. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Nice. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: I think we’ll need an Office Hours dedicated to hidden talents of the OER librarian fields soon. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: That’s a good topic. <br><br><strong>Phoebe</strong>: The Office Hours have been a good introduction for me, too. I'm pretty new to the field and the ones I've attended, I've appreciated the welcoming feeling. It seems easy to enter and speak and contribute. And I learned from the speakers, but also I've learned a lot from the participants and what they share in the Office Hours, so I like that. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thanks, Phoebe, same here. It's always great to hear everybody's stories and even as a co-host who's been here many, many times it's still nice for me to feel that same welcoming spirit. It's just this sort of communal nature of the work that people are trying to accomplish and I really appreciate that, too. <br><br>Susan says she's going to be collaborating with some folks on universal design for learning in higher education to present on using voice recognition in academic work and create OER materials to share. Cool. <br>The reviewers were especially excited about the OER aspect. Susan, that sounds like a great project, is there anything more you want to say about that? Or nah? <br><br>Okay, super. I don't know, Apurva, I'm getting antsy. I'm excited about the trivia. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: I'll let everyone into the trivia room shortly. But I might just add onto what Phoebe was saying and note that we've had sessions at Office Hours ranging from very small ten-person intimate sessions to large 90- to 100-person webinars. But with each of them it's really been the attendees and the participants in the room and the stories that they bring that really make the experience.<br> <br>It's less about the topic at hand or who we've collaborated with to introduce those topics as a guest speaker, but really about the group of people and how they guide the conversation. I also just maybe will note all of our Office Hours sessions including this one always have a corresponding forum space where the discussion can be continued. <br><br>And in fact, we've had a few Office Hours sessions that have been asynchronous to better reach the more global open education community that might not always be awake between the hours of 2:00 and 3:00 PM Eastern time. So there's always opportunity to continue that conversation with folks to meet new people in that Rebus forum space. And hopefully this is something we'll always have a live session with individuals, but a space for asynchronous conversation afterwards. <br><br>And if folks maybe want to do a little bit of a drum roll I can share my screen and we can dive into what we prepared. A short, I think, five or six question trivia about Office Hours. So you're going to see the instructions on this slide here. Let me also drop a link into the chat for anyone who wants to hop into this call.<br> <br>I'm seeing folks are coming in right now. Cheryl, Jonathan, welcome. You have come right on time for trivia. <br>You can go to www.menti.com and type in the code 5443 5648. You can scan this QR code with another device if you have one handy. Or you can use the link that I have just dropped into the chat once again here. I will note all of the questions are multiple choice, so you needn't have attended Office Hours before to work your way up the leaderboard. You can really just use probability to help you out here and chance. <br><br>I see six people maybe are in here, if anyone has trouble getting into this Menti space, please let us know. Super competitive segment. Well, we already have 10 people in here, so I'm going to get us started then with question one of six, and remember, in order to get the maximum number of points you need to get the right answer. So what was the most popular topic that we've ever hosted with Office Hours based on the attendance numbers, based on how many people were in the room?<br><br>Was it More Than A Button: Getting Open Textbooks into Print? Was it The Invisible Labor of OER? Or was it License To…? On open licensing. And you have about a minute to mull over answers. Feel free to unmute and maybe have a little bit of conversation if you want to convince somebody else that one or the other had the most attendance. <br><br><strong>Guest</strong>: This is tricky. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: What are you leaning towards?<br><br><strong>Guest</strong>: I don't know, did anyone here attend any of these?<br><br><strong>Guest</strong>: Yeah, I remember the Invisible Labor because I attended that one from a bus to Salem to get my train. (Laughter) <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: That is dedication. <br><br><strong>Guest</strong>: Were there a lot of people there?<br><br><strong>Guest</strong>: Yeah, being on transportation in between cities within Oregon was Invisible Labor.<br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: We should have added what are the weirdest places that you've attended Office Hours from? Well, the answer was actually Getting OER into Print, getting open textbooks into print. And sounds like two of you on this call have managed to get that right. Six of you did think it was the Invisible Labor of OER, which looks like it was Leigh's favorite session, regardless of attendance numbers. Do you want to tell us why, Leigh?<br><br><strong>Leigh</strong>: I link to it all the time when I'm writing about OER just because I think that it's one of the great unseen problems given that it is invisible. Just a very useful session in the future. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: And hopefully work that won't be invisible-ized going forward. All right, to the eight people who might not have gotten this right, there's still plenty of chances for you to move ahead. So I guess we can move on to question two of six. <br><br>Which topic had the most RSVPs? What were people most interested in coming and learning about? Was it Accessibility for Open Textbooks? Was it again, Getting Open Textbooks into Print? Or was it Instructional Design and OER? I wish I had the Jeopardy countdown music in the background. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Totally. I appreciate the subtle difference in these two questions. The first one is how many people showed up? And then, this is one is the most number of RSVPs, which turns out is not the same. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: And people were most interested in that Instructional Design and OER session. I can even maybe, Karen, I can ask you to pull up the numbers. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Sure. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: How many did we get for that particular session?<br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: That was, hold on, I have to move all my little chat windows. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: I like that everybody side stepped Getting Open Textbooks into Print, because it did have the highest attendance, but maybe not the highest RSVPs. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: There were 95. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: 95, yeah. And yes, Jonathan, the License To phrase was very much intentional using it to talk about the license to whatever else it might be, but the license to publish openly. The license to use the five Rs. Yes, you can see with this particular question it seemed like maybe early on folks were very curious to learn more about accessibility and we had actually a number of different Office Hour sessions on web accessibility, on building accessibility into workflows.<br><br>But it seemed like as we kept doing more Office Hours instructional design became the next gap that people wanted to learn more about and we were actually very lucky to have I believe it was Veronica Vold and others at this session telling us more about how to build that into our production workflows. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Yeah, one of the other interesting things about that is the accessibility session which was the second most popular was back in 2017. And then the next big number here is the Instructional Design in OER, which was just this year. <br><br><strong>Guest</strong>: I was wondering about the dates, so that's interesting to hear that. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Yeah. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: And I think we can get a chance to look at the leaderboard here, it looks like Sue and whoever is Vote Goat, they're really taking the lead right now. Beyonce is a close second, so I appreciate that. And KS as well. And all of the others, there's still hope for you all yet. Don't worry, Cheryl, everyone is a winner here.<br><br>Okay, moving on to question three, is everybody ready? <br><br>All right, remember, you have to get the right answer to get the maximum number of points. Which of the following people were featured guests at the very first Office Hours session? Was it Amanda Coolidge from BCcampus? Was it Steel Wagstaff, who is now at Pressbooks? Was it Robin DeRosa from Plymouth State? Or was all three? And Karen, can we reveal the topic for that session, or would that be too much of a hint?<br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: The topic was, let's see how many have weighed in, it is a pretty good hint. But we're all friends here. It was making open textbooks with students. <br><br><strong>Guest</strong>: That would have given it to me. And now, I'm like I should show you my answer. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: All right, seven of you got that right, so woohoo. It was all three of them really a great panel, like all of ours have been. And that was when did you say, Karen, when in 2016, February 2016? <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: It was February 6th, 2017. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: 2017, five years, yes. All right, and like I said, three of the 137 speakers we've had to date. Moving on if folks are ready to question number four of six. How many total recorded sessions do we have? Keyword here being recorded. Is it 55? Is it 52? Or is it 48? And you'll note 60 is not an option because we typically take a month or two off every year for Office Hours, so despite the fact that it's been going for five years, we don't have 60 sessions. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: We've also had a couple of Halloween horror sessions that we decided not to record so that people felt they could speak freely about some of more challenging aspects of their work. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: And some international perspectives on Office Hours that were asynchronous as well, so folks could participate from different time zones around the world. I would be surprised if folks were keeping track of this, so I think that the lucky guess winners will really take the cake with this one. I wouldn't know this myself, Karen, I don't know if you do. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: No. And no going to the YouTube page. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Well, the guesses are really working well for you, Sue. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: They are working well for you. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: All right, the answer was 52 out of 56 I think sessions were recorded. You've always been a good test taker. We need to bottle up whatever it is you have and share it out widely. I think as Karen said it was those two OER horror story sessions and the two international perspectives in Office Hours were ones we decided not to record so that folks could speak a little more freely. <br><br>All right. I think we're going to take another look at the leaderboard to see if anyone has been able to oust Sue and Vote Goat. Cheryl, I see you on here, that's fantastic. Looks like there's been quite a bit of change. Sue, you are really taking the lead. Heartstorm, Zlatan, Vote Goat, great. Leigh, we're going to be rooting for you for these final two questions.<br> <br>And Elizabeth, I know you're just coming in now, but you wanted to hop in to join our little trivia poll you are more than welcome to, I think we have a couple of questions left. <br><br>All right, moving on to question number five of six. What is the Office Hours Twitter hashtag? Now this one you should get, Leigh, because you coined it for us back when you were working at Rebus. Is it #OfficeHours? Is it #OEROfficeHours? Or is it #RebusOENOH? I think there was an option with Mentimeter which is the tool we're using for this poll to award points based on who answers the fastest, and to sort of scale things up that way. But that just didn't seem like we needed the pressure. <br><br><strong>Guest</strong>: I had to make myself guess and not try to go to Twitter. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: It's tempting. <br><br><strong>Guest</strong>: Right. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: It is tempting, but hopefully you will all get this answer, let's see. All right, six of you did guess correctly, it is in fact #OEROfficeHours. I think we may have gone with #OfficeHours, but it's a popular term, it's a popular phrase. A lot of people especially on Twitter are using it, so we had to carve out our own niche with the OER piece. And #RebusOENOH was just too many acronyms for folks to figure out. What is the OEN? Is it oh no, Rebus? Or is it something else? <br><br>All right, Leigh, did you manage to get that? It was also OTN at the time, yes, so the name changed. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: True. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: And Jim notes even a blind squirrel can find a nut and that's been their strategy, so good going, Jim. <br><br>All right, I believe this next one is our final question. So hope you all have your fingers ready to pick and select. The question six out of six is, what do Karen and I ask for at the end of nearly every session at Office Hours? Do we ask for donations? Do we ask for happy thoughts? Or do we ask for your input for future topics? <br><br>Amy, I'm glad you like that one. I hope you all have Karen and my voices in your head, thank you everybody, thank you to our speakers and…<br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Before we go, please take a moment… <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Cheryl, I'm happy to hear this is the only one you didn't have to guess. And Jim, this might be a little unfair because I know this is the first time you're attending, but hopefully you've had a little bit of a preview. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Yes, there was a hint earlier in the session, a giveaway even. <br><br><strong>Guest</strong>: Yeah, I had not actually been to the end of any of them, but I'm pretty sure. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: The confidence is high with this question, which I'm really pleased about. For anyone else who is yet to submit, 15 second countdown. Three, two, one. Well, we always ask for your input, which everybody seemed to get. Although I will take happy thoughts any time. Always open. And Karen, maybe this is a nice time to drop that form in again for anybody who missed it earlier, who joined us late. We genuinely want your suggestions for future topics. <br><br>You'll see from this preview of my work window here we have many documents to plan future Office Hours sessions, we're always eager to hear about people that you would like to bring to these sessions and spotlight as a speaker or topics no matter how niche or how general you'd like to bring to the attention of the community. <br><br>And I think with that, it's maybe time to reveal our winner for today, who is many of you. Sue took it away with all of her answers at the start, so congratulations, Sue. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Congratulations.<br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: The #OEROfficeHourstriviachampion. <br><br>Well, we have one final question for all of you as you're thinking about Office Hours and thinking about perhaps the ways in which you've interacted with Rebus and OEN at these sessions over the years. So if there's anything that you would like to provide in terms of a testimonial for Rebus and OEN about the impact that it might have had, please let us know. <br><br>And I'll say this is definitely going to help us keep in mind, again, the types of sessions we want to have in future. It hopefully can also be a way for us to solicit some input from folks in the field to keep this going for another five years. So it's always helpful to be able to demonstrate the impact of these sessions. So if there's anything you feel like you want to share and can share, you're welcome to add that into this session call. <br><br>Someone just says, "Just knowing it's out there is comfort in and of itself." So thank you. And I'll let you all think and I'm happy to stop screen sharing, if you don't want me to share these responses out loud right now. One of you notes, "The OER community is so generous and supportive, and Office Hours has been a great way to learn, connect and share." And that makes me happy to hear, so thank you so much for that. It's also been a lovely learning opportunity for me. And Karen, I'll let you read some of these, it doesn't need to be me. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Yeah, well, thank you for this third comment, "Thanks for hosting these conversations for many years. It's an opportunity to hear from a wide range of people about their work." Indeed. And it is I think meaningful for the whole planning team when we are joined by people like you, who come to the sessions and ask questions and share experiences.<br> <br>Often we'll say that in addition to the three or four guests who are there to kick us off at the beginning there is also so much shared knowledge and experience in the entire room, in the whole group. And so it really makes a difference when we hear from all of you and can engage with you together on these topics, so thank you. A couple more have come in. "Listening to others is a learning experience for me." Absolutely. It really informs a lot of what I do in my role at the OEN is through listening and hearing what people need and what they're working on. <br><br>"Office Hours is a really important place for participating in a community. It feels more genuine and human than most places on the interwebs." Yeah, it's a rough, wild interweb world. So I'm glad to hear that together we've created an environment that feels genuine and human. It can be really hard to do that over a screen, so we do what we can, and it really helps that we can do it together. <br><br>Let's see, "Office Hours has been a great resource in my OER learning journey, thank you for sharing!" That's awesome, I think that's true for all of us here. And I think there's one more that I have to read. "Definitely the community building has been the most important for me. Getting to know the folks who are doing the practical work and who can therefore give me incredibly specific suggestions, either during Office Hours or later, when I bug them by email." Yes, it's so great to basically have a space where you can get very specific recommendations or resources.<br> <br>Like you said, there's often so many things being shared in the chat, so many templates that you can take and do with whatever you need. And also it sounds like a little bit of that hallway experience that you might get, either at your workplace or at a conference, where you can sort of connect with somebody and then exchange contact information and build that relationship, so that's really exciting. Kaitlin, I see... <br><br><strong>Kaitlin</strong>: Yeah, I thought I would pose a question to all of you. And if you haven't been to Office Hours yet or if you've only been to a couple, maybe think of what you would want it to be. But I would be curious to hear what each of your biggest takeaway from an Office Hours session was. I know that's a big answer, so if you want, I'll answer first.<br> <br>It was actually I think the last session about policies to support OER and all of the conversation around OER sustainability. I'll pop the link to the video in the chat, but it blew my mind. I can't stop thinking about it, truthfully. Just hearing from both speakers of what their idea of OER sustainability looks like and how to think outside of the box with that was brilliant. If anyone else has... <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: That was a great session, Sam's session, yes. Amy, the recording is always available. I think the key takeaway for me, it's always just been the generosity of the community and the willingness to share everything from spreadsheets and templates and documents that are really in the works to advice and suggestions to avoid the pitfalls that someone else might have dropped into.<br> <br>Leigh is noting in the chat, for her it was the one on tenure and promotions that was very valuable. She says it was good to see the different strategies that people made, as they were making a case for the value of OER. Again, it's not needing to reinvent the wheel and hearing what others have done. What about anyone else in the room? Are there big takeaways or reflections that are coming to mind right now?<br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: I have a super pragmatic one. I'm pretty sure it was in that how to print OER session that I first learned about the printmeone.com that is positioning itself to be for one-off OER printing. So just in the vein of always learning from others about new tools and what they're using to get the work done. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Amy notes that she's always glad to see when Oregon folks are invited as speakers, because they have some amazing talent there. You definitely do, Amy. I also love when we're able to highlight and spotlight maybe speakers who are very new to OER, speakers who are early career, or who might be otherwise maybe historically excluded by virtue of their identity or their work. <br><br>We always want to make sure that the opportunity to come, whether it's attend OERs or speak at OERs is really open to all, and we’re always looking for new speakers. I think that's oftentimes the hardest part with the planning team, Karen, isn't that right? It's not just landing on the topic and seeing what does the community want to be focusing on right now? But who can we invite? And the first question is always, has this person spoken before? If so, let's look for someone who hasn't had a chance to come in and talk about these topics, because we always want to be hearing from new voices. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Yeah, that's right. We don't want to rely only on our own circle or our own network. It's really valuable to hear from others about maybe a conference or a presentation that they went to, a speaker that they heard who was really compelling or had something useful and important to share. <br><br>And so, in the input form that we have shared throughout this session and every session, that's another field. <br>Maybe you don't even have a specific topic in mind, but there is a speaker who you saw at a conference or a webinar or another event and you're like, "Gosh, I want to hear more from that person." That's useful information for us and we can get to know them and see what topics might fit in. So please feel free to share speaker suggestions as well so that we can…<br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Including yourself. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Including yourself, absolutely. So that we can hear as many voices as possible. Cheryl's…<br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Before you share Cheryl's point, I'll say if you were a former speaker you'll know that a lot of the times you'll have the Office Hours planning team email you to solicit suggestions for new speakers. So we're always trying to, as Karen said, cast the net wide. The Office Hours speaker casting call is open to all, it's an open casting, anyone can come in anytime. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: I like that, no audition required. <br><br>Cheryl's takeaway from Office Hours is that she's not alone and many of us are struggling with similar challenges. Indeed. I appreciate when colleagues share ideas I can try. Absolutely. Thank you all so much for sharing some of your own reflections about Office Hours, it's really lovely to pause and just take some time to think about where we've been together. The fact that five years has passed during these Office Hours sessions and it's just nice to share that kind of pause with all of you, so thank you for coming and talking with us. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you. And as we're coming to end of our hour, maybe we're moving to that last bit of our prompt for today, which is what do we hope to accomplish in the next five years? Do you all have any hopes and dreams for Office Hours that you want to share? Or for the open community that you think Office Hours could be a good tool and medium through which to advance towards that line of work?<br><br><strong>Kaitlin</strong>: That's a really tough one. I think my mind just went in a hundred different directions. But I like the idea of those asynchronous ones, of getting the international open community together and the idea of more of that really connecting everyone. However that looks, I think that's something that is really exciting. And seeing how we can move open further, like beyond just as a textbook. <br><br>I think seeing how we can go open policies at state levels, country levels, world levels. Maybe just I figured I'd go all the way. But yeah, that's something I'm pretty excited about, because it's so incredibly validating to meet other people who are just as passionate about open education. And I think with that comes a lot of really great ideas and I'm looking forward to seeing what ideas come out of that. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you, Kaitlin. Looks like there's a resounding yes in the chat from attendees with both those ideas to push open beyond just textbooks and also beyond academia, perhaps more into practices and policies. I can maybe see Karen taking notes as you were sharing. <br><br>Does anyone else have any big grand dreams for Office Hours that they'd like to plant right now, plant the seeds for? Well, if it does come to mind, you know that you can always get in touch with us. More trivia, Karen says. We'll host another 56 sessions and come back with trivia. <br><br>But I was going to note if you wanted to use that Twitter hashtag to tag us as and when ideas come to mind, this happens often where folks just say, "I think this could make for an interesting Office Hours session. What do you think? Just use that hashtag, which I think all of you got, which is #OEROfficeHours or get in touch. You can chat with us on the Rebus forum or if you are someone who just loves an email, you can send us an email at contact@rebus.community or Karen's email which is klaurits@umn.edu <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Amy loves an email. I'm with you, Amy. Thank you, Leigh, to 56 more...cheers! Hear, hear. And I think this brings us to the end of the hour. Thank you again for celebrating with us. This has been really fun, and here's to the next five years. <br><br>So I wish you all a good weekend and a good summer. We will take a break in July and join you again in August with a new topic, perhaps one that we may get from that form that you all filled out as part of the celebration. And l look forward to seeing you then. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thanks everybody, bye bye. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Bye. <br><br>END OF VIDEO<br><br></div><h2>Chat Transcript</h2><div>00:08:33 Kaitlin Schilling: Hey all! grateful to be joining today from a lovely and sunny Winnipeg, Manitoba, traditionally known as Win-nipi (Cree for ‘muddy waters’), the shared lands and waters of the Anishinaabeg, Dakota Oyate, and Ininiwak, on the homeland of the Red River Métis. Thankful for the privilege to live, work, and love on this beautiful land and be spending some time with you all today :)<br>00:09:34 Amy Hofer (she/her): I'm Amy with Open Oregon Educational Resources. My neighborhood is closely associated with the territories of the Clackamas and Cowlitz tribes, as well as the Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde and Siletz Indians.<br>00:12:03 Leigh KP: Hello! I'm in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. The Kanien’kehá:ka Nation are custodians of this island, and this land is also a place of gathering, connecting, and communing.<br>00:12:11 Amy Hofer (she/her): Time has flown!<br>00:12:40 Karen Lauritsen: !<br>00:14:08 Karen Lauritsen: That's my cue: <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform">https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform</a><br>00:14:17 Karen Lauritsen: We're still happy to get your suggestions for future session.<br>00:14:20 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: I just like lurking and learning ;)<br>00:15:27 Tonia J Johnson: My introduction to all things open education! 🙂<br>00:16:39 Tonia J Johnson: @Kaitlin, +1<br>00:16:46 John McLeod (he/him): I've enjoyed access to the recordings and seeing how things have changed or developed over the years.<br>00:16:59 Jim S: 1st time visitor. I have been the OER Librarian at the Community College of RI since 2017<br>00:18:45 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: I'm going to be collaborating w/ some folks in Universal Design for Learning inHigher Education to present on using voice recognition in academic work, and create OER materials to share. The reviewers were specifically excited about the OER aspect :)<br>00:19:44 Phoebe Daurio (she/her): That sounds so neat Susan!<br>00:20:09 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: Not yet it just got accepted yesterday<br>00:20:22 Karen Lauritsen: Congrats on the news!<br>00:20:58 Apurva Ashok: <a href="https://www.rebus.community/t/office-hours-oerofficehours-celebrates-5-years-bring-your-stories/7096">https://www.rebus.community/t/office-hours-oerofficehours-celebrates-5-years-bring-your-stories/7096</a><br>00:22:01 Apurva Ashok: <a href="https://www.menti.com/ca69p1o2ph">https://www.menti.com/ca69p1o2ph</a><br>00:22:15 Karen Lauritsen: Welcome!<br>00:22:30 Apurva Ashok: <a href="https://www.menti.com/ca69p1o2ph">https://www.menti.com/ca69p1o2ph</a><br>00:22:59 Karen Lauritsen: Super competitive segment of our OH celebration is about to begin…! 😉<br>00:24:45 Kaitlin Schilling: Amy, that's dedication!<br>00:24:47 Leigh KP: Invisible Labour was one of my favourites, regardless of its attendance numbers<br>00:26:48 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): I liked the "License to..." phrase: makes me think we should have secret agents, like "CC5" (a` la 007, but this one uses CC licenses as a license to ... use the five Rs!<br>00:27:20 Amy Hofer (she/her): One of our point people has a pet peeve abt people who rsvp and don't show up 🙂<br>00:28:23 Kaitlin Schilling: The Part 2 of Instructional Design and OER was one of my favourites!<br>00:28:41 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Woohoo - 0 for 2 :)<br>00:31:47 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: It's all been guesses here!!!<br>00:32:04 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: I have always Been A Good Test Taker<br>00:32:49 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Making a comeback :)<br>00:33:05 Apurva Ashok: <a href="https://www.menti.com/ca69p1o2ph">https://www.menti.com/ca69p1o2ph</a><br>00:34:49 Leigh KP: Phew!<br>00:35:19 Leigh KP: It was also OTN at the time<br>00:35:20 Leigh KP: I did<br>00:35:25 Karen Lauritsen: True<br>00:36:32 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: This is the only one I didn't have to guess on<br>00:36:39 Karen Lauritsen: Yay!<br>00:37:44 Karen Lauritsen: <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform">https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform</a><br>00:43:42 Kaitlin Schilling: <a href="https://www.rebus.community/t/office-hours-what-happens-when-my-author-leaves-policies-to-support-oer/6985">https://www.rebus.community/t/office-hours-what-happens-when-my-author-leaves-policies-to-support-oer/6985</a><br>00:44:10 Amy Hofer (she/her): Sam's session! I should watch that. I was so sorry to miss it.<br>00:44:18 Kaitlin Schilling: It was so good, Amy!<br>00:44:38 Leigh KP: The one on tenure and promotions was very valuable. It was good to see the different strategies people made a case for the value of their work<br>00:45:19 Amy Hofer (she/her): I'm always glad to see when Oregon folks are invited speakers. We have amazing talent here.<br>00:45:35 Karen Lauritsen: Takeaway: <a href="https://www.printme1.com/">https://www.printme1.com/</a><br>00:46:13 Karen Lauritsen: We're always looking for new speakers!<br>00:46:44 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: My takeaway from OH is that I'm not alone, and many of us are struggling with similar challenges. I appreciate when colleagues share ideas I can try.<br>00:47:17 Kaitlin Schilling: @Cheryl +1!<br>00:49:55 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: Don't everybody talk at once<br>00:50:43 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: YES beyond academia and textbooks<br>00:50:53 Leigh KP: +1<br>00:52:05 Karen Lauritsen: More trivia! 🌈<br>00:52:30 Kaitlin Schilling: #OEROfficeHours<br>00:52:42 Karen Lauritsen: <a href="mailto:klaurits@umn.edu">klaurits@umn.edu</a><br>00:52:51 Leigh KP: 🥂to 56 more<br>00:52:53 Amy Hofer (she/her): You know I love an email<br>00:53:16 John McLeod (he/him): Keep up the great work! Thank you!<br>00:53:17 Amy Hofer (she/her): THank you!<br>00:53:18 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): onwards and upwards!<br>00:53:20 Kaitlin Schilling: <a href="mailto:contact@rebus.community">contact@rebus.community</a> <a href="https://www.rebus.community/c/news-discussion-events">https://www.rebus.community/c/news-discussion-events</a><br>00:53:25 Leigh KP: Thank you Rebus and OEN!!!<br>00:53:35 Phoebe Daurio (she/her): Thank you Karen and Apurva!</div><div><br><br><br></div>admintag:open.umn.edu,2005:Spina::Blog::Post/672022-05-26T21:16:39Z2022-05-27T13:38:43ZMay Office Hours: What Happens When My Author Leaves? Policies to Support OER<div>Watch the <a href="https://youtu.be/lTgaZ7_FonI">video recording</a> of this Office Hours session, or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.<br><br>Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please <a href="mailto:joh20849@umn.edu">contact Tonia</a>.<br><br></div><h2>Audio Transcript</h2><div><br><strong>Speakers:</strong></div><ul><li>Apurva Ashok (Director of Open Education, The Rebus Foundation)</li><li>Karen Lauritsen (Publishing Director, Open Education Network)</li><li>Sam Arungwa (Assistant Professor & Extension Specialist; Director, Utah Prevention Science (UPSc) Institute; Utah State University)</li><li>Rama Kaba-Demanin (Program Lead, Open Library, eCampus Ontario)</li></ul><div><br></div><div><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Hello everybody. Welcome to another Office Hours, I should say perhaps at least in the northern hemisphere the first of our summer Office Hours of this year. My name is Apurva Ashok and I am joining you today from the traditional territories of many nations here in Toronto, including the Mississaugas of the First Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples.<br><br>I am very grateful to be enjoying such lovely weather here today, but also for the privilege to be able to live on this land, work on this land, and play here. And for allowing us to come together to meet and learn about all things OER. I want to acknowledge that there are many ways in which my own practices and that of Rebus, my organization, can continue to support decolonization and reconciliation work in Canada. <br><br>So this is something that continues to be something I am mindful of personally, but I am also grateful for that our organization is always thinking about and looking for ways to make sure this work is embedded into our practices. A little about Rebus in case you are new and you haven’t heard of us before, we are a charity that helps educational institutions build human capacity in OER publishing and open education through professional development. <br><br>As well as through the sharing of free resources, guides, and community events like this one. These Office Hours sessions are co-organized with the Open Education Network. And I will pass it over to Karen to introduce herself and to introduce the Open Education Network. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thank you, Apurva. I am Karen Lauritsen, I am publishing director with the Open Education Network, and I am delighted to be joining you all today for another edition of Office Hours with the Rebus Community. I am based in San Louis Obispo California, although the Open Education Network is based at the University of Minnesota. I am on the central coast in San Louis Obispo, which is the traditional home of the Northern Chumash and I am grateful to live and garden in this place. <br><br>The Open Education Network is a community of professionals, who work together to make higher education more open, and they support one another through conversations like these and sharing resources and strategies for moving forward. So today’s session is What Happens When My Author Leaves? Policies to Support OER. <br><br>And I am sure that in addition to our two guests that many of you have some experience to share, so please feel welcome, you’re all invited to contribute your experience and questions to this conversation. Lauren Ray was planning on joining us today from the University of Washington, however, due to a family emergency she’s unable to join us. We are joined by Sam Arungwa, who is Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist, Director of Utah Prevention Science Institute at Utah State University, as well as Rama Kaba-Demanin who is Program Lead at Open Library at eCampus Ontario. <br><br>And so we’re going to talk today about what happens after the OER has been out there for a while. What happens when an author leaves? How do we sustain our programs and our resources in the longer-term? So I’m really looking forward to this conversation, it certainly impacts my work. And without further… Yeah, go ahead. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: I might just note for anyone who is new to Office Hours, if this is your first time attending this is going to be an informal conversation. So, our format typically is to hear from our two guests for about five to seven minutes, and then we turn things over to everyone here today for questions, if you have your own experiences you’d like to share with the community or thoughts and we’ll really let you drive the conversation. But perhaps now I can pass things over to Rama to take us off. <br><br><strong>Rama</strong>: Great, thank you for that introduction and for the land acknowledgements. So I just want to add I am happy to be here, to join all of you, this is my first after hours. So I’ve been looking forward to attending one of them, so I’m glad I can finally make it, even if it’s as a guest. So I just want to add to the land acknowledgement that Burlington is covered by the same territories as Toronto. <br><br>Burlington is also mutually covered by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, so I’m in the same boat of just making land acknowledgement and recognizing all the past injustice that has been done to indigenous people, especially in Canada. So welcome again everyone, I am Rama Kaba-Demanin, as Karen mentioned. And I work at eCampus Ontario and I am one of the leads for the Open Library. <br><br>So we at eCampus Ontario Open Library, we serve the unique position of leading and supporting open education and OER initiatives for Ontario publicly funded universities, colleges and indigenous institutes. So my position tends to sort of serve as a higher overview lead position, rather than at an institutional level. So that’s something that generally tends to be a little bit different than some of faculty or librarians who work the same in institutions. <br><br>So when it comes to creating OER, the Open Library main service is to provide platforms and a repository to aid our members for creating, searching and adapting OER. We aren’t actual publishers of OER, rather we support our members as self-publishers of OER. And sometimes that may actually be through grants and government initiatives, such as the most historic event investment by the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities, through the virtual learning strategy project. <br><br>Which was a $50 million investment into educational resources in Ontario which majority went to actual OER. So we are in the midst of cataloguing over 400 OERs, so I cannot wait, and I am sure I have my colleague here, Mary, as well as a guest. We cannot wait until these are actually catalogued and just released out there. Because they’re truly amazing, amazing OER, ranging from simulation, XR VR, textbook courses, it’s all over the category type map to say the least. <br><br>So although we have published OERs in the past, so eCampus Ontario Open Library did used to publish OER in its early infant stages because we’re sort of like a sister version of BC Campus. So we kind of started as sort of a sister version of BC Campus. So we kind of follow the same models, but we soon changed mainly because the post-secondary structure, but also the funding structure in Ontario is completely different. <br><br>So that’s where we kind of had to pivot into changing how we support OER into more of a supporting our educators and learners with creating OER as opposed to actually publishing OER. So our decisions and policy we have around data and book retentions come from multiple sources. So we employ what works from a publishing industry to library and archival process. <br><br>And that’s mainly because of our repository, which tends to be one of our biggest service that we offer is a repository for our members, but also internationally to host and catalogue their OER after they’re done creating them. So we do have different policies for our platforms, such as Pressbooks and our own H5P Studio than we do for our Open Library repository. So if we look at the platforms we provide versus the actual repository service we provide, we generally tend to have different policies around data and retention. <br><br>So for example, to address one of the questions which is whether authors have perpetual access to our publishing platforms, the answer is yes and no. So at the onset, our platforms are reserved for active members only, mainly because they cost money to make them available essentially. So we check in with our users yearly, and we will remove any inactive users after we actually sent out an email to gauge where users are in terms of being actively engaged with the platform or not. <br><br>We don’t actually delete any books that are created in Pressbooks, unless they’ve requested to have it deleted. This is mainly because we’ve learned that our members are very collaborative, like they work collaboratively across within their institution, but also outside of their institution. So again, because we are a consortium and the way our Pressbooks is set up, someone from the University of Toronto can actually be working on a project or an OER with someone from let’s say Conestoga College or Sheridan College. <br><br>So because of that, we generally don’t tend to delete an actual book because a lot of the books can belong to multiple authors or administrators. And with that also, this also allows the institutions to employ their own policies, not just around OER creation, but also around copyright and who the copyright holder actually is within the Pressbook instance. <br><br>So we generally try to make sure that we set up off the Pressbooks authors, administrators, editors, if done by the users so that they can apply whatever policy they have around whether this OER is created as part of someone’s tenure or job so that we’re not interfering with whatever requirements they may have. If an author is no longer a member, but needs access to their book, we do provide temporary access.<br><br>So that is something we also do, so although we remove you if you’re inactive or you maybe switched jobs or you’ve completely left the academic industry or Ontario public secondary industry, if you still have a book and you need access to it, we will provide access. We will never say no, and that’s why I say the answer is yes and no, mainly because of that flexibility. <br><br>So our repository on the other end is created like a typical library, which means we seek to preserve all additions and derivatives of OER for the long-term benefit, for educators and learners. However, we do have de-selection process which is done on a case-by-case review for either harmful information, inappropriate material or at the request of the author copyright holder. <br><br>And again, this can come through mainly a user identifying something we will evaluate, look at it, or sometimes information are no longer relevant, and this again can be identified by a user or by the author or copyright holder. And how do we handle updates and new editions to the Open Library is pretty straightforward. So editions we keep all, we either keep it active or we archive it. Adaptations we keep, corrections we replace. <br><br>So again, editions we keep all, we either keep it active or archive it depending on what the author may want. Adaptations we do keep all of those when they come through, but again, it’s also based on any special requests we get from the author. Corrections we always replace, because the idea then is that corrections means that you’ve identified an enormous error and you don’t really want that circulating currently out there. <br><br>We can’t do anything about what’s previously been downloaded, but we can certainly make sure that you are comfortable with what’s actually being posted. The biggest challenge we find with updates as we know anyone who works in OER knows that they are constantly updated all the time, from a smaller percentage to 20 videos randomly appearing in a book that weren’t there before. <br><br>And part of what we’ve learned is really educating the creator and understanding the sort of differences between a correction, adaptation, and new editions, like what constitutes an actual new edition so that you should actually let us know or catalogue it as a new item. So we do have a guideline that was put together that we generally always try to send whenever we get questions about correction, addition, or adaptation. <br><br>We always send that guideline and I’ll drop the link in the chat shortly. And it’s really just walking a creator through understanding the difference and what constitutes which type of change you’re making an update. And not just for your benefit, but also for the end user’s benefit, who may be using the resource and they’re not surprised at extra new videos appear, and it’s still considered the same version type. <br><br>So who manages updates? Generally it’s the creator, so for us as a repository, we don’t update anything unless we’re notified by it. So either we’re notified by the user or the author so that generally tends to be the workflow. We haven’t really had time or resource to do our own sort of weeding, which really means looking at what’s relevant, what’s no longer relevant, what’s old, what’s new. <br><br>And sometimes we’ll randomly do it as we’re cataloguing, if we spot anything we can kind of go like, “Okay, we can archive this, or we can withdraw this because we know that there is a latest version out there or we can preserve this.” So an example would be the OpenStax textbook generally is easy to kind of like identify newer versions of those based on the title. So that’s hopefully summed it up and hopefully I didn’t talk too fast about the process. But happy to turn it over to Sam and then yeah, answer questions later on and hear about others’ processes.<br><br><strong>Sam</strong>: Thank you, Rama. I appreciate that, you did not talk too fast for me, but might be for others. I am so appreciative of doing this with you. I think you’ve laid a good foundation for our topic today. When it comes to sustainability for our open educational resources, I tend to think a little bit outside the box in finding solutions to issues or challenges that we face. And Rama, you mentioned about resources, so I’m going to lead off with that. <br><br>Because for profit publishers make profits as part of their business model, and then they reinvest a portion of that profit for what you might refer to as research and development. And that’s how publishers are able to release new editions of their textbooks or resources that they sell. For us in the open community, it seems that we didn’t really think through how we are going to replicate that when we started, which could be good or bad. <br><br>Good because if you think about it and you didn’t have millions of dollars and you’re waiting until you have millions, you might not get started. So it’s good that we started without really figuring out where are we going to find the resources which now stands at millions perhaps billions of dollars, if you think more globally to be able to continue to replicate the success we’re having in open resources. <br><br>And so that question has consumed my career. I happen to have shared a little bit of this with Phoebe, I see that Phoebe is here today. I’m really excited because she put me up to this, by the way. And Phoebe and I are collaborating. She recruited me to her team where we are working on exactly this issue. So Phoebe, out of Oregon, they produced the first criminal justice textbook introduction to the American Criminal Justice System. <br><br>And I fell in love with that book years ago, when I saw it, because I have a PhD in juvenile justice, and I have a master’s degree in criminal justice. And we have no open educational textbook in my field, which was almost embarrassing when I realized that. And I felt like I needed to do something. And so I was researching, I was working for Texas A&M then and then we ran into that book, which was written by Dr Alison Burke and her team in Phoebe’s state, Oregon. <br><br>And so, I’ve been secretly using it and what we decided to do when I came to Utah State University, which is where I am now, I’ve been here for almost two years. And so the first thing I did was find our open educational resource team at the Utah State University Library. And they welcomed me with open arms, they said, “Yes, let’s go, what can we do to help you?” And they told me what they have. <br><br>And immediately, I did what I always do, which is take people in America literally when they say, “You’re welcome.” I usually come up with a long list and I realized that I completely overwhelmed them when I told them I wanted to get this book and revise it in one year and replace. And that was when I realized oh Sam, we wanted you to use our resources, but we don’t have $1 million, and we certainly don’t have a team dedicated to just you. <br><br>Because we have to serve 1,000 other faculty, and so I had to bear down. But then I shared with them what my vision was about how we can sustain and continue to improve upon the work we have. And the secret sauce that I came up with is people. If you don’t have $1 million and you have a million students or a million faculty, that’s your $1 million grant that we scrambled to write. <br><br>And that led me to a university you’ll recognize called Brigham Young University, our sister university in the State of Utah. And I ran into Dr John Hilton, who is a legend in the open educational world. And his mentor before him, David Wiley, who also had worked at Utah State University. And I read their work and realized that in some ways they have solved this problem. <br><br>But it wasn’t done in a way that I could relate to it at least and I know that’s happening to a lot of people. So David Wiley for those of you who don’t know came up with the idea of renewable assignments. I don’t know if he came up with it or he certainly made it famous enough for me to be able to read on Google, which is where I get all my peer reviewed work. So David Wiley talked about having students do homework that would live forever essentially. <br><br>And that would contribute to making the world a better place. And I thought that is our sustainability plan. Our students come to our class to learn. We can choose to make that learning more affordable by making their textbooks open resources. But we can also do it in a way that we partner with them, we do what we call collaborate with our students and make it part of their homework. <br><br>So to make a long story short, I know I have five minutes and I don’t know, Rama, have you kept time for me? If I see you wincing I will stop talking. But what I did at Utah State University is that I went through a process every university I believe had one. Sometimes it’s called service learning, and sometimes it’s called community engagement learning, which is sort of the new language for service learning. <br><br>And that is a tool that every faculty has in America and in most of the free world. That you can require, you can make it optional, but I like the part about requiring because then more students take it seriously. You can require your students to get up to a quarter of the grade for the class at least that’s the case at Utah State. So I made 25% of the grade in my class to come from an assignment that I appropriately named RAP, Research Assignment Project. <br><br>Not rap music, I’m always having to emphasize that. So each of my students, I usually have between 100 and 200 students, each of them will be required to take a topic that I would assign or have them choose. So in this case, we break down the textbook into topics, every textbook on average we found has at least 100 topics. So we break them, we create a table, we call it TOSAT, table of sections and topics for each of our textbooks. <br><br>And we ask each student to pick one or we assign them one and that becomes their homework. They will get 25% of their grade from developing the open educational version of this topic. If we do that, assuming this becomes successful and I’m betting everything that I have that it would be, then we would have a million students maybe a billion students is what I’m really hoping for who would take one topic at least. <br><br>Some of them tell me they can handle several, but I’m starting small. So they have worked on this, the data just came in and we’re analyzing it as we speak to see if they were able to successfully research that topic and then develop the open educational material for that topic. Whatever they come up with, I refer to it as low quality replacement. And then, I will collaborate with my colleagues, which is what I’m doing now with Phoebe and our team essentially. <br><br>So I will collaborate with what we are calling subject matter experts, they don’t have to be professors with PhDs. Could just be anyone who have taken interest in that topic and have worked on it. Then, we upgrade the work of my students to higher quality OER material. And then, if you know anything about universities and students, they are renewable resources when one graduates, another replaces them. <br><br>And so this is expected to last forever. If we do that, we would be able to replicate what publishers have been doing for centuries, which is dedicate resources to make sure that that topic and that chapter and that textbook and that material continues to stay relevant and continues to stay higher quality every single year. So I fully expect to transition all my textbooks to higher quality open educational resources. <br><br>And I fully expect to release a new edition on the 1st January or February every year until I die. And then, whoever takes after me can continue doing it and I fully expect it will cost exactly zero because I can give a billion As or Bs or grades in every class that I teach. So that is I think my idea of solving the problem of sustainability. We’ve always actually had the resources way more than the publishers have. <br><br>We just haven’t seen our students as the $1 billion that we needed to replace and exceed. So I’m thinking that we should be able to meet and exceed what the for profit publishers are doing. And if you ask me my qualifications, I spent about 20 years, I’ve been 25 years in America, and 20 of those were spent working for for profit and worked part time for non profit. <br><br>Now I switched, the second half of my life I’m working full time for non profit and part time for for profit. So I understand both mindsets about research and development and I’m betting that this is a solution. So how am I doing, Rama? I’m pretty sure I’ve gone more than five minutes. Okay, so I’ll stop there and then we can continue later. Thanks. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thank you very much both of you for getting our conversation started. And as Apurva noted in the chat, this is the time when we transition to everyone who’s here, so that the conversation can meet your needs and reflect the reality of your work. So please feel free to continue to talk in the chat or to unmute or raise your hand and ask a question that way, too. <br><br>We invite your input as well as your experience making OER more sustainable in the long run. I appreciate how between the two of our guests we heard sort of the range of strategies and methodologies whether it’s based on preserving existing resources or creating new ones. Rama, I was hoping you could talk a little bit about this question of deleting a book when requested. <br><br>Do you have a specific scenario that you can think of where perhaps a deletion was requested and you struggled with that question? Or is it always up to the copyright holder and if they request that, then sure thing, we’re taking it down? This is surprisingly not something that comes up that often with the Open Textbook Library, but it has once or twice over the years. So I’m interested in your thoughts. <br><br><strong>Rama</strong>: Yeah, certainly, that’s a good question. And I think it’s like you said, it doesn’t come up often. I’ve only experienced it once. And that one it was an easy decision I would say. At the time I was sort of aware of the reasoning for it. So I know that it wasn’t a difficult decision, in terms of taking it down. And I think because of it being open, right, and because we are an open repository, we generally tend to always side with the creator or copyright holder. <br><br>I myself am a creator, so I’m always trying to take the creator’s side. And my background is in publishing, traditional publishing mind you, so I generally tend to always side with definitely the creator or copyright holder. So I think oftentimes the decision becomes a little bit easier for us. And luckily, we really only had one. On the other side with our H5P Studio in terms of interactive content, right?<br><br>So we’ve actually I think the interesting case we’ve had was where we did have we received some notice from a user about videos needing trigger warning signs. So that was actually a whole interesting conversation that we never really considered or thought about. Because we think educational resources, but then there’s different types of educational resource and different types of subjects and fields. <br><br>And so that was an interesting experience I found playing that balance between giving the creator the freedom of choice, but also keeping in mind the multiple users that access this platform. So yeah, generally I think we tend to coincide with the creator. And I think a lot of our decision making really came about with the virtual learning strategy project because we were expecting to receive a lot of indigenous resource, right?<br><br>So a lot of my sort of delve into it, and really thinking about to how to create a policy that respects these types of resources, especially traditional knowledge resource came about really because we were expecting a lot of indigenous resources. So an example would be they’re creating a resource and it may have different interviews. So then, if one interviewer wants to remove their video or have it taken down, can they do that? <br><br>So that was questions we kept getting from people who were actually putting together these resources. And for us it was just yes, yes, yes. Because again, one, we were happy to even get indigenous resources and encouraging and opening that door into OER as we know is extremely difficult was step one. So for us it was just easy to say yes and respecting traditional knowledge and traditional knowledge label. <br><br>And knowing that things can change, so someone who said yes now can say no later because of different circumstances. So we were open to sort of respecting that. We only asked that for us, we will always connect the creator whenever we get a request. So if we get a request or a user says, “I’m in this book, take down my chapter.” <br><br>And it’s a collection of different chapters by different authors, we will always ensure that the main creator or main author or editor is involved in that conversation, just to make sure that everyone is aware of that discussion. So hopefully, that answers your question, I think I went off a little bit. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: No, absolutely. I appreciate being able to listen in on your thought process, because it’s very thoughtful and I appreciate the sensitivity to creators. It’s interesting you touched on so many things that I think we try to balance, at least thinking sort of with my Open Textbook Library hat on. <br><br>And it hasn’t happened so much in the last few years, but certainly when I first got started several years ago now, we heard more frequently from creators who were traditional publishers who had changed their business model and no longer wanted that openly licensed resource out there. And so, that was a little bit of a different decision, so now you’re thinking about well, is the creator an individual who is acting within an educational context? <br><br>Was the creator an organization or a financially driven company? So I always joke with my colleagues that the Open Textbook Library may seem fairly straightforward in that you’re creating metadata to point to the resources where they live online. But there are some surprisingly juicy and intricate questions that come up on an almost weekly basis, so thank you for talking with me about that. <br><br>I just want to make a note, I think that the comment that Kelly dropped into the chat was related to this topic. And she wondered aloud if something like the trigger warnings you mentioned could be addressed in the metadata or bibliographic info page or a note from the publisher or something like that? So I don’t know if that’s something you want to comment on? <br><br><strong>Rama</strong>: Yeah, I can add to that. So that’s actually the solution we came up with. So one of the things we did, and I always thank my background in public library and customer service because it wins every time. And my first sort of thought was let’s talk to the actual creator for these videos that were sort of identified as causing distress to someone else. So as we talked to the creator, and there were actually a few of them. <br><br>As we talked and engaged, we made sure to have it as an open conversation and asking them what did they recommend? And not surprisingly, but sort of the actual creators that we had, they suggested that they would actually be fine putting the trigger warning or an information about it in the description. So that was what we were hoping for, we didn’t want to make it a required thing. <br><br>Because again, that balance, and I think at the time there was that whole sort of debate and conversation going on with trigger warning and not. So I definitely did not want to enter that conversation too much. But yeah, so that was their own proposal and I think it’s because it was a conversation that was happening at almost every institution in Ontario maybe a year and a half ago or two years ago when it happened. <br><br>So that was the solution. The other part about it was actually system hesitation or system limitation I mean. So meaning the system we were actually using didn’t have a part in video where you can actually apply this information, unless you created your video in a different platform. So that was another thing that we had to consider was that systems and the platform you use can actually limit your ability to apply these metadata information in a visible place to an end user, right?<br><br>So there are certainly places where they can add this information, but yet it wasn’t in a place that was easily visible so like a cover page or a poster page for a video depending on the platform they were using. So that was another limitation. The other thing we did was and I cannot recall because it was a while back. I may have hinted at it in out about page, not making it a policy or anything, but just hinting at it as sort of like something to consider. <br><br>And that’s the angle we wanted to take is just reminding people that if you’re sharing something, just think about who you’re sharing it with and to, and everyone can access it. So that was our thing. I think for the Open Library, in the metadata field, again, I think for us as a repository we wouldn’t necessarily add that information, but we do encourage or just mention it to the creator to add it as part of their actual resource itself, right? <br><br>Because if that resource is taken out of our repository, it’s best that these types of metadata actually live with the resource, as opposed to the system or the repository. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Sounds like you and Sam have a lot in common with the encouraging the behavior in people. And I might just note that there are a few questions that have come into the chat that maybe are directed for you, Sam, from Richard and Kaitlin. They’re asking do students generate case studies as part of that section on student co-created OER? Or is that a separate project? <br><br>And Kaitlin is curious about what the reaction has been from students to have this method and have there been any challenges from their perspectives that you’ve heard of? <br><br><strong>Sam</strong>: So thank you, I will take the second one first, reaction of the students because it’s on my mind right now. We just got, here at Utah State we refer to it as IDEA. It’s when students get to grade their professors, and it looks to me like it didn’t go as well as planned, but it’s encouraging that more than half of the students enjoyed the experience. Maybe what I would put at maybe 60% now enjoy their experience and were eager to participate. <br><br>There are other students who felt like, so I found the cheapest textbook I could, it was about $50. So there were those who said, “I paid $50 for my textbook and now I am investing 10 to 20 hours to try to develop a free one for future students.” So they didn’t quite feel that charitable feeling of having to do something for someone else. So I have work to do, I have a few months to try to respond to that in some way because that’s not completely unanticipated. <br><br>It would be better I think maybe a year from now when they have a free textbook and then they are improving it. So they would feel like I didn’t have to spend any money, but in the initial time I would have to face these tough questions, which is I paid for mine, why should I make it free for somebody else? That is a feeling that perhaps a few of us wouldn’t understand, but it’s common, it’s human nature. <br><br>So the other question about case studies, that part is interesting. I wanted to start small, so what we did was just focus on text. So we have two tables we work with. We have one we call table of sections and topics, we call it TOSAT for short. Then, we created a second table that complements that, we call it TOF, table of features. So we took the one we called features is really non-text features. <br><br>And the one we call table of topics is really text. We’re focusing on the text. So something like case studies would be included in the text part, where they were just capturing it in the text. The value of the non-text features is that we wanted every faculty, no matter their field, to be able to collaborate with us. So we want to outsource every feature in the textbook to any faculty that we consider would be the subject matter expert. <br><br>So for instance, there are lots of pictures, so we would have the photography professors take that on. There are drawings, so we would have our art professors. And then, there are audio links that would be the communication audio technology people. There are video links. So we wanted to take the textbook and break it down into 100 different parts and then go out and recruit professors. <br><br>The beauty of universities is that we know everything, right? So we have experts in every particular area and we hope to identify them and go through a process to find out how many to divide them into what we are calling high WITS and low WITS, WITS which stands for Willingness To Support, which is a 10-minute survey we created. We will administrate to every professor on the planet, so we divide them into two, those with high willingness to support OER and those with low willingness. <br><br>And the goal is to start with those who already have high willingness. So I haven’t done case studies, that’s in the works for a long answer to a short question. We will do case studies in the next version, which is in the Fall, in a few months. And then, I will have reaction to that. But in addition to case studies, we are including, like I said, every part of the textbook including ancillaries like quizzes, text, everything you normally would get from your best for profit published textbook. <br><br>We want to be able to replicate that in OER because essentially we anticipate we now have unlimited resources, so why not? That’s the attitude. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: That’s a great attitude. And clearly, from our name Rebus Community, we have a shared interest in developing and empowering all of the people involved. As Karen notes in the chat, if anybody here has a scenario of their own that they’d like to share about their own programs or authors who may have left, feel free to let us know. You can raise your hand using Zoom and we’ll tap in on you. <br><br>And you’re welcome to continue posting any questions in the chat. Maybe while we’re waiting I have one perhaps for both of you in different ways. Rama, you talked a lot about your role as sort of the system or provincial level agency that coordinates with representatives at institutions. Could you tell us more about what that collaboration process is like? <br><br>And again, is it a matter of routine periodic meetings, where you check in with them about OER that is published from their programs or from their institutions? And I know, Sam, you talked about coordinating with Phoebe and others and also tapping into the faculty at your institutions. So how do you both envision that collaboration taking place? I would love to hear from both of you on that. <br><br><strong>Rama</strong>: Yeah, sure I can go first. Yeah, I think for us, we generally tend to serve a resource role. So oftentimes a conversation can start with someone reaching out, emailing us, who generally may be new to OER. So the conversation can range from answering what is OER? Or I want to adapt this resource do you have another educator who has adapted this resource I can connect with? Which generally tends to be one of my favorite things to do is building that relationship. <br><br>And it can also range from I’m already in the process of creating but I need that extra help and I wasn’t able to get that support or resource through my institution. So that’s generally what my role tends to be that resource high level, so oftentimes those who reach out to me generally tend to be either an OER librarian or a faculty and sometimes even students. So it kind of ranges from all over in terms of the inquiry type I get. <br><br>And then, based on that, the continued meeting or collaboration will depend. So I have been part of a process where I have helped someone setup their Pressbooks, gave a demo of Pressbooks, how to use it, walk them through the steps. They are creating. I don’t hear back for several months, and all of a sudden, they’re stuck, they need my help. Or I don’t hear again, and then they’re done. <br><br>And then, they just need that next level how do I submit to the Open Library? So yeah, so the process can really vary depending on what they’re looking for. And I guess because of my publishing background, I also tend to give a lot of resource relating to if someone wants to obtain an ISBN. And just best ways to publish their work, so meaning how do I make this available? What are the different types of format I should consider?<br><br>So I serve more of an educational resource level support and a lot of technical help. So I would say maybe I think it’s Mary is in the chat, she’s probably chuckling because 80% of my support generally tends to be troubleshooting tech things either with Pressbooks or H5P studio. And sometimes with other platforms, just because I am a librarian by nature, I usually have a hard time saying no, it’s not my job to help you with this. <br><br>I will always be willing to say yes to that, so that is just typical interactions with Ontario. Again, it can be faculty, prof level who’s created an OER or learning center, the library invited me to introduce, talk about our platforms, a lot of licensing, that’s the other thing, so serving as open license Creative Common resource type as well. <br><br>And sometimes connecting and reminding people who the actual OER librarian or OER resource contact is at their institution to go there for more support than I may be able to give. Thank you, I think Mary put something in the chat. <br><br><strong>Sam</strong>: Thank you, Rama. And I could add to that the angle that we are taking when it comes to collaboration. So I did talk about my connection with Phoebe. I found out about Phoebe because she and her team are managing a federal grant from Department of Education to update if you will the first open educational textbook in criminal justice, which was written by Dr Alison Burke and her team. <br><br>So essentially they wanted to do the second edition and it turns out I was working on exactly the same idea. I love the textbook, but I felt like there were aspects that needed to be updated for us to be able to use it here in Utah. One of the things I noticed that I felt was really important was what we are now calling and I got this phrase from Phoebe diversity, equity and inclusion. <br><br>I just felt like it needed to be a little bit more diverse. But then, I realized that that was a focus of the grant they are working on. And so, they recruited me to work with them and the recruitment happened because I needed workers. So in this university, we operate in semesters and I wanted to be able to work 24/7 on the project. And because I’m in criminal justice, I was aware that there is a place in every community called prison or we give it all kinds of names, jail, prison, detention facility, correctional facility. <br><br>Essentially where we are holding adults who have at least secondary education, high school diploma. So we have more than a million people incarcerated in the US who have at least a high school diploma or higher. And we usually warehouse them, there is nothing for them to do. We keep them there as punishment. And I thought could I recruit them into this cause so that I could collaborate with these prisons?<br><br>And much to my shock, when I reached out they said, “Wow, where have you been all our lives? We’ve been looking for something for the inmates to do.” And so we saw an opportunity for us to collaborate, to develop free textbooks which would then be used to help them gain access to free college education, another passion of mine. So while I was talking to the prisoners, our first group of prisoners, a few months ago one of them said, “Which book are we going to start with?”<br><br>And I said, “Burke et al, which is the only textbook I know that was written in Oregon.” And one of them said, “Have you talked to the author?” And I said, “No.” He said, “Why would we work on her textbook if you haven’t talked to them?” And I said, “Because it’s open and we don’t really need her permission.” And I wouldn’t say his name, we call him Doc, he said, “You need to talk to her.” <br><br>He gave me a direct instruction to reach out to Dr Burke and I did. I had one of my assistants reach out and that’s when we connected with Phoebe. And I told them what I was doing and that there was this guy on our team who felt like I need to get their permission, even though I told him we didn’t need one. And after that meeting, one thing led to another and Phoebe recruited me to become a lead author, to write this second edition which is what we are working on right now. <br><br>So in terms of collaboration, we think of the university as our resource, every community in the world has a university serving them. So we call it CommU, which is short form for community university. So we want to partner or collaborate with every community and every university because we have a shared benefit that would come from working together. So that’s working with Phoebe we think is a start and talking to you at Rebus, we think it’s an extension of that. <br><br>But I fully expect that this should be a universal effort unless you can tell me anybody, any community or any university that wouldn’t benefit from the work we are doing. We shouldn’t feel the need to do it alone. I think we should be in hyper collaboration and my training has prepared me to sort of play a leadership role in bringing every community and universities together because I think sometimes we just have to tell everyone what’s in it for them.<br><br>For my students I say, “This is a quarter of your grade.” That usually gets their attention. For a mayor, whether in Oregon or Utah I tell them, “This is the way you provide free college education for all your inmates and lower crime, disease and poverty.” That usually gets their attention. And for a university president I usually say, “This is how you are able to recruit all the adults that are qualified to go to college instead of a fraction.” <br><br>Because there are many here in Utah is about 100,000 who would enroll in college if they didn’t have to pay for textbooks. So there is something in it for everybody, we just need to be able to explain it in their language and then sign a contract and collaborate with them. So that’s what we think of collaboration is think of everybody starting where we are. In my case it’s Utah and now Oregon and open it up to the whole world, which is in a way what I am doing here today. I like to have more collaborators from everywhere. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thank you, Sam. And we couldn’t agree more. Apurva noted in the chat, we shouldn’t feel the need to do it alone and that’s the same thing we say in the Open Education Network and it’s universal to the open ed community, I think, that we’re not alone and we’re here to support one another. And we can accomplish a lot by working together. <br><br>Also as Apurva noted we are nearing the end of our hour together. And I haven’t seen any new urgent questions come through in the chat. So perhaps we’ll begin wrapping up. Apurva, is there anything else you’d like to ask? <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Just ask our guests if they maybe have final comments and for those perhaps with the financial means to plan and budget for this work, are there any suggestions that you might have for folks on the call who are maybe writing grant proposals about OER initiatives or OER projects? <br><br>And suggestions that you have either to train individuals to do this work and to keep this rolling or to budget out the resources needed to develop those policies that you didn’t realize you needed until the needs arose? So any suggestions or final comments, feel free to jump in. <br><br><strong>Rama</strong>: I think I can add a little to that. Mainly just what I’ve observed through our virtual learning strategy project, which was really a collaborative effort among many faculties across different institutions in Ontario. But also, with Ontario businesses as well, so just seeing how the projects came about, how people coordinated, worked together and the challenges that they’ve encountered. <br><br>And I think it’s like you said having those policies in place really saved a lot of those projects that were successful and were able to actually finish their project and submit their final resources, especially during the pandemic. So this is all happening during the pandemic, when I think about those who had video schedules that they were going to shoot but never happened because of lockdown. <br><br>So I think just having that policy in place and just having different considerations for how you’re going to treat risk and identifying those risks that may happen throughout a lifecycle of your project I think is important because on one hand, creating an OER it is a project. I think I’ve definitely come to realize that, and I feel comfortable saying that. It is not the same as writing a book. <br><br>It's creating a project and I think it’s because of that multiple aspect that really goes into it all the different resources that you’re going to need in order to create a great quality OER. It really is a project, and I think my recommendation really would be to treat it as a project and if you have it setup as a project, then this I think will allow you to succeed. And part of that is thinking about retention as well. <br><br>So once it’s out there, what and how do you expect to treat any updates that you do to your resource? So some of the resources have already identified that, and for us as a repository it makes it easy for us to identify that this is a dynamic digital resource. I’m not going to provide a printed version of it, or an exported PDF or XML because it may change tomorrow. So I’m just going to leave it as an online resource. <br><br>So just something so small but yet so important when you start cataloguing and being able to identify a resource that already says I’m dynamic, I’m a living document and I will be updated frequently. So that’s my cap summary. <br><br><strong>Sam</strong>: Thank you, Rama. I will build on your comment that OER is a project. And like every other project it requires resources. I think we started out in the OER community thinking that because it’s free, that somehow we would get away with focusing on the initial part of the work. We didn’t really think through what we are tackling today, which is what happens after that initial publication. <br><br>So the sustainability part, I don’t think we should be continuing how we started, because we’ve had decades of experimenting with this. It is time to make every OER as sustainable as humanly possible, and that’s certainly the approach we take to get OER to break down in this case I will talk about a textbook because that’s where I live. So we look at the book as 100 topics, if you will. <br><br>And each one requires updating, each one requires improvement over time. So we should think about it that that improvement needs to be happening 24/7 at any given time in the world there is someone who can be incentivized to contribute to it. And that someone most likely will be a university student or faculty or someone who is incentivized differently. I call it non-monetary reward or non-monetary compensation. <br><br>So when I give my students 25%, it’s almost the same as giving them $25 or 25,000 whatever currency you want to use. If I’m in Nigeria, where I was born and raised, it would be like 25,000 Naira is the value for them. And so, when it comes to sustainability, we need to think about in my work we call it surplus resources. The universe is filled with surplus resources that would pay for sustainability. <br><br>Here in Utah, we have two law schools and in the next few weeks I’ll be sitting down with both of them to ask if they would start a new field of law that I am calling OER Law. Because I found out they have about half a dozen different areas of law, and I thought where is OER in your curriculum? And they looked at me like, “What is wrong with you, Sam?” And I said, “I was a paralegal I was told you guys are the only ones on the planet who can just create a new curriculum. Can you add one?” <br><br>But I am in the process of selling them why this is important to them because in the field of law, they have what is called pro bono law, where they are supposed to contribute to reducing poverty. Imagine if they created a new field of law where all my legal OER needs can be taken care of for free, what can I do with that? What if every law school on the planet whether in Nigeria or China or Ontario, Iraq, wherever implement it? <br><br>So we have the resources, the biggest lie told is that we don’t. We have more resources then for profit, we just need intelligence to tap into it. And I hope to have more detailed conversations on how we do that because the best part is we already have the money, just nobody told us and now I’m telling you. So that’s my final comment. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you, Sam and thank you, Rama and everybody else here today. We are at 3:00 Eastern that is I will also just note in the chat I’ve dropped in a link to a form to do some future thinking and envisioning for Office Hours as well. Do we want to continue this conversation? Do we want to tackle another topic? Would you like to hear from other speakers? Please let us know. <br><br>These are always community organized events, hopefully for communities, so we’d love to hear from you what you’d like to discuss as a group to move this forward. And for now, I just want to say thank you so much to our two guests. I appreciate just the reflections that you’ve brought, the language that you’ve used and the questions that you’ve left us thinking with. And solutions as well as you all noted, we’re here to resolve this together. <br><br>We hope to see all of you next month at our next Office Hours, and in the meantime, hope you all can take care, enjoy the rest of your day wherever you are. And look forward to seeing you in about a month’s time for our next session. Take care everybody, thank you so much. Bye bye. <br><br><br>END OF VIDEO<br><br></div><h2>Chat Transcript</h2><div>00:16:24 Hallie Clawson: Hi everyone! I'm Hallie Clawson from California State University Dominguez Hills in Carson, CA<br>00:17:14 Hallie Clawson: We are in the homeland of the Tongva people<br>00:18:15 Kaitlin Schilling (she/her): Hey everyone, I’m Kaitlin Schilling from Rebus Community and am joining you all today from a rainy Winnipeg, Manitoba, on Treaty 1 territory, the shared traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg and Ininiwak. These lands are the unceded territories of the Dakota Oyate, and the homeland of the Red River Métis. Thankful for the privilege to live, work, and love on this beautiful land and grateful to be spending some time with you all this afternoon.<br>00:20:20 Kelly Smith, she/her: … and in my area, the place we now call Kentucky is primarily Shawnee, Cherokee, Chickasaw and Osage land.<br>00:20:54 Apurva Ashok: We're thrilled to have you!<br>00:23:01 Karen Lauritsen: So exciting!<br>00:30:48 Apurva Ashok: Feel free to start posting any questions in the chat!<br>00:31:30 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/15lcmxVtuy8mX090BIH5INYZMYDV-IgDAaJgUwuR1cTA/edit">https://docs.google.com/document/d/15lcmxVtuy8mX090BIH5INYZMYDV-IgDAaJgUwuR1cTA/edit</a><br>00:31:46 Apurva Ashok: Thanks, Rama!<br>00:32:11 Kelly Smith, she/her: Rama, thank you! We really needed something like this.<br>00:32:42 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): It does need to be updated as it primarily refers to Pressbooks.<br>00:32:57 Kelly Smith, she/her: It's a great template though<br>00:34:37 Mélanie Brunet: Thank you @Rama! I'm updating the uOttawa OER by discipline guide that's in the Open Library and these guidelines help a lot!<br>00:37:50 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): Great to hear @Melanie! We are adding a form soon to submit updated files to an existing resource.<br>00:38:06 Mélanie Brunet: Oh! That's great!<br>00:40:07 Kelly Smith, she/her: My internet connection is unstable so I'm missing a lot. Karen, can you remind me where I can view this recording?<br>00:40:27 Apurva Ashok: Recording will be here: <a href="https://www.rebus.community/t/office-hours-what-happens-when-my-author-leaves-policies-to-support-oer/6985">https://www.rebus.community/t/office-hours-what-happens-when-my-author-leaves-policies-to-support-oer/6985</a><br>00:40:38 Kelly Smith, she/her: Thanks, Apurva!<br>00:40:39 Apurva Ashok: You can also continue the conversation asynchronously in this space!<br>00:41:29 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): Such a great point Sam! A lot of Ontario institutions have been engaging students as co-creation, even starting a student-led OER lab.<br>00:42:22 RSaunders: Sam, do students generate case studies as part of their section, or might that be a separate project?<br>00:42:28 Kaitlin Schilling (she/her): What has the reaction from students been like to this method? Have there been any challenges from their perspectives, that you know of?<br>00:45:17 Kelly Smith, she/her: I wonder if something like that "trigger warnings" could be addressed in the metadata/bibliographic info page?<br>00:45:50 Kelly Smith, she/her: Or a "note from the publisher" or something like that.<br>00:46:36 Apurva Ashok: Plus perhaps on the course syllabus, in the classroom too during the first few sessions as the instructor hopefully brings a trauma-informed pedagogical approach with their students?<br>00:51:48 Kaitlin Schilling (she/her): Rama, I really appreciate your approach with creators and all the considerations that go into your processes and policies so creators can make informed decisions that work best for them and their resources.<br>00:53:09 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): Thank you @Kaitlin.<br>00:54:40 Karen Lauritsen: Does anyone have a scenario they want to share related to their own program or author? We'll check in shortly.<br>01:00:22 Mary Gu (she/her) | eCampusOntario: We also do Pressbooks and H5P workshops now to provide consistent support to new users and maintain a Slack community!<br>01:00:46 Apurva Ashok: Thanks, Mary!<br>01:00:48 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): Thanks Mary! I always forget about Slack! ?<br>01:03:14 Phoebe Daurio (she/her): We're happy to have Sam on our project - it's one of the Open Textbook Pilot Grants from the DOE. You can see a short summary of our grant here: <a href="https://openoregon.org/federal-grant-award/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=federal-grant-award">https://openoregon.org/federal-grant-award/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=federal-grant-award</a><br>01:03:55 Apurva Ashok: Thanks for the info, Phoebe. Sounds like an exciting project<br>01:04:20 Hallie Clawson: Thank you all for this session, I have to go but I appreciate the discussion and everything you've shared!<br>01:04:29 Apurva Ashok: As we're nearing our final 10 minutes, I'll encourage you all to post any final comments/questions in the chat.<br>01:05:17 Apurva Ashok: "We shouldn't feel the need to do it alone” - I love that, Sam!<br>01:08:29 Phoebe Daurio (she/her): We're happy to share any of our resources related to our grant proposal, and we've started by sharing a blog post here: <a href="https://oerandbeyond.org/replicable-federal-oer-grant-proposal-model/">https://oerandbeyond.org/replicable-federal-oer-grant-proposal-model/</a><br>01:09:04 Phoebe Daurio (she/her): We do still have questions though about sustainability in the long term, tracking updates etc. (but we know Sam will take care of his OER :)<br>01:12:30 Apurva Ashok: As Sam is encouraging us to do some future thinking/planning, we'll do the same! Any suggestions for Office Hours topics and/or speakers are welcome: <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform">https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform</a><br>01:13:10 Karen Lauritsen: Thank you Rama and Sam! And everyone for joining us.<br>01:13:24 Phoebe Daurio (she/her): Thank you Sam and Rama so much!<br>01:13:33 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): Thank you for having me! And thank you Sam for the great insight.<br>01:13:42 Sam Arungwa: Thank you everyone....what a joy to be with you!!!<br>01:13:43 Kaitlin Schilling (she/her): "We have the resources, the biggest lie is we don't" - thank you both so much for today!<br>01:13:55 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): And so many quotes from Sam! ?<br>01:13:55 Karen Lauritsen: Yes!<br>01:14:12 Rumyana Hristova: Thank you!<br>01:14:13 Mary Gu (she/her) | eCampusOntario: Thank you everyone!<br>01:14:15 Mélanie Brunet: Thank you!<br>01:14:15 Karen Lauritsen: Farewell.<br><br><br></div>admintag:open.umn.edu,2005:Spina::Blog::Post/612022-04-20T00:07:48Z2022-04-20T00:07:48ZApril Office Hours: Showing Your Work - Tools for Reporting Impact<div>Watch the <a href=" https://youtu.be/ZSld72F_s1s">video recording</a> of this Office Hours session, or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.<br><br>Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please <a href="mailto:joh20849@umn.edu">contact Tonia</a>.<br><br></div><h2>Audio Transcript</h2><div><br><strong>Speakers:</strong></div><ul><li>Apurva Ashok (Director of Open Education, The Rebus Foundation)</li><li>Karen Lauritsen (Publishing Director, Open Education Network)</li><li>Emilia Bell (Coordinator, Evidence Based Practice, Library Services, University of Southern Queensland)</li><li>Tara Lebar (Associate Director, Academic Affairs, Kansas Board of Regents)</li><li>Barb Thees (Community Manager, Open Education Network)</li></ul><div><br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Hello everybody. Welcome to another Office Hours session. It is lovely to see so many of you from so many different parts of the world. For those of you I'm meeting for the first time, my name is Apurva Ashok. I am the director of open education and the assistant director at the Rebus Foundation. And I work on the Rebus Community project. <br><br>We really try to build human capacity in OER publishing and open education through professional development, the publication of free openly licensed resources and through sessions like this one, Office Hours, which we've been co-organizing with the Open Education Network for many, many years now. <br><br>Before I pass it over to Karen, I also just want to acknowledge that I'm joining you all today from the traditional territories of many nations. I'm joining you from the territories of the Mississaugas of the First Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples.<br><br>I'm very grateful to be here on this territory, I'm grateful for the privilege to be able to live and meet and learn here. And look forward to conversing with all of you and learning more about where you might be joining us from today. Karen, over to you. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Okay, thank you, Apurva. And welcome everyone, we are so glad you could join us for another session of Office Hours. I am the publishing director with the Open Education Network. My name is Karen Lauritsen. And we are a community of professionals working together in higher education to make it more open. And if this is your first time joining us for Office Hours, we are going to turn to you for questions and conversation after we briefly hear from our guests. <br><br>It's intended to be a casual conversation. As we all come together from different parts of the world, I am joining you today from San Luis Obispo, California, which is the traditional land of the Northern Chumash. And today we're going to discuss showing your work, tools for reporting impact. We are joined by Tara Lebar, who is Associate Director of Academic Affairs with the Kansas Board of Regents; Barb Thees, who is Community Manager with the Open Education Network; and Emilia Bell who is Coordinator of Evidence Based Practice with Library Services at the University of Southern Queensland.<br><br>We're so delighted to have the three of you with us today, as well as all of our participants. We invite all of you to contribute to the conversation. I am sure that many of you are also engaged in reporting the impact of your OER programs, learning to make the case and to tell stories about why it's so important to support OER development in open education. And so we invite you to chime in in the chat and then as I mentioned, we'll turn it over to you for conversation after we hear from our guests. So I think that's it, and to kick it off, I will hand things over to Tara. <br><br><strong>Tara</strong>: Great, thank you very much, I'm excited to be here. What I've learned in my 18 months of being with the Kansas Board of Regents and working with the OER, the Kansas OER Steering Committee is that no matter how much you know about OER, you never know enough about OER, right? And you never really feel like you are an expert. <br><br>And I definitely don't feel like an expert, but I'm excited to be here to share at least some of the things that we've done with our Steering Committee as OEN members. And how we've used the dashboard to expand our faculty workshop programs, expand and use a state stipend grant with those. And then also I started to collect some of the adoption data in there. <br><br>So I'm excited to show you what that looks like as well. So I'm going to share my screen here. And let's see. A little bit of background on the Kansas Board of Regents. The State of Kansas has 32 public institutions. Seven public universities, seven technical colleges and then 19 community colleges. And we are the governing body for all of the public universities and then we coordinate with the community colleges and technical colleges across the state. <br><br>And so, it's a partnership, but it's also something that we kind of all have to walk together on because we all have different governances, until the state tells us what we have to do, and then we all have the same boss. So we do have a lot of collaboration, and one of the great things about the OER Steering Committee is we do have representation from all different types of institutions. And most of our institutions are represented on that Steering Committee. <br><br>And so, the work they've done together to advance OER initiatives across the state has been phenomenal in the last two I think it really started, they started slightly before I joined the team, maybe a year right before Covid. So in the three years that this group has been going, just the programming about OER has been really exciting statewide. So you can see here, so this is our OEN dashboard. <br><br>We joined a year ago as a consortial member. A couple of our institutions are institutional members from OEN. And we had some trainers that had worked specifically a trainer from University of Kansas that was very connected with OEN. And then, another trainer at Fort Hays State University was connected with OEN. And so we had some folks that were really connected and spoke highly of the organization. <br><br>And so we were able to do this, and we saw this membership as a way to share their resources and specifically the programming with all of the institutions in our system across the state. And so last year, the Spring of '21 we implemented five faculty workshops, and you can see that, using the OEN faculty workshop model. And then we had faculty from all across the system. These filled up super fast. <br><br>We kept them moderately small so that we could encourage discussion. They filled up very quickly. And then, we invited just like the workshop model does, we invited the participants to go into the OTL and enter an online review if they chose to. And if they did that, then they were eligible for $150 stipend from the state. So we've been doing that. This Fall we continued that workshop series by offering another six workshops, again, multiple institutions. <br><br>We used our trainers, all these workshops were virtual. And so, here we were using the OEN dashboard as it was intended, as it was presented and as a way to register for those workshops and track participation. And what's nice about the dashboard is that Barb's team they have created all the registration, the emails, the communication to go to these participants and make it very easy for us to put this together. <br><br>And especially for me, at the Board of Regents office location, one central location, it was very easy for me to just put the details of the event in the dashboard. And then, the emails were sent directly, or we sent out the registration, people signed up, faculty signed up to the one they wanted to attend. It was really slick. What it also created though, is all of these participants come with an email and a contact, which has been nice. <br><br>And so, we did 11 workshops last year over the course of 2021. And we realized we still had quite a bit of grant money left over. And so, we transitioned this model into using it for our institutions, and we opened it up to any of our 32 institutions to hold a training for their faculty as a professional development event. We said we'll provide you the trainers, if you want to offer the stipend, we have enough money to offer a stipend. <br><br>And so, you can see since January we've had several of these institutions reach out and create their own. We have another one coming up next week, Johnson County Community College. And these vary from the professional development that everyone has to take, to an optional session created just for faculty. And so really just letting the institutions, they can be virtual, they can be in person. <br><br>And with this model, the participants don't register through the dashboard, the contact just sends me who's signed up. Now that really has been the extent of how we used the dashboard up until a couple of weeks ago. Because as I was looking the dashboard was recently redone, and so I had used activity things to send out invites and reminders and track our stipends and things like that. <br><br>But because I looked over on this reporting status, they added a couple of things. Well, all of these graphs were empty. And really, the only thing I would scroll down, and the only graph I would see is this. And I'm kind of looking at this going, "Boy, it would be really, really cool to be able to see student savings, student impact, faculty using OER." So one of the surveys that was added recently from OEN to the dashboard is called an adoption survey. <br><br>And we hadn't played with that yet. And so what I did was I clicked on the adoption enrolment update, and I sent that out to all 188 faculty that we had interacted with during 2021. Now, again, these are small numbers, and this is just a start. But this is the information that I got back from those 188 participants. And so just that small slice and really, it's probably only about 50 or 60 participants that had really answered and responded. <br><br>All of a sudden, this data started coming to life, too in ways that now I'm thinking ooh, how can we do this? How can we replicate this on a larger scale? How could we get this out to all of our institutions? Because this was really exciting to see. Barb, did you want to chime in here? <br><br><strong>Barb</strong>: I think I'll let Emilia go, this is giving me great ideas and I'll circle back on it. Thank you, Tara. <br><br><strong>Tara</strong>: Cool, no worries, well so this is the start of what got me excited about looking at different ways that we could use that. And maybe even twisting OEN's arm a bit to see if there's a way that we could share that survey with more than just workshop participants. If there's a way that we could send that out to our whole entire system or something in that aspect. But I love the simplicity of this survey. I think it's five or six questions. <br><br>It's very easy and it talks very clearly about what class you're teaching, how many students. Talking about sections and numbers of students and really getting that concrete information from the faculty member that's answering the question. And so, like I said, this is a cool tool that I am excited to play more with. And so, with that, I will maybe toss it to Emilia. And be happy to answer questions as we go along today. And I'll stop sharing, there we go. <br><br><strong>Emilia</strong>: Wonderful, thank you and hi everyone. So I'm going to talk a little bit on how we've highlighted the reach of USQ's open texts which are on the Pressbooks platform, using Power BI as a data visualization and dashboard tool. And this is work that's emerged from conversations between two library teams. So that's the open educational practice team and the evidence based practice team, which is where my role is. <br><br>So we had several initial discussions and ended up taking a phased approach to impact. And our first stage has involved showing the attention or the reach with web analytics data. So we've created a Power BI report that has a dedicated page for each of our open texts and it can be accessed by individual authors. It's probably worth mentioning as well that web analytics data is very easy to access, can be usefully measured, can appear very promising. <br><br>So there's a lot of appeal to it. It's been a lot more challenging, however, to actually recognize what's actually meaningful and accurate from it. So there are limitations that have required some consideration and transparency. But really, the dashboard has highlighted the attention that open texts receive and a new way just to promote that OER output as well. So we've been able to not only visualize the reach or attention, but to also provide just a single space for authors to explore and interact with data themselves. <br><br>There's a few groups accessing the Power BI report, so that includes academic authors and library staff as well. And what we're aiming for there is to actually make this as accessible as possible, so that authors can really easily navigate and explore the data independently. So I'll share an example of this work. Awesome. So as I mentioned, we have dedicated a separate page for each open text. <br><br>And this means that authors can simply select their text and find the data specific to their own text or chapter. So we'll look at academic success. And initially we can see the page views and downloads. And academic success has different authors for each chapter. So we've drilled down to this level of detail, so that the numbers on page view is actually relevant to individual authors as well. <br><br>Some of our other measures included sources of traffic, browsers and devices, and geographic reach. And after a few iterations and some feedback we chose to include these measures on the same page open texts. Just to use tabs, which are Power BI bookmarks to switch between different views. So we can switch to sources of traffic and still on the same page we've just built upward on the canvas and hidden the other visualizations. <br><br>So we've got sources of traffic, which is showing the referral path, so the website or search engine that they've used to find through. And we've included any social media sites, USQ's learning management system, which is called Study Desk as well as access by any other university or school links as well. So from many other websites. There browsers and devices was a little bit less specific for reach or impact, but it's provided opportunities for greater evidence based decision making when creating open texts. <br><br>And getting an understanding of what forms of technology are actually being used to access our open education resources. And then finally, under the last tab, we have access by geographic location, so by country. And that's really interesting just to explore between different open texts and subjects and to be highlighting reach in that respect as well. And we needed to accommodate several needs for evidence. <br><br>Some around decision making and others to actually highlight that reach and attention but we still had to be providing some of those visualizations that were considered and responding to the questions that we were asking. And really there's only so much canvas space that could be used effectively, while also facilitating authors and library staff to actually frame their own stories around reach and impact. <br><br>And within the library we can repurpose and refine any of these visualizations in other dashboards or communications, just as part of the larger narratives around openness. When we were designing the dashboard though we were also considering what measures can actually signify impact. So I think some of the language that we're using reflects our ongoing discussions around that. <br><br>So at this stage, we've addressed the reach of open text or the attention that they receive as being at best proxies for actually impact on user engagement. So we've distinguished between attention and impact. And that's where our phased approach comes in in that we're intending to then collect and incorporate the data on adoption and reuse of open texts as well as later qualitative evidence. <br><br>Just to provide opportunities to actually highlight other voices which is going to mean that we can extend beyond just quantifying reach and intention that our open texts receive to further emphasizing the value and impact of their openness as well. So thank you. And I might pass on to Barb now. <br><br><strong>Barb</strong>: Thank you both. And I'm going to circle back kind of on similar things to what Tara was sharing with her screen. So I was a part of the team that like Tara mentioned revamped the dashboard. And I do want to give a shout out, there's a lot of OEN members in this crowd who use the dashboard on a regular basis. We have some data rockstars in here, too that we tapped in to create this version of the dashboard as well. <br><br>So I invite any of you to share or chime in if anything is really striking a chord with you. But just to expand on some of the things that Tara shared, don't worry, this is not me sharing anybody's data. But this is our test account. And as she mentioned, so the general purpose of the dashboard itself is to track the impact of open educational initiatives of our members. And so, it does have this capability, where like Tara was saying administrators themselves can add details on their programs. <br><br>Whether that be a grant program, an event you're hosting, a workshop you're hosting, and who participated in that. And then, also has this capability, as she showed, to actually create email campaigns that are then sent out directly to instructors where they can add that information themselves. So it has that flexibility for administrators to manage, but then hopefully keep the information as up to date as possible with including the instructors in the data process directly having them added to the dashboard. <br><br>Another one of the things that I think is unique about our data dashboard and one of the reasons that we did want to do a revamp is because we have a number of consortial members, as well as individual institutions who are using the dashboard, who work with one another. And there is that overlap between faculty that attend professional development OER related events, through either the consortium or through their local institution. <br><br>So something I want to show you which Tara is at the consortial level and that is the view we're seeing here is when you login to your dashboard you see the programs that you have created. But then, down below if I'm a consortium, for example, I can see the programs that my member institutions have also created in terms of their open education initiatives more locally. <br><br>So with that, I can see what they're up to. I can see which of their faculty are participating and within an individual faculty profile, I don't have an example in this screen. If someone has participated in more than one program, whether it be at the local level or the consortial level, they're marked on here and you can see that within their profile and vice versa. So if you're an institution that's part of the consortium, you can see the programs you've created up top. <br><br>And then, any programs that your local faculty have participated in at the consortial level, you can see the basic details down on the bottom of your view here. So we're hoping that that really helps in terms of transparency and facilitating communication between these different levels that are working with some of the same faculty members and instructors within the open ed space. <br><br>And then, I am going to come back to the individual profile. So in addition to you start at the program level and you can zoom in to an individual instructor. You can see the basic information for the person which in this case Mia Hamm, who knew she was involved in open educational work? You can collect basic details about a faculty member, make any notes about their engagement in your programs. <br><br>View which programs they've participated in, and then you can also see which activity requests you've sent to them. So what have you invited them to do? You can see details about the campaigns that they've been a recipient of. And then, zooming in even closer, you can see how they've engaged as a result of you reaching out to them through the data dashboard. <br><br>And that would either be by for example, if you had sent them an invite to review an open textbook in the Open Textbook Library, you can see how they've engaged in that way. Or if they have any adoptions associated with their account, you can view that information, as well as any enrolments associated with that individual right in here. So this information, like we've been saying gets populated either you can do it manually as the administrator. <br><br>Or this is something that perhaps Mia Hamm would enter directly based on a communication that she received, or what we call an activity request that she received through the dashboard. And then just finally to come back to the reporting, the data slices these visuals are downloadable. So the hope is that we polled the community, we're asking what is most helpful in terms of using your data for your advocacy efforts and your reporting efforts. <br><br>And from that, we've put together these different visuals that Tara was showing, that you can easily download and plop into a report or a slide share presentation somewhere. And then also, for our superusers, which again, we have lots of them on here. There is a way to download in spreadsheet form your data to extract it and be able to manipulate in whichever way serves your program or your reporting needs best. <br><br>So I will leave it at that, again, knowing that there's a lot of OEN members in the crowd. I did just want to drop a link. We have a documentation site that outlines all of the capabilities of the dashboard with some screenshots. So if anybody wants to dig deeper into that, that is now in the chat. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thank you Barb, Emilia, and Tara, it's great to hear from you about how you've been leveraging different tools, both at the programmatic level and at the resource or book level. And thinking about who has access to that data. Emilia, you talked about really wanting authors to have direct access to the data related to their resource, which is interesting. And so now is the time when we transition to a conversation and talk about the tools that we've seen today as well as more generally about reporting impact. <br><br>So we'd love to hear more from all of you about what you're working on, what the challenges in reporting impact for your OER programs, what you've found to be effective, whether it's hard numbers or stories or both. And so with that in mind, I thought maybe I'd start with you, Tara, if you could tell us a little bit more about what you do at the state level to sort of share back the impact of your OER programs and what you've found legislators and other really glom onto when you're doing that reporting. <br><br><strong>Tara</strong>: So data reporting is a newer function of our state organization so far. And I am the state liaison from our office. But unlike other states, it's a little part of my job, and so our big dream would be to have an OER staff person in academic affairs. That honestly, I'm working really hard to work myself out of that job, only because we have an amazing steering committee of professionals and they are wonderful to work with. <br><br>But wow, the things that we could do with someone who has OER background working full time in advocacy out of academic affairs would be fantastic. So like I said, my end goal is to get that position built into Kansas Board of Regents and I think that's definitely a doable request. But so what we did last year though, in an attempt to create some baseline data for our state was we looked at several different states. <br><br>And we created an annual survey, so we put that out towards the end of the academic year, last Spring. So we're getting ready to put another one out. And then we created a report that we could give to our Kansas Board of Regents just on those open education initiatives and resources. So like I said, last year was baseline data. This is going to be our first year of measuring. <br><br>But this year I can tell you, yes we had 11 faculty workshops last year. We also did our very first OER summit statewide this past February that was virtual. And that was our first foray in a year out of the OEN faculty workshop model, too. And so looking at different ways to reach faculty, and I remember we had about 350 attendees for our virtual summit, we were really thrilled about that. <br><br>And I remember just hearing over and over again, "Oh my gosh, I didn't know there was so much OER happening across the state." And that was from our OER Steering Committee members, these are the people in the trenches, and they're going, "Holy cow, I didn't know all these other people existed, too." So I've been really excited to see the expansion, the excitement, the encouragement. <br><br>And I think we've only just begun to tap some of that. But measuring it is a beginning thing, in fact I talked to my boss earlier today and he was asking because we are looking at our performance agreements. And so we're looking at is there a way that we could put OER as one of the performance measures, specifically for our community colleges. And not because the universities, but because it's just one of those things that A it provides a measure of validity to the effort. <br><br>And it gives those schools that might need an excuse to try something new that excuse. So oh, well if it's something that we can put down on our performance measures for the next upcoming year, what the heck, we've been talking about that, or we've got some folks that are already doing some of those things. And so that's one thing that we're looking at. <br><br>And I think as we look forward, we're going to be putting together a showcase where we're going to be able to show our Board of Regents and our legislators all the different things are happening with regard to OER at our individual institutions. And combining that with putting together our legislative ask and so our Steering Committee is working with our legislative liaison to make that a budgeting priority for our board in the next session. <br><br>So those are the things we're looking forward at right now. And I'm hopeful the data will help us in that as we continue to grow with that. But also, because of these graphs that I've been playing with recently, I'm tempted to see if some of those questions maybe can get in or if there's a way that we capture some of that. Because like I said, it's pretty powerful. It's hard to capture student savings and quantify that. But man, when we can, I think that starts really speaking to the power players, right, to the decision makers and the money holders. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thanks, Tara. And your excitement around what you can do with this data reminds me of what Emilia was saying about thinking just beyond the reach and just beyond those numbers. Emilia, I'm curious if you could take us with you to some of those discussions that your team has been having around other ways to demonstrate value and impact. <br><br>You showed us a lot of really excellent book level metrics, but I'm curious about what the ideas are in your discussions? What is brewing and where do you see yourselves going as the next step? <br><br><strong>Emilia</strong>: Yeah, so for starters looking at extending beyond reach and attention, we were looking at the language around how we communicate the impact and considering what we were actually counting as impact. So we considered whether what we were collecting could actually show impact and reflecting on what was being counted or emphasized when we were tracking page views or downloads. <br><br>So we chose to make that distinction between impact and attention. So page views might show the attention an open text received or interest in it, but not how it was actually engaged with. And there are some presentation slides, I think it's by Luc Boruta on the impact of open that really explores this. And I'll share it in the chat in a little bit. <br><br>But it's on open access metrics, I love the ideas around how we measure impact and what's worth counting are really relevant to explore with OER, too. So across the different stages of our approach to impact, some metrics or evidence won't necessarily show that on their own. But they will show that reach or attention that an open text receives. And I think that's where we need to be actually critically reflecting on what's meaningful for us to actually be collecting. <br><br>And how we can demonstrate the meaning and value a user gains from open text. So not everything is going to be worthwhile counting or is going to highlight impact or even attention in a meaningful or relevant way. And that's also going to vary a lot between different local contexts and different stakeholders as well depending on who this is being communicated to. <br><br>Moving forward though, adoption is going to be the next part of our stage. So looking at reuse, attribution, so part of that would be internal and include the use of textbooks in courses. And so, that internal reporting would really just help to collate USQ activity around OER. And separate to that, would also be adoption of USQ texts by other institutions as well. And we can explore different approaches to how actually communicating that in evidence how we might incorporate it with what we're already collecting. <br><br>And also, just keeping to help that reflection on our current stage and revisiting the questions that we're asking around the data there. Whether they need to change, whether we need to change what we're collecting, how we're communicating it, who we're providing access to. Whether we need to be building other dashboards, or other means of communication around it as well. So yeah, that's really where we're heading with that. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you so much. And Michelle was asking I think for any of our speakers if any of you have tied this back to retention or completion? And I'll extend that question to everybody here on the call. If you had a chance to use the data you've collected around your OER initiatives to talk about retention or completion of courses that you've seen your students perform better with OER. <br><br>Emilia, it sounded like this is something that you're hoping to do with the next iteration. Barb, is this something that you can get from that adoption form information in the dashboard? Or is that perhaps a future feature? <br><br><strong>Barb</strong>: Yes, I think that would be a future feature. Kind of like Tara said, a lot of people are just hopping into the adoptions part, so it's going to be exciting what we can do with that. <br><br><strong>Tara</strong>: No, I was just going to say I think it's more of a function of course marking. And once you can get your course marking in your institution, then you can trace that GPA and maybe do some comparisons there or at least follow your students that way. We have a couple of our institutions that have fairly elaborate course marking systems and are able to do some tracking. <br><br>But I don't know that I've seen anything that has tracked them all the way to retention or completion that way. But I do know that course marking is pretty helpful in that. I mean, course marking is helpful for students knowing how to sign up for classes, but I also think there's the other side of the course marking piece, too where you can follow that and track that data on the back side. <br><br><strong>Emilia</strong>: Yeah, I was just going to say very early stage for us at USQ as well in this area and probably Australia I think as well. So it's just something that we're going to continue to explore and yeah, very much a staged process. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you, I'm actually wondering if, Tara, you talked a lot about reaching out to legislature administrators and stakeholders. But this retention or completion question has me wondering whether the authors who might have access to the data at USQ, what has their response been to seeing the impact? And has that driven any desire for change at the classroom level in terms of pedagogy? <br><br>Because that's also another way I think that we can talk about the impact of OER. Right? There's that student piece, but also the faculty or teacher side.<br><br><strong>Emilia</strong>: Yeah, absolutely. I'm not sure about actually in the courses themselves. But we've received plenty of positive feedback from several stakeholders, including authors themselves. So we took the time to actually walk through groups of authors from each open text through the dashboard and have got plans as well to record some more walk throughs around that just to make sure that everyone's familiar with how they can use it, any of the limitations associated with it as well. <br><br>And some authors have actually felt really encouraged or driven by it to want to create more open texts, so that was some really positive feedback that we received as well. And it's also prompted several changes in the design and granularity of the dashboard. So from the outset each text had its own page, but we've realized that a lot of the data around that wasn't just page views or downloads was being missed. <br><br>Because everyone would just go to their own page and forget that the rest of the dashboard existed, which is why we changed the navigation around to include that data on the same page, there. And also, filtering down to day that was another request we had, and some other changes that we made. But on the whole it's been yeah, really positive feedback that we've received from our academic authors. Yeah. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you and I see, Adrian, you seem to have sent me a message in the chat. But perhaps you would like to share it with the larger group around other ways in which USQ or others have used this data? Yeah, Adrian mentions that they've also used the data in academic promotion rounds, for learning and teaching fellowship applications and thinking about their learning and teaching practices. And Tara, you were talking about advocating for that OER staff person, so it seems like there is a way in which to make the case for it and to help with that, either career advancement or carving out of new roles as well. <br><br><strong>Tara</strong>: And one of the things that one of our institutions did that sounds kind of counterintuitive at first, but I think it's proven really popular is with their course marking system, they indicated all of the low or no cost courses. And added a very small stipend, $10 stipend, that the student would pay in lieu of obviously a larger textbook fee. But with that, the money paid for those students in those courses a portion of that money goes back to the department for OER initiatives. <br><br>And so, there was incentive to create more for faculty to revamp their texts and their curriculums to using open education resources when appropriate. Nobody was pressured. But they had access to resources if they wanted to use time or to go learn or whatnot, they had a pocket of money that they could use for their department in the effort of OER to add more OER courses to their department. <br><br>The other part of that stipend fund went back to the university to do again, OER grant programming school wide. And so, while it was a very small cost to each student in those OER courses, it helped fund more OER initiatives and create that motivation for faculty to take that step and maybe stretch themselves or add another OER class. Because again, the more classes you had, the more money you generated for your department. So there was a little bit of a win-win there, and I think that that also helped encourage faculty. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thank you and thank you also to Emilia who put a link in the chat for a presentation impact cannot be measured and other sad half truths about impact measurement. Not having seen this presentation, I'm just going to take a leap and say that I identify with the title. Because I do think that that is sort of a larger, if you will, philosophical struggle with what we're talking about today in terms of wanting to quantify everything. <br><br>Wanting to put a number on something, just looking for ways that we can quickly tell people why these programs matter. And sometimes that can feel reductionist or frustrating, and yet it's also understandable that we probably need more than stories. So that's the position that we find ourselves in. And so, very happy to talk about that too. Amy, I'm not sure what you were "ha-ha'ing, me too." Who presented the webinar?<br><br>Anyway, I invite anyone to chime in. Maybe just in thinking about some of the things that our guests have been reflecting on. I wonder Barb, in your role because you hear from so many new OEN members who are being onboarded and perhaps just getting their programs started. Do you hear about what they're doing? How they imagine tracking impact or pressures they might be under to do that? Or what are those early conversations and inquiries like? <br><br><strong>Barb</strong>: That's a good question. I think it seems overwhelming. There are some people that come at it like we've done the more anecdotal things because of capacity measures that we don't have the capacity to be crunching the numbers in the way that we would want to. And so, when our conversations around the dashboard kind of come up, they see that as a boost to what they feel is a very valuable piece of this advocacy and reporting, which is the student voice, which is the more storytelling behind it. <br><br>And that kind of feeds into what Tara is saying, too I think. There is always a concern around capacity. But I think in my work and in my conversations a lot of what I say to people just starting out is that in the culture of open, relying on those and connecting with those who are further along in their journeys and learning from maybe the bumps that they've faced along the way is probably the best way to go. <br><br>So again, some of those people that I name drop are in this call right now, and I invite them to join in. But I think what I've heard also from the more experienced people is how they've gotten to their processes of the way that they use their data, the challenges the come along with it. Because it is so involved, especially when you're talking about multiple adoptions and multiple people who are parts of multiple programs. <br><br>And how you quantify the return on investment when there's that overlap between programs and people in them and what your instructors are doing. So that is always my biggest takeaway is lean on and rely on those who have come before you and worked out some of those kinks. And we're lucky to have a lot of those people in this call and in our community. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thanks, Barb. I'm just going to allow for an awkward pause, in case any of those people care to chime in. It was worth a shot. Okay, Kaitlin in the chat, thank you for your question. Kaitlin is curious to hear your biggest hopes for this work, whether that's funding and policy change, finding non-traditional ways to measure student success and impact, perhaps increasing capacity on your local teams. Those all sound like great incomes, are any of them close to your hearts? <br><br><strong>Emilia</strong>: I'll jump in just saying incorporating some qualitative evidence into this body of work, whether that's separate from the dashboard itself or whether we incorporate aspects into that dashboard or create more work from it. Yeah, love to see some other voices included just beyond the quantitative reach. <br><br><strong>Tara</strong>: I think I'm most excited to see what we can do from the statewide level and if we can take it from a volunteer steering committee effort to something that is more policy either legislated or just policy written. I think we've got support, but we don't have anything written down yet. So I'm excited to see if that materializes for the state, because I think it would be really exciting. <br><br>But honestly, one of the things I love about OER the most is there's no downside, right? It's all good. It feels good, and regardless of as long as you're taking steps forward, it's exciting. And I love seeing people get connected. I love hearing the student stories, but I also love hearing the teacher stories about how they feel like they're doing something good for their students and they're more free to teach. Like I said, there's just not a downside, in my perspective. And so I just love following where the work takes us. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thanks, Tara and Emilia. I will pause for a second on student stories. I'm curious to hear from our group, when we say student stories, if most of those focus now on hey, this was a free resource that I could access from day one. And that's made a huge difference in my educational career. Or are student stories also more sort of open pedagogy based or reflecting some of the open practices that faculty are engaging with students in creating these resources?<br><br>Are there both of those kinds of stories out there? Do you think that they hit decision makers or funders in a similar way? Or that they serve different purposes? What thoughts might this group have on that? <br><br><strong>Kaitlin Schilling</strong>: I think they're both. I think it can be both. And in terms of that qualitative, I know the gut reaction is to say if it's qualitative or a story it can't sell to policy or legislature. But I think it's just finding the right way to tell that story and share that impact. Maybe it's not a number but breaking down that data and the number you do have of maybe showing equity or how accessible things have become. There are always ways to weave in selling points throughout stories. Hopefully that made sense. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: I think what you're saying also, Kaitlin, is that big reminder of this is not work in a vacuum, but this is work for people, right? Whether it's the story of the students being impacted as you were gesturing towards, Karen. Or I know, Tara, you talked about doing a showcase to the Board of Regents and legislature. Could it also just be a faculty or librarian or educator showcase of the various champions who've attended all of these workshops? <br><br>Who've seen all of this tremendous growth, who've changed their practice, who are bringing all of these different ways of hopefully innovative more student centric, empathy focused, trauma informed ways of teaching in the classroom. I think there is definitely a lot of different types of stories to share. And I wonder if focusing on the people and encouraging some conversation around that is on your radar, any of the three of you?<br><br>And I don't know, Barb, if you've heard from other OEN members whether that's something they have done or are planning to do? <br><br><strong>Tara</strong>: Well, I think for me, the hook or the connection with those policymakers and stakeholders is everybody knows about college textbooks. Right? And buying the textbooks, everybody's got a story from when they did it. And they have their own child story, blah, blah, blah. That's the place we connect. But I think to Kaitlin's point, that's not the only story that's being told. <br><br>And you hear the stories, and it's not just from students that are economically disadvantaged, either. You hear this from every income level, from every college student across the board. "Well, I decided I didn't want to buy all the books for this class." Right? But what I love about it though is sometimes when you go and you ask students on campus, "What do you think about OER classes?" <br><br>And they go, "What are you talking about?" "Oh you know." And you explain it. "Oh yeah." Sometimes those are their favorite classes. Sometimes those are the most engaging classes and the classes that they'll go, "That teacher was the best teacher I had. That was the best class I had." And you hear that just as much as you hear, "And I didn't have to pay for the book." Right?<br><br>And that's what I love about this is it goes hand in hand. So yeah, we start there, but when you unlock the teaching and you get connected, faculty can unlock their teaching and get creative with their teaching, connect with students in different ways. Students aren't stressed out and they can connect from day one. It's just more than saving money on textbooks. So yeah, and I agree. <br><br>To your point, our showcase is going to highlight all the OER initiatives happening on our institutions, not just that student voice. But all the initiatives that have been happening and we had a student keynote speaker for our summit, and he literally stole the show. You know what I mean? You can't go wrong with that student voice ever. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: That's definitely something we're always mindful of because in these conversations, which is faculty or librarian focused, we don't have a student necessarily in this room. So I'm always mindful of that. Amy, why don't you do next? And Emilia, I saw you unmute as well, so I'll pass it over to you after. <br><br><strong>Amy Hofer</strong>: Yeah, I'm curious if anyone else who is in the MHEC presentation this morning that Katie Zaback gave. So she was presenting a new document that MHEC, which is the Midwestern Regional Compact created about trying to find standardized ways to measure student savings, impact, and cost benefit analysis. I loved that she took that approach, because there's cost to any implementation of course materials whether open or not. <br><br>Anyway, it was a really tough crowd in the chat, and a lot of back and forthing about which dollar amount is correct. And should it be 68? Should it be 160? And I didn't want to jump in on the dollar amount, because I feel like the way that this conversation has been emphasizing there are so many impacts that go beyond whether it was $68 or $78 right? And also, just the fact that I hear from students that a $10 book can be too expensive. <br><br>A $10 book can be barrier to success, truly. So trying to figure out the real dollar amount can feel sort of quibbly at that point. Anyway, I just wanted to say that that report is out, I'll dig around for that link. I think it's still open in my browser, but I'm hoping that there will be more discussion. Because it feels like a really major entry into the conversation to talk about cost benefit analysis. <br><br>And also, just the way that this conversation has unfolded going to the more qualitative pieces that we can share that talk about importance, I'm just really appreciating that approach. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you, Amy. I think I found the report, you can tell me after taking a look if that's the one you were referring to. Emilia, over to you. <br><br><strong>Emilia</strong>: Yes, just on the topic of conversations and stories, I think what everyone's been speaking to is why some of our initial conversations before you started looking at the data were actually so important. And while we did end up drilling down to more data driven questions, we actually started with that bigger picture with values driven questions around looking at what openness means as a value to USQ. <br><br>And to anyone actually involved with that process including students as well. And yeah, we did that before we started refining questions around the data itself. And it was really great to actually have just to be starting from a values-based kind of approach to how we were communicating evidence to what we were collecting. And to have those initial conversations around it, I think it really defined I guess the trajectory that we were taking and what we might collect in the future as well. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Yes, Emilia. I can really appreciate how taking that values-based approach makes it feel meaningful for everybody at that human level, that Amy, Apurva and maybe of us have been talking about today. And I see too that Adrian had a related comment in the chat and so thank you for sharing that, Adrian. We are starting to run out of time. And so if there are any pressing final thoughts or questions that you would like to share, there are some great resources shared in the last couple of minutes. <br><br>I'm really curious about the MHEC report, and I know that we have an Office Hours quick form that we love to share at the end of each session to invite you to inform what we talk about next. We look at them every month during our planning sessions, so Apurva will drop that in the chat. There it is, we invite you to nominate a speaker, yourself, a topic, whatever strikes your fancy, and we'll try and flesh it out and bring it to you in the future. <br><br>For now, please join us in thanking our guests, Emilia, Barb, and Tara for joining us today to have this conversation about impact, what that means to us in our work. And it's always nice to see all of you and get together and just have a place where we can share ideas and talk freely about what we're trying to accomplish together with students and for students. So with that, I'll turn things back over to Apurva for a final farewell. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: I will just say thank you everybody for all of your contributions, your observations, your willingness to share your experiences. And for being able to come across many different time zones today as well. I always learn a lot at these sessions, and I find that especially this year, 2022 Office Hours has left me with a lot of reflecting in sort of ways that we can continue to do more and have greater impact. <br><br>I think that's what we're all trying to do. So I will just say thank you again. And maybe pause for a minute while Amy tries to put that link into the chat, which I think has been accomplished, wonderful. Well, thank you all, Emilia, Tara, Barb, appreciate all of your expertise and look forward to seeing you all next month for another Office Hours. Bye everybody, take care. <br><br><br>END OF VIDEO<br><br></div><h2>Chat Transcript</h2><div>00:13:42 Iwona (she/ona/wiya/elle): Thank you Tara!<br>00:14:44 Kaitlin Schilling (she/they): Grateful to be joining you all today from a blizzard-y win-nipi (colonially known as Winnipeg, Manitoba), the shared traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg, Ininiwak, and Dakota Oyate, and the homeland of the Red River Métis. Happy to meet you all and see many familiar faces!<br>00:15:17 Adrian Stagg: Joining from Jarowair and Giabal lands in Australia.<br>00:17:05 Apurva Ashok: Constant learning!<br>00:20:43 Barbara R Thees: Info on the OEN Workshop Strategy that Tara is referring to: <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cycd8tAs0r-MnBnIjh5MtNePStPzQdQhPPjOKzCuYn4/edit#">https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cycd8tAs0r-MnBnIjh5MtNePStPzQdQhPPjOKzCuYn4/edit#</a><br>00:21:04 Apurva Ashok: Thanks, Barb!<br>00:24:44 Adrian Stagg: That's really impressive, Tara!<br>00:24:51 Amy Hofer (she/her): I agree, really nice work!<br>00:24:52 Apurva Ashok: Truly - congratulations!<br>00:25:36 Kaitlin Schilling (she/they): These are great visuals, Tara!<br>00:28:26 Amy Hofer (she/her): I missed which software Emilia is using for this dashboard?<br>00:28:40 Apurva Ashok: Power BI<br>00:28:45 Amy Hofer (she/her): Oh - she just said that. Thanks!<br>00:37:06 Barbara R Thees: <a href="https://sites.google.com/umn.edu/oen-data-dashboard-documentati/home">https://sites.google.com/umn.edu/oen-data-dashboard-documentati/home</a><br>00:37:13 Kaitlin Schilling (she/they): Thank you!<br>00:38:35 Apurva Ashok: Feel free to post your questions in the chat, or raise your hand to unmute and ask our guests yourself.<br>00:42:17 Clare Sobotka TBCC (she/her): I have to take off, but thank you all!<br>00:42:29 Apurva Ashok: Thanks, Clare!<br>00:45:21 Michele Behr she/her: Wondering if anyone has tied any of this back to retention or completion<br>00:46:16 Sybil from NDSCS (she/her): @Michele - I’ve seen that connection made in a webinar… can’t recall which one though.<br>00:49:52 Sybil from NDSCS (she/her): I found my tweet about it: <a href="https://twitter.com/ihaveabug/status/1453378541614211077?s=20&t=Fa-dP130nuWm2dukjs4Wpw">https://twitter.com/ihaveabug/status/1453378541614211077?s=20&t=Fa-dP130nuWm2dukjs4Wpw</a><br>00:50:29 Adrian Stagg: USQ authors have also used the data in academic promotion rounds, for L&T Fellowship applications, and thinking about their L&T practices.<br>00:51:10 Emilia Bell: Presentation slides on measuring the impcat of open: <a href="https://figshare.com/articles/presentation/Impact_cannot_be_measured_and_other_sad_half-truths_about_impact_measurement/16866355/1">https://figshare.com/articles/presentation/Impact_cannot_be_measured_and_other_sad_half-truths_about_impact_measurement/16866355/1</a><br>00:51:22 Apurva Ashok: @Sybil - thank you!<br>00:52:53 Sybil from NDSCS (she/her): I wish I could remember who presented that webinar…<br>00:53:09 Amy Hofer (she/her): haha! me too!<br>00:53:52 Amy Hofer (she/her): the presentation title.<br>00:54:34 Karen Lauritsen: ?<br>00:55:13 Kaitlin Schilling (she/they): Curious to hear your biggest hopes for this work, whether that's funding & policy change, finding non-traditional ways to measure student success and impact, increasing capacity, etc.<br>00:57:25 Kaitlin Schilling (she/they): Love that!<br>00:59:20 Sybil from NDSCS (she/her): OMG I found the slides! <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/18WriIRlXZo262LisudZzOe3h7CMMZI9oEs-NQl7NQNg/edit?usp=sharing">https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/18WriIRlXZo262LisudZzOe3h7CMMZI9oEs-NQl7NQNg/edit?usp=sharing</a><br>00:59:45 Sybil from NDSCS (she/her): Slide 80<br>01:02:42 Adrian Stagg: We had some stories of students in our first course that offered open assessment. A number of students had previously failed the course, yet achieved very well in the open assessment offer. The lecturer captured some statements about how the students felt more engaged, saw the purpose of the assessment, and were motivated to 'do well'.<br>01:05:03 Apurva Ashok: Creating Clarity to Drive More<br>Consistency in Understanding<br>the Benefits and Costs of OER report from MHEC: <a href="https://www.mhec.org/sites/default/files/resources/2022MHECOER-Toward-Convergence.pdf?utm_source=msdynmktg&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=22towardconvergence#msdynttrid=VmvtnKKQChDysdy-aIj7yfOOyxcm8b2-mfmsls0m8hQ">https://www.mhec.org/sites/default/files/resources/2022MHECOER-Toward-Convergence.pdf?utm_source=msdynmktg&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=22towardconvergence#msdynttrid=VmvtnKKQChDysdy-aIj7yfOOyxcm8b2-mfmsls0m8hQ</a><br>01:05:24 Sybil from NDSCS (she/her): To speak to Tara’s comments about students enjoying OER courses more, I think when teachers have materials they LIKE or CREATED, they care more. I never thought I’d “teach to a book” but now I teach to MY OER and I love it.<br>01:05:30 Adrian Stagg: From the lecturers' perspective, we've had staff who have really leveraged their open work for other opportunities (research, grants, speaker invitations, etc). We're planning for our next Open Showcase to have those staff speak so they can hopefully connect with other aspects of academic workload and career progression.<br>01:05:53 Amy Hofer (she/her): yes that's it!<br>01:07:20 Apurva Ashok: @Adrian - that is really exciting. @Sybil - thank you for highlighting that shift in perspective you’ve seen!<br>01:07:37 Apurva Ashok: * Any suggestions for topics or speakers are welcome: <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform">https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform</a><br>01:08:00 Tara Lebar: Amy- We've struggled around the measuring student savings and data points and work together as a committee to try and set some state definitions just for consistency sake around OER reporting. IT wasn't easy.<br>01:08:03 Amy Hofer (she/her): thanks everyone!<br>01:08:08 Barbara R Thees: Thanks for having us!<br>01:08:09 Michele Behr she/her: Many thanks. Very helpful<br>01:08:16 Adrian Stagg: Thank you everyone! These sessions are always so valuable!<br>01:08:36 Kaitlin Schilling (she/they): Thank you everyone! :)<br>01:08:39 Amy Hofer (she/her): @Tara we avoid consistency in Oregon! One sec while I look for taht link...<br>01:08:58 Amy Hofer (she/her): https://openoregon.org/local-data/<br>01:09:09 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Thank you all<br>01:09:18 Karen Lauritsen: Take care.<br>01:09:19 Tara Lebar: Amy- Thanks for sharing!</div><div><br><br><br><br><br></div>admintag:open.umn.edu,2005:Spina::Blog::Post/552022-03-22T21:19:05Z2022-04-06T15:17:09ZMarch Office Hours: OER & Instructional Design Part 2: Student-Centered Development<div>Watch the <a href="https://youtu.be/K_Xh2WGVBD4">video recording</a> of this Office Hours session, or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.<br><br>Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please <a href="mailto:joh20849@umn.edu">contact Tonia</a>.<br><br></div><h2>Audio Transcript</h2><div><br><strong>Speakers:</strong></div><ul><li>Apurva Ashok (Director of Open Education, The Rebus Foundation)</li><li>Karen Lauritsen (Publishing Director, Open Education Network)</li><li>Iwona Gniadek (Educational Developer, University of Manitoba)</li><li>Veronica Vold (Open Education Instructional Designer, Open Oregon)</li><li>Brenna Clark Gray (Coordinator, Educational Technologies, Thompson Rivers University)</li><li>Nicolas Parés (Teaching and Learning Specialist, University of Denver)</li></ul><div><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Welcome everybody, hello. It's always exciting to be hosting another Office Hours on the Rebus Community side and with the Open Education Network. My name is Apurva Ashok, I'm the Director of open education at Rebus Community. And I want to start off by first acknowledging that I am coming to you today from a warm, but very gray city. I'm located on the traditional territories of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the First Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples.<br><br>And I'm very grateful to be enjoying some warmer weather and enjoying some rain on this lovely Tuesday. You may also know this city as Toronto, Canada. As I noted, I work at the Rebus Community. Rebus is a Canadian charity that helps educational institutions build human capacity in OER publishing and open education through a variety of ways, including free resources, professional development and webinars like this one. <br><br>As I mentioned earlier, the Office Hours sessions are co-organized with the Open Education Network. And I'm going to turn it over to Karen, to tell you a little more about her and the Open Education Network.<br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thank you, Apurva. We are happy to be here, as always in hosting Office Hours with you, in the Rebus Community and with everyone else on this call. My name is Karen Lauritsen, I'm with the Open Education Network. And we are a community of professionals in higher education working together to make things more open and equitable. Today we are joined by four guests, and we are going to be talking about OER and instructional design. <br><br>And we're calling it part two because we had a discussion last month that was lively and very engaging, and we just wanted to continue with that momentum. And so, today we're going to talk specifically about student-centered OER development. I'm going to go ahead and introduce our guests. They will talk for a few moments about their experience with the topic, and then we will look to you for the conversation and questions. <br><br>And so, before we get started I will say that while the OEN is based at the University of Minnesota, I am coming to you from San Louis Obispo, California, which is the ancestral home of the Northern Chumash. And with that, I will let you know who we are joined by today. Iwona Gniadek is here with us, she's the Educational Developer at the University of Manitoba. <br><br>Also, Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer with Open Oregon. Brenna Clark Gray who's Coordinator with the Educational Technologies area at Thompson Rivers University. And Nicolas Parés, who is Teaching & Learning Specialist with the University of Denver. And so, to get us started I'm going to turn things over to Veronica. <br><br><strong>Veronica</strong>: Thank you, Karen, and good morning everyone. I am Veronica Vold, she/her pronouns, coming to you from Eugene, Oregon. I live on stolen land that originally belonged to the Kalapuya Ihili, the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians and the Winefully. And I am really thrilled to be with you and take this hour together to explore student-centered design and equity at the heart of open educational resources. <br><br>And I wonder if we would begin by just starting with some breaths together. Often when we talk about equity, we're dipping into some really deep experiences of exclusion and privilege and it's an emotional journey. So if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to use a technique that my kindergartener last year taught me, called volcano breaths. So just to set us off, if you wouldn't mind loosening your shoulders up a little bit, we're going to do three special kinds of breaths. <br><br>These are volcano breaths. So you're going to raise your arms above your head, if you feel comfortable and inhale, and then we're going to release that breath like lava flowing down. So we're going to do that together. All right, so first breath, we're going to inhale, exhale. Let's do that one more time, we're going to inhale, exhale. Yeah. Thank you. A big part of my work as the open education instructional designer is being with faculty and instructors as they are surviving the Covid-19 pandemic. <br><br>And living in an era of racial uprising and renewed awakening for dominant cultures and people who are occupying a lot of power in their institutions. And in my experience so far I started this job supporting all 24 public colleges and universities in Oregon for about five months now. And repeatedly as I'm meeting with people in these little Zoom spaces that we hold and hearing about the yearning and desire they have to support their students in meaningful learning experiences. <br><br>What I notice is a physical response that this doesn't just sit in our intellectual capacities, but this work actually rests in our bodies. And for many of us, the histories that we've lived through, the histories that our families and our generations have lived through, also surface and are present in the conversations we have. I wanted to start by sharing a quote from James Baldwin, the African-American novelist and cultural critic as he helps us to center that history. <br><br>James Baldwin said in 1965 in Ebony Magazine, "History as no one seems to know is not merely something to be read, and it does not refer merely or even principally to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities and our aspirations."<br><br>To me, when we start to focus on student-centered instructional design in open educational resources we have the opportunity to confront the history living within us and around us to start to think critically about the legacies of exclusion and control that entered the room before we did. Student-centered and equity-centered instructional design in open education doesn't happen by accident, it doesn't happen just by virtue of something being open or by virtue of something being OER enabled pedagogy. <br><br>It really is a journey of intention and of deep listening. One of the stories I wanted to share with you was the opportunity I had in my capacity in the state-wide role to start an open education instructional design community of practice. So colleagues from all over the state of Oregon who are working in instructional design and higher education have an opportunity to come together and we focus our time once a month on thinking through questions of equity in open education. <br><br>And repeatedly the urge has come up in our consultations, those one-on-one consultations with instructors and faculty to move at the speed of trust. That we are developing relationships that require trust, that require being seen, in order to talk about the experiences that students are having in classrooms that we design. And there's frustration with that, the one-on-one relationship building and the one-on-one conversations are so meaningful and so important. <br><br>But the operational agency around that instructor or around that relationship also create the conditions for the conversation itself. I recently read an awesome article on the intentional agency versus operational agency that instructional designers engage when they're talking about open educational practices. And I'd like us to consider in this hour together how we can move and build capacity for operational agency. <br><br>Our intentional agency is what we can bring to a consultation or to a conversation. Whose voices are we centering? Are we building a course for the full universe of learners, for students with disabilities, students of color, first generation students, students who are documented, or undocumented, students who are queer or trans? Are we representing their voices?<br><br>Those are really important conversations to have, and they represent what this article referred to as our intentional agency, the intention or the ethics that we're bringing to the conversation. The big shift is to operational agency, how we have the capacity to put concrete action behind the intention. So our institutions investing in instructional design and equity, our institutions creating professional development that focus equity in open educational practices. <br><br>Is senior leadership investing in those individual conversations and reflecting on its value for students? The other thing I wanted to encourage us to consider in our time together today is our relationships with DEI coordinators and units on our campuses. Often offices of online learning, units that are dedicated to instructional design, offices that are dedicated to teaching and learning don't necessarily have strong relationships or connections with the offices that are dedicated to holding an institution accountable to its values for students. <br><br>So that's one thing I'd love to open up together in our time is what is your relationship with your diversity and equity and inclusion office or coordinator on your campus? And then, finally, I also wanted to share a really exciting project that Open Oregon educational resources has taken up. We have an equity in open education cohort that is created by Amy Hofer and Jen Klaudinyi from Portland Community College. <br><br>And 60 plus faculty members historically have come together to focus on a four-week course where they talk together about culturally responsive pedagogy. And universal design for learning and universal design in general and open pedagogy. And we're starting a new cohort that's focused on teaching and learning support in particular. <br><br>So that all of the teaching and learning colleagues who are involved in creating learning experiences can come together, share their stories, and talk about how to advance and champion open education on their campuses. So those are just a few stories that I wanted to share with you. And I also wanted to offer us this final quote from Tressie McMillan Cottom, this is from 2015, pre-pandemic. <br><br>This is in response to a wonderful international conference on distance learning and online learning. Tressie says, "What I do need are specifics about how this moment is not like those other moments, those old moments of educational expansion that were shaped be powerful white interests, wealth, and racism to expand access without furthering justice." In my sense in the relationships I'm building, in my capacity to talk with many institutions in a single meeting is that this is a moment of change and transformation. <br><br>The pandemic has taken so much from us and continues to take so much from us especially those who are most vulnerable. And we have an opportunity to shift and to recenter our priorities in open education to think critically about what we are doing to advance equity for our students and not to repeat patterns that privilege wealth, that privilege white interest and to center justice in our expansion. <br><br>And I don't want to take too much time, I want to pass it onto our next person to continue our conversation. Karen, would you share who our next person is?<br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Sure, Iwona, over to you and thank you, Veronica.<br><br><strong>Veronica</strong>: Yeah, thank you.<br><br><strong>Iwona</strong>: Hello, jin dobre. My name is Iwona Gniadek, she/her pronouns. And I am located on Treaty One territory, in what is now Manitoba, Canada, the original lands of Anishnabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples and on the homeland of the Métis Nation. I also want to acknowledge Treaty Three and Treaty Five lands, which supply my home with tap water and hydro. <br><br>I have been a settler on these lands since 2007, and I am originally from Poland. My journey with OER started in 2009, when I joined English Online, a publicly funded settlement and language training organization for immigrants to Manitoba. The director was an avid OER supporter and advocate, so we shared our content on the English Online website and incorporated open practices in teaching and learning. <br><br>For example, we built self-directed open courses on Wiki Spaces, if anybody remembers Wiki Spaces. And then, I moved from English Online to the University of Manitoba, where I design non-credit and for-credit courses. And here for example, some HR courses included optional social media activities, specifically Twitter, so that learners could find like-minded professional peers outside of the course and engage in digital identity formation and expression. <br><br>And I also had an opportunity to incorporate open badges, a social currency to foster peer-to-peer engagement. And today I'd like to share with you some OER tools that I use during the design process. And these tools help me and the instructors focus on centering learners' needs, desires, contexts, when developing OER. I always say to instructors, "People first then content and technology." <br><br>So the first tool is called the persona, and I'm going to share a link in the chat. And so the folder has some templates that I use and an example. And I use the persona tool specifically to build a shared understanding of who we are designing for. So we don't think about a faceless crowd of students or of people but we focus on specific individuals. And also to build empathy for the learner, so the personas have a photo, have a name, they're detailed. <br><br>So we can easily empathize with the person we're designing for. And I invite instructors to create the learner personas with me, based on their knowledge and experience with their past or future learners. So I'll give you an example of a current project. I'm currently working on a self-study OER resource, focusing on incorporating equity, diversity and inclusion in teaching, which I'm co-developing with a committee of representatives from eight partner institutions in Manitoba. <br><br>And as a committee we engaged in creating a set of personas, one for each institution. And once we compiled the results, we understood how diverse the audience is, ranging from trades instructors to tenured professors nearing retirement, instructors working at urban universities, and small rural colleges. So the audience is very diverse and ideally you would perhaps want to build multiple resources targeting different audiences, but we have a brief for one. <br><br>So the personas helped us build a shared understanding of who our audience is and suggest content and pedagogical approaches to address their needs. So for example, we talked about including scenario-based activities to build empathy, relationship building activities, a glossary of terms, a statistical discussion of enrolment and completion of various learner groups. <br><br>We also want the resource to be fully downloadable, so that folks in areas where the internet is patchy can download and study offline. And these are ideas linked to specific personas in the set that we've created. And the persona can also be used to empower learners and support their agency. In one course, I shared the personas with my learners and in this case the persona descriptions were accompanied by suggested learning pathways through an online course. <br><br>And learners were tasked to review the personas and choose one that matched them and follow the suggested pathway. And if there was no match, learners were encouraged to draw their own persona and speak to a facilitator to build a personalized learning plan depending on their interests and goals. So the learner was always at the center, is always at the center with the persona activity. <br><br>And the second tool that's also the template is in the folder is called transition matrix. And the transition matrix is a story told by the learner persona about the learning change that they've experienced as a result of engaging in a learning experience. So the story starts with an initial state, before taking a course and then ends with a target state. And the target state is illustrated by some tangible outputs which naturally lead towards specifying learning objectives, which sometimes are difficult conversations to have when we design courses. <br><br>So if you're looking for tools to create learner-centered OER, I highly recommend using those two tools to guide your conversations and learning design decisions. Thank you, and over to Brenna. <br><br><strong>Brenna</strong>: Thank you. Hi everybody, I'm so pleased to be here. I warned the organizers at the beginning about my kid who was home sick from school today. So he may arrive, he usually chooses when I'm in the middle of like the most genius thought to appear with some unspecified meat. So just a heads up. My name is Brenna Clark Gray, I'm Coordinator of Educational Technologies at Thompson Rivers University. <br><br>I'm an uninvited settler in Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc in the unceded traditional land of Secwépemc'ulucw. And I also like to reflect that my journey to this space has also been shaped by time spent in Algonquin Anishnabeg, in Mi’kmaq & Wolastoqiyik and in Qayqayt lands. And I like to reflect on that because we work many of us in settler colonial institutions that demand a certain lack of connection to territory. <br><br>This ability to kind of float and a lack of relationality, which is the exact opposite of what I want to talk about today. I wanted to open by asking how everybody is doing, and if you feel comfortable sharing how you're feeling today in the chat, I welcome it. I'm a bit discombobulated with a kid home and all the other competing demands on time. It's hard to center and focus on any one individual task. <br><br>And I particularly like to check in and genuinely ask how people are doing because we spend a lot of time in these very screen-y interactions, where we present information at each other. Which again, is not often as maybe relational as we might hope for particularly our educational interactions to be. So I hope that if you feel comfortable you'll genuinely share how you're feeling in the chat and reflect on a multitude of effective experiences that we bring to these sessions as actual whole human beings in whole human bodies. <br><br>Which again, I think our institutions would prefer we forget about, a lot of the time. I'm hungry, I'm also getting hungry and it's not even lunchtime in DC, it's the morning still, but I'm also hungry. Okay, so I am very interested in educational technology support which is what I do primarily faculty support. Although I do get the pleasure of working with students as well. <br><br>I'm interested in that support work as care work, thinking about it that way, and thinking about how to center care in the practice educational technologies. And we hold office hours like this at TRU. I hold four hours of office hours a week, my colleagues do as well. During the pandemic, a sort of upswing as we first transitioned to online and for that first fully online year we were holding six to eight, sometimes 10 hours of office hours every week. <br><br>And the thing that I really came to realize was that our community of faculty were very much using that as a place to vent, check in, make sure they were feeling like they were on the right track and get centered. And a faculty member said to me at the end of one session, she said, "I always feel so much better after I talk to you." And I said, "That's really nice." And then, she left and I was like, "Maybe this is why I'm burning out, because this is kind of like the whole campus' therapy session."<br><br>Thinking about my work as care work has really helped me to consider what my own priorities are in the work that I do. And so, I very much appreciate Maha Bali’s definition of care pedagogy as relational. Pedagogy that's relational and pedagogy that includes concern for the person. And I think that that's a straightforward thing to conceptualize in the classroom.<br><br>We're in the classroom and we're showing respect and consideration for the individual learners in the room. But sometimes when we're creating OER, which can feel a little bit like a one-sided thing, like I'm developing this thing that I'm then pushing out into a world as opposed to a relational project, it can maybe be a little less explicit or less clear how we center care in the work of actually just developing OER. <br><br>So I've got a couple of strategies I'm going to suggest and I'm hoping that together we can think through some strategies for centering care in OER development in the same way we might expect of ourselves in a classroom setting. So things like centering access first and foremost something can't be used by students who can't access it. And I do believe that centering access is a key component of centering care. <br><br>And these strategies don't have to be difficult, or they don't have to be complicated. Yes, learning all the nuances and ins and outs of UDL for example is a project that one undertakes as part of their professional practice. But I think there are small things, making sure videos that we include are captioned, using proper header functions instead of just straight up text so that screen readers can navigate through the documents we create. <br><br>Checking our H5P objects for accessibility, Iwona mentioned the idea of fully offline functionality for we certainly have tons of rural learners here at TRU, so thinking about if I'm going to include an H5P object because I want some interactivity in my OER, what does the offline learner experience? Can we create like a printout of the same exercise that they can do by hand? This kind of thing. <br><br>Attending to contrast and alt text, these are all really important key pieces of demonstrating care for the myriad of learners who are going to come to our texts. I think the trauma informed approaches are also useful here, particularly if your OER contains difficult or triggering content, thinking about how you orient the reader or the user to that content and doing so in a trauma informed way is really helpful. <br><br>And Karen Ray Costa has some great resources available for like thinking through trauma informed pedagogies in online spaces, which I think can be helpful here as well. I also think that centering care in our OER development can involve things like ensuring that we build in space for reflection when we're creating whether it's a textbook or an exercise. And especially reflection that encourages the learner to make connections to their own life and lived experience. <br><br>Not only does that help the content feel relevant to the learner, but it also suggests to the learner that even in this asynchronous relationship, I as the content creator am interested in you as the person and how this content applies to your life. I also think that we can demonstrate care by creating space for localization and indigenization when we share our texts into the world. So how does this text get adopted locally?<br><br>Is there space to recognize the people who live and work and breathe in the space where this text is actually going to be used? And then, finally and I think really importantly, centering care in our OER development involves building in space for feedback from learners. And I think oftentimes our OER processes are really good, we often have built in structures to do peer review, or check in with colleagues or get reflective feedback back from colleagues. <br><br>But building in the space for learners to reach out to you with feedback about an OER I think is an incredibly valuable step in a learner-centered text, that also lets learners know that their experience of OER is of value and that we want that feedback and we want to take it on board and use it. That also means though never ask a question that you don't know how to deal with the answer to. <br><br>So if you're going to ask for feedback, working into a workflow or a revision process how that feedback will be used is really important. But I think it's a central piece that sometimes is missing from the institutional processes is that learner feedback piece. I hope I didn't go over. I'm going to hand it off to Nicholas and he can share his thoughts. So thanks so much everybody.<br><br><strong>Nicholas</strong>: Yeah, thank you so much, Brenna. And thank you for having me I appreciate this. The University of Denver and where I currently live resides on the lands of the Ute and Arapaho and Cheyenne peoples, way before I was here or my grandparents. This is a great group, I really appreciated the, acknowledge Brenna's focus on care, Iwona's focus on personas, I intended to speak to those things in practice. <br><br>So I won't do that, I'll get a little more philosophical, I guess, with you all as I approach and less practical. And I hope all of it ties together a lot of all of our thoughts, that it was a really great three little share outs there, so I really appreciate that. I guess for me, I think of maybe because in college I took a lot of humanities courses and I read a lot of Edward Said and the Occident and Orientalism and that kind of thing. <br><br>And so, otherness in our work and not othering our students and bringing belonging to our classrooms through care and a sense of belonging has been pretty, I've tried to make it as practical as possible, especially initial conversations with maybe not outcome conversations, sitting down and figuring out outcomes of a course. But maybe and even then there's some opportunity for reflection. <br><br>But I think I like to have instructors think about and almost use personas and frame it around how can we make sure that they feel like they belong? And belonging shows up in a couple of ways. A sense of belonging is defined as being accepted, valued, included and encouraged by others, teachers and peers in spaces. So a sense of belonging can be related to students' cognition, affect and behaviors. <br><br>In other words, students can think, feel and act as they belong. This sense of belonging can help them connect and engage, think and feel like they're students. Feel like they belong in the classroom. And at the same time, knowing that belonging can come and go, they can feel like they belong here in this class, reading this book, engaging with these students, and in this instructor and in other class they may not have that experience or in a larger space, the college space, the university space they may not have that sense of belonging. <br><br>So if we design with consideration of having our students see themselves whether that is through visuals that represent many students, many people in our course designs, in our pages and our chosen images and imagery. Opportunity to reflect and think about and bring their contexts and experiences into the chapter or into the page or the lesson. That's a really practical fashion, just some good really reflective essential questioning that brings them in and pulls them in. <br><br>Makes the reading less just page after page 30-pages of reading. And how did you bring this? What do you see? What were your steps? Is this the same experience that you had growing up? Or does this resonate with you? Those types of questions can help bring the students feeling and bring them into the learning and learning experience. And then, the behaviors and I work primarily as a teaching and learning specialist, I do quite a bit of course design and curriculum design. <br><br>But also a good half of my work is just with instructors while they teach. I like to tell them I'm a partner in teaching and learning but also an instructional designer on the fly. And a lot of my work is just helping them to engage students throughout the learning experience, create opportunities. Not just invite student experience and student opinion on materials but embrace it. <br><br>Let's plan to take action, let's plan to in the first quarter of the class they don't feel like the reading resonates with them or the experiences aren't super relevant. Well, how can we work to make those more relevant, bring them back into the materials? A lot of that is what a good facilitator, good instructor and instructors play facilitator and designer as they teach, in my mind. <br><br>Let's see, what else did I want to talk about? I feel like you all hit on so much. I also love to do, I just did a presentation last week where I brought in our office of disabilities and I had them share out on UDL. I didn't say a word, I love universal design for learning. But I felt like the student services needed to be the one to speak and share that opinion and it landed quite well and I've gotten emails, I have conversations coming with instructors around implementing UDL. <br><br>Because they heard it from someone who wasn't me, from the students, from the people servicing the students, and that was massively impactful in comparison to my own participation in UDL workshops in the past. So bringing them in, students into the process in this kind of belonging framing can be a very powerful thing. And centering care through Covid has Brenna mentioned has been huge as well. So I hope I tied some of this together. I really appreciate the speakers before me, they've laid some great groundwork. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thank you, Nicholas, and thank you Iwona, Veronica and Brenna for sharing such thoughtful insights and guidance for all of us as we consider creating a sense of belonging in the student-centered experience. So this is the time when we turn to all of you to direct and guide the conversation based on your own reflections, your own lived experience or what you're trying to accomplish locally. <br><br>So please feel free to pop questions into the chat or unmute. We're, I think an intimate enough group here that should be pretty easy to have a conversation. So I see Kaitlin put something in the chat here. We spoke a lot about care work in today's session. I wonder if each of you can speak to what the biggest barriers for you have been in applying these approaches in the process.<br><br><strong>Brenna</strong>: I'll start, if that's okay. I think that everybody is either burnt out or burning out. And care is sustaining and care is valuable and care can fill us up. But care is also a very particular form of labor that is emotionally taxing. And I went to a session on trauma informed approaches to burn out this time last year with Karen Ray Costa and she said, "How do you know when you're burning out?"<br><br>And I recognized in that session that for me it's often when my patience begins to ebb, when my capacity for care feels like it is… So there are all kinds of institutional structural issues like many of our institutions are in an austerity mode at the moment. An audacity mode too a little bit. But an austerity mode at the moment and I think many of us are experiencing extremely heavy workloads and a lack of appropriate staffing. <br><br>The demands for classroom instructors of multi-modal teaching that many people are either taking on either institutionally required or because they want to reach their students in this very complex moment. These are things that are impacting everyone's ability to care. And I think that that's going to continue to be an issue because we don't actually get over burn out very easily. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Iwona, Nicholas, Veronica, any barriers that you see that you wanted to highlight?<br><br><strong>Iwona</strong>: I think one of the barriers that I've encountered is time because courses usually are packed with content and with activities, with assignments. And there is not enough time to build relationships or to reflect on what's going on on what we're learning and connect with one another. And when I've spoken with some indigenous students that's what was one of their biggest concerns, that there was basically no space for relationship building and for showing that we care for one another. <br><br>So I think a very important consideration is to perhaps include a pause week, a slow week in a course, somewhere halfway through. Because face-to-face courses have reading weeks, online courses at least the ones that I've taken and I've designed with the instructors never had a reading week. But I think it would be a good practice to introduce and also give students this opportunity to slow down, to check where they are and care for themselves and for others. <br><br><strong>Veronica</strong>: I think a barrier that I've seen in the work of creating communities of care is that historically as Brenna said, having a body hasn't been okay in the academy and institutions of higher learning. We've privileged very western, very white, very historically masculine understandings of what it means to study and engage in the work of building knowledge. And so, I think a barrier is having a body, having kids, having feelings, having emotions, having disappointment, and managing trauma. <br><br>And I think a solution to that is to acknowledge the burn out, to acknowledge the disappointment and especially in working with instructors to make it okay for them to disclose that they are also struggling alongside their students. I think a barrier to actually receiving care is to feel like I don't deserve it. I'm not worthy. There's something wrong with me, that's why I'm so tired, that's why I'm not learning. <br><br>And I think normalizing struggle right now, especially, is a collective solution. And being honest about where our institutions have failed us. Like the audacity of operating in austerity I think is a really important link because it means that students are taking on more of the burden. Instructors are taking on more of the burden and our institutions are chugging along rather than inviting pause or rather than inviting recognition. <br><br>So I think that that's huge, that's collective, no individual can address that alone. But I think speaking the truth about what we've been managing and how it's not separated from our desire to offer students what they need, our desire to offer ourselves what we need is connected to it. Yeah. And I see in the chat shamelessly sharing an essay, cool on feminist digital pedagogy, thanks, Brenna. <br><br>I will also shamelessly share in the chat we had the good fortune of hosting Maha Bali as our keynote speaker with Open Oregon Educational Resources this past Friday. And Maha's talk is recorded and openly licensed, and I invite you to review it and sit with it. One of the strengths I think Maha brings is the ability to normalize and validate where you are and what you're managing and see that as a strength connected to your work. So, share that in the chat as well. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Veronica, and I'll drop in a link to Maha's blog because I know, Brenna, you referenced that earlier. And I'm also going to drop in a link maybe Karen Ray Costa's Twitter for those of you on Twitter, so you can learn more and continue this conversation outside of this hour. We're nearing the end of our hour, but I wanted to invite more questions to the room. And while folks are thinking, ask this one from Michelle. <br><br>Michelle appreciates the recommendation to include opportunities for reflection. I know, Nicholas, you mentioned that, I think all four of our speakers talked about different ways to encourage self-reflection from learners and incorporate those opportunities into any type of teaching design. Do you have any thoughts around how to do that well or how to do that at all? <br><br><strong>Brenna</strong>: I don't want to jump in first every time. Good, Nicholas, you go first.<br><br><strong>Nicholas</strong>: I'm a big fan of and have been for a very long time of journaling and having a journal as maybe not a major assessment. But I often frame it as critical thinking not for the sake of critical thinking, but for the sake of them making the learning their own and connecting it to what they're doing in their life and why they're taking the class and that kind of thing. <br><br>It worked really well a long time ago when I was teaching math in a turnaround, a dropout high school and I just kept it, I kept working with it through my teaching experience in higher ed. And I think that works, if you have the time and space, that could show up as exit surveys if it's like a hybrid in-person or a Google form if you're asynchronous or that kind of thing. <br><br>I've also used it to and gotten permission to share journals with other groups of students to help them see other people who they may feel a sense of connection to through the course. So on the front end of the course I'll share some journals exemplars or things like that and just share them upfront. And that's a bigger practice. <br><br>I think you could also incorporate questions into if you're designing some OER, you could end each chapter with some reflective questions or embed them throughout to have them really to stop and pause and take a moment. I do that in my synchronous Zoom class, I have a slide in every deck where during Covid, when we were locked up, not to say that Covid's over, when we were all locked down, I had a slide where I would stop and say, "Hey I want to take a moment and acknowledge.<br><br>And let's take some time to reflect here on how we're feeling and how we're doing and what we may need extra." So if you're teaching Zoom, I plug it into a slide deck. Yeah, I think those are some good examples.<br><br><strong>Brenna</strong>: I have no research to support this assertion, but I think there is great value when we're creating OER of devoting actual physical space, textbook page real estate to the act of reflection. And this comes from my previous life before faculty support I spent nine years primarily as a composition instructor at a community college in New West, in the lower mainland of British Colombia. <br><br>And one of the things I realized is that in doing that work is that there is a world of difference between pull out a piece of paper, do this exercise. And here's a handout, do this exercise. Right? Those feel like very different things. And there's something about the act of devoting space or real estate and resources on our part to signal importance. And so I'm a big believer in not just a question in the OER but space to make notes. <br><br>And this is something that I've been increasingly using the H5P documentation tool to do in online resources because it very nicely and tidily creates this little journaling space for students that they can then export as a text file. But it is exclusively their own, it doesn't get logged anywhere, it doesn't come back to you. And so I find that a nice middle ground as a way to signal the significance and importance of reflective practice. <br><br>Like, look I'm devoting actual space to this thing that you can just click and type in. And not then having to mark it, if I'm the instructor and I don't also want to just get an avalanche of paper in. So that's my little plug for the documentation tool, which I think H5P is underused in writing instruction generally, but that tool in particular I find very useful. <br><br><strong>Veronica</strong>: I wanted to share a document from the Southern Poverty Law Center, social justice standards for learning for justice anti-bias framework. This is a K through 12 document that's intended to help instructors to identify learning objectives that are related to domains that are traditionally perhaps overlooked or not centered when we think about course level objectives. So around identity, around justice, diversity and action. <br><br>And this is some rights reserved copyright and I've reached out to them to ask a little bit more about what it means for adaptation, I haven't heard back yet, but I can report back. I really, really appreciate the effort to create an intention around student reflection that's made possible when you're incorporating objectives that specifically asks students for example to recognize stereotypes and relate them and relate to people as individuals rather than representations of groups. <br><br>I think setting objectives that are set in these domains that are relational that are around identity development actually allow you to align assessments, like student reflection or connecting their lived experience to the content in really aligned ways. So that's a project that I'm really interested in as I'm working with instructors is to help them to identify unit level or chapter level or module level objectives that speak to the core of the learning they want students to do and advance the inclusion in their field. <br><br>I was in a great conversation last week in open ed week with an instructor who wasn't sure how to build an assignment around marginalized voices and the history of invention. And that's not necessarily something that comes fluently, if you haven't had that experience in your own education or you're modeling the kind of teaching that you yourself received as a student. <br><br>And so, thinking about how your course level objectives themselves could invite students to reveal and share their own expertise, their own knowledge and what they bring into the space especially as you're threading through assessments. I think that would be a fabulous best practice. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thank you all for your thoughts, we have another question, this one's from Amy. She's wondering if any of you have successes to share about championing equity in OER at an institutional level. I will add another question as you consider that one. We've been talking a lot about how we can support students. <br><br>I wonder if in your work there are techniques or practices for demonstrating or encouraging students to support one another in the class and what that looks like. If that's a kind of behavior that can be encouraged and supported through the class experience. Thank you, Phoebe. <br><br><strong>Veronica</strong>: I can tackle the institutional question. One thing that we've done as a team in Open Oregon Educational Resources is we've intentionally hired an equity consultant as part of the leadership team in our targeted pathway grant development. So we are investing our time and our collaboration in working with an expert who will hold us accountable to our values. <br><br>And this is not something that I think institutions can easily mobilize around because it does take funding and it does take senior leadership investment. But it is something that teams can ask and advocate for. Often the DEI unit on your campus, especially following the murder of George Floyd and worldwide protests, or at least this was the case at the University of Oregon, they were flooded with requests for collaboration and flooded with the need for guidance. <br><br>And thinking about how you can take ownership or responsibility within your unit, following the lead, or aligned with the goals that are developed by your DEI unit and share the burden of that work might be a way to approach it. And if you do have funding, if you do have the possibility of partnering with an equity consultant, leap on it. <br><br>Because having just an advocate on the search who's dedicated to thinking through equity as you're moving through your projects, having an equity consultant on a grant who is not necessarily involved in a given institution and can offer a fresh sight on the work you're doing and the processes and structures you're setting up, yeah, is definitely a gain for the project. <br><br><strong>Karen</strong>: Thanks, Veronica. So we're getting a few farewells and appreciative notes in the chat for this conversation. We have just a couple of minutes left, and so I'll open it up and see if anyone, our guests, our attendees has any closing thoughts or things they would like to share. Or Apurva, anything you'd like to add? Brenna?<br><br><strong>Brenna</strong>: I was going to share a link in the chat on the last question. We've had a lot of movement, I feel like success is too strong a word, we've had a lot of movement on the issue of indigenization and decolonization at our institution. And one resource that's been particularly good I think for those of us working in faculty support and instructional design has been the BCcampus pulling together a guide for curriculum developers. <br><br>And they frequently run workshop sessions, online virtual workshop sessions on this material. They do it for different, so pulling together as a series, a professional learning series, and you can take it as a leader or as an instructor. But the curriculum developer guide I think is particularly good. So I've just shared that in the chat in case it's useful to anyone's context.<br><br><strong>Veronica</strong>: Thank you. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you, Veronica, thank you, Brenna. Iwona, Nicholas did you have any final comments or questions or thoughts you wanted to share before we wrap up?<br><br><strong>Nicholas</strong>: I appreciate the opportunity to come speak to you all here and collaborate with you all. It's all about people and keeping our students centered and building a sense of care and belonging and not othering anyone. And centering disability, ability, centering those components as we move forward and not othering them and pushing them away. So thank you all so much for letting me be here and share with you. <br><br><strong>Veronica</strong>: I would love to invite anyone to drop into the chat since we're just coming out of open ed week any specific session that you attended that you want everyone to attend, especially something that focuses or centers on students or equity. I want a whole stack of other opportunities that I might not yet know about. <br><br>So if you're comfortable thinking through everything that you learned the last week, it was a lot, and having a little chatterfall of opportunities to engage and learn and grow around equity and open education, I would love that personally. <br><br><strong>Apurva</strong>: Thank you for that invitation, Veronica, and I will use that as an opportunity to note that we have a discussion space on the Rebus Community end. So if you're not able to think of an event that you attended immediately, and it comes to you at some point as this week progresses, feel free to drop in those recommendations there and we can have a public facing list to go back to when we find ourselves with a spare hour to catch up and reflect on presentations from last week. <br><br>I also wanted to use this time before I thank our guests and thank everybody here, to throw in another opportunity for reflection, just in the spirit of our discussion and conversation today. These Office Hours spaces are very much designed for community, and I would love, and I know Karen would as well, to hear from you all if there were other challenges that you've had, that you want to explore as a community. <br><br>If there's topics that you want to revisit, if there are people you want to hear from, other guests you would like. So I've dropped in a link to a very simple form, we really appreciate your suggestions. In fact our past two or three session topics have been community suggested. And I believe next month we're going to be chatting a little bit about more sharing and showing off the work, inviting guests to talk about tools for reporting impact. <br><br>But we don't have any other sessions planned for the rest of the year. So you really can take control of what these events and conversations look like. That form will be saved in the chat and shared on the forum for those who need it. We are at the hour, so I just want to ask everybody to please join me in thanking all four of our guests and thank you all as well for contributing your questions, your reflections and thoughts and resources in this conversation. <br><br>As always, I'm looking forward to continuing this discussion in the forum, but also at future Office Hours events. And I hope that everybody can get a short or perhaps longer break as we hit the hour and look after yourselves, as the week goes by. Take care and thank you so much everybody. Bye bye. <br><br><strong>Veronica</strong>: Thank you so much for this invitation.<br><br><strong>Brenna</strong>: Yeah, thank you, this was really fun. <br><br><br>END OF VIDEO<br><br></div><h2>Chat Transcript</h2><div>00:16:42 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Congratulations to the OEN's Open Textbook Library on exceeding 1,000 open textbooks!<br>00:17:11 Apurva Ashok: Yes, congrats! ????<br>00:17:43 Amy Hofer (she/her): Hooray Veronica!<br>00:17:57 Apurva Ashok: Please let us know where you are joining from today - we encourage you to share your territorial acknowledgement in the chat.<br>00:18:45 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: The University of Arizona is on the land and territories of Indigenous peoples. Today there are 22 federally recognized tribes in Arizona, with Tucson being home to the O’odham and the Yaqui.<br>00:20:52 Louann Terveer: Macalester College, St Paul, MN - the ancestral homeland of the Dakota people who were forcibly exiled from the land because of aggressive and persistent settler colonialism<br>00:21:07 Apurva Ashok: Thank you, Veronica, for helping us feel more ready in mind and body for our conversation today.<br>00:23:07 Michele Behr she/her: Western Michigan University is located on lands historically occupied by the Ojibwe, Odawa and Bodewadmi nations.<br>00:25:52 Nicolas Pares (He,Him): The University of Denver honors and acknowledges that the land on which it(we) resides is the traditional territory of the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Peoples.<br>00:26:36 Amy Hofer (she/her): Here’s the most recent update on the program Veronica is talking about: <a href="https://openoregon.org/open-for-everyone-equity-and-open-education-cohort-update/">https://openoregon.org/open-for-everyone-equity-and-open-education-cohort-update/</a><br>00:26:45 Apurva Ashok: Thanks, Amy!<br>00:29:08 Jennifer Pate She/Her: Florence, Alabama is on Chikashsha Yaki (Chickasaw), S’atsoyaha (Yuchi), Shawandasse Tula (Shawanwaki/Shawnee), and ᏣᎳᎫᏪᏘᏱ Tsalaguwetiyi (Cherokee, East) land.<br>00:30:28 Iwona (she/ona/wiya/elle): <a href="https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12jgZvYjAdzxqMgKvv5C4JScx9XiFMdEw?usp=sharing">https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12jgZvYjAdzxqMgKvv5C4JScx9XiFMdEw?usp=sharing</a><br>00:34:43 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: Thanks, Iwona!!<br>00:34:48 Apurva Ashok: Thank you!!<br>00:35:10 Apurva Ashok: Hope he feels better soon, Brenna. ?<br>00:35:22 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: “Most genius” ?<br>00:35:34 Kaitlin Schilling (she/they): These are wonderful, Iwona! Really looking forward to the OER ☺️<br>00:36:39 Karen Lauritsen: I’m feeling well, thank you! I am getting hungry… ?<br>00:36:56 Apurva Ashok: I’ve been having a challenging personal week, but am finding my cup being filled as I hear you all speak!<br>00:37:11 Amy Hofer (she/her): I just ate first lunch.<br>00:38:24 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: I am also kid-related discombobulated! More care work<br>00:39:44 Tiffani Tijerina: I am feeling weirdly torn between ridiculously happy and ridiculously stressed (full-time momming and working at the same time with a 4-month-old), and my late response to your question is evidence (I was changing a diaper when you asked it ?)<br>00:44:01 Brenna (she/her): Tiffani, omg, I have spent the whole pandemic it seems pausing Zoom calls to attend to toddler toileting needs, so I Get In (capital G capital I).<br>00:44:39 Tiffani Tijerina: ^^YES<br>00:46:40 Michele Behr she/her: My youngest is about to move to take a job out of state and I will be transitioning to an empty nest. You all are nearly making me weepy with nostalgia<br>00:47:20 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: Oh Michele, I feel for you! My kids are in-between the diapers and the college<br>00:48:03 Brenna (she/her): @Michele ❤️ Ages and stages, my mum would say. We are off to kindergarten in the fall and that is an emotional enough journey!<br>00:48:25 Karen Lauritsen: As Nicolas wraps up our guests’ opening comments, we invite your reflections, questions and conversation in the chat, or when we transition into the larger group.<br>00:49:45 Brenna (she/her): I think you did well, Nicolas! Felt very cohesive.<br>00:49:55 Kaitlin Schilling (she/they): We spoke a lot about care work in today’s session. I wonder if each of you can speak to what the biggest barriers for you have been in applying these approaches in the process?<br>00:51:03 Michele Behr she/her: Also appreciate the recommendation to include opportunities for reflection. Any thoughts on best practices for that?<br>00:55:15 Brenna (she/her): I will shamelessly share this essay I wrote this year: <a href="https://edtechbooks.org/feminist_digital_ped/zXHDRJAq">https://edtechbooks.org/feminist_digital_ped/zXHDRJAq</a><br>00:55:31 Amy Hofer (she/her): Thanks Brenna!<br>00:56:16 Iwona (she/ona/wiya/elle): Thanks Brenna!<br>00:56:40 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: Keynote: Towards Openness that Promotes Social Justice with Maha Bali: <a href="https://openoregon.org/archived-webinar-towards-openness-that-promotes-social-justice-with-maha-bali/">https://openoregon.org/archived-webinar-towards-openness-that-promotes-social-justice-with-maha-bali/</a><br>00:57:08 Apurva Ashok: <a href="https://twitter.com/karenraycosta">https://twitter.com/karenraycosta</a><br>00:57:44 Amy Hofer (she/her): Do the panelists have successes to share about championing equity in OER at an institutional level?<br>00:59:28 Apurva Ashok: Maha bali’s blog: <a href="https://blog.mahabali.me/">https://blog.mahabali.me/</a><br>01:00:11 Karen Lauritsen: Here’s my favorite journal guidance from Lynda Barry: <a href="https://thenearsightedmonkey.tumblr.com/post/111125141634/above-variations-on-our-daily-diary-practice">https://thenearsightedmonkey.tumblr.com/post/111125141634/above-variations-on-our-daily-diary-practice</a><br>01:00:52 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: Oooooo! Thank you!!<br>01:00:56 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: Love Lynda Barry<br>01:01:02 Nicolas Pares (He,Him): Thanks, Karen!<br>01:02:15 Apurva Ashok: Brenna talked about this H5P Documentation tool at a BCcampus webinar back in 2020: <a href="https://kitchen.opened.ca/2020/11/09/november-webinar/">https://kitchen.opened.ca/2020/11/09/november-webinar/</a><br>01:02:31 Brenna (she/her): Thanks, Apurva!!<br>01:02:42 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: <a href="https://www.learningforjustice.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/LFJ-2111-Social-Justice-Standards-Anti-bias-framework-November-2021-11172021.pdf">https://www.learningforjustice.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/LFJ-2111-Social-Justice-Standards-Anti-bias-framework-November-2021-11172021.pdf</a><br>01:05:30 Phoebe: I have to do something before my next meeting - I appreciate this session - thank you all for your honest, thoughtful ideas.<br>01:05:53 Apurva Ashok: Thank you for joining, Phoebe!<br>01:06:28 Mark Meagher: Thanks very much to everyone - this has been a really great and informative session!<br>01:07:41 Amy Hofer (she/her): I agree, we’ve had the chance to work with two terrific people in the equity consultant role<br>01:08:08 Brenna (she/her): <a href="https://opentextbc.ca/indigenizationcurriculumdevelopers/">https://opentextbc.ca/indigenizationcurriculumdevelopers/</a><br>01:08:23 Brianne Collins (she/her): This was great thank you so much!<br>01:09:00 Kaitlin Schilling (she/they): Pulling Together is such an incredible series!<br>01:09:06 Karen Lauritsen: Thank you for all the resources!<br>01:09:34 McKenzie Gentry: Thank you all!<br>01:09:57 Louann Terveer: Thank you Veronica, Brenna, Iwona, and Nicolas - this was like a breath of fresh air in this week ?<br>01:10:24 Iwona (she/ona/wiya/elle): Thank you, Louann!<br>01:10:29 Apurva Ashok: <a href="https://www.rebus.community/t/office-hours-oer-instructional-design-part-2-student-centered-development/6783">https://www.rebus.community/t/office-hours-oer-instructional-design-part-2-student-centered-development/6783</a><br>01:11:15 Apurva Ashok: <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform">https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform</a><br>01:11:29 Karen Lauritsen: We really appreciate your suggestions!<br>01:12:05 Louann Terveer: Just joined a learning circle with RIOS: <a href="https://qubeshub.org/community/groups/rios">https://qubeshub.org/community/groups/rios</a><br>01:12:11 Amy Hofer (she/her): Thank you!<br>01:12:15 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: Thanks Louann!!<br>01:12:20 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Thank you<br>01:12:38 Brenna (she/her): Thank you so much for the invitation! It’s been a lovely, positive break to have this chat together.<br>01:12:42 Kaitlin Schilling (she/they): Greatly appreciate all the focus on care work and thankful to have spent some time with you all!<br>01:12:47 Nicolas Pares (He,Him): Thank you all!</div>admintag:open.umn.edu,2005:Spina::Blog::Post/532022-03-10T00:42:06Z2022-03-10T00:46:18ZFebruary Office Hours: Instructional Design for OER<div>Watch the <a href="https://youtu.be/o06MR5FJ2YU">video recording</a> of this Office Hours session, or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.<br><br>Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please <a href="mailto:joh20849@umn.edu">contact Tonia</a>.<br><br></div><h2>Audio Transcript</h2><div><br><strong>Speakers:</strong></div><ul><li>Apurva Ashok (Director of Open Education, The Rebus Foundation)</li><li>Karen Lauritsen (Publishing Director, Open Education Network)</li><li>Heather Caprette (Senior Media Developer/Instructional Designer, Cleveland State University)</li><li>Clint Lalonde (Project Manager, BCcampus)</li><li>Verena Roberts (ZTC Lead Instructional Designer, Thompson Rivers University)</li></ul><div><br><br></div><div><strong>Apurva:</strong> Hello everyone, welcome to another Office Hours. I'm Apurva Ashok and I'm joining you all today from Toronto, from the traditional territories of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the First Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. I am very grateful to be living and working here and to be able to join and learn from all of you wonderful people in the open education community virtually. <br><br>In case you haven't seen or met me before, I am Apurva Ashok from Rebus Community. We are a Canadian charity that helps educational institutions build human capacity in OER publishing and open education more generally through professional development. We also offer a lot of free open guides and resources and organize sessions like this one, Office Hours, with our excellent partners, the Open Education Network. So I'm going to pass it over to Karen to tell you a little bit about herself and the Open Education Network. <br><br><br><strong>Karen:</strong> Hi everybody and thank you, Apurva. I am Karen Lauritsen, I am publishing director with the Open Education Network, and I am joining you today from San Louis Obispo, California, the traditional land of the Northern Chumash. And I too am excited to be with all of you and learn with you today. We're going to be talking about instructional design for OER. And if this is your first Office Hours, I'll just introduce you to the format briefly. <br><br>We will hear from three guests today, who will speak informally about their experiences with instructional design for OER. And then we will look to all of you to direct the conversation, ask questions, share your local experiences, and otherwise kind of guide us in making this a useful and helpful hour for you. So let's see, yes, the Open Education Network, if you are not familiar with the OEN, we are a community of higher ed professionals who are supporting one another in making things more open. <br><br>So thank you for that. And I think without further ado, I'll go ahead and introduce our guests. We are joined today by Heather Caprette, she is Senior Media Developer and Instructional Designer with Cleveland State University. Clint Lalonde, who is Project Manager with BCcampus and Verena Roberts, who is the ZTC Lead Instructional Designer at Thompson Rivers University. And I believe we're going to kick things off today with Heather. <br><br><br><strong>Heather:</strong> Hi guys, I just want to say thank you very much for having me today. I'm going to start off with screen sharing a couple of slides and I'm going to take you to a Pressbook that some theater students worked on, actually. Okay, so bear with me here. So here is my contact information in case you want to get a hold of me later. And I'm going to put my slides and some other resources in a Google Drive folder, and I'll paste that in chat after I'm done speaking. <br><br>So part of our affordable learning initiative at CSU includes textbook affordability grants that we offer to our faculty. And those were kicked off in 2016 by our former library director, Glenda Thornton, absolutely love the woman. I miss her. She offered grants to faculty wanting to adopt and adapt an open textbook or OER to their course and also to those who wanted to write an open textbook. <br><br>So the technologies that we have at CSU are a self-hosted Pressbooks, we administrate that on campus. It has the H5P plugin, it also has Hypothesis and we use Blackboard Learn as our LMS. We do offer professional development courses to faculty to learn about OERs and open pedagogy and there's a couple of them with a stipend. One is called the Textbook Affordability Summer Symposium, and I co-facilitate that with a couple other people in the OER committee at CSU. <br><br>And so, faculty turn over their syllabi to an OER librarian, and she maps out possible open textbooks and other OER or library licensed content to the topics within the syllabus. And so, within this course faculty we them to review their OER and if they review an open textbook in the OTL, she can publish it there. And I also have them go through an exercise where they do a mini course alignment map for one or two modules in their course. <br><br>So they're introduced to Blooms taxonomy, and they create measurable learning objectives with those action verbs from Blooms taxonomy. And then, they map those to the chapters or the sections in their open textbook that support those learning objectives. And they also list their learning activities and their assignments and tests that are going to measure the achievement of those learning objectives. <br><br>And I have an example of a course alignment map in the Google Drive folder. I also have open pedagogy in Pressbook course and we have an OER librarian that talks to them about Creative Commons licensing, copyright and gives the open textbook workshop. So as an instructional designer, what I do varies. I get paired up with people that are awarded the textbook affordability grant. <br><br>And if they don't have a course shell already in Blackboard, I can make a copy of our CSU course template, which is based on Quality Matters standards to provide a development shell for them. I can help them locate OER and place links to those within their Blackboard development course. As an example, one professor who was doing African American literature asked me to find ex-slave narratives. <br><br>So I did a search on YouTube and placed some links in there for her to pick and choose from. She was also interested in the library licensed documentaries on I think it was called Greatest Civilizations of Africa. So I gave her the links to that. I provide training on technology such as Blackboard, H5P and Pressbooks to faculty and students. Occasionally I get to develop creative content for the open textbooks. <br><br>So one is an example of I did it in Camtasia it's a narrative explaining the symbolism in a painting of Durga, who's a Hindu goddess. And the objects that are in her hands are all linked to spots on the timeline, which explain the symbolism of those objects. And I get to help write creative assignments for students. So one such assignment was for introduction to theater students. <br><br>And we had them create interactive learning content and knowledge checks for other students and for the public. They got published in a Pressbook at CSU. And they could pick any of the content types that they wanted within H5P.org. So here's like an example. There is interactive videos that have spots on the timeline that jump to websites that give more information about the topic. <br><br>And at the end, you can put questions in or intersperse questions on the timeline to gauge understanding of the content. There is like a course presentation tool, they can build quizzes. Some of them did timelines over the history of Greek theater or costume design process. And so what I'll do is escape out of here, and I'll take you to the Pressbook. Here is it. And if you scroll down, the very first chapter here has all of the information about the assignment and the open textbook that they used. <br><br>And you're welcome to adopt it and adapt it to your institution, if you want to. It has suggested learning objectives for the assignment. There's a rubric for grading, with criteria and levels of achievement for each of those criteria. We did want them to cite their sources, so using MLA. There's language here that you can copy and paste into a Blackboard or other LMS assignment tool and this helps the faculty member with grading. <br><br>So it explains somewhere in here it shows what they're supposed to turn in. Essentially, here's a screenshot of the H5P plugin area in the Pressbook. So they would turn in their title and their H5P ID so that she could match it up later. I did create all the accounts in the Pressbook and I created the announcement that sent the invitation to them to join. And I reminded them to do within 72 hours because it would expire and I'd have to recreate the account and resend it. <br><br>And I have links to tutorials here on what is Pressbooks and H5P and how to build various content types. So very quickly, I just want to show one example, this is an interactive video that was done by a theater major, Dylan Sell. And he went behind the scenes of a student production called Company and interviewed all the people in the various roles with the development of the production. [video plays]<br><br>So everywhere on this timeline, you see a little dot he's got a link to a website that talks more about that role. And at the very end, he has some questions to gauge understanding of the content. So who prepares the actors vocally? That's actually the music director. And if somebody misses something, they can retry the question. Okay, so I'm going to stop sharing and turn it over to the next presenter, Verena. Thank you. <br><br><br><strong>Verena:</strong> Thank you so much, Heather, that's difficult to follow. I'm just going to read a little bit, actually and not use PowerPoint so you can close your eyes for a second. So hello everyone, I am coming to you today from Treaty Six territory in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, which is a traditional meeting grounds, gathering place and traveling route of the Cree, Saulteaux, Blackfoot, Métis, Dene, and Nakota Sioux. I want to acknowledge all the many First Nations, Métis and Inuit, whose footsteps have marked these lands for centuries. <br><br>And I'm going to talk to you a bit today about the potential of open learning design as an instructional designer to create a ripple effect. As an open learning designer, or as we're often called an instructional designer who advocates for the use of OER and open educational practices, depending on your context. I am currently working with Thompson Rivers University, TRU in Kamloops BC helping to facilitate the new course redesign to create a ZTC a zero textbook cost associate science degree pathway for our students. <br><br>In most cases, this means that we are redesigning and updating our current open learning courses with OER and open educational practices. At TRU open learning, as an instructional designer we work with subject matter experts, known as the developers and consultants from all over North America. I have been lucky enough to work with TRU campus faculty themselves, Canadian instructors from multiple institutions and faculty from colleges across the US. <br><br>What I want to focus on today though is the importance of designing for open from the beginning. Specifically what do you intentionally choose to do as an instructional designer or instructor from the beginning of the course design to ensure that your course will be student centered and sustainable for you and others in the future? I start by encouraging you to think about how my or your personal actions and contributions will promote or encourage a positive ripple effect for others in everything you design. <br><br>I always think about the possible positive impact of my course design in order to build for sustainability within a larger learning ecosystem. For example, when we considered student centered learning for our biology 1113 course, which is the first course you take as an undergraduate student at our university, we discovered that linking to outside Pressbooks wasn't enough. <br><br>So we needed to learn how to download and adapt and recreate new TRU versions of the Pressbooks in order to ensure that the content was personalized for our students in authentic and meaningful ways. At our university in particular we have a larger indigenous population, so we needed to ensure that we could adapt and integrate some content so that students could actually see, feel, hear themselves within the content. <br><br>From an accessibility and infrastructure point of view, the open content that we linked to was often adapted and changed without our knowledge. And what we thought we were linking to was not always correct. By creating TRU OER adaptions of Pressbooks, the students are aware of the possibilities of open content and have multiple additional open links and resources in which to expand their learning to clarify and expand upon their understanding of topics. <br><br>Because when you adapt a Pressbook, you also have to include where you got the content from. And the students will go back and go down multiple rabbit holes, learning about new things. In terms of student experience, as we consider other copyright options for our students, we are aware that students are often given the option to buy additional resources to practice learning the content. <br><br>For example, in biology and in my chemistry courses, they're often given multiple interactive assignments, and additional activities that they can do if they choose to buy the publishable content. So it's kind of like how do we meet the needs of our students when we're competing against really great interactive content? So as such, we expanded our OER course design to include open homework systems, while we were developing our course and we learned how to support these systems at our institution. <br><br>So you can't just integrate an open homework system without ensuring that you can actually integrate it at your institution into your learning management system. These innovative pilots helped us to make connections with LibreTexts and adapt homework systems where we started to learn about the possible future of open learning and instructional design. LibreTexts has also helped us find files and openly accessible content that we can remix and reuse more easily in our courses. <br><br>Building and participating within an open community becomes essential when designing for open. So by intentionally designing for open learning from the beginning, you are advocating for the ripple effect, an unlimited learning potential. What I didn't mention today is also the work that I have done co-designing Pressbooks and other OER with my students. And I look forward to answering questions about this process as well. Thank you. And I pass it over to Clint. <br><br><br><strong>Clint:</strong> Thanks Verena. And nice shout out to LibreTexts and their work there, too. My name is Clint Lalonde everyone. My pronouns are he and him, and I'm joining you today from the traditional territories of the Lekwengen speaking people of the Songhees and Esquimalt nations. I've been a settler on these lands since 1994, originally from Treaty Six territory, right around where Verena is, actually, from the land of the Cree, Chipewyan and Stony nations. <br><br>So I'm an open education project manager with an organization called BCcampus, if you're not familiar with BCcampus, we provide shared services around open education and open educational resource grants in the Province of British Colombia, working with the 25 publicly funded post-secondary institutions. So we do a lot of collaborative projects and a lot of collaborative content development. <br><br>One of our big projects is our open textbook project, which has been going on since 2012, currently a repository of about 400 openly licensed textbooks and open education resource guides created or curated for faculty here in the Province of British Colombia. So I don't have instructional designer in my title, however I've done quite a bit of instructional design influenced work in the OER work that I've done for the past decade. <br><br>And I always try to bring some ID principles to the open education work that I do. And I actually think that open education and OER, the creation especially of open educational resources is a really good Trojan Horse to introduce the concept of instructional design to instructors we often work with in the post-secondary system people who are not trained in education. They're subject matter experts, so they don't often have a grounding in learning theories or how to design a course or how to design a lesson plan. <br><br>And sometimes working in OER can be a really good opportunity to have those conversations with instructors. As we're talking about the resources, we're also talking about how to integrate those resources, how to make sure they align with your learning outcomes, and how to make sure that you can actually assess your learning outcomes in your course. So it's a really good opportunity to have those conversations with instructors. <br><br>I thought maybe what I'd do today is talk about how instructional design has kind of influenced some of the work that I have done on some of the open education projects that I manage here at BCcampus. I mentioned the open textbook project that's a big project that's been going on since 2012. And I've been working on that on and off for the past 10 years. When I first started with the open textbook project, and when we first got this open textbook project, one of the first things we wanted to do was find out what actually makes a textbook?<br><br>Like what's the difference between a textbook and just like a regular source of information? So I did a deep dive into some of the research around what makes a textbook. And really, I was looking at things like pedagogical aids, like what are the things in the textbook that can really help students understand the content better? So I've just posted a link to a blogpost that I wrote around 2014 where I synthesize some of the research I was finding about what are some of the pedagogical features of a textbook. <br><br>And this is the first area where I looked at trying to incorporate some instructional design thinking around the creation of open resources, like an open textbook. And it was really interesting research, because I actually found that some of the things that were really useful for students and helped with their learning were things that were quite basic in a textbook, things like bold and italicized terms, chapter summaries and chapter reviews and practice questions. <br><br>Those were really useful for students, and that would come back a little later or come forward in some of the work that I've been doing recently, this idea of practice questions. From there I also took a look at we did quite a bit of creation of textbooks, I did a project called an open textbook sprint, where we created an open geography textbook, localized here for British Colombia with a group of there was about 10 people. <br><br>We locked ourselves in a room at UBC for five days and at the end of it, we came up with a textbook. And so, these people were instructors, so we wanted to try to incorporate some instructional design into the creation of the textbook. So one of the first things we did is we sat down and we talked about the kinds of learning that happens within their discipline. And they hit upon this idea of service learning as being very important within their discipline. <br><br>So we actually use that as kind of a guiding principle as we created the textbook. And we incorporated a lot of service learning type activities in the actual content of the textbook. And along the way, too we also created this which was a five rules of textbook development that kind of helped us structure the textbook and some sort of big picture ideas that were pulled from some research around how to structure a textbook to make it a really good learning resource for students. <br><br>We also did another sprint where we created a test bank for an open psychology textbook that we had. And we brought together in that case there was 20 faculty over the course of a weekend. We brought them together and we just banged out questions to create a test bank to go along with an open textbook. And along the way, that allowed us to have conversations around how do you actually create a really good question that will actually challenge students?<br><br>And so, we dove deep into what makes a good multiple choice question, how do you construct these? I mean, there's some good work that has been done around how to construct good things like distractors within your multiple choice questions to make sure that you're providing students with something that may seem like the right answer and they may go, "Mm, that isn't the right answer." <br><br>But they're not quite sure, so it kind of distracts them a little bit and makes them really think about the question. So it gave us an opportunity to work with 20 faculty members around things like how to create really good questions. And then, the second project is one Verena actually mentioned a little bit, the open homework systems project that I've been managing here for the last couple of years in British Colombia. <br><br>Where we looked at creating questions and took an even deeper dive into how to structure questions using H5P as our tool. So we put together some resources, not only about how to use H5P, but also how to incorporate the questions into a textbook, so that it made sense and helped students learn. So it was again a good opportunity to speak with faculty about things like learning sciences, things like retrieval practice and inter-leaving and the spacing effect. <br><br>And how to design your textbooks and your questions in a way that kind of takes advantage of some of these learning science principles, which to me are sort of part of the instructional design principles and how to make sure that you're creating resources that actually help students with their learning. So I'm going to stop there, that's my high level overview, and pass it back. And see if we can use any of the discussions that we've heard here from these three presentations as a basis of a discussion. Thank you. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> Thank you all, all three of you, Clint, Verena, Heather for sharing just what the tip of the iceberg is of your expertise as either official instructional designers or what term did you use, Verena? Open learning designers. This is really the time of our one-hour conversation where we turn it over to all of you, all of our attendees and participants today for questions and comments. Feel free to drop your questions into the chat if you wanted to unmute your microphone and ask any of our three speakers a question out loud, you're welcome to do so. <br><br>I know that Veronica has posted a question in the chat while you three were presenting. Veronica is curious if there is an existing community of practice for instructional designers working in open education. Do any of you know of one? Is there a secret hideout spot for instructional designers in the field?<br><br><br><strong>Heather:</strong> The Open Education Network has instructional designers at their institution. So for me that's my go-to. I'm on their list serve, so I get the emails through Gmail and that helps me. Anybody else?<br><br><br><strong>Verena:</strong> I put Twitter, just Twitter, because I think that's where I connect with everyone. But that's a really good point, Heather, that there is potential area for growth in this community. So I think that's a really great question, yeah, Veronica, that's a really good point. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> Clint, do you know of one for across the province in BC? Do you bring instructional designers together at times? <br><br><br><strong>Clint:</strong> Yeah, we have a number of different communities of practice here in British Colombia. We have ETUG, which is our education technology user group, which contains a number of instructional designers. And in fact, I know Amelie who is here, I saw was quite involved with ETUG, she's an instructional designer at Camoson College. We also have a number of informal things like we have list serves where we have a number of instructional designers that participate. <br><br>We have a number of instructional designers that work at BCcampus, that have informal networks of instructional designers. So I know those things exist. I think instructional design, there is a discipline of instructional design, and there are conferences and groups associated. <br><br>None that are really specific to open though, which when you're designing open resources or open courses or working with students on open pedagogy projects, it does bring its own special challenges. So I think there's definitely room to have something for instructional designers. <br><br><br><strong>Heather:</strong> So I pasted a link to the Quality Matters annual member meeting for we have a consortium in Ohio. And it's a non-profit that's dedicated to quality online learning, it's not specific to open. But I would imagine you could weave in like open topics if you want to present, that would be something to present at. <br><br><br><strong>Karen:</strong> Thank you all, and if there are other suggestions from participants, please feel free to put them in the chat. We have a very active chat and I know that a lot of you are joining us from different regions that may have similar groups. So speaking of the chat, Stephanie had a question about H5P and if there is a resource anyone can recommend or training that's provided for H5P?<br><br><br><strong>Verena:</strong> I added your link, Clint. Sorry. <br><br><br><strong>Clint:</strong> Did you?<br><br><br><strong>Verena:</strong> I put the kitchen in already, yeah. Sorry, glad I could tell you I already did that, but anyway, go on, keep going. <br><br><br><strong>Clint:</strong> Yeah, I was just going to mention the kitchen, the H5P kitchen. For the open homework systems project, we created a website for our grantees but it's open and it does have some basics around H5P and some links back to some tutorials, some webinars there. But it also has some instructional resources around the things that I was talking about, like how to actually create good questions. <br><br>How to provide robust feedback that is actually going to be useful for students. So we tried to use that as a hub for not only the technical how to use H5P but also how to pedagogically use it in a manner that's going to help with students learning. Yeah. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> Thank you all. I know Adrian's posted a question in the chat and Melissa has a hand up. So Melissa, I'm going to let you jump in and we'll get back to Adrian's two questions shortly. <br><br><br><strong>Melissa:</strong> Okay, great. Hi this is amazing. I have a fair amount of instructional design experience but only some moderate experience with OER, not anywhere near, especially in terms of construction. I'm pretty new and I just came into a role where we're trying to build some courses that are focused around OER and then offer the entire courses as OER probably nationally throughout the United States aligned to some national teaching standards. <br><br>I'm wondering, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed to say the least. Also very excited about what we might be able to do. I guess my big question is when you're working by committee with a lot of subject matter experts and you're working in a space that needs to be carefully mapped out and aligned, do you have some advice on what as an instructional designer kind of keeps your head clear or helps you keep track of how the mapping process is happening upfront? <br><br><br><strong>Heather:</strong> So we do course alignment maps that I talked about earlier. And that's not only, it's just helpful I think for planning and organizing a course. But we do it to try to meet Quality Matters standards because they're very big on course alignment, having those measurable learning objectives and they start with action verbs from Blooms taxonomy. And just making sure that everything that is chosen as far as like course materials, learning activities and assessments meet and support those learning objectives. <br><br><br><strong>Melissa:</strong> Yeah, I appreciate that. And Heather, we have briefly crossed paths because of QM. You are familiar to me through that. But yeah, that's I think absolutely a great point. I think the worry I have is the design by committee part, I think a little bit, too, right? <br><br><br><strong>Heather:</strong> Too many hands? Yeah, too many hands. <br><br><br><strong>Melissa:</strong> And I'll just mention one more thing and then I'll hush because there are lots of excited people and very cool things going on in the chat which is why I love instructional designers, we use the chat, it's great. But my other thing that I'm wondering about is part of the grant I'm working on had promised personalized learning within an OER environment and I'm trying to, I mean, obviously branching is the feasible option for that. <br><br>But I'm wondering if any of you have worked with that kind of approach within your OER. I know H5P gives you some opportunities. <br><br><br><strong>Heather:</strong> So are you talking about them coming up with their own learning objectives?<br><br><br><strong>Melissa:</strong> I think the idea is different learners are going to be coming in at different places as they engage with this material. So based on what their individualized learning needs are, how that might determine the way that they navigate through the material or how they're guided through the material, if that makes sense. So branching yeah, right? But I'm wondering what your experience has been with trying to make that a bit more sophisticated in the engaged bit, more interactive within your OER. Yeah. <br><br><br><strong>Heather:</strong> So I've never designed a course where there is some pre-assessment and people start at different levels or wherever they fit in. With the H5P assignment, it revolved around constructionism learning theory. So they're actively learning by reviewing the content and constructing new knowledge based on that. So that's where that assignment is coming from. <br><br><br><strong>Verena:</strong> Melissa, would these courses have someone facilitate or not? <br><br><br><strong>Melissa:</strong> I feel like I'm hijacking here, I will just say the idea is that anyone who uses these courses in an OER space would be able to facilitate. In fact, one of the things they're suggesting is that there may need to be an instructor's guide written to go with the pre-packaged courses that I would be writing. So anyway, I'm just feeling a little bit overwhelmed and thinking let's start by getting really immersed in this community. So I can stop there. But lots of cool things that you all are doing, very exciting. <br><br><br><strong>Verena:</strong> Melissa, I would suggest looking at P to P, it's peer to peer, and the way that they've developed online courses and they've been doing it for years before we even thought about OER or open. Because it gives you a more informal community-based way of thinking about developing flexible, multi-options for all learners with content. Yeah, and I've taken Quality Matters, obviously as instructional designers we have expectations that we need to meet. <br><br>But I tend to expand from Quality Matters in that I integrate formal and informal learning environments. And I think that you might want to develop a community with a hashtag, while developing the content as well. Anyway, peer to peer and I know Clint will probably have some suggestions, too, but I think that would be my way to go. <br><br><br><strong>Melissa:</strong> Thank you, I'll definitely check that out. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> Melissa, I'll just say thank you so much for being so vulnerable and for giving us a chance also to deep dive a little bit into the ID instructional design methods. I can see Verena and Heather's questions of wanting to understand your context a bit more before offering a single platform. And I think there's probably many of us in that space who are coming in perhaps new to instructional design wondering what are the best ways to begin. <br><br><br><strong>Melissa:</strong> Phenomenal group. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> And Clint, you've done a lot of writing about H5P and branching scenarios. Perhaps you can highlight in the chat some blogposts or sessions of the H5P kitchen from last year, where several of your grantees talked about the learning activities they created. <br><br><br><strong>Clint:</strong> Yeah, we actually did one specific around branching scenarios and with I think it was Arley Cruthers at KPU who did it, who actually had used a branching scenario for H5P. She did a keynote for a conference at BCcampus I put on a few years ago, and she did her whole entire keynote as a choose your own adventure based on a branching scenario she had created in H5P. <br><br>So at various points she would stop and poll the audience and say, "What path do we want to go down now?" And then, take the keynote down that way, it was really unique and an interesting way to use the branching scenario. But I'll dig up a post for you and post it in the chat. <br><br><br><strong>Karen:</strong> Thanks, Clint. We'll turn to Adrian's questions that he posted in the chat a little bit ago. This is for any of our guests. Do you link faculty with other staff in your institution to help share practice? Do any of you run communities for faculty who are implementing aspects of open educational practices? <br><br><br><strong>Verena:</strong> So at TRU, we have an open education committee and within that committee we have what they've described as they're the key atom and then they have these little electrons that go around the key of the founding atom of open. And I'm an electron, and I lead the open research committee, the community of practice. But we also have a community of practice for open pedagogy, and we have one for open publishing, and we have one for OER. <br><br>And so, these are communities of practice that any faculty can join from anywhere, I guess. The other things that I definitely would suggest are considering looking at Go GN. Go GN is the Global Open Graduate Network, and Adrian's part of that network, so I'm speaking to him as well. But Go GN has some resources to help with this as well, in order to really help develop awareness across your institution. <br><br>And the idea is that you can't do this alone, so it's about finding allies in your institution and working with them to support what they're doing, a great idea, and then say, "Have you considered this?" But never go in in an instructional design conversation saying, "This is what we're doing." Instead it's, "What are you doing? And have you considered?" Or maybe not even have you considered? It's just what are you doing?<br><br>And the great Alan November always said, "Go in with a cup of tea." So when I think of working with our faculty and members, every time you want to say something literally have your tea and take a sip or imagine taking a sip. Because the more the faculty and others talk about what they want to do, the more you'll figure out how to connect those open ideas that you may have or those OER connections or links that you may have. <br><br>So I hope that gives you some ideas, Adrian, on all the different ways. I mean we have some set formal communities of practice, but then there's the informal how do we do it as well. <br><br><br><strong>Karen:</strong> Thanks, Verena. I appreciate too the top tips for starting conversations and strategies for opening things up with curiosity and getting those conversations going. It also reminds me of a conversation we've just been having in the OEN that Cheryl Casey shared some resources that I just put in the chat. She led a faculty learning community for Pressbooks, did not have a lot of funding or other resources. <br><br>And so, that was a way to bring faculty together and support them as they developed OER. So she shares the content that she used for those learning communities, and I went ahead and put that link there in the chat. Heather, Clint, please feel free to chime in if there's anything you'd like to add to that question. We do have another one from Veronica in the chat. Does anyone have favorite strong examples of instructor guides to accompany open textbooks? This is something we're working on in our grant funded textbook pathways. <br><br><br><strong>Heather:</strong> So ours is so specialized to the person and their course. We don't have anything like that. It's very personal, so I'm sorry, I can't add anything there. <br><br><br><strong>Verena:</strong> I'm doing some work with BCcampus on our open course, and I know it's an expectation that we create instructor guides. So I know, Clint, do you have the link for? How would someone find them? I just know that I have to design it as I'm going along. <br><br><br><strong>Clint:</strong> Yeah, so I can't speak too much about it, but we have a number. One of the new initiatives that I'm working on with Melanie Meyers, my colleague at BCcampus is now looking at expanding on open textbooks and creating courses that are based on open textbooks that are open courses. And one of the expectations that we have is the creation of instructor guides and faculty focused materials on how to teach using this textbook and this course. <br><br>So we're just in the process of doing exactly the same thing that it sounds like what is happening there. But I do want to point to what I think is a pretty good facilitator guide for an open resource, and that's UBC and the Center for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC. They have a number of open courses that are built around open case studies. And they do have a facilitator guide that goes along with it. <br><br>And I just came across this as I was doing some of the research around the work that we're doing at BCcampus. And I thought this was quite good, it talked about how to use the modules, which could easily be adapted to how to use this textbook, how to use this chapter. What are the guiding principles behind the creation of this material? Something that talks a little bit about the philosophy of the content and how to actually go about teaching with this content. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> Thank you, Clint. We'll be staying tuned for more coming out of BCcampus on those guides. I'm going to encourage others if you have more questions or comments to drop them into the chat. And perhaps while folks are thinking one that's been on my mind for a while has just been around the time that it takes to design good learning experiences for our students. <br><br>Now, for faculty members or adjunct instructors or instructors of any kind who might not have the time it takes to completely redo their course and work alongside an instructional designer. Are there still ways that they can work with you and make sure they start thinking about student centric design and good learning experiences? And start out in that path, even if it's not a full overhaul of perhaps what they've been doing. Might be a big question for us to try to answer, but I'm just curious. An easy starting point for faculty. <br><br><br><strong>Heather:</strong> So I think our textbook affordability grants allowing for instructors to adopt existing open textbook is kind of a lighter version. It's not the full out like writing your own open textbook, which some of them have done a fabulous job. So just that in itself, they're not doing a complete rehaul of their course, but they are developing new test banks or quizzes around that content. <br><br>And it's an opportunity for me to introduce them to Quality Matters and our course template to meet those standards and start talking about writing measurable learning objectives. Because a lot of times I'll see things like the students will understand, they'll have an awareness of, an appreciation of, which those aren't measurable. So I would say yeah, it doesn't have to be a complete overhaul, they can mix and match and tie in older assignments and come up with new assignments within a course doing that. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> Thank you, Heather. I think that's so reassuring to hear. And Verena, I'm thinking about what are the ways to create the small ripples? If you or Clint have any suggestions. <br><br><br><strong>Verena:</strong> I think it's a really, really good question because I for example am a sessional instructor with the University of Calgary Werklund School of Education. And I teach actually yeah, good job. Alec Couros she's picked up Alec Couros so great open learning, I'm distracted by the chat. When you are one of 12 sessional instructors, for example, like me I have the same syllabus that everyone else has. <br><br>So I don't have the opportunity to necessarily make those changes that I would when I teach my own courses. So what I do do and I know that I'm advocating for Twitter today, which is kind of interesting, but I always have a course hashtag. Because what the course hashtag does and in my introductory online survey, I say are you interested in ed tech? Or are you interested in open learning? <br><br>And I introduce the opportunity to look to Twitter to expand beyond the course because you have what you need in the course, especially when everyone's doing the same thing. But you give those students who are interested the opportunity to expand in little ways. I used to also have a Twitter chat, but then I learnt that that just complicates things, especially for the really regimented everyone has the same course type of course. <br><br>So that's one way that you could do it, it's just how do you bridge and actually, I'll find an image to show you, how do you bridge those things outside the learning management system with the learning management system? The other thing is asking students to create their own content, or their own projects. So with my graduate course I would not suggest it, I would absolutely not suggest as a beginning thing. <br><br>Start by everyone creating the textbook together or Pressbook together, that is incredibly difficult. I will admit it, I had multiple faculty working with me and librarians and other people. But what I have started with is just going into Wikipedia for example and asking the students to go in and make an edit. The learning that they get out of joining Wikipedia and making an edit when I see their reflections, because I always ask my students to reflect was exactly the same as the students who wrote their own chapters in a Pressbook. <br><br>You don't have to do something big, you can do something little. It's uncanny to see and actually I'm sure future research would be really interesting comparing and contrasting student perceptions and experiences. So my point is just small steps can make astronomically big ripples. Yeah, and then also if you look at the e-portfolio I put in another project that I just did, it was designing podcasts. <br><br>And these are former students who have come back and want to do more work, so the secret is not ending with your course. Making learning so exciting that they want to develop a learning relationship with you that continues beyond the course, and you continue to do things with them and connect with them in different ways. That's also important. Okay, so those are some varied ideas, but no, you don't have to make a Pressbook or make a WordPress. Clint. <br><br><br><strong>Clint:</strong> Yeah, well just add a couple of things. I think one of the things if you do have, if you are in control of any grant money at your institution or you're able to give out grants to instructors or faculties, try to set aside some of that money for professional development opportunities to attend conferences, to attend things that are teaching and learning or CTL resources to have them go there to get some ideas for quick starts. <br><br>One thing I picked up though on the question was just about I am an adjunct faculty member as well at both Royal Roads University and also at the University of Victoria, and going back to the University of Victoria experience, Verena and I ended up being brought on right around the pivot because a lot of courses had to be put online very, very quickly. And we were, I can't even remember how long we had, Verena, it was so quick. <br><br>But it gives you such an understanding of what most adjuncts go through. It's like here's a syllabus, here's some, maybe there's some previous material from the instructor before that you can use to put together your course. But you've got two weeks, go. And you've got 45 online students, many of them who are online not because they want to be online, but because they were pushed online. <br><br>And how do you go about doing that? So I think one of the first things that Verena and I did is we teamed up. She had one section, I had another section, and so we kind of went, "Let's just try to mix our sections as much as possible and design for one course even though we have multiple sections of that course." So taking that team approach to doing it really helped and it saved my bacon. <br><br>I would have gone nuts if I would have had to have designed this whole thing in essentially a couple of weeks to go fully online with 45 students. So that was one of the strategies that we had to try to divide and conquer at the adjunct level. <br><br><br><strong>Karen:</strong> Thank you all for your reflections and guidance on that question. I especially appreciate how we're keeping the human experience at the center and how we can support one another as people going about our work under stressful conditions especially. So we have only a few minutes before the end of the hour. So if there are any pressing questions, now is the time. <br><br>So please raise your hand or drop them into the chat. I have a question that I will ask in the meantime, which is focused on open pedagogy and engaging with students and just wanting to hear a little bit more about the guidance and support that you recommend or provide directly to students as they engage in some of these projects. And how do you get them so excited that they keep coming back for more? So any thoughts you can share on collaborating with students.<br><br><br><strong>Heather:</strong> I think offering them choice to pick something that they're interested in, give them okay, here's the means to do it. And then, you explore what part of the course you're interested in. I think that helps. Certainly being there for them, like showing them how to use the tools, and offering your support like offering your contact information. I know the first time we did this for some reason the gentleman that did the video was having trouble uploading it to YouTube. <br><br>So before he could get his channel up and running, I just uploaded it for him and gave him the link and then he was able to use that in his H5P to get his interactive content started. So that's my thoughts. It's just reassuring them and making sure they have your contact information. <br><br><br><strong>Verena:</strong> I totally echo that, Heather. I think it's developing those relationships because you can't make assumptions about your students. You can have some guesses as you're designing, but you have to leave enough opportunity for plan B, plan C, plan D as you're teaching. I think the difference is as an instructional designer I often am not there when the actual course is being delivered. <br><br>And so, it's encouraging the instructor to think about plan A, and B, and C in that planning phase. But the reality is as an instructor, you have to be ready to follow through with plan B and C. And also, be human yourself and know that no matter how many different plans you make, someone does something or something happens that you have to ready and open to like you're saying, Heather, just sort it out together and be humble and transparent. And I think Covid has definitely taught us that, just be honest with what's going on. <br><br><br><strong>Heather:</strong> Yeah, so we always tell them when I'm meeting with them in person and in the class, I give them an opt out. Like I pass around a sheet of paper, and say, "If you don't want your name published online, you don't want your work published online, let us know." And there were two or three people the first time we did it that they just didn't want to do the online part of it. So they wrote up their ideas and gave it to the instructor so she could grade it, but they just didn't take part in the public part. <br><br><br><strong>Clint:</strong> Yeah, thanks for saying that, Heather. That was the point I was going to make, too. If you're doing things in open spaces and I'm a big believer, I like public sphere participation for students in some of the courses that I teach. So I like to have them editing Wikipedia or blogging in public. But always giving them the option to be able to not be in public. To participate in different ways, which does bring up another instructional design challenge that you have. <br><br>In that you have to figure out how to say maybe fairly assess students that are participating in the public and getting the benefit from doing that, versus those that don't want to participate in the public. And how do you make sure that those are assessed equally in your program? But it's very important that you do that and give the students the opportunity to not participate in public if they don't want to. <br><br><br><strong>Karen:</strong> Thank you all so much for sharing that. Since we only have a couple of minutes left, I think it's time to wrap up and just say thank you again for everyone including all of you for participating in the chat and have shared your questions. Please join us in thanking Heather, Clint and Verena. And Apurva, I will hand things to you to see if there's anything that you would like to add. <br><br><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> Thank you, Karen and thank you all of our speakers. I have learned so much, and I've jotted down a lot of different ideas to take back to the communities that I work with, but also conversations that hopefully we can explore at future Office Hour sessions. And on that note, I might actually drop in a form into the chat in case all of you here, our wonderful community today, have ideas for future topics you'd like us to delve into. <br><br>Whether it's instructional design and OER related, whether it's more about pedagogy, or if it's about nominating speakers and other voices that you think should share the Office Hours spotlight, please do drop in your suggestions. As you've seen today, the conversations are very much for and driven by communities. So if you have anything that has been a pressing issue on projects you've worked on or at your institution or in your region, we might want to pick up the mantle on this stage. <br><br>And I will just say thank you once again to all three speakers and to everyone here. We will follow up as always with a recording of the session, so stay tuned for more resources and information and a link to share this out with others in your network in the coming weeks. <br><br><br><strong>Karen:</strong> Thank you all again. <br><br><br><strong>Heather:</strong> Thank you everyone, have a good day. Bye. <br><br><br><strong>Verena:</strong> Thank you. <br><br><br><strong>Karen:</strong> Bye. <br><br><br>END OF VIDEO<br><br></div><h2>Chat Transcript</h2><div>00:19:32 Verena Roberts: Where are people coming in from today?<br>00:19:56 Sybil: North Dakota.?<br>00:20:06 Carrie Miller: Mankato, Minnesota<br>00:20:11 Sunyeen Pai: Sunny Pai from Honolulu Hawaii!<br>00:20:13 Emily Schudel: Hi! I am an uninvited visitor on the traditional territories of the Lekwungen peoples in what is now called Victoria, BC<br>00:20:44 Clint Lalonde (he/him) BCcampus: Hey Emily! Great to see you here<br>00:20:50 Stephanie Hallam: Cape Girardeau, MO<br>00:20:53 Emily Schudel: Hi Clint!<br>00:20:57 Verena Roberts: Welcome everyone ! :)<br>00:21:02 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: Hi there! I’m in from Eugene, OR, where it is sooooo cold today<br>00:21:30 Farah Kashef: University of Northern Iowa<br>00:21:41 Melanie Smith: Pretty chilly up here in Seattle (Duwamish/Coast Salish lands) too!<br>00:22:10 Karen Lauritsen: I forgot to mention that live transcription is enabled if you’d like to use it.<br>00:22:19 Sybil: We’re looking at a high of 2 above Fahrenheit here.<br>00:22:47 Melanie Smith: Brr! Fair enough, it’s all relative ;-)<br>00:23:19 Sybil: True story<br>00:27:32 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: Thank you for sharing this!!<br>00:27:46 Deb Quentel - CALI: ?<br>00:31:06 Heather E Caprette: Heather’s slides are shared at <a href="https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BzUtFndd41E0WcDyokRhfv8U3mrxzqZ_?usp=sharing">https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BzUtFndd41E0WcDyokRhfv8U3mrxzqZ_?usp=sharing</a> Pressbooks with Theater students’ interactive learning content are at <a href="https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/theater/">https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/theater/</a><br>00:31:16 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: I’m curious if there’s an existing community of practice for instructional designers working in open education?<br>00:31:43 Heather E Caprette: Open Education Network has been great. They have IDs as well as librarians<br>00:35:30 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: So TRU Pressbooks are versions specifically adapted for Thompson Rivers University students? Wow!<br>00:36:36 Verena Roberts: Yes Veronica - That’s what we have ended up doing :) HEre’s our draft example press book for BIOL 1113 - which still needs editing and citation checks … <a href="https://biol1113temp.pressbooks.tru.ca/">https://biol1113temp.pressbooks.tru.ca/</a><br>00:37:09 Verena Roberts: We can also “add in NEW OER” .. Like the H5P case studies<br>00:37:52 Verena Roberts: Veronica - I am not aware of a set group of Open instructional designers… I connect through twitter @verenanz<br>00:38:20 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: Thanks Verena : D<br>00:38:34 Clint Lalonde (he/him) BCcampus: <a href="https://clintlalonde.net/2014/03/31/fleshing-out-the-pedagogical-features-of-textbooks/">https://clintlalonde.net/2014/03/31/fleshing-out-the-pedagogical-features-of-textbooks/</a><br>00:40:24 Clint Lalonde (he/him) BCcampus: <a href="https://opentextbc.ca/selfpublishguide/chapter/textbook-development/">https://opentextbc.ca/selfpublishguide/chapter/textbook-development/</a><br>00:41:42 Heather E Caprette: Here is a very nicely built open textbook on African Art at <a href="https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/bright-continent/chapter/chapter-1-1/">https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/bright-continent/chapter/chapter-1-1/</a>.<br>00:41:46 Melissa Williams: That self-publishing guide is ?<br>00:41:51 Verena Roberts: Veronica - I gave you the link from one of the press books we adapted from … this is the actual link: <a href="https://openintrobiology.pressbooks.tru.ca/">https://openintrobiology.pressbooks.tru.ca/</a><br>00:41:56 Heather E Caprette: The instructor made use of the call out boxes for exercises.<br>00:42:01 Verena Roberts: Agreed Melissa<br>00:43:42 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: Thank you for both links, Verena!<br>00:44:00 Deb Quentel - CALI: @Clint, did I miss it - did you list your five rules of textbook development? Thanks!<br>00:44:17 Clint Lalonde (he/him) BCcampus: @Deb <a href="https://opentextbc.ca/selfpublishguide/chapter/textbook-development/">https://opentextbc.ca/selfpublishguide/chapter/textbook-development/</a><br>00:44:33 Deb Quentel - CALI: Thanks @Clint<br>00:44:50 Stephanie Hallam: Is there a resource to provide training about hp5?<br>00:45:39 Emily Schudel: <a href="https://etug.ca/">https://etug.ca/</a><br>00:45:40 Verena Roberts: H5P: <a href="https://kitchen.opened.ca/">https://kitchen.opened.ca/</a><br>00:45:47 Apurva Ashok: Thanks, Emily!<br>00:45:47 Adrian Stagg: For any of the panel: do you link Faculty with other staff in your institution to help share practice? Do any of you run communities for Faculty who are implementing aspects of OEP?<br>00:46:21 Heather E Caprette: Ohio has an annual Quality Matters members meeting. It's not specific to open. There's info at <a href="https://www.qmohio.org/event/2021-qm-ohio-annual-member-meeting/">https://www.qmohio.org/event/2021-qm-ohio-annual-member-meeting/</a><br>00:47:04 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: Thanks!!<br>00:47:22 Verena Roberts: #OER22 Registration is open for the first hybrid edition of <br>@A_l_t's Open Education and Research Conference - Taking place over 3 days, 26-28 April 2022 with registration starting at just £99 for #altc members<br>00:47:33 Adrian Stagg: For Clint: I wanted to let you know I still use your blog post 'PDF is where OER go to die' as one of the core readings in my ongoing grant community when we talk about accessible formats and designing for reuse. It is still such a useful resource.<br>00:47:48 Emily Schudel: I've found that while a lot of the Open networks have been traditionally for librarians are now opening up for IDs, etc. So, for example CARL, the Canadian Association of Research librarians<br>00:47:48 Apurva Ashok: The H5P Kitchen is a fabulous resource!<br>00:47:49 Verena Roberts: OER22 - Greta conference for Open Instructional Designers<br>00:47:56 Heather E Caprette: <a href="https://guide.pressbooks.com/">https://guide.pressbooks.com/</a><br>00:48:07 Emily Schudel: But it would be nice to have more ID OE based conversations<br>00:48:24 Heather E Caprette: <a href="https://guide.pressbooks.com/chapter/create-interactive-content-with-h5p/">https://guide.pressbooks.com/chapter/create-interactive-content-with-h5p/</a><br>00:48:33 Sunyeen Pai: Emily: +1<br>00:49:36 Adrian Stagg: Completely agree, Emily.<br>00:49:50 Emily Schudel: @Verena - is this the ALT OER22 conference you are referring to, or another onw?<br>00:50:20 Emily Schudel: OER22 <a href="https://www.alt.ac.uk/events/open-education-conference">https://www.alt.ac.uk/events/open-education-conference</a><br>00:50:40 Clint Lalonde (he/him) BCcampus: @Adrain thank you for saying that! I am always very happy to hear when something I have written is useful to others<br>00:51:15 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: Would you please share that blog post link to “PDF is where OER go to die?”<br>00:51:18 Verena Roberts: It’s the ALT one<br>00:51:31 Emily Schudel: @Verena - thanks!<br>00:52:39 Clint Lalonde (he/him) BCcampus: @Veronica Caveat: I wrote this almost a decade ago <a href="https://clintlalonde.net/2013/06/25/pdf-is-where-oers-go-to-die/">https://clintlalonde.net/2013/06/25/pdf-is-where-oers-go-to-die/</a><br>00:52:56 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: Thank you, Clint!<br>00:53:30 Emily Schudel: CARL cross-Canada coffee chats are amazing <a href="https://www.carl-abrc.ca/mini-site-page/open-education-cross-canada-coffee-chat-oecccc-in-french-on-recognizing-oer-in-tenure-and-promotion/">https://www.carl-abrc.ca/mini-site-page/open-education-cross-canada-coffee-chat-oecccc-in-french-on-recognizing-oer-in-tenure-and-promotion/</a><br>00:53:48 Emily Schudel: <a href="https://www.carl-abrc.ca/advancing-research/scholarly-communication/open-education/oewg/">https://www.carl-abrc.ca/advancing-research/scholarly-communication/open-education/oewg/</a><br>00:54:23 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: Does anyone have favorite strong examples of instructor guides to accompany open textbooks? This is something we’re working on in our grant-funded textbook pathways<br>00:54:30 Simon Ringsmuth: Verena I like the idea of developing a Community while also developing Content<br>00:55:02 Verena Roberts: Example: <a href="https://courses.p2pu.org/en/courses/3230/open-research-2015/">https://courses.p2pu.org/en/courses/3230/open-research-2015/</a><br>00:55:06 Emily Schudel: <a href="https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/oertoolkitfortrades/">https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/oertoolkitfortrades/</a><br>00:55:15 Emily Schudel: OER Toolkit for Trades instructors<br>00:55:28 Emily Schudel: Sorry, @Veronica<br>00:55:34 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: Thank you!<br>00:55:49 Verena Roberts: Here is my ePortfolio with some ideas: <a href="http://verenaroberts.ucalgaryblogs.ca/">http://verenaroberts.ucalgaryblogs.ca/</a><br>00:55:53 Verena Roberts: SPLOTS are another option<br>00:56:58 Emily Schudel: We are working towards creating a CoP of faculty working with Open. I am just now surveying faculty to start building this, and other resources and workshops, out. I'm at Camosun college in BC<br>00:57:20 Clint Lalonde (he/him) BCcampus: H5P Branching scenarios webinar from our H5P Kitchen <a href="https://kitchen.opened.ca/2021/06/03/june-webinar/">https://kitchen.opened.ca/2021/06/03/june-webinar/</a><br>00:57:30 Apurva Ashok: GoGN: <a href="https://go-gn.net/">https://go-gn.net/</a><br>00:57:33 Heather E Caprette: We have faculty excellence workshops. Some examples are at <a href="https://www.csuohio.edu/cfe/center-for-faculty-excellence-workshops">https://www.csuohio.edu/cfe/center-for-faculty-excellence-workshops</a><br>00:57:43 Adrian Stagg: Thanks Verena! That sounds like a great approach to link all the open 'flavours'.<br>00:58:19 Adrian Stagg: Completely agree, Verena, I always start with 'tell me about your teaching, tell me about your students' and it's always enlightening.<br>00:58:48 Karen Lauritsen: Pressbooks Learning Community led by Cheryl Casey: <a href="https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wSsmpj7d3KLwunx2YqJG59-G7Rmyge4x">https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wSsmpj7d3KLwunx2YqJG59-G7Rmyge4x</a><br>00:59:10 Verena Roberts: Exactly Adrian :) People LOVE talking about what they are doing !<br>01:01:09 Clint Lalonde (he/him) BCcampus: <a href="https://justfood.landfood.ubc.ca/facilitator-guide/">https://justfood.landfood.ubc.ca/facilitator-guide/</a><br>01:02:45 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: Yes, I would love to know what resources you share with instructors who are new to designing with OER and open practices!<br>01:02:54 Verena Roberts: This is a great chapter for open design: Couros, A., & Hildebrandt, K. (2016). Designing for open and social learning. In G. Veletsianos (Ed.), Emergence and innovation in digital learning: Foundations and applications.<br>Edmonton, Canada: AU Press. <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/emergence-and-innovation-in-digital-learning">https://www.ubcpress.ca/emergence-and-innovation-in-digital-learning</a><br>01:04:30 Cathy Germano: Alec Couros ?<br>01:05:55 Adrian Stagg: @Heather Thanks for the workshop details. I'm working on stronger ties with the unit that offers professional learning and embedding OEP into the core offerings, so this is very helpful.<br>01:07:32 Cathy Germano: Yes!<br>01:07:39 Gerald Nachtwey: I have another meeting to get to, but this has been wonderful! Many thanks to the presenters!<br>01:07:50 Kaitlin: "Small steps can make astronomical ripples" - I love that Verena!<br>01:07:53 Apurva Ashok: Thank you! Great ideas from you all!<br>01:09:46 Apurva Ashok: Collaboration for the win :)<br>01:14:16 Verena Roberts: Catherine Cronin talks about Open Readiness - that includes options to offer different choices for everyone<br>01:14:23 Apurva Ashok: A good reminder for anyone who missed my earlier message: anything shared in the chat or recording can be anonymized or redacted! Contact us over email at contact@rebus.community if you’d like anything removed from our public record!<br>01:14:38 Tami Belhadj: Thank you all!<br>01:14:42 Simon Ringsmuth: Thank you everyone!<br>01:14:51 Cathy Germano: Thank you, stay safe.<br>01:14:51 Emily Schudel: Thanks for this great conversation!<br>01:14:53 Melissa Williams: Really wonderful!<br>01:14:54 Melanie Smith: So much to consider and digest — thank you all!<br>01:14:55 Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer: ? Thank you so much!<br>01:14:58 Adrian Stagg: Thanks everyone! This was such a useful session!<br>01:15:06 Hanna Primeau ( She/Her): Thank you so much folks!<br>01:15:29 Apurva Ashok: <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform">https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform</a><br>01:16:03 Deb Quentel - CALI: thanks for sharing so many great ideas<br>01:16:14 Donna Ziegenfuss: Thank you! This was so helpful.<br><br><br></div>admintag:open.umn.edu,2005:Spina::Blog::Post/482022-01-31T20:39:52Z2022-01-31T20:49:10ZJanuary Office Hours: OER Challenges Facing Newcomers<div>Watch the <a href="https://youtu.be/qvnUW5W43F4">video recording</a> of this Office Hours session, or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.<br><br>Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please <a href="mailto:joh20849@umn.edu">contact Tonia</a>.<br><br></div><h2>Audio Transcript</h2><div><strong>Speakers:</strong><br>● Apurva Ashok (Director of Open Education, The Rebus Foundation)<br>● Karen Lauritsen (Publishing Director, Open Education Network)<br>● Gabby Hernandez (Open Education Librarian, University of Texas, Rio Grande)<br>● Shannon Smith (Open Educational Resources Librarian, Boise State University)<br>● Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey (Open Education Librarian, University of Arizona)<br><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> Hello everybody, welcome to Office Hours. My name is Apurva Ashok, I am joining you all today from Toronto, from the traditional territories of many nations here, including the Mississaugas of the First Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. I'm really grateful to be living here on this land, working here on this land. And kicking off what is I think maybe our fourth year of Office Hours and session number 51 in organization with the Open Education Network as well. <br><br>For those of you who may be joining us for the first time and you haven't heard about Rebus before, we are a Canadian charity that helps educational institutions build human capacity in open education, in OER publishing through things like professional development, free resources, discussion spaces and more. And Office Hours, as I mentioned are co-organized with the Open Education Network, so I'll hand it over to Karen to tell you a little bit about her, about the OEN, and about our topic for today. <br><br><strong>Karen:</strong> Okay, thank you very much, Apurva. It is exciting to be starting another year of Office Hours with you and the Rebus Community. My name is Karen Lauritsen, I am publishing director with the Open Education Network or OEN for short. I’m joining you today from San Luis Obispo, California. And that is the traditional land of the Northern Chumash. And I'm especially grateful to them for all that they are teaching me about native plant uses. <br><br>As a gardener that has been a really exciting discovery. So today's format is as it always is with Office Hours, which is informal and driven by all of you. So we look forward to your questions, your concerns, your musings, please feel free to drop them in the chat or save them for the discussion. We'll briefly hear from our three guests today for a few minutes each and then talk informally. <br><br>So welcome. Today's topic is OER challenges facing newcomers. And we are joined by Gabby Hernandez, who is the Open Education Librarian at the University of Texas, Rio Grande. Shannon Smith, who is the Open Educational Resources Librarian at Boise State University. And Cheryl Casey, who is the Open Education Librarian at the University of Arizona. So to kick us off and get things started, I'm going to hand it over to Gabby. <br><br><strong>Gabby:</strong> Hi everyone, thank you all so much for joining us today. I'm really excited to talk about my experiences with open education at UTRGV. We're situated in very, very south Texas on the border of Texas and Mexico. And I have been in my role as an open education librarian for two years. The first year was part time, so I was able to spend part time working as the OER librarian, and then one year and a little bit working as the open education librarian full time. <br><br>And in that time, there's been a lot. So I was the first person in my role at the university. And a lot of the things that we did is like original content building. So we had a very, very small structure in place from our scholarly communications librarian. And then over the last two years we've been able to build it out into quite a wonderful little program that we have here in south Texas. <br><br>But the way I got started was really taking advantage of all the amazing community opportunities that are out there. So I went through the SPARC Open Education leadership program curriculum, so the curriculum is free and online. So I did it by myself as my first step into what did I get into? What am I doing? How do I learn how to do this? And then, from there I also participated fully in the Open Education Network librarian certification in OER. <br><br>That was wonderful community building, the action plan that we created really helped me understand how do I build a program and sustain it and looking both at current things and future things. And then, just recently this past summer I felt like that next little step was the Creative Commons certificate for librarians. So that was kind of okay, now we're in the OER, faculty kind of know, and then we're taking those next steps and thinking about publishing. <br><br>And making sure I understand what I need for those things to be able to support my faculty. So that's really how I built my own professional development out so we could then support big grants, money grants. We just got Pressbooks, so now we're starting with publishing and things of that nature. And so really to let it be known and what I learned from the programs was just make faculty aware that we exist. <br><br>Faculty have really come, they're excited, they're interested, they hear OER and open educational resources. On my campus faculty are very, very interested in textbook affordability. But they didn't know that there was a whole dedicated person on campus to help support them. So a lot of my role has just been marketing myself and letting them know I am here, I am here for you. <br><br>This is my role. And finally, after a year part time and a year full time, the word is out and I have heard from other faculty that now faculty are talking about OER outside of me and my presentation. So it's great, the word is out, it's happened. And faculty are really, really starting to participate in all of our programs. And I guess I'll end my little session with one thing I didn't quite understand when I started was how much original content creation this position requires. <br><br>So creating websites, creating proposals, creating marketing flyers, creating databases to keep track of all of my contacts and ROI. So it takes a lot of imagination and a lot of okay, what are we going to do next? And then, how are we going to create it and doing all of those things? But thankfully, there is an entire community of people who are willing to share and help each other and that makes this journey all the better. So that's my little part, my little intro. And I will now pass it onto Shannon. <br><br><strong>Shannon:</strong> Hi everyone, thanks for joining us today as well. So I've actually been sitting a lot with the idea of being a newcomer in open education. And I wanted to talk about this a little bit from a space of thinking about a professional identity. I've worked in supported OER initiatives as graduate student, library staff and tenure track faculty, now since 2017 and at three different institutions. <br><br>Which means from my perspective, I've been completely new to open education and motivated by own curiosity. I have been new to being faculty, I have been new to an institution or geographical region, and I've been new to a library. Different lenses for being a newcomer and certainly different battles for lack of a phrase I try not to use very often anymore impostor syndrome. <br><br>So it wasn't until I would say this past year when I was part of the SPARC Open Education leadership cohort that I started to see intersections between my own educational journey outside of libraries which has included being homeschooled, online learner, transfer student, non-traditional student. My time editing student zines as an undergrad, my work in project-based learning environments, being raised in rural communities, and then my work in open. <br><br>And then, finding these intersections in my own story has really grounded my understanding of how all these experiences inform and build upon each other to form both my why and my professional identity with this work. My path to open is its own unique story, just like every single one of us on this call has today. And am I newcomer? In some respects I think I will always be, because open education is constantly evolving and adapting. <br><br>And we were talking before everybody joined that that's just a really constant conversation in the field, I think. Am I an impostor? No. I have a history of experience with learning and information that was not explicitly labeled open. Do I have to remind myself of this regularly? Absolutely. I share this because I want to encourage you to unpack your own story a little. It is my belief that you'll find some meaningful learning experiences that intersect with your work in open as well. <br><br>Having a lens of a newcomer, I believe can be an asset to navigate your institutional context. It's proven to be that for me, as I employ both deep listening with campus stakeholders, faculty, students, colleagues, all the things Gabby was talking about. What do I need to build? It's a lens for viewing those resources that may or may not be available to your campus community or identifying gaps that need to be addressed. <br><br>And certainly, that messaging that may not be consistent across campus and marketing yourself. And in terms of working with campus stakeholders, I just want to say that newcomer lens, if something doesn't make sense to you, if you're coming into a program that's already been established somewhat, there is probably a reason it doesn't make sense to you, so don't be afraid to look at that closely. <br><br>The session description also talks about overwhelm. And yes, overwhelm is frequent for me. And like Gabby said, I want to remind you none of us need to reinvent the wheel completely. There are so many wonderful resources in this community to use or adapt, that's the work we do. If there's a particular OER initiative or resource you really admire that sparks something for you, I'd encourage you to email the folks working with that program. <br><br>Introduce yourself and ask questions you may have. I did this a lot initially and I still do. It's a practice that really helps me build the community. And for me especially in our pandemic world, reaching out when I just hit that wall and cannot get my brain out of the rabbit hole it might be in, it helps me mitigate overwhelm from isolation. We are all in this together, and the open education community does want to help you. <br><br>It's a very practical day-to-day practice for me, also when I get overwhelmed by that big picture thinking of campus wide OER work and what needs to happen to step back and focus on what I can do right now, today, that is progress. And that could be sending introduction emails, that marketing piece of I'm here. It could be watching a webinar or reading that article I left open in the endless tabs in all my windows. <br><br>I find it's important to make myself do that when I get overwhelmed so that I keep moving. Because all of those movements add up to that big picture. At some point you'll start to see it, I promise. And then, I'll hand it over to Cheryl. <br><br><strong>Cheryl:</strong> Thank you, Shannon. So I'll say that I've been working in this space since 2014. But I still feel like a relative newcomer and I'm so happy to see some of my OER heroes here. Anita Walz was one of the first people I met at an OpenStax conference, I think 2013, '14. And Steven Bell from Temple is here, his work with alt text grants was some of the first that I looked at when we were looking at [Sedo] funding and encouraging. <br><br>And I'm an instructor with a certificate in OER librarianship and I'm glad that Gabby mentioned that as a resource for people for learning. And I also do trainings for new consortial members to the Open Education Network. And in doing those, I've learned that we're all facing super similar problems. And to me, that's really comforting, no matter how many years you're doing this, you're still dealing with the same problems as somebody who's brand new to it. <br><br>So things like trying to work with faculty, dealing with competition to OER from products like inclusive access, mistrust about the quality of OER, which sometimes comes from the vendors themselves or the publishers themselves. The time question is huge, especially with the certificate participants that we have. And it's been a big issue for me, too. Scope creep and I'll share one approach that I've found useful when my supervisor comes to me and wants to add another thing to my plate. <br><br>I'll say, "Great, okay. Now what can I give up? I'd like you to help me prioritize my work, if you want me to add something, then let's look at what low priority thing you think I can drop." And putting that back on my supervisor has helped to raise awareness of all that I'm being asked to do. Because a lot of OER is in your spare time, please run an OER program. It's not a spare time thing, it's two or three people could be full time working in this easily. <br><br>It's very, very time consuming, the learning curve is super steep. It intersects with so many different areas like copyright and fair use and the course materials markets. There's just a lot to keep up with. And I'll second what Gabby and Shannon have said about this being just a fabulous community and people being so willing to share and being so supportive and not needing to reinvent things because people are more than willing to share resources and help and assistance. <br><br>The conferences are great, the OEN is great, Rebus is a fabulous community. For those in community colleges, CCC OER is awesome, SPARC, lib OER list serve is an amazing resource. So there is lots of help out there, but for me as a fairly recent library school grad, it's a second career for me. I went to library school and finished in 2008. I didn't learn about any of this in library school. There was no mention of Creative Commons. <br><br>We didn't learn about copyright, we didn't learn about ebook licenses. It's all been really self-directed learning and really having to advocate for myself and for OER as a library priority. And going to my administrators and saying, "Look, the return on investment for the library to be involved in this is huge. We should be devoting personnel, we should be devoting money, time." <br><br>Because the impact on student success is enormous and we can advertise that to campus. But it's continuous advocacy when there are lots of shiny things that get library administrators' attention, bigger spaces, this, that. So to focus on OER is just continually advocating. And I've had to advocate for myself as well, to say, "Look, this needs to be a priority. I would really like the title of open education librarian."And fighting for yourself in that work. So that's my little spiel. And I'll pass things back to Apurva and Karen. <br><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> Thank you so much, Cheryl, Shannon, and Gabby. I have a whole two pages of notes from all of your excellent suggestions and tips. I will say to everybody who is listening in this is really the time where we turn it over to all of you for your questions and comments. If you had your own experiences you wanted to share as either seasoned professionals in OER or forever newcomers as Shannon was describing. <br><br>I will invite you to post your questions or comments in the chat, if you wanted to. Or feel free to unmute your microphone and ask a question out loud. And in the meantime, maybe to kick us off, I can ponder over a few questions, but Karen, I might also give you an opportunity in case you had some brewing. <br><br><strong>Karen:</strong> Sure, I can kick us off. So each of you in one way or another mentioned the need to market yourselves. And Shannon, you mentioned for example introductory emails, perhaps just hearing a little bit more about some of the marketing strategies that each of you have employed, what you might include in those emails. How you romance faculty, so to speak, into a conversation around OER. <br><br><strong>Gabby:</strong> I guess I'll start us off. For me, a lot of it was I don't want to say easy, but we are one of the largest Hispanic serving institutes in the United States. So already we have a population that is desperately in need of affordability. We have a large amount of our students that are on Pell Grants. We are in a community of need. And thankfully our faculty understand that. <br><br>They understand that our students are in need, that they didn't quite have that bridge of like well, we know this, but I don't know what to do about it. Or there's nothing I can do about it. So once those emails started coming out that this is there, the library is offering this. It just started snowballing and faculty being very excited. Another thing that worked as a benefit was the fact that the pandemic hit at the same time I was hired. <br><br>So I think I only worked for like four months, and then it was like just kidding, we're going to be online. And it came at such a good time, because faculty were scrambling. I've never taught online, what do I do? My students don't have access, how do I get this? So people were flooding the library and we were like, "Open educational resources, they're here and available and there's somebody to support you in this." <br><br>So we really used that hand in hand. But it's also not working alone, so it's all about building communities. So I work very closely with we call it COLTT, center for online learning and teaching technology. They were having faculty blueprint their courses to go online. So every single faculty that was going through that, they said, "Hey open educational resource is a thing, the library can help you with that."<br><br>I also worked with our center for teaching excellence, which is our professional development resource for faculty so they can learn about teaching excellence. And I was like, "Can I do a three-month session?" And I started with OER 101 and then, okay, you kind of know about OER but how do you adopt it? And then I did another one that was okay, you know about it and how about open pedagogy and open licensing? <br><br>So I tiered it so faculty could drop into the session that was most relevant to them, and also for me to figure out what do my faculty need and what are my faculty the most interested? And oddly enough, they were all interested in open pedagogy and Creative Commons licensing, which I did not expect. I expected it to be all OER 101. So that also helped guide me to future professional development practices at my campus. <br><br>So it was doing a faculty survey without having to do a faculty survey. But those partnerships with other groups who already have the pulse on faculty was such a great help with getting the word out that I exist and I'm here for them as well and the library is here for you. So that's how we did it and I will share an infographic that I made for our faculty to make it appealing and appetizing about the services we provide. <br><br><strong>Shannon:</strong> So for me, I would second everything Gabby said, it's working with those campus partners that already have the pulse. In my current role, the OER librarian position was brand new to Boise State but the work of OER had already been happening across campus. So I've been plugged into some of those spaces pretty quickly in terms of regular meetings with folk that want to talk about OER. <br><br>In terms of like our ecampus center, they have for faculty that are revamping their online courses, it's part of their questionnaire are they interested in OER? And so if they check yes, then I have an email that I send saying, "Please reach out to me, this is what OER is. I'm happy to help." And there's a variance of support that the faculty do or don't ask for, like anything it's hit or miss. <br><br>And because they had run a grant cycle in I believe 2019, those were emails that I targeted as an outreach opportunity to let faculty that I knew were really engaged with OER already on campus know that I'm here. So that was a self-identified thing that just every opportunity I can think of where those folks exist, I'm here. And then, I did take the time in starting my new position too to setup meetings with people that were really active in the OER program whether that was internal to the library or external. <br><br>And then, I would say my previous role I was doing OER support as part of my scholarly communication librarian role. And so, a lot of times in that position it was being aware of moments where faculty were really coming to me for something else. And being aware of an opportunity to ask a question. So maybe they came to me because they just want to share their thing in IR.<br><br>And I started to realize I was seeing a set of things. And so, then being willing to pause and say, "Have you considered licensing these so that they can be OERs, is that something you're interested in?" And most of the time faculty would say yes. And so I think that's an interesting space to think about marketing and outreach to and maybe even having those conversations, I know a lot of us aren't full time OER dedicated positions. <br><br>So having those conversations with your partners in the library and spaces like that to what can we be listening for to help build those questions for faculty? Because they might not even be thinking of something as OER, that's really just a flip of a license, if they're willing to share it openly already. And then, I would say in the directed fieldwork experience I mentioned, and I have a chapter on that I can put in the chat, too. <br><br>That was a brand new program that I was part of helping launch. And we took a very dedicated approach to marketing. So we knew what was coming, we had the time to lay some foundation for ourselves. And then, we spent a whole semester I was the tagalong. There was the two faculty librarians that really did the bulk of the work. And we were doing presentations like I would say once a week approximately for a semester. <br><br>And it was trying to find spaces where faculty already exist. So maybe it's a departmental brown bag, it's a departmental meeting and we just need five or 10 minutes to let you know we're doing a thing, and we want to help you. Because it's easier to get in those spaces where you're not adding a meeting to faculty time of the time in my experience than it is to try to build something new in a lot of ways, too. <br><br>And I would agree with Gabby, I think the pandemic has really shifted this conversation and highlighted that OER is doing something that other learning materials aren't right now. <br><br><strong>Cheryl:</strong> I wholeheartedly agree with Shannon's suggestion to go to department meetings and plug into when faculty are already meeting. I've had far more luck with that than holding a workshop and hoping that faculty can make time to attend. The other approach that I've tried that I've been successful with is forming a faculty, well we call it a professional learning community. <br><br>Because we want it to be more than faculty for instructional designers and program managers having that regular time to meet and form a community of practice has been good too. And we've plugged into an existing system for faculty learning communities to offer that. As far as other ways to reach faculty, I've found it helpful to join targeted and strategic campus groups. <br><br>I'm a faculty senator, and I co-lead our taskforce on student success and so being connected with various campus partners who are working on affordability and basic needs issues has been useful. For example, when there was a push by our administrators to outsource our campus bookstore, as a campus senator I was able to quickly get on the faculty senate agenda with our bookstore and do a presentation on why this is a terrible idea. <br><br>And so far we've been able to fight it back. But having access to audiences where administrators and faculty who are movers and shakers can be useful. I've joined groups with instructional designers and participated in other learning communities where faculty are engaged and that's been a good way to make contacts and you get invited to other department meetings or other colleges to do presentations once word spreads. <br><br>I'll say that the other approach that I've taken, that I've found useful is to treat OER as one tool in our toolbox. And I like to start there because it's free, offers perpetual access, and it's customizable. But it doesn't work in all cases. And so, next we look at what library license resources that are also free we could use. And I really have to credit Steven Bell for this term a spectrum of affordability. <br><br>And I've started using that and framing that with faculty and administrators and it seems to help. Let's start with OER, then let's look at other free to use resources we can use from the library. And then, if we exhaust all of the free to use approaches, then let's look at inclusive access. And I do not demonize inclusive access, it's very widely used on my campus. And so, I present the pros and cons to it to faculty but it's a fact of life for me that our bookstore is campus owned. <br><br>They're a fabulous partner, I think they practice inclusive access very well in a student friendly way. And they avoid some of the pitfalls that we can see with inclusive access. But treating that as a tool in our toolbox I think has been helpful. So if a faculty member comes to me and says, "I want the library to buy this ebook." This happened this morning with the dean. <br><br>And I said, "I'm sorry, the publisher doesn't allow us to buy that license, and that happens 80% of the time or more. They just find it more profitable to sell, so let's look at other options." And being able to help faculty with a range of options rather than just saying, "No, sorry, there's no OER in that subject" has been helpful because it opens the door. And I share that OER is being released all the time. I direct them to the Open Textbook Library and Karen, is it over 1,000 titles yet?<br><br><strong>Karen:</strong> Almost. We're on the edge of our seat. <br><br><strong>Cheryl:</strong> So close. So close. The Pressbooks directory has been another place that I direct faculty because we have Pressbooks and we can customize the content for a U of A audience. So offering them a range of options that makes them feel very empowered, letting them know that they are the subject matter experts. I can point them to options, but it's really up to them to select what's best for their sequence, their teaching objectives. <br><br>And so, I'm a partner. I try not to make quality judgements on their behalf. They're best equipped to do that, I can point them to reviews in the Open Textbook Library or other resources. But I try not to say, "This is really high quality." So those are just some tips that I've found in working with faculty and administrators. <br><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> Thank you so much Cheryl, Shannon, and Gabby. Again, if folks have any questions, feel free to jump in in the chat or unmute your mic and ask. Something that I have been struck by because I'm seeing a theme across all three of your sections today about perhaps starting out as maybe the only person doing OER or thinking about OER open education on your campus and that too as the chat has been saying as well in a part time capacity. <br><br>Gabby, when you are describing your program and how much it has grown over the past two years, it sounded like you're also wearing so many different hats. Shannon, you talked about the different professional identities that you've had to work through and think about the intersections around. And Cheryl, you talked about OER heroes. And I am just curious as someone who might be perhaps in a part time position, working on OER or tasked with the OER problem or the OER initiative. <br><br>How would you suggest someone pause and sort of focus on the day? Focus on the place to start? Because it can be overwhelming to look around and to see everything from learning all the terms like inclusive access and the rest. To doing all of the various professional development opportunities or speaking to all of the stakeholders. What would the three of you would say would be the best place for someone in that position with limited time begin? <br><br><strong>Gabby:</strong> I will say that number one is be kind to yourself. There are so many exciting things and then you start like, "I want a grant program, I want this opportunity and I want this, and I want this." And then, you look at these other universities that have these amazing programs and then here you are, it's a piece of your job or you're only working part time. So one realize some of these colleges that you're seeing all of these savings have huge capacities. <br><br>Multiple people working on it, and it's not one lone little OER librarian who it's a part of. So for me, what really helped was I spent the first couple of months, and I was lucky, I don't know if everyone has this opportunity. But I really spent those first couple of months building my knowledge, so I could feel comfortable answering the questions. And also, building a lib guide or a website or anything so that way once you so start having faculty questions, you have a good place to send them. <br><br>So that was my focus, I was like, "I don't want faculty to start asking me all these questions, and then I don't have a resource for them to use." So that's how I started. I said, "Okay, I'm going to learn the things, I'm going to put them all in a resource, so then I can start my advocacy and presentations and starting getting my name out there." I didn't want it to catch wildfire, and everybody knows there's an open education librarian, but I didn't have any resources to direct faculty to. <br><br>So that's how I started. We already had a grant program in place that our scholarly communications librarian was running. So I didn't really have to focus on that, we didn't have a lib guide, we didn't have resources. Our attendance to our presentations were very, very low as in zero, which is also okay. It happens to all of us. And a piece of advice that I just reiterated is that it can be extremely intimidating being a part time person who is, and for me I was an elementary educator. <br><br>So I had never worked in an academic library. This was my first professional library job. It was extremely intimidating thinking about I'm going to get in front of an audience, they all have doctorates, they're all extremely educated people. And here I am, fresh out of my master's and I'm going to be an expert in this field. But then, I had to go back and tell myself I did put in the time, I put in the hours to learn this. <br><br>I may not have a doctorate in mathematics, but I do have the education about OER. And so, in that room, in that moment you are the expert and that's okay, too. Speaking to all of these people that are highly educated, so I gave that so that was my little mantra. You are the expert and it's okay and if I don't know the answer, again, there's a gigantic community that will help me find the answer with no shame attached to it. <br><br>So that's how I started. I started let me educate myself, let me build a website, something so faculty can go to and refer to. And then, start really spreading the word that we are here to help. So that's how we started. <br><br><strong>Shannon:</strong> I think I'd like to add onto Gabby's comments about being an expert in that space, too. That in my experience, a lot of those spaces that I'm in with faculty, they may be newcomers way more than you are. They might be asking you things and not have the understanding of something with what is OER. I had a question recently on can I still use references, like I normally would? <br><br>So there is some hesitation on what it means to share openly, I think, even though faculty want to do those things. So in that space I really come from a we're in this together, we're learning together. And that helps me I think center myself in that whole conversation. They are always the subject expert when I'm having those conversations with certain departments. <br><br>But that we can have the conversation on what barrier they might be facing in their head around something, or where they're stuck. And those questions form over time, and I completely agree with Gabby. You're not going to know until you work for a while. So start small, with a lib guide or a Google Doc, whatever you have at your disposal. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. <br><br>And I think a lot of times that really surprises faculty too when I talk about publishing content. You don't have to have Pressbooks. If you want to put it in a Word document, and I put it in an institutional repository with the right license, it's OER. And you get this lightbulb moment from faculty of oh I don't have to know all these things. And so, I think that's why I wanted to talk about the different layers of newcomer because it's coming from multiple spaces. <br><br>It's not just us, but the faculty as well. But yeah, I completely agree, start small, think about what your definition of these things in terms of affordability is as an institution, I find it helpful for myself to have those conversations with my supervisors, with my library. Where are we in certain conversations? What do we have the capacity for in terms of collection budgets and other things?<br><br>And try to be cognizant of that and build some boundaries for yourself early on, and let it grow rather than trying to do everything I think and then coming back, which I've also done, why did I do that? So I don't know if that's helpful, but that's the space I would come at it from. <br><br><strong>Cheryl: </strong>Yeah, when I was starting out and I was a liaison librarian who was also the OER coordinator. So it was very part time. I focused on adoptions rather than adaptations or OER creation. We are just barely getting into OER creation. We launched Pressbooks a couple of years ago, but we launched it as a self-service tool. And I loaded it up with resources on here's how you can teach yourself to use Pressbooks, because I don't have the bandwidth to do anything more than a learning community, really to help you. <br><br>Our OER webpages are very self-service oriented as well. We've got the search box for Oasis, which SUNY provides the code for. You can add that to your own lib guide or webpages. If you see anything on my webpages that you want to adapt, go for it. I've had people contact me and say, "Can I just copy?" "Yes, please. Don't reinvent the wheel." I link out to other people's far superior lib guides on OER. <br><br>Anita's for veterinary medicine, we have adapted so much, our liaison for vet med uses that all the time to add to her veterinary medicine because it stays on top of what's available free. So yeah, use what other people have already created. I started as far as adoptions with OpenStax content and targeting professors who were teaching subjects that the OpenStax content applied to. <br><br>And just saying, "Hey did you know that there are all of these free textbooks available with free instructor resources and free student resources? And if you want low-cost courseware, that's available too." And that addressed some of the concerns about there's not a textbook for me or I want the courseware, I want the self quizzing. Great, it's available. So starting there and really focusing on pilots. <br><br>Pilots seem less intimidating to all of us because if it flops, that's fine, only a few of us knew about it. We were piloting it. You learn from it, and you move on. It also seems to have a less heavy list for an instructor than oh my gosh, I have to convert my entire syllabus to this new textbook. No, just add an existing OER to pilot with your students, see if they like it. And if they do, great, incorporate more of it next semester. <br><br>So trying to find ways to ease into OER from our standpoint and faculty's standpoint, we are still in a soft rollout of Pressbooks since summer 2019 or '20. We still haven't heavily advertised it because I just don't have the bandwidth to support. So I work with the people who are really excited about it and that's plenty to keep me busy. So don't feel like you have to reach everybody or convince everybody. <br><br>There are faculty that I am never going to convince to switch to OER. That's okay, I don't have the capacity to deal with every faculty member on our campus. So find those who are really excited and can be faculty champions on your campus, and work with them and they'll spread the word to other faculty. So that's how you can start slow and build in a sustainable way. <br><br><strong>Karen:</strong> Thank you all so much for sharing your strategies. We're having a few questions coming in now as we're rounding out the three-quarter mark of our time together. So let's start with Melanie, who is also appreciative of everyone's advice. Melanie is a newcomer in another sense, she's a grad assistant in OER starting to look at post MLIS opportunities. Do any of you have recommendations for someone coming into the job market with an interest and background in OER and publishing? She's a former newspaper editor. <br><br><strong>Cheryl:</strong> I'm a former copyeditor of newspapers too. So this is a such a great integration of those skills. Yeah, oh my gosh, so many intersections, and you will find loads of opportunities to put those skills to work. I have volunteered as a copyeditor on the starter kit, working with Apurva and Avi on that. So the Rebus Community is continually offering opportunities to help out with projects. And I've found that those skills in copyediting are really highly desired in libraries. Yeah, it's a fantastic combination. <br><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> Gabby or Shannon, did you have any recommendations for Melanie about where to keep an eye out, as they near graduation. I don't know your pronouns Melanie. <br><br><strong>Shannon:</strong> I think keeping an eye on Live OER which is SPARC's email list serve would be a good one. I've been seeing more and more positions that are maybe project managers or things like that, not necessarily even housed within libraries that might be a great fit for that skillset and a passion for this work, too. <br><br>And I would just encourage you when I was first entering the job market for these kinds of positions, really having some online links and resources to the work you're doing now as a graduate assistant to highlight. I helped support this so that you can really show that work in your applications I think is really useful. <br><br><strong>Gabby:</strong> Yeah, and I will also add that multiple, there's CCC OER, OE Global, there's an entire list of list serves, and there's always jobs. I don't know. Off the top of my head I know there's one in Corpus Christi, right around the corner from me in Texas, who's looking for an open education librarian. So just keep your eye out. I see the jobs pop up regularly on the list serves, so being a part of that community would be I think very helpful. And that you have this background in editing is just a step above getting started in this area. <br><br><strong>Melanie:</strong> Thank you so much, I really appreciate it. Looking forward to learning more. <br><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> And I'm just looking through the chat, and it sounds like we have another question from Steven here. Gabby and Shannon, how did you engage your fellow librarians in the OER initiative? And did either of you feel pressure as newcomers, we're calling it, to take on the bulk of that OER outreach or engagement work on your own? <br><br><strong>Gabby:</strong> I know on my campus, we don't have how do you call the subject librarians? We just order, so there's nobody who is a liaison to departments. So I came in with the understanding that yeah, this was 100% on me. But we do have a fairly large research and instruction department, which is our largest department. So slowly but surely, I'm engaging the research and instruction librarians and teaching them the basics of OER. <br><br>So that way they can field those entry level questions, like they're interested in OER. I did a training on here's a question you might get or this is how it relates to your job and how you can then transition the conversation OER. They love their textbook, but they're unhappy with the price, what can you do? And encourage them to look into a library license material. Or they absolutely hate their textbook, what can you do? Talk to them about OER. <br><br>So I gave them that scenario-based questions, so that way when they're in their research and instruction role and it was like, "Listen for these key terms to help me." And then, if they also field the incoming questions, so it's like we built the lib guide and OER by subject guide. So giving them the capacity to say, "These are the steps you should do first before you send them to me."<br><br>And then, I did another interactive, if somebody's asking about redesigning their course, who do you send that to? Me. If somebody's asking for an OER of an entry level course, what do you do? Look at the lib guide and go to OpenStax and see if you can give that information. So that's how I've started to hand off some of that lower-level entry level questions to other departments, so that way we can focus more on our Pressbooks and those higher level activities. <br><br><strong>Shannon:</strong> I would say I've taken different approaches depending on the scenario. I often CC subject librarians when I'm interacting with their faculty or students. If I know what department somebody is in and they reach out and ask a question, even if I'm handling the entirety of everything, I'll often CC the subject librarian just to try to help build some of that these are the kinds of questions I'm seeing. <br><br>Or your faculty are interested, which has proven really useful. Because what I see sometimes when I get a referral hand off, then is I build in language that I use or the ways that I describe things being repurposed. And so, I think that's a way that I try to build that knowledge and comfort very slowly and at the level that subject librarians that I work with are interested in. <br><br>And I say that because I think it was Cheryl, you were talking about I maybe focused more on those that are excited. And I think that goes for my colleagues, too. There's often colleagues that are really excited and want to help you and will seek that out. And so then I may be more empowering of here's some stuff, I'm happy for you to do things. And with those that I'm not sure where they stand or maybe there's more hesitancy, I just want to include them in the process. <br><br>So they don't feel like I'm talking with their faculty without them part of that process. And so, if there's a thing that I don't want to speak to because it's a multi-layered question and part of it may be really falls back in that subject librarian space that I bring them into that. So that's really how I approach it, predominantly at this point. And I would say your subject librarians are the focused approach to get into those departmental meetings to get into email blips that go out when they send out at the beginning of a semester or the end of the semester. <br><br>I've sometimes used emails to subject librarians in advance of textbook deadlines. If you have time or you're sending an email, please remind faculty that this is the time to think about adopting OER. I've taken that approach, I've also what Gabby was talking about built some if you get a question about CC licenses, here's a great link. If you get this kind of a question, please use this just so that it's at their hands and they're not having to think about it quite so much. <br><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> Thank you, Shannon. And you just a little bit of Jody's question on when you're doing some of that faculty outreach or marketing perhaps at departmental meetings and you offered some really great advice about coordinating and collaborating with subject or liaison librarians, so that you don't end up having battles about each other's turf or areas of expertise. Cheryl, it seemed like you also had something to add to that question. So I'll invite you to share your thoughts. <br><br><strong>Cheryl:</strong> Sure, yeah. I have run into that with a few liaisons where they don't want me to contact their faculty. And I find that kind of gatekeeping not good for the library. And ideally, that's something that the administration will squash. But you may run into that. I've tried to do training for all of our liaisons, offer templates for them as was suggested. Definitely CCing them on all messaging. <br><br>Where I find that sometimes liaison's feelings get hurt is when faculty reach out to me before they reach out to the liaison. It's a process, I just keep CCing the liaison and explain that we're working on this together, and whoever can help them that's what our goal is to help the faculty member. So yeah, some of those hurt feelings and turf can come into play, but just keeping those lines of communication open and stressing that our goal is to help faculty and students. <br><br>This shouldn't be about turf, this shouldn't be about who they contact first, it's just about helping faculty and students. But really working hard with the liaisons and inviting them to all of the events, all of the online meetings and making sure that they feel included. <br><br><strong>Apurva:</strong> Thanks, Cheryl and I'm seeing in the chat a question that has been answered to some degree by participants and some of you, speakers. One from Katie. Katie wants your thoughts about bringing the bookstore into the conversation. And it seems at their institution the manager at the bookstore doesn't seem to be very receptive to working together. Do any of you three have suggestions? <br><br><strong>Cheryl:</strong> We've worked for many years to establish a really good relationship with our bookstore. It takes time, we started with a pilot project together that really built bonds and overcame some previous mistrust between the library and the bookstore that existed before I even started work there. Our bookstore doesn't make most of its money from textbooks. So for them, and we're campus owned, so that does make a difference whether it's campus owned or corporate. <br><br>But I know there are corporate bookstores that have been cooperative, so if you have any kind of campus wide taskforce or group that's working on affordability issues, looping the bookstore in as a member is really helpful. I would invite them to workshops, because they were fearful about the information I was sharing with faculty. And once they saw that I was including them as a partner and saying how great they were, and that faculty need to report their textbook adoptions and work with them.<br> <br>That eased their fears about what was being shared with faculty. So yeah, it's possible to develop a really strong partnership with your bookstore, it just takes time. <br><br><strong>Shannon:</strong> I think I would really add to that that it's so variable in my experience, depending on the messaging that the bookstore or campus store is getting from administration or whoever their supervisors are. Whether they have teeth in the game, in terms of making a profit very heavily in that way or whether they don't. I've worked in both scenarios, and I've had bookstores that are very like what can we do to help?<br><br>We love that you're doing this. And then, others that maybe are a little more concerned and in that space, I've had the best luck with really thinking through ways that maybe asking can I build in some OER definitions in the tools that you share with faculty. So it's a little clearer what these things mean as they're making choices in the adoption tools and things like that. That's not a great answer, but it does take time and it's so institution dependent in my experience. <br><br><strong>Karen:</strong> Thank you so much for all of your questions and engagement in the chat from both newcomers and more experienced participants alike. We are at the end of our time together, so please join me as you already are doing in thanking our guests, Cheryl, Shannon, and Gabby for sharing some strategies for being a newcomer, an eternal newcomer perhaps. So on behalf of the Open Education Network and the Rebus Community, we will sign off until we see you next month, at another Office Hours. Until then, farewell. <br><br>END OF VIDEO<br><br><br></div><h2>Chat Transcript</h2><div>00:23:06 Karen Lauritsen: Here’s more about the Certification in OER Librarianship: <a href="https://open.umn.edu/oen/oercert">https://open.umn.edu/oen/oercert</a><br>00:23:09 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Action Plan templates (Certificate in OER Librarianship), <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vhcdz6-HwNZN7t8Ka5u5HIun_H13_-LBjafC5UXDcrk/edit">https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vhcdz6-HwNZN7t8Ka5u5HIun_H13_-LBjafC5UXDcrk/edit</a><br>00:24:07 Anita Walz: Yay!!<br>00:29:09 Anita Walz: Completely agree about always asking when something doesn't make sense.<br>00:30:52 Gabby Hernandez: Yes Shannon to the endless tabs of articles I want to read!<br>00:31:07 Shannon Smith: At least we aren't alone, Gabby!<br>00:31:23 Gabby Hernandez: In the world of open never :)<br>00:31:43 Shannon Smith: Agree, Cheryl!<br>00:32:33 Shannon Smith: Great newer resource for inclusive access: <a href="https://www.inclusiveaccess.org/">https://www.inclusiveaccess.org/</a><br>00:33:00 Anne Marie Gruber (she/her/hers): PREACH<br>00:33:46 Karen Lauritsen: As Cheryl wraps up our guests’ stories, please consider what questions you’d like to ask or issues you’d like to discuss when we turn to you for conversation.<br>00:35:14 Shannon Smith: For me in library school (I graduated in 2019), it was a topic in only two courses: collection development and academic librarianship. I ended up setting up a directed fieldwork experience in order to spend more time with it.<br>00:36:20 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Keep an eye out for the upcoming "OER Starter Kit for Program Managers"!<br>00:36:33 Jody Bailey: ??<br>00:36:39 Stephanie Western: So excited for that kit!<br>00:36:40 Apurva Ashok: <a href="https://www1.rebus.community/#/project/184b2d08-16ad-421a-829c-58c2a8e3942e">https://www1.rebus.community/#/project/184b2d08-16ad-421a-829c-58c2a8e3942e</a><br>00:36:41 Gabby Hernandez: Yes Cheryl I can't wait to read that!<br>00:39:38 Anita Walz: I love that so many of the OER librarian positions are full time (or at least have moved that way.) So important to have bandwidth to build out your programs.<br>00:39:45 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: I've compiled an OER Toolkit that you're welcome to adapt: <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kQdhTy8WMjoAD2SqKuB_quSZwkfwVKHm/edit">https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kQdhTy8WMjoAD2SqKuB_quSZwkfwVKHm/edit</a><br>00:40:29 Stephanie Western: Thanks Gabby!<br>00:41:51 Gabby Hernandez: Here is my faculty flyer for more information our Textbook Affordability Project services. It's a template so feel free to use! <a href="https://www.canva.com/design/DAEr946z-nQ/N8glz-Hn5O7GoNZDDXlXKQ/view?utm_content=DAEr946z-nQ&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=sharebutton&mode=preview">https://www.canva.com/design/DAEr946z-nQ/N8glz-Hn5O7GoNZDDXlXKQ/view?utm_content=DAEr946z-nQ&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=sharebutton&mode=preview</a><br>00:42:12 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: We use a Check for Ebook Availability form, which can lead to OER help: <a href="https://new.library.arizona.edu/request/ebook-availability">https://new.library.arizona.edu/request/ebook-availability</a><br>00:43:26 Apurva Ashok: I really appreciate this bridging approach that Shannon is describing!<br>00:43:56 Stephanie Western: That's what I'm seeing as well, instructors who have basically created OER but don't realize it!<br>00:45:55 Shannon Smith: Make friends with your instructional designers for sure!<br>00:46:44 Gabby Hernandez: Learning Communities are the next on my list of things to do. I really want to start them on my campus.<br>00:46:51 Shannon Smith: Here's the book chapter I mentioned - there's a small section on marketing approach for a brand new program. <a href="https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/lib_facpubs/160/">https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/lib_facpubs/160/</a><br>00:49:19 Karen Lauritsen: Gabby, all, Cheryl speaks about learning communities related to OER publishing in this video: <a href="https://youtu.be/TtFhJPR41QE">https://youtu.be/TtFhJPR41QE</a><br>00:50:18 Gabby Hernandez: Thank you Karen!<br>00:50:29 Apurva Ashok: The Open Textbook Library: <a href="https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks">https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks</a> & Pressbooks Directory: <a href="https://pressbooks.directory/">https://pressbooks.directory/</a><br>00:51:04 Shannon Smith: Another awareness/marketing space I take is encouraging faculty to be transparent on their syllabus and with their students they are using OER. and why. For students, it's often just a link and they don't realize their instructors are making that choice for affordability.<br>00:51:30 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: And encouraging students to praise faculty for using OER in faculty reviews<br>00:52:23 Shannon Smith: +1<br>00:55:33 Anita Walz: +1, Gabby on spending time building your own knowledge and acknowledging that "you are the expert" on this topic.<br>00:56:00 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: And it's OK to say "I don't know the answer to that, but I'll look into it for you"<br>00:56:48 Melanie Smith (she/her): In every context, yes!<br>00:57:00 Melanie Smith (she/her): Thanks for all this wonderful advice, everyone. I’m a newcomer in another sense — a grad assistant in OER starting to look at post-MLIS opportunities. Do any of you have recommendations for someone coming into the job market with an interest and background in OER and publishing (former newspaper editor)?<br>00:57:27 Gabby Hernandez: Yes! Learning together with faculty throughout the process is so wonderful!<br>00:58:14 Gabby Hernandez: In my experience faculty have been very kind to learn tougher through this open journey.<br>00:58:21 Steven J. Bell: How did Gabby and Shannon engage their fellow librarians in the OER initiative? Did they feel pressure, as newcomers, to take on the bulk of the OER outreach/engagement work on their own?<br>00:59:16 Shannon Smith: Absolutely, Cheryl!<br>01:00:07 Gabby Hernandez: That is 100% what our new publishing model looks like! We also do not have the capacity to support faculty throughout the entire process.<br>01:00:09 Anita Walz: Oh, that's great, Cheryl! I'll add the URL<br>01:00:12 Apurva Ashok: Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS): <a href="https://oasis.geneseo.edu/">https://oasis.geneseo.edu/</a><br>01:00:25 Shannon Smith: I link out to this a lot as well: <a href="https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/oerstarterkit/">https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/oerstarterkit/</a><br>01:00:33 Anita Walz: Vet Med OER (and some other free things) <a href="https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/oerstarterkit/">https://guides.lib.vt.edu/oer/vetmed</a><br>01:00:41 Jody Bailey: Re: meeting faculty where they are (at departmental faculty meetings) and other faculty outreach/marketing, what is your advice about handling subject/liaison librarians' impulse to protect "their turf"?<br>01:01:16 Karen Lauritsen: I heart pilots<br>01:01:43 Anita Walz: +1, Karen<br>01:01:51 Shannon Smith: Or flip one assignment to open pedagogy - not necessarily the whole class and see what they think of the outcomes!<br>01:02:04 Apurva Ashok: I find my approach to open can be described as “experimental and forgiving”<br>01:02:15 Shannon Smith: I love that, Apurva.<br>01:02:43 Gabby Hernandez: Yes sustainable is key!<br>01:04:26 Apurva Ashok: LibOER: <a href="https://oerdigest.org/">https://oerdigest.org/</a><br>01:05:17 Lauren Ray: I’m so lucky to have Melanie working with me as our first Open Education Grad Assistant at the UW. She has moved our OER program forward in ways I wouldn’t have been able to do on my own.<br>01:05:26 Apurva Ashok: CCCOER Community Email: <a href="https://www.cccoer.org/community-email/">https://www.cccoer.org/community-email/</a><br>01:05:35 Apurva Ashok: Hear hear, Lauren!<br>01:06:03 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: @Melanie: Your skill in making content more understandable will be highly sought-after in web content work too (I do that too)<br>01:06:55 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: @Jody: Turf issues are real! I'd be happy to talk about that<br>01:07:33 Apurva Ashok: We’re coming to that question, Jody! Stay tuned…<br>01:08:38 Katie Beth Ryan (she/her): Thoughts about bringing the bookstore into the conversation? The manager does not seem to be receptive to working together.<br>01:08:57 Lauren Ray: That’s super useful to hear Gabby. I just did workshops with our subject librarians to re-up their familiarity with OER search tools but I love the idea of planting “questions you might get from faculty” with useful OER answers/solutions.<br>01:09:14 Anita Walz: @Jody, I usually invite liaison librarians to be as involved as they want to be. We have a shared understanding as well that any time I communicate with someone in their department I will copy them or let them know. It's not been a problem -- it's been more of a problem to try to get them engaged because everyone is so stretched with their existing work.<br>01:09:15 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: @Katie - keep trying! Invite them to events, suggest a joint project or presentation.<br>01:10:23 Anita Walz: @Katie +1 Cheryl -- I proposed a "learning exchange" where we met a few times over a semester to talk about what our respective work is and try to look for shared goals and opportunities to collaborate.<br>01:11:22 Jody Bailey: Great responses! And I agree that including subject librarians in email comms is effective, but when you're asking to speak at a faculty meeting, and subject libs may have a problem getting in front of their own faculty at a meeting -- this can be tricky.<br>01:12:11 Steven J. Bell: Thanks for your responses to my question. Sounds like you are navigating this well.<br>01:12:29 Gabby Hernandez: @Katie I am so sorry to hear this. We have been very lucky to have a cooperative bookstore. I make sure to share as much as I can with them to know we are partners and it's not a one sided relationship. I share any textbook adoption data that comes our way which they are always looking for.<br>01:14:27 Steven J. Bell: We are sending our first liaison librarian (someone not active in our OER initiatives) to the OEN open textbook librarian program. Hoping that over time every liaison librarian will be able to attend.<br>01:15:00 Jody Bailey: That's great, Steven!<br>01:15:02 Gabby Hernandez: @Lauren I have had multiple information session with our R&I team which were not very successful so I flipped the classroom and made things super interactive and it seemed to stick. I wanted to draw clear lines on what they could do to help and what I do.<br>01:15:24 Stephanie Western: I need to sign off, thank you so much to everyone for sharing! I'm only 3 months into this role and I appreciate the generosity and enthusiasm of this community as I find my feet!<br>01:15:57 Jody Bailey: I also need to head out -- thanks for a great conversation!<br>01:16:06 Jody Bailey: ????????<br>01:16:14 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Thanks for coming!<br>01:16:19 Apurva Ashok: Thank you!<br>01:16:22 Lauren Ray: Thanks @Gabby! I do some interactive stuff with our librarians in my workshops (quizzing them around OER/OA differences and having them search and share in OER databases and those interactive parts are always the most successful.<br>01:16:32 Katie Beth Ryan (she/her): Thanks, these are helpful!<br>01:16:52 Gabby Hernandez: @Lauren feel free to email me and I will share my questions! gabrielle.hernandez@utrgv.edu<br>01:16:54 Apurva Ashok: A big thank you to everyone, and especially Gabby, Shannon, and Cheryl!<br>01:17:08 Steven J. Bell: Thanks for organizing this and thanks to the speakers</div>admin