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By Faculty and For Students: Supporting Open Educational Resources, Part One

Webinar

About the Webinar

Open Educational Resources (OER) might seem like a win/win for students and faculty alike, but adoption isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. For example, some texts may not lend themselves to being printed out — the subject matter may dictate an interactive design, or one that is heavily image-driven. And, while the creation of low-cost textbooks and curriculum support is recognized as important, how is the information community dealing with the challenges of ensuring currency and quality? How do we ensure equal access for all in a world of differing access to technology?

In the first session of this two-part webinar, a panel of experts will address some of the key challenges, including: How can you successfully drive buy-in by your undergraduates? What design elements are most likely to engage them? What indicators of use should you be measuring, how, and why?  How can you support faculty members who are interested in developing these materials?

Confirmed speakers include Perry Collins, Scholarly Communications Librarian, and Micah Jenkins, eText Coordinator, University of Florida, Anita Walz, Assistant Director for Open Education and Scholarly Communication Librarian, Virginia Tech, and Apurva Ashok, Program Manager, Rebus Foundation.

Note: In response to the circumstances surrounding COVID-19, NISO understands that staff at an increasing number of organizations are working remotely. During this unique situation, we are allowing registrants to share the sign-on instructions with your colleagues so that they may join the broadcast directly, irrespective of where they are located.

Event Sessions

Impacts of OER Flexibility: Understanding, Navigating, and Leveraging the Flexibility of Open Educational Resources

Speaker

Anita Walz

Assistant Director of Open Education and Scholarly Communication Librarian
Virginia Tech

Open educational resources (OER) are inherently flexible and participatory. They offer up-front permission to freely adapt, transform, host, and share in a diversity of formats, usually with attribution. While often thought of as merely free (gratis) resources OER are increasingly viewed as doorways for expanded and free (libre as in liberty) participation, creativity, customization, and broadened access from, by, and for their makers, adapters, and user communities. The potential and realities of flexibility in authorship, format, hosting location, and content can be both maddening and exhilarating. These realities may however serve as an opportunity to shift one's paradigm, reflect on purpose and ethics regarding content and learning, and as an opportunity to seek further skills to address practical OER challenges in one's already-busy day to day work and life. Primarily for an academic librarian audience, but also of interest to information scientists and those interested in standards, this presentation will cover contributions and challenges presented by the flexibility of open educational resources. It will focus primarily on the current OER landscape, standards and tools, creator practices, and strategic approaches for finding and leveraging OER and enabling others. Listeners, participants, and speakers will have opportunities to share their knowledge and interact during this presentation.

Helpful Resources:

Defining the “Open” in Open Content and Open Educational Resources

Fundamentals of Business

Fundamentals of Business, Second Edition

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

Vet Med Library Information: Virtual Reality Anatomical Models

Open Education: Open Educations Initiative Faculty Grants

pkAnalyzer 2.0

Visualizing Acid-Vase Chemistry for Environmental Scientists and Engineers

DESIGN THINKING for Visualizing Acid-Base Chemistry

Library as Leader: Searching for Open Materials

Searching by Type of “Use”:

Virginia Tech Guidelines for Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Textbooks

Canvas Commons (Public View)

Creating a Free Account

Canvas Commons - Further Reading

Creating Resilient OER in Times of Crisis

Speaker

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated accessibility and affordability issues endemic to higher education. Open Educational Resources (OERs) have long been seen as solutions to these problems, but many questions remain. What exactly is an OER? Where can you find them? How are they made? This talk will review different types of OERs and sources for locating them. Mainly, it will focus on creating high-quality, resilient OERs that meet the needs of the current moment. We will demystify the open publishing process and explore how its flexibility allows for creating innovative, inclusive, accessible learning materials. We’ll also identify the people involved and suggest ways of effectively engaging stakeholders to build the foundations for sustainable OER work.

Blog Post: Chart of the day…. or century?

Building and Sustaining OER at a Large University

Speakers

Perry Collins

Scholarly Communication Librarian
University of Florida

A range of stakeholders including the library, press, and teaching-focused units at the University of Florida have been involved in promoting and creating open educational resources (OER) over the past decade. How have these partners worked together fruitfully, and how have OER initiatives progressed more recently? This presentation will focus on concrete ways in which we have tackled three major areas--assessment, professional development, and publication--with an emphasis on building replicable, sustainable workflows. We will provide examples of lessons learned and productive failures, as well as solutions and plans for iteratively improving our work to support students and instructors.

Additional Information

  • NOTE: Members of NISO automatically received sign-on credentials for this event as a member benefit. There is no need to register for the recording. Check your institutional membership status here.

  • Registrants will receive detailed instructions about accessing the archived recording within one business day. Due to the widespread use of spam blockers, filters, out of office messages, etc., we ask that you contact the NISO office at nisohq@niso.org if you do not receive these instructions in a timely fashion. This recording access is only to be used by the registrant's organization.

  • Speaker presentation slides are posted to this event webpage following the live broadcast.

For Online Events

  • You will need a computer in order to view the broadcast; audio should feed through your device’s speaker or attached headset.

  • If you have questions or concerns regarding this registration, please contact NISO headquarters via email to nisohq@niso.org. We appreciate your interest and hope that you will gain valuable insight from our speakers.

Event Dates

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Fees

NOTE: Member organizations of NISO would have automatically received access links to the recordings of this event as a member benefit. Please contact NISO HQ for assistance. There is no need to register a second time. Check your institutional membership status here.

Location

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a virtual event. Scheduled times shown are in Eastern Daylight Time. Please plan accordingly.