@feb20-cohort happy new year! Our first session of the year, and penultimate one of the cohort, is this Wednesday at 9am ET, on Zoom. It will be a chance for you all to share updates about your project. So if you have something specific you’d like to highlight, come prepared. We’ll also use our time to discuss your plans for the project for the new year. And finally, but most importantly, let’s touch base to check-in with one another and see how everyone is feeling post-holiday and before the new term begins.
Apurva:
I will not be attending on Wednesday. My required attendance department held on Mondays has been unexpectedly rescheduled to Wednesday at the same time.
See you next time.
Send my well wishes for a safe and Happy New Year!
Gerry
[Geraldine Terry MD]
Associate Professor, GVSU
Grand Rapids, MI
O: 616-331-5765
No worries Gerry. Thanks for letting me know. Feel free to post an update about your project here!
Hope your meeting goes well, and see you next month. 
Thanks @feb20-cohort for joining me at last week’s session. It’s been quite a tumultuous week since we met, so my apologies for taking so long to follow-up. I hope everyone is holding up okay.
Recap
Many members of the cohort seem have been able to get a small respite from the project over the break! Some are reviewing course evaluations to see what improvements they can make to the book or their courses, while others are continuing to coordinate with their authoring and editorial teams to get content finalized. Like last term, a lot of teams are also piloting their books in courses this semester. Take a look at the student survey that @Daniel-Hauptvogel shared as a starting point for surveys that you could administer in your own classes.
Another theme I noticed was that a few different projects (languages team, writing team, language disorders team) are looking at adding H5P exercises or activities to their books. The geology and understanding the holocaust teams are gathering content to transfer into Pressbooks before moving along to peer review. The librarianship team is following along the footsteps of others in the cohort to release the book in phases — 3 chapters to start, followed by more as they add these to their book (in both GitHub and Pressbooks).
There’s also been some movement outside of projects: The support staff at GVSU is looking at ways to possibly integrate OER into the university’s 5 year strategic plan. A few teams in the cohort have submitted articles to various higher education journals!
Chat Transcript and Resources
As usual, I’ve saved our chat transcript and rounded up the resources shared:
- Pressbooks Favourite Books of 2020 - the “Write What Matters” book is featured!
- Culturally Responsive Education collection
- Pressbooks Directory - search for open books across all the Pressbooks educational networks; perhaps how the “Write What Matters” book was discovered and adopted by someone in Ireland!
- A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students - check out some of the case studies written by instructors and students
- Building Sustainable and Scalable OER Initiatives Through Faculty, Librarian, and Student Partnerships that Encourage Open Pedagogy - Bryan’s presentation at last year’s OE Global conference
- Survey - The Story of Earth
Final Check-in next month
It’s hard to believe that almost a full year has passed since you all enrolled in the program last February. Our check-in on Feb. 3rd will be our final one in the program. But don’t worry — the discussion space will always remain open, so you can continue to chat with others in the cohort, share project updates, ask questions, and stay in touch more informally. Here’s what you can expect for our last session (more details to come):
- an overview of the program’s objectives and key lessons we hope you’ll hold on to
- a chance to showcase how your project has grown over the year (one representative per group, ideally, given time)
- reflections on the program (individually)
- discuss next steps for the project, cohort
- evaluation and collecting program certificates