Faculty Interview Anna Hiatt-UNL

Brad Severa Author

03/24/2023 Added

9 Plays

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Dr. Anna Hiatt, School of Biological Sciences-UNL

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[00:00:10.432]In the live 120 courses,
[00:00:12.150]we have a large enrollment of students
[00:00:14.100]and so anywhere from 400 to 800 students
[00:00:18.120]in a semester.
[00:00:19.230]So using lower cost materials is highly beneficial
[00:00:22.800]to those students.
[00:00:24.120]STEM fields tend to be a fairly expensive area
[00:00:26.970]of study for students,
[00:00:28.020]and so any little bit we can save
[00:00:29.340]for those students starting
[00:00:30.180]off is always a benefit.
[00:00:32.040]And for our students
[00:00:33.330]who may be taking the course online,
[00:00:35.670]it's also a lot more convenient for them
[00:00:37.650]and increases the number of students
[00:00:39.120]who may be non-traditional students
[00:00:41.190]that can't fit that course into their schedule
[00:00:43.320]in the normal semester.
[00:00:50.280]Spend some time finding a quality existing OER textbook
[00:00:54.330]and then decide from there
[00:00:55.560]if you want to add or modify.
[00:00:57.660]There's a lot that goes into putting some
[00:01:00.240]of those materials together
[00:01:01.740]and sometimes it can feel like you're cutting
[00:01:03.840]and pasting too many different things.
[00:01:05.580]It's not cohesive.
[00:01:06.990]And more often than not, there might be someone
[00:01:09.270]who's already put some materials together
[00:01:11.310]and you just need to modify those a little bit.
[00:01:13.980]And while the quality may not be what you want it
[00:01:16.890]to be there are several open access images,
[00:01:21.090]materials and things available.
[00:01:23.378]You may also have a professional organization
[00:01:26.010]that is related to your field.
[00:01:28.650]For me, the National Association of Biology Teachers
[00:01:31.260]has a large community of educators
[00:01:33.390]who use OER resources that I could reach out to.
[00:01:36.570]So there's a lot available that maybe isn't all
[00:01:38.970]in one place, but you can find it
[00:01:40.440]in different places.
[00:01:46.980]What was most surprising is how common the use
[00:01:50.490]of OER materials has become among students.
[00:01:52.830]I was expecting many of students
[00:01:54.780]to have this have been their first course
[00:01:57.540]where they were using OER materials
[00:01:59.280]but several students indicated
[00:02:00.690]that they had free materials
[00:02:02.280]or reduced cost materials in other courses,
[00:02:04.110]which was really great to hear.
[00:02:10.710]Using undergrad students, especially students
[00:02:12.600]who have taken the course before
[00:02:13.950]or who have served as teaching assistants
[00:02:15.930]for us before are really valuable
[00:02:17.820]because not only have they been a student
[00:02:19.500]and they understand the struggles
[00:02:20.730]of what's out there to use to study,
[00:02:23.430]they also understand materials that students
[00:02:25.363]use that aren't super beneficial.
[00:02:27.900]And so they provide a unique perspective in terms
[00:02:30.360]of identifying materials that are gonna
[00:02:32.340]be the most helpful.
[00:02:33.930]But one particular case is we were looking
[00:02:36.090]at different materials to use
[00:02:37.470]for a particular activity and it didn't occur
[00:02:40.620]to me why students were struggling
[00:02:42.180]with certain questions until one
[00:02:43.650]of the students indicated that, well,
[00:02:45.570]the background is blue so students think
[00:02:47.580]that's an aqueous environment
[00:02:49.080]and that makes all the difference
[00:02:50.880]of determining whether something's gonna interact
[00:02:52.350]in an aqueous environment in a certain way.
[00:02:54.660]And that's always super helpful
[00:02:56.100]to have that feedback that me as a professor,
[00:02:58.740]I haven't thought about those things
[00:02:59.703]in a really long time.
[00:03:01.170]And so they always bring really great insights
[00:03:02.940]into understanding what's gonna be best for students.
[00:03:10.800]We sent a survey out to students
[00:03:12.690]at the end of the semester asking them
[00:03:14.400]about their use of OER materials in this course
[00:03:18.510]and in other courses, we asked 'em
[00:03:20.400]about the quality of the content that we created,
[00:03:23.190]this short video tutorials that we created
[00:03:25.620]that was supplemented the OER text
[00:03:27.630]and the other educational materials
[00:03:29.550]that we put together that went out
[00:03:31.530]to students the last week of classes.
[00:03:34.170]And we did that for two semesters in a row,
[00:03:38.490]the semester before we implemented this,
[00:03:40.440]semester after we implemented it to see
[00:03:42.510]if there were differences in terms
[00:03:44.160]of what students were looking for
[00:03:46.140]in different materials.
[00:03:46.973]And so that gave us an idea
[00:03:47.910]of like what to prioritize.
[00:03:49.800]Students who took the course online
[00:03:52.470]found the materials extremely beneficial.
[00:03:55.170]Part of that is
[00:03:56.003]because I think there was a greater diversity
[00:03:57.510]of materials available to them.
[00:03:59.400]Not only did they have the open-ended textbook,
[00:04:01.650]they had video tutorials,
[00:04:03.330]they had short video clips that were available.
[00:04:05.640]They had a large number
[00:04:06.540]of different resources that oftentimes
[00:04:08.700]when you're using a publisher provided textbook,
[00:04:11.370]the materials that they have to go through,
[00:04:12.780]they have to search through a lot
[00:04:13.710]of different things.
[00:04:14.700]Because everything was embedded right in Canvas,
[00:04:16.650]it was right there available to them,
[00:04:18.090]I think they utilized those resources a lot
[00:04:19.650]more readily rather than relying
[00:04:21.240]on external resources.
[00:04:23.310]And that was something that we found
[00:04:25.470]with the the online course.
[00:04:27.210]For the in person courses, again,
[00:04:29.880]a lot of the students didn't necessarily realize
[00:04:32.250]that they were getting reduced cost materials
[00:04:35.820]but many of them found that the extra study aids
[00:04:38.910]and materials that came with the book were helpful.
[00:04:47.460]I think the most important thing is the amount
[00:04:48.900]of time that it took.
[00:04:50.130]I wasn't expecting for it to take as much time
[00:04:52.590]as it did to gather up the resources
[00:04:54.570]but once they were gathered together
[00:04:56.190]and put together for use in Canvas
[00:05:00.270]in those modules,
[00:05:01.320]it came together a little more quickly.
[00:05:03.300]It was also a little more difficult
[00:05:04.770]to get graduate students involved in the process.
[00:05:08.370]Part of that is the summers
[00:05:09.600]are typically research times
[00:05:10.770]for those graduate students.
[00:05:12.060]And so I wish I would've thought a little
[00:05:13.650]bit farther ahead of time in recruiting
[00:05:16.290]some graduate students to help with those.
[00:05:18.330]I think another underutilized source
[00:05:20.010]are our lab managers who are working day-to-day
[00:05:22.560]with students, day-to-day with graduate students
[00:05:25.110]and they have a better understanding
[00:05:27.150]of the practical applications
[00:05:29.580]of some of the materials we're putting together.
[00:05:31.560]And that was another underutilized resource
[00:05:33.660]that I wish I would've used sooner.
[00:05:37.200]And in terms of questions to be asked,
[00:05:41.640]the most important one is knowing
[00:05:44.130]that in my course, there's multiple instructors
[00:05:46.530]across multiple sections,
[00:05:50.340]each instructor may have different things
[00:05:52.440]that they would want to incorporate
[00:05:53.850]into a course.
[00:05:56.430]Our instructors have different levels
[00:05:58.110]of expertise and different levels
[00:05:59.760]of comfort with putting together those materials.
[00:06:02.400]And so having a better understanding
[00:06:04.732]of what are all of the common things
[00:06:07.320]that all those instructors
[00:06:08.250]would want is really important.
[00:06:10.590]And at the end of it, all the materials
[00:06:12.990]that I put together would be great for my course,
[00:06:15.360]but another instructor would have
[00:06:17.040]to either adapt those, change those, add to it,
[00:06:20.670]and that can be a lot to ask
[00:06:22.620]of maybe someone who's a new instructor.

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Faculty Interview Anna Hiatt-UNL

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