Estimated reading time for this article:
37
minutes.
Speakers:
Apurva: 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.
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.
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.
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.
Karen: 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.
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.
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.
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.
Apurva: 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.
Rama: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sam: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Karen: 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.
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.
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.
Rama: 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.
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?
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.”
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.
Karen: 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.
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?
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.
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?
Rama: 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
Apurva: 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?
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?
Sam: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Apurva: 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.
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?
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.
Rama: 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Sam: 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.
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.
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.
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?
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?”
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
Karen: 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.
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?
Apurva: 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?
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.
Rama: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sam: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?”
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?
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.
Apurva: 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.
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.
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.
END OF VIDEO
Share this post:
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)
- Sam Arungwa (Assistant Professor & Extension Specialist; Director, Utah Prevention Science (UPSc) Institute; Utah State University)
- Rama Kaba-Demanin (Program Lead, Open Library, eCampus Ontario)
Apurva: 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.
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.
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.
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.
Karen: 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.
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.
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.
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.
Apurva: 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.
Rama: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sam: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Karen: 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.
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.
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.
Rama: 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.
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?
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.”
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.
Karen: 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.
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?
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.
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?
Rama: 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
Apurva: 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?
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?
Sam: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Apurva: 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.
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?
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.
Rama: 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Sam: 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.
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.
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.
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?
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?”
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
Karen: 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.
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?
Apurva: 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?
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.
Rama: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sam: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?”
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?
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.
Apurva: 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.
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.
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.
END OF VIDEO
Chat Transcript
00:16:24 Hallie Clawson: Hi everyone! I'm Hallie Clawson from California State University Dominguez Hills in Carson, CA
00:17:14 Hallie Clawson: We are in the homeland of the Tongva people
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.
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.
00:20:54 Apurva Ashok: We're thrilled to have you!
00:23:01 Karen Lauritsen: So exciting!
00:30:48 Apurva Ashok: Feel free to start posting any questions in the chat!
00:31:30 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): https://docs.google.com/document/d/15lcmxVtuy8mX090BIH5INYZMYDV-IgDAaJgUwuR1cTA/edit
00:31:46 Apurva Ashok: Thanks, Rama!
00:32:11 Kelly Smith, she/her: Rama, thank you! We really needed something like this.
00:32:42 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): It does need to be updated as it primarily refers to Pressbooks.
00:32:57 Kelly Smith, she/her: It's a great template though
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!
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.
00:38:06 Mélanie Brunet: Oh! That's great!
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?
00:40:27 Apurva Ashok: Recording will be here: https://www.rebus.community/t/office-hours-what-happens-when-my-author-leaves-policies-to-support-oer/6985
00:40:38 Kelly Smith, she/her: Thanks, Apurva!
00:40:39 Apurva Ashok: You can also continue the conversation asynchronously in this space!
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.
00:42:22 RSaunders: Sam, do students generate case studies as part of their section, or might that be a separate project?
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?
00:45:17 Kelly Smith, she/her: I wonder if something like that "trigger warnings" could be addressed in the metadata/bibliographic info page?
00:45:50 Kelly Smith, she/her: Or a "note from the publisher" or something like that.
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?
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.
00:53:09 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): Thank you @Kaitlin.
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.
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!
01:00:46 Apurva Ashok: Thanks, Mary!
01:00:48 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): Thanks Mary! I always forget about Slack! ?
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: https://openoregon.org/federal-grant-award/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=federal-grant-award
01:03:55 Apurva Ashok: Thanks for the info, Phoebe. Sounds like an exciting project
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!
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.
01:05:17 Apurva Ashok: "We shouldn't feel the need to do it alone” - I love that, Sam!
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: https://oerandbeyond.org/replicable-federal-oer-grant-proposal-model/
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 :)
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: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform
01:13:10 Karen Lauritsen: Thank you Rama and Sam! And everyone for joining us.
01:13:24 Phoebe Daurio (she/her): Thank you Sam and Rama so much!
01:13:33 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): Thank you for having me! And thank you Sam for the great insight.
01:13:42 Sam Arungwa: Thank you everyone....what a joy to be with you!!!
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!
01:13:55 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): And so many quotes from Sam! ?
01:13:55 Karen Lauritsen: Yes!
01:14:12 Rumyana Hristova: Thank you!
01:14:13 Mary Gu (she/her) | eCampusOntario: Thank you everyone!
01:14:15 Mélanie Brunet: Thank you!
01:14:15 Karen Lauritsen: Farewell.
00:17:14 Hallie Clawson: We are in the homeland of the Tongva people
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.
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.
00:20:54 Apurva Ashok: We're thrilled to have you!
00:23:01 Karen Lauritsen: So exciting!
00:30:48 Apurva Ashok: Feel free to start posting any questions in the chat!
00:31:30 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): https://docs.google.com/document/d/15lcmxVtuy8mX090BIH5INYZMYDV-IgDAaJgUwuR1cTA/edit
00:31:46 Apurva Ashok: Thanks, Rama!
00:32:11 Kelly Smith, she/her: Rama, thank you! We really needed something like this.
00:32:42 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): It does need to be updated as it primarily refers to Pressbooks.
00:32:57 Kelly Smith, she/her: It's a great template though
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!
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.
00:38:06 Mélanie Brunet: Oh! That's great!
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?
00:40:27 Apurva Ashok: Recording will be here: https://www.rebus.community/t/office-hours-what-happens-when-my-author-leaves-policies-to-support-oer/6985
00:40:38 Kelly Smith, she/her: Thanks, Apurva!
00:40:39 Apurva Ashok: You can also continue the conversation asynchronously in this space!
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.
00:42:22 RSaunders: Sam, do students generate case studies as part of their section, or might that be a separate project?
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?
00:45:17 Kelly Smith, she/her: I wonder if something like that "trigger warnings" could be addressed in the metadata/bibliographic info page?
00:45:50 Kelly Smith, she/her: Or a "note from the publisher" or something like that.
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?
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.
00:53:09 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): Thank you @Kaitlin.
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.
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!
01:00:46 Apurva Ashok: Thanks, Mary!
01:00:48 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): Thanks Mary! I always forget about Slack! ?
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: https://openoregon.org/federal-grant-award/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=federal-grant-award
01:03:55 Apurva Ashok: Thanks for the info, Phoebe. Sounds like an exciting project
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!
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.
01:05:17 Apurva Ashok: "We shouldn't feel the need to do it alone” - I love that, Sam!
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: https://oerandbeyond.org/replicable-federal-oer-grant-proposal-model/
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 :)
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: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform
01:13:10 Karen Lauritsen: Thank you Rama and Sam! And everyone for joining us.
01:13:24 Phoebe Daurio (she/her): Thank you Sam and Rama so much!
01:13:33 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): Thank you for having me! And thank you Sam for the great insight.
01:13:42 Sam Arungwa: Thank you everyone....what a joy to be with you!!!
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!
01:13:55 Rama Kaba-Demanin (she/her): And so many quotes from Sam! ?
01:13:55 Karen Lauritsen: Yes!
01:14:12 Rumyana Hristova: Thank you!
01:14:13 Mary Gu (she/her) | eCampusOntario: Thank you everyone!
01:14:15 Mélanie Brunet: Thank you!
01:14:15 Karen Lauritsen: Farewell.
Share this post: