Office Hours

This is year five of Office Hours and our final 59th session.  ...we thought we would reflect, not just only on the Office Hours experience that we’ve shared together many of us once a month for the last few years, but also on the open education community more broadly. Where we were five years ago as a community, and even in our own sort of individual professional lives and careers, where we think we might be five years from now and so on.

Office Hours has been a monthly opportunity for the open education community to discuss open publishing and related topics since 2017. After five years, the 59th and final Office Hours session co-hosted by the Open Education Network (OEN) and Rebus Community was held in November 2022.

Today, we are fortunate to be joined by three guests, and all of you, to talk about trauma-informed pedagogy in open education. As usual, we will hear briefly from our three guests, around five minutes each. And then once they’ve finished introducing their perspective and views on the topic we will look to all of you to have this conversation with us together.

Today’s topic was inspired by the reality of our lives, particularly over the last couple of years and what we’ve heard from the community about burnout and fatigue. And the desire to try and lean on and support one another to keep going.

Well, hello everybody and welcome to our 56th Office Hours and also our Office Hours session that marks five years of Rebus Community and the Open Education Network coming together to talk about various topics in open.

We are joined by Sam Arungwa, who is Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist, Director of Utah Prevention Science Institute at Utah State University, as well as Rama Kaba-Demanin who is Program Lead at Open Library at eCampus Ontario. And so we’re going to talk today about what happens after the OER has been out there for a while. What happens when an author leaves? How do we sustain our programs and our resources in the longer-term?

Today we're going to discuss showing your work, tools for reporting impact. We are joined by Tara Lebar, who is Associate Director of Academic Affairs with the Kansas Board of Regents; Barb Thees, who is Community Manager with the Open Education Network; and Emilia Bell who is Coordinator of Evidence Based Practice with Library Services at the University of Southern Queensland.

Today we are joined by four guests, and we are going to be talking about OER and instructional design. Iwona Gniadek is here with us, she's the Educational Developer at the University of Manitoba. Also, Veronica Vold, Open Education Instructional Designer with Open Oregon. Brenna Clark Gray who's Coordinator with the Educational Technologies area at Thompson Rivers University. And Nicolas Parés, who is Teaching & Learning Specialist with the University of Denver.

We will hear from three guests today who will speak informally about their experiences with instructional design for OER. And then we will look to all of you to direct the conversation, ask questions, share your local experiences, and otherwise kind of guide us in making this a useful and helpful hour for you. 

Today's topic is OER challenges facing newcomers. And we are joined by Gabby Hernandez, who is the Open Education Librarian at the University of Texas, Rio Grande. Shannon Smith, who is the Open Educational Resources Librarian at Boise State University. And Cheryl Casey, who is the Open Education Librarian at the University of Arizona.