UTA Faculty Present at Virtual Open Education Conferences

U T A with star in the center, used when staff photo is unavailable

by Michelle Reed
November 9 2020

In Spring 2020, UTA Libraries launched a travel scholarship program to support the participation of UTA educators in local, regional, and national open education conferences and events. Weeks before our first travel scholarship recipient was scheduled to travel to Houston for OpenStax Creator Fest, the in-person event was cancelled, the first in a series of travel cancellations due to growing concerns about COVID-19.

The fall’s slate of open education events moved online, and today kicks off two weeks of virtual programming for the Open Education Conference (November 9-13) and OE Global (November 16-20). Twelve members of the UTA community are presenting at the conferences (see schedule below), and UTA Libraries sponsored attendance for eight faculty through the travel scholarship program.

Publishing Reimagined: An Overview of OER Publishing Services at the University of Texas at Arlington

Michelle Reed, Danny Grigg, and Jasmine Bridges

Open Education Conference • Monday, November 9 • 6:30pm - 6:30pm

This YouTube playlist about the open educational resources (OER) publishing program at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) Libraries features interviews with stakeholders in the OER creation pipeline, including OER creators, librarians, and printing and distribution partners. UTA Libraries believe education should be available to everyone, which means supporting the creation of free, open, and accessible course materials. We provide access to and support for using open source tools to create and disseminate OER. We prioritize eliminating as many barriers to OER use as possible, so we offer training and technical services for transitioning existing open content into an editable format, licensing and attributing content to abide by legal and ethical reuse expectations, providing content in multiple format options (e.g., web, PDF, EPUB, optional hard copies), and indexing OER in open repositories. We are also actively committed to increasing the accessibility and usability of OER by providing accessibility evaluations, trainings, and assistance with content remediation as necessary.

Open Education in Teacher Development: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective

Cynthia Kilpatrick, Peggy Semingson, Jiyoon Yoon, and Robin Jocius

Open Education Conference • Tuesday, November 10 • 4:00pm - 4:25pm

This panel discussion provides insights into the variety of ways that four educators who work in areas of teacher development and training have drawn on creative OER ideas over the last several years. Ways that institutional support provided infrastructure for creation and implementation of OER will be explored and discussed including: participation in an open education Professional Learning Community (PLC), use of library-based trainings and workshops taught by an open education librarian, and informal backchannels, social media, and digitally-based conversations to share ideas about OER with each other and colleagues. We define open education as an open sharing for education.

Using Free & Open Digital Texts with K-12 Readers: Curating Quality Resources from Global Sources

Peggy Semingson

Open Education Conference • Wednesday, November 11 • 4:00pm - 4:25pm

Building on the idea of #keeplearning and #keepteaching, this session provides examples of free and accessible e-texts and mobile apps that can be of use to K-12 readers, teacher educators, and librarians. This session has a global focus and is specific to the Covid-19 pandemic in that young readers around the world need broader access to digital text as learning shifted and continues to shift to online settings. Additionally, text needs to be of quality to engage young readers across a wide variety of genres as does the ability to access multilingual e-texts. Learn more about the wide variety of digital and multi-modal texts that become possibilities for reading material for K-12 readers in virtual and home-school settings during and beyond the pandemic. K-12 students, educators, and families, who come from diverse language backgrounds need such access to quality texts, tools, and resources to develop their literacy skills in engaging ways. Participants will be provided a list of free digital reading titles, websites, and other resources that will help K-12 students’ literacy development. Ideas to build, remix, and create free digital texts for K-12 readers, including both fiction and non-fiction will also be shared. Examples of library-sponsored resources, non-profit resources, and resources curated by the United Nations will be curated and shared. Connections and alignment to the United Nations sustainable development goals will be explored. Information will be posted to an open blog so that comments can be made and resources can be easily shared.

Reimagining a Historical Methods/Student Success Course: Balancing Needs and Demands Through OER

Kim Breuer, Stephanie Cole, and Brandon Blakeslee

Open Education Conference • Thursday, November 12 • 10:00am - 10:25am

This session presents the UT Arlington History Department’s journey in developing a workshop-based practicum course which utilizes multiple OERs (one created by departmental faculty) and leverages the LMS and other educational technology. Three years ago, the department revised the curriculum for the BA, completely reimagining the existing Historical Methods course. Methods is taken the first semester a student declares the major or transfers to the program. UTA also requires all students to take a career prep/student success course their first semester at the university; our revised Methods course also fulfills this requirement. Because of the re-envisioning of Historical Methods as a hands-on practicum introducing students to the discipline and profession of history, we were left without a good choice of textbooks. Since the goal of the History department is to utilize OER in all multi-section courses, faculty instructors of Methods determined that the best way forward was creating our own OER to meet the unique needs of this course. We began the process planning an all-encompassing OER. Along the developmental path, we ended up narrowing the focus to cover only the historical profession and its ethics, the fields of history and its allied disciplines, career opportunities, historical sources/research, historical analytical thinking, basic analytical skills, and historical artifacts (written, digital, oral). We then sought out other OERs to fill the gaps (style guide, technical skills, teamwork, and student success). In addition, we decided to leverage the LMS, pushing some content directly to Canvas and embedding the departmental OER within Canvas. Our final course design utilizes a departmental OER with embedded activities (fully customized to our pedagogy and learning outcomes) which integrates seamlessly with the LMS, other OER content, and classroom workshop activities. The functionality of our design allows for instructor choice and flexibility in individual sections while providing a consistency of instruction across sections.

Inclusion by Building Capacity: Advancing STEM and Multicultural Programs with OER

Michelle Reed, Bonnie Boardman, and Julian Rodriguez

OE Global 2020 • Wednesday, November 18 • 9:10am - 10:10am

Academic libraries play an important role in advancing the use of open educational resources (OER) in higher education. In addition to connecting communities with information, an increasing number of libraries now provide OER publishing support and services for faculty. This panel presents the results of two OER creation projects supported and funded by such a program. The authors of the OER and an academic librarian will discuss their experiences developing, publishing, and piloting the OER. The session will demonstrate how to build local capacity to increase use and creation of OER, how to increase inclusion in open educational practices, and how to facilitate international cooperation.

 

 

Learn more about OER services from UTA Libraries or join our OER Team to get the latest news on open education at UTA.

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