Hello, @oct22-b-cohort! I look forward to seeing you at our session tomorrow on Storytelling and Communications. Here are some important links for the session:
Is this where we publish our Individual brief bios? I am not sure where to find the “project fori”. Thank you.
Hi Lise,
You’ll actually be posting your individual bio in your project space under the “Team Meet & Greet - CHIS 1023 Western Civilization II” topic. I’ve linked it here so you have easy access to it!
Let me know if you have any trouble accessing the page.
Kaitlin
Okay thank you. for the help and the link. >LN
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Hi @oct22-b-cohort, thanks for the great session yesterday! I hope the beginning of our session was helpful to you all for how to navigate the Rebus Community forum. If you need any more assistance, don’t hesitate to reach out! Below you’ll find the key links to our session, along with a session recap, and your homework checklist.
Key Links:
- Slide Deck: Storytelling and Communications
- Handout: Storytelling and Communications
- Storytelling & Communications Template
Recap:
Session 3: Storytelling and Communication focused on continuing 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. We also 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).
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?
Looking forward to seeing you all next week - don’t forget to vote! 
-Kaitlin
Hi @kaitlin -
We spoke about the Roles and Responsibilities document in our November cohort meeting. I gave each cohort a deadline of Sunday, December 18 to have all comments made on the document being shared in our Google Drive).
Everyone in all groups shared that this document would be a challenge to answer some of the questions due to our subject matter - but we will do our best!
A few comments made during the meetings, and my thoughts afterwards are this:
- For College Algebra and Finite Mathematics - There are a lot of applications that can be used in this resource.
- Applied Calculus - This course is often referred to as “Business Calculus” so some applications related to cost, profit, etc. would be useful.
- Trigonometry - This course has a lot of useful applications as well. Maybe a common theme throughout can be used?
- Statistics - This course is all about data and how to use it. Having data sets that follow through the resource is an idea.
I’m hoping everyone in the groups provide their comments on the document and that as we develop the resource we can think more about the storytelling aspect.
Anymore guidance you can provide would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Hey all!
I wanted to revisit this session and provide some clarification around the Storytelling & Communications Template, as @jeusea has noted above that this template has been a bit trickier for y’all to work through.
First and foremost, these templates are really meant to be a guide for your team discussions as you go through the publishing process. Since your teams are still early on in the planning process, some of these questions may be a little far ahead to be thinking of - that’s okay! Remember, we’ll be revisiting these themes and documents as we forge ahead into Phase 2 in the new year.
When looking at the Storytelling & Communications template, keep these questions in mind as you go through the publishing process. For example: as you’re looking at existing OER, make note of:
- who writes these resources (are they predominately men? White? North American?)
- do these resources provide context to the why of math concepts and problems?
- do these resources bring in examples of math around the world?
I know storytelling feels far away from a subject matter like Mathematics, but in fact Math in itself is storytelling. Oxford University mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, offers a compelling metaphor:
“Mathematicians are storytellers. Our characters are numbers and geometries. Our narratives are the proofs we create about these characters.”
Storytelling in math really creates opportunity for students to make meaning of mathematical concepts through making connections. During our session, I mentioned the concept of ethnomathematics, a term coined by Brazilian Educator Ubitarian D’Ambrosio back in the 70s. I encourage you all to read his 2017 paper (which is openly licensed!), Ethnomathematics and the pursuit of peace and social justice. The idea with ethnomathematics (and subsequently storytelling in OER) is to create holistic, integrated units of study that are relevant to students and provide story, context, and history of mathematical concepts.
All of this to say is that this may sound really challenging, but you all have already begun to think about this - from localizing math problems to providing real world context to math concepts!
I hope this helps your teams as you continue to work on the Storytelling in your OER, and if anyone has any other questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out!
I was able to post my bio to the Team Meet & Greet. I also added my comments to the groups Storytelling and Communication page although I’m still trying to figure out storytelling in the field of math. While we can write stories around the problems we write and solve, teaching math through storytelling seems to be more of a challenge.
Hey Ginny - I think application problems is the “storytelling” of math courses. Right?
I guess we can consider our applications sort of storytelling. Now that we have decided to use the OpenStax book, I think of the storytelling as the introductory part of the section and/ or chapter.
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