Hello, @oct22-d-cohort! I look forward to seeing you at our session today on Storytelling and Communication. Here are some important links for the session:
Hi @oct22-d-cohort, thanks for the productive session today. We spent the first several minutes reviewing how to access important information on the Rebus website. We also focused on the two key documents for the first few sessions: the Project Summary and Storytelling and Communications Templates. These documents serve as the benchmarks for each group to make sure you’re making progress towards your Strategic Vision for your OER project. The homework items up to this point (including Session 3) have been focusing on those items. One more thing about the templates: these documents are intended to help save you time later! The more research and deliberation you’re able to dedicate to the Strategic Vision and your Operations, the more efficient your OER development will be in a few months. If you run into any issues while working on the homework items, please do reach out to me (you can simply respond to this thread). We’re here to help you succeed.
The homework checklist is at the bottom of the recap, below. I’ve tried to include all important links so you don’t need to click around very much.
Here’s the chat transcript from today.
Key Links:
- Slide Deck: Storytelling and Communications
- Handout: Storytelling and Communications
- Storytelling & Communications Template
Recap
Today’s session was designed to continue the scoping work from last week and we returned to look more closely at those parts that relate to the storytelling in your OER, namely the motivators, the audience, and the course materials.
Storytelling allows you to situate your role in the work, describe the story of your project, both within your team, but also more broadly as you market your OER. We used a template [link above] to guide your teams in the process of creating your project storywork plan.
Review the quote from late Ojibway author Richard Wagamese in our slides [link above] — and you’ll see how central narrative and story is to the work of OER creation. We discussed the transformative power of education and how storytelling can play a role in making inclusive content with equitable processes.
We emphasised acknowledging and validating different types of knowledge and expertise — and how you all play an integral part in this work by reflecting on the content of your OER (approach, vision for the discipline, knowledge, research, text, media, contributors, students, pedagogy). Jo-ann Archibald’s Indigenous Framework for Storytelling offers a guide to help you articulate the work you will be doing on your OER projects, both internally to inform decision-making on your OER but also externally to the broader open education community.
Thinking deeply about the storywork you want to do as content creators and team support members, may sound like a lot of effort, but we know from experience with past cohorts how well those efforts play out in the longer term. Having a clear understanding of the storywork for your resource - both its purpose and content - is critical throughout the publishing process to ensure you create an equitably and culturally sustainable resource.
Homework Checklist
I know why and how to use storytelling as part of our OER project.
I have listened to the individual motivators of my team, and understand the expertise they bring to this work.
In our teams, we have discussed specific aspects of storytelling in our OER to guide our equitable work [based on Part 2 in the Storytelling and Communications (S&C) template]. Note: Feel free to use your discussion results to update aspects of your Project Summary!
Deliverable: Individually, I have written a short bio for our team to use going forward based on [Part 1 in the S&C template]. Note: Since you’ve already introduced yourselves to the cohort, you can view this new bio as an update, in light of the Session 3 storytelling principles. Updated bios should go in the “Meet and Greet” thread of your team’s Project Homepage.
Deliverable (from Week 2): If your team hasn’t yet posted a Project Summary to your homepage’s Project Summary thread, try to do that now. You can just link to your team’s shared document until everything is finalized. Treat it as a work in progress!
Deliverable: Before Session 4, respond to the Session 3 main thread and let us know: What parts of this homework checklist were you able to successfully complete? What parts of Week 3 did you find most useful? What challenges did you face while attempting the checklist? When peaking at the outcomes listed in Session 4: Managing and Growing Teams, what are you eager to learn and what questions do you currently have related to those areas?
Thank you for providing this session on storytelling. I know why and how to use storytelling as part of the OER project. The Western Civilization II team had an opportunity to meet on Friday and discuss motivators and specific aspects of storytelling. We also completed the template which was turned in by our group. We should also have our project summary posted.
I found the meeting with the team the most useful part of this week. I have only had trouble finding threads here in the Rebus Community. I look forward to the next session.
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The Western Civ cohort has continued to work on our project summary and S&C template. I think the storytelling aspect of the project is very interesting because it makes us consider what is typically missing from existing Western Civ textbooks and lets us determine what we can personally contribute to fill in gaps. Personally, I’m very excited about session four since my role as librarian on the team functions more like a project manager. I think learning more about collaboration and assigning roles within the team will be very beneficial to me. As of now, the team is meeting once a month outside of these Rebus weekly meetings and communicating more through email, but as we move along we will need to meet more often and using a project management system will be essential.
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The philosophy cohort has continued to work on and develop both the S&C Template and The project Summary. We will meet this Friday and go over these documents to provide individualized updates. We are very enthusiastic about this project, and are looking forward to the actual creation portion. Discussions thus far have revolved around the idea of modifying an existing OER to include uniquely Louisiana content. These initial steps we have taken in the REBUS community have helped to get our focus and collective goals set.
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I am looking forward to Week 4’s focus on growing and managing teams. During my previous work on OER material for U.S. History II, our team struggled with balancing roles. We were fortunate to have a great librarian and some other very active and wonderful members, but others did not contribute or missed meetings with no notice, which left myself and the last other remaining member with a significant amount of extra work.
For Philosophy, we’re still meeting and coming up with our larger OER plan. But for storytelling, we’ve been thinking of ways to connect the art of telling a story to our local communities in Louisiana.
What parts of this homework checklist were you able to successfully complete?
Human Geography team met and worked on the Project Summary template.
What parts of Week 3 did you find most useful? Explaining what storytelling was expected to be.
What challenges did you face while attempting the checklist?
I know why and how to use storytelling as part of our OER project. I have not finished writing my biography.
We discussed our motivations on why we are excited about this project at our team meeting. One of our tasks is to make a draft of our biography by the next team meeting.
We have not yet plugged items in as a team for the Storytelling template 3.
Deliverable: We are going to use Google doc to post our biography as well as in the Meet and Greet thread. Mine is not submitted yet.
Deliverable Week 2: Our team leader will be posting our current Project summary.
Deliverable Week 3: Have not really gotten anything completed as per Storytelling template beyond thinking about how we want to write our updated biographies.
Deliverable for Session 4: Gotta love team building information!
