Faculty Spotlight OER 2024

Brad Severa Author

03/19/2024 Added

4 Plays

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Faculty discuss OER projects they are using in courses at the University of Nebraska.

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[00:00:00.190]Okay, well we are at the top of the hour, so I'll go ahead
[00:00:03.850]and kick things off then.
[00:00:05.730]Thank you all for everybody who showed up today,
[00:00:08.010]and I'm excited about this panel of quick OER presentations.
[00:00:14.750]We've got faculty from all of the campuses, from a variety
[00:00:19.250]of subject areas who are going to be sharing with us
[00:00:23.250]kind of the quick hits of their respective OER projects and work.
[00:00:28.530]So we have a lot of hours of experience in
[00:00:32.590]implementation and forced design.
[00:00:35.570]You hear with us in the room, and so we're going to hear from
[00:00:39.790]four faculty today in succession.
[00:00:43.530]And yeah, I think it's going to be some super interesting content
[00:00:47.210]with a lot of diversity.
[00:00:50.950]And hopefully we'll be super valuable for everybody who's
[00:00:54.210]attending either today in person or asynchronously later, we will
[00:00:58.530]be posting these recordings after the fact.
[00:01:02.450]So I'll go ahead and just kind of kick things off today.
[00:01:08.270]We're going to be hearing from Madeline Weissman
[00:01:11.490]at UNL, Dr. Fu-Vu at UNK, Dr. Lissette Aliara.
[00:01:23.870]Sorry, I stuttered.
[00:01:27.030]Oh, and Josh Brummer at UNL.
[00:01:30.970]So our first presenter, Dr. Madeline Weissman,
[00:01:34.170]who is the Business and Technical Communication Coordinator
[00:01:38.430]and Lecturer in the College of Journalism and
[00:01:42.050]Media Communication at University of Nebraska at Lincoln.
[00:01:47.630]Madeline, take it away.
[00:01:51.940]I'm going to share my screen.
[00:02:03.970]Do you guys see that okay?
[00:02:07.770]Okay.
[00:02:09.190]I'm going to set a timer, just so that I keep it at 10 minutes.
[00:02:16.340]Okay.
[00:02:19.160]All right, so opening slide there.
[00:02:21.160]So a project that I'm working on is looking at innovations
[00:02:23.820]and opportunities in the sequence that I've been working with since 2021.
[00:02:29.880]So I had to produce a report about what I did specifically last
[00:02:34.760]year, but I've been working with OER since when I started this position.
[00:02:41.000]So the particular report I have that I'm working on has five goals, but the
[00:02:44.760]first goal really is talking about that innovation
[00:02:47.320]abusing tech or OER and interesting on ways.
[00:02:51.660]And so we, I say we because I coordinate a group of instructors,
[00:02:57.680]the number of instructors changes.
[00:03:00.880]And so if I say we a lot, it's because I think I think
[00:03:03.700]I think I think I in we use would be what I would say.
[00:03:07.820]All right.
[00:03:09.840]So I'm going to talk about the accomplishments. So kind
[00:03:13.260]of the results, the key outcomes and then achievements and I'll
[00:03:15.860]talk if I have time just a little bit about kind
[00:03:17.560]of the last ask in this area that's in the report.
[00:03:23.580]So I'm going to talk about these to start.
[00:03:25.780]All right. So we are we've been using in the
[00:03:30.660]classes for a while. It started just in the largest class,
[00:03:34.740]which is changing 200, which serves something like five or
[00:03:39.040]six hundred students, at least that's the way it had started.
[00:03:43.580]Since across each semester, so on spring as well as
[00:03:46.000]some in the summer. And then I applied for a
[00:03:48.900]couple of CTT grants and did some work with 120
[00:03:52.040]as well as 300 and those were implemented
[00:03:54.700]in different pilots.
[00:03:55.680]And then we had some.
[00:03:59.100]Some surveys coming from students on their experiences as
[00:04:02.400]well as the regular kinds of like feedback throughout.
[00:04:05.180]And then from the instructors and then also
[00:04:07.460]part of this grant that I'm working on has this opportunity to
[00:04:11.140]develop concepts and course offerings curriculum and special
[00:04:15.420]topics and pop ups.
[00:04:17.220]So one credit classes that are past no pass that are focused
[00:04:20.260]on communication and interesting ways.
[00:04:26.620]Okay. And then I'm sorry, I just wanted to see what the question was.
[00:04:32.780]So, yeah, so the two classes there on the special topics are
[00:04:37.480]the ones that I developed and have been taught
[00:04:40.300]several, several times now, or will be taught
[00:04:42.820]again in the future semester.
[00:04:47.260]And I guess the point of that is that in these
[00:04:49.780]classes, OER was the primary material used throughout all the classes.
[00:04:55.560]And as this was developed from the get go, everything was free for
[00:04:59.380]students because we wanted to create a situation where students
[00:05:02.360]could learn good material.
[00:05:04.340]It was out there in a way that was affordable to them because
[00:05:07.340]college is expensive and they have lots of bills and we don't want them
[00:05:11.400]to have to worry about all that when they graduate.
[00:05:15.820]And then the other thing that we did was to explore different kinds of tech
[00:05:21.100]innovations to bring in and enhance the curriculum and using often
[00:05:24.500]OER and interesting ways.
[00:05:26.820]So different things that were available here on campus.
[00:05:31.940]And then one that was suggested to me was Perusal and
[00:05:34.340]Perusal is an interesting, it's an LTI platform that is outside.
[00:05:39.540]It is not like one of the preferred ones, I guess, maybe or maybe it is.
[00:05:43.500]Maybe it is now.
[00:05:44.240]It wasn't originally in Canvas, but it allows this like platform space.
[00:05:48.320]That's kind of a social environment for students where
[00:05:51.460]you can include all the different kinds of material.
[00:05:53.440]So all your OERs, your videos, your podcasts, your textbooks, your
[00:05:57.220]syllabus, anything you want.
[00:05:58.500]And then the tool invites students to offer comments, to win points.
[00:06:05.720]So they're like assignments by engaging with the material.
[00:06:09.480]And this was super helpful because with the OER in previous semesters,
[00:06:14.020]we'd have all these textbooks or videos, but then
[00:06:16.580]we're students watching them.
[00:06:18.280]Were they engaging with them?
[00:06:19.460]Were they reading them?
[00:06:20.520]We would have quizzes where they just, you know, doing control
[00:06:23.540]F and finding them.
[00:06:24.420]But this particular platform asks students to actually have meaningful
[00:06:28.200]engagement conversations with each other as well as offer comments.
[00:06:31.280]So it was an interesting tool to kind of explore.
[00:06:34.880]So I tried it in the pop up to start and then it was tried in
[00:06:38.640]the summer and the summer offerings.
[00:06:40.520]And those are all online.
[00:06:41.500]So those students do not have any kind of in-person engagement unless
[00:06:44.700]they meet with the professor on Zoom or their groups with Zoom.
[00:06:47.640]And then it was enhanced, of course, in the fall.
[00:06:50.200]And then one of the feedbacks, and I'll come to that later,
[00:06:53.740]is that students felt like the offering from the tool in terms of
[00:06:57.120]like how to use the tool could be enhanced.
[00:07:00.220]So one of the things I did is I created some curriculum
[00:07:02.480]that would help students for extra credit understand how to win the points.
[00:07:06.960]We also played with UJIT Engage for the fall semester.
[00:07:14.100]The course hasn't changed the size, cap sizes, because of budget cuts.
[00:07:18.060]So originally some of the change in classes were
[00:07:20.520]25 students or 20, depending on how it worked.
[00:07:25.180]And then it went up to 120 for the fall and the semester is 250.
[00:07:32.280]So we had to create ways for students to come to class,
[00:07:36.960]engage with each other, find that buy and for them to come there.
[00:07:40.220]So we explored different opportunities for that.
[00:07:42.640]And then, of course, there was lots of opportunities
[00:07:44.000]for all of us to learn how to use these tools because if
[00:07:47.120]you're going to improve your class with new tech,
[00:07:50.120]you need some skill sets.
[00:07:51.540]Who doesn't love learning? I love to learn.
[00:07:54.680]Okay, so I'm at about five.
[00:07:56.680]So the low-cost textbook, one of the cool things with
[00:07:59.580]perusal is that I believe it works with the library.
[00:08:03.260]Students can buy textbooks through perusal that are affordable.
[00:08:09.560]And then that same action of engaging with paragraphs,
[00:08:13.140]sections, their peers can be done through those textbooks.
[00:08:16.980]So I piloted this in the special topics with perusal to kind of explore
[00:08:21.900]like these textbooks that are STEM oriented
[00:08:25.680]for the students that were in that course.
[00:08:27.280]And it was very successful.
[00:08:29.880]And then I have continued to do some of that
[00:08:32.460]in the pop-up this semester with A Mindfulness of Grace
[00:08:35.980]and Altered Traits because they're really great books for students
[00:08:38.840]to understand communication practices, especially
[00:08:40.760]with DEI and STEM students.
[00:08:43.680]Okay, so a little bit about the key outcomes.
[00:08:45.600]So I wanted to pull in some user feedback from the students and
[00:08:48.880]some of the things that they enjoyed from the resources that we use.
[00:08:53.460]So students love the free textbooks.
[00:08:56.000]They love using the perusals and engaging with
[00:08:58.360]each other in that space that's free for them.
[00:09:05.420]And then I guess the one challenge I guess with OER and
[00:09:07.820]those of you who have explored it know is
[00:09:09.840]that sometimes, okay, timeliness.
[00:09:13.200]So that might change something that's no longer the same way it used to be.
[00:09:18.940]Sometimes the quality is not as great.
[00:09:21.480]I don't know.
[00:09:21.800]I was thinking about this in terms of like the students are
[00:09:24.560]like going to these different like platforms or different
[00:09:26.640]like experiences of textbooks and videos and like how
[00:09:29.480]do you navigate that space?
[00:09:30.920]Where's the patterning?
[00:09:32.140]Like, you know, if you go to a Hy-Vee or Walmart in
[00:09:35.700]this city and then you go to a Walmart in California, you go
[00:09:38.480]to a Hy-Vee in Iowa, the layout is similar.
[00:09:41.080]We know where to get the milk, the cookies, the lemons.
[00:09:45.080]But if you have all these different textbooks,
[00:09:46.920]like students are like, now, how do I
[00:09:47.980]find the table of contents here?
[00:09:49.680]Where do you find the definition?
[00:09:51.000]So like that, like, how do I get through this space?
[00:09:53.860]Because it might be a challenge if you're not
[00:09:55.400]using like the same textbook all the way through
[00:09:58.040]using different ones because different ones are better in
[00:10:00.640]terms of the content, the quality of the content.
[00:10:03.100]So that user experience I think is really important for students.
[00:10:08.360]Okay, innovations.
[00:10:10.000]Again, students really like the perusal.
[00:10:12.220]They like the way it was set up.
[00:10:13.240]It works really well.
[00:10:14.040]Canvas, it brings in the assignments very well.
[00:10:16.660]It plays very well with the gradebook.
[00:10:19.140]So all that worked really well for students.
[00:10:21.920]And they gave us great feedback, too.
[00:10:24.000]So we could make changes on how and when grades came over, offering
[00:10:29.100]extra credit, Windows for late.
[00:10:31.760]So it was a really good conversation with students throughout, too,
[00:10:34.420]with those user feedbacks because we could
[00:10:36.100]enhance and change things, meeting the needs for
[00:10:38.900]them through the pilot.
[00:10:41.060]So that was really great.
[00:10:41.800]And if we couldn't make all of these things happen, we could
[00:10:44.280]do it the next semester.
[00:10:45.420]So super helpful to have feedback from students.
[00:10:51.520]And then the low cost textbook, because we were moving to a
[00:10:55.240]larger enrollment for some of the classes, students
[00:10:59.720]really wanted to have more interactivity activities and
[00:11:03.740]then really good quality materials.
[00:11:05.520]And then the whole idea about taking camp.
[00:11:08.560]We were having problems with some of the Canvas quizzes.
[00:11:11.980]Right.
[00:11:12.440]Those quiz questions just go out all over the place, don't they?
[00:11:15.200]So how do we have a really good resource
[00:11:17.400]for students where they can learn and find support for
[00:11:21.920]that learning and support that academic integrity?
[00:11:24.480]So we wanted to explore some of that.
[00:11:25.600]So I did a lot of research on that and then did implement some of those.
[00:11:30.640]Because we have so many great opportunities here at
[00:11:32.940]the University at UNL and probably at the other institutions,
[00:11:38.080]too, because we have partnerships with these different programs or
[00:11:42.480]like, I don't know, presses, if you will, for textbooks.
[00:11:47.020]And then in terms of the achievements, a little
[00:11:49.160]bit shorter, just that we got it in there.
[00:11:52.300]We tried OER all the way through.
[00:11:54.660]No $50 textbook, right?
[00:11:56.580]So good.
[00:11:57.380]I guess they're more like 108 now, nowadays.
[00:12:00.520]We did transform the tech quite a bit, building lots of
[00:12:03.640]skills for ourselves, for the students, learning all kinds of new
[00:12:06.960]things in Canvas that was even beyond, you know, like what
[00:12:11.160]a lot of us had to do with that pivot with COVID.
[00:12:13.400]Right.
[00:12:13.660]And then exploring low cost textbook options, where
[00:12:16.940]and when and where OER could need a little bit of support as this, but it might
[00:12:22.740]be that more OER will develop that is strong.
[00:12:26.740]Yeah.
[00:12:27.160]And then in terms of project impacts, and I'm still good with time here.
[00:12:31.580]Then this is, again, from the annual report
[00:12:35.300]that I was working on. So is there a change or in the
[00:12:40.220]knowledge of techniques to use in the discipline of
[00:12:42.000]tech comm and business communication.
[00:12:44.100]And then also is there changes in practice and practices
[00:12:46.920]like society, but also like local and local businesses in Nebraska.
[00:12:50.460]So these are like maybe it's changing, you know, how do you prove that for just like
[00:12:54.320]a one year report of what kind of what you're thinking might
[00:12:57.600]improve with what you've done.
[00:13:00.600]So, a little bit just of reiterating of what
[00:13:04.280]I already said, we did enhance the curriculum, we
[00:13:07.020]did innovate the course, we definitely enhance the engagement
[00:13:09.960]with the materials for sure using that LTI tool.
[00:13:14.280]Definitely textbook costs were low, they were
[00:13:17.180]free, and we added some low cost options, especially in the new ones, the special
[00:13:22.560]topics that were totally new, the pop ups.
[00:13:26.740]And then students get to learn new skills when you out when you
[00:13:29.920]bring in new tech, they get to learn new tech and that's good for
[00:13:33.080]them because they're going to be in a world where they're always using
[00:13:35.500]new tech and interesting ways and they need to learn and navigate those things.
[00:13:39.000]And then the other thing in terms of being like in state.
[00:13:43.060]Most of our students are you know, are in sale
[00:13:46.840]of majority of them and so many of them may
[00:13:50.020]stay here to or they are currently working here so
[00:13:52.700]they're learning skills and then they're bringing that to the job.
[00:13:56.500]Yeah.
[00:13:58.840]Okay, I did it in 12 minutes. Thank you all for listening. I
[00:14:01.940]will stop my share and I'll let our friend
[00:14:04.540]here, take it away, whatever. Thank you, thank you, thank
[00:14:07.100]you, thank you for listening.
[00:14:09.140]Awesome. Thank you so much for that. I'll be saving
[00:14:11.600]questions in the chat for the end, just so that
[00:14:14.380]we can make sure that we get through everyone. And
[00:14:16.540]I realized also that I didn't introduce myself at the start.
[00:14:18.640]My name is Craig Finley. I'm the OER and STEM librarian at
[00:14:22.260]Chris Library at UNO. So that's who I am. But yes, thank you.
[00:14:29.220]So next up we have Dr. Fu Wu, Associate Professor of
[00:14:34.280]Teacher Ed in the College of Ed at University of Nebraska, Carney.
[00:14:51.280]Hello, everyone. I'm trying to share screen
[00:14:54.600]and somehow let me so please wait, please.
[00:14:59.240]So, can you guys see my screen.
[00:16:04.210]Okay, thank you so much.
[00:16:06.130]Well, hello.
[00:16:08.870]The screen, the class I share with you is the class
[00:16:12.830]that I was asked to teach when I first came to UNK
[00:16:17.630]2013, about 11 years ago, it was the graduate level class
[00:16:24.490]about how to use technology in the classroom to
[00:16:29.330]improve student performances.
[00:16:31.410]This is a class that have the book textbook
[00:16:34.790]and some licensed software because it's a technology class.
[00:16:54.880]So I decided to change the course to use free online resources because I
[00:17:00.660]want it to be more flexible, more efficient and accessible
[00:17:05.119]and effective for everyone.
[00:17:08.740]And especially they don't have to buy the textbook or licensed software
[00:17:12.859]for the class. So that's the reason I decided to use OER for my
[00:17:18.460]class when I first came to UNK in 2013.
[00:17:23.980]The problem with one of the problems with the OER online
[00:17:28.540]classes, especially for technology is that you have to try a
[00:17:33.360]lot of technologies, a lot of tools, a lot of software
[00:17:36.620]to see how it works before you introduce it to your students.
[00:17:40.560]For example, in topic two, we are talking about creating
[00:17:47.380]mind maps, infographics, comments on time lapse in the classroom.
[00:17:52.840]So literally I have to try all the software, all the
[00:17:56.400]tools that I am familiar with or I search around internet and
[00:18:02.560]try all the software and find out which one works, which
[00:18:06.380]one is free, which one I feel safe and appropriate for myself.
[00:18:10.280]So if I am a student, then I introduce in my class.
[00:18:13.360]So that's the same thing for infographic. I have
[00:18:19.340]to play around with several platforms, several tools like
[00:18:23.820]pick a chart, canvas, etc.
[00:18:25.900]Everything I have to test it before I introduce in my classroom.
[00:18:41.780]The same thing. So literally I have to try every software, every tool
[00:18:46.100]and then make sure that it's secure, at least it's free or
[00:18:51.820]trial so that students can use during the class time like this one.
[00:19:00.890]And then for the learning material like reading
[00:19:03.810]article, etc. I put all the folder into Google Doc into a full Google folder so
[00:19:10.470]that student access even after class. I know that
[00:19:16.110]I was not supposed to put everything in Google
[00:19:20.750]folder or Google Doc because it's not secure, but
[00:19:25.870]most of my students are public school teachers and
[00:19:30.810]they use a lot of Google products, Google apps.
[00:19:33.570]So I think it's better for my students to have access
[00:19:37.370]material from Google Doc from Google Apps, Google Doc, Google folder
[00:19:42.730]instead of included them into canvas into the one tries because
[00:19:51.230]after the class, usually my student cannot have access to them anymore.
[00:19:55.550]So that's why I have to put it into Google Doc or Google folder.
[00:20:03.570]So what are the challenges of the designing online classes?
[00:20:09.150]Well switching to free online learning material
[00:20:11.350]wasn't easy at the beginning, especially when I
[00:20:14.710]first started in 2013.
[00:20:18.190]I had to find the right free tools that everyone could use
[00:20:21.790]and make sure that they were good enough for our learning goals.
[00:20:26.010]And then creating new learning materials that were both free and
[00:20:30.310]good quality took a lot of work at the beginning, especially
[00:20:33.490]in the online learning environment that some of my students are
[00:20:37.950]non-traditional students and they have to log into different
[00:20:42.830]accounts, different websites.
[00:20:45.210]Some of them have big problem with that and
[00:20:48.650]so I have to spend quite a lot of time with them one on one to help them
[00:20:54.290]with just log in to different websites that I introduced.
[00:20:58.250]It takes a lot of time, but eventually still in catch up and we have less
[00:21:03.970]time, we spend less time on those things, but we spend more
[00:21:08.190]time on learning, really learning.
[00:21:20.420]So as you can see in my class design, I included a lot of
[00:21:25.440]learning material like videos, readings, activities that
[00:21:29.680]engage students in the online learning environment, which
[00:21:32.620]is really hard because in the traditional classroom, we can present in a way that
[00:21:39.800]students can see it and when they have questions, but in
[00:21:42.880]the online learning environment,
[00:21:43.960]I have to find a way that integrate different
[00:21:47.680]learning material, including videos, podcasts, chat box like this
[00:21:53.460]one, the platform, this one, but basically I include
[00:22:04.180]everything that creating a learning environment for the students.
[00:22:09.460]So what is the benefit of the OER course so
[00:22:12.640]far I have? I think my students really appreciate the fact
[00:22:15.660]that they don't have to buy the textbook, they don't have
[00:22:18.960]to buy licensed software and they have very flexible learning material.
[00:22:24.340]Even after the class, they still have access to those material and from my
[00:22:28.860]end, I can update the material anytime. I can change, I
[00:22:33.800]can replace whatever material that I think are up to date
[00:22:38.420]relevant and so far my students are happy with the OER class that I offer
[00:22:46.040]and I'm also happy with what I offer.
[00:22:50.120]Statistically speaking, my course evaluation is
[00:22:53.120]very consistent over the past 10 years since I started using OER
[00:22:57.840]in my class, especially for this one.
[00:23:00.860]So basically, that is my introduction of OER
[00:23:07.000]class that I have used since 2013. Any questions, comments, please feel
[00:23:18.020]free to ask or put it in the
[00:23:20.860]Facebook, I'm happy to answer.
[00:23:26.270]Yeah, awesome. Thank you for that, Dr. Vu. Yeah, please, if
[00:23:30.610]you have any questions for any of the presenters, just drop them
[00:23:33.030]in the chat and then we can kind of collect them
[00:23:35.650]and do a Q&A session at the end once everyone's gone through.
[00:23:39.410]But thank you so much for that.
[00:23:43.330]So third up, we have Josh Brummer, who is Assistant Professor
[00:23:49.290]of Practice in the Department of Mathematics and University
[00:23:52.830]of Nebraska, Lincoln.
[00:23:57.500]Thank you, everybody. Let me see if I can get my screen shared.
[00:24:02.340]Okay, that seems to have worked. Great.
[00:24:08.220]Let me do a presentation view here.
[00:24:12.900]All right, yes. So my name is Josh. I'm an assistant
[00:24:16.280]professor of practice in the math department. I oversee some of
[00:24:22.040]our first year math courses at UNL and I also do
[00:24:25.720]a lot of our professional development for graduate students
[00:24:28.620]teaching these courses.
[00:24:30.260]And I also help kind of maintain a lot of our course materials and I'll
[00:24:35.740]tell you a little about a few of those today, especially our
[00:24:38.300]OERs in our courses.
[00:24:41.980]So just kind of a quick overview. So these are OERs. We actually have OERs
[00:24:49.300]in all of our first year courses and I'll list those out in a moment.
[00:24:52.780]But this is a result of a lot of change efforts that
[00:24:56.680]have been happening in our department over the course of many years.
[00:25:02.480]And these have all been custom developed to match, you know, our goals and
[00:25:06.820]kind of exactly what we want the curriculum to look like in our courses.
[00:25:12.400]At this point, we have OERs in all of our first year courses, which would
[00:25:17.240]be, you know, math classes that are the primary enrollment is freshmen,
[00:25:23.080]incoming freshmen to UNL.
[00:25:24.380]And then we have just one second year course.
[00:25:27.660]So math course is typically taken by sophomores that
[00:25:30.960]hasn't been moved to an OER, but I think there's a plan to
[00:25:35.140]work on that this summer.
[00:25:36.180]And at that point, we'll have OERs in all of our first and second year
[00:25:40.240]courses. So the main benefits to these, of course, is that there's
[00:25:44.440]no cost to students.
[00:25:46.200]In mathematics, it's not uncommon for standard
[00:25:48.940]textbooks to cost over $100, if not up to $150 annually. We have about 6,500
[00:25:55.980]students in these first and second year courses.
[00:26:00.360]So, you know, conservative savings of, you know, upwards of
[00:26:04.200]half a million dollars per year for students taking math
[00:26:07.680]courses. And so we're very happy to, you know, continue
[00:26:11.180]to work hard to be able to do that for students.
[00:26:14.280]Some other pros are that there's a lot of good
[00:26:18.260]accessibility options in the way that we build our OERs.
[00:26:23.380]So you can compile them. There's actually computer code to
[00:26:26.420]build and compile them because generating readable
[00:26:30.480]typeset mathematics requires, you know, something, it doesn't
[00:26:35.160]work so well to just do that in like a
[00:26:36.820]Microsoft Word or something like that.
[00:26:39.040]But we can compile them in a lot of different formats, including
[00:26:41.860]interactive online web pages, and I'll show you those a little bit, as well
[00:26:47.440]as we can generate PDF copies, and we can even conveniently generate our
[00:26:51.260]OERs in Braille, which has come up a small number of times and, you
[00:26:57.140]know, actually saved the university quite a bit of
[00:26:59.400]money from, you know, having to like translate resources.
[00:27:05.640]Some challenges, though, is that we find that it takes a lot
[00:27:09.260]of effort to remind students that they do have access to a
[00:27:12.380]textbook when they haven't been traumatized
[00:27:14.460]by having to at some point be charged $100 or more for
[00:27:18.380]one at the start of the semester.
[00:27:20.340]So we kind of think about how can we constantly be
[00:27:22.600]reminding them that they can go to this textbook to see
[00:27:26.200]examples and to get assistance in the courses.
[00:27:29.240]So here's kind of links to all of our courses, pre-calculus, contemporary
[00:27:33.660]math, business calc, and calc one and two. Those are our first year
[00:27:37.560]courses, and we have OERs for all of those.
[00:27:41.040]And then multivariable calculus, calc three, as well as
[00:27:44.060]differential equations are two of our kind of, we
[00:27:48.120]call them second year courses that have relatively recently
[00:27:51.560]we've gotten OERs up and running for these courses.
[00:27:55.620]So here's just kind of a quick overview of like a
[00:27:59.060]timeline for how we've worked on these things. These OERs are
[00:28:03.040]kind of embedded in this like big, like
[00:28:07.820]multi-pronged curriculum structure that we're trying to like provide
[00:28:14.520]accessibility and good access for students.
[00:28:17.920]So this all started with building out like course packets, which are
[00:28:22.960]workbooks with problem sets that promote more active learning during class time.
[00:28:30.320]Then in 2015, we worked on web work problems. Web work
[00:28:33.920]is our online homework system, which is also completely free to students.
[00:28:39.280]And then in 2017, we created an online wiki
[00:28:44.220]that has lesson plans for all of our courses.
[00:28:47.540]This is especially important because a lot of instructors
[00:28:50.280]of these courses that have OERs are graduate students.
[00:28:54.440]So relatively novice instructors. And so having this wiki that has suggested
[00:28:59.900]lesson plan templates that they can build off of helps to support them.
[00:29:04.100]And then in 2018, we really started going all in on getting these
[00:29:08.500]OER textbooks up and running in a lot of our first year courses.
[00:29:13.540]It's taken a few years. I think by around 2020 we
[00:29:16.800]had OERs in most of our first year courses. And then we
[00:29:21.020]also created supplemental instructional videos. They're
[00:29:24.160]all embedded now in our OERs. And again, I'll try to show
[00:29:27.460]that briefly at the end here.
[00:29:30.220]So our vision for these open access materials is
[00:29:34.320]to engage students in mathematics and increase student success.
[00:29:38.680]In particular, by emphasizing or building our course around active learning
[00:29:43.460]structures and providing professional development for
[00:29:46.060]the graduate students teaching these courses.
[00:29:49.420]And so we want to provide a more consistent experience
[00:29:52.460]across different sections of the same course and also again
[00:29:55.600]with OERs and free online homework systems, make sure that
[00:29:59.100]students have consistent and convenient access to all those materials.
[00:30:04.540]We aim to kind of build a community of practice around teaching
[00:30:08.120]our first year courses. And that could be a whole separate topic to
[00:30:14.620]discuss, but they are collaborating around
[00:30:18.220]these curriculum materials.
[00:30:20.420]That's one of the components of this community of
[00:30:22.760]practice and actually contributing back to the curriculum materials themselves.
[00:30:27.800]And then again, just increasing access to high
[00:30:30.940]quality educational resources. Other commercial and products in math
[00:30:35.800]often incorporate textbooks and quiz structures
[00:30:38.280]together. So ours are separate because we have our OERs and
[00:30:41.660]we have our web work, but they're both completely free to students.
[00:30:46.960]So with building these OERs, I just wanted to show you kind of
[00:30:50.400]just super briefly kind of what the back end of this looks like.
[00:30:54.180]We wanted our textbooks, of course, to be mathematically
[00:30:57.680]correct, easily readable and complementary to all
[00:31:02.420]of our other resources in this suite of open access tools.
[00:31:06.600]In terms of technology, we wanted these to look good both
[00:31:09.460]on traditional computers and mobile devices because we find a lot of
[00:31:12.580]students use their phones a lot for things.
[00:31:15.840]We wanted it to typeset mathematics nicely, load
[00:31:19.700]quickly and support interactivity, which was very important.
[00:31:23.600]Here's actually, I won't say much about this, but
[00:31:26.020]this is just a screenshot of our like some source code for one
[00:31:30.080]of our textbooks. It's kind of a mixture of HTML code and XML code.
[00:31:37.940]And then there's ways that we can like typeset mathematics embedded within
[00:31:42.320]here. So we actually, a lot of our graduate students work in
[00:31:46.880]the summer on revising and refining our curriculum materials.
[00:31:50.740]So there are a lot of authors that have contributed to
[00:31:54.780]our OERs and they come in and they edit this source code.
[00:31:59.500]All of the code is kept up on GitHub, a like version control system software
[00:32:05.360]that allows everyone to make changes and then push them
[00:32:07.860]all together and merge them and then we can compile
[00:32:09.920]them into our live textbook.
[00:32:12.960]And here's just some screenshots of some of the
[00:32:15.780]pages of our textbook. I think what I might actually
[00:32:18.800]do is switch over and just show you one of these really briefly and just
[00:32:23.320]highlight a couple of things.
[00:32:25.200]If that's all right. So this is our College Algebra
[00:32:28.400]textbook. I'll go to section 1.1. You can see at
[00:32:31.340]the top here, here are links to all of our supplemental lecture videos that just
[00:32:35.380]open a page in Yuja.
[00:32:38.180]Throughout the text, you'll see boxed definitions. We
[00:32:42.620]have embedded examples and exercises which are expandable.
[00:32:48.140]And then, you know, in text links to different
[00:32:51.020]tables and other resources. Some of the examples have
[00:32:55.580]solutions written out which are not immediately visible, but
[00:32:58.460]students can click to expand that to learn more.
[00:33:02.740]And then, let's see, towards the bottom, some of the examples or exercises even
[00:33:09.140]include hints so they can look at that before they look at the solution.
[00:33:13.840]Here's an example of the interactivity of applets. This is a Geogebra
[00:33:20.680]applet that's embedded in the textbook. Students could type in any function.
[00:33:25.780]Well, I shouldn't say function here. They can type in
[00:33:28.560]any relation or equation up here in variables x and
[00:33:32.440]y. It will re-graph it on this grid and then
[00:33:34.860]they can test out. This is called the vertical line test.
[00:33:38.340]And over here, the function is passing the vertical
[00:33:40.540]line because it only crosses this line in one spot.
[00:33:44.240]But over here, it starts to fail the vertical
[00:33:46.440]line so they could use this to explore that topic.
[00:33:49.320]And we have other various tools embedded throughout
[00:33:52.820]different sections of the text. Basically anything you could
[00:33:55.320]build in Geogebra or Desmos, which are kind of like online
[00:33:58.780]graphing calculators for visualization, but you
[00:34:01.120]can program structure within them you could embed in our OER textbooks.
[00:34:06.720]And then down here at the bottom, we have exercises which link to, these
[00:34:11.540]are what our web work problems look like. And so
[00:34:15.340]students can see some examples of exercises they can try
[00:34:20.000]to work and get hints.
[00:34:21.520]And some of these are the same as their homework problems so
[00:34:23.580]they can go in and take a look at hints. So I think I
[00:34:26.440]am at time. I will stop my presentation there.
[00:34:31.120]I will also give a quick shout out from what, let's see, Dr.
[00:34:39.300]Lynette, was it? No, Laura had said. I love Perusall. I use that
[00:34:45.120]in some of my classes too, so it was cool to hear you
[00:34:46.800]talk about that. But I will turn it over to the next presenter.
[00:34:52.880]Awesome. Thanks for that, Josh. Yeah, I know I have
[00:34:55.960]a couple questions that relate to sort of the logistics of
[00:35:01.340]project management on such a scale with so many people
[00:35:04.340]working on it, but we'll get to those at the end.
[00:35:07.320]But I do very much want to ask you about those.
[00:35:10.340]So yeah, our final presenter, Dr. Lissette Aliaga-Lanares,
[00:35:16.100]associate professor in the sociology and anthropology department
[00:35:19.560]at University of Nebraska Omaha. Lissette.
[00:35:24.260]Hi. Hi, everyone. I would like to share a little bit about
[00:35:29.360]my experience. I didn't present a PowerPoint or have
[00:35:32.420]anything like that, but I was told that this
[00:35:35.860]was 10 minutes informal conversation.
[00:35:39.000]So I was the first cohort at the UNO that took the training
[00:35:44.940]program on OER in 2019.
[00:35:50.280]And at that time, I engaged with OER because of some of the
[00:35:54.600]frustrations that I had had as a professor, as an incoming professor at
[00:35:58.460]UNO with textbooks, like the traditional way students purchase
[00:36:03.040]textbooks, the delay that you have at least two weeks
[00:36:06.400]or even three weeks in the semester.
[00:36:08.060]The student didn't get the textbook, so they cannot follow up,
[00:36:11.840]etc. And the fact that I was teaching courses like research
[00:36:15.620]methods and stats that are really critical to have the availability
[00:36:20.140]from the first day because many of the content builds every week.
[00:36:25.300]So my first experience was to change to OER my research methods
[00:36:31.440]class. And after that particular course, I did a
[00:36:35.320]survey with my students and even have an informal
[00:36:37.560]conversation with the survey results.
[00:36:39.640]And two things that actually stuck with me since 2019 at OER has been that
[00:36:49.660]there is a paradox in how students see the use of textbooks in a classroom.
[00:36:57.360]If a professor relies too much on the textbook, it creates an
[00:37:02.700]incentive to disengage with the class. Why are you going to show
[00:37:05.520]up to class if everything is on the textbook?
[00:37:07.860]And the second part is if you have too little overlap, they see
[00:37:13.040]that it's unfair that you have made a required
[00:37:17.760]textbook on the class. You are making them purchase
[00:37:21.480]a hundred thousand dollar textbook.
[00:37:24.080]And when everything that you are covering your
[00:37:26.420]slides are basically the textbook on the slides.
[00:37:30.960]So those were part of my conversations. I also learned a couple of things that
[00:37:35.640]actually surprised me because I thought that
[00:37:37.660]people were more used to read online, etc.
[00:37:41.240]They didn't like necessarily the ebooks. They found that
[00:37:44.780]limitation with ebooks was about annotations, that they cannot easily
[00:37:49.240]remember where to go back, which page it was,
[00:37:52.140]that it seems to be much easier with physical books.
[00:37:55.420]And they wanted the option to have some if it's something is online to
[00:37:59.840]have some version that they can print, you know, particularly that was a reading.
[00:38:05.180]So with these two ideas in mind, I, well, my
[00:38:10.140]first task, my very basic task was to find a
[00:38:14.480]textbook and to think deeper on what part of how
[00:38:18.080]what type of function I'm going to assign the textbook.
[00:38:21.920]So for my more introductory classes, what I have
[00:38:25.060]done is use the textbook as that conversation started.
[00:38:29.020]It covers. I try to look for textbooks that
[00:38:32.080]have a very everyday language in that they cover
[00:38:35.620]those concepts in research methods that we can go
[00:38:38.100]more deeper with my lectures or the activities in class.
[00:38:41.780]But also my first no less check. So they read the textbook and I
[00:38:46.800]have quizzes. And I also are the fan of Perusals because I don't only
[00:38:51.960]use the quizzes, the reading quizzes at the end of the reading, but within
[00:38:56.040]the reading, using all these annotation tools
[00:38:59.000]that Perusals has, they have embedded quizzes too.
[00:39:01.560]You can make polls inside the Perusals, etc. So make me
[00:39:06.680]think deeper on how how is the process of reading for students.
[00:39:10.440]So I use Perusals for that. And in my senior level classes, which has
[00:39:15.400]become very popular in sociology to identify these books
[00:39:18.260]that are readers, you know, that are basically fragments or
[00:39:23.500]articles or key books, etc.
[00:39:27.820]In which you assign the seminars to read. It's practical in the sense
[00:39:32.960]that you have one book that has everything. But what I have decided
[00:39:36.400]to do is instead of asking students to buy a reader, basically make
[00:39:41.440]my own collection of things that they can read and have a mix.
[00:39:45.020]That actually gives them even more with this
[00:39:49.340]idea of using annotation tools for students to
[00:39:53.220]engage with the reading, give them some primers
[00:39:56.100]on the things that they want to read.
[00:39:58.460]For instance, if this is a theory book, you know, I tell
[00:40:01.920]them like theories, sometimes it's very abstract to read. So I try
[00:40:05.240]to think these questions in mind. So before the reading, I'm prepping
[00:40:09.780]them what they have to look after the reading or in the reading.
[00:40:13.560]And then I strategically write prompts, comments, questions
[00:40:18.700]within the reading in which they can reply to me or even ask them a question
[00:40:24.520]to me or other students to engage in discussions.
[00:40:28.460]I also give them the option to download the reading with the comments if
[00:40:33.000]they want because some students like it that way. But also what I noticed
[00:40:36.700]is that even those students that tend to download more these readings go back
[00:40:43.300]because they are curious to know what are the other takes of the other students.
[00:40:48.400]So I had a good experience with using annotation. And also I
[00:40:53.060]think that have changed the way I teach and I think about readings.
[00:40:56.900]I mean, I came to UNO and before coming to UNO, I
[00:41:02.380]was a TA, you know, I haven't taught a class all my own.
[00:41:05.840]I was mostly a research assistant when I was in my
[00:41:08.660]grad school. So it made me think deeper on how I teach.
[00:41:15.500]So OER has been important to my experience as an instructor in the sense
[00:41:22.460]that it has challenged me to think about how students
[00:41:26.100]engage with the material.
[00:41:28.120]So since I didn't prepare a PowerPoint, I just want to show you a couple
[00:41:31.340]of readings that I have done in my courses and how it looks like in Prusall.
[00:41:39.180]For instance, this is one article in which I asked students to
[00:41:49.960]read a research article, an empirical sociological article that
[00:41:54.660]uses experiments for capturing.
[00:42:02.000]Well, this one is an audit study, but using calls to
[00:42:07.620]capture whether somebody will get assistance
[00:42:11.660]in mental health by certain practitioners.
[00:42:15.820]The idea is to assess the method. And it's very used, I mean, for sure,
[00:42:20.880]because of the topic, students can go from the branches and not
[00:42:24.260]necessarily for the course.
[00:42:25.280]So for the beginning, I asked them to center
[00:42:28.180]on the content of the reading. And then when I
[00:42:34.340]present the reading, I draft a specific question so
[00:42:38.880]they can focus on the methodology part of the reading.
[00:42:41.940]I mean, they can comment on everything else, but they have
[00:42:45.020]to re-center how they are the process of reading and engagement.
[00:42:48.180]So this is one example of how I do that. I may then go to the
[00:42:52.680]appendix because I noticed after I have used this tool many
[00:42:56.500]times, students tend to read up to the half of the reading
[00:43:01.360]and then drop into your engagement.
[00:43:03.720]So I try to, using those analytics, try to call
[00:43:08.720]their attention to go farther in the reading. And this is
[00:43:11.400]the appendix of the reading and I asked them to
[00:43:13.620]engage how they see that transcript that the researchers have used.
[00:43:17.480]Do they think that it actually caused the fact that they were willing to, etc, etc.
[00:43:24.820]This is another example. This is a reading that is highly theoretical.
[00:43:28.760]I explained to them what it might be a little confusing or
[00:43:33.120]too general to re-center them in the questions and what is the
[00:43:37.140]central focus of the reading, what are the central arguments, etc, etc.
[00:43:42.760]This is another example in my, it is a senior
[00:43:45.660]level classes in which students actually, you can see some
[00:43:50.520]of them even ask the question related to me, you
[00:43:53.280]know, some of them interact with each other, etc, etc.
[00:43:57.300]And this is one of my upper level courses that is urban
[00:44:00.060]sociology in Latin America.
[00:44:02.700]So that's all some sort of the samples that I want to see to share with you.
[00:44:08.560]And my big takeaway is that it's not just the content, but how
[00:44:12.940]students interact with the content and that I have to put to take
[00:44:16.860]that process as a learning opportunity that is you
[00:44:19.940]create better engagement when this engagement is social, like
[00:44:23.700]they can interact with each other and with you.
[00:44:26.680]And with the fact that you need to be mindful of how
[00:44:30.400]much you are overlapping in your content and what you are saying,
[00:44:35.280]what is worth to be repetitive and what is worth to be
[00:44:40.140]more enhancing in terms of going deeper with the concepts that you present.
[00:44:44.480]Well, that's it. I think I have all the time.
[00:44:49.760]Awesome. Thank you.
[00:44:51.200]So yeah, we are actually really good at time. We got about 15 minutes left.
[00:44:57.840]If you have any questions, drop them in the chat and more than happy to read them.
[00:45:04.440]I also check here. I have actually a couple that people have sent me.
[00:45:12.900]So beginning here, Madeline, you mentioned integrating
[00:45:19.720]interactivity between students in your course as part
[00:45:27.780]of your conversion. Can you talk a little bit more about
[00:45:31.460]the philosophy behind that?
[00:45:34.660]And actually, yeah, that was the thing that occurred to me too, because I've
[00:45:37.340]been thinking a lot about in terms of online education. And I'm sure we
[00:45:41.940]all remember, like, do you remember the relationships that you
[00:45:45.280]formed with students in the 10 minutes before class when you
[00:45:49.160]were a student as an undergrad, right?
[00:45:52.640]And that's something that is, I think, harder to get out
[00:45:55.320]of a lot of online education. So yeah, Madeline, a bit
[00:45:59.360]more about kind of your efforts to increase
[00:46:02.700]student interaction and kind of put that human
[00:46:05.780]element back into an online course.
[00:46:18.340]Do we still have Madeline?
[00:46:20.900]She's speaking, but she might be muted.
[00:46:23.000]Got it. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Okay, good. So microphone is muted.
[00:46:29.080]But the room was not. So, okay.
[00:46:32.240]So JGen 200, for example, probably like some
[00:46:35.560]of your other classes that some of the instructors
[00:46:37.620]who are teaching serve students across the university. So
[00:46:40.620]it's not necessarily for one major or one college.
[00:46:44.340]Primarily, it was STEM students, engineering was like
[00:46:48.600]63 to 75, 73%. So majority of engineering, but the construction management
[00:46:56.400]of computer science, you know, just all the
[00:47:00.420]different kinds of engineers.
[00:47:03.860]So all these different disciplines are coming together, all these
[00:47:06.580]fields of study, students may not know each other. So how
[00:47:09.320]do you create environments or spaces where they will want to
[00:47:12.920]talk to each other when they're like studying
[00:47:14.620]totally different things?
[00:47:15.740]And maybe the only thing they're coming together on is
[00:47:18.480]this class, which is an ACE1 class for communications. So
[00:47:22.660]it definitely fits that one of those pegs that they
[00:47:26.140]have to, or those things they have to cross off.
[00:47:28.380]But also, some of the different majors required JGen 200
[00:47:32.620]as a requirement or as an option, like you take
[00:47:35.240]this or you take this communications class. So they may
[00:47:38.240]have some people in the same major, but not necessarily.
[00:47:41.160]So how do you do that to create an environment where they
[00:47:43.240]want to talk to each other? In class, in
[00:47:46.380]the smaller section, you can do that. You can put it in small groups.
[00:47:49.280]But then, if you're in an online class, like some of
[00:47:52.500]us have sang, Perusal is just a super great way. Students
[00:47:55.100]are used to like talking to each other in kind of
[00:47:58.040]a social media type environment and Perusal works really well with that.
[00:48:03.260]The other way that I do it is that I always have an introductory and
[00:48:06.360]well, for sure an introductory assignment where students introduce themselves and
[00:48:10.160]they have to engage each other in Canvas on a
[00:48:12.560]discussion board and I love that.
[00:48:14.200]And then in some of my classes, I do more of those
[00:48:17.080]so that students are getting to see each other, talk to each other, see
[00:48:19.820]that visual presentation and get to know each other.
[00:48:23.000]And students across the board, and others of
[00:48:26.000]you might know this as well, that I have found that they love
[00:48:28.820]talking to each other in that engaged space on
[00:48:32.340]Perusal. They love that engagement.
[00:48:35.040]So I hope I answered your question. Thank you.
[00:48:38.120]Awesome. Yeah, thank you. And then I have a question here for Dr. Vu. So
[00:48:44.620]you mentioned using Google Drive to provide
[00:48:50.080]ready access to materials for your K-12 instructors.
[00:48:54.380]Have you explored options for online textbook publishing or are
[00:49:01.560]these materials that need to be kept more restricted access?
[00:49:29.660]I don't know if we still have Dr. Vu.
[00:49:33.540]Okay, if he hops back in, I can ask that question later.
[00:49:37.620]I had a question for Josh, which I brought up
[00:49:41.100]briefly, but yeah, so you're doing a kind of a
[00:49:44.360]big complex project here with a lot of different sort
[00:49:47.360]of workflows and deadlines and multiple people working on it.
[00:49:50.580]Can you talk a little bit about kind of how you
[00:49:52.320]developed a workflow for managing, well, you know,
[00:49:55.100]assigning workflows, assigning deadlines and
[00:49:58.220]deliverables and coordinating among this many people who are
[00:50:02.000]developing materials for a number of courses, which are also interconnected?
[00:50:06.860]Yeah.
[00:50:09.720]We've had varying types of experiences with this for different textbooks. So
[00:50:14.940]a lot of these are adapting, you know, existing open source materials.
[00:50:19.120]So we're taking, you know, we have a lot of source code
[00:50:21.700]that we're then going to adapt to our context in some way.
[00:50:24.980]So it's not like we're building too much of this stuff
[00:50:27.500]from scratch, although a couple of semesters ago, I oversaw some
[00:50:33.200]graduate students and we rewrote like a credit hours or wrote
[00:50:36.680]a credit hours worth of content for like our trig textbook.
[00:50:41.440]So we do this in the summer.
[00:50:44.480]My policy is just, you know, we meet once a week.
[00:50:49.160]Graduate students are paid for this curriculum development work in the summer.
[00:50:52.440]We, you know, meet for an hour, we discuss things, and we
[00:50:57.440]talk about the week's projects and they work and then we meet again.
[00:51:02.580]I find that like that meeting consistently and creating
[00:51:07.440]accountability by knowing that, you know, we're going to
[00:51:10.200]be talking about this soon is just critical because
[00:51:14.500]as academics, it's hard to be productive during the summer.
[00:51:18.820]I think there's been some other projects that have
[00:51:21.320]been summer projects that maybe got done mostly in
[00:51:26.340]like the last two weeks of July and then into August that were maybe
[00:51:30.420]a little bit more hectic.
[00:51:32.460]But I haven't like overseen every one of those projects. I think
[00:51:35.480]it just varies quite a bit, but that's some of the things that I
[00:51:38.440]found are important. We don't usually have, I mean,
[00:51:42.520]this is actually one ongoing question that we're just starting
[00:51:45.520]to kind of grapple with a little bit right now is
[00:51:47.720]in 2018 when we had two OERs, we could just kind
[00:51:52.440]of manage all of this just manually as things came in.
[00:51:56.280]We could like make adjustments. Now when we
[00:51:58.820]have OERs for all first and second year courses, we're realizing that
[00:52:02.700]we do need something in place to track
[00:52:06.400]changes that need to happen.
[00:52:08.500]And who's making those changes and how the curriculum is changing.
[00:52:12.440]So we're kind of like starting to discuss that in our
[00:52:15.220]faculty committee, our first year task force that kind of oversees
[00:52:18.840]some of the curriculum changes we do in some of these courses.
[00:52:22.720]In the meantime, we have just a Microsoft Excel document on OneDrive
[00:52:29.340]that all instructors have access to linked from our wiki where they
[00:52:33.360]can add things that need to be changed.
[00:52:38.960]They can make notes about typos in the textbook or errors in
[00:52:42.660]our online homework problems or things like that. And then we take
[00:52:45.260]that there's a tab for each of our courses.
[00:52:47.260]And then that's the thing we start with each summer
[00:52:50.100]when we do curriculum development to check those things off first.
[00:52:54.880]I love that answer. Yeah, because two of your points
[00:52:58.900]were just, you know, good open communication and
[00:53:01.940]accountability, right? And with these kind of huge
[00:53:04.820]projects that could be, you know, intimidatingly daunting to somebody who's
[00:53:08.720]just thinking about launching them, right?
[00:53:10.680]There are often rather simple answers as far as sort of ideals to stick to
[00:53:16.920]and to keep in mind communication and accountability, right? Like in
[00:53:20.680]hindsight, it seems simple.
[00:53:23.840]And a lot of the times that can get you a lot
[00:53:26.880]of the way toward these anxieties that you're having, I feel like.
[00:53:31.320]So yeah, and just like one other really quick,
[00:53:34.000]like another byproduct of all of this is, you
[00:53:36.300]know, because we're at scale, we do have to
[00:53:38.200]have a lot of people working on this stuff.
[00:53:41.060]But one result is that a lot of our graduate students
[00:53:44.020]get this amazing professional development experience of
[00:53:46.960]contributing to curriculum development that they get to put on their CVs.
[00:53:59.920]They can say, like, look, I contributed to a textbook. And that's super easy to
[00:54:04.540]change since it's an open resource and we can just recompile it once we make edits.
[00:54:09.540]And also, you know, I think I know at least
[00:54:12.680]at UNL, the Center for Transformative Teaching has a lot of,
[00:54:16.560]you know, nice like seed funding available for like taking up
[00:54:20.160]these projects to collaborate with someone to build on curriculum materials.
[00:54:24.540]And a little bit can go a long way for like a summer project.
[00:54:27.700]But even so, if they're not getting, you know,
[00:54:29.660]making, you know, buku bucks, it's really great, like professional
[00:54:33.500]development and CV building experience.
[00:54:36.440]Awesome. Yeah, that's a really good point. Thank you.
[00:54:40.220]And I had a question too, because you mentioned something that I
[00:54:45.080]don't often hear being brought up, which was
[00:54:48.580]a consideration for students who wanted to be
[00:54:50.380]able to print content, right?
[00:54:52.580]Because we think about open educational resources in terms of access,
[00:54:57.440]but that doesn't always just mean the ability to access it, right?
[00:55:01.620]It also like access accessibility also includes the ability to access and
[00:55:06.600]consume content in a way that works best for the learner, right?
[00:55:10.840]And so you mentioned that one of your considerations and one of
[00:55:13.440]the things that your students have done is to be able to actually
[00:55:15.860]print out materials, particularly I'm assuming for like heavier,
[00:55:21.540]denser kind of text based materials. So you talked a little bit more about your
[00:55:24.840]experience as to sort of like when that option seems to
[00:55:29.040]be valuable for students?
[00:55:31.520]Well, it has been many things, things about accessibility in terms
[00:55:37.500]of they have vision problems that actually makes
[00:55:41.400]them feel too tired to be on the screen all the time.
[00:55:44.920]So they need that to download, to print, to be with the text
[00:55:49.480]by themselves and then go come back for the interaction part to write.
[00:55:55.320]The other is older, nontraditional students do
[00:55:58.000]prefer to print the materials in general. So
[00:56:01.380]these are the type of students that have asked me about how to download it.
[00:56:06.100]So I need to show them where is the icon.
[00:56:09.200]The other issue is also with read out loud functions.
[00:56:15.740]Adolph Akrabad has a built-in read out loud, but
[00:56:18.480]in this annotation platforms, Perusel has a read out
[00:56:21.720]loud function and those accommodate students that also accommodate
[00:56:27.240]not necessarily students that have problems with vision, etc.
[00:56:31.480]But also in terms of comfort because certain students do prefer to listen, you
[00:56:37.100]know, when they are working and it's a way for them to focus or concentrate.
[00:56:42.320]So I think like having all these options available to
[00:56:45.140]them actually makes them remove a barrier that increases engagement
[00:56:50.200]in general, you know, the less of a barrier you
[00:56:52.800]make to the material, not only in terms of cost,
[00:56:54.960]but in terms of different formats that they can fit their needs, but
[00:57:00.240]also lifestyles, let's say, the best they will completely
[00:57:04.640]engage with assignments, etc.
[00:57:08.600]Thank you.
[00:57:11.340]Well, this is a, so one of the things that I
[00:57:15.240]love about these kind of sessions is just the ability to
[00:57:17.860]quickly kind of hear about what so many of my colleagues
[00:57:20.820]in this community of practice are doing and how they're implementing it.
[00:57:24.160]And it also raises so many questions. I mean, I really think we
[00:57:26.940]need this discussion going for another hour.
[00:57:29.040]I know I've got at least 15 questions that I had jotted down
[00:57:32.640]along the way that I'd like to ask, but we are unfortunately just going
[00:57:36.700]up to the top of the hour.
[00:57:37.660]So I do want to thank everybody who took time out of their day to
[00:57:40.680]day to come and share their work and their progress and
[00:57:43.980]their experience with us.
[00:57:46.240]Very much appreciate it. It's made the willingness of multiple
[00:57:52.240]people throughout this Open Educational Week event to come and share
[00:57:55.300]with us is what has made it possible.
[00:57:57.820]So thank you again and thank you for everybody who's attending live.
[00:58:01.760]And if you're watching this later asynchronously, I'm sure
[00:58:05.020]it will be nonetheless valuable. So have a good rest of
[00:58:08.380]your week, y'all. Thank you very much.
[00:58:11.020]And yeah, we'll see you around.

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Faculty Spotlight OER 2024

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