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Speakers:
Apurva: 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.
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.
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.
Karen: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Apurva: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Karen: 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.
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.
Apurva: Congratulations, Tonia. And Kaitlin, I saw you unmute, so please jump in.
Kaitlin: 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.
Apurva: 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.
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.
Jim: 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.
Karen: Nice.
Apurva: I think we’ll need an Office Hours dedicated to hidden talents of the OER librarian fields soon.
Karen: That’s a good topic.
Phoebe: 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.
Karen: 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.
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.
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?
Okay, super. I don't know, Apurva, I'm getting antsy. I'm excited about the trivia.
Apurva: 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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm seeing folks are coming in right now. Cheryl, Jonathan, welcome. You have come right on time for trivia.
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.
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?
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.
Guest: This is tricky.
Apurva: What are you leaning towards?
Guest: I don't know, did anyone here attend any of these?
Guest: Yeah, I remember the Invisible Labor because I attended that one from a bus to Salem to get my train. (Laughter)
Karen: That is dedication.
Guest: Were there a lot of people there?
Guest: Yeah, being on transportation in between cities within Oregon was Invisible Labor.
Apurva: 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?
Leigh: 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.
Apurva: 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.
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.
Karen: 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.
Apurva: 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.
Karen: Sure.
Apurva: How many did we get for that particular session?
Karen: That was, hold on, I have to move all my little chat windows.
Apurva: I like that everybody side stepped Getting Open Textbooks into Print, because it did have the highest attendance, but maybe not the highest RSVPs.
Karen: There were 95.
Apurva: 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.
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.
Karen: 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.
Guest: I was wondering about the dates, so that's interesting to hear that.
Karen: Yeah.
Apurva: 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.
Okay, moving on to question three, is everybody ready?
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?
Karen: 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.
Guest: That would have given it to me. And now, I'm like I should show you my answer.
Apurva: 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?
Karen: It was February 6th, 2017.
Apurva: 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.
Karen: 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.
Apurva: 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.
Karen: No. And no going to the YouTube page.
Apurva: Well, the guesses are really working well for you, Sue.
Karen: They are working well for you.
Apurva: 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.
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.
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.
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.
Guest: I had to make myself guess and not try to go to Twitter.
Karen: It's tempting.
Guest: Right.
Apurva: 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?
All right, Leigh, did you manage to get that? It was also OTN at the time, yes, so the name changed.
Karen: True.
Apurva: And Jim notes even a blind squirrel can find a nut and that's been their strategy, so good going, Jim.
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?
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…
Karen: Before we go, please take a moment…
Apurva: 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.
Karen: Yes, there was a hint earlier in the session, a giveaway even.
Guest: Yeah, I had not actually been to the end of any of them, but I'm pretty sure.
Apurva: 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.
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.
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.
Karen: Congratulations.
Apurva: The #OEROfficeHourstriviachampion.
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.
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.
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.
Karen: 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.
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.
"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.
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.
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...
Kaitlin: 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.
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...
Apurva: 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.
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?
Karen: 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.
Apurva: 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.
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.
Karen: 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.
And so, in the input form that we have shared throughout this session and every session, that's another field.
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…
Apurva: Including yourself.
Karen: Including yourself, absolutely. So that we can hear as many voices as possible. Cheryl's…
Apurva: 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.
Karen: I like that, no audition required.
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.
Apurva: 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?
Kaitlin: 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.
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.
Apurva: 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.
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.
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
Karen: 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.
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.
Apurva: Thanks everybody, bye bye.
Karen: Bye.
END OF VIDEO
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Watch the video recording 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.
Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please contact Tonia.
Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please contact Tonia.
Audio Transcript
Speakers:
- Apurva Ashok (Director of Open Education, The Rebus Foundation)
- Karen Lauritsen (Publishing Director, Open Education Network)
Apurva: 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.
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.
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.
Karen: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Apurva: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Karen: 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.
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.
Apurva: Congratulations, Tonia. And Kaitlin, I saw you unmute, so please jump in.
Kaitlin: 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.
Apurva: 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.
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.
Jim: 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.
Karen: Nice.
Apurva: I think we’ll need an Office Hours dedicated to hidden talents of the OER librarian fields soon.
Karen: That’s a good topic.
Phoebe: 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.
Karen: 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.
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.
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?
Okay, super. I don't know, Apurva, I'm getting antsy. I'm excited about the trivia.
Apurva: 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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm seeing folks are coming in right now. Cheryl, Jonathan, welcome. You have come right on time for trivia.
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.
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?
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.
Guest: This is tricky.
Apurva: What are you leaning towards?
Guest: I don't know, did anyone here attend any of these?
Guest: Yeah, I remember the Invisible Labor because I attended that one from a bus to Salem to get my train. (Laughter)
Karen: That is dedication.
Guest: Were there a lot of people there?
Guest: Yeah, being on transportation in between cities within Oregon was Invisible Labor.
Apurva: 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?
Leigh: 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.
Apurva: 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.
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.
Karen: 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.
Apurva: 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.
Karen: Sure.
Apurva: How many did we get for that particular session?
Karen: That was, hold on, I have to move all my little chat windows.
Apurva: I like that everybody side stepped Getting Open Textbooks into Print, because it did have the highest attendance, but maybe not the highest RSVPs.
Karen: There were 95.
Apurva: 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.
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.
Karen: 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.
Guest: I was wondering about the dates, so that's interesting to hear that.
Karen: Yeah.
Apurva: 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.
Okay, moving on to question three, is everybody ready?
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?
Karen: 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.
Guest: That would have given it to me. And now, I'm like I should show you my answer.
Apurva: 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?
Karen: It was February 6th, 2017.
Apurva: 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.
Karen: 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.
Apurva: 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.
Karen: No. And no going to the YouTube page.
Apurva: Well, the guesses are really working well for you, Sue.
Karen: They are working well for you.
Apurva: 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.
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.
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.
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.
Guest: I had to make myself guess and not try to go to Twitter.
Karen: It's tempting.
Guest: Right.
Apurva: 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?
All right, Leigh, did you manage to get that? It was also OTN at the time, yes, so the name changed.
Karen: True.
Apurva: And Jim notes even a blind squirrel can find a nut and that's been their strategy, so good going, Jim.
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?
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…
Karen: Before we go, please take a moment…
Apurva: 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.
Karen: Yes, there was a hint earlier in the session, a giveaway even.
Guest: Yeah, I had not actually been to the end of any of them, but I'm pretty sure.
Apurva: 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.
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.
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.
Karen: Congratulations.
Apurva: The #OEROfficeHourstriviachampion.
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.
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.
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.
Karen: 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.
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.
"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.
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.
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...
Kaitlin: 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.
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...
Apurva: 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.
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?
Karen: 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.
Apurva: 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.
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.
Karen: 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.
And so, in the input form that we have shared throughout this session and every session, that's another field.
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…
Apurva: Including yourself.
Karen: Including yourself, absolutely. So that we can hear as many voices as possible. Cheryl's…
Apurva: 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.
Karen: I like that, no audition required.
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.
Apurva: 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?
Kaitlin: 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.
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.
Apurva: 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.
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.
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
Karen: 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.
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.
Apurva: Thanks everybody, bye bye.
Karen: Bye.
END OF VIDEO
Chat Transcript
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 :)
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.
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.
00:12:11 Amy Hofer (she/her): Time has flown!
00:12:40 Karen Lauritsen: !
00:14:08 Karen Lauritsen: That's my cue: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform
00:14:17 Karen Lauritsen: We're still happy to get your suggestions for future session.
00:14:20 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: I just like lurking and learning ;)
00:15:27 Tonia J Johnson: My introduction to all things open education! 🙂
00:16:39 Tonia J Johnson: @Kaitlin, +1
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.
00:16:59 Jim S: 1st time visitor. I have been the OER Librarian at the Community College of RI since 2017
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 :)
00:19:44 Phoebe Daurio (she/her): That sounds so neat Susan!
00:20:09 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: Not yet it just got accepted yesterday
00:20:22 Karen Lauritsen: Congrats on the news!
00:20:58 Apurva Ashok: https://www.rebus.community/t/office-hours-oerofficehours-celebrates-5-years-bring-your-stories/7096
00:22:01 Apurva Ashok: https://www.menti.com/ca69p1o2ph
00:22:15 Karen Lauritsen: Welcome!
00:22:30 Apurva Ashok: https://www.menti.com/ca69p1o2ph
00:22:59 Karen Lauritsen: Super competitive segment of our OH celebration is about to begin…! 😉
00:24:45 Kaitlin Schilling: Amy, that's dedication!
00:24:47 Leigh KP: Invisible Labour was one of my favourites, regardless of its attendance numbers
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!
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 🙂
00:28:23 Kaitlin Schilling: The Part 2 of Instructional Design and OER was one of my favourites!
00:28:41 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Woohoo - 0 for 2 :)
00:31:47 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: It's all been guesses here!!!
00:32:04 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: I have always Been A Good Test Taker
00:32:49 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Making a comeback :)
00:33:05 Apurva Ashok: https://www.menti.com/ca69p1o2ph
00:34:49 Leigh KP: Phew!
00:35:19 Leigh KP: It was also OTN at the time
00:35:20 Leigh KP: I did
00:35:25 Karen Lauritsen: True
00:36:32 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: This is the only one I didn't have to guess on
00:36:39 Karen Lauritsen: Yay!
00:37:44 Karen Lauritsen: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform
00:43:42 Kaitlin Schilling: https://www.rebus.community/t/office-hours-what-happens-when-my-author-leaves-policies-to-support-oer/6985
00:44:10 Amy Hofer (she/her): Sam's session! I should watch that. I was so sorry to miss it.
00:44:18 Kaitlin Schilling: It was so good, Amy!
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
00:45:19 Amy Hofer (she/her): I'm always glad to see when Oregon folks are invited speakers. We have amazing talent here.
00:45:35 Karen Lauritsen: Takeaway: https://www.printme1.com/
00:46:13 Karen Lauritsen: We're always looking for new speakers!
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.
00:47:17 Kaitlin Schilling: @Cheryl +1!
00:49:55 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: Don't everybody talk at once
00:50:43 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: YES beyond academia and textbooks
00:50:53 Leigh KP: +1
00:52:05 Karen Lauritsen: More trivia! 🌈
00:52:30 Kaitlin Schilling: #OEROfficeHours
00:52:42 Karen Lauritsen: klaurits@umn.edu
00:52:51 Leigh KP: 🥂to 56 more
00:52:53 Amy Hofer (she/her): You know I love an email
00:53:16 John McLeod (he/him): Keep up the great work! Thank you!
00:53:17 Amy Hofer (she/her): THank you!
00:53:18 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): onwards and upwards!
00:53:20 Kaitlin Schilling: contact@rebus.community https://www.rebus.community/c/news-discussion-events
00:53:25 Leigh KP: Thank you Rebus and OEN!!!
00:53:35 Phoebe Daurio (she/her): Thank you Karen and Apurva!
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.
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.
00:12:11 Amy Hofer (she/her): Time has flown!
00:12:40 Karen Lauritsen: !
00:14:08 Karen Lauritsen: That's my cue: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform
00:14:17 Karen Lauritsen: We're still happy to get your suggestions for future session.
00:14:20 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: I just like lurking and learning ;)
00:15:27 Tonia J Johnson: My introduction to all things open education! 🙂
00:16:39 Tonia J Johnson: @Kaitlin, +1
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.
00:16:59 Jim S: 1st time visitor. I have been the OER Librarian at the Community College of RI since 2017
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 :)
00:19:44 Phoebe Daurio (she/her): That sounds so neat Susan!
00:20:09 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: Not yet it just got accepted yesterday
00:20:22 Karen Lauritsen: Congrats on the news!
00:20:58 Apurva Ashok: https://www.rebus.community/t/office-hours-oerofficehours-celebrates-5-years-bring-your-stories/7096
00:22:01 Apurva Ashok: https://www.menti.com/ca69p1o2ph
00:22:15 Karen Lauritsen: Welcome!
00:22:30 Apurva Ashok: https://www.menti.com/ca69p1o2ph
00:22:59 Karen Lauritsen: Super competitive segment of our OH celebration is about to begin…! 😉
00:24:45 Kaitlin Schilling: Amy, that's dedication!
00:24:47 Leigh KP: Invisible Labour was one of my favourites, regardless of its attendance numbers
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!
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 🙂
00:28:23 Kaitlin Schilling: The Part 2 of Instructional Design and OER was one of my favourites!
00:28:41 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Woohoo - 0 for 2 :)
00:31:47 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: It's all been guesses here!!!
00:32:04 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: I have always Been A Good Test Taker
00:32:49 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Making a comeback :)
00:33:05 Apurva Ashok: https://www.menti.com/ca69p1o2ph
00:34:49 Leigh KP: Phew!
00:35:19 Leigh KP: It was also OTN at the time
00:35:20 Leigh KP: I did
00:35:25 Karen Lauritsen: True
00:36:32 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: This is the only one I didn't have to guess on
00:36:39 Karen Lauritsen: Yay!
00:37:44 Karen Lauritsen: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform
00:43:42 Kaitlin Schilling: https://www.rebus.community/t/office-hours-what-happens-when-my-author-leaves-policies-to-support-oer/6985
00:44:10 Amy Hofer (she/her): Sam's session! I should watch that. I was so sorry to miss it.
00:44:18 Kaitlin Schilling: It was so good, Amy!
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
00:45:19 Amy Hofer (she/her): I'm always glad to see when Oregon folks are invited speakers. We have amazing talent here.
00:45:35 Karen Lauritsen: Takeaway: https://www.printme1.com/
00:46:13 Karen Lauritsen: We're always looking for new speakers!
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.
00:47:17 Kaitlin Schilling: @Cheryl +1!
00:49:55 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: Don't everybody talk at once
00:50:43 Susan Jones (she/her) @geonz: YES beyond academia and textbooks
00:50:53 Leigh KP: +1
00:52:05 Karen Lauritsen: More trivia! 🌈
00:52:30 Kaitlin Schilling: #OEROfficeHours
00:52:42 Karen Lauritsen: klaurits@umn.edu
00:52:51 Leigh KP: 🥂to 56 more
00:52:53 Amy Hofer (she/her): You know I love an email
00:53:16 John McLeod (he/him): Keep up the great work! Thank you!
00:53:17 Amy Hofer (she/her): THank you!
00:53:18 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): onwards and upwards!
00:53:20 Kaitlin Schilling: contact@rebus.community https://www.rebus.community/c/news-discussion-events
00:53:25 Leigh KP: Thank you Rebus and OEN!!!
00:53:35 Phoebe Daurio (she/her): Thank you Karen and Apurva!
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