Session 7 (LOUIS D). Content Creation

Hello, @oct22-d-cohort! This Monday we’ll dive into a subject that many of you have been eager to discuss–Content Creation. Here are the Week 7 Slides and handout. Before jumping into our Zoom session, remember to post your weekly update to the Week 6 forum. Thank you:)

Thank you everyone for your participation in today’s session! As usual, here’s the chat transcript. One more thing before diving into the recap: the Homework Activity is found at the bottom of this announcement. For the homework, we encourage your teams to work on the OER Structure Template as a way to begin thinking about the different levels of content creation and what we covered during Session 7.

Recap

Greetings to those of you who couldn’t make it. Please find here our brief recap and all resources related to the session for your reference:

The creation of content is one of the most important stages in the process. The work you do in this phase can make the next phases of editing, review, and formatting much easier. As OER content creators or contributors, your project teams can change the status quo in education.

With your student audience at the core of your efforts, you can develop both OER and specific pedagogical methods that in synthesis will work to support accessible, equitable, and inclusive learning. Well-structured content not only helps your students identify what matters to the discipline and specific courses, but also what matters to them. Thus we looked closely how specific elements in textbooks/ OER can work to represent and support your diverse learners on the book and chapter levels.

Homework Activity

Thinking through the structure of your OER will take some time and dedication, but we hope that the homework activity will guide your team’s discussion around the structure and parts in your resource [see Session 7 handout link]. It will help you redefine the alignment of your content with the envisioned outcomes for your project, so you can determine the parts that will further enrich your OER and make it stand out within your discipline. Feel free to browse the examples shared in your handout for inspiration as well.

Next week, we will dig a bit deeper into the editing process and how you can set up an equitable workflow and smooth logistics that includes checklists, tracking sheets, and an author guide to orientate everybody on your team.

Share Team Progress Updates in Forum

To let each other know of the progress you are making as you are working through the tasks of the week, post your reply to Session 7: Content Creation thread in the Discussion Forum prior to our next session:
- What activities (from the Homework activity and otherwise) have you managed to complete?
- What resources have you found that guide your work?
- What challenges have you faced and what solutions have you found to address those?
Leave a few thoughts around the outcomes for Session 8: Authoring and Editing Logistics [Read the initial 5 slides].
- What excites you,
- Would you like to know more or have questions about?

We divided up the chapters among group members and started reading the text

Our chapters were assigned and I was able to read mine over the weekend.

molly

Our cohort has been reviewing OERs and should be discussing them and choosing one to adapt at our next meeting. We’ve also steadily been making progress on our various planning documents and SLOs.

The Western Civ II team met last Friday and had a pretty productive meeting. We had previously assigned each team member to identify and review and existing Western Civ OER that we could potentially use for remixing. We had a discussion about each and pinpointed aspects that we liked, and things we want to avoid in our own textbooks. We narrowed our list down to three books that we feel we can work with. We also discussed things like including primary sources, chapter wrap us questions, and images or tables to break up the text and make it more digestible, and how we want to cite sources that we used. We have begun to think about our SLOs and that we have to keep in mind that this course is specifically geared for dual enrollment, so everything has to be assessible for high school students. We are lucky to have multiple group members who have experience with OER textbooks, so they are able to find resources and provide guidance for those of use who are working with this for the first time.

I am really excited for session 8 because we are moving more towards the actual structure and creation of the textbook and understanding how to manage the work and distribute tasks amongst the team.

The Philosophy group has been looking at different resources to consider. These discussions will be ongoing, and at our next meeting we may have more definite ideas on which resources to use. Thus far we have talked about using primary materials. Though there may be some OER resources that we will also consider. SLO’s will be coming very soon as well and these will likely be based on SLO’s already present in current syllabi used by these instructors.

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Great summary Connie! I’ll just add that, according to the homework for the week, we also began to talk about OER structure. Several important points were made. We talked about how to present the material based on Tasha Whitton’s comments about the Glencoe World History textbook format. We also talked about the importance of primary sources, quizzes, H5P, and how / where to include them in the course, although no specific recommendations were based, pending the creation of the Moodle Course.