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Speakers:
Amanda: Hi, everybody. It's me again. You just saw me last week and here I am again. I'm Amanda Larson. I'm the Affordable Instructional Consultant at the Ohio State University. And I am so glad to see you all here again today. Thank you for joining us for today's session. Soon, I'm going to be handing it off to the amazingly wonderful Karen Bjork, from Portland State. And she's going to talk to us today about, I believe, call for proposals.
As always, we are going to leave time for your questions at the end of the session and for conversation. So please do be lively in the chat as you have been previously. There be many of you who already have some experience with call for proposals, and we invite you to share those experiences and resources in the chat. As always, there's going to be a few housekeeping details. The webinar is being recorded and you should have the popup that said, "Hey, let's be recorded, click okay."
And then it will be added to the YouTube Pub101 spring '22 playlist. So if you want to come back and re-watch it, that will be available to you then. We are committed to providing a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for everyone aligned with our community norms and I'll pop that link into the chat in case you want to review what those are. So please join us in creating both a safe and welcoming constructive space.
And now I'm going to turn things over to Karen Bjork.
Karen: Amanda, thank you so much. When you said, "I hope we're talking about call for proposals," I got slightly concerned because I was like, "Well, if we're not, then this could be an interesting discussion."
It's so nice to meet everyone. I'm just going to share my screen and we will go from there. So you all should now be able to see my full screen. I'm just going to move a few things over here for a second. So just give me a moment while I attempt to get my screen, so....okay.
So as Amanda said, I'm going to be looking at communicating capacity and expectations using the call for proposal. And there we are. So my name is Karen Bjork. I am Head of Digital Initiatives as well as Cataloging & eAccess at Portland State University. So I manage the institutional repository, PDXScholar, and I lead the university's open access textbook publishing initiative, PDXOpen.
So as the project lead, I'm fully invested in ensuring that all of our faculty authors have a positive experience and are able to successfully complete their open textbooks. And since the inception of PDXOpen, we have supported over 26 faculty authored open access textbooks. And actually, I just realized that that is wrong. We've actually supported over 30. I, unfortunately, forgot to update this slide. So my apologies.
So when thinking about your call for proposal, it's also about thinking about the capacity. Your capacity really does inform your program design. Your call for proposals communicates your program design. And you can think about your call for proposals as your first opportunity to communicate your programmatic capacity and author's expectations. Everything here is what I will be discussing in more detail.
So the call for proposal does provide your program the opportunity to set priorities and expectations. So as I said, just in that previous slide, it is typically how faculty first hear about your publishing program and it provides the opportunity to communicate your potential partners and your program goals, and your targeted outcomes. Karen Al used to describe it as your dating profile. It's your program's dating profile. It's the, "Here's what I'm expecting. Here's what I'd like to see. Who wants to join me and be a part of my program?"
So the call for proposal really does set that overall tone and it defines the spirit of your project. And having the spirit of your project well defined will be extremely helpful as you move forward and start working with faculty authors. In my experience, it's very important to be clear and to provide detailed information in your call for proposal.
So I'll be showing an upcoming slides, the evolution of Portland State University's call for proposal and the level of detail we now include. So I'll be going through all of these in more detail, but in your call for proposal, you'll want to define your program's priorities, the expectations, the budget, your selection process, additional support that you're going to be providing, what the end product will look like. Your CFP informs your author agreement, which will be covered in another session.
So there are many open textbook publishing CFPs out there. So always look at what others have done. And this is what I did when I first got started. There's really no reason to reinvent the wheel. There's so many great programs out there now and it's just the perfect opportunity to pick and choose what will fit your program best.
The other thing is it is really important to revise your call for proposal each round. Priorities shift, lessons are learned, and there's always something you missed or points that need more clarity or detail. So I was just telling Amanda, before we got started, that I was informed we have a pot of money and I can do another call for proposal. So I am relooking at our past call for proposals and reinventing and looking at what it is I want to do with this new round and who I want to target.
So as I mentioned in the previous slide, before you release your CFP, you'll want to think about and decide what the focus of your grant program will be. So this is really important. Essentially creating the CFP is all about answering a lot of questions. So the decision that you make not only provides the framework for your CFP, but it also will inform your selection criteria and rubric.
So let's get started. So you'll need to ask yourself who will you be encouraging to apply? And does your program have a specific focus? So for example, will you be encouraging faculty who teach first-year courses? Is your focus on high enrollment? Will your program focus on a particular discipline or area? Is the focus of your OER program to support inclusive learning?
So several years ago, we wanted to target high enrollment courses so we designed our CFP around that goal. One thing that we needed to do was define what we meant by high enrollment. So this took a bit of work on our end because my institution doesn't define high enrollment. And after a lot of consultation with the registrar's office and other institutional partners, we defined high enrollment courses as one that had approximately 500 students annually. And while it took us a while to land on that number, it was definitely worth it in the end.
It is also important to include how participants are going to report on progress. Will you be requiring regular one-on-one check-ins? Will you have group monthly meetings? Will there be workshops? How will grantees share their successes or talk about their challenges? So at PSU, we require that grantees participate in an OER workshop at the very beginning of our program. We also require that they have regular check-in meetings.
The OER workshop provides grantees the opportunities to meet each other and get a brief introduction to self-publishing. The main purpose is to have the grant recipients complete their project roadmap. So this roadmap actually helps the recipients organize their project timeline and identify points where they may need additional support. We also utilize those roadmaps for our regular check-in meetings. I can look at the roadmap and say, "You said that by this time you would be here. Are you there? Let's talk about why you may not be, what challenges do you have."
And the roadmap is continuously updated to meet the needs and the changes that are happening. But it's really important to have that at the very beginning of the project in order to make sure that all of those expectations are set and that the authors have an understanding of the capacity.
In particularly, when we talk about timelines, I always stretch all of our timelines out by at least two to three months. So if a faculty member says they're going to complete something in September, I actually identify that they will have it completed by November, just because life happens and a lot of these books are getting written at the same time that our faculty are also teaching.
So expectations. So you really must clearly define what services your program is going to be providing. So this could include project management, locating resources, accomplishing reviews, design, and production work. So are you going to be providing a project manager? Who's going to do that work? Copyright permissions. Will the author be responsible for clearing copyright or is your program going to do that?
So at Portland State, many of our textbooks are language education and they required international copyright clearance. So while we worked closely with the author to draft the copyright clearance permission letters, we required the authors to request the permission themselves. So for example, we have a Russian textbook and this particular textbook used text that was published in Russia. So the faculty author, thankfully, had some family connections in Russia, and they were able to work with the Russian copyright office to negotiate the rights and then translate everything that was said in English so we have direct documentation on that. And we did a similar thing with a French science fiction textbook that we have.
So during the author creation process, will your library assist the authors with pedagogical questions or does your university have instructional designers that you can refer them to? Do you have any in-house expertise? Is there staff in your library or at your university that could do copy editing or design? Does that person have the capacity to take on extra work? Would you charge for these services? And if you don't have the in-house expertise, will authors be responsible for finding editors and designers on their own? How will they know what the criteria to select editors and designers is? Are you going to assist them with identifying editors or designers? Or do you have a service that you could point them to and utilize, for example, like Scribe?
Could you say to your authors, if you want editor or design work, you will go through Scribe and will work with you to do that? Or are they going to be able to hire their own? How will you handle textbook peer review? Will your books be double-blind or an open peer review? Will your program pay peer reviewers or will authors need to pay the reviewers from their stipends?
If you decide to do an open peer review, will the authors need to find the reviewers? If so, how many? And can they be affiliated with your institution? Will authors be required to set aside a certain amount of funding to be designated to the editorial and production services? So this is what I mentioned just a few minutes ago about if you're saying to your authors, you'll have to use this particular service, are you also going to say, you need to set aside a certain amount of money to ensure you have a certain amount of money for those services.
So for example, one of our call for proposals, we decided that all authors needed to set aside a minimum of $2,500 for editorial and production design services. We've actually looked at increasing that number because I am realizing how expensive editorial and design services are. But it's also about then figuring out how much overall budget you have.
The other question that you really need to think about that I actually didn't think about until several call for proposals was about, are you going to support interactive websites? Are you going to allow audio or video recordings? If you're not going to support that, is there someone in your institution that will? And lastly on expectations is about accessibility compliance.
What requirements are you going to have with accessibility? Are you going to make sure and ensure that all your books are accessible? What does that mean for math textbooks? Particularly when trying to ensure that math equations are accessible, who is going to be doing that work? And when are you going to ensure that all the compliance is met? And are you going to create a checkbox and have authors do all of that?
So there's a lot in regards to that expectations. It's essentially what to expect before participating and being a part of this program.
So final product and timeline. So will authors retain their copyright or will the copyright be transferred to the university? So when we originally started our program, the authors had to give their copyright to the university. This, of course, as many of you can assume was problematic. We actually had a number of our authors step away from our program because they didn't want to give the university their copyright. And we fully understood that and supported our authors in those decisions. So we went and worked with our university council office to ensure that the authors could keep their copyright. It was really important to us.
Once we were able to get that insurance and once we had that moved over, we actually then were able to retro the copyright and give the copyright back to the authors for those in which the university initially had said, "No, we want the copyright on." And I will say this was a really big win for us, but it also took a lot of time and a lot of effort in order to make that happen. But I do, and I can't stress this enough, always check with your legal counsel before releasing your call for proposal just to make sure that there isn't something that you're not thinking about.
So you'll also have to address what Creative Commons license the textbooks will be published under. So will you allow authors to choose a CC license or will authors be required to publish under a particular license? So for us, for example, we do not allow authors to apply a no derivative license. We do this because it doesn't meet the requirement of the open textbook library and we want our authors to place their books in the open textbook library.
So we have a lot of discussions very early on about what Creative Commons license can be used as well as what our Creative Commons license. But we put it directly in our call for proposals, the Creative Commons license that we allow.
It's also important to have what a completed textbook looks like. Will you define the number of pages, number of chapters? Will each chapter have a set structure? And will your textbooks have a similar style or design? So to answer the question about what the final product would look like, we include the following statement in all of our call for proposals, that a completed manuscript supports the teaching of an entire course, which for us includes terms. And it includes a table of contents, consistent chapter elements, and features footnotes, glossary, and et cetera.
We have found that it's really important to put that language in there because we've had authors in the past misunderstand what we meant by an open textbook and had created a product in which was not a textbook. And so we needed to go back to our original call for proposal, look at everything, and we realized we were not clear on it. So we had to figure out how to meet that spirit of the project and get their book published and do some additional work and what that all looks like. But it, unfortunately, was something that we just didn't even think about at the very beginning.
Budget. As Amanda knows, I can probably talk about budget for two full hours. The budget is the area that takes up most of my time as a project manager. I meet weekly with our budget person in the library to ensure that we're on track with everything. So we have a number of spreadsheets and document every decision we make. We also recently set up a Trello board, which is a project management board that allows us to move authors through their timeline and how they're spending their money. And it allows us to attach contracts and various other documents to their name on the Trello board. And it has streamlined so much of our work that I can't stress enough how much that's really helped us.
So the really big questions that you'll need to answer are, how is the budget going to be distributed? Are you going to pay your faculty authors just one lump sum? Are you going to pay it at the beginning of the project, the mid, the end? Will authors have to meet certain expectations in order to get paid? What do those deadlines look like? Or will you be offering a departmental buyout if you have the funding in order to do that? Is that an option? Who will cover other payroll expenses known as OPE?
So when we talk about OPE, I mean the employer-paid taxes such as Social Security and Medicare. So if you are offering a stipend of $2,500, for example, will the faculty receive the gross wages of 2,500 or will they actually only receive $2,000 after taxes and OPE is taken out? How will this affect your overall budget?
I will tell you that OPE can get very, very tricky. And we learned early on, one of our call for proposals, our budgeting person forgot to include OPE. And we were over our budget by thousands of dollars. We thankfully had a buffer and were able to cover it, but it became very problematic for us. So what we do now is we advertise that we're going to pay a faculty, for example. If we have set aside $2,500 for the faculty, we only advertise that we're going to pay them $2,000. We can then adjust the budget higher or lower, but we're at least saying, "This is the amount that you are to expect."
And we have just found that it's so much easier budget-wise to do it that way than to try to pay and try to talk to the faculty about why they're only receiving a certain amount when we promised them a higher amount.
The other thing to think about is hiring and handling contracts. So as I said in the previous slide about expectations with editorial and design, if an author is going to be hiring somebody, who is going to handle the contracts for your institution? And what do the contracts look like? Are there certain legal things that the contractors have to go through? Do they have to meet certain standards? And as well as, when you do contracts, you do have to make sure you also speak to your university's HR because you want to make sure that you're not violating any contracts or HR laws.
And then what type of other expenses can be paid? Is there anything you will not pay for? Will you not pay for travel expenses to a conference, for example? Or will just say, "We're just going to give you one lump sum?" And then as the author, you can decide how you want to distribute that money.
So there is a lot to consider. And I will say, and I can't stress this enough, budget is probably one of the most complicated areas. So always make sure that you work with a budget analyst and you really know how your budget is going to be spent. So when we do our call for proposals, we have an internal document and an external facing. And our internal document provides all the ins and outs about our budget and what we will or will not do.
So I wanted to be able to show you the evolution of PSU's call for proposals, just to give you an idea of where we started and where we're now, where we now go. So back in 2016, I was just super excited to have money to do an open textbook publishing program. And I was like, "I don't care. I want anyone to participate. Please say yes to me. Please, please." And I feel like our call for proposal reflects this.
As you can see, this is all I was asking for. I was just like, "Anyone, anyone out there? You want to come? You want to ... I'll give you money." So we just wanted faculty to be able to show that they had a contact, their title, description of the contents, estimated length. I mean, we didn't even ask for a writing sample. We were just like, "Do you have an outline?" And then we also wanted to make sure we had a departmental chair or support. So that's where we started.
And then as you can see, we've gotten a little more detailed. So this was our last one we did in 2019. You can see how we've discussed the grant amount. So this was our high enrollment call for proposal that I talked about that we required 500 students annually. We have project timelines put in there, the grant amounts and how the amounts can be spent, in particular, with working with Scribe.
And then this is our continuation of this. So you can see what we're requiring, excuse me, what we're requiring of our grantees. We now require that all grantees participate in a long-range assessment. They write a final report. They have to report on enrollment for each term that the work is going to be published in our repository and what license that we require. We also have a criteria of what a successful proposal looks like. And we have found that adding these criteria has been really good in finding proposals that can meet expected timelines.
Because when we were very vague, we ran into a number of proposals or had a number of proposals that they were proposing it was going to take them two years to complete their book, where, in fact, one of our books took them over five years to complete. So that is one of our now reasons of why we now have such a higher level of criteria.
All right. Lessons learned. Be specific. I can't reiterate this enough. Be very specific on what it is that you want. Also, really provide opportunities for feedback and suggestions both from your team and from applicants throughout your program. It is okay to make adjustments as long as you communicate them to all of the participants, but it's all right to make adjustments to your program as you're going. We're all learning and mistakes are going to be made, things are going to be missed, but you want to make sure that faculty feel supported.
Having faculty feel supported will really make sure that they get to the finish line of completing their projects. Many of these projects are labors of love. We can't really pay the amount of time and effort that they put into it and making sure that faculty feel like we have their back is the key, I feel, to the success and getting our books completed and having our books just look beautiful. The work that the faculty have done have been amazing.
Really make sure you set clear selection, eligibility, and create a rubric and make sure that that is available. Make sure you're transparent about your selection and how you're going to be rating your proposals. It is okay to reject proposals. It is the how to say no. I have really found that rejecting proposals really does create a stronger program. You want to make sure that you have well-thought-out proposals and the books that are published are a representation of your program. And you want to ensure that it meets the spirit of the project.
Your books will be downloaded and seen throughout the world. And so you do want to make sure you have those strong books.
And also rejecting proposals provides an opportunity to have a conversation with faculty who are interested in OER and provides the opportunity to work with them, to move their OER proposal forward. So I've done this with previous proposals where I've rejected them and I've provided them feedback and said, "Here is why, let's talk about what you can do to make it better so the next round, you can go and move forward." And we've been able to support our proposals. And I think that's one of the reasons why we've continued to grow so much is because we are constantly checking in and having conversations, even with those proposals that we said no to.
But it is also the opportunity to create awareness on campus. It's really about, why should faculty participate and care, and what are the benefits? What expertise as program managers do you bring? And what are those opportunities for awareness on campus and how can you leverage to move this forward?
For me at Portland State, because of my work with open textbook publishing, I am now heavily involved in ensuring that our legislative mandates of Oregon are implemented. So I'm chairing a committee that's looking at implementing the low-cost, no-cost designation. We're looking at implementing our affordability plan. And this is all stemming from the work that I have done with open textbook publishing.
I feel like I have talked a lot and I've thrown a lot at you. So I'm just going to throw these questions to consider, and then I'm going to open it up for your own questions. So when looking at your CFP, some questions to consider is, do you want to evaluate writing samples as part of the application criteria? Do you want to work with multiple authors or just the lead author? Beyond the written text, what will you support? Will you support illustrations, interactive experiences, and videos? Will you provide tech support for any type of project? Do you want to require peer review? And do you want to ensure that someone else has reviewed the project before it's published, and who would that be? Would it be a copy editor? Would it be a peer reviewer viewer?
All right. So I am going to open it to questions.
Amanda: All right. Thank you so much, Karen, for sharing your recommendations about creating and building and, most importantly, revising a call for proposals. Please feel free to share your questions and comments in chat or raise your hand. And I can call on you to unmute and share them that way.
We did have a question in the chat earlier. There we go. Could you drop the definition of a textbook in the chat? And then what happens if a certain book doesn't need a glossary, for instance?
Karen: What happens if a certain book doesn't need?
Amanda: If it doesn't need a component.
Karen: Oh, that's fine. We're just doing it as a, for example, here's what we're expecting. Each book is unique. And so if it doesn't need a glossary, then we don't require a glossary be added. It's just the making sure that faculty are really thinking about what a textbook is and how their end product would reflect what we're wanting to do.
I will put the definition in the chat. I just have to locate it.
Amanda: While you are locating that, I will read to you and make you do two things at one time.
Karen: Oh, that's fine. I'm pretty good at multitasking most days.
Amanda: Michelle asked, "Do you provide guidelines for the letter of support from the department chair? We are finding some details are nice to have, for instance. Are other instructors going to adapt the book?"
Karen: Let me throw this in the chat. Okay. So here is our definition of how we define a completed manuscript. We have not created any guidelines or a template around what the department chair letter looks like. For us, it's mainly just about ensuring... Because we had a number of adjunct professors apply. So what we wanted to do was just ensure that the chairs were aware of the work that the department was doing and have it be something, in particular, for adjuncts, if the adjunct was not going to stick around, would there be interest in having this book continue to be used and why?
So I have gone back to... I've seen a department letter chair and then what I do is part of the conversation. So in our selection, all of our authors, those that we are considering to participate in our program, we actually have a one-on-one interview with them just to chat to talk about their project, to answer any lingering questions. And if they're an adjunct, this one comes into play about, will there be other adjuncts that will be using the book? Is there support from your department to continue using this book if you leave?
And our best example of this is, we have an English textbook called EmpoWord that was created by an adjunct. He's now a high school teacher in Southern Oregon, but his book is still being used in the English department because when he came on board or when he started our program, some of his editors were the other adjuncts that were teaching the course. And so they had a lot of feedback as part of that.
But I don't like to be really prescriptive about what that letter looks like. It's mainly a, "Hey, I know that this person is going to be spending their time doing this work and I support that." And then it becomes part of a larger conversation if we decide to take them on.
Amanda: Cheryl asks, "What payout schedule have you found works the best for stipends? Based on milestones?"
Karen: Yes, based on milestones. So we are required... And this is, again, where your HR office is going to come into play. So at Portland State University, we are required for our nine-month contract faculty to only pay them in the summer. We can't pay overloads. So because of that, we have designed our call for proposals and our program around the summer payment.
So it gets a little tricky sometimes, but we say, "Okay, in order to get your summer payment, you have to show this certain level of progress." And that does get hard. So with hiring, if our faculty wanted to hire a designer or a copy editor, then that can happen at any time. We can create contracts for that. But it's just the self-payment is what we are told that we can only pay faculty during the summer. It gets very tricky when we have 12-month faculty that have extra contracts.
The fiscal stuff that our budget analysts can do with money and making sure that we're not hitting overload contracts is amazing. And it's beyond anything I understand. So we have a very close relationship with our HR department just due to this.
Amanda: Okay. Next up. Julia writes, "I find it interesting that you pay a different amount of statement for low enrollment and higher enrollment course books, courses. Textbooks require the same amount of work regardless of enrollments. How do faculty feel about the difference?"
Karen: Yeah. So that's a really good question. What we ended up figuring out is our high enrollment courses. So Portland State University is on terms. So our high enrollment courses ended up being our Spanish 101, 102 and 103. So what are... And then we had a Spanish 201, 202 and 203. So what that meant is actually our faculty who met the high enrollment criteria were actually creating a book for three terms because all the students went through those.
So it wasn't like they were just creating a book for nine weeks, but they were actually creating a book for almost an entire academic year. So that was the reason why we decided to pay those particular faculty more money. And it was the same... We had a statistics book that met that criteria because it was for a statistics, I can't remember the course numbers, but it was, for example, a 101 and then a 102. It was a required two-term course that they needed to take. And so it ended up becoming such a larger project.
So with our low enrollment courses, those are usually focused on the nine-week term rather than the longer. So that's why we did make those differentials in payment. But it took a lot of conversation and we did have a number of faculty who were upset with us. But then when we started looking at what was needed and how the creation was going to be done, it just made sense to us to go that route.
Amanda: Yeah. I will also chime in that it is pretty usual across grant programs in the wild that there are low support and high support grants and that they have different numbers. So there is a bunch of other institutions who can back you up if you want to make that decision.
Next up, question-wise, Jodi asks, "Are your stipends always from institutional funds? Do you ever use grant funds for stipends for other parties? That would change the CFP, right? And do authors ever publish without stipends?"
Karen: So authors do publish without stipends. So Portland State University is run purely on donations. We work very closely with our grant office to essentially have... We have an arm of PSU that goes and does fundraisers for us and all of our open textbook publishing money, we get from those fundraising efforts. So it doesn't change our call for proposal because everything is done on donor funding.
We did have... And I was just mentioning to Amanda this morning that we have one grant that we received a couple of years ago. And now we are being told we have to spend out the rest of the grant, but it was all done through our foundation. So our call for proposal doesn't change at all because all the money is coming through the foundation. It isn't used in our... Our money is not coming from our overall regular budget.
And so for us, we've just kept it that way and just done it on donations and working with our foundation rather than doing any university-level budgeting. We have had one author who we wanted and asked for more money to support their open textbook, and we didn't have the funding. So they worked with their department and their department agreed to fund them the extra money. And we just worked with the department to ensure that the money came and that everything was meeting certain criteria. But that was only difference.
And we always put in our call for proposal where the funding is coming from. So if it's from the foundation or if it's from a particular grant, but how we actually distribute the money doesn't change.
Amanda: Next question, also from Jodi, is, does your CFP ever require updates or new editions after every so many years of publishing or do you handle that on a case-by-case basis?
Karen: I handle it on a case-by-case basis. So I look at how much money we have, which is really probably my big reason for changing my call for proposals. So for example, when we were able to do the high enrollment, we had gotten a large donation that was specifically for open textbooks. So we had over $20,000, which I'd never had before. And I was like, "Yay, we can do some cool things."
But generally, we have 5,000. So we're trying to figure out how can we get little call for proposals, little projects done. So when we have only a small amount of money, we might just do adopt and adapt grants and not even do the create grants. But if we have a larger amount of money, we're going to try to do those create grants. And so our call for proposal for us changes after each iteration. But I use our call for proposals as our baseline and just tweak it as needed.
Amanda:
Next up is a question from Michelle. She says, "We have also found some people are starting from square one and some have already developed a good chunk of content when they apply. Have you considered different grant amounts or different levels of support for those situations?"
Karen:
That is a really good question. And it's something I currently am considering. So one of the things that I'm looking at, and I haven't fully decided if I'm going to do it or not, is we have, for example, past authors that have published books and are still working at Portland State and are still using the textbook, for example. And I'm thinking about, do I reach out to them and say, "Hey, are you interested in revising, creating a new edition? What would that look like?"
And if that was the case, then they would get a different pot of money. I'm also thinking about in our newest call for proposals, do I want to create a call for proposals for people who just need to get over the crossing line, who just need money for a reviewer, or who just have almost a completed manuscript? And it's something that they could get done in a really short period of time.
So could we say that in the summer you are going to complete your project? Okay. Then what would that look like? How much money would that be? What would you need? And that would be a different pot. And then do another call for proposal for people who are brand new, who are starting from scratch.
I see each of these as three separate little mini-programs that are encompassed in one larger, but they would each have their own application process or their own selection criteria based on that. I haven't quite figured out how I would write it up or how I would design it, but it is definitely something I've been thinking about because you do now have a lot more awareness around OER and it's trying to support. And our institution really is pushing us to get more out there because we're trying to move towards a Z major or a Z degree. So how can we get some additional OER out more quickly?
Amanda: Next question is from Elizabeth. She asks, "Can you share how much your OER donor fund is and how many years it's taken to grow the fund?"
Karen: I don't actually know how much it is. That's totally not in my wheelhouse. So we started doing our call for proposals, I think our first one was 2016. And that one was when we had... So we used to have a relationship with the alumni association. We actually... My dean at the time was able to work with the alumni association, they were giving scholarships to individual students, but they were doing such a small amount that they were starting to get less and less students applying for it.
And so my dean talked to them into taking that money and putting it towards open textbooks and open textbooks creation. So that's how we initially got started. And then we had a donor that wanted to donate one-time money specifically for this project.
PSU does a day of giving, which actually just recently happened. And so we were able to... Our open textbook project is part of that day of giving. So this year, for example, I think we raised $4,000. In past years, we've raised 6,000, 8,000, but generally, it's small pots of money. And so we have to decide, can we wait and sit on this money and let it grow a little bit? Or do we want to spend it out right away? And a lot of that depends on the donor and expectations from the donors.
Amanda: Elizabeth also asks, "How do you handle revisions and updates? Does the new material go through copy editing and proofreading?"
Karen: So it depends. It depends on how much work is done on the books. So many of our faculty authors, after they publish and teach... So let me take a step back on that. So before we fully publish our open textbook, we require that the faculty teach with the book for a year. So we require that they put their book in D2L or in Moodle or whatever their learning management system is, and teach with it for a year and make adjustments based on that. And we have found that faculty during that time period make huge adjustments, particularly to the pedagogical approach.
Once they've done that for a year, then it goes to the copy editor and designer. And then after that, as they continue to teach with it and as more errors are found, faculty will make small changes and send those to me. And I just update the book. I put a note in the metadata that says, "Hey, this book has been updated for grammatical issues."
For larger changes, this is something that we're starting to tackle and try to figure out. I've had one book that completely did a revise because it was a Spanish textbook and he was realizing that some of the vocabulary he had used in his book was too high for his students. And so he needed to include definitions in the margins. He had designed his own book. He did it in InDesign. It's a beautiful book to look at.
And so we did that as a second edition because it was pretty major. I did ask him to send out that edition to his reviewers and have them review it. Particularly, he had a reviewer that was a... So this author, English... So Spanish is not his first language. And so we required that he had a faculty from a different institution where Spanish is their first language to look it over to ensure that his definitions were accurate and correct, and that everything grammatically was in line.
And I've done this for many of our language OERs, is that... And I know the faculty are usually the one saying, "I want to make sure that I have a native speaker of the language actually look it over and do some of that copy editing." So it does depend. We are looking at reaching out to our past authors and saying, "Hey, now that you've been teaching with this for several years, sometimes maybe up to six years, what kind of changes do you want to make? What would that look like and how much money or funding do you think it would take to create a new edition?
So it really depends on changes and where faculty are at and what's happening.
Amanda: Daniella asked, "Do you take into consideration if the work is original or if it is a remix of existing OER materials?"
Karen: We do. So we do require within our call for proposals, we have different levels of funding. And one of them is if they wanted to adopt or adapt. And so that is a less... We give for that, it's like $1,000 or $2,000, whereas our creation is up to 5,000. So we do allow and we've been moving a lot towards using Pressbooks rather than having a faculty publish directly in PDXScholar. So we've been trying to find different ways for publishing to happen. But, yeah, we do definitely allow and provide different levels of incentives based on what type of OER they're creating.
Amanda:
Lauren asked, "Do you have any requirements around or are there specific ways you encourage your faculty authors promoting the book for remixing and reuse at other institutions?" That's part one of that question. Part two...
Karen: Can I answer... Okay.
Amanda:
Yes, go ahead.
Karen:
I was like, "Let me answer that first because it's pretty quick." No. But, there's always a but. I swear, there's always like it depends, however. However, we have been encouraging it more and more because we're trying to get our faculty senate to look at OERs for tenure and promotion. And we see that if faculty can take their OER creation work and present it at conferences and write about it, it leverages our ability to get OER into that tenure and promotion discussion.
Okay. Second part.
Amanda: Do you gather any data on how the works created through your program have been adapted, remixed, reused at other institutions?
Karen: To the best of our ability, yes. This is probably, I would say, one of the hardest nuts to crack. This has been an issue, I think, from the very beginning. OpenStax, I remember, talked about their struggles with trying to find out who is using their material and for what purpose. So all of our books have a link within the metadata that says, "If you're using this, please fill out this form." And it's a very brief Google Form and people do fill it out.
We get submissions probably at least once a month, sometimes more. And they are from people from institutions from around the world. The other thing that I do is I always look at the reviews that are placed on the open textbook library to get a sense as well if the faculty are mentioning they're using those books. I think that that's a really good resource to use as well. But trying to figure out where people are coming from, I mean, we have statistics on where locations or institutions, but unless somebody out says explicitly, "Hey, I'm using this for this course," it's really difficult to track.
So our Google Form has been our best way so far, but I'm totally open to other ideas and suggestions because I know our faculty authors would really like to have something more concrete.
Oh, the OTL dashboard might be helpful. That's true. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting, Cheryl. I didn't know that. See, we don't run our Pressbooks site. Our Office of Academic Innovation does, so I don't have the same level of access to some of the admin stuff but that's really good to know.
Amanda: I can ask them to pull that data for you.
Karen: Yeah, I guess I should actually. These have been amazing questions, by the way.
Amanda: Very great questions, right?
Karen: I love talking about call for proposals.
Amanda: We do not have any more questions in the chat at this time and we are at 2:56. So I want to be really respectful of everybody's time. And I just want to thank you, Karen. We appreciate you so much for coming and sharing your expertise and experience with us today. And thank all of you for joining us.
As we continue to learn about open textbook publishing and we hope that we'll continue as we share available resources and recommendations. And that one of your key takeaways is the sense that you're not alone in figuring out how all of this works and how to support open textbook authors at your institution. If you have more questions about today's sessions or you'd like to chat with others about it, please use our class notes, which I'm going to link in the chat right now.
Karen: And I did put my email address in the chat.
Amanda: I will also throw her email address in the class notes when we're done. We'll review the notes before the following session and try to answer any outstanding questions. We really look forward to seeing you all next week. Carla will be presenting on memorandums of understanding. So the MOU process.
Karen: And I will say it's okay to just jump out there and try it and then just evaluate, reevaluate. It's scary just to get started, but just get started. Those are my ending words. Just jump out there.
Amanda: Just do it. Just do it.
Karen: Just do it.
END OF VIDEO
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Pub101 is a free, informal, online orientation to open textbook publishing. This May 4, 2022, session is hosted by Amanda Larson of Ohio State University. Amanda is joined by guest speaker Karen Bjork from Portland State University who explores the call for proposals as a means to inform and communicate your program design, and as a first opportunity to communicate programmatic capacity and author expectations.
Watch the video recording of this 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.
Audio Transcript
Speakers:
- Amanda Larson (Affordable Learning Instructional Consultant, Ohio State University)
- Karen Bjork (Head of Digital Initiatives and Scholarly Publishing, Portland State University)
Amanda: Hi, everybody. It's me again. You just saw me last week and here I am again. I'm Amanda Larson. I'm the Affordable Instructional Consultant at the Ohio State University. And I am so glad to see you all here again today. Thank you for joining us for today's session. Soon, I'm going to be handing it off to the amazingly wonderful Karen Bjork, from Portland State. And she's going to talk to us today about, I believe, call for proposals.
As always, we are going to leave time for your questions at the end of the session and for conversation. So please do be lively in the chat as you have been previously. There be many of you who already have some experience with call for proposals, and we invite you to share those experiences and resources in the chat. As always, there's going to be a few housekeeping details. The webinar is being recorded and you should have the popup that said, "Hey, let's be recorded, click okay."
And then it will be added to the YouTube Pub101 spring '22 playlist. So if you want to come back and re-watch it, that will be available to you then. We are committed to providing a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for everyone aligned with our community norms and I'll pop that link into the chat in case you want to review what those are. So please join us in creating both a safe and welcoming constructive space.
And now I'm going to turn things over to Karen Bjork.
Karen: Amanda, thank you so much. When you said, "I hope we're talking about call for proposals," I got slightly concerned because I was like, "Well, if we're not, then this could be an interesting discussion."
It's so nice to meet everyone. I'm just going to share my screen and we will go from there. So you all should now be able to see my full screen. I'm just going to move a few things over here for a second. So just give me a moment while I attempt to get my screen, so....okay.
So as Amanda said, I'm going to be looking at communicating capacity and expectations using the call for proposal. And there we are. So my name is Karen Bjork. I am Head of Digital Initiatives as well as Cataloging & eAccess at Portland State University. So I manage the institutional repository, PDXScholar, and I lead the university's open access textbook publishing initiative, PDXOpen.
So as the project lead, I'm fully invested in ensuring that all of our faculty authors have a positive experience and are able to successfully complete their open textbooks. And since the inception of PDXOpen, we have supported over 26 faculty authored open access textbooks. And actually, I just realized that that is wrong. We've actually supported over 30. I, unfortunately, forgot to update this slide. So my apologies.
So when thinking about your call for proposal, it's also about thinking about the capacity. Your capacity really does inform your program design. Your call for proposals communicates your program design. And you can think about your call for proposals as your first opportunity to communicate your programmatic capacity and author's expectations. Everything here is what I will be discussing in more detail.
So the call for proposal does provide your program the opportunity to set priorities and expectations. So as I said, just in that previous slide, it is typically how faculty first hear about your publishing program and it provides the opportunity to communicate your potential partners and your program goals, and your targeted outcomes. Karen Al used to describe it as your dating profile. It's your program's dating profile. It's the, "Here's what I'm expecting. Here's what I'd like to see. Who wants to join me and be a part of my program?"
So the call for proposal really does set that overall tone and it defines the spirit of your project. And having the spirit of your project well defined will be extremely helpful as you move forward and start working with faculty authors. In my experience, it's very important to be clear and to provide detailed information in your call for proposal.
So I'll be showing an upcoming slides, the evolution of Portland State University's call for proposal and the level of detail we now include. So I'll be going through all of these in more detail, but in your call for proposal, you'll want to define your program's priorities, the expectations, the budget, your selection process, additional support that you're going to be providing, what the end product will look like. Your CFP informs your author agreement, which will be covered in another session.
So there are many open textbook publishing CFPs out there. So always look at what others have done. And this is what I did when I first got started. There's really no reason to reinvent the wheel. There's so many great programs out there now and it's just the perfect opportunity to pick and choose what will fit your program best.
The other thing is it is really important to revise your call for proposal each round. Priorities shift, lessons are learned, and there's always something you missed or points that need more clarity or detail. So I was just telling Amanda, before we got started, that I was informed we have a pot of money and I can do another call for proposal. So I am relooking at our past call for proposals and reinventing and looking at what it is I want to do with this new round and who I want to target.
So as I mentioned in the previous slide, before you release your CFP, you'll want to think about and decide what the focus of your grant program will be. So this is really important. Essentially creating the CFP is all about answering a lot of questions. So the decision that you make not only provides the framework for your CFP, but it also will inform your selection criteria and rubric.
So let's get started. So you'll need to ask yourself who will you be encouraging to apply? And does your program have a specific focus? So for example, will you be encouraging faculty who teach first-year courses? Is your focus on high enrollment? Will your program focus on a particular discipline or area? Is the focus of your OER program to support inclusive learning?
So several years ago, we wanted to target high enrollment courses so we designed our CFP around that goal. One thing that we needed to do was define what we meant by high enrollment. So this took a bit of work on our end because my institution doesn't define high enrollment. And after a lot of consultation with the registrar's office and other institutional partners, we defined high enrollment courses as one that had approximately 500 students annually. And while it took us a while to land on that number, it was definitely worth it in the end.
It is also important to include how participants are going to report on progress. Will you be requiring regular one-on-one check-ins? Will you have group monthly meetings? Will there be workshops? How will grantees share their successes or talk about their challenges? So at PSU, we require that grantees participate in an OER workshop at the very beginning of our program. We also require that they have regular check-in meetings.
The OER workshop provides grantees the opportunities to meet each other and get a brief introduction to self-publishing. The main purpose is to have the grant recipients complete their project roadmap. So this roadmap actually helps the recipients organize their project timeline and identify points where they may need additional support. We also utilize those roadmaps for our regular check-in meetings. I can look at the roadmap and say, "You said that by this time you would be here. Are you there? Let's talk about why you may not be, what challenges do you have."
And the roadmap is continuously updated to meet the needs and the changes that are happening. But it's really important to have that at the very beginning of the project in order to make sure that all of those expectations are set and that the authors have an understanding of the capacity.
In particularly, when we talk about timelines, I always stretch all of our timelines out by at least two to three months. So if a faculty member says they're going to complete something in September, I actually identify that they will have it completed by November, just because life happens and a lot of these books are getting written at the same time that our faculty are also teaching.
So expectations. So you really must clearly define what services your program is going to be providing. So this could include project management, locating resources, accomplishing reviews, design, and production work. So are you going to be providing a project manager? Who's going to do that work? Copyright permissions. Will the author be responsible for clearing copyright or is your program going to do that?
So at Portland State, many of our textbooks are language education and they required international copyright clearance. So while we worked closely with the author to draft the copyright clearance permission letters, we required the authors to request the permission themselves. So for example, we have a Russian textbook and this particular textbook used text that was published in Russia. So the faculty author, thankfully, had some family connections in Russia, and they were able to work with the Russian copyright office to negotiate the rights and then translate everything that was said in English so we have direct documentation on that. And we did a similar thing with a French science fiction textbook that we have.
So during the author creation process, will your library assist the authors with pedagogical questions or does your university have instructional designers that you can refer them to? Do you have any in-house expertise? Is there staff in your library or at your university that could do copy editing or design? Does that person have the capacity to take on extra work? Would you charge for these services? And if you don't have the in-house expertise, will authors be responsible for finding editors and designers on their own? How will they know what the criteria to select editors and designers is? Are you going to assist them with identifying editors or designers? Or do you have a service that you could point them to and utilize, for example, like Scribe?
Could you say to your authors, if you want editor or design work, you will go through Scribe and will work with you to do that? Or are they going to be able to hire their own? How will you handle textbook peer review? Will your books be double-blind or an open peer review? Will your program pay peer reviewers or will authors need to pay the reviewers from their stipends?
If you decide to do an open peer review, will the authors need to find the reviewers? If so, how many? And can they be affiliated with your institution? Will authors be required to set aside a certain amount of funding to be designated to the editorial and production services? So this is what I mentioned just a few minutes ago about if you're saying to your authors, you'll have to use this particular service, are you also going to say, you need to set aside a certain amount of money to ensure you have a certain amount of money for those services.
So for example, one of our call for proposals, we decided that all authors needed to set aside a minimum of $2,500 for editorial and production design services. We've actually looked at increasing that number because I am realizing how expensive editorial and design services are. But it's also about then figuring out how much overall budget you have.
The other question that you really need to think about that I actually didn't think about until several call for proposals was about, are you going to support interactive websites? Are you going to allow audio or video recordings? If you're not going to support that, is there someone in your institution that will? And lastly on expectations is about accessibility compliance.
What requirements are you going to have with accessibility? Are you going to make sure and ensure that all your books are accessible? What does that mean for math textbooks? Particularly when trying to ensure that math equations are accessible, who is going to be doing that work? And when are you going to ensure that all the compliance is met? And are you going to create a checkbox and have authors do all of that?
So there's a lot in regards to that expectations. It's essentially what to expect before participating and being a part of this program.
So final product and timeline. So will authors retain their copyright or will the copyright be transferred to the university? So when we originally started our program, the authors had to give their copyright to the university. This, of course, as many of you can assume was problematic. We actually had a number of our authors step away from our program because they didn't want to give the university their copyright. And we fully understood that and supported our authors in those decisions. So we went and worked with our university council office to ensure that the authors could keep their copyright. It was really important to us.
Once we were able to get that insurance and once we had that moved over, we actually then were able to retro the copyright and give the copyright back to the authors for those in which the university initially had said, "No, we want the copyright on." And I will say this was a really big win for us, but it also took a lot of time and a lot of effort in order to make that happen. But I do, and I can't stress this enough, always check with your legal counsel before releasing your call for proposal just to make sure that there isn't something that you're not thinking about.
So you'll also have to address what Creative Commons license the textbooks will be published under. So will you allow authors to choose a CC license or will authors be required to publish under a particular license? So for us, for example, we do not allow authors to apply a no derivative license. We do this because it doesn't meet the requirement of the open textbook library and we want our authors to place their books in the open textbook library.
So we have a lot of discussions very early on about what Creative Commons license can be used as well as what our Creative Commons license. But we put it directly in our call for proposals, the Creative Commons license that we allow.
It's also important to have what a completed textbook looks like. Will you define the number of pages, number of chapters? Will each chapter have a set structure? And will your textbooks have a similar style or design? So to answer the question about what the final product would look like, we include the following statement in all of our call for proposals, that a completed manuscript supports the teaching of an entire course, which for us includes terms. And it includes a table of contents, consistent chapter elements, and features footnotes, glossary, and et cetera.
We have found that it's really important to put that language in there because we've had authors in the past misunderstand what we meant by an open textbook and had created a product in which was not a textbook. And so we needed to go back to our original call for proposal, look at everything, and we realized we were not clear on it. So we had to figure out how to meet that spirit of the project and get their book published and do some additional work and what that all looks like. But it, unfortunately, was something that we just didn't even think about at the very beginning.
Budget. As Amanda knows, I can probably talk about budget for two full hours. The budget is the area that takes up most of my time as a project manager. I meet weekly with our budget person in the library to ensure that we're on track with everything. So we have a number of spreadsheets and document every decision we make. We also recently set up a Trello board, which is a project management board that allows us to move authors through their timeline and how they're spending their money. And it allows us to attach contracts and various other documents to their name on the Trello board. And it has streamlined so much of our work that I can't stress enough how much that's really helped us.
So the really big questions that you'll need to answer are, how is the budget going to be distributed? Are you going to pay your faculty authors just one lump sum? Are you going to pay it at the beginning of the project, the mid, the end? Will authors have to meet certain expectations in order to get paid? What do those deadlines look like? Or will you be offering a departmental buyout if you have the funding in order to do that? Is that an option? Who will cover other payroll expenses known as OPE?
So when we talk about OPE, I mean the employer-paid taxes such as Social Security and Medicare. So if you are offering a stipend of $2,500, for example, will the faculty receive the gross wages of 2,500 or will they actually only receive $2,000 after taxes and OPE is taken out? How will this affect your overall budget?
I will tell you that OPE can get very, very tricky. And we learned early on, one of our call for proposals, our budgeting person forgot to include OPE. And we were over our budget by thousands of dollars. We thankfully had a buffer and were able to cover it, but it became very problematic for us. So what we do now is we advertise that we're going to pay a faculty, for example. If we have set aside $2,500 for the faculty, we only advertise that we're going to pay them $2,000. We can then adjust the budget higher or lower, but we're at least saying, "This is the amount that you are to expect."
And we have just found that it's so much easier budget-wise to do it that way than to try to pay and try to talk to the faculty about why they're only receiving a certain amount when we promised them a higher amount.
The other thing to think about is hiring and handling contracts. So as I said in the previous slide about expectations with editorial and design, if an author is going to be hiring somebody, who is going to handle the contracts for your institution? And what do the contracts look like? Are there certain legal things that the contractors have to go through? Do they have to meet certain standards? And as well as, when you do contracts, you do have to make sure you also speak to your university's HR because you want to make sure that you're not violating any contracts or HR laws.
And then what type of other expenses can be paid? Is there anything you will not pay for? Will you not pay for travel expenses to a conference, for example? Or will just say, "We're just going to give you one lump sum?" And then as the author, you can decide how you want to distribute that money.
So there is a lot to consider. And I will say, and I can't stress this enough, budget is probably one of the most complicated areas. So always make sure that you work with a budget analyst and you really know how your budget is going to be spent. So when we do our call for proposals, we have an internal document and an external facing. And our internal document provides all the ins and outs about our budget and what we will or will not do.
So I wanted to be able to show you the evolution of PSU's call for proposals, just to give you an idea of where we started and where we're now, where we now go. So back in 2016, I was just super excited to have money to do an open textbook publishing program. And I was like, "I don't care. I want anyone to participate. Please say yes to me. Please, please." And I feel like our call for proposal reflects this.
As you can see, this is all I was asking for. I was just like, "Anyone, anyone out there? You want to come? You want to ... I'll give you money." So we just wanted faculty to be able to show that they had a contact, their title, description of the contents, estimated length. I mean, we didn't even ask for a writing sample. We were just like, "Do you have an outline?" And then we also wanted to make sure we had a departmental chair or support. So that's where we started.
And then as you can see, we've gotten a little more detailed. So this was our last one we did in 2019. You can see how we've discussed the grant amount. So this was our high enrollment call for proposal that I talked about that we required 500 students annually. We have project timelines put in there, the grant amounts and how the amounts can be spent, in particular, with working with Scribe.
And then this is our continuation of this. So you can see what we're requiring, excuse me, what we're requiring of our grantees. We now require that all grantees participate in a long-range assessment. They write a final report. They have to report on enrollment for each term that the work is going to be published in our repository and what license that we require. We also have a criteria of what a successful proposal looks like. And we have found that adding these criteria has been really good in finding proposals that can meet expected timelines.
Because when we were very vague, we ran into a number of proposals or had a number of proposals that they were proposing it was going to take them two years to complete their book, where, in fact, one of our books took them over five years to complete. So that is one of our now reasons of why we now have such a higher level of criteria.
All right. Lessons learned. Be specific. I can't reiterate this enough. Be very specific on what it is that you want. Also, really provide opportunities for feedback and suggestions both from your team and from applicants throughout your program. It is okay to make adjustments as long as you communicate them to all of the participants, but it's all right to make adjustments to your program as you're going. We're all learning and mistakes are going to be made, things are going to be missed, but you want to make sure that faculty feel supported.
Having faculty feel supported will really make sure that they get to the finish line of completing their projects. Many of these projects are labors of love. We can't really pay the amount of time and effort that they put into it and making sure that faculty feel like we have their back is the key, I feel, to the success and getting our books completed and having our books just look beautiful. The work that the faculty have done have been amazing.
Really make sure you set clear selection, eligibility, and create a rubric and make sure that that is available. Make sure you're transparent about your selection and how you're going to be rating your proposals. It is okay to reject proposals. It is the how to say no. I have really found that rejecting proposals really does create a stronger program. You want to make sure that you have well-thought-out proposals and the books that are published are a representation of your program. And you want to ensure that it meets the spirit of the project.
Your books will be downloaded and seen throughout the world. And so you do want to make sure you have those strong books.
And also rejecting proposals provides an opportunity to have a conversation with faculty who are interested in OER and provides the opportunity to work with them, to move their OER proposal forward. So I've done this with previous proposals where I've rejected them and I've provided them feedback and said, "Here is why, let's talk about what you can do to make it better so the next round, you can go and move forward." And we've been able to support our proposals. And I think that's one of the reasons why we've continued to grow so much is because we are constantly checking in and having conversations, even with those proposals that we said no to.
But it is also the opportunity to create awareness on campus. It's really about, why should faculty participate and care, and what are the benefits? What expertise as program managers do you bring? And what are those opportunities for awareness on campus and how can you leverage to move this forward?
For me at Portland State, because of my work with open textbook publishing, I am now heavily involved in ensuring that our legislative mandates of Oregon are implemented. So I'm chairing a committee that's looking at implementing the low-cost, no-cost designation. We're looking at implementing our affordability plan. And this is all stemming from the work that I have done with open textbook publishing.
I feel like I have talked a lot and I've thrown a lot at you. So I'm just going to throw these questions to consider, and then I'm going to open it up for your own questions. So when looking at your CFP, some questions to consider is, do you want to evaluate writing samples as part of the application criteria? Do you want to work with multiple authors or just the lead author? Beyond the written text, what will you support? Will you support illustrations, interactive experiences, and videos? Will you provide tech support for any type of project? Do you want to require peer review? And do you want to ensure that someone else has reviewed the project before it's published, and who would that be? Would it be a copy editor? Would it be a peer reviewer viewer?
All right. So I am going to open it to questions.
Amanda: All right. Thank you so much, Karen, for sharing your recommendations about creating and building and, most importantly, revising a call for proposals. Please feel free to share your questions and comments in chat or raise your hand. And I can call on you to unmute and share them that way.
We did have a question in the chat earlier. There we go. Could you drop the definition of a textbook in the chat? And then what happens if a certain book doesn't need a glossary, for instance?
Karen: What happens if a certain book doesn't need?
Amanda: If it doesn't need a component.
Karen: Oh, that's fine. We're just doing it as a, for example, here's what we're expecting. Each book is unique. And so if it doesn't need a glossary, then we don't require a glossary be added. It's just the making sure that faculty are really thinking about what a textbook is and how their end product would reflect what we're wanting to do.
I will put the definition in the chat. I just have to locate it.
Amanda: While you are locating that, I will read to you and make you do two things at one time.
Karen: Oh, that's fine. I'm pretty good at multitasking most days.
Amanda: Michelle asked, "Do you provide guidelines for the letter of support from the department chair? We are finding some details are nice to have, for instance. Are other instructors going to adapt the book?"
Karen: Let me throw this in the chat. Okay. So here is our definition of how we define a completed manuscript. We have not created any guidelines or a template around what the department chair letter looks like. For us, it's mainly just about ensuring... Because we had a number of adjunct professors apply. So what we wanted to do was just ensure that the chairs were aware of the work that the department was doing and have it be something, in particular, for adjuncts, if the adjunct was not going to stick around, would there be interest in having this book continue to be used and why?
So I have gone back to... I've seen a department letter chair and then what I do is part of the conversation. So in our selection, all of our authors, those that we are considering to participate in our program, we actually have a one-on-one interview with them just to chat to talk about their project, to answer any lingering questions. And if they're an adjunct, this one comes into play about, will there be other adjuncts that will be using the book? Is there support from your department to continue using this book if you leave?
And our best example of this is, we have an English textbook called EmpoWord that was created by an adjunct. He's now a high school teacher in Southern Oregon, but his book is still being used in the English department because when he came on board or when he started our program, some of his editors were the other adjuncts that were teaching the course. And so they had a lot of feedback as part of that.
But I don't like to be really prescriptive about what that letter looks like. It's mainly a, "Hey, I know that this person is going to be spending their time doing this work and I support that." And then it becomes part of a larger conversation if we decide to take them on.
Amanda: Cheryl asks, "What payout schedule have you found works the best for stipends? Based on milestones?"
Karen: Yes, based on milestones. So we are required... And this is, again, where your HR office is going to come into play. So at Portland State University, we are required for our nine-month contract faculty to only pay them in the summer. We can't pay overloads. So because of that, we have designed our call for proposals and our program around the summer payment.
So it gets a little tricky sometimes, but we say, "Okay, in order to get your summer payment, you have to show this certain level of progress." And that does get hard. So with hiring, if our faculty wanted to hire a designer or a copy editor, then that can happen at any time. We can create contracts for that. But it's just the self-payment is what we are told that we can only pay faculty during the summer. It gets very tricky when we have 12-month faculty that have extra contracts.
The fiscal stuff that our budget analysts can do with money and making sure that we're not hitting overload contracts is amazing. And it's beyond anything I understand. So we have a very close relationship with our HR department just due to this.
Amanda: Okay. Next up. Julia writes, "I find it interesting that you pay a different amount of statement for low enrollment and higher enrollment course books, courses. Textbooks require the same amount of work regardless of enrollments. How do faculty feel about the difference?"
Karen: Yeah. So that's a really good question. What we ended up figuring out is our high enrollment courses. So Portland State University is on terms. So our high enrollment courses ended up being our Spanish 101, 102 and 103. So what are... And then we had a Spanish 201, 202 and 203. So what that meant is actually our faculty who met the high enrollment criteria were actually creating a book for three terms because all the students went through those.
So it wasn't like they were just creating a book for nine weeks, but they were actually creating a book for almost an entire academic year. So that was the reason why we decided to pay those particular faculty more money. And it was the same... We had a statistics book that met that criteria because it was for a statistics, I can't remember the course numbers, but it was, for example, a 101 and then a 102. It was a required two-term course that they needed to take. And so it ended up becoming such a larger project.
So with our low enrollment courses, those are usually focused on the nine-week term rather than the longer. So that's why we did make those differentials in payment. But it took a lot of conversation and we did have a number of faculty who were upset with us. But then when we started looking at what was needed and how the creation was going to be done, it just made sense to us to go that route.
Amanda: Yeah. I will also chime in that it is pretty usual across grant programs in the wild that there are low support and high support grants and that they have different numbers. So there is a bunch of other institutions who can back you up if you want to make that decision.
Next up, question-wise, Jodi asks, "Are your stipends always from institutional funds? Do you ever use grant funds for stipends for other parties? That would change the CFP, right? And do authors ever publish without stipends?"
Karen: So authors do publish without stipends. So Portland State University is run purely on donations. We work very closely with our grant office to essentially have... We have an arm of PSU that goes and does fundraisers for us and all of our open textbook publishing money, we get from those fundraising efforts. So it doesn't change our call for proposal because everything is done on donor funding.
We did have... And I was just mentioning to Amanda this morning that we have one grant that we received a couple of years ago. And now we are being told we have to spend out the rest of the grant, but it was all done through our foundation. So our call for proposal doesn't change at all because all the money is coming through the foundation. It isn't used in our... Our money is not coming from our overall regular budget.
And so for us, we've just kept it that way and just done it on donations and working with our foundation rather than doing any university-level budgeting. We have had one author who we wanted and asked for more money to support their open textbook, and we didn't have the funding. So they worked with their department and their department agreed to fund them the extra money. And we just worked with the department to ensure that the money came and that everything was meeting certain criteria. But that was only difference.
And we always put in our call for proposal where the funding is coming from. So if it's from the foundation or if it's from a particular grant, but how we actually distribute the money doesn't change.
Amanda: Next question, also from Jodi, is, does your CFP ever require updates or new editions after every so many years of publishing or do you handle that on a case-by-case basis?
Karen: I handle it on a case-by-case basis. So I look at how much money we have, which is really probably my big reason for changing my call for proposals. So for example, when we were able to do the high enrollment, we had gotten a large donation that was specifically for open textbooks. So we had over $20,000, which I'd never had before. And I was like, "Yay, we can do some cool things."
But generally, we have 5,000. So we're trying to figure out how can we get little call for proposals, little projects done. So when we have only a small amount of money, we might just do adopt and adapt grants and not even do the create grants. But if we have a larger amount of money, we're going to try to do those create grants. And so our call for proposal for us changes after each iteration. But I use our call for proposals as our baseline and just tweak it as needed.
Amanda:
Next up is a question from Michelle. She says, "We have also found some people are starting from square one and some have already developed a good chunk of content when they apply. Have you considered different grant amounts or different levels of support for those situations?"
Karen:
That is a really good question. And it's something I currently am considering. So one of the things that I'm looking at, and I haven't fully decided if I'm going to do it or not, is we have, for example, past authors that have published books and are still working at Portland State and are still using the textbook, for example. And I'm thinking about, do I reach out to them and say, "Hey, are you interested in revising, creating a new edition? What would that look like?"
And if that was the case, then they would get a different pot of money. I'm also thinking about in our newest call for proposals, do I want to create a call for proposals for people who just need to get over the crossing line, who just need money for a reviewer, or who just have almost a completed manuscript? And it's something that they could get done in a really short period of time.
So could we say that in the summer you are going to complete your project? Okay. Then what would that look like? How much money would that be? What would you need? And that would be a different pot. And then do another call for proposal for people who are brand new, who are starting from scratch.
I see each of these as three separate little mini-programs that are encompassed in one larger, but they would each have their own application process or their own selection criteria based on that. I haven't quite figured out how I would write it up or how I would design it, but it is definitely something I've been thinking about because you do now have a lot more awareness around OER and it's trying to support. And our institution really is pushing us to get more out there because we're trying to move towards a Z major or a Z degree. So how can we get some additional OER out more quickly?
Amanda: Next question is from Elizabeth. She asks, "Can you share how much your OER donor fund is and how many years it's taken to grow the fund?"
Karen: I don't actually know how much it is. That's totally not in my wheelhouse. So we started doing our call for proposals, I think our first one was 2016. And that one was when we had... So we used to have a relationship with the alumni association. We actually... My dean at the time was able to work with the alumni association, they were giving scholarships to individual students, but they were doing such a small amount that they were starting to get less and less students applying for it.
And so my dean talked to them into taking that money and putting it towards open textbooks and open textbooks creation. So that's how we initially got started. And then we had a donor that wanted to donate one-time money specifically for this project.
PSU does a day of giving, which actually just recently happened. And so we were able to... Our open textbook project is part of that day of giving. So this year, for example, I think we raised $4,000. In past years, we've raised 6,000, 8,000, but generally, it's small pots of money. And so we have to decide, can we wait and sit on this money and let it grow a little bit? Or do we want to spend it out right away? And a lot of that depends on the donor and expectations from the donors.
Amanda: Elizabeth also asks, "How do you handle revisions and updates? Does the new material go through copy editing and proofreading?"
Karen: So it depends. It depends on how much work is done on the books. So many of our faculty authors, after they publish and teach... So let me take a step back on that. So before we fully publish our open textbook, we require that the faculty teach with the book for a year. So we require that they put their book in D2L or in Moodle or whatever their learning management system is, and teach with it for a year and make adjustments based on that. And we have found that faculty during that time period make huge adjustments, particularly to the pedagogical approach.
Once they've done that for a year, then it goes to the copy editor and designer. And then after that, as they continue to teach with it and as more errors are found, faculty will make small changes and send those to me. And I just update the book. I put a note in the metadata that says, "Hey, this book has been updated for grammatical issues."
For larger changes, this is something that we're starting to tackle and try to figure out. I've had one book that completely did a revise because it was a Spanish textbook and he was realizing that some of the vocabulary he had used in his book was too high for his students. And so he needed to include definitions in the margins. He had designed his own book. He did it in InDesign. It's a beautiful book to look at.
And so we did that as a second edition because it was pretty major. I did ask him to send out that edition to his reviewers and have them review it. Particularly, he had a reviewer that was a... So this author, English... So Spanish is not his first language. And so we required that he had a faculty from a different institution where Spanish is their first language to look it over to ensure that his definitions were accurate and correct, and that everything grammatically was in line.
And I've done this for many of our language OERs, is that... And I know the faculty are usually the one saying, "I want to make sure that I have a native speaker of the language actually look it over and do some of that copy editing." So it does depend. We are looking at reaching out to our past authors and saying, "Hey, now that you've been teaching with this for several years, sometimes maybe up to six years, what kind of changes do you want to make? What would that look like and how much money or funding do you think it would take to create a new edition?
So it really depends on changes and where faculty are at and what's happening.
Amanda: Daniella asked, "Do you take into consideration if the work is original or if it is a remix of existing OER materials?"
Karen: We do. So we do require within our call for proposals, we have different levels of funding. And one of them is if they wanted to adopt or adapt. And so that is a less... We give for that, it's like $1,000 or $2,000, whereas our creation is up to 5,000. So we do allow and we've been moving a lot towards using Pressbooks rather than having a faculty publish directly in PDXScholar. So we've been trying to find different ways for publishing to happen. But, yeah, we do definitely allow and provide different levels of incentives based on what type of OER they're creating.
Amanda:
Lauren asked, "Do you have any requirements around or are there specific ways you encourage your faculty authors promoting the book for remixing and reuse at other institutions?" That's part one of that question. Part two...
Karen: Can I answer... Okay.
Amanda:
Yes, go ahead.
Karen:
I was like, "Let me answer that first because it's pretty quick." No. But, there's always a but. I swear, there's always like it depends, however. However, we have been encouraging it more and more because we're trying to get our faculty senate to look at OERs for tenure and promotion. And we see that if faculty can take their OER creation work and present it at conferences and write about it, it leverages our ability to get OER into that tenure and promotion discussion.
Okay. Second part.
Amanda: Do you gather any data on how the works created through your program have been adapted, remixed, reused at other institutions?
Karen: To the best of our ability, yes. This is probably, I would say, one of the hardest nuts to crack. This has been an issue, I think, from the very beginning. OpenStax, I remember, talked about their struggles with trying to find out who is using their material and for what purpose. So all of our books have a link within the metadata that says, "If you're using this, please fill out this form." And it's a very brief Google Form and people do fill it out.
We get submissions probably at least once a month, sometimes more. And they are from people from institutions from around the world. The other thing that I do is I always look at the reviews that are placed on the open textbook library to get a sense as well if the faculty are mentioning they're using those books. I think that that's a really good resource to use as well. But trying to figure out where people are coming from, I mean, we have statistics on where locations or institutions, but unless somebody out says explicitly, "Hey, I'm using this for this course," it's really difficult to track.
So our Google Form has been our best way so far, but I'm totally open to other ideas and suggestions because I know our faculty authors would really like to have something more concrete.
Oh, the OTL dashboard might be helpful. That's true. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting, Cheryl. I didn't know that. See, we don't run our Pressbooks site. Our Office of Academic Innovation does, so I don't have the same level of access to some of the admin stuff but that's really good to know.
Amanda: I can ask them to pull that data for you.
Karen: Yeah, I guess I should actually. These have been amazing questions, by the way.
Amanda: Very great questions, right?
Karen: I love talking about call for proposals.
Amanda: We do not have any more questions in the chat at this time and we are at 2:56. So I want to be really respectful of everybody's time. And I just want to thank you, Karen. We appreciate you so much for coming and sharing your expertise and experience with us today. And thank all of you for joining us.
As we continue to learn about open textbook publishing and we hope that we'll continue as we share available resources and recommendations. And that one of your key takeaways is the sense that you're not alone in figuring out how all of this works and how to support open textbook authors at your institution. If you have more questions about today's sessions or you'd like to chat with others about it, please use our class notes, which I'm going to link in the chat right now.
Karen: And I did put my email address in the chat.
Amanda: I will also throw her email address in the class notes when we're done. We'll review the notes before the following session and try to answer any outstanding questions. We really look forward to seeing you all next week. Carla will be presenting on memorandums of understanding. So the MOU process.
Karen: And I will say it's okay to just jump out there and try it and then just evaluate, reevaluate. It's scary just to get started, but just get started. Those are my ending words. Just jump out there.
Amanda: Just do it. Just do it.
Karen: Just do it.
END OF VIDEO
Chat Transcript
00:15:52 Amanda Larson: https://z.umn.edu/pub101norms
00:23:43 Amanda Larson: In the programs I've been involved in we had a mandatory kick off meeting and then a requirement that grantees share their work either through a webinar we organized or in a facilitated group share out.
00:27:39 Amanda Larson: Or not peer reviewed at all, or peer reviewed after the fact through something like the OEN's Open Textbook Library reviews
00:30:45 Amanda Larson: also it pays off to read thoroughly the Intellectual Property Policy at your institution
00:32:11 Elizabeth Scarpelli: Can you drop the definition of a textbook in the chat?
00:32:29 Elizabeth Scarpelli: What happens if a certain book doesn't need a glossary for instance.
00:34:35 Beth Daniel Lindsay (she/her) | Wabash College: oh wow, I never thought about payroll expenses
00:34:39 Anne Marie Gruber: Another institution in my state ran into an issue where "special compensation" for faculty was approved through dept & provost, but was held up by HR. So communication needs to involve all interested parties well ahead of time.
00:43:10 Karen Lauritsen: Here are a couple examples of PDX open textbooks: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/inferring-and-explaining
00:43:39 Karen Lauritsen: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/histoires-d-avenirs-science-fiction-pour-le-cours-de-francais-niveaux-intermediaire-et-avance
00:44:26 Carla Myers: This is all such great info Karen!
00:45:41 Michele Behr: Do you provide guidelines for the letter of support from the department chair? We are finding that some details are nice to have. For instance, are other instructors going to adopt the book?
00:46:47 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey: What payout schedule have you found works best for stipends? (based on milestones?)
00:46:56 Julia Rodriguez: I find it interesting that you pay a different amount of stipend for low enrollment and high enrollment courses- textbooks require similar amount of work regardless of enrollments - how do faculty feel about this difference?
00:47:00 Karen Bjork: a completed manuscript supports the teaching of an entire course (term) and includes a Table of Contents, consistent chapter elements, and features, footnotes, glossary, etc.
00:47:03 Jodie Morin: Are your stipends always from institutional funds? Do you ever use grant funds for stipends from other parties? That would change the CFP, right? Do authors ever publish without stipends?
00:49:14 Jodie Morin: Does your CFP ever require updates (or new editions) every X years after publishing, or do you handle that on a case by case basis?
00:54:39 Michele Behr: We have also found that some people are starting from square one, and some have already developed a good chunk of content when they apply. Have you considered different grant amounts or different levels of support for these situations?
00:55:36 Elizabeth Scarpelli: Can you share how much your OER donor fund is and how many years it has taken to grow the fund?
00:55:46 Michele Behr: FYI, we are using a fund from fines for lost books to fund our program
00:56:09 Elizabeth Scarpelli: How do you handle revisions and updates? Does the new material go through copyediting and proofreading?
00:56:40 Daniela Elliott: Do you take into consideration if the work is original or if it is a remix of existing OER materials?
01:01:28 Lauren Ray: Do you have any requirements around (or are there specific ways you encourage) your faculty authors promoting the book for remixing and reuse at other institutions?
01:03:16 Lauren Ray: ...And do you gather any data on how the works created through your program have been adapted/remixed/reused at other institutions?
01:04:49 Carla Harper: I need to go now. I want to thank you Karen for this information.
01:06:49 Lauren Ray: Thank you Karen! Super helpful.
01:07:27 Julia Rodriguez: OTL dashboard might be able to help institutions with this data
01:07:33 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey: Pressbooks' new analytics will show highest site traffic, so we've been able to deduce that .edu sites (besides Open Textbook Library) are likely adopters
01:08:25 Karen Bjork: kbjork@pdx.edu
01:08:26 Carla Myers: Thank you Karen!!!
01:08:33 Michele Behr: Yes, excellent session
01:08:34 Anne Marie Gruber: Great session. Thank you so much!
01:08:34 Edward Mandity: very informative, thank you.
01:08:36 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey: This was fabulous, Karen!
01:08:40 Michele Leigh: I wish I had seen this before we put out our first CFP
01:08:44 Julia Rodriguez: Thank you great work. Say hi to Mt. Hood for me.
01:08:45 Stacy Anderson: Thank you!
01:08:46 Beth Daniel Lindsay (she/her) | Wabash College: Thank you!
01:08:52 Amanda Larson: https://z.umn.edu/101notes
01:08:56 Megan Heiman: Thank you, Karen!
01:09:12 Hayley Battaglia: Thank you!
01:09:31 Susan Whitmer: Thanks! I appreciate that you mentioned Faculty Senate and their potential to add OER for tenure & promotion.
01:09:32 Carla Myers: Yes Karen!
01:09:33 Leanne Urasaki: Thank you. See everyone next week.
01:09:38 Michele Leigh: thanks so much
01:09:43 Elizabeth Scarpelli: Thanks. Great session
00:23:43 Amanda Larson: In the programs I've been involved in we had a mandatory kick off meeting and then a requirement that grantees share their work either through a webinar we organized or in a facilitated group share out.
00:27:39 Amanda Larson: Or not peer reviewed at all, or peer reviewed after the fact through something like the OEN's Open Textbook Library reviews
00:30:45 Amanda Larson: also it pays off to read thoroughly the Intellectual Property Policy at your institution
00:32:11 Elizabeth Scarpelli: Can you drop the definition of a textbook in the chat?
00:32:29 Elizabeth Scarpelli: What happens if a certain book doesn't need a glossary for instance.
00:34:35 Beth Daniel Lindsay (she/her) | Wabash College: oh wow, I never thought about payroll expenses
00:34:39 Anne Marie Gruber: Another institution in my state ran into an issue where "special compensation" for faculty was approved through dept & provost, but was held up by HR. So communication needs to involve all interested parties well ahead of time.
00:43:10 Karen Lauritsen: Here are a couple examples of PDX open textbooks: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/inferring-and-explaining
00:43:39 Karen Lauritsen: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/histoires-d-avenirs-science-fiction-pour-le-cours-de-francais-niveaux-intermediaire-et-avance
00:44:26 Carla Myers: This is all such great info Karen!
00:45:41 Michele Behr: Do you provide guidelines for the letter of support from the department chair? We are finding that some details are nice to have. For instance, are other instructors going to adopt the book?
00:46:47 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey: What payout schedule have you found works best for stipends? (based on milestones?)
00:46:56 Julia Rodriguez: I find it interesting that you pay a different amount of stipend for low enrollment and high enrollment courses- textbooks require similar amount of work regardless of enrollments - how do faculty feel about this difference?
00:47:00 Karen Bjork: a completed manuscript supports the teaching of an entire course (term) and includes a Table of Contents, consistent chapter elements, and features, footnotes, glossary, etc.
00:47:03 Jodie Morin: Are your stipends always from institutional funds? Do you ever use grant funds for stipends from other parties? That would change the CFP, right? Do authors ever publish without stipends?
00:49:14 Jodie Morin: Does your CFP ever require updates (or new editions) every X years after publishing, or do you handle that on a case by case basis?
00:54:39 Michele Behr: We have also found that some people are starting from square one, and some have already developed a good chunk of content when they apply. Have you considered different grant amounts or different levels of support for these situations?
00:55:36 Elizabeth Scarpelli: Can you share how much your OER donor fund is and how many years it has taken to grow the fund?
00:55:46 Michele Behr: FYI, we are using a fund from fines for lost books to fund our program
00:56:09 Elizabeth Scarpelli: How do you handle revisions and updates? Does the new material go through copyediting and proofreading?
00:56:40 Daniela Elliott: Do you take into consideration if the work is original or if it is a remix of existing OER materials?
01:01:28 Lauren Ray: Do you have any requirements around (or are there specific ways you encourage) your faculty authors promoting the book for remixing and reuse at other institutions?
01:03:16 Lauren Ray: ...And do you gather any data on how the works created through your program have been adapted/remixed/reused at other institutions?
01:04:49 Carla Harper: I need to go now. I want to thank you Karen for this information.
01:06:49 Lauren Ray: Thank you Karen! Super helpful.
01:07:27 Julia Rodriguez: OTL dashboard might be able to help institutions with this data
01:07:33 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey: Pressbooks' new analytics will show highest site traffic, so we've been able to deduce that .edu sites (besides Open Textbook Library) are likely adopters
01:08:25 Karen Bjork: kbjork@pdx.edu
01:08:26 Carla Myers: Thank you Karen!!!
01:08:33 Michele Behr: Yes, excellent session
01:08:34 Anne Marie Gruber: Great session. Thank you so much!
01:08:34 Edward Mandity: very informative, thank you.
01:08:36 Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey: This was fabulous, Karen!
01:08:40 Michele Leigh: I wish I had seen this before we put out our first CFP
01:08:44 Julia Rodriguez: Thank you great work. Say hi to Mt. Hood for me.
01:08:45 Stacy Anderson: Thank you!
01:08:46 Beth Daniel Lindsay (she/her) | Wabash College: Thank you!
01:08:52 Amanda Larson: https://z.umn.edu/101notes
01:08:56 Megan Heiman: Thank you, Karen!
01:09:12 Hayley Battaglia: Thank you!
01:09:31 Susan Whitmer: Thanks! I appreciate that you mentioned Faculty Senate and their potential to add OER for tenure & promotion.
01:09:32 Carla Myers: Yes Karen!
01:09:33 Leanne Urasaki: Thank you. See everyone next week.
01:09:38 Michele Leigh: thanks so much
01:09:43 Elizabeth Scarpelli: Thanks. Great session
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