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Facilitators:
Apurva: Hello everybody. Welcome to another Office Hours, our final Office Hours in fact. My name is Apurva Ashok, as many of you know. And I am the Assistant Director and Director of open education at the Rebus Foundation. Rebus is a Canadian charity that helps educational institutions build human capacity in OER publishing and open education more generally through professional development, through the sharing and offering of free resources and more.
I use she/her/hers pronouns and I am joining you today from Toronto, from the traditional territories of many nations here, including the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, the Wendat peoples and the Mississaugas of the First Credit. I am grateful to be joining you all from this space and might encourage those of us who are here to share your own territorial acknowledgements in the chat.
And I am joined today by my colleague, Kaitlin Schilling, who is based out of Winnipeg, in Manitoba. And I’ll pass it over to Karen to introduce herself, the OEN and the OEN team.
Karen: Thank you, Apurva. Hi everybody, I am Karen Lauritsen, publishing Director with the Open Education Network, which is based at the University of Minnesota. We are a community of professionals who are working together to make higher education more open and equitable. I am based remotely in the central coast of California, which is the ancestral and current home of the Northern Chumash.
And I am joined by my colleagues, Barb Thees, who is Director of community engagement at the OEN and Tonia Johnson, who is the digital content strategist at the OEN. And this is a bittersweet session, as we’ve all used that word a few times together already today. This is year five of Office Hours and our final 59th session, we almost made it to that nice round 60 number.
And so, normally at this time I might say, “Here is how Office Hours works, if you haven’t been before.” Which seems a little silly because today’s Office Hours is a little bit different than typical. And I’m delighted to see more people joining us as we get started here. So today, since we’ve done our introductions at least with the Office Hours team, we invite all of you to say hello to one another.
We have a couple of questions for you to get started and then we thought we would reflect, not just only on the Office Hours experience that we’ve shared together many of us once a month for the last few years, but also on the open education community more broadly. Where we were five years ago as a community, and even in our own sort of individual professional lives and careers, where we think we might be five years from now and so on. So Apurva, have I left anything out?
Apurva: Well one member of I guess Office Hours team who isn’t here today many of you might not have seen on our calls over the past five years but has been a really vital member has been our transcriptionist, Mei, who actually is based out of the UK. So she is someone who works tirelessly to make sure that all of the captions for the recorded sessions are accurate, including all of the right terminology around open textbook OER publishing or institutions from our various speakers’ affiliations around the world.
So we just also wanted to give a shoutout to Mei, who has been with the Office Hours team in some ways for the past five years. So, thank you, Mei, for what you are doing and I’m sure you’ll be working on this session.
Karen: Hi Mei, thank you.
Apurva: No, I think you captured the rest pretty clearly, Karen, so would be great if some of you felt comfortable unmuting or just dropping into the chat where you’re joining from and if you can actually remember your first Office Hours. Have you been here as a speaker or an attendee? And Karen, do you remember yours, while folks are thinking?
Karen: Yes, well, I was chuckling at Cheryl’s note in the chat about how OER can appear in automatic transcriptions, it’s so true. So I was looking at our YouTube playlist and trying to jog my memory because I am the old hat here, since the first Office Hours session. I have been a co-host for most of them. And while I can’t claim to remember the session truly, I will say that looking at what is currently number 54 in our YouTube playlist called Recruiting Open Textbook Authors.
I feel like this topic in itself kind of illustrates how far we’ve come. I don’t normally get this question that much anymore in terms of like oh, how do we attract faculty to our program to writing? I mean certainly there is still a lot of issues there in terms of pay and release time and commitment involved and what’s involved in making an open textbook. But the growth has been so phenomenal, that there really is I think, and correct me if I’m wrong please, but I see a lot of momentum.
A lot of faculty who are stepping forward and saying, “I want to do this.” And a lot of colleagues who have been down that path before and can lend a hand to people who might be just emerging on that path. So I do sort of more generally just remember getting the conversation started, being really impressed with how willing people are to share with one another, which you know, we hear time and again, and is truly one of the most I think rewarding and gratifying things about working together in this space.
And I’m also struck by sort of perennial many of the issues are when looking at the YouTube playlist. We’re still working on making things more accessible, we’re still working on finding a smooth workflow. Just recently Amy and I were talking about plans for keeping textbooks up to date, which was a really early session. It looks like number 15. So there is just a lot of things that we’re continuing to work on. So that’s kind of a non-answer, Apurva, but just some reflections on some of the early days. What about you?
Apurva: Thank you, it’s helpful to hear where it all started. I recall attending my first Office Hours in May of 2017. I had just joined Rebus as a coop student, while I was completing my publishing degree. And the first session I attended was about accessibility workflows in open education. And I remember Josie from BCcampus, Josie Gray, Christa Greer, who was at the University of Washington at the time, Michelle Read.
And I think Jess Mitchell from the IDRC, Inclusive Design Research Center, here in Toronto talking about remediation and the hours spent remediating STEM textbooks in particular. My eyes were wide open, sort of taking it all in, learning about the term accessibility for the first time and five years later, it’s such a central part of my workflow. So I always found the Office Hours sessions to be great learning opportunities for me.
So thinking back to when I was an intern at the Foundation, to now, it was really a great chance to learn from experts who have been integrating these practices into their workflows for so long. And it sounds like some of you have been here for most of the haul as well from 2018 onwards. Did any of you want to share some of your first sessions or memories of your first sessions, like Karen? Jonathan says, “The first one on his calendar was from Feb 2018.” Go ahead, Amy, I see your hand up as well.
Amy: Yeah, I’m Amy Hofer, Statewide Open Education Program Director with Open Oregon Education Resources and I don’t remember my first Office Hours, but my most memorable one was about invisible labor in open ed. And I was joining from a bus on the way to Salem to like talk to some committee or testify at a hearing or something like that, and it was just very apropos. And I was like, “I’m just joining by chat, I can’t talk, I’m on a bus.” So yeah, thanks for all the timely topics.
Apurva: Yeah, and shoutout to our speakers for that session, Esperanza, Melissa, Ali and Monica as well, Monica Brown. Yeah, many people have joined Office Hours from strange commutes, locations, buses, cars, airports, I think as well. That was a good one. Anyone else who can remember their first Office Hours?
Karen: Jonathan, does your calendar have any further details?
Jonathan: It says Barriers to Open Textbook Adoption, common questions and concerns explained, which sounds like it’s right in the core of what we’ve been doing for a lot of the time.
Karen: That was a word I was going to use, too, core. And I think there’s a lot of you who’ve attended both as speaker and as guest over the years. Any thoughts on kind of what, if any, relationship between those two roles sort of informed your what am I trying to ask? Was it different being a speaker versus an attendee? Was it kind of the same? Did one prepare you for the other? Any thoughts on that?
Cheryl: I’ll say that I prefer being an attendee to being a speaker. You know, I’ve been doing this for a long time, but I still don’t feel like an expert. And so, it feels awkward to be in that ooh, I’m an expert, I’m a speaker role. And I feel like I learned so much more from other people who were doing this work.
Karen: Thanks, Cheryl. Jonathan?
Jonathan: I don’t know, so a pet peeve that I have is about how the internet seems to have divided people from like the writers and the readers, you know? I mean, Facebook is a horrible platform but it’s there because people want to be writers, they want to put things on the web, they want to make things, they want to share things. And you know, somehow the ability to be authors in this incredible new communication medium has somehow been kind of taken away from us.
Look at the implosion of Twitter going on right now, people just write HTML everyone could put whatever the hell they wanted on any website, you know, you can get one for $35 from Reclaim Hosting. And so, in a certain sense I think the fact that and from my perspective, unlike Cheryl, I feel perfectly, I’m happy in both worlds in this community, here and in other aspects of community being both an author and a listener and a speaker and a reader, all at the same time.
It's because this is a community that believes everyone should have all those roles, and I have felt incredibly supported in those roles. And so, many of the people here have been my teachers and mentors in so many of those roles, and I feel I probably said things over the years that have been useful to them, too. Because it’s a community that wants everyone to be able to be speaking and acting, which is what we’re here for after all.
So I guess I disagree with Cheryl, a little bit oddly, because I respect everything she says, but that I feel like it’s a great example of both sides are great, so I don’t even remember when I was a speaker or when I was not.
Karen: Sorry, I was just going to say, that’s one of the things I think we’ve tried to foster in Office Hours and throughout the community is that sense of everybody can contribute something. We all have our own experience and our own context, but there is something about your name is in the description, you are going to give a five-minute intro that for a variety of reasons some people are more or less comfortable with.
But as someone else who was new to open education and started co-hosting Office Hours as I was learning, it was a very welcoming and comfortable environment to not know things, and to be able to say, “Who here has done this before? Or tried this? Or tried something similar? And can maybe guess?” And I really appreciate that and I see, elle, you have your hand up.
elle: There I am, okay.
Karen: Here you are.
elle: Hello everyone, apologies if you hear construction in the background, I’m coming at you from a hotel. So speaking of buses, planes, trains and automobiles and also speaking of hats, I am missing the captain’s hat. So I just wanted to make a quick shoutout for that. But I really think the idea of authorship and collaborator really is an important one, right? When we’re working on this open process because I have done some of the speaking roles and being the subject matter expert.
But I find it’s actually more helpful speaking to the work everyone has done on this platform to use it as a hey, there are some good people who are doing work out here. You’re not just siloed in your one little section, right? Or you’re not the only one working on this particular text or this particular challenge, right? There’s a lot of I still think you know, harkening back to the accessibility pieces, which I am fully versed in, I would say.
But even then, you know, I feel like it’s a better collaboration and a better process for workflow, especially when you’re connecting with other authors to be in that co-work space, right? Yes, of course, I might know the intricacies of WCAG or you know, the little tips and tweaks to make Adobe PDFs work just a little bit better. But that’s just what I bring to the table, what everyone else brings is so much more.
And we can get so much more done, I think, if we think about blending those barriers, or crossing those borders for lack of a better metaphor. I think everybody should get both their author, creator and their participant passport checked and stamped more often. And you know, I think there is a new thing, speaking of Twitter, there is a new thing that was big on Twitter just recently in some circles about AI and text generation and things about that kind of creation when we’re thinking about open pedagogy.
And having a platform to have those discussions, what are the benefits, especially in like assistive technology for those types of things, but what are the pedagogical opportunity costs that students might be missing out, and having a place to have that open dialogue I think is a great space. So I want to thank everyone on the call here but also everyone who’s participated in open Office Hours.
And I always point folks towards your direction, that’s what I was trying to get at, is like a resource for collaboration. Not just my particular sections, right? So thanks everyone. Pleasure to be a part.
Karen: Thank you, elle.
Apurva: Thank you. Kaitlin, I see you have a hand up as well, so I’ll pass it over to you.
Kaitlin: I thought it might be easier saying it instead of typing. Yeah, I think I said in the chat I couldn’t quite remember my first Office Hours, but one thing I have loved over the years is being newer to open felt really overwhelming, because it’s such a big space and there’s so much to know and there’s all these people in different places all over the world.
But starting to come to Office Hours, and having such a safe space to be vulnerable, whether that’s with my emotions or my struggles in open or just me as a human, or just not really knowing all of the answers because none of us do. And the warm welcome Office Hours has given and everybody who has attended Office Hours, I’ve learned so much, I’ve grown so much as like a person, but also as like an educator.
And it’s been really great, and I’ve learned a lot and I think that’s such a testament to the open community to be able to have these rich conversations together and really share that hey, I have a gap in knowledge here or I really have expertise here. So being able to collaborate and support one another has just been one of my favorite things. It’s definitely made this work feel less lonely over the years, so very much appreciated.
Apurva: Thank you, and I also just wanted to pick up as elle was saying earlier, when they talked about the collaborative effort this has been. I think from our organization names Rebus Community and the Open Education Network, that those were the key values that we wanted to stay true to with the Office Hours series was it’s not just a place where people can come and share their stories and workflows and processes.
But it’s really a space for people to come together, where speaker and participant and attendee and author or faculty member and designer really can share more about their roles and sort of come into a space where hopefully they’re all welcome to speak or listen. And it sounds like that’s what these sessions have been for many of you. I also maybe wanted to do a little bit of reflecting and ask people where do you think the open education community was five years ago versus now?
You’ve heard from me, when I started attending Office Hours sessions, I was a coop student, so I’ve had a lot of reflecting on my own journey, versus where are folks now and how do you feel the needs of the community have changed in the five years since? We’re still talking about accessibility for instance, but are we doing it in different ways? And there was a question in the chat about you know, will we continue to offer something similar in the future?
And this is really our chance to take the temperature of those of you who are in the room today. We have a survey going out to anyone who isn’t able to be here synchronously live.
Karen: Sometimes too when thinking about kind of those bigger questions, maybe it’s helpful to think about even your own sort of job description five years ago versus today or your feelings five years ago at work versus today. Have there been any major shifts or changes that come to mind? Kaitlin.
Kaitlin: I think for me one thing I’ve noticed definitely more of an emphasis on DEI, however, at a deeper level. And I think the conversation around what open pedagogy is, what open education is has gone from hey, this is a great chance to make free resources for students and save students money. And it’s really gotten, there’s been critical lenses applied to it, there’s been so many different lenses and perspectives brought to the conversation around what open education is and how it can be used in different ways.
And I think that’s been the really nice thing is kind of getting deeper and deeper into these conversations to ensure we’re not replicating the same types of systems over, but we’re really challenging each other and ourselves to really push beyond those systems and create something new that’s going to benefit everyone more than student savings. So I think that’s one thing I’ve noticed over the years.
Karen: Yeah, same.
Apurva: And Amy says so too, that resonates with her experience as well. And I see thumbs up from folks who are on the call. Have any of your individual needs changed? And in the survey that Karen has linked to in the chat, one of our respondents has noted a need for just more time. More time in their role to attend sessions, but also be fully active in deep conversations, so that’s what they’re sort of seeing as a shift from five years ago to now.
If any of you are using this as you chance to state some individual needs or organizational needs based on where you work and in your roles, feel free to do so. And I might tap on Barb or Karen to share what you observed in your exchanges with the OEN community members and in conversations and dialogue you’ve had with them. What are you hearing as sort of the pulse of your membership at this time?
Barb: All right, Karen.
Karen: I saw you unmute.
Barb: Yes, I would just agree with what has been shared already, and then just kind of the excitement around maybe the different stages in the evolution of programs where it started with adoptions and now we’re kind of going into newer frontiers, diving deeper into the open pedagogy, into the publishing, into the curation, editing kind of thing. So a lot of members are talking about where they once were and where they’re headed and kind of both the excitement around that, that they’re gaining that traction.
But then the what does that mean when we’re all kind of in this new frontier together? And it’s been fun to, I think, coming back to the spaces like this are so important in the unknown so that’s what I would say. Karen, do you have any thoughts?
Karen: Yeah, thank you, Barb. I am so glad you said that because I just went right to thinking about you know, the size of the OEN five years ago versus how much it has grown now. And sort of that as a snapshot or a portrait of the momentum that we have, but you’re absolutely right. And what Barb said speaks to the strategic planning that the OEN undertook in the last year or so, just really thinking about people’s journeys in open education landscape, in creating and supporting the adoption and use of OER.
And building on that and thinking about some of the other parts of this conversation. We’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about how to support those institutions and people at those institutions who don’t have the same resources as other better funded institutions, for example. And so, we’ve been developing new infrastructure, we have a couple of pilots going, or rather one pilot underway, another sort of we’re on the eve of rolling out that pilot.
And that’s with Manifold and Ketida which is the new name for Editoria. And so thinking about how we can offer infrastructure and tools for people who want to be publishing and ultimately supporting anyone who wants to be creating OER. Because that adds to the vision that we all share, which is you know, being able to create a more equitable higher education by providing more resources, engaging students in the creation of those resources.
And so, really just exploring those different pathways in addition to staying focused I think on affordability issues, which continue to be so real in where we’re all at today. And what about with Rebus?
Apurva: I like that you used the word infrastructure, because we also are thinking along those terms. And I think in the early days a lot of the work we were doing with our community was to understand things at perhaps a more grassroots level and really break down the puzzle pieces of OER publishing or open initiatives more generally. I think more and more so now we’re sort of seeing a need to invest in people as infrastructure.
And really support the capacity building and sustainability work of the people who are holding up the programs and again making sure that open is not just something that is a category or small portion of a single librarian’s portfolio, but is instead something that is woven into the greater fabric of the post-secondary system, whether it’s at a single institution, whether it’s at a two-year college, a four-year college, a system of universities and colleges or really embedded in policy.
So I think we’re seeing the need now for more support to develop that type of expertise. And there’s actually a question in the chat where I’m scrolling back up here, because folks are talking faster than I can scroll. What sources for faculty training as a cohort or sharing of experiences would you all suggest? Because there seems to be an interest at Rumyana’s university, which is Evangel University.
Are there options and models that you would encourage they look at? Okay, Cheryl is dropping a ton of resources in the chat, did you want to speak to any of them in particular, especially the learning communities and how they’ve been effective at your campus, Cheryl?
Cheryl: Sure. Sorry, I’m feeling under the weather, so I’m going to stay off camera, but I’ll try to talk. Yeah, the learning community is a bit more effective than trying to program say workshops. We have a lot of trouble unless we have the budget to pay to attend OEN style workshops, we have a lot of trouble getting people to show up. So forming a learning community and a community of practice has surfaced people that we weren’t aware were interested in OER.
And we’ve been able to develop those resources and a lot of our textbook authors have come out of those learning communities. So yeah, I think as far as faculty resources for training about OER, I would recommend starting with the OER starter kit that Abby released, and then the workbook that she and Stacey worked on. For program managers, I recommend the starter kit for program managers that Apurva was involved in. But for faculty, I would start with the other starter kits.
Apurva: And I might add to that and say it really depends on the type of training you want your faculty to have, because we’ve had this conversation I think in a previous Office Hours about the number of professional development opportunities there are in the open field, whether it’s about licensing, about publishing, about technical training that faculty want. So really being able to have those conversations with those faculty members to gauge their interest.
And then seeing as Cheryl was suggesting whether there are smaller learning communities that you could create so faculty have the opportunity to jump in and learn about whatever their area of interest is rather than only having one option and nothing else. I think the fabulous thing about the open education community in general is we have a ton of options. We have something for everybody here. Book clubs sound like a lot of fun, I know the CCC OER has done a few successful runs of different book clubs, as have other organizations.
Cheryl: I’d also recommend, sorry, recommend looking at what infrastructure already exists on your campus, as far as learning communities, or are there book clubs. With our learning community we were able to piggyback on existing faculty learning communities that had support from another unit as far as marketing and outreach. So that really lightened our loads. But there may be existing groups that you can partner with.
And that’s been helpful too in terms of other outreach and training instead of me offering a standalone workshop going to say the interest group for instructional designers and being invited to do a presentation to that specific group.
Apurva: And tapping into existing networks in your region, I know the Midwestern higher education compact hosts a lot of free webinars and has professional development opportunities. So if the infrastructure as Cheryl was suggesting does not exist at Evangel, you can still look to these other networks within your state or within the region that you’re in and tap into hopefully their opportunities, their larger budgets, larger networks, or folks.
All right, and we’re doing a lot of future thinking right now, which I like. Jonathan, you have a question in the chat, you ask if there are so many professional development opportunities and so many people interested in this, could this be a sign that we should be doing more of this type of training or education around open in more standard parts, like in grad schools, professional schools, like medicine and law? Or even in undergraduate education in some way?
I think so, if you’ve ever spoken to me about post-secondary education, you would hear that I would love for teacher training and awareness of OER to become a standard part of doctoral programs, so it’s not just research focused, but teacher focused as well. I think Rebus and OEN have been singing the praises of the train the trainer model and train the future teachers model.
And as elle was saying earlier on in the chat, involving student representation to co-create OER can be tremendously powerful and we’ve seen how student advocates can really help further this cause in so many ways, so looking at ways to bring undergraduate student representation as well into our conversations is pretty critical. See resounding definitelys in the chat as well.
Karen: I can’t stop thinking, Barb, about the climate group that you’re involved with also at the College of Education and Human Development at the U. It’s related to Jonathan’s comment, I wonder if you just want to share a little bit about it because I think it’s a nice potential model for doing what he’s describing in the chat.
Barb: Yes, and now I’m reading Jonathan’s comment, I’m like trying to drop things in the chat.
Karen: Sorry, you’re doing so much right now, yeah.
Barb: Yes, okay. So I love making these connections as well, and it’s been really fun, like Karen said. I’m volunteering with the Center for Climate Literacy at the University of Minnesota. And I just got involved because I’m interested in climate, right? But it’s been fun to see what’s happening around climate action in the open community. And I’ve kind of brought that to the conversation with the Center for Climate Literacy, who’s now connecting with some of those open education initiatives.
And just generally around open science sharing and that kind of thing. So bridging that gap I think is something that we don’t talk about a ton. But I really appreciate you bringing that up, Jonathan, because it’s really exciting when that happens. And I think there is a lot of energy around that and particularly from folks who are not engaging with open in terms of textbooks on their campus. So it’s fun to like get them through that path and who even knows what that could then lead to, circling back to what we’re all working on here.
Karen: Thanks, Barb. And then Amy is saying how interesting it is, she’s been wondering whether Oregon’s next targeted pathway course development project should relate to climate. Yeah, that sounds great for sure. It’s all interconnected. Well, we’ve talked a lot about what we imagine or think the next five years could look like, as more visions occur to you or just even keywords about what that could feel like or look like, feel free to drop them in the chat along with any other resources connected to the conversation.
We did want to share with you the Office Hours archive, which Tonia did at the beginning of the call, so that you can always reminisce. We’re not far away in terms of the transcripts and the videos that are there and accessible for you. And then, I also shared earlier the survey that we have been doing about Office Hours. Cheryl, I see your hand is up. Please. Or maybe that was left over?
Cheryl: Sorry, my brain is not functioning either. I’m having trouble typing and unmuting. I was just going to share a little bit from the textbook affordability conference that I attended last week. And Steven Temple and I did a panel session that was moderated by Bob from University of Wisconsin Stout, Butterfield. And on library bookstore partnerships, so there were a lot of interesting things that came up about OER at the conference.
More about OER than I’d ever heard at that conference before which is primarily attended by bookstore people and vendors, a few librarians. One of the things they talked about was the growth of the equitable access model, which was kind of an expansion of inclusive access and UC Davis came up with the name equitable access, and it’s basically an all-in-one price. And at the conference we really heard about how they expect a lot of growth in that model.
And I know on my campus we’re working on rolling out a version of it that’s not called equitable access, but it leverages OER and library licensed materials to lower the overall costs for students. So as a community, I think that’s really something for us to pay attention to and really step up working with bookstores to partner on these. But there were other interesting trends related to OER as well, like what’s the future of a book.
And they had a futurist talk about the growth in artificial intelligence and augmented reality and virtual reality and at what point are we going to cease you know looking at a book as something very specific with chapters. And yeah, there was also emphasis on the sustainability trend that you were mentioning in terms of advocating for digital textbooks and how that’s been resonating with students especially, that it doesn’t use print, it doesn’t have to shipped.
And the sustainability angle in relation to digital textbooks was not one I had really seen until this past year, but UC Davis is heavily using it to promote their equitable access program. So I think that’s something to watch for, too.
Karen: Thanks, Cheryl, that’s really interesting and it is a good reminder to stay abreast of the conversations and the strategies that publishers and others are using to be in this space. I was looking for the right phrase. Yeah, I see more conversation here about what you were talking about. There is a lot of investment in this Apurva is saying, just yesterday there was a call for proposals from Google as they plan to invest $25 million in AI projects, which is related to what elle was saying earlier.
Also open science is a great connection to open. How can we develop or support sustainable repositories that include lab and data notebooks as well as the machine learning models alongside the abstract article? Absolutely. Thank you, Cheryl. Are there other things as we kind of round the corner on our hour here? Looking to the future, concerns you might have or excitement you might have.
Apurva: Go ahead, Kaitlin.
Kaitlin: Just because I looked at the Center for Climate Literacy and that blew my mind, and now I’m just like, my head is spinning with ideas. I think one thing about open I would love to see going forward something I think about a lot is one, the digital inequity that a lot of people face. A lot of people don’t have access to digital resources, so how does that intersect with open?
But also, using OER in post-secondary or higher education, there’s still that gap of access, how many people can’t access post-secondary education and how open educational resources can be used to increase literacy in various topics, such as climate outside of like a traditional academy. So thank you, Barb, for sharing that because I’m now just like oh cool, what other ideas can we get spinning? So that’s one thing I think of, like how can we push this for bigger change, in the biggest sense possible?
Karen: Thank you, Kaitlin. I’m also really excited about that project, it’s fun to see it developing. And Amy and others, if you work on climate related projects, love to hear about them going forward. Amy also would like to hear more about what the OEN and Rebus are thinking in terms of professional development. So I can start and then Barb, if I could hand it to you since we’ve been talking a little bit about some professional development plans in our group and over the last few weeks.
So we are going to have professional development and communities around the different tools and infrastructure that we’re developing, so for example, the Manifold pilot has a group. And we monthly talk about some of the issues in Manifold, how it can be leveraged for open pedagogy, how you use the tool, everything in between. We’ll be doing the same with [Cotita 0:44:17] and then, the overarching umbrella with the publishing cooperative, we’re currently forming an advisory group.
And so that group is going to inform the type of professional development opportunities that we offer based on what’s happening in the community. We do have a monthly teatime in the publishing cooperative that the advisory group may decide to change, continue, expand. And then there are broader OEN initiatives underway, outside of sort of just the publishing space. And so, with that maybe Barb, if you want to say a few words?
Barb: Sure. And we’re in the throes of developing what this looks like. Amy was in a focus group yesterday and shared some really great feedback, so I just want to give a shoutout to her. But one of the pieces kind of on a more broad scale, different topics within the OEN is we’re looking at expanding workshops that we’re offering, both on a number of different topics.
Again, OER adoptions like we’ve always done with our faculty workshop that I dropped in the chat earlier. But then looking at engaging faculty through a similar workshop but different topics, like introduction to open ped, introduction to publishing in some of these other pathways that we talked about. And what we’re really excited about in addition to that is offering it more at scale, so that we can offer some general workshop at the OEN ourselves.
Talking about the common good and some of these members of our organization, our community that have more limited resources or capacity to be running things on their own that we can help provide that at a larger scale where faculty can then take part if there aren’t actually those professional development opportunities happening locally at their institution. So a little glimpse, we’re working on that now, talking to members to help refine what that’s going to look like and how that could best serve our community. So stay tuned for more.
Apurva: Exciting things in progress there. On the Rebus side, folks are welcome to participate in our textbook success program. So this is a professional development package not just for faculty, but also for instructional designers, technologists, librarians, administrators. Really anyone looking to build capacity for their open education publishing initiatives at their institutions.
Jonathan and Kaitlin are both alumni and facilitators. So we’re really trying to adopt that model that so many great organizations in open are doing, letting folks who have tried and tested experience doing this work teach the next set that are coming in to try it out again for the first time. We also host webinars again on a variety of topics related to open education, as well as offer consulting to folks.
We are actually in the midst of a strategic planning process and would love to hear more from all of you about what you would like more of. Amy and Rumyana, I appreciated in your comments in the chat how in some ways you even see the Office Hours as a professional development opportunity whether it’s to come and speak as a guest speaker or come and listen and connect and network just as a participant and attendee.
And as we’re sort of thinking ahead to the next five years or more, what would you like to see more of? That was one of our survey questions, we’re happy to read some responses from there, but would love to hear from you all. In the future you’d like more… Cheryl says her faculty OER authors would love to hear how to do peer review on OER. Others have talked about wanting papers that talk more about processes, more formal presentations, where they can learn.
Internally on the Rebus team some ideas have been around just podcasts for instance, to highlight newcomer voices to OER or often unheard voices who are working in the open education process. Mentorship opportunities for people again who are new to the field. More webinar series like this one, around open publishing.
Karen: And these are areas too where we can imagine the OEN and Rebus Community collaborating in the future, maybe there are you know, peer review for OER guidelines or methodologies that we can co-develop. This is on a list of topics that I’ve heard listening to the community over the last several months, thinking about the advisory group. So there’s definitely more to come. Tools to support workflow and project management.
Apurva: And everyone’s favorite methodologies.
Karen: Yes. Tools are a funny thing, they’re so valuable, but I also feel like they’re sort of mythological in their promise. If we only had the right tool, it would somehow be easy. But I think it’ll always be a little hard. We do have the open textbook builder that is a part of Ketida, which is designed to help support authors in thinking about and planning their book before they start writing.
So that’s an element, I think, of the production process that we hope to support with this tool and with some workshops around the tool. But then, we need tools that will remind people in a friendly way, nudging tools, writing tools. Yes, Amy, so in terms of the Ketida pilot, we are on the edge of our seat, and basically the Coko Foundation said that they needed to make just a few more updates to make sure that Ketida was stable before we started the pilot.
And so, last we talked it should be ready in January or February and so as soon as it’s ready, I have the documentation ready. I even have a draft email to the OEN. So really excited about getting that started. elle, I have a group of authors I introduced to Discord now, and they love it. It depends on how the tool fits and extends your thinking instead of creating just another tech barrier. Please. I was just going to say we keep looking at Discord, talking about Discord, that’s really great to hear.
Apurva: Yeah, a lot of the conversations we have at Rebus and with folks around tools is similar to our conversations we have just around licensing. What do you want to do? What are you hoping this will achieve? Who are the people involved? What are the accommodations that folks might need? And then go from there rather than here’s this tool that I like, now let me try to fit all of my wishes and desires into this single pre-selected tool, but rather we work the other way round.
So what do you want to achieve, let’s survey the landscape and go from there. And be willing to change if the tool doesn’t meet our needs or maybe some of their privacy concerns or data sharing policies change. Again, we’re always careful of a human first approach to the tool, so it’s not just selecting the tool for the sake of but selecting the tool that’ll work as elle is saying for the humans, rather than creating a technology barrier.
Karen: I love being reminded of that. I still so often will try to like cram my thinking or my needs into a tool and I’m like, why is this so terrible? And then someone will remind me, is this the right tool? Like why don’t you think about what you want and need to do first? It’s like oh right. Okay, well, we spent an hour together, these are really great signposts in terms of what we’re still dealing with, where we want to go, what we might be able to do together. Thank you so much for your contributions.
Apurva: Yes, thank you all and I appreciate everyone who’s filled out the surveys so far. A few people have noted how even though they haven’t been able to attend as many Office Hours sessions over the year and years that they wanted to, it’s always been an affirmation for them about the work being done in OER.
Just to know that these sessions are happening, that people are sharing their documents and resources and ideas and that this is licensed for the world to access freely afterwards. So thank you all. Do we have any final questions for our group, Karen? Or are we on to our bye for nows?
Karen: I think we’re onto our see you laters. We did have one question kind of at the ready that we can close with, which was when we see one another again, what do we hope will be different or the same within open education? Maybe we’ll chew on that. And I am confident that we will all see one another again soon. But in the meantime, thank you again, it is always lovely to come together and I’m looking forward to doing it again sometime soon.
I’d also like to thank Apurva and Kaitlin and the Rebus Community for partnering with us on this, it’s been such a joy and pleasure. And even though a monthly series is a lot to organize, it has always gone so smoothly. So it’s really been fun and thank you.
Apurva: Thank you, too. And I might ask Kaitlin or Tonia to perhaps drop into the chat a link to the Office Hours archives on YouTube where people can access all 58 plus one recordings, as well as links to our respective blogs where we have audio and chat transcripts and for some sessions even summaries of our long conversations over the past five years.
And I’ll also extend my thank you back to you, Karen, the OEN team, as well as everybody else who has just helped grow this community and been so willing to come, learn, share and connect. So thank you all as Karen said, this is a see you later. Hopefully you will hear more from Rebus and OEN respectively, but also collaboratively down the road.
And I hope we get to meet in person someday, and if not, you’ll find us on our various social media websites forum list serves and online. So take care everybody and thank you for joining this hour.
Karen: Farewell.
Apurva: Bye.
END OF VIDEO
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Watch the video recording of this Office Hours session, or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.
Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please contact Tonia.
Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please contact Tonia.
Audio Transcript
Facilitators:
- Apurva Ashok (Director of Open Education, The Rebus Foundation)
- Karen Lauritsen (Publishing Director, Open Education Network)
Apurva: Hello everybody. Welcome to another Office Hours, our final Office Hours in fact. My name is Apurva Ashok, as many of you know. And I am the Assistant Director and Director of open education at the Rebus Foundation. Rebus is a Canadian charity that helps educational institutions build human capacity in OER publishing and open education more generally through professional development, through the sharing and offering of free resources and more.
I use she/her/hers pronouns and I am joining you today from Toronto, from the traditional territories of many nations here, including the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, the Wendat peoples and the Mississaugas of the First Credit. I am grateful to be joining you all from this space and might encourage those of us who are here to share your own territorial acknowledgements in the chat.
And I am joined today by my colleague, Kaitlin Schilling, who is based out of Winnipeg, in Manitoba. And I’ll pass it over to Karen to introduce herself, the OEN and the OEN team.
Karen: Thank you, Apurva. Hi everybody, I am Karen Lauritsen, publishing Director with the Open Education Network, which is based at the University of Minnesota. We are a community of professionals who are working together to make higher education more open and equitable. I am based remotely in the central coast of California, which is the ancestral and current home of the Northern Chumash.
And I am joined by my colleagues, Barb Thees, who is Director of community engagement at the OEN and Tonia Johnson, who is the digital content strategist at the OEN. And this is a bittersweet session, as we’ve all used that word a few times together already today. This is year five of Office Hours and our final 59th session, we almost made it to that nice round 60 number.
And so, normally at this time I might say, “Here is how Office Hours works, if you haven’t been before.” Which seems a little silly because today’s Office Hours is a little bit different than typical. And I’m delighted to see more people joining us as we get started here. So today, since we’ve done our introductions at least with the Office Hours team, we invite all of you to say hello to one another.
We have a couple of questions for you to get started and then we thought we would reflect, not just only on the Office Hours experience that we’ve shared together many of us once a month for the last few years, but also on the open education community more broadly. Where we were five years ago as a community, and even in our own sort of individual professional lives and careers, where we think we might be five years from now and so on. So Apurva, have I left anything out?
Apurva: Well one member of I guess Office Hours team who isn’t here today many of you might not have seen on our calls over the past five years but has been a really vital member has been our transcriptionist, Mei, who actually is based out of the UK. So she is someone who works tirelessly to make sure that all of the captions for the recorded sessions are accurate, including all of the right terminology around open textbook OER publishing or institutions from our various speakers’ affiliations around the world.
So we just also wanted to give a shoutout to Mei, who has been with the Office Hours team in some ways for the past five years. So, thank you, Mei, for what you are doing and I’m sure you’ll be working on this session.
Karen: Hi Mei, thank you.
Apurva: No, I think you captured the rest pretty clearly, Karen, so would be great if some of you felt comfortable unmuting or just dropping into the chat where you’re joining from and if you can actually remember your first Office Hours. Have you been here as a speaker or an attendee? And Karen, do you remember yours, while folks are thinking?
Karen: Yes, well, I was chuckling at Cheryl’s note in the chat about how OER can appear in automatic transcriptions, it’s so true. So I was looking at our YouTube playlist and trying to jog my memory because I am the old hat here, since the first Office Hours session. I have been a co-host for most of them. And while I can’t claim to remember the session truly, I will say that looking at what is currently number 54 in our YouTube playlist called Recruiting Open Textbook Authors.
I feel like this topic in itself kind of illustrates how far we’ve come. I don’t normally get this question that much anymore in terms of like oh, how do we attract faculty to our program to writing? I mean certainly there is still a lot of issues there in terms of pay and release time and commitment involved and what’s involved in making an open textbook. But the growth has been so phenomenal, that there really is I think, and correct me if I’m wrong please, but I see a lot of momentum.
A lot of faculty who are stepping forward and saying, “I want to do this.” And a lot of colleagues who have been down that path before and can lend a hand to people who might be just emerging on that path. So I do sort of more generally just remember getting the conversation started, being really impressed with how willing people are to share with one another, which you know, we hear time and again, and is truly one of the most I think rewarding and gratifying things about working together in this space.
And I’m also struck by sort of perennial many of the issues are when looking at the YouTube playlist. We’re still working on making things more accessible, we’re still working on finding a smooth workflow. Just recently Amy and I were talking about plans for keeping textbooks up to date, which was a really early session. It looks like number 15. So there is just a lot of things that we’re continuing to work on. So that’s kind of a non-answer, Apurva, but just some reflections on some of the early days. What about you?
Apurva: Thank you, it’s helpful to hear where it all started. I recall attending my first Office Hours in May of 2017. I had just joined Rebus as a coop student, while I was completing my publishing degree. And the first session I attended was about accessibility workflows in open education. And I remember Josie from BCcampus, Josie Gray, Christa Greer, who was at the University of Washington at the time, Michelle Read.
And I think Jess Mitchell from the IDRC, Inclusive Design Research Center, here in Toronto talking about remediation and the hours spent remediating STEM textbooks in particular. My eyes were wide open, sort of taking it all in, learning about the term accessibility for the first time and five years later, it’s such a central part of my workflow. So I always found the Office Hours sessions to be great learning opportunities for me.
So thinking back to when I was an intern at the Foundation, to now, it was really a great chance to learn from experts who have been integrating these practices into their workflows for so long. And it sounds like some of you have been here for most of the haul as well from 2018 onwards. Did any of you want to share some of your first sessions or memories of your first sessions, like Karen? Jonathan says, “The first one on his calendar was from Feb 2018.” Go ahead, Amy, I see your hand up as well.
Amy: Yeah, I’m Amy Hofer, Statewide Open Education Program Director with Open Oregon Education Resources and I don’t remember my first Office Hours, but my most memorable one was about invisible labor in open ed. And I was joining from a bus on the way to Salem to like talk to some committee or testify at a hearing or something like that, and it was just very apropos. And I was like, “I’m just joining by chat, I can’t talk, I’m on a bus.” So yeah, thanks for all the timely topics.
Apurva: Yeah, and shoutout to our speakers for that session, Esperanza, Melissa, Ali and Monica as well, Monica Brown. Yeah, many people have joined Office Hours from strange commutes, locations, buses, cars, airports, I think as well. That was a good one. Anyone else who can remember their first Office Hours?
Karen: Jonathan, does your calendar have any further details?
Jonathan: It says Barriers to Open Textbook Adoption, common questions and concerns explained, which sounds like it’s right in the core of what we’ve been doing for a lot of the time.
Karen: That was a word I was going to use, too, core. And I think there’s a lot of you who’ve attended both as speaker and as guest over the years. Any thoughts on kind of what, if any, relationship between those two roles sort of informed your what am I trying to ask? Was it different being a speaker versus an attendee? Was it kind of the same? Did one prepare you for the other? Any thoughts on that?
Cheryl: I’ll say that I prefer being an attendee to being a speaker. You know, I’ve been doing this for a long time, but I still don’t feel like an expert. And so, it feels awkward to be in that ooh, I’m an expert, I’m a speaker role. And I feel like I learned so much more from other people who were doing this work.
Karen: Thanks, Cheryl. Jonathan?
Jonathan: I don’t know, so a pet peeve that I have is about how the internet seems to have divided people from like the writers and the readers, you know? I mean, Facebook is a horrible platform but it’s there because people want to be writers, they want to put things on the web, they want to make things, they want to share things. And you know, somehow the ability to be authors in this incredible new communication medium has somehow been kind of taken away from us.
Look at the implosion of Twitter going on right now, people just write HTML everyone could put whatever the hell they wanted on any website, you know, you can get one for $35 from Reclaim Hosting. And so, in a certain sense I think the fact that and from my perspective, unlike Cheryl, I feel perfectly, I’m happy in both worlds in this community, here and in other aspects of community being both an author and a listener and a speaker and a reader, all at the same time.
It's because this is a community that believes everyone should have all those roles, and I have felt incredibly supported in those roles. And so, many of the people here have been my teachers and mentors in so many of those roles, and I feel I probably said things over the years that have been useful to them, too. Because it’s a community that wants everyone to be able to be speaking and acting, which is what we’re here for after all.
So I guess I disagree with Cheryl, a little bit oddly, because I respect everything she says, but that I feel like it’s a great example of both sides are great, so I don’t even remember when I was a speaker or when I was not.
Karen: Sorry, I was just going to say, that’s one of the things I think we’ve tried to foster in Office Hours and throughout the community is that sense of everybody can contribute something. We all have our own experience and our own context, but there is something about your name is in the description, you are going to give a five-minute intro that for a variety of reasons some people are more or less comfortable with.
But as someone else who was new to open education and started co-hosting Office Hours as I was learning, it was a very welcoming and comfortable environment to not know things, and to be able to say, “Who here has done this before? Or tried this? Or tried something similar? And can maybe guess?” And I really appreciate that and I see, elle, you have your hand up.
elle: There I am, okay.
Karen: Here you are.
elle: Hello everyone, apologies if you hear construction in the background, I’m coming at you from a hotel. So speaking of buses, planes, trains and automobiles and also speaking of hats, I am missing the captain’s hat. So I just wanted to make a quick shoutout for that. But I really think the idea of authorship and collaborator really is an important one, right? When we’re working on this open process because I have done some of the speaking roles and being the subject matter expert.
But I find it’s actually more helpful speaking to the work everyone has done on this platform to use it as a hey, there are some good people who are doing work out here. You’re not just siloed in your one little section, right? Or you’re not the only one working on this particular text or this particular challenge, right? There’s a lot of I still think you know, harkening back to the accessibility pieces, which I am fully versed in, I would say.
But even then, you know, I feel like it’s a better collaboration and a better process for workflow, especially when you’re connecting with other authors to be in that co-work space, right? Yes, of course, I might know the intricacies of WCAG or you know, the little tips and tweaks to make Adobe PDFs work just a little bit better. But that’s just what I bring to the table, what everyone else brings is so much more.
And we can get so much more done, I think, if we think about blending those barriers, or crossing those borders for lack of a better metaphor. I think everybody should get both their author, creator and their participant passport checked and stamped more often. And you know, I think there is a new thing, speaking of Twitter, there is a new thing that was big on Twitter just recently in some circles about AI and text generation and things about that kind of creation when we’re thinking about open pedagogy.
And having a platform to have those discussions, what are the benefits, especially in like assistive technology for those types of things, but what are the pedagogical opportunity costs that students might be missing out, and having a place to have that open dialogue I think is a great space. So I want to thank everyone on the call here but also everyone who’s participated in open Office Hours.
And I always point folks towards your direction, that’s what I was trying to get at, is like a resource for collaboration. Not just my particular sections, right? So thanks everyone. Pleasure to be a part.
Karen: Thank you, elle.
Apurva: Thank you. Kaitlin, I see you have a hand up as well, so I’ll pass it over to you.
Kaitlin: I thought it might be easier saying it instead of typing. Yeah, I think I said in the chat I couldn’t quite remember my first Office Hours, but one thing I have loved over the years is being newer to open felt really overwhelming, because it’s such a big space and there’s so much to know and there’s all these people in different places all over the world.
But starting to come to Office Hours, and having such a safe space to be vulnerable, whether that’s with my emotions or my struggles in open or just me as a human, or just not really knowing all of the answers because none of us do. And the warm welcome Office Hours has given and everybody who has attended Office Hours, I’ve learned so much, I’ve grown so much as like a person, but also as like an educator.
And it’s been really great, and I’ve learned a lot and I think that’s such a testament to the open community to be able to have these rich conversations together and really share that hey, I have a gap in knowledge here or I really have expertise here. So being able to collaborate and support one another has just been one of my favorite things. It’s definitely made this work feel less lonely over the years, so very much appreciated.
Apurva: Thank you, and I also just wanted to pick up as elle was saying earlier, when they talked about the collaborative effort this has been. I think from our organization names Rebus Community and the Open Education Network, that those were the key values that we wanted to stay true to with the Office Hours series was it’s not just a place where people can come and share their stories and workflows and processes.
But it’s really a space for people to come together, where speaker and participant and attendee and author or faculty member and designer really can share more about their roles and sort of come into a space where hopefully they’re all welcome to speak or listen. And it sounds like that’s what these sessions have been for many of you. I also maybe wanted to do a little bit of reflecting and ask people where do you think the open education community was five years ago versus now?
You’ve heard from me, when I started attending Office Hours sessions, I was a coop student, so I’ve had a lot of reflecting on my own journey, versus where are folks now and how do you feel the needs of the community have changed in the five years since? We’re still talking about accessibility for instance, but are we doing it in different ways? And there was a question in the chat about you know, will we continue to offer something similar in the future?
And this is really our chance to take the temperature of those of you who are in the room today. We have a survey going out to anyone who isn’t able to be here synchronously live.
Karen: Sometimes too when thinking about kind of those bigger questions, maybe it’s helpful to think about even your own sort of job description five years ago versus today or your feelings five years ago at work versus today. Have there been any major shifts or changes that come to mind? Kaitlin.
Kaitlin: I think for me one thing I’ve noticed definitely more of an emphasis on DEI, however, at a deeper level. And I think the conversation around what open pedagogy is, what open education is has gone from hey, this is a great chance to make free resources for students and save students money. And it’s really gotten, there’s been critical lenses applied to it, there’s been so many different lenses and perspectives brought to the conversation around what open education is and how it can be used in different ways.
And I think that’s been the really nice thing is kind of getting deeper and deeper into these conversations to ensure we’re not replicating the same types of systems over, but we’re really challenging each other and ourselves to really push beyond those systems and create something new that’s going to benefit everyone more than student savings. So I think that’s one thing I’ve noticed over the years.
Karen: Yeah, same.
Apurva: And Amy says so too, that resonates with her experience as well. And I see thumbs up from folks who are on the call. Have any of your individual needs changed? And in the survey that Karen has linked to in the chat, one of our respondents has noted a need for just more time. More time in their role to attend sessions, but also be fully active in deep conversations, so that’s what they’re sort of seeing as a shift from five years ago to now.
If any of you are using this as you chance to state some individual needs or organizational needs based on where you work and in your roles, feel free to do so. And I might tap on Barb or Karen to share what you observed in your exchanges with the OEN community members and in conversations and dialogue you’ve had with them. What are you hearing as sort of the pulse of your membership at this time?
Barb: All right, Karen.
Karen: I saw you unmute.
Barb: Yes, I would just agree with what has been shared already, and then just kind of the excitement around maybe the different stages in the evolution of programs where it started with adoptions and now we’re kind of going into newer frontiers, diving deeper into the open pedagogy, into the publishing, into the curation, editing kind of thing. So a lot of members are talking about where they once were and where they’re headed and kind of both the excitement around that, that they’re gaining that traction.
But then the what does that mean when we’re all kind of in this new frontier together? And it’s been fun to, I think, coming back to the spaces like this are so important in the unknown so that’s what I would say. Karen, do you have any thoughts?
Karen: Yeah, thank you, Barb. I am so glad you said that because I just went right to thinking about you know, the size of the OEN five years ago versus how much it has grown now. And sort of that as a snapshot or a portrait of the momentum that we have, but you’re absolutely right. And what Barb said speaks to the strategic planning that the OEN undertook in the last year or so, just really thinking about people’s journeys in open education landscape, in creating and supporting the adoption and use of OER.
And building on that and thinking about some of the other parts of this conversation. We’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about how to support those institutions and people at those institutions who don’t have the same resources as other better funded institutions, for example. And so, we’ve been developing new infrastructure, we have a couple of pilots going, or rather one pilot underway, another sort of we’re on the eve of rolling out that pilot.
And that’s with Manifold and Ketida which is the new name for Editoria. And so thinking about how we can offer infrastructure and tools for people who want to be publishing and ultimately supporting anyone who wants to be creating OER. Because that adds to the vision that we all share, which is you know, being able to create a more equitable higher education by providing more resources, engaging students in the creation of those resources.
And so, really just exploring those different pathways in addition to staying focused I think on affordability issues, which continue to be so real in where we’re all at today. And what about with Rebus?
Apurva: I like that you used the word infrastructure, because we also are thinking along those terms. And I think in the early days a lot of the work we were doing with our community was to understand things at perhaps a more grassroots level and really break down the puzzle pieces of OER publishing or open initiatives more generally. I think more and more so now we’re sort of seeing a need to invest in people as infrastructure.
And really support the capacity building and sustainability work of the people who are holding up the programs and again making sure that open is not just something that is a category or small portion of a single librarian’s portfolio, but is instead something that is woven into the greater fabric of the post-secondary system, whether it’s at a single institution, whether it’s at a two-year college, a four-year college, a system of universities and colleges or really embedded in policy.
So I think we’re seeing the need now for more support to develop that type of expertise. And there’s actually a question in the chat where I’m scrolling back up here, because folks are talking faster than I can scroll. What sources for faculty training as a cohort or sharing of experiences would you all suggest? Because there seems to be an interest at Rumyana’s university, which is Evangel University.
Are there options and models that you would encourage they look at? Okay, Cheryl is dropping a ton of resources in the chat, did you want to speak to any of them in particular, especially the learning communities and how they’ve been effective at your campus, Cheryl?
Cheryl: Sure. Sorry, I’m feeling under the weather, so I’m going to stay off camera, but I’ll try to talk. Yeah, the learning community is a bit more effective than trying to program say workshops. We have a lot of trouble unless we have the budget to pay to attend OEN style workshops, we have a lot of trouble getting people to show up. So forming a learning community and a community of practice has surfaced people that we weren’t aware were interested in OER.
And we’ve been able to develop those resources and a lot of our textbook authors have come out of those learning communities. So yeah, I think as far as faculty resources for training about OER, I would recommend starting with the OER starter kit that Abby released, and then the workbook that she and Stacey worked on. For program managers, I recommend the starter kit for program managers that Apurva was involved in. But for faculty, I would start with the other starter kits.
Apurva: And I might add to that and say it really depends on the type of training you want your faculty to have, because we’ve had this conversation I think in a previous Office Hours about the number of professional development opportunities there are in the open field, whether it’s about licensing, about publishing, about technical training that faculty want. So really being able to have those conversations with those faculty members to gauge their interest.
And then seeing as Cheryl was suggesting whether there are smaller learning communities that you could create so faculty have the opportunity to jump in and learn about whatever their area of interest is rather than only having one option and nothing else. I think the fabulous thing about the open education community in general is we have a ton of options. We have something for everybody here. Book clubs sound like a lot of fun, I know the CCC OER has done a few successful runs of different book clubs, as have other organizations.
Cheryl: I’d also recommend, sorry, recommend looking at what infrastructure already exists on your campus, as far as learning communities, or are there book clubs. With our learning community we were able to piggyback on existing faculty learning communities that had support from another unit as far as marketing and outreach. So that really lightened our loads. But there may be existing groups that you can partner with.
And that’s been helpful too in terms of other outreach and training instead of me offering a standalone workshop going to say the interest group for instructional designers and being invited to do a presentation to that specific group.
Apurva: And tapping into existing networks in your region, I know the Midwestern higher education compact hosts a lot of free webinars and has professional development opportunities. So if the infrastructure as Cheryl was suggesting does not exist at Evangel, you can still look to these other networks within your state or within the region that you’re in and tap into hopefully their opportunities, their larger budgets, larger networks, or folks.
All right, and we’re doing a lot of future thinking right now, which I like. Jonathan, you have a question in the chat, you ask if there are so many professional development opportunities and so many people interested in this, could this be a sign that we should be doing more of this type of training or education around open in more standard parts, like in grad schools, professional schools, like medicine and law? Or even in undergraduate education in some way?
I think so, if you’ve ever spoken to me about post-secondary education, you would hear that I would love for teacher training and awareness of OER to become a standard part of doctoral programs, so it’s not just research focused, but teacher focused as well. I think Rebus and OEN have been singing the praises of the train the trainer model and train the future teachers model.
And as elle was saying earlier on in the chat, involving student representation to co-create OER can be tremendously powerful and we’ve seen how student advocates can really help further this cause in so many ways, so looking at ways to bring undergraduate student representation as well into our conversations is pretty critical. See resounding definitelys in the chat as well.
Karen: I can’t stop thinking, Barb, about the climate group that you’re involved with also at the College of Education and Human Development at the U. It’s related to Jonathan’s comment, I wonder if you just want to share a little bit about it because I think it’s a nice potential model for doing what he’s describing in the chat.
Barb: Yes, and now I’m reading Jonathan’s comment, I’m like trying to drop things in the chat.
Karen: Sorry, you’re doing so much right now, yeah.
Barb: Yes, okay. So I love making these connections as well, and it’s been really fun, like Karen said. I’m volunteering with the Center for Climate Literacy at the University of Minnesota. And I just got involved because I’m interested in climate, right? But it’s been fun to see what’s happening around climate action in the open community. And I’ve kind of brought that to the conversation with the Center for Climate Literacy, who’s now connecting with some of those open education initiatives.
And just generally around open science sharing and that kind of thing. So bridging that gap I think is something that we don’t talk about a ton. But I really appreciate you bringing that up, Jonathan, because it’s really exciting when that happens. And I think there is a lot of energy around that and particularly from folks who are not engaging with open in terms of textbooks on their campus. So it’s fun to like get them through that path and who even knows what that could then lead to, circling back to what we’re all working on here.
Karen: Thanks, Barb. And then Amy is saying how interesting it is, she’s been wondering whether Oregon’s next targeted pathway course development project should relate to climate. Yeah, that sounds great for sure. It’s all interconnected. Well, we’ve talked a lot about what we imagine or think the next five years could look like, as more visions occur to you or just even keywords about what that could feel like or look like, feel free to drop them in the chat along with any other resources connected to the conversation.
We did want to share with you the Office Hours archive, which Tonia did at the beginning of the call, so that you can always reminisce. We’re not far away in terms of the transcripts and the videos that are there and accessible for you. And then, I also shared earlier the survey that we have been doing about Office Hours. Cheryl, I see your hand is up. Please. Or maybe that was left over?
Cheryl: Sorry, my brain is not functioning either. I’m having trouble typing and unmuting. I was just going to share a little bit from the textbook affordability conference that I attended last week. And Steven Temple and I did a panel session that was moderated by Bob from University of Wisconsin Stout, Butterfield. And on library bookstore partnerships, so there were a lot of interesting things that came up about OER at the conference.
More about OER than I’d ever heard at that conference before which is primarily attended by bookstore people and vendors, a few librarians. One of the things they talked about was the growth of the equitable access model, which was kind of an expansion of inclusive access and UC Davis came up with the name equitable access, and it’s basically an all-in-one price. And at the conference we really heard about how they expect a lot of growth in that model.
And I know on my campus we’re working on rolling out a version of it that’s not called equitable access, but it leverages OER and library licensed materials to lower the overall costs for students. So as a community, I think that’s really something for us to pay attention to and really step up working with bookstores to partner on these. But there were other interesting trends related to OER as well, like what’s the future of a book.
And they had a futurist talk about the growth in artificial intelligence and augmented reality and virtual reality and at what point are we going to cease you know looking at a book as something very specific with chapters. And yeah, there was also emphasis on the sustainability trend that you were mentioning in terms of advocating for digital textbooks and how that’s been resonating with students especially, that it doesn’t use print, it doesn’t have to shipped.
And the sustainability angle in relation to digital textbooks was not one I had really seen until this past year, but UC Davis is heavily using it to promote their equitable access program. So I think that’s something to watch for, too.
Karen: Thanks, Cheryl, that’s really interesting and it is a good reminder to stay abreast of the conversations and the strategies that publishers and others are using to be in this space. I was looking for the right phrase. Yeah, I see more conversation here about what you were talking about. There is a lot of investment in this Apurva is saying, just yesterday there was a call for proposals from Google as they plan to invest $25 million in AI projects, which is related to what elle was saying earlier.
Also open science is a great connection to open. How can we develop or support sustainable repositories that include lab and data notebooks as well as the machine learning models alongside the abstract article? Absolutely. Thank you, Cheryl. Are there other things as we kind of round the corner on our hour here? Looking to the future, concerns you might have or excitement you might have.
Apurva: Go ahead, Kaitlin.
Kaitlin: Just because I looked at the Center for Climate Literacy and that blew my mind, and now I’m just like, my head is spinning with ideas. I think one thing about open I would love to see going forward something I think about a lot is one, the digital inequity that a lot of people face. A lot of people don’t have access to digital resources, so how does that intersect with open?
But also, using OER in post-secondary or higher education, there’s still that gap of access, how many people can’t access post-secondary education and how open educational resources can be used to increase literacy in various topics, such as climate outside of like a traditional academy. So thank you, Barb, for sharing that because I’m now just like oh cool, what other ideas can we get spinning? So that’s one thing I think of, like how can we push this for bigger change, in the biggest sense possible?
Karen: Thank you, Kaitlin. I’m also really excited about that project, it’s fun to see it developing. And Amy and others, if you work on climate related projects, love to hear about them going forward. Amy also would like to hear more about what the OEN and Rebus are thinking in terms of professional development. So I can start and then Barb, if I could hand it to you since we’ve been talking a little bit about some professional development plans in our group and over the last few weeks.
So we are going to have professional development and communities around the different tools and infrastructure that we’re developing, so for example, the Manifold pilot has a group. And we monthly talk about some of the issues in Manifold, how it can be leveraged for open pedagogy, how you use the tool, everything in between. We’ll be doing the same with [Cotita 0:44:17] and then, the overarching umbrella with the publishing cooperative, we’re currently forming an advisory group.
And so that group is going to inform the type of professional development opportunities that we offer based on what’s happening in the community. We do have a monthly teatime in the publishing cooperative that the advisory group may decide to change, continue, expand. And then there are broader OEN initiatives underway, outside of sort of just the publishing space. And so, with that maybe Barb, if you want to say a few words?
Barb: Sure. And we’re in the throes of developing what this looks like. Amy was in a focus group yesterday and shared some really great feedback, so I just want to give a shoutout to her. But one of the pieces kind of on a more broad scale, different topics within the OEN is we’re looking at expanding workshops that we’re offering, both on a number of different topics.
Again, OER adoptions like we’ve always done with our faculty workshop that I dropped in the chat earlier. But then looking at engaging faculty through a similar workshop but different topics, like introduction to open ped, introduction to publishing in some of these other pathways that we talked about. And what we’re really excited about in addition to that is offering it more at scale, so that we can offer some general workshop at the OEN ourselves.
Talking about the common good and some of these members of our organization, our community that have more limited resources or capacity to be running things on their own that we can help provide that at a larger scale where faculty can then take part if there aren’t actually those professional development opportunities happening locally at their institution. So a little glimpse, we’re working on that now, talking to members to help refine what that’s going to look like and how that could best serve our community. So stay tuned for more.
Apurva: Exciting things in progress there. On the Rebus side, folks are welcome to participate in our textbook success program. So this is a professional development package not just for faculty, but also for instructional designers, technologists, librarians, administrators. Really anyone looking to build capacity for their open education publishing initiatives at their institutions.
Jonathan and Kaitlin are both alumni and facilitators. So we’re really trying to adopt that model that so many great organizations in open are doing, letting folks who have tried and tested experience doing this work teach the next set that are coming in to try it out again for the first time. We also host webinars again on a variety of topics related to open education, as well as offer consulting to folks.
We are actually in the midst of a strategic planning process and would love to hear more from all of you about what you would like more of. Amy and Rumyana, I appreciated in your comments in the chat how in some ways you even see the Office Hours as a professional development opportunity whether it’s to come and speak as a guest speaker or come and listen and connect and network just as a participant and attendee.
And as we’re sort of thinking ahead to the next five years or more, what would you like to see more of? That was one of our survey questions, we’re happy to read some responses from there, but would love to hear from you all. In the future you’d like more… Cheryl says her faculty OER authors would love to hear how to do peer review on OER. Others have talked about wanting papers that talk more about processes, more formal presentations, where they can learn.
Internally on the Rebus team some ideas have been around just podcasts for instance, to highlight newcomer voices to OER or often unheard voices who are working in the open education process. Mentorship opportunities for people again who are new to the field. More webinar series like this one, around open publishing.
Karen: And these are areas too where we can imagine the OEN and Rebus Community collaborating in the future, maybe there are you know, peer review for OER guidelines or methodologies that we can co-develop. This is on a list of topics that I’ve heard listening to the community over the last several months, thinking about the advisory group. So there’s definitely more to come. Tools to support workflow and project management.
Apurva: And everyone’s favorite methodologies.
Karen: Yes. Tools are a funny thing, they’re so valuable, but I also feel like they’re sort of mythological in their promise. If we only had the right tool, it would somehow be easy. But I think it’ll always be a little hard. We do have the open textbook builder that is a part of Ketida, which is designed to help support authors in thinking about and planning their book before they start writing.
So that’s an element, I think, of the production process that we hope to support with this tool and with some workshops around the tool. But then, we need tools that will remind people in a friendly way, nudging tools, writing tools. Yes, Amy, so in terms of the Ketida pilot, we are on the edge of our seat, and basically the Coko Foundation said that they needed to make just a few more updates to make sure that Ketida was stable before we started the pilot.
And so, last we talked it should be ready in January or February and so as soon as it’s ready, I have the documentation ready. I even have a draft email to the OEN. So really excited about getting that started. elle, I have a group of authors I introduced to Discord now, and they love it. It depends on how the tool fits and extends your thinking instead of creating just another tech barrier. Please. I was just going to say we keep looking at Discord, talking about Discord, that’s really great to hear.
Apurva: Yeah, a lot of the conversations we have at Rebus and with folks around tools is similar to our conversations we have just around licensing. What do you want to do? What are you hoping this will achieve? Who are the people involved? What are the accommodations that folks might need? And then go from there rather than here’s this tool that I like, now let me try to fit all of my wishes and desires into this single pre-selected tool, but rather we work the other way round.
So what do you want to achieve, let’s survey the landscape and go from there. And be willing to change if the tool doesn’t meet our needs or maybe some of their privacy concerns or data sharing policies change. Again, we’re always careful of a human first approach to the tool, so it’s not just selecting the tool for the sake of but selecting the tool that’ll work as elle is saying for the humans, rather than creating a technology barrier.
Karen: I love being reminded of that. I still so often will try to like cram my thinking or my needs into a tool and I’m like, why is this so terrible? And then someone will remind me, is this the right tool? Like why don’t you think about what you want and need to do first? It’s like oh right. Okay, well, we spent an hour together, these are really great signposts in terms of what we’re still dealing with, where we want to go, what we might be able to do together. Thank you so much for your contributions.
Apurva: Yes, thank you all and I appreciate everyone who’s filled out the surveys so far. A few people have noted how even though they haven’t been able to attend as many Office Hours sessions over the year and years that they wanted to, it’s always been an affirmation for them about the work being done in OER.
Just to know that these sessions are happening, that people are sharing their documents and resources and ideas and that this is licensed for the world to access freely afterwards. So thank you all. Do we have any final questions for our group, Karen? Or are we on to our bye for nows?
Karen: I think we’re onto our see you laters. We did have one question kind of at the ready that we can close with, which was when we see one another again, what do we hope will be different or the same within open education? Maybe we’ll chew on that. And I am confident that we will all see one another again soon. But in the meantime, thank you again, it is always lovely to come together and I’m looking forward to doing it again sometime soon.
I’d also like to thank Apurva and Kaitlin and the Rebus Community for partnering with us on this, it’s been such a joy and pleasure. And even though a monthly series is a lot to organize, it has always gone so smoothly. So it’s really been fun and thank you.
Apurva: Thank you, too. And I might ask Kaitlin or Tonia to perhaps drop into the chat a link to the Office Hours archives on YouTube where people can access all 58 plus one recordings, as well as links to our respective blogs where we have audio and chat transcripts and for some sessions even summaries of our long conversations over the past five years.
And I’ll also extend my thank you back to you, Karen, the OEN team, as well as everybody else who has just helped grow this community and been so willing to come, learn, share and connect. So thank you all as Karen said, this is a see you later. Hopefully you will hear more from Rebus and OEN respectively, but also collaboratively down the road.
And I hope we get to meet in person someday, and if not, you’ll find us on our various social media websites forum list serves and online. So take care everybody and thank you for joining this hour.
Karen: Farewell.
Apurva: Bye.
END OF VIDEO
Chat Transcript
00:07:25 Kaitlin Schilling: Grateful to be joining you from the traditional and contemporary shared lands of the Anishinaabeg, Dakota Oyate, and Ininiwak, and the Red River Métis in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Happy to be here with you all!
00:08:21 Amy Hofer (she/her): !!!
00:08:27 Apurva Ashok: As a reminder, all Office Hours sessions are recorded, captioned, and transcribed. We also save the chat! Anything can be anonymized, just contact us at contact@rebus.community.
00:08:57 Tonia J Johnson: Open Education Network OH Blog: https://open.umn.edu/blog/categories/office-hours
00:09:14 Tonia J Johnson: Rebus Community OH Blog: https://rebus.community/category/otn-rebus-office-hours/
00:09:41 Tonia J Johnson: Open Education Network YouTube OH Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWRE6ioG4vdahUrKaiHvsCA2J6NQLysU6
00:10:36 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: automatic transcriptions do not like the OER acronym!
00:11:00 Amy Hofer (she/her): Yes so many acronyms
00:11:39 Apurva Ashok: They also don’t like my Indian English accent 😄 Grateful for Mei for correcting all these errors in our official recordings.
00:12:46 Rumyana Hristova: I am based in Springfield, Missouri. Extremely grateful for Office Hours! I must have started attending OH some time in late 2018.
00:13:11 Apurva Ashok: You’ve been with us for nearly the entire journey! Thank you :D
00:14:08 Karen Lauritsen: Rumyana, thank you for sharing so many sessions with all of us!
00:14:42 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): Ha, my calendar says the first one I went to was in Feb 2018!
00:15:15 Kaitlin Schilling: That was a good one, Amy!
00:17:16 Kaitlin Schilling: I can't quite remember my first one, but I do love being able to go back and watch them - so many relevant topics!
00:19:12 Tonia J Johnson: Loved "Legitimizing Burnout in Open Education Roles" - so much honesty and connection in that conversation.
00:19:39 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Good points, Jonathan! I've always appreciated your perspectives
00:19:43 Kaitlin Schilling: +1 Tonia
00:20:25 Barbara R Thees: What stood out most to me was along those lines as well- the willingness to contribute, learn together, collaborate and share within the open community.
00:23:57 Rumyana Hristova: I love the format of OF! Once a month (not too time-consuming) with various speakers with great experiences, sharing great resources, which you can't hear anywhere else! Are you thinking of some other form of OER professional development in the future?
00:24:53 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: So true, Kaitlyn!
00:25:03 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Sorry, Kaitlin!
00:25:08 Apurva Ashok: @Rumyana - We are, in fact, but would love community input to help shape/guide where we go next!
00:25:38 Tonia J Johnson: Absolutely, Kaitlin!
00:25:45 elle (she/her/they): Yes, Kaitlin. I have connected with some great international experts especially in STEM accessibility in Germany, the UK and Australia
00:28:25 Karen Lauritsen: Here’s the survey Apurva mentioned: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeNF552EKTIstKZJSaFQY3zThtEoN3_lrhprDbZiGtn5ic5sg/viewform
00:28:52 Amy Hofer (she/her): Great point Kaitlin, that resonates with my experience too
00:30:32 elle (she/her/they): Yes, speaking to the DEI efforts we now carve out intentional spaces for student representation for co-creation of OER.
00:32:48 Rumyana Hristova: What sources for faculty training as a cohort, sharing experiences, would you suggest? There seems to be an interest in such kind of training at my university, Evangel University, a Christian university.
00:34:23 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: @Rumyana - OER learning communities have been effective on my campus. I'd be happy to share resources
00:35:07 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: OER Starter Kit (Abbey Elder of Iowa State University), https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/oerstarterkit OER Starter Kit Workbook (Abbey Elder & Stacy Katz), https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/projects/the-oer-starter-kit-workbook
00:35:38 Kaitlin Schilling: Hope you feel better soon, Cheryl!
00:36:42 Amy Hofer (she/her): Oregon’s first book club meeting to talk about the starter kit is Friday 🙂
00:36:56 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Resources from University of Arizona’s OER/Pressbooks Learning Communities (Cheryl [Cuillier] Casey and Cheryl Neal), https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14Jl61dXbviZtqQNI0zfL1UP414vLOnGX “OER Learning Circles for Instructional Improvement” by Karen Pikula (2020 Open Education Network Summit), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDAzdaF1v3w&list=PLWRE6ioG4vdZbJGUCc0XquZi23EHXXLKM&index=5
00:37:01 Karen Lauritsen: Ooh, book club! Fun, Amy.
00:37:12 Barbara R Thees: OEN Certificate for Open Educational Practices for faculty-librarian pairs: https://open.umn.edu/oen/certificate-in-oep
00:37:16 Amy Hofer (she/her): Not my idea - responding to what the point people want!
00:37:27 Kaitlin Schilling: That sounds really interesting, Amy!
00:37:31 Karen Lauritsen: Look forward to hearing how it goes.
00:38:39 Kaitlin Schilling: Great point, Cheryl! "no need to reinvent the wheel" --one of my favourite phrases in open 😄
00:38:42 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): I wonder if there are so many PD opportunities and so many people interested in this ... could that be a sign we should be doing more of this training/education (about open) in more standard educational paths: grad schools, professional schools like med/law... even in undergrad education in some way?
00:39:34 Kaitlin Schilling: That's a really interesting point, Jonathan. I wonder what that could look like
00:39:39 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: definition in iSchools, for future teachers & professors
00:39:47 Barbara R Thees: Here’s the link to the OEN Faculty workshop that has been mentioned. The workshop that introduces faculty to OER, and OEN members are able to invite faculty participants to review a textbook in the Open Textbook Library after participating in the session: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1BtHKrINZ9-9tKi3IpK639CW9wwaGtPddZfUnIHcIgIY/edit#slide=id.g8fb33e01fb_1_210
00:39:48 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: *definitely*
00:41:36 Apurva Ashok: hear hear!
00:42:22 Amy Hofer (she/her): So interesting Barb! I’ve been wondering whether Oregon’s next targeted pathway course development project should relate to climate
00:42:41 Barbara R Thees: Love that idea!
00:42:46 Barbara R Thees: It’s all interconnected!
00:43:11 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): There is a very interesting new climate OER coming out of Massachusetts soon (in the ROTEL grant portfolio).
00:43:19 Amy Hofer (she/her): Thanks Jonathan!
00:43:34 Apurva Ashok: Yes, I was thinking about Larry’s book! :) We’re on the same page Jonathan
00:43:41 Barbara R Thees: Ooh I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled for those resources!
00:43:45 Kaitlin Schilling: I love the idea of connection making across different sectors/topics and open education
00:43:55 Barbara R Thees: What’s the title, Apurva?
00:44:15 Barbara R Thees: Multitasking is hard! 🙂
00:44:27 Apurva Ashok: Conversations with the Earth - https://forum.rebus.community/c/open-textbooks-in-development/conversations-with-the-earth/485
00:44:30 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): "Conversations with the Earth"
00:44:34 Barbara R Thees: Thanks!
00:46:44 Apurva Ashok: And there’s a lot of investment in this too - just yesterday I saw a call for proposals from Google as they plan to invest $25M in AI projects advancing the SDGs
00:47:13 elle (she/her/they): Open science is a great connection to open. How can we develop or support sustainable repositories that include lab and data notebooks as well as the machine learning models alongside just the abstract article.
00:47:15 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Tactful, Karen!
00:48:18 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): Several organizations including Creative Commons and SPARC have a big open science thing going right now, partly in support of the UNESCO Open Science Recommendation.
00:48:37 Amy Hofer (she/her): +1 to Rumyana’s question earlier about what OEN/Rebus are thinking about for the evolution of this PD?
00:48:55 Karen Lauritsen: Sure, we can say more on that, Amy.
00:49:00 Karen Lauritsen: Also: https://climateliteracy.umn.edu/
00:49:33 Amy Hofer (she/her): Thanks for the climate related links! I’m searching through all our catalogs to try to figure out which courses might be most relevant statewide for OER development
00:50:01 Barbara R Thees: Shameless plug- it’s Give to the Max Day today here in Minnesota, and the Center for Climate Literacy is raising funds to support their work: https://crowdfund.umn.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=1668
00:52:43 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: I would love to be able to steer our faculty to these workshops
00:53:07 Kaitlin Schilling: https://rebus.community/textbook-success-program/
00:53:26 Barbara R Thees: That’s great to hear that there would be interest in this model at your institution, Cheryl!
00:54:22 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: @Apurva - our faculty OER authors would love to hear about how to do peer review on OER
00:55:33 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: how to find peer reviewers, how to use tech to do reviews
00:56:03 elle (she/her/they): Tools that support workflow and project management. Many folkx don't have the exposure to applications like slack, basecamp, etc.
00:56:07 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: methodologies, yes! the word my brain couldn't think of
00:56:22 Amy Hofer (she/her): +1 Elle. A lot of interest in Oregon in that area.
00:57:01 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): I love "mythological in their promise"!!
00:57:27 Amy Hofer (she/her): Any update on when we can pilot that one Karen?
00:57:40 Barbara R Thees: A whole toolbox full!
00:57:44 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: And often our faculty don't want to learn new tools
00:57:54 elle (she/her/they): I have a group of authors that I introduced to discord and now they love it. It depends on how the tools fits and extends your thinking instead of creating just another technology barrier
00:58:13 Apurva Ashok: Great perspective, elle
01:00:19 Amy Hofer (she/her): Thank you for hosting for 5 years Karen, Apurva, and teams!
01:00:27 Barbara R Thees: Thanks, everyone! So good to see you all.
01:00:41 Karen Lauritsen: ☺️
01:00:43 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): Yes, agree with Amy, thanks so much for hosting/building/supporting this community!
01:00:56 Kaitlin Schilling: Thank you all for sharing ideas and hopes and memories! I hope we all get to chat again or work together soon :)
01:01:03 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Thank you to the OEN & Rebus for organizing these!
01:02:18 Tonia J Johnson: Open Education Network YouTube OH Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWRE6ioG4vdahUrKaiHvsCA2J6NQLysU6
01:02:27 Kaitlin Schilling: Thanks Tonia!
01:02:33 Tonia J Johnson: Open Education Network OH Blog: https://open.umn.edu/blog/categories/office-hours
01:02:45 Tonia J Johnson: Rebus Community OH Blog: https://rebus.community/category/otn-rebus-office-hours/
01:02:56 Tonia J Johnson: Thanks everybody!
01:02:59 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Thanks
00:08:21 Amy Hofer (she/her): !!!
00:08:27 Apurva Ashok: As a reminder, all Office Hours sessions are recorded, captioned, and transcribed. We also save the chat! Anything can be anonymized, just contact us at contact@rebus.community.
00:08:57 Tonia J Johnson: Open Education Network OH Blog: https://open.umn.edu/blog/categories/office-hours
00:09:14 Tonia J Johnson: Rebus Community OH Blog: https://rebus.community/category/otn-rebus-office-hours/
00:09:41 Tonia J Johnson: Open Education Network YouTube OH Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWRE6ioG4vdahUrKaiHvsCA2J6NQLysU6
00:10:36 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: automatic transcriptions do not like the OER acronym!
00:11:00 Amy Hofer (she/her): Yes so many acronyms
00:11:39 Apurva Ashok: They also don’t like my Indian English accent 😄 Grateful for Mei for correcting all these errors in our official recordings.
00:12:46 Rumyana Hristova: I am based in Springfield, Missouri. Extremely grateful for Office Hours! I must have started attending OH some time in late 2018.
00:13:11 Apurva Ashok: You’ve been with us for nearly the entire journey! Thank you :D
00:14:08 Karen Lauritsen: Rumyana, thank you for sharing so many sessions with all of us!
00:14:42 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): Ha, my calendar says the first one I went to was in Feb 2018!
00:15:15 Kaitlin Schilling: That was a good one, Amy!
00:17:16 Kaitlin Schilling: I can't quite remember my first one, but I do love being able to go back and watch them - so many relevant topics!
00:19:12 Tonia J Johnson: Loved "Legitimizing Burnout in Open Education Roles" - so much honesty and connection in that conversation.
00:19:39 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Good points, Jonathan! I've always appreciated your perspectives
00:19:43 Kaitlin Schilling: +1 Tonia
00:20:25 Barbara R Thees: What stood out most to me was along those lines as well- the willingness to contribute, learn together, collaborate and share within the open community.
00:23:57 Rumyana Hristova: I love the format of OF! Once a month (not too time-consuming) with various speakers with great experiences, sharing great resources, which you can't hear anywhere else! Are you thinking of some other form of OER professional development in the future?
00:24:53 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: So true, Kaitlyn!
00:25:03 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Sorry, Kaitlin!
00:25:08 Apurva Ashok: @Rumyana - We are, in fact, but would love community input to help shape/guide where we go next!
00:25:38 Tonia J Johnson: Absolutely, Kaitlin!
00:25:45 elle (she/her/they): Yes, Kaitlin. I have connected with some great international experts especially in STEM accessibility in Germany, the UK and Australia
00:28:25 Karen Lauritsen: Here’s the survey Apurva mentioned: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeNF552EKTIstKZJSaFQY3zThtEoN3_lrhprDbZiGtn5ic5sg/viewform
00:28:52 Amy Hofer (she/her): Great point Kaitlin, that resonates with my experience too
00:30:32 elle (she/her/they): Yes, speaking to the DEI efforts we now carve out intentional spaces for student representation for co-creation of OER.
00:32:48 Rumyana Hristova: What sources for faculty training as a cohort, sharing experiences, would you suggest? There seems to be an interest in such kind of training at my university, Evangel University, a Christian university.
00:34:23 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: @Rumyana - OER learning communities have been effective on my campus. I'd be happy to share resources
00:35:07 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: OER Starter Kit (Abbey Elder of Iowa State University), https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/oerstarterkit OER Starter Kit Workbook (Abbey Elder & Stacy Katz), https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/projects/the-oer-starter-kit-workbook
00:35:38 Kaitlin Schilling: Hope you feel better soon, Cheryl!
00:36:42 Amy Hofer (she/her): Oregon’s first book club meeting to talk about the starter kit is Friday 🙂
00:36:56 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Resources from University of Arizona’s OER/Pressbooks Learning Communities (Cheryl [Cuillier] Casey and Cheryl Neal), https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14Jl61dXbviZtqQNI0zfL1UP414vLOnGX “OER Learning Circles for Instructional Improvement” by Karen Pikula (2020 Open Education Network Summit), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDAzdaF1v3w&list=PLWRE6ioG4vdZbJGUCc0XquZi23EHXXLKM&index=5
00:37:01 Karen Lauritsen: Ooh, book club! Fun, Amy.
00:37:12 Barbara R Thees: OEN Certificate for Open Educational Practices for faculty-librarian pairs: https://open.umn.edu/oen/certificate-in-oep
00:37:16 Amy Hofer (she/her): Not my idea - responding to what the point people want!
00:37:27 Kaitlin Schilling: That sounds really interesting, Amy!
00:37:31 Karen Lauritsen: Look forward to hearing how it goes.
00:38:39 Kaitlin Schilling: Great point, Cheryl! "no need to reinvent the wheel" --one of my favourite phrases in open 😄
00:38:42 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): I wonder if there are so many PD opportunities and so many people interested in this ... could that be a sign we should be doing more of this training/education (about open) in more standard educational paths: grad schools, professional schools like med/law... even in undergrad education in some way?
00:39:34 Kaitlin Schilling: That's a really interesting point, Jonathan. I wonder what that could look like
00:39:39 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: definition in iSchools, for future teachers & professors
00:39:47 Barbara R Thees: Here’s the link to the OEN Faculty workshop that has been mentioned. The workshop that introduces faculty to OER, and OEN members are able to invite faculty participants to review a textbook in the Open Textbook Library after participating in the session: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1BtHKrINZ9-9tKi3IpK639CW9wwaGtPddZfUnIHcIgIY/edit#slide=id.g8fb33e01fb_1_210
00:39:48 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: *definitely*
00:41:36 Apurva Ashok: hear hear!
00:42:22 Amy Hofer (she/her): So interesting Barb! I’ve been wondering whether Oregon’s next targeted pathway course development project should relate to climate
00:42:41 Barbara R Thees: Love that idea!
00:42:46 Barbara R Thees: It’s all interconnected!
00:43:11 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): There is a very interesting new climate OER coming out of Massachusetts soon (in the ROTEL grant portfolio).
00:43:19 Amy Hofer (she/her): Thanks Jonathan!
00:43:34 Apurva Ashok: Yes, I was thinking about Larry’s book! :) We’re on the same page Jonathan
00:43:41 Barbara R Thees: Ooh I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled for those resources!
00:43:45 Kaitlin Schilling: I love the idea of connection making across different sectors/topics and open education
00:43:55 Barbara R Thees: What’s the title, Apurva?
00:44:15 Barbara R Thees: Multitasking is hard! 🙂
00:44:27 Apurva Ashok: Conversations with the Earth - https://forum.rebus.community/c/open-textbooks-in-development/conversations-with-the-earth/485
00:44:30 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): "Conversations with the Earth"
00:44:34 Barbara R Thees: Thanks!
00:46:44 Apurva Ashok: And there’s a lot of investment in this too - just yesterday I saw a call for proposals from Google as they plan to invest $25M in AI projects advancing the SDGs
00:47:13 elle (she/her/they): Open science is a great connection to open. How can we develop or support sustainable repositories that include lab and data notebooks as well as the machine learning models alongside just the abstract article.
00:47:15 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Tactful, Karen!
00:48:18 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): Several organizations including Creative Commons and SPARC have a big open science thing going right now, partly in support of the UNESCO Open Science Recommendation.
00:48:37 Amy Hofer (she/her): +1 to Rumyana’s question earlier about what OEN/Rebus are thinking about for the evolution of this PD?
00:48:55 Karen Lauritsen: Sure, we can say more on that, Amy.
00:49:00 Karen Lauritsen: Also: https://climateliteracy.umn.edu/
00:49:33 Amy Hofer (she/her): Thanks for the climate related links! I’m searching through all our catalogs to try to figure out which courses might be most relevant statewide for OER development
00:50:01 Barbara R Thees: Shameless plug- it’s Give to the Max Day today here in Minnesota, and the Center for Climate Literacy is raising funds to support their work: https://crowdfund.umn.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=1668
00:52:43 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: I would love to be able to steer our faculty to these workshops
00:53:07 Kaitlin Schilling: https://rebus.community/textbook-success-program/
00:53:26 Barbara R Thees: That’s great to hear that there would be interest in this model at your institution, Cheryl!
00:54:22 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: @Apurva - our faculty OER authors would love to hear about how to do peer review on OER
00:55:33 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: how to find peer reviewers, how to use tech to do reviews
00:56:03 elle (she/her/they): Tools that support workflow and project management. Many folkx don't have the exposure to applications like slack, basecamp, etc.
00:56:07 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: methodologies, yes! the word my brain couldn't think of
00:56:22 Amy Hofer (she/her): +1 Elle. A lot of interest in Oregon in that area.
00:57:01 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): I love "mythological in their promise"!!
00:57:27 Amy Hofer (she/her): Any update on when we can pilot that one Karen?
00:57:40 Barbara R Thees: A whole toolbox full!
00:57:44 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: And often our faculty don't want to learn new tools
00:57:54 elle (she/her/they): I have a group of authors that I introduced to discord and now they love it. It depends on how the tools fits and extends your thinking instead of creating just another technology barrier
00:58:13 Apurva Ashok: Great perspective, elle
01:00:19 Amy Hofer (she/her): Thank you for hosting for 5 years Karen, Apurva, and teams!
01:00:27 Barbara R Thees: Thanks, everyone! So good to see you all.
01:00:41 Karen Lauritsen: ☺️
01:00:43 Jonathan Poritz (he/him): Yes, agree with Amy, thanks so much for hosting/building/supporting this community!
01:00:56 Kaitlin Schilling: Thank you all for sharing ideas and hopes and memories! I hope we all get to chat again or work together soon :)
01:01:03 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Thank you to the OEN & Rebus for organizing these!
01:02:18 Tonia J Johnson: Open Education Network YouTube OH Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWRE6ioG4vdahUrKaiHvsCA2J6NQLysU6
01:02:27 Kaitlin Schilling: Thanks Tonia!
01:02:33 Tonia J Johnson: Open Education Network OH Blog: https://open.umn.edu/blog/categories/office-hours
01:02:45 Tonia J Johnson: Rebus Community OH Blog: https://rebus.community/category/otn-rebus-office-hours/
01:02:56 Tonia J Johnson: Thanks everybody!
01:02:59 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey | she/her: Thanks
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