Faculty Interview Nicholas Husby-UNL

Brad Severa Author

03/24/2023 Added

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Dr. Nicholas Husby, Teaching, Learning & Teacher Education-UNL

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[00:00:10.470]As a teacher educator,
[00:00:12.810]so much of what I do in my courses
[00:00:14.400]has to be responsive to the context
[00:00:17.640]within which my pre-service teachers are working.
[00:00:21.090]And instructional practices change
[00:00:24.480]from school to school to school.
[00:00:27.390]And so when I'm thinking about content area knowledge
[00:00:31.380]and how I'm asking my pre-service teachers
[00:00:34.500]to utilize that content area knowledge in classroom spaces,
[00:00:39.570]I have to be aware
[00:00:40.860]of the context within which they'll be working.
[00:00:44.430]And while there are resources out there for them to learn
[00:00:51.000]and to be thinking about how to thus teach
[00:00:54.210]that kind of content within their classrooms,
[00:00:59.070]there's a lot of translation work often.
[00:01:01.590]And so one of the things that's so appealing to me
[00:01:05.040]about OER
[00:01:07.230]is that as I'm writing those materials,
[00:01:11.520]I am crafting them specifically
[00:01:14.340]for the context within which my students are working.
[00:01:19.410]I'm able to really hone in
[00:01:22.380]on what is most important for them
[00:01:25.770]as they're working in their classrooms
[00:01:28.770]and I'm able to communicate that connection
[00:01:33.300]versus having to really be tangential about that
[00:01:36.330]if I were using a text authored by someone else.
[00:01:39.780]Furthermore, it allows me to shift
[00:01:41.580]and change those materials
[00:01:44.160]based upon how my course evolves,
[00:01:47.220]how their practicum experience evolves,
[00:01:49.650]how new adoptions of curriculum
[00:01:52.200]within the school district change.
[00:01:54.660]And rather than having to reexamine
[00:01:59.490]a bunch of resources coming from other authors,
[00:02:03.540]I'm able to do that
[00:02:05.070]and really make it meaningful
[00:02:06.930]and work really, really well
[00:02:09.510]to connect what's happening in my coursework
[00:02:11.850]here at the university
[00:02:13.440]with their teaching experiences
[00:02:17.010]in the local school district.
[00:02:19.020]To me, that's the power of OER,
[00:02:21.930]the idea that I can bring together
[00:02:23.640]these really powerful ideas from the field
[00:02:26.250]and make them really matter for my pre-service teachers
[00:02:29.400]and their teaching experiences.
[00:02:36.450]Designing OER is this massively huge project
[00:02:42.840]or at least it can seem to be.
[00:02:44.790]I think for someone beginning to design OER,
[00:02:50.130]think about the scope of what it is you want to do,
[00:02:53.820]how big is that project,
[00:02:56.430]or how small might it be
[00:02:57.870]like breaking it into manageable chunks
[00:03:01.260]I think is the most important piece.
[00:03:04.320]Anne Lamont famously wrote that
[00:03:06.360]in order to start writing,
[00:03:07.350]you just take it "bird by bird", paragraph by paragraph.
[00:03:11.100]And the same thing I think stands with OER,
[00:03:14.970]particularly in my experiences
[00:03:17.550]where I was designing entire modules
[00:03:20.910]consisting of tons of videos and test banks
[00:03:24.570]and guided notes, and et cetera, et cetera.
[00:03:29.040]Like it was really, really important
[00:03:30.690]for me to break down that larger project
[00:03:33.750]and not get inundated with how large it was
[00:03:37.350]into smaller actionable tasks
[00:03:40.350]and then set timelines
[00:03:42.240]for how I was going to work through those tasks.
[00:03:46.920]Right?
[00:03:48.060]OER is a really fascinating project,
[00:03:53.340]but I think it can also be, as it was for me,
[00:03:56.430]a bit overwhelming
[00:03:58.740]until you think through
[00:04:00.510]how to break it up into its component parts
[00:04:04.050]and schedule the time with yourself to get it done.
[00:04:08.310]Also, to be thinking about
[00:04:11.122]how big is the scale of your OER project, right?
[00:04:14.700]Like what's going to be most effective
[00:04:18.810]isn't always what's gonna be the flashiest.
[00:04:20.910]And sometimes I feel like there's a desire
[00:04:24.330]to do the most flashy thing
[00:04:27.300]when really what's going to be most effective
[00:04:31.560]is fairly basic and quotidian.
[00:04:34.080]And there's something freeing in that, right?
[00:04:35.910]Like starting with something that's basic and quotidian,
[00:04:38.580]and in future revisions,
[00:04:40.560]maybe adding up the flashiness profile of it.
[00:04:44.610]But there's nothing wrong
[00:04:46.050]with being basic,
[00:04:49.200]be the pumpkin spice latte of the OER world,
[00:04:53.340]and then work up to being extra.
[00:04:55.290]But like thinking through scalability,
[00:04:57.000]thinking through how to break it down into actionable items,
[00:05:01.920]I think would be the best advice I would give anyone
[00:05:05.910]contemplating an OER project for their coursework.
[00:05:16.560]OER has been really surprising for me in my coursework
[00:05:20.910]in terms of how durable those learning assets have been.
[00:05:27.390]From my OER project,
[00:05:28.770]I created a series of about 35 videos
[00:05:32.850]around phonics generalizations
[00:05:35.550]to support my reading instruction courses
[00:05:38.910]here at the university,
[00:05:40.320]along with some guided notes,
[00:05:42.060]along with some test banks.
[00:05:44.340]And as my course evolves
[00:05:48.180]and as situations change within the schools
[00:05:53.190]that my students are working within,
[00:05:55.680]I'm able to go back
[00:05:57.630]and adapt those OER materials and update them
[00:06:02.700]without having to totally and completely redesign them,
[00:06:06.930]which I think has been really powerful.
[00:06:09.750]The ability to go back
[00:06:11.700]and rethink what's happening within those materials
[00:06:16.980]and adapt them to reflect the evolving changes
[00:06:22.080]has been super surprising to me,
[00:06:25.620]and particularly in
[00:06:29.070]how easily I'm able to go and do that.
[00:06:32.490]Right, like this kind of DIY OER approach
[00:06:36.750]has allowed me to actually free up some time
[00:06:39.360]because if things were changing
[00:06:41.730]and I was using traditionally available materials,
[00:06:44.760]I'd have to order multiple books,
[00:06:47.220]reevaluate all of those,
[00:06:49.230]find additional book chapters
[00:06:51.360]that would reflect the current situation
[00:06:54.330]that's happening within my coursework.
[00:06:56.460]And here within OER,
[00:06:58.290]I can just go back and think through
[00:07:01.260]where the edits need to happen,
[00:07:03.000]revise appropriately and move from there.
[00:07:06.270]So the durability and strength of those materials
[00:07:09.810]as they evolve from semester to semester
[00:07:12.930]has been really surprising.
[00:07:15.210]And the ease of management for me as an instructor
[00:07:19.740]has been surprising.
[00:07:21.810]Additionally, another thing that's been surprising to me
[00:07:24.450]is how they're being adopted by other instructors
[00:07:29.550]both here at UNL,
[00:07:31.710]but I also have colleagues at Purdue
[00:07:33.780]and the University of Northern Iowa
[00:07:35.490]and some other institutions
[00:07:36.660]that have started utilizing some of these OER materials
[00:07:40.770]in their coursework.
[00:07:42.210]And it's been really interesting to get feedback
[00:07:47.280]from institutions outside of my own,
[00:07:51.090]from students who are working in very different contexts
[00:07:55.500]than the ones in which my students work.
[00:07:58.050]And thinking through again
[00:07:59.670]how to make those revisions meaningful
[00:08:02.910]for as wide an audience as possible
[00:08:05.520]while also keeping it like
[00:08:08.460]connected to the work
[00:08:09.990]that I'm doing with my students here at UNL.
[00:08:18.420]The thing about working in pre-service teacher education
[00:08:21.360]is that your students are
[00:08:24.210]learning to be teachers themselves.
[00:08:26.280]And so they are more than happy
[00:08:29.040]to share with you opinions on
[00:08:30.750]how you are teaching them,
[00:08:32.220]and that feedback has been invaluable
[00:08:35.010]as I'm thinking about
[00:08:36.780]the next iteration and evolution of the OER materials
[00:08:40.230]that I'm using in my classroom space.
[00:08:43.230]The way that OER has worked
[00:08:45.750]within my literacy education coursework
[00:08:48.480]is it comprises a module that takes on this flipped model
[00:08:53.400]where students will engage in the videos
[00:08:57.180]that I created as OER materials.
[00:09:00.270]And then we unpack
[00:09:01.590]what that content knowledge
[00:09:03.360]around letter-sound relationships looks like in practice
[00:09:07.530]and instruction in classrooms.
[00:09:09.630]And one of the things
[00:09:11.580]that I normally start those in-class sessions with is,
[00:09:16.380]where are your continuing questions?
[00:09:19.770]Where in the videos that you watched,
[00:09:22.920]did I not perhaps explain a generalization as well?
[00:09:27.120]Or what are some of the concepts
[00:09:29.760]that I covered in those videos
[00:09:31.350]but didn't quite make sense yet?
[00:09:34.950]And what that allows me to do
[00:09:36.960]is track where I'm not connecting as well as I could be
[00:09:43.080]in terms of that content knowledge
[00:09:45.300]within the OER materials.
[00:09:47.190]And after the semester ends,
[00:09:49.530]I'm able to go back in,
[00:09:51.150]or that module ends,
[00:09:52.350]I'm able to go back in
[00:09:54.150]rethink how I'm approaching that,
[00:09:55.980]bring in some of that feedback
[00:09:58.590]and make a much stronger piece
[00:10:02.370]for my students to utilize within their learning.
[00:10:05.640]And that feedback has been invaluable.
[00:10:09.480]Additionally, I've been able to talk with instructors
[00:10:12.240]at other institutions
[00:10:13.740]and listen to them
[00:10:15.360]talk about which pieces of the OER materials they use,
[00:10:19.950]how their students respond to them,
[00:10:21.780]things that didn't quite work out for them,
[00:10:25.950]and what pieces really did work out for them
[00:10:28.860]and I shouldn't like really touch.
[00:10:30.900]And it's interesting how,
[00:10:33.060]despite the differences in the context
[00:10:36.000]within which these materials are used,
[00:10:38.100]the feedback all kind of aligns
[00:10:41.040]and it helps me think through the design of my OER
[00:10:46.050]and how to both maintain a local focus for my own students
[00:10:50.940]but also this larger global context
[00:10:54.660]for others that may utilize these resources.
[00:10:58.200]So the feedback from my students
[00:11:00.270]where I explicitly ask them to reflect upon,
[00:11:03.900]this is what we talked about
[00:11:05.670]in these videos that you watched
[00:11:07.620]and that you took kind of a quiz on,
[00:11:10.530]here's what I'm noticing,
[00:11:11.610]what other patterns should I be paying attention to,
[00:11:14.610]and then talking with other instructors
[00:11:16.260]about how their students are interpreting
[00:11:18.180]and thinking about those materials have been
[00:11:21.180]just invaluable systems of feedback
[00:11:24.270]to help revise and improve my OER materials.
[00:11:32.880]One of the things that I have really enjoyed
[00:11:35.910]about developing OER materials for my coursework
[00:11:40.290]is how it allows me as an instructor
[00:11:44.490]to make as efficient a use of class time as possible.
[00:11:51.210]We're coming out of COVID,
[00:11:54.300]is this the new normal?
[00:11:55.740]I'm not quite sure.
[00:11:56.573]But as part of that,
[00:11:59.250]we've been asked to like rethink
[00:12:01.680]how we utilize instructional time
[00:12:03.900]and how we can think through
[00:12:06.180]ways to make our instructional time
[00:12:08.580]more efficient,
[00:12:10.080]more impactful.
[00:12:11.640]And I think OER materials,
[00:12:13.830]the ones that I've developed,
[00:12:14.940]have really helped me do that.
[00:12:16.920]It's allowed me to flip elements of my classroom,
[00:12:21.540]helping students dive deeply
[00:12:23.790]into the phonics generalizations
[00:12:25.680]that I built my OER materials around.
[00:12:28.470]And that's allowed me to utilize in-class time
[00:12:32.310]to really help them dive deeply into,
[00:12:35.700]now that you know this content knowledge,
[00:12:38.100]here's how you mobilize that content knowledge
[00:12:41.490]within classroom spaces
[00:12:43.920]that you yourselves will be teaching in.
[00:12:46.860]Here's how you are going to see this content
[00:12:49.350]up here in your classroom practicums.
[00:12:52.650]Here's how that gets explained in different ways.
[00:12:57.810]Because I'm an elementary education to young children,
[00:13:01.800]and so the utilization of OER materials
[00:13:06.030]has actually allowed me to be more efficient
[00:13:09.570]in the delivery of instruction for my pre-service teachers.
[00:13:15.720]And that has been
[00:13:17.580]probably one of the biggest surprises for me
[00:13:21.420]is just how much more efficient it's allowed me to be
[00:13:25.110]both in terms of my classroom instruction
[00:13:28.320]but also in terms of selecting materials.
[00:13:31.560]I no longer have to, again,
[00:13:33.840]to have this editorial, curational hat
[00:13:37.380]around these book chapters
[00:13:39.780]or these journal articles
[00:13:41.790]fit the goals of my course.
[00:13:43.890]I just write them or videotape them
[00:13:46.710]or design another video around them,
[00:13:50.400]which is a lot of work on the front end,
[00:13:54.750]but allows me some efficiencies on the back end.
[00:13:59.040]And that's been really surprising.
[00:14:02.070]The other thing that's been really surprising
[00:14:04.380]is how students within my coursework
[00:14:08.520]have utilized the videos.
[00:14:10.800]Of course there's the initial viewing of them,
[00:14:14.550]and then there's,
[00:14:16.770]I get emails from students
[00:14:18.270]who have had me in previous semester saying,
[00:14:21.000]okay, I'm student-teaching in a kindergarten classroom.
[00:14:23.730]And I went back to these videos
[00:14:25.560]to figure out how I was going to talk
[00:14:27.870]about this generalization
[00:14:30.270]with kids in my practicum class.
[00:14:32.580]Thanks for providing those resources.
[00:14:35.310]And so the fact that these are OER materials
[00:14:38.370]and they are constantly available to students
[00:14:41.130]and they're there for them to reference back to
[00:14:43.230]I think is really powerful.
[00:14:46.290]Also, how engaging students have talked about them being
[00:14:50.880]is really surprising
[00:14:52.590]that I start each video with,
[00:14:55.050]this is what I want you to be thinking about.
[00:14:57.660]As you're working through,
[00:14:58.500]I come back to those lesson objectives
[00:15:01.140]or learning objectives throughout,
[00:15:04.290]and then they take a quick quiz on it like that.
[00:15:08.010]The ability for them to really track their learning
[00:15:11.730]and keep track of both what they have learned
[00:15:14.130]and what they haven't learned,
[00:15:16.680]what they feel like they don't have a solid understanding of
[00:15:19.170]that they can bring with class,
[00:15:21.330]they can bring with them to class the next day,
[00:15:24.510]has been really helpful.
[00:15:27.090]And how they've been leveraged as tools for learning.
[00:15:30.600]So those are my surprises,
[00:15:32.730]how engaging students have found them,
[00:15:35.910]the ways in which
[00:15:37.230]it allows me to be a more efficient instructor.
[00:15:40.200]And I think they are just invaluable
[00:15:43.020]in terms of how I'm able to run my coursework
[00:15:47.520]in order to prepare high-quality literacy educators
[00:15:52.410]here at UNL.

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Faculty Interview Nicholas Husby-UNL

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