Open Nebraska Course Marking Logo

Brad Severa Author

03/19/2024 Added

5 Plays

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Find out about the new Logo being used for marking affordable courses at the University of Nebraska.

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[00:00:00.350]Alright, welcome everyone. I think we've got a few more
[00:00:04.390]people coming in, but I think I want to go ahead
[00:00:05.910]and get us started and so that way we can kind of talk about our
[00:00:10.210]course marketing system here at NU.
[00:00:13.310]So thank you so much for joining us today for our second day
[00:00:16.810]for Open Educational Resources Week.
[00:00:20.670]And I want to go ahead and it's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Dan
[00:00:25.130]Hawkins, who is a professor of sociology and the
[00:00:29.210]director of online learning for the innovative and learning centric
[00:00:34.250]initiatives that you would know.
[00:00:38.910]Thanks so much, Julia. Thanks everybody for being here.
[00:00:42.670]I'll be really brief on this introduction because all the
[00:00:44.890]good stuff's in the video that we're about to show you.
[00:00:48.490]Jackie Ostrowicky, who is in external relations at
[00:00:52.630]the NU system level, and her team have been
[00:00:55.770]working on a project for over a year now about a course
[00:00:59.590]marking logo for Open Nebraska.
[00:01:02.710]So some of us here on this call are part of the
[00:01:05.230]Open Nebraska community practice and we've seen the logo,
[00:01:10.090]but her presentation is hot off the presses,
[00:01:12.870]all the most updated information.
[00:01:14.490]She recorded it yesterday. She wished she could be here, but she
[00:01:17.570]had another obligation. So that video is about 15 minutes long and should
[00:01:21.870]give you the latest updates and sort of on the development of
[00:01:25.390]the logo and then what the intent is to use it going forward.
[00:01:29.670]But after that video, I hoped we could just kind of have a conversation
[00:01:32.310]about your reactions to the logo, how you'd like to use it if you could.
[00:01:37.690]Maybe what kind of problems or challenges you
[00:01:40.930]think this might overcome that the logo helps
[00:01:43.070]with. So I think with that being said, we'll go ahead and
[00:01:47.150]play the video and enjoy.
[00:01:57.920]Hi, I'm Jackie Ostrowicky. I'm assistant vice
[00:02:01.040]president for the University of Nebraska system
[00:02:03.620]and I am the director of marketing brand and digital media
[00:02:08.759]at the president's office.
[00:02:11.140]I am really happy to be with you today to talk about
[00:02:14.360]Open Nebraska and course marking.
[00:02:17.460]I know there's a great group of faculty and staff gathered here
[00:02:20.660]to learn more about how they can use this
[00:02:24.520]logo on their material to make sure that students
[00:02:27.560]are more aware of it.
[00:02:29.060]And we're really excited to provide this to
[00:02:31.280]you and your teams to generate more awareness.
[00:02:34.600]So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and walk you
[00:02:38.040]through a little bit of the process about how
[00:02:40.260]the logo was developed, what logo was selected and how you can use it.
[00:02:46.320]So with that, give me just a moment here and I will
[00:02:50.460]go over to my presentation.
[00:02:54.140]So, again, like I said, I'm going to talk to you a
[00:02:56.720]little bit about the Open Nebraska logo and the course marking overview.
[00:03:01.620]And I know that you are all celebrating Open Education Week, which
[00:03:04.740]is a terrific opportunity to think about not only making it more
[00:03:10.200]affordable for our students to access educational resources, but to also make
[00:03:15.980]it easier to provide them with honestly the best and latest information.
[00:03:20.700]So first of all, just a little bit of background about Open
[00:03:24.140]Nebraska. Obviously, this is an initiative that goes across all four campuses.
[00:03:30.400]Each campus and each of your campuses individually have launched
[00:03:33.920]programs that will help reduce the cost of textbooks for students.
[00:03:38.300]And really, it's part of the University of Nebraska systems
[00:03:41.640]goal to assure that a quality education is
[00:03:44.420]affordable and accessible.
[00:03:46.800]And so all of these efforts collectively are known as Open Nebraska.
[00:03:51.540]And when we were thinking about how to communicate about Open Nebraska, we
[00:03:56.820]decided to create a logo for the initiative for a couple of reasons.
[00:04:00.620]First, to create really a quick visual recognition of free
[00:04:04.620]and reduced cost textbooks.
[00:04:06.320]How can you quickly look at something, a syllabus,
[00:04:10.740]some course marking when you're signing up for classes?
[00:04:13.360]How can you quickly understand that it is going to be OER or free and reduced cost?
[00:04:19.200]And then the other reason is just to help identify material and create a
[00:04:24.060]better understanding of the efforts around Open
[00:04:27.400]Nebraska, both for faculty and for students.
[00:04:30.880]So if you think of the audience for Open Nebraska,
[00:04:33.900]really the primary audience is your undergraduate and
[00:04:36.580]your graduate students.
[00:04:38.420]They're looking for ways to make college more affordable. Textbooks
[00:04:41.420]can be extremely expensive.
[00:04:43.160]We don't want students to not get textbooks because
[00:04:46.060]they can't afford it.
[00:04:47.900]And free books and resources really help them when
[00:04:50.820]it comes to learning both inside and outside of class.
[00:04:53.340]So Open Nebraska is looking at undergraduate and graduate
[00:04:56.500]students, but honestly, it's also looking at faculty, faculty
[00:05:00.940]who want to make low cost materials accessible for
[00:05:04.140]their students, faculty who want to promote this effort,
[00:05:08.000]and faculty who may not know about OER material.
[00:05:11.780]So if you think about the benefits of Open
[00:05:13.740]Nebraska, it's pretty incredible.
[00:05:16.220]Jackie Lindberg has been working on behalf of the
[00:05:19.240]system to help track the cost savings for Open Nebraska.
[00:05:23.820]And since 2018, she just sent an email to the office of
[00:05:28.120]the president that shared that University of Nebraska students
[00:05:31.880]across the system have saved nearly twenty eight
[00:05:34.720]million dollars in textbook costs.
[00:05:37.580]So that's pretty incredible. And that's through the open
[00:05:39.860]educational resources that have been provided by Open Nebraska.
[00:05:43.560]So there's a definite benefit when it comes to cost.
[00:05:47.660]And I actually have some of the campus savings
[00:05:49.780]breakdown here, so I'm going to share those with you.
[00:05:52.960]UNL has saved a little over 17 million dollars. UNO has saved
[00:05:58.540]nearly eight million dollars.
[00:06:00.880]UNK has saved around a million and a half dollars.
[00:06:04.440]And UNMC has saved a little over a million dollars.
[00:06:08.020]So really, the Open Nebraska program is just another way that the
[00:06:11.900]university continues to demonstrate their commitment
[00:06:14.320]to affordability and access for students.
[00:06:18.660]The other thing I want to say before I go to
[00:06:20.080]the next slide is that this is an extremely
[00:06:22.760]collaborative program, right?
[00:06:24.900]So it involves our faculty, our libraries, it
[00:06:27.480]involves IT, instructional design, bookstores, registrars,
[00:06:32.160]marketing communication teams.
[00:06:33.400]So this is really an all in effort. So although maybe the
[00:06:36.220]logo was created by my team and my colleagues,
[00:06:39.260]definitely the implementation of the program belongs to everybody
[00:06:42.900]back to the market itself.
[00:06:46.200]So why did we create a logo for it? There were a
[00:06:49.860]couple of simple reasons. First of all, students who
[00:06:53.260]take classes, regardless of their campus, wanted a single
[00:06:56.520]name to refer to it.
[00:06:57.900]The student regions actually were pretty instrumental
[00:07:00.400]in ensuring that this logo came to be.
[00:07:03.920]The second reason is that a logo really helps to create an
[00:07:07.340]umbrella to describe these various differently named efforts,
[00:07:11.860]not just to students, but to the public and also to the board.
[00:07:15.980]And then last of all, it allows us as an institution to course
[00:07:20.260]mark in the student information systems and to tag courses that use OER.
[00:07:24.680]And then you can also use it in syllabi and other material,
[00:07:28.820]promoting OER and promoting Open Nebraska. So really, how
[00:07:32.080]do we quickly capture people's minds and eyeballs
[00:07:35.980]when they see the logo?
[00:07:38.940]So I'm going to take you through the logo process just so that
[00:07:42.980]you can understand the thought and intentionality that went
[00:07:47.200]into creating this mark.
[00:07:49.660]We didn't just sit down in an hour and come up with it. We really wanted to make
[00:07:53.840]sure that it met the needs, the strategic needs,
[00:07:57.620]and that it met the understanding of what OER is.
[00:08:02.120]So we did a competitive audit across a number of
[00:08:05.540]different institutions, initiatives, and just
[00:08:08.120]how OER is being described.
[00:08:10.400]If you look across all of these logos, they're very busy, they're
[00:08:14.160]very colorful, and they don't really show at a glance what OER is.
[00:08:22.140]They don't show that it is making books available
[00:08:25.800]low cost and digitally.
[00:08:28.440]And so if you look at some of these key themes, there's a lot of
[00:08:31.100]books. There's some font only treatments.
[00:08:34.159]There's some initials. And in my opinion, OpenStax gets the closest to it because it
[00:08:39.500]at least talks about and shows books, but it doesn't show the digital nature of OER.
[00:08:45.500]So moving from the competitive audit of what was out there in the landscape, the
[00:08:49.880]next step was to think about what do we want to portray with this mark.
[00:08:56.100]And so we pulled a number of different visuals
[00:08:58.220]that might get to where we're headed with the audit.
[00:09:02.020]You can see here are a number of visuals of
[00:09:05.320]books. They're very clean. They're very simple. They're very graphic.
[00:09:10.400]But I think what we didn't arrive at in this particular set is
[00:09:15.560]the digital nature of OER.
[00:09:18.800]The second we looked at N for Open Nebraska. How could we
[00:09:24.280]perhaps use the letter N?
[00:09:26.340]And although these are very clean and simple and do show,
[00:09:29.980]you know, tie to a letter, it didn't talk about books.
[00:09:34.560]It didn't really talk about the digital nature. I think
[00:09:36.880]the closest one is the one on the right that
[00:09:39.440]has the two semi-open books, one that's on its spine
[00:09:43.480]and the other that is the other leaning the other way.
[00:09:47.600]We also looked at some possibilities for either the word
[00:09:52.100]O for Open, the letter O, or things that were opening.
[00:09:56.360]And again, we didn't really feel like these inspirational audits
[00:09:59.740]got to the heart of the digital nature of OER.
[00:10:04.680]Probably the closest again is on the right hand side with
[00:10:07.860]the mouse that is making up the circle of the O.
[00:10:11.540]Then when we got to this set of inspiration, we felt
[00:10:15.520]it was getting a lot closer. You start to see pixels emanating.
[00:10:19.900]You see books that are kind of turning into digital. We
[00:10:24.040]really felt like this started to get to the heart of OER.
[00:10:28.420]And so the round one logo design that we landed on
[00:10:33.220]with these two options, these are the icons only for Open Nebraska.
[00:10:37.040]So we don't have the names under it. I'll get to that in a subsequent slide.
[00:10:41.480]So concept one, you can see on the left that is an open book and you can see
[00:10:45.660]the pixels emanating out of it or as it goes from actual course material,
[00:10:51.400]actual book to digital material.
[00:10:54.200]Concept two gets to that same thought, but it's a little more abstract and it
[00:10:58.960]shows an open book and then it shows some dissolution into
[00:11:02.460]digital type looking marks.
[00:11:07.920]So if you look at concept one, this is how it would look with the
[00:11:11.340]Open Nebraska word underneath it.
[00:11:13.760]So you can see it on the left. It's just the icon. You can
[00:11:16.540]see it with a horizontal word mark underneath and then
[00:11:19.980]you can see a little bit more stock so it
[00:11:21.940]could fit into social media.
[00:11:23.120]And when we develop icons and marks, we try
[00:11:26.160]to make sure that we look at them all three ways so we can see that it's going
[00:11:31.320]to be easy to read and easy to understand.
[00:11:35.060]It's really a dynamic metaphor. If you look at it, showing the move from
[00:11:40.420]books to digital form back again and it feels very
[00:11:44.400]accessible, approachable and friendly.
[00:11:47.700]The second option was this open book.
[00:11:53.040]On the left is the icon. In the middle, you can see
[00:11:55.340]the Open Nebraska underneath it horizontally
[00:11:57.440]and then again to the right stacked.
[00:12:00.560]And if we think about this option, it shows a transition. On
[00:12:03.900]the left, you've got the open book. On the right, you've got digital.
[00:12:07.200]So it shows a transition from maybe a more
[00:12:10.060]traditional way of interacting with course material to a more
[00:12:13.760]modern way of interacting with course material.
[00:12:17.860]You can see both of them compared side to side with Open
[00:12:21.260]Nebraska underneath. And what we did is we went through a number
[00:12:26.340]of rounds of sharing this with the various constituents.
[00:12:29.180]We shared it with folks that are in COLE, which is the Online Learning
[00:12:35.300]Association. I'm saying this wrong.
[00:12:39.580]COLE, I don't remember exactly what it stands for, but
[00:12:41.800]it's the Consortium of Online Learning across all four campuses.
[00:12:46.820]We showed this to the registrars. We showed this
[00:12:49.460]to the communicators. We showed this to several groups.
[00:12:52.620]And as we walked through this process that we went
[00:12:55.860]through to land on the logos, a clear favorite came out.
[00:13:02.340]One of the other things that we wanted to consider
[00:13:04.980]is how do we brand this in the campus color?
[00:13:08.340]So each campus needs to be able to use the final
[00:13:10.960]logo in their campus colors to make it recognizable to their students.
[00:13:16.880]So although we would create one logo, we would then make sure that it was
[00:13:20.820]created in all of the different campus colors and built out for them to use.
[00:13:26.200]And so I noted that we landed on a final logo. This was the
[00:13:30.940]final design that was selective.
[00:13:32.640]It was overwhelmingly the favorite in all of the four to
[00:13:36.260]five groups that we showed, probably over 40 people looked at these.
[00:13:40.840]You can see it in UNO colors on the left, UNL colors with red next to it, UNMC
[00:13:48.320]in the cranberry or maroon, and then UNK in
[00:13:51.560]the blue and gold to the very right hand side.
[00:13:55.840]One of the things I wanted to show you is how it could
[00:13:58.900]look used in course marking.
[00:14:02.780]So this, I just use an example, I used my own MyRed student dashboard
[00:14:07.720]as I'm a doctoral student right now as well and showed how it might
[00:14:11.960]look if I was looking through my classes to indicate that this is an,
[00:14:16.900]has OER resources and that would have free or reduced cost
[00:14:20.520]textbooks associated with it.
[00:14:22.600]And then you can also see how it might look if a student is looking at that
[00:14:27.240]on their laptop. So that's just one way that this logo could
[00:14:33.340]be used to course mark.
[00:14:35.240]A couple of things I did want to share about the course marking is that
[00:14:40.160]the NISA's team is working on the feature that's going to make
[00:14:44.580]displaying this icon possible.
[00:14:47.620]They are planning to get this into the test environment and getting
[00:14:52.120]instructions out to the campuses on how to use it yet this week.
[00:14:56.500]So once it's available, the portal administrators on each campus can start
[00:15:00.260]implementing the icon within the MyRed or the MyBlue or the MavLink dashboards.
[00:15:06.400]So this has not been used yet, but we are ready to launch it
[00:15:10.820]and it could be used, knock on wood for both
[00:15:14.000]summer and fall registrations.
[00:15:16.020]So that's just one way that you can use course marking. And
[00:15:20.140]if you are faculty or staff that are on the call or the
[00:15:23.800]Zoom, the video right now, I would recommend that you work with
[00:15:27.780]your respective registrar's offices in order
[00:15:30.720]to make this happen for your class.
[00:15:37.140]Another consideration is how can you use this in promotion? So you can see
[00:15:40.800]it on a T-shirt, you can see it on a mug, maybe on a sticker.
[00:15:45.680]And we lay these out in the various campus colors. So you've got UNK on the
[00:15:50.740]left, you've got UNO on the right, Medical Center on the left and UNO on the right.
[00:15:57.040]So I know there's been a lot of questions coming forth about how we
[00:16:01.200]can use this logo, what is appropriate, where do we get the logos from.
[00:16:07.220]I am sorry that I'm not there in person to share answers to those questions,
[00:16:11.420]but I do want to work with you to get the answers to you. So I
[00:16:16.920]will give you my email at the end of this presentation.
[00:16:21.560]So if there's any questions, you can email me at
[00:16:24.540]jaustrawickie at nebraska.edu. Hopefully this
[00:16:28.600]has given you a good overview of how the logo
[00:16:31.980]was developed and how it is intended to be used
[00:16:35.900]when it comes to course marking.
[00:16:38.480]Of course, there's lots of other ways to deploy it. Could we put it
[00:16:42.580]on bookmarks? Could we make posters for it? Can we put it on syllabus?
[00:16:46.660]You know, there's a concerted effort that can be made around Open Nebraska
[00:16:51.080]so that more students are aware of it, more faculty are aware of it.
[00:16:56.380]Honestly, the more that you see the logo, the more that
[00:16:59.140]you're going to be familiar with it and understands what it
[00:17:01.620]means. So I do think that there's additional usage that can
[00:17:04.940]happen around it. I'm going to stop my share on my PowerPoint.
[00:17:10.980]And I just want to close by thanking all of
[00:17:13.339]you for what you do for the University of Nebraska.
[00:17:16.180]I feel so privileged to work for this university and to work with folks
[00:17:20.380]like you. If you have any questions about Open Nebraska, please do email me.
[00:17:25.640]If I don't know the answer, I will connect you with someone who does.
[00:17:29.540]And I hope that this will really provide you with
[00:17:32.240]a visual way to show that your courses have open
[00:17:37.800]educational resources attached to them.
[00:17:41.380]And if you have other ideas of things that we could do to help you or to
[00:17:45.500]help get the word out, also feel free to shoot me an email and let me know.
[00:17:49.460]I am going to turn it over to the team who is running this Zoom now to
[00:17:54.240]facilitate some discussion about how Open Nebraska's logos could
[00:18:00.140]be used or any questions that could be had.
[00:18:03.460]In the meanwhile, have a great rest of the Zoom session and I
[00:18:07.080]look forward to hearing from you in the very near future. Thank you.
[00:18:15.930]Thank you, Jackie, wherever you are. Really, she did a great job on
[00:18:19.750]that presentation with a lot of information in a short amount of time.
[00:18:23.450]So I thought we could use whatever amount of the remaining time
[00:18:27.950]we want to to just talk about reactions to the logo, maybe share
[00:18:33.350]creative ways you'd like to use it, ask questions that we could
[00:18:37.650]take back to Jackie if you still have questions
[00:18:39.370]about the logo itself.
[00:18:41.550]But it's sort of an open forum at this point.
[00:18:46.310]And Julie is saying, feel free to put things in chat, turn your
[00:18:50.150]camera on and unmute, or use the raise hand if you prefer that.
[00:18:58.980]Thoughts, questions, feelings?
[00:19:08.540]Where are we with the registrar's offices and getting ready
[00:19:16.300]to put them into the catalog? How far out are we?
[00:19:20.720]That is a great question. I don't think Jackie has
[00:19:23.360]the answer to that one either because I think that
[00:19:25.040]is a question for each of our registrars. So I
[00:19:27.300]know I'm going to meet with UNO's registrar hopefully this week.
[00:19:31.100]My understanding is that they've got the logos, they've got access to
[00:19:34.860]them. So I think it's sort of a campus level decision now.
[00:19:41.840]Although I think our community of practice should try to help
[00:19:46.460]coordinate that too and keep track of what everybody's doing because it
[00:19:49.980]has been sort of a unified effort up till now and I
[00:19:52.100]think we should try to continue that theme if possible. Good question.
[00:19:58.140]So is there a kind of marketing campaign set up to
[00:20:04.540]explain this to both students and faculty on each of the campuses?
[00:20:10.940]Yeah, I think that's next. And again, that's something that
[00:20:13.800]this community of practice has been working on. We've broken up
[00:20:17.100]the team into sort of work groups and there's an outreach work group that's
[00:20:21.600]got that on their plate to try to have sort of a unified campaign
[00:20:25.920]around making people even more aware of this.
[00:20:28.420]Now that we've got the logo, kind of got something to glom
[00:20:31.280]onto for everybody. So you should be seeing something like that soon.
[00:20:40.980]Well, I know one of the things faculty will think of first,
[00:20:44.900]I'm sure anticipated is how the environment for this
[00:20:52.640]is entirely voluntary.
[00:20:57.440]And so if there are faculty who don't want to opt
[00:21:00.280]in, they should feel very comfortable to opt out. Or are there
[00:21:07.920]pieces of the framework of all of this that will sort of
[00:21:14.200]along the lines of saying you will put this in your syllabus.
[00:21:17.980]You know what I mean? You will have this in
[00:21:20.400]your syllabus. We all faculty get this across the system. And
[00:21:24.440]sometimes it's okay. And sometimes people feel it's a little
[00:21:27.240]coercive. But where will this fall in that scale of things?
[00:21:35.440]I mean, I can try to answer that from my perspective, but I'd
[00:21:38.820]welcome others as well. I mean, I think we've
[00:21:41.600]been operating on the carrot side of things than the
[00:21:44.060]stick side of things, right?
[00:21:45.000]I mean, particularly at UNO, we've got grant support funding support to
[00:21:49.620]move your textbooks to OER resources. I do think having the logo, you
[00:21:56.080]know, on your syllabus or when in the registration system is going to
[00:21:59.280]catch students eyes and that there might be enrollment
[00:22:01.800]consequences because of that.
[00:22:04.420]I don't think we've got that data for sure. But I mean, in terms of student
[00:22:09.260]success, we even know from a white paper that the community practice
[00:22:12.820]wrote that students do better
[00:22:14.280]when they've got access to these materials right off the bat. So
[00:22:16.940]I think there's a lot of reasons for faculty to be motivated
[00:22:19.240]to do this. At the same time, there might not be a
[00:22:23.760]high quality OER resource out there for every discipline and every course yet.
[00:22:28.200]Although I think it's, you know, it's getting better every
[00:22:30.400]day. And then there's always the opportunity for faculty to create
[00:22:33.440]their own resources if they want to go that direction.
[00:22:36.720]So I certainly don't think we want it to seem coercive.
[00:22:40.660]We're just trying to make as many people aware of the benefits
[00:22:44.920]that come with the program.
[00:22:49.650]I just want to chat real quick about the, we have been
[00:22:52.490]doing course marking for a couple semesters now through
[00:22:55.230]the registrar's offices.
[00:22:57.630]And that will show up if they do a search. There's an
[00:23:02.150]attribute for that for the different kind of categories
[00:23:04.830]of affordable textbooks.
[00:23:06.770]I would bet this will work similar to that. We haven't got the final
[00:23:11.270]word on how they're going to do it yet, but those basically if you're
[00:23:15.610]using something like an inclusive access textbook
[00:23:18.070]through Fallout here in the campus bookstore
[00:23:20.130]at UNL, for example, that'll automatically get
[00:23:22.730]added and it'll show up, of course.
[00:23:25.510]If you're doing an OER, you have to kind of opt
[00:23:27.730]in to that because we don't know who's doing OER necessarily. So
[00:23:32.430]it's going to be opt in for any that are in
[00:23:35.390]a program that we have data on that we can just import.
[00:23:38.890]Would be my guess. I'm not 100% sure how it's
[00:23:40.910]going to work, but I would guess it'll be like that.
[00:23:44.130]Yeah, Roger. I think, I mean, these are great questions. Another part
[00:23:46.570]of the campaign is I'm positive that at all of our campuses,
[00:23:50.450]we have people using OER resources that are not tagging them yet
[00:23:53.830]because they don't know the open Nebraska tag exists or the logo exists.
[00:23:57.630]So I think there's actually more of it even going on than we
[00:23:59.750]might be tracking right now. So we want to tighten that part up
[00:24:03.030]too. So we're sure that we're capturing all the classes that are using
[00:24:07.170]OER and it should be in an open, should be in open Nebraska.
[00:24:19.220]Something I wanted to add in for consideration, it
[00:24:22.080]might be a campus level response, which I also understand.
[00:24:26.340]First off, as a visual consumer, I appreciate the effort
[00:24:30.840]and work put into having something that visually is appealing.
[00:24:33.640]That signals to me, the staff member, that it's an easy way
[00:24:37.060]to communicate to students the variation in course offerings. So that's nice.
[00:24:40.680]The consideration I have for more conversation should it be available
[00:24:44.520]is from the students lens, what is the anticipated plan or intention
[00:24:49.960]for informing students at this, of course, likely at the campus
[00:24:55.340]level on what it means, what the impact is, and maybe some
[00:24:59.100]storytelling at each of the campus levels and or the system
[00:25:01.560]level as far as why this is being done over a variety
[00:25:04.740]of terms, the impact they have on the students and that we're
[00:25:07.580]doing this in stride for those who opt in to benefit them.
[00:25:14.560]Colton, you got ideas for reaching out to students? Where do
[00:25:17.520]you think we should be publicizing things to them? So the
[00:25:21.100]student governments, as Jackie said, were really involved on the front
[00:25:23.940]end of this, but students, they are here and then they leave.
[00:25:29.560]And a lot of those students that were involved
[00:25:31.180]in this are not here anymore to keep sharing the
[00:25:34.200]story. So I don't know, Colton, you're very connected
[00:25:38.000]to the student groups across campus. What do you got?
[00:25:40.780]Well, that's a generous compliment. Thank you, Dan. We across
[00:25:47.360]the system like to think that there are a variety
[00:25:49.320]of awesome gems that exist, either because they are pursued
[00:25:53.140]in mind or they're collaboratively created and sought after by students.
[00:25:56.820]And so just trying to think creatively and collaboratively across the system.
[00:26:00.920]And if it's possible, how can we share that out, whether it's
[00:26:05.500]collectives in the state or the region or conferences, these are some
[00:26:08.680]of the things that the system is doing to reduce barriers and
[00:26:11.800]access to learning, whether it's financial access of
[00:26:15.040]materials for course that have it opted into.
[00:26:17.200]And I think it's a great point. The student
[00:26:19.040]government associations across the system is a great starting
[00:26:21.600]point and expanding on that as far as how can we provide
[00:26:25.420]base level introduction for academic advisors
[00:26:28.560]or some of the academic units to inform, educate and just explain.
[00:26:34.320]This is not a takeaway or a placement of how
[00:26:36.660]content can be delivered or received. It's an alternative way
[00:26:41.300]or value add to the spaces where it's applicable. So
[00:26:43.920]I think more conversation to be had then. But I think
[00:26:46.660]it's something that I think we need to should consider
[00:26:49.040]that through the lens of the students is how do we
[00:26:50.740]prepare them to understand what it is and why they
[00:26:53.480]should consider courses or not consider courses that have that mark.
[00:26:58.700]I think you're right that the advisors though are a
[00:27:01.640]huge needed partner in this. And one of the open Nebraska
[00:27:05.400]community practice work groups has been meeting with advisors on different
[00:27:08.460]campuses and realizing that they're sort of aware of the program.
[00:27:12.720]They know it can be beneficial, but it's not
[00:27:14.120]on top of their mind when they're trying to
[00:27:15.520]slot students into, you know, things that work for
[00:27:17.820]their schedule and things that work for their academic plan.
[00:27:21.120]But they could definitely be a champion of this program if
[00:27:24.440]we make sure to keep reminding them that this is something that's
[00:27:28.100]here, that's saving students money, that's good for their academics and
[00:27:31.760]that continues to grow. So we'll keep that in mind for sure.
[00:27:40.130]You know, one thing that might be of some value and thinking
[00:27:45.110]about students, Senate stuff like that, is to bring in the student voice
[00:27:50.370]a lot more. And by that, I mean, actually talk to students
[00:27:56.750]who have had exposure to an experience with courses
[00:28:01.170]that have OER materials.
[00:28:04.430]You know, my experience with students is the
[00:28:08.930]array. There are some students who have had really
[00:28:12.110]good experiences with good materials OER, but they're
[00:28:15.850]also students who have reacted very negatively to it.
[00:28:20.850]They felt the materials weren't good. They were
[00:28:23.150]hard to access. Didn't quite fit what was going
[00:28:27.270]on in the class all the time. That type of thing. I've actually
[00:28:30.910]had students say things like,
[00:28:33.070]I would rather have spent the money and gotten good materials for the class
[00:28:37.350]than save the money and have what I thought was not such a great experience.
[00:28:45.250]So the degree to which, you know, that's just student
[00:28:48.590]impressions and reactions to things and has to be taken
[00:28:52.170]in a court. But that would be interesting to hear
[00:28:57.790]the student voices across the board, not one or two.
[00:29:01.210]But I mean, in a systematic way, how they perceive
[00:29:04.610]OER right now, what their experiences have been in some
[00:29:08.130]detail and, you know, where they found OER to be
[00:29:13.350]maybe disappointing or coming up short, what would those things be?
[00:29:17.510]Where they found it rewarding, what were those resources?
[00:29:22.130]Why were they rewarding and not like the other things?
[00:29:25.890]I think it's a really good point to dig deeper and to figure
[00:29:29.210]out when these kinds of materials are working well for students and when there's
[00:29:32.790]not. And I don't think we want to be encouraging people to switch to
[00:29:35.630]OER just for the cost savings. They still have to be high quality materials.
[00:29:39.510]And that's where our librarians as partners really come in to help you,
[00:29:43.190]you know, guarantee, ensure that those are the right resources to be using.
[00:29:52.190]But I'll go back to the community practice we've
[00:29:54.290]got. We do have a research group that's also
[00:29:55.950]thinking about different types of research projects, Roger, which
[00:29:59.230]you're suggesting it could be a large scale survey.
[00:30:01.410]And we've done that at UNO, but only asked one question about
[00:30:04.490]Open Nebraska, just kind of like, have you ever heard of it? And
[00:30:07.570]40% of students had and had been part of the program, which
[00:30:11.790]was a bigger number than we thought it would be in that survey.
[00:30:15.490]But maybe it's a more of a qualitative research kind
[00:30:19.290]of project where you sit down with a focus group of
[00:30:21.950]students and talk through what works for them and what doesn't
[00:30:25.470]in terms of this so we can keep improving the program.
[00:30:44.460]Other reactions to having a logo or places you would like to see it
[00:30:48.880]show up and across your campus or questions you still might have for Jackie.
[00:31:08.890]I don't think I'm the one that gets to call it a day, Julia, that
[00:31:10.890]might be you, right? But if the conversation is coming to
[00:31:16.630]an end, that's okay.
[00:31:17.850]I do see a comment from Colton in the chat that regarding
[00:31:21.250]student feedback experiences and opportunities
[00:31:23.190]to improve. Hopefully the session that took place yesterday
[00:31:26.630]was recorded and I do know that it was.
[00:31:28.910]And it'll be available via the link that Colton posted in the
[00:31:33.870]chat as well. So I think that might be a good kind
[00:31:37.070]of place to start that discussion as well and be thinking about
[00:31:40.290]how we can use that to help propel this forward as well.
[00:31:44.930]And the student panel from 2023 was equally as
[00:31:47.710]good if people want to check that out. There
[00:31:49.550]were two different kinds of student panels because yesterday
[00:31:53.130]it was more, I think it was a couple graduate students, one who
[00:31:55.450]was actually doing her own OER work and in the previous year it was
[00:31:59.490]more some undergrad students that were just talking about
[00:32:02.590]what it was like in their courses that used OER.
[00:32:05.010]So yeah, definitely worth checking out. Our students are awesome.
[00:32:13.570]Fantastic. All right. Well, if there are no other questions or
[00:32:17.010]comments, this is kind of the last call for that. So
[00:32:19.510]if you have any thoughts or anything, feel free to either
[00:32:23.010]post them in the chat or go ahead and unmute yourself.
[00:32:26.290]Otherwise, I think that we'll go ahead and call
[00:32:28.830]it a day. But thank you all so much for joining us for this session
[00:32:32.250]today. I'm really excited to see all of you here.
[00:32:35.310]And have a wonderful afternoon.
[00:32:38.050]Thanks, everybody.

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