Open Education Practitioners

Goals, Needs & Priorities

I am completely new to VIVA, OER, Canvas, and fairly new to the VCCS.  I am here to learn how to collaborate with other professors and improve my teaching strategies.  I did a quick search here and do not see any resources related to my subject matter.  I teach Architecture and Design. 

Hi Crystal - I did a quick import of Architecture and Design OER into VIVA Open to get you started. Here's the newly created collection for your review: https://vivaopen.oercommons.org/curated-collections/148. I'll keep poking around for more content in Architecture & Design.

Sophie

Hi, 

I have a variety of interests/goals related to OER: 

1. In general I just want to know more about OER
2. At NOVA my program wants to move more and more to OER. We haven't found complete OER textbooks for many of the courses, so we use a variety of articles and videos on the internet. The good thing about this is we can pull writing in by experts on particular topics. The limitation is students are given links to articles/videos based on the weekly topic, but there is no organized collection of these resources students can search and access when they have a question or want to revisit a topic (or for future reference). I've started creating a Google site to do this, but I'm wondering if there is a better way, and are there any copyright issues linking to all these resources. 
3. What I see of OER seems mostly content. I wonder if there are some teaching method templates. I create a lot of active learning templates for Google Docs/ Google Slides & Jamboard. Many educators share these types of templates and ideas on the internet, but it seems to me it would be useful to share via OER. (or maybe that is not the correct platform)
4. I'm also interested in learning if it's possible to remix a lumen learning course to be able to fix broken links and tailor the sequence and add additional content to suit our unique needs. 
5. I'm very interested in the authoring and remixing processes- how, best practices, ethics, etc. 

Thanks!  Lauren

Hello, Lauren -

Anita Walz shared these helpful instructions about remixing Lumen materials:

Lumen's Candela platform has WordPress/Pressbooks underlying it, it can be "imported" into Pressbooks. 
How to do this:
1) Go to the Pressbook you want to add this to (or create a new book)
2) Use "Tools" --> Import
3) Select "import from a webpage/website" from the dropdown menu
4) Enter the URL https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-hostos-education/chapter/philosophies-of-education-assignment/
5) Select the section/subsections etc. that you want to extract
And press go or submit (or whatever the button is :) and there you have it -- an editable version in Pressbooks! 

VIVA has extra instances of Pressbooks. If you'd like to request one, please use this form: 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSffnmtXJEKdQaKYtokTTxp3qgOOm-8CSa8VGknrL7vNPLVbYA/viewform

Please let me know if you have additional questions!

Sophie

Great! Thanks so much :)

Dear Megan and others,

OER is a new area for me.  A few weeks ago I accessed the portal to look for resources on Psychology to suggest adoption for our Psychology Overview course.  The interesting thins is that the resource, while not adopted for the course, was discovered and may be used in a Counseling course.  The course designers discovered the resource on their own.  I thought that was a positive step.

A goal is to spread the word regarding these resources at my institution for a number of reasons, i.e. cost savings for students, adoption of resources for our courses, inclusion into Canvas, and the collaboration.

Thanks,

Jeff

Congrats on the positive step, Jeff!

Hello!
I am new to VCCS and to OER. I am interested in learning more about the resources available and how I can help faculty find and create the resources they need for their classes. Specifically, I am looking for Composition and Literature resources. I've already found a great textbook with supplemental videos to recommend to a faculty member. I am also interested in inclusive practices and accessibility as they relate to OER. 

Thanks!

Jen

Hi Jen -

We curated OER for VCCS.ENG.111/112 College Composition and they have been reviewed by VA faculty. Please find those materials here: 

https://vivaopen.oercommons.org/curated-collections/64?__hub_id=4&batch_size=20&sort_by=title&view_mode=summary&f.viva_alignment=VIVA.VCCS.ENG.111%2F112.

Don't hesitate to let me know if there's anything else I can help with.

Sophie

Hi, 

I am a new adjunct instructor, so I'm looking for resources to build and enhance my course. I've used Creative Commons materials in my high school courses for several years and appreciate freely shared ideas. Maybe in the future I can contribute resources as well. 

Hello, Amanda -

Would you please tell me a bit about the courses you teach? I may be able to provide some direction on finding OER.

Thanks,

Sophie

Sure - this year I teach General Biology 101 & 102. We're currently using OpenStax Biology 2e textbook and resources. Thanks!

We mapped Bio 101/102 courses and they have been reviewed by VA faculty for their suitability for these courses. You can find them here. I'd be glad to hear your thoughts about these resources, Amanda.

Hello,

Previously, I was an academic librarian and instructor who used OER to teach research and writing courses. These days, I am working in instructional technology. I am taking this workshop to brush up on my OER skills, as its been a few years. My main goals are to find ways to encourage faculty at my school to explore OER and begin to integrate these into our LMS (Canvas). 

Hi Rebecca, 

In case it might be helpful in your quest to encourage faculty to explore OER, here is my experience. As an instructor, switching to OER has been great in a couple ways- first is the cost savings for students, and all students have access from the first class, so it eliminates the problem of some students not yet having the textbook, so we can hit the ground running. Another benefit is the flexibility of using OER. Because the students didn't pay for a text, it's easier to justify only using part of the text, and pulling in other resources. It also feels much easier to use the content materials in an order that makes sense to the progression of the course rather than using the order created by the textbook- chapter 1, then 2, etc. The ability to remix materials really takes it to a whole new level in terms of tailoring content to the unique needs of your student and the course objectives. (but of course this takes more effort)

Lauren

Thank you for that information.  I have recently changed job roles and are now able to undertake Scholary Communicatons efforst like OER.  My institution has a few professors who have started to use OER like OpenStax and we have one Faculty that has gotten a grant to author a book, but a greater outreach effort is needed.  I'm here to brush up on my OER knowledge, learn the autoring possiblities, and learn from others what has worked to reach professors.  Thank you Lauren for the positive benefits.  

I have been aware of the existance of OER resources for quite some time but have not looked deeper into what is offered.  I am more curious now about the resources out there, and curating them for using in my courses.  Yet, I am also very interested in creating content to share for plant sciences, which is a field that I often find challenging to find resources for that are good for the community college level.

Hi, I'm Danielle Leek from Reynolds CC. 

My OER Goals are to learn more about how to use the OER Commons platform - and to make use of the great resources that I believe VIVA has available - I'd say this is also my need and my priority. I find the interface really intimidating and really difficult to interact with (I can't really find things, and don't really understand how to access or manage materials - and once I find something I can never find it again - sad face emoji). The result is that I usually use and share OER that I've seen other people use - and then I end up curating all of the OER I share with faculty as direct links - and now my bookmarks are way too big - and I'm probably missing a lot of stuff. 

And, since my job is not only to teach (mostly communications) but also to teach faculty how to use OER, I need to learn how to do this effectively.

Hi Danielle -

Thanks for sharing your candid feedback about your difficulty with the site. Did the session yesterday help you understand how you can use groups to save content to folders? I'd be happy to spend some time with you working through some of your other issues.

Also, we are building a collection for Reynolds CC  (coming soon) and I have some ideas about how we could set up a Reynolds CC group in the hub where that collection lives. I worked with Lynn Riggs on getting that started. Please reach out to me at wrondeau@gmu.edu.

Sophie

I want to get the word out about these tools at my school so more people can take use of them—not just because they save money for students, but also because they are great for our classes  geometry dash breeze, they work well together, and they are available on Canvas.