o00:00:00 Camie
Textbooks are 1000% more expensive than they.
00:00:02 Camie
Used to be.
00:00:03 Camie
Welcome to the pedagogy toolkit. Inflation is everywhere. We see it in our groceries, housing, fuel for our vehicles. And if you're taking courses at a university, textbooks. In this episode, Camie interviews a special guest OER librarian Christine Rickabaugh.
00:00:23 Camie
About open education resources.
00:00:43 Camie
Hi, Christine and welcome. Thanks for being.
00:00:46 Camie
On the show today
00:00:46 Christine
Thanks for having me
00:00:47 Camie
Great. I'm so glad you're here. You've been at the university for a while now, and we worked together on a couple of things. But every time I come to you, just like all the librarians, I feel like it's a little bit of magic.
00:01:03 Camie
Thanks. So could you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do at the university?
00:01:08 Christine
Sure. So I've been here a whopping 5 months now.
00:01:12 Christine
Just past that and I'm the open education librarian. So basically what that means is I work with faculty to either find or create textbooks that are openly licensed, which means they are copyrighted, but they hold a license that allows us to save them.
00:01:32 Christine
To redistribute them and occasionally to remix them. For example, if you're a statistics professor and there is a.
00:01:39 Christine
Way of approaching the content that you want to hit and your commercial textbook isn't doing that. You could write your own. You could find someone else who's already written it the way you want to approach it. Or you could say I really want my students to learn a couple of different approaches and you could take chapters from other openly licensed textbooks.
00:01:59 Christine
And put them together to kind of Frankenstein to exactly what you want and what that does is both save students money because open relations means there's no cost to students.
00:02:11 Christine
But also it means you're getting content that is specifically tailored to your students. So when you think about courses like biology or something in the environmental sciences, you could have examples that are specific to your students and.
00:02:25 Christine
Your part of.
00:02:25 Christine
The world. So you could have examples from Northwest Arkansas, from Missouri, from Oklahoma.
00:02:31 Christine
That would more engage your students because you're talking about something they know.
00:02:37 Christine
And then you can intentionally add things they wouldn't know, so they get that balance of sort.
00:02:41 Christine
Of.
00:02:42 Christine
I was think of it in children's literature as windows and mirrors, so that they see both themselves and their experiences reflected, but also something else, because that's part of what reading and education should do for us. It allows us to see both ourselves and experiences beyond.
00:02:57 Camie
Yes.
00:02:58 Christine
So I work with faculty to do that, which can be everything from finding them, instructional designers, finding resources. I do a lot of accessibility kind of checking and figuring out, you know, is this accessible? It? Can we use it with the screen reader? Do we have Alt text in the pictures? All of those kinds of basic things?
00:03:20 Christine
And then I'm kind of like half sheepdog. So a lot of my job is just, OK, do we have that paperwork? OK, do we have that? What's that deadline? How can I help you? Like, sending a lot of emails being like, what do?
00:03:30 Christine
You need. Please let me help you so.
00:03:34 Christine
That's kind of what I do.
00:03:36 Camie
Well, that sounds kind of exciting, although a little burdensome when you have to e-mail all the time.
00:03:43 Christine
I know to be fair right now we have like between 15 and 16 projects in the works. So it's not like I'm emailing one person. I I have teams of different people and different faculty doing different projects, so.
00:03:50 Camie
Right.
00:03:55 Camie
It's really exciting. I didn't realize we had that many projects going right.
00:03:58 Camie
Now, as a side note, I think Levar Burton would be really proud of your thoughts about reading, though.
00:04:07 Christine
I am a Reading Rainbow child. I will I.
00:04:09 Christine
Will say it.
00:04:11 Camie
I love that so much. As soon as you said that, I thought reading Rainbow, yes, actually reading rainbow.
00:04:19 Christine
Yeah, I'm also.
00:04:20 Christine
A recovering kindergarten teacher that that probably should have gone somewhere in that info. So. So I tend to think of things sort of in a children's literature perspective because when I was getting my masters, we spent a lot of time looking at children's literature and saying.
00:04:35 Christine
Who is being reflected in the story? Who is not? How can we find materials that reflect our, our students, our patrons, and how do we find materials that don't so that they can be exposed to things outside of what they see on the street corner, regardless of what that street corner is or where?
00:04:52 Camie
It is and both of those things we didn't talked about in a previous podcast
00:04:55 Camie
With those that this connecting uh, what you're learning about?
00:05:01 Camie
To something that you know is really important and then being able to see that same thing from a different perspective is also very important to the learning process and ultimately student success.
00:05:11 Christine
Absolutely. Well and we are, we have to acknowledge we are educating students for a world that doesn't quite exist yet. You know, when you when I was teaching kindergarten, it was always like I'm prepping you for a job that doesn't exist.
00:05:24 Christine
Because in 20 years we don't know where technology will take us. And so in terms of educating college students and thinking about the world they're going into, we know it's going to be more diverse like that. There's just no way it won't be. And so we need to help them figure out how to draw on their own strengths and also identify strengths and.
00:05:44 Christine
People who are not like them so that they can exist in that society and be successful.
00:05:51 Camie
Yeah, we've actually talked about that a little bit in when we talked our first episode on AI, you know how over time we introduce these new technologies and it kind of redefines literacy for us because you have to be able to know and function with those new technologies or at least have the skills to.
00:06:05 Christine
OK.
00:06:11 Camie
Adapt to them.
00:06:12 Christine
Absolutely.
00:06:15 Christine
You know and then within open education in terms of remixing or adapting textbooks, that means we can put in those examples, we can use a variety of names. We can use a variety of pronouns of different life experiences that brought in that experience for our students. So do we have?
00:06:35 Christine
Case studies from indigenous people. Do we have case studies from from the inner city, from rural areas? You know, all of the different kinds of experiences that we know our students are.
00:06:45 Christine
Thing, and that they're going to have to interact with and actually AI is doing some really great things for I come from Wisconsin and the Chippewa Valley Technical College does a lot with nursing and they are using AI to have case study experiences for their nursing students because.
00:07:05 Christine
Love northern Wisconsin. Not the most diverse place, but they know that they're sending their nursing students to places.
00:07:11 Christine
That are diverse.
00:07:12 Christine
And so they've got AI so that they're not Co opting anyone else's story or experience.
00:07:18 Camie
Yes.
00:07:19 Christine
And they're not asking people to portray patients in case studies that aren't authentic authentically them, they're using AI instead. And so they get these different perspectives.
00:07:29 Christine
It's.
00:07:31 Christine
Just on this side of creepy. Like, it's just enough AI that you're like, oh, OK, no, I can tell if that's AI, that's fine. But they're getting really life like and how they can take different experiences, you know, had common health issues and, you know, comorbidities and things that often happen in.
00:07:51 Christine
Different demographics than what happens to be in Chippewa Valley, Wisconsin.
00:07:58 Camie
Right. And giving them those experiences of looking at different populations is really important when you're a nurse and you're treating people from all over.
00:08:08 Christine
Exactly. And here at EU of A1 of the conversations I've had with Hope Valentine in the nursing school is they're looking for materials that allow them to see skin conditions in people of color because they are educating a lot of nursing students who work with people of color and skin conditions present differently in different skin tones.
00:08:29 Christine
And they're having a hard time finding.
00:08:31 Christine
Materials that do that.
00:08:34 Camie
Right. And you want these, you know, if you're sending nurses out into the world to nurse people, you want them prepared for that so that they're not overlooking or missing symptoms. That's really important. So.
00:08:43 Christine
Exactly.
00:08:47 Camie
Explain a little bit more about what OER is and how it differs from traditional approaches to education materials.
00:08:55 Christine
Sure. So, oh, we are. It can be a really wide range of things because it stands for open educational resources. So anything that you can use in your classroom to educate your students could qualify as an OER.
00:09:08 Christine
That can be everything from.
00:09:10 Christine
Digital images or like the Smithsonian, has a huge collection of digital resources pictures.
00:09:19 Christine
Scams, videos films, sound files that they've openly licensed that you could use. So if you are having conversations about American history, you can look at some of the items that actually exist in this.
00:09:32 Christine
It can be syllabuses, syllabi, syllabi, syllable. It can be course objectives. They can be rubrics and assignments. It can be a full course text. It can be a full course. There are people who put together everything from the textbook to the ancillaries of PowerPoints and assignments and rubrics and.
00:09:51 Christine
All of the minutiae you need to teach it can be a really wide range. It includes videos.
00:09:57 Christine
It could be podcasts.
00:09:59 Christine
There's a great repository out of UC Humboldt that has all sound effects.
00:10:07 Christine
And so if you think about how you might need need that for engagement or something different in an online class to add another modality, this is an option. So it can be a really wide range of things. There's also virus in university out of Canada that do public domain books. So they put together somewhere around.
00:10:28 Christine
Four or five dozen books that are in the public domain. Everything from Plato's the Republic to little women, to infant incidents of life in the life of a slave.
00:10:39 Christine
They're all in press books, which is a digital printing platform that's super accessible, so it works with screen readers, and then they've also added an AI audio version so you can read and listen at the same time. And so these are books that would be freely available, but maybe not particularly accessible.
00:10:59 Christine
You know that don't work with screen readers or screen magnifiers, and so they've made this a project that they're doing they take.
00:11:07 Christine
Suggestions for materials, but they've really tried to get some less represented voices, which is just really cool. So ER can be any of.
00:11:17 Christine
That.
00:11:18 Christine
Basically, if you can use it to.
00:11:20 Christine
Teach your students it's OER.
00:11:23 Camie
And that's really interesting because I think when people hear or we are, if they've heard of it.
00:11:28 Christine
Then.
00:11:28 Camie
And.
00:11:29 Camie
It automatically goes to a textbook and there's it sounds like there's so much more out there that can be pulled in for students, and we we've also talked about this, how it's really important to kind of, if you can get your students seeing it and hearing it and you know, you, you get these multiple modalities.
00:11:31 Christine
MHM.
00:11:49 Camie
Then they're more likely.
00:11:50 Camie
To remember it.
00:11:51 Christine
Exactly. And you know, that also could include occasionally kind of depends on copyright for Open Access articles, but it could also be instead of a textbook you have a collection of Open Access articles that you have your students read and reflect on or.
00:12:08 Christine
Film classes we have moving pictures. One of our open textbooks is for film and so the instructor who did it was. It was here before my time was able to find enough public domain.
00:12:23 Christine
Film footage to put together an open textbook on films, which is insane because lots of times the visual performing arts.
00:12:31 Christine
Copyright is so closely monitored because that is your creation. You know, this is intellectual property. Someone has put their life into it. And so how do we honor that while still being able to teach students how things are? And then the other difference I didn't mention between OER and Portal textbooks is who's creating them.
00:12:45 Camie
Right.
00:12:51 Christine
Commercial textbooks.
00:12:53 Christine
Have.
00:12:54 Camie
Textbook authors right on any textbook you can actually see a list of the authors somewhere in the book, usually at the front.
00:13:01 Camie
Of the back.
00:13:02 Camie
Sometimes on the cover, yes.
00:13:04 Christine
And oftentimes these are not subject matter experts. These are textbook authors who have consulted with experts as opposed to people being in the classroom or in the field doing the work.
00:13:16 Christine
And so when you think about who's who you're creating for, these are instructors who have a passion for their field but also want their students to succeed. And so they're doing their very best to convey this information for their students, right. You know, so I'm working with advanced composition right now and.
00:13:35 Christine
They are working really hard to make sure as they create materials that it's not only what?
00:13:40 Christine
The head of the program and other, you know, people with PHD's who have been teaching for years can do, but also how are we making it so that the TA?
00:13:47 Christine
'S can teach it.
00:13:48 Christine
And be successful so that our students get the best possible experience and the most out of their experience. We can give them.
00:13:57 Camie
Well, and that's kind of one of the ideas that we adhere to not only in our accreditation standards, but also here at Global campus is that we want students who are taking that same course to have.
00:14:11 Camie
The best, most positive similar experience across the board, no matter who's class you're in.
00:14:16 Christine
Exactly. And so when you curate the materials yourself, you put them together. Whether you're writing them, you're pulling chapters from different open textbooks. However you put together your materials.
00:14:28 Christine
You're you're more like to be able to ensure that because you can think about what are your specific course objectives, because for the most part, my understanding of the University of Arkansas is that the course objectives.
00:14:40 Christine
Are roughly the same for all sections of the course, but the point is when you can control the materials, you can make sure they match the course objectives and what the end result should be.
00:14:51 Christine
The desired result for an education in X field should be that we're giving our students the tools to be successful.
00:14:58 Camie
Right. Ideally we should have course objectives and.
00:15:02 Camie
Assessments and even our texts, that kind of are all aligning right and and similar in every single section of the course. And it helps when you you know you have these course objectives that you've been able to curate your material and OER it sounds like it's really giving people.
00:15:22 Camie
Flexibility to to do that.
00:15:27 Camie
So, and that's one way I think it could maybe benefit instructors, but how does it make an impact on students?
00:15:34 Christine
Oh, gosh. OK, well, think about this. In a study from 2018, roughly 2 in three college students have reported being food insecure in the last year.
00:15:47 Christine
OK, so they might have enough to eat, but they don't know where their next meal is coming from.
00:15:54 Christine
And now we're asking them to make a choice between, hey, do you want to eat dinner next week, or do you want a $300.00 textbook that you're going to use 4 chapters and then you're going to resell?
00:16:05 Christine
And when you resell it, it's you're going to get 35 bucks for it.
00:16:09 Christine
I mean to me that is, that's one of the key pieces is as a student.
00:16:14 Christine
You know, we were talking about inflation before, so the consumer price index in the last 40 years has gone up about 250 to 253%, probably a little bit higher with the current inflation. But let's just round it to 2:50.
00:16:28 Christine
Textbooks have gone up by 1000%.
00:16:33 Camie
I did not realize that yes.
00:16:35 Christine
So when we talk about how things are getting more expensive, I mean.
00:16:40 Camie
Textbooks are 1000% more expensive than they.
00:16:42 Camie
Used to be.
00:16:42 Christine
Yes, and everything else is only 250% more expensive. So we are at we're at four times that rate. So we're asking students, you know, and our.
00:16:49
Oh.
00:16:54 Christine
The trends are telling us that demographics of higher education are becoming more first generation older students, students with other responsibilities.
00:17:04 Christine
I can't imagine being a parent and having to make the choice between. Does my kid have cereal in the morning or do?
00:17:09 Christine
I have a textbook.
00:17:11 Christine
How do you make that choice knowing that that textbook is what's going to get you to a better place? It's going to.
00:17:16 Christine
Help you be successful.
00:17:18 Camie
Right.
00:17:19 Camie
And.
00:17:20 Camie
For.
00:17:22 Camie
our online asynchronous programs. You know, the students who are in these programs, not just your online course, but in the programs, they are more likely to be working parents.
00:17:34 Christine
Exactly.
00:17:36 Christine
You know, so why wouldn't we give them materials that don't ask them to make these hard choices? Yeah, you know, plus, when you curate the materials as A and as instructor.
00:17:49 Christine
You know you're going to use the entire book, so you're not saying, hey, we're going to read 3 chapters out of this book and three chapters out of that book. And those six chapters might be phenomenal.
00:18:00 Christine
But now instead of one book, you're asking your students to buy 2.
00:18:05 Christine
You know, and thinking about those pieces and is that necessary?
00:18:11 Christine
You know, and depending on the book, is it accessible? Does it work with the screen reader? Does it come as an audio book? All of those different pieces? Because.
00:18:23 Christine
I believe what is it? One in four adults actually have some sort of disability.
00:18:29 Christine
I think one in 401 and five, we know they're in our students. We know then we know they're in our students.
00:18:34 Christine
We know they're in our classes.
00:18:37 Christine
They may not be obvious learning differences, but they're there. And why not just choose items that everyone can work with?
00:18:45 Camie
Right.
00:18:46 Christine
You know, especially as our population gets older, you know, one really interesting study I saw recently is that something like 2/3 of millennials actually really, like closed captions on their videos. Yes, I I know I do.
00:18:59 Camie
I have to confess that I am in that 2/3 and not you know, sometimes I want to turn it off and.
00:19:07 Camie
Not have to.
00:19:07 Camie
See it but like if I'm watching a show, I don't necessarily want close captioning on the show. Sometimes I do, but if it's a video where I need to parse out information, I want both the audio and visual.
00:19:20 Camie
So I like having the closed captioning because I can read it also.
00:19:27 Camie
These people who are working, they're really crunched for time, right? Absolutely. Well, I can read faster than I can listen. And so I can turn that video up to, you know, 1 1/2 times the speed. And I can turn the closed captions on and I can get the information faster.
00:19:44 Christine
Exactly. Or let's say you're an American history student who has a 40 minute drive to and from work every day.
00:19:52 Christine
Do you want to listen to music or would you rather bust through your American history textbook because you can listen to it because there's an audio version in which you're still getting the content?
00:20:00 Camie
Right
00:20:05 Christine
But that then frees up 40 minutes of your day to, I don't know, take a nap, clean your bathroom, and spend time with your family.
00:20:12 Camie
Of people are doing audio books now, and not just for textbooks. I mean for, you know, the the books that we consume. If you're one of the people who at New Year's sets your, you know, book goal for the year, a lot of people are doing audiobooks for those because it is something you can do it while you're cleaning the house.
00:20:31 Camie
While you're commuting, you know while you're dropping your kids off to school, all of those things it it's not. It's crushing on the the.
00:20:43 Camie
Finite time that we have during.
00:20:45 Christine
Exactly.
00:20:46 Christine
The day or if you're someone who maybe processes differently and you want to read.
00:20:50 Christine
It and then.
00:20:51 Christine
Listen to it when I do online classes these days, I make sure that I watch the video in the first half of the week because I might want to rewatch it. And these are like 15 minute videos, but I still want to rewatch it and make sure I understand the content as we continue with an online discussion in.
00:21:05 Christine
An online course.
00:21:07 Christine
You know, I want to have that content multiple times because I know that when I watch and hear and read it multiple times, it sticks more and I want to revisit multiple times. So if I can read it once and listen to it another time now I've been.
00:21:20 Christine
Exposed to it twice.
00:21:22 Camie
Yes it.
00:21:24 Camie
It helps so much not just to have the multiple exposures to that content, but to have multiple exposures from different modalities. And we've talked about this in a different episode. But for those who didn't hear that, modalities just means the way that you are receiving that information, whether it's visual.
00:21:42 Camie
Or through audio.
00:21:43 Camie
They're doing something with it. There are different ways to access information, so.
00:21:52 Camie
Audio and visual when you can get both of those, or you can add another modality on top of that you know, the more.
00:22:00 Camie
Touches you have with information or knowledge of a topic. The more your knowledge of that topic grows, the more you kind of understand those foundations that you're really needing in order to do something with the knowledge.
00:22:14 Christine
Exactly. And then the other piece of OER is that they're often digital.
00:22:20 Christine
Which means if you want to have H5P content. So let's say you're going to read a chapter and then you want to do a quick knowledge.
00:22:27 Christine
There.
00:22:28 Christine
You can embed a mini quiz that either does or does not get graded in black order canvas for students to check their knowledge and go do I really understand this? Do I understand this vocabulary? Can I put you know can I sort these new vocabulary terms into different contexts? Can I identify what these things are?
00:22:49 Christine
You know, some of those quick checks, so that not only are we as instructors finding out if our students have that, but we're giving them the tools to go, oh, maybe I need to reread that over again. I guess I didn't.
00:23:00 Christine
But.
00:23:02 Christine
You know, which means we're helping them identify their own learning style and go. I need to read this differently. You know, we're giving them some of those lifelong learning tools that they're going to need because again, technology keeps changing. How how are we going to keep learning? How are we going to keep growing, being able to do some self-assessment on whether or not you understood, but you just.
00:23:22 Christine
Read what you just tried to consume.
00:23:24 Christine
Seems like a.
00:23:25 Camie
Valuable skill to me. Yeah. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with H5P, it's just a way that you can digitally, both present and evaluate knowledge in.
00:23:40 Camie
In our platform here at the University of Arkansas, we use Blackboard Ultra and there is a way that you can embed these H5P's right into your course and and you can present or check the knowledge there. It can be graded, it can be ungraded. There's a whole host of ways that you can do it. What Christine is talking about in a book.
00:24:00 Camie
Is that when you have, you know you've given them this information. You stop and have a little evaluation of that, but it's a self check for students so that they can check whether or not they understood what they just read or saw or heard.
00:24:15 Christine
Exactly. And you can do it with H5P. I was also playing this morning with the Microsoft form that they now have a practice option so you can answer the question, and then the instructor can say yes, that's correct or oh, no, actually it's this and kind of fix some of those misconceptions, perhaps the beginning of.
00:24:36 Christine
A module or a topic to kind of help students understand where they are in terms of their knowledge and where they.
00:24:43 Christine
Need to go.
00:24:44 Christine
Which I thought was kind of cool to be able to have that quick. Well, not quite. It's actually this and you know, give them just that pitch of background information without getting preachy or, you know, overly explaining, yes.
00:24:57 Camie
It could be really helpful definitely to do that. I did not hear that about Microsoft form. So that's really interesting.
00:25:05 Christine
I I just learned this morning when I opened my course
00:25:08 Camie
And and again for those of you who don't know about Microsoft forums, it's mostly a survey tool that Microsoft has and is available to you if you are an instructor here at the University of Arkansas at no cost. And they're also very easy to embed in your.
00:25:25 Camie
In your Ultra course, yeah.
00:25:27 Camie
So.
00:25:29 Camie
You're giving us all kinds of resources today, Christine.
00:25:31 Christine
I gotta tell you, I just keep learning and and figuring out different ways and different things to do.
00:25:36 Christine
So.
00:25:37 Christine
So we've talked about some of the benefits for instructors, but what other benefits do you maybe see instructors having if they use OER as an instructor? One of the frustrating things that could happen in your world is that you have a resource that you used for months or years or multiple semesters and it disappears for whatever reason.
00:25:57 Christine
The website gets taken down, they've updated it, but now it's not quite you quite what you're looking for. A new edition of the textbook comes out and they don't include content that they did before. This is one I hear frequently.
00:26:11 Christine
OK, when you have OER you have the right to retain it, which means you can download it.
00:26:17 Christine
And save it.
00:26:18 Christine
That does not violate anyone's copyright.
00:26:21 Christine
More you can redistribute it so when you think about this license, think about Warner Brothers and Barbie. Warner Brothers doesn't give everyone a copy of Barbie that they get to keep forever and ever. Amen.
00:26:33 Christine
They licensed a movie theater to play it for a certain span of time, probably even a certain number of showings. OK. And then when it's done, it goes back to Warner Brothers.
00:26:44 Christine
Or we are is similar in that someone has created a material they are licensing it for you to use. You get to save it, you get to redistribute it.
00:26:54 Christine
After that, it depends on which license you choose. If you allow people to commercially profit off it. If you allow people to remix it, do they have to share it the same way? Those are kind of different options, but it means you get to download something and it is yours to use forever. So no matter how many editions of that textbook.
00:27:14 Christine
Amount. You've always got that content that your students can use.
00:27:20 Christine
And to me, that is a really big one because, for example, I was talking to an apparel professor last week who was like.
00:27:26 Christine
Every two years, the book gets smaller. It has less content. We're not doing, you know, this application and that application. And the book gets $5 more expensive.
00:27:37 Christine
So if you have an OER.
00:27:40 Christine
You have that content until you choose not to teach it because you know course objective has changed or you look at a different way of doing it, but it doesn't disappear. And again you control the content. You're the one saying I want to teach this this way. I think this approach is most appropriate for our students. You get to really.
00:28:00 Christine
Make it fit your students and your teaching.
00:28:03 Camie
And so one thing that we kind of talk about like one of the reasons we rebuild courses and do things like that, you know, here at global.
00:28:10 Camie
Campus is because.
00:28:12 Camie
Textbooks or information gets outdated and we need better, more relevant examples. How would you incorporate that with an OER text?
00:28:24 Camie
You talked about retaining the knowledge how do?
00:28:26 Camie
You update it
00:28:28 Christine
Well.
00:28:28 Christine
This is kind of the cool part is because most of it is exists digitally. You can continue to add, edit, change it for time immemorial, or at least until press books becomes outdated, whichever one comes.
00:28:40 Christine
1st.
00:28:41 Christine
So for example, I was talking to an instructor recently who had done a music world culture.
00:28:48 Christine
And he was like, I think we might, you know, we might be looking at an update. And I was like, OK, well, you know, kind of think about that. Would you be making enough changes that you would want a second volume or a second edition, or would you want to just update your existing?
00:29:00 Christine
One because both.
00:29:01 Christine
Of those are possible, so you know if it's just.
00:29:04 Christine
Ohh let's update.
00:29:06 Christine
You know election results because this is a political or a, you know, political science textbook that you can swap out and do, you know, depending on how many times you've talked about a certain election in 20 minutes or an hour.
00:29:19 Christine
Or you could create another volume or another addition that added to it, so you can do that really easily. It's slightly more complicated than editing a word.
00:29:29 Camie
Document and and so if you replace it, you have an updated example. If you add to it, you have comparison of elections.
00:29:36 Christine
Maybe exactly so. And what's nice is once you save it, it updates.
00:29:40 Christine
Automatic.
00:29:40 Christine
Quickly everywhere on the web that the book is. So if you think about, so we host our books for press box. So they live on a server that we control as the University of Arkansas University libraries.
00:29:55 Christine
So when?
00:29:57 Christine
And apparel professor update her textbook. Her students don't have to go by anyone.
00:30:02 Christine
They just go to the same website that they went to yesterday and have additional content, so it becomes, you know, an easy thing to do but also think about this Lynn Meade one of our instructors who's been doing a portfolio open textbook.
00:30:18 Christine
She built it sort of, along with her students. So there are student reflections in this textbook that are.
00:30:24 Christine
Just about real time. So she finished teaching with it in December.
00:30:29 Christine
It is now publicly available.
00:30:30 Christine
Well.
00:30:31 Christine
And it has reflections and comments, and this went well and this was really challenging from her students in that class. The class finished a month ago.
00:30:40 Christine
Those comments are already in there and she can continue to update an ad. She also did a public speaking textbook and one of the reasons she loves doing it is because when you graduate, you still have access to that textbook. It doesn't go away because you're not a student.
00:30:57 Christine
And she used to always get emails saying, hey, can I get the information about a toast? Can I get that information about a eulogy? The sorts of different public speaking that.
00:31:07 Christine
You.
00:31:08 Christine
Come across in different stages of your life.
00:31:11 Christine
And you can go back and get that and she can update it.
00:31:13 Christine
As she hears.
00:31:14 Christine
From different people around the world and different cultures and.
00:31:17 Christine
How they approach?
00:31:18 Christine
Different public speaking opportunities. She can then add that.
00:31:23 Christine
No one has to buy a new book.
00:31:26 Christine
She can just add another chapter and say in this culture things are done this way.
00:31:31 Christine
You know, it broadens our everyone's understanding without costing anyone any more time or money other than Lynn updating her press book. And she does that pretty regularly just because she's Lynn Meade.
00:31:42 Camie
Yes, just because she's Lynn Meade. She's pretty fantastic. And. And she's got a lot of resources on that.
00:31:51 Camie
Portfolio. She's done a fantastic job with it.
00:31:56 Camie
So that's been a lot of benefits for instructors, for students, and it sounds like OER is really great, but I'm sure that there are challenges with OER that we have to meet. So what are those challenges?
00:32:11 Christine
They kind of fit in a.
00:32:12 Christine
Couple of different buckets. The 1st is that.
00:32:15 Christine
And in terms of the world of education, open Ed is still a baby. It's still brand new. I mean, if you think about our public education system, at least here in the United States, it's been.
00:32:23 Christine
Around a couple 100 years.
00:32:26 Christine
Open education has been around like 25 to 30 years. So, and because it was originally thought of mostly as an affordability issue, a lot of the materials are for large introductory courses. OK, so making the change in your composition 1.
00:32:46 Christine
Sections impacts a lot of students right away.
00:32:50 Christine
So there's been a lot of focus on those large enrollment kind of Gen. Ed courses.
00:32:56 Christine
So when you are at an upper level apparel an upper level agriculture, some of those less heavy enrollment courses, there aren't as many materials, which means we, which is why we incentivize teachers or instructors to.
00:33:15 Christine
Creation because there it may not exist yet. I know a lot of the trade schools and technical colleges are running into the same sort of thing of like.
00:33:25 Christine
Yeah, we can get them through American history, but what are we doing with mechanics?
00:33:30 Christine
What are we doing with the welding? How are we supporting those students? And so, you know, and writing a textbook is a big undertaking. You know, I've taught kindergarten for 10 years. I have known my letters and my sounds for quite a few decades. But the idea of writing a curriculum for teaching small to learn how to read.
00:33:51 Christine
Kind of blows my mind, even though I know I know how to do it.
00:33:56 Christine
So that becomes a big piece because that's a lot of management. That's a lot of here are your course objectives. You know the actual writing, the compiling of materials, all of that, it's it's a fair amount of work you know and then also making sure that what you're creating.
00:34:12 Christine
Is accessible so you know what theme are you choosing in press books because you can kind of, you know, they're different themes with different fonts and things and some fonts work better with screen readers than others.
00:34:23 Christine
You know the pictures that you're using. How are those licensed? Are you taking your own? Are you finding them in a repository? How do you need to cite them? All of those kinds of things, you know, finding the videos and the articles that you want to go with it and all of that is, is a fair amount of work. And I.
00:34:39 Christine
Can help with a lot of that.
00:34:43 Christine
But I'm a librarian, not a subject specialist.
00:34:47 Christine
And so I can find you the resources, but it's up to the instructor to go. This is quality. This is not. This is what I want. This isn't. I can just give you a list of options. And and I can get pretty close, you know. Give me your course objectives and I can look at a textbook and be like, oh, this one seems to have a chapter that.
00:35:02 Christine
Has similar language to what you're looking at.
00:35:07 Christine
But unless you're teaching children how to read, how?
00:35:10 Christine
To.
00:35:10 Christine
How to read or how to say the alphabet? That's that's not my specialty.
00:35:14 Christine
Right, right. You know, so that becomes a big piece.
00:35:18 Camie
It does take time to build these and probably keep them updated to some extent.
00:35:25 Camie
So that can definitely be a drawback. Do you think there are any drawbacks at all to using them?
00:35:30 Christine
With students, I'm having a hard time thinking of any, simply because you know they're designed for the students. Like that's that. That's the great.
00:35:36 Christine
Part of this.
00:35:38 Camie
I also have had a hard time thinking of any challenges for students because they're accessible.
00:35:45 Camie
00:35:46 Camie
So you can access them on your blackboard. Course they're right there.
00:35:50 Christine
Yeah, I was going to say we just turned the integration on so that literally it will appear as though it's a PDF in your Blackboard Ultra course. If you would like it.
00:35:58 Christine
To do so.
00:36:00 Christine
Or there's a website that will exist for again time and memorium or until press books ends.
00:36:06 Christine
With that textbook available so you know, unless we are deleting it for some reason and we have a couple of projects that have been abandoned.
00:36:15 Christine
That we have.
00:36:16 Christine
Preserved the the files but removed them from press books because we have to pay per title and so you know, right finite resources.
00:36:26 Christine
But those are not ones that have ever been used in courses. They were ones that were started, and then life happened, you know.
00:36:33 Camie
Right. Yes, as we know.
00:36:35 Christine
Particularly if you started projects so.
00:36:37 Christine
Before the pandemic.
00:36:38 Camie
And then and then the pandemic happened. Yes, but.
00:36:41
Sometimes.
00:36:42 Camie
Life happens and we do understand, like you.
00:36:43 Christine
No, absolutely.
00:36:45 Camie
Nothing goes. I won't say nothing. Things where we go according To plan l
00:36:50 Christine
absolutely. And one of the things we do is preserving those files so that if we ever wanted to get them back, we have an option to do that. We don't ever want to lose anyone's, you know, hard work.
00:36:57 Camie
Right.
00:37:02 Christine
Right. So if you know, life comes back around and you have that free time, you can jump in it again so.
00:37:07 Christine
Exactly.
00:37:11 Camie
Specifically for online courses, the things you've been describing, you know, because we are resources are generally digital. You know they're accessible because they can be right on the.
00:37:23 Camie
Screen reader.
00:37:24 Camie
Oh, that sounds really great. Uh, for asynchronous online courses.
00:37:29 Camie
How do you think OER effects?
00:37:32 Camie
Asynchronous courses.
00:37:34 Christine
I mean, I don't know how they do anything but add to them simply because you know, particularly if I'm thinking about a global campus student and online, you know, maybe the.
00:37:45 Christine
Five years ago.
00:37:45 Christine
We would have called a non traditional student someone who's maybe not 18 to 22. You might have be taking let's say it's.
00:37:54 Christine
Statistics course, because apparently I'm about statistics today, OK? And maybe you had a statistics course five years ago, 10 years ago, when you were in high school or when you were, you know, doing part of a college experience. And now you're back to statistics and you're going ohh, OK, I know. I knew this Once Upon a.
00:38:12 Christine
Time.
00:38:13 Christine
OK.
00:38:16 Christine
You could find another open textbook and get those base skills, or you could go back to the open textbook that you had several years ago and reactivate that knowledge and think about those base skills you're going to have access to this book for.
00:38:30 Christine
However long the Internet exists, more or less so in terms of like that longevity.
00:38:36 Christine
It's there.
00:38:37 Christine
You know, from an instructor perspective you get to cut down a whole bunch of friction because you can embed it directly in in Blackboard so no one can say I didn't want.
00:38:46 Christine
To carry my book.
00:38:47 Christine
With me, because that's that's a big one. That is one really big advantage of OER and specifically press books are books that exist digitally.
00:38:57 Christine
Is.
00:38:58 Christine
You don't have to carry your textbook. When I was getting my masters, I had these giant books and it was like I the only place I could sit was on my couch because it needed.
00:39:05 Christine
To be in my lap in order to do it. Yes, I actually remember.
00:39:08 Camie
But when I was going through with undergrad and my masters.
00:39:12 Christine
Exactly. Whereas you can read a press book.
00:39:15 Christine
On your.
00:39:15 Christine
Phone. So oh, you're on the bus and you have 10 minutes because the bus is running late and you want to bust through a few pages so that you're that much further on your list. Or you just don't want to carry 3 textbooks.
00:39:26 Christine
With you everywhere you go.
00:39:28 Camie
Like who does?
00:39:29 Christine
Exactly. You know that that's why we have back problems in in our 40s.
00:39:33 Christine
Is is from.
00:39:34 Christine
The from the books we were carrying around as.
00:39:36 Christine
Undergrads, you know. So it just becomes.
00:39:38 Christine
So much easier.
00:39:40 Camie
Right, I love that.
00:39:44 Camie
I think too with specifically with the asynchronous online courses, one thing that struck me is that.
00:39:52 Camie
The resource is already right there in the course. It's not something else they have to go looking for. And with asynchronous courses, our students could be anywhere you know they're not always right here in Northwest Arkansas and so.
00:40:10 Camie
Having your materials right there in the course so students don't have to take an extra step to, you know, reach out to Amazon or.
00:40:17 Camie
The bookstore or.
00:40:18 Camie
Send Gage or where you know where you're getting your book from it.
00:40:23 Camie
It makes such a huge difference to have your material just right there on the page.
00:40:29 Christine
The other big advantage that OER has for online students.
00:40:33 Christine
Is the logistics piece of having the book from day one. You don't have to worry about whether or not the Amazon warehouse sends out the book, or if there is a postal worker strike or whatever is going on. You have the book available, you're not waiting for student loans, you're not waiting for, you know, a paycheck, any of that. They're ready to go.
00:40:54 Christine
Day one because studies do show students who.
00:40:58 Christine
Don't have their book the first two weeks, of course, of the course.
00:41:01 Christine
Already that much further behind, you know, imagine trying to do that. Catch up it, it becomes infeasible, particularly if you're doing it for more than one or two courses. You know, how do you keep up with that? How do you find those resources? We we have options to just eliminate that problem. Why?
00:41:18 Camie
Why wouldn't why wouldn't we use it?
00:41:20 Christine
Exactly.
00:41:23 Camie
So let's say, you know, instructors have heard our little podcast here and they say.
00:41:31 Camie
I think we are might be a great idea for me, what's the best way for them to implement O? We are in their own course.
00:41:38 Christine
There's kind of a couple different ways you can approach it. Let's say you just want to do the barest of, like putting your toe in, in which case, let's say you've got a commercial tax book, but there is a concept that just students always struggle with.
00:41:52 Christine
Look and see if there is an OER that can be a supplemental resource for your students that maybe explains it in a slightly different way, particularly when we're thinking about students that might have learning differences, or they might be English language learners or whatever. Having an open textbook that is just a supplement.
00:42:12 Christine
Saying if you don't understand how X works, try reading it here because you know all of our brains work differently. There's no way that we can reach every single learner.
00:42:24 Christine
Teaching in one way, right? So I would say look at that, that would be a first option is just here's another thing. You don't have to buy it, just go on and read and see.
00:42:33 Christine
Use it as.
00:42:33 Christine
A supplement you could look at, just swapping out one article or one assignment. Those are kind of your small steps, so maybe it's using a Ted Ed talk.
00:42:44 Christine
Or a Ted talk or an Open Access article instead of having them go through and have to buy another textbook or pay for a Netflix subscription or however you're doing your videos.
00:42:59 Christine
You want to go big scale. That's where I come in. Actually, I can come in at any point in this. I'm happy to help anyone, whether they're looking for a supplementary material or, you know, just a simple swap out. But every spring and every fall, we do a call for proposals. It'll go through newswire. It'll be on the university website.
00:43:17 Christine
You know, we usually try to get a fair amount of buzz about it and and you can apply for some extra compensation if you are creating a textbook that's at least 75% your own work. You can get up to $7500 in extra compensation for that. If you want to remix a textbook.
00:43:38 Christine
You can get up to 4500, so that means you're taking one or two materials, kind of mixing them together, maybe adding a little of your own content or rewording it. Kind of making it fit your course better. Both of those are options if you wanted to just adopt A book that already exists.
00:43:57 Christine
That's when we'd really have you reach out to global campus and look at the course redesign Workshop as an option. They could help you integrate that in and make sure that you're using the best instructional strategies to get that content going.
00:44:13 Christine
So those are kind of your different options. You know if you're just curious, you want to see what's out there, you can always drop me an e-mail and I, you know.
00:44:21 Christine
I started on a project for advanced composition and within an hour I had 25 different resources for them that they could go through would be like Oh well, this fits this and this fits that you know these different learning objectives and my my e-mail is very complicated. It's O ER at york.edu.
00:44:40 Christine
So it's so hard. It's very complicated so.
00:44:45 Camie
We could remember.
00:44:46 Camie
We are you are study.
00:44:48 Christine
To you. So, because you know that that's the beauty of this is this is what I do so I can do small projects, big projects kind of help people find.
00:44:58 Christine
Whatever they're looking for, you know.
00:45:03 Christine
And find the resources is is the ultimate goal.
00:45:07 Christine
Or identify that this is, you know, a need we have and then maybe if you don't want to write it.
00:45:13 Christine
It also becomes something that fits in the back of my mind, and as I get different emails from other open education librarians across the country, and they say, oh, we're releasing this, you know, that's one of the advantages of working with a librarian is that I'm already on the list, serves for different consortiums and organizations in which we promote.
00:45:33 Christine
Our open textbooks and so oh.
00:45:37 Christine
Someone's working on a course where they're talking about communication and the University of Florida, just Florida, just released a great open textbook about can't we all get along and conflict resolution? And it came out two months ago, but it's a fantastic resource.
00:45:53 Christine
And I'm like, wait a minute. Someone just did that book. I just have to go through my emails and find it. So it may not be in three different, you know, databases, repositories yet, but we promote our books to the open education community. So I'm tapped into that as well, you know, and I get emails of people saying, hey.
00:46:14 Christine
I know you've got a big apparel marketing, production and design program.
00:46:19 Christine
Do you have anything coming out focusing on?
00:46:21 Christine
This I reach.
00:46:23 Christine
Out to other librarians and do the same thing and say, hey, you know we are X number of courses away from having an entire program that doesn't require commercial textbooks, but I'm looking for something that fits this need.
00:46:38 Christine
You know, and I reach out to other people and say no, you know, no, we don't have anything yet. But you know what are you working on? Do we want to have instructors?
00:46:45 Christine
Work together across campuses.
00:46:48 Christine
You know it's it's a very collaborative community. That's kind of the big thing about OER is that.
00:46:55 Christine
It's designed to share, so we want to help everyone else. We want to say this is how I'm doing this, this, this is what went well. This is what isn't going well. You know, that scholarly conversation is constantly going in open education about different materials, different approaches. How do we market things? How do we?
00:47:14 Christine
You know, one of the things I really want to do when student work day comes in is have a marker for courses that are OER.
00:47:23 Christine
Or low cost at least right now we have kind of a work around with a yard sign plan for the spring so that when registration starts I will have had the textbook adoption list and there will be a QR code on the yard signs that students can scan and get a list of which courses and which sections.
00:47:43 Christine
Are using openly open education right so that when they go to plan their schedule?
00:47:50 Christine
They know what's open and what isn't, you know.
00:47:54 Christine
And.
00:47:54 Christine
So it's kind of our current workaround. We're also going to have Flyers in residence halls and around the different campus on TV screens, you know, like in the Union and some of those types of things. We'll also probably do a newswire story so instructors could perhaps link to that on their blackboard announcements.
00:48:11 Christine
So that their students have that resource, but eventually we hope to.
00:48:15 Christine
Get it in student work day but.
00:48:17 Camie
All of that films are really exciting and.
00:48:20 Camie
And I'm so glad that you could join us today OR is an important topic that we need to think about, especially in our asynchronous courses, but really in every single course that we do, because it does impact our student success.
00:48:35 Camie
And can make a huge difference, not only for our students, but also for us, as we are curating our courses, so think through how maybe you could implement OER in your classroom.
00:48:50 Camie
Thank you for being here today, Christine. I just really appreciate you coming and chatting.
00:48:54 Christine
With me, thanks. And I would say to instructors, keep your eyes open. I've been doing a few things with the teaching and faculty support center, including some course, some presentations on simple switches. So keep your eyes open. I will probably do more presentations like that.
00:49:11 Christine
Around campus in the coming months and years, so that will give you some specific resources as well.
00:49:17 Camie
Keep your eyes out for Christine. She's she's bringing OER to the University of Arkansas or spreading the OER love pretty.
00:49:26 Camie
Much everywhere you go.
00:49:27 Christine
Yeah, that's pretty much a goal, yes.
00:49:29 Camie
Yeah. Yeah. OK. Well, thank you so much for joining us here on the Pedagogy toolkit. Don't forget to subscribe.