Session 1: May 16th

@may23cohort

It was wonderful to meet so many of you, and see all teams in our cohort represented at our first session! Having three different content area teams - Elementary Art Education, Deep Sea Biology, Applied Calculus - is going to be a blast.

The main focus was to get to know one another’s projects, understand how our sessions will be structured, and learn about Rebus’ tools and approaches. As some of you requested more guidance for project accountability in the process, we are designing activities for in-session practice and application afterwards, so that you can successively build out your OER creation plan and implement it smoothly over the coming year. On that note, I kindly ask you to complete this week’s activities as outlined in your session handout:

  • Respond below with your introduction,
  • Agree to the Memorandum of Understanding for our cohort.
  • Write a brief introduction to the forum titled: Who’s in the cohort? including your role on the project and the dream goal you have for it.

We also spent a bit of time discussing Rebus’ collaborative approach to publishing, and how a larger community around a resource can not only make it stronger, but also help maintain it down the line. Our approach hinges on thinking about communications, accessibility, formatting, and more at each stage to really harness the global potential of OER. And these stages can and most likely will be flexible, and thus play out in different ways for each team — that’s what the model is built to do!

We also discussed how being transparent about the process of creation can invite others to contribute and be involved in your projects, whether in big ways or small. Using a public-facing space for your project planning and communication, for example, is a unique way to broadcast your project and invite collaborators to join efforts in its creation.

Talking about the tools we use for the Textbook Success Program like Curriculum Hub in Google, for instance, we also mentioned the Rebus Community Forum, where this recap is posted and where we will conveniently streamline ALL our cohort communication. All materials will be available to you throughout the program. We encourage you to share your questions here! Please note that you can use the tag @may23cohort for conversations that include all cohort members. In addition, you can also write direct messages to individuals, not only in your cohort, but the entire forum space. Refer to the video tutorials in your handout for a more in-depth overview of the forum and its features.

In preparation of next Session 2: May 23rd -

Leave a few thoughts around the items that excite you, you would like to know more about, or you have questions about with regards to the upcoming Session 2: Project Scoping [Read the initial 5 slides]

I’m Sue Kunda, and I’m the Scholarly Communication Librarian at Western Oregon University, but I spend at least 75% of my time working on OER-related initiatives. I’m the co-project manager (with Chris Mansayon) for our project. I would love to see Paula’s book be celebrated because of its inclusivity and diversity of artists, artwork, and voices. I’d like to see it used by teachers and teacher training programs throughout Oregon – and possibly beyond.

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Hi I’m Chris Mansayon, and I am the Reference and Exhibits Coordinator at WOU, so in addition to the other Library & Academic Innovation staff on our team, I have worked regularly with Paula on building art projects so we know each other pretty well! As Sue mentioned I’ll help manage the project during the summer and provide support where I can. I’ve participated in plenty of OER webinars/workshops but this is the first opportunity to actually contribute to one.

The thing I’m looking forward to the most in the upcoming weeks is learning about all the tools available to help with OER organization and writing (Outcome 3), as well as learning how to confidently discuss with others the importance of OER and why they should contribute with their own book, or integrate existing resources into their classes! (Outcome 5).

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I’m Heather Olins. I teach Deep Sea Biology at Boston College and am excited to help Roxanne and the rest of her team think through what can be included in a digital text that doesn’t work in a traditional text. In particular, I am excited to think about ways to include classroom activities other teaching resources that might be useful to other instructors who might use this text eventually. I don’t have any questions about session 2 at this point, but I’m sure they will come once we get started.

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The first and third outcomes for Session 2 really struck me at first glance. I’m eager to give a team-built shape to our project and agreeing on tools for communicating, storytelling, etc. sounds like a good first step in doing that.

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Hi, everyone! I am Seyed Shahrokni, and I am an instructional designer with Center for Academic Innovation at Western Oregon University. Open Education and Open Pedagogy are areas very close to my heart! I have personally published my work in OER format (see, e.g., CAL Principles and Practices) and have also supported faculty and colleagues publish theirs, especially by offering support in using authoring tools and considering accessibility in the design of the document. Most of the work I have been involved in, however, have been one-on-one, and this is the first item I am part of a “publishing process” with clear goals and objectives (Slide 5). I am really excited about this opportunity and the collaboration we are going to have as part of this project. Thank you!

Hello! I’m Janeanne, pronounced “ja-neen” and I am the Program Lead for Research and Access in the library at Western Oregon University. This will be my first involvement in an OER textbook beyond accessing them and some training in the essentials. My roles for the project are to assist Paula @boothp with any research and citation needs that she has; editing; copyediting; and communication and storytelling. I’m excited to be teaming with a group of cool people with the goal of producing a tangible product that will be useful to so many and accessible to all.

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Regarding the Session 2, the aspect that caught my eye is “Adoptions and Post-Release: How will you involve students and the adopters to shape future iterations of you your OER?” I thinkit would be compelling to include a way for students to engage with the elements and principles of design by contributing their own photography. Could roll authentic assessment into potential example images for future iterations.

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Hey Seyed - thanks for the introduction, AND for sharing your book with me/us, I’m a German teacher and took a course in the middle of the pandemic that focused in on CALL, one of our colleagues at Boise State (Dr. Kelly Arispe) is a specialist in this. I’m excited to dive in and see your take on this. Happy to have you as part of our cohort!
Becca

Hey, folks, my name is Mark and I am a librarian working as the Digital Publishing Manager for the University of Cincinnati Press. I manage the software applications that the press, and the university faculty, staff, and students, use to publish their work. The UC Press has been charged with leading the university’s open agenda, as such we are working with a few faculty members on OER textbooks. Our focus for this cohort is Change in Context: Applied Calculus authored by my team member, Crystal. Looking forward to getting to know everyone as we move forward!

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Greetings! I’m Paula Booth and I teach Elementary/Middle School Art Education and Visual Art Pedagogy at WOU. I am the content creator for this OER. Two years ago, frustrated by the lack of affordable visual art textbooks for pre-service teachers, I embarked on the OER journey with Sue Kunda, and soon thereafter realized I was in a bit over my head. My simplistic idea of what it meant to write a textbook was completely blown up when I started to grasp all of the possibilities for an OER. I am most excited to learn about the tools available to me, best practices for accessibility, and ways that I can connect information throughout the text. I am also excited to work with colleagues as I learn how to find, use and cite artwork and lesson examples (this OER is image-heavy!) My dream is that this OER eventually becomes a “living” text that all of my students will not only read and learn from, but also engage with and contribute to.

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I’m Roxanne Beinart, an assistant professor of oceanography at University of Rhode Island. I am the project lead for our Deep-Sea Biology textbook. This project is part of my NSF CAREER award. My goal is to make a broadly useful and accessible textbook that will be adopted by deep-sea biology, marine biology, and oceanography instructors globally. Also, Rhode Island had an OER initiative a few years ago but that has mostly fallen off, so I also hope to become an advocate and expert for OER at URI and in the state.

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Hi Everyone, I’m Heather Olins - Assistant Professor of the Practice at Boston College. I’ve switched most of my classes to OER (OpenStax for example), and it is exciting to now be part of creating OER resources. I’m especially interested in thinking about how digital media (for example digital 3D models of a deep sea organisms) could be built into our “book.”

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