Virginia's Academic Library Consortium

Introduction

Steve Litherland, Tidewater Community College

Keynote

Jasmine Roberts-Crews, The Ohio State University

Breakout Session One

Students as Contributors in OER Creation (Panel) - Anita Walz (VT), Kindred Grey (VT), Erin Hopkins (VT), and Donald Orth (VT)

Lecture Hall (Room 303)/Breakout Room 1

Virginia Tech’s Open Education Initiative supports faculty who wish to adopt, adapt, or create and publicly share open educational resources in a variety of formats. Since inception of the initiative, program leadership and faculty partners have experimented with various ways to incorporate student contributions and feedback. This panel discussion features faculty and OER coordinator presenters and student comments from two OER project types which have incorporated students as contributors, paid anonymous reviewers from within the major, classroom survey respondents, paid graphic designers, and others with substantive roles in OER creation or adaptation projects.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All: The OER at JMU and BRCC (Presentation) - Tim Ball (JMU), Kathy Clarke (JMU), Don Taylor (BRCC)

Room 250/Breakout Room 2

This presentation explores the different applications of a multi-institutional large-scale course redesign grant undertaken by James Madison University and Blue Ridge Community College, and now used in all sections of the basic communication courses at both schools. The presentation focuses on: the resource creation process in a large academic department at JMU, which serves 2000-2300 students a year; the differences in the development and use of the OER resource in a small academic community department at a community college; and finally, lessons learned for other multi-institutional OER creators. 

You want to teach at a college or university? Where do you start to find teaching resources? (Presentation) - Donna Westfall-Rudd (VT)

Room 321/Breakout Room 3

This presentation will detail the the journey of a team of twenty doctoral graduate students and early career faculty to develop the Teaching in the University open textbook. A team of editors and authors will present the dilemmas the editors sought to overcome, the dual purpose of the book, classroom engagement experiences related to the book, the numerous types of learning enabled by the project, and the scope and known adoptions of the resulting text. Learn more about the book here: https://openvt.lib.vt.edu/2022/03/01/new-open-textbook-teaching-in-the-university-learning-from-graduate-students-and-early-career-faculty.

Breakout Session  Two

Journeying into Open Pedagogy | Moving Beyond Cost (Presentation) - Kristen McCleary (JMU); Elaine Kaye (JMU); Nicole Wilson (JMU)

Room 250/Breakout Room 2

In this session, Dr. McCleary, a Latin American History Professor will discuss her journey toward developing a holistic worldview of open pedagogy by sharing the evolution of an open oral histories project, specifically highlighting how her teaching practices evolved alongside the various iterations of the assignment. Project details, outcomes, student engagement and feedback will be shared with an emphasis on how Rajiv Jhangiani’s 5 R’s of Open pedagogy (Reciprocate, Risk, Reach, Resist, Respect) and the values of Critical Digital Pedagogy (Stommel, Friend, & Morris, 2020) impact teaching and design choices.  Presenters will discuss their approach to creating collaborative relationships between faculty, students, instructional designers, and libraries. This session will focus on sharing Dr. McCleary’s pedagogical approach as well as how the values of “Open” support the achievement of educational goals beyond cost. 

Beyond the Platform: What Else Can We Do with OER? (Presentation) - Laurie Massery (RMC); Anna Wachsmuth (RMC)

Lecture Hall (Room 303)/Breakout Room 1

The preference for online texts aligns with the general values and behaviors shared by Gen Z learners: environmental awareness, inclusivity, financial prudence and their natural interconnectedness via social media and digital platforms. In this presentation, we briefly discuss the results of the data collected for our recent VIVA OER project, which suggest that instructors should consider creating open educational resources that meet the interests, principles and learning styles of Gen Z students - as the results of the data indicate a clear preference for interactive platforms over traditional textbooks. As part of our presentation, we introduce our OER resource and share our current and future plans for student research and inter and intra-institutional co-authorship.

Break

An OER Bridge Across the Covid-19 Learning Gap (Panel) - Preston Davis (NOVA); Bethany Mickel (UVA); Andrew Bennett (ODU); J. Morgan Russell (VT), Aryan Venkanagari (VCU)

Lecture Hall (Room 303)/Breakout Room 1

Open educational resources and practices are often used in courses with the goal of improving learning outcomes for new students, setting the stage for success in their later academic careers. In the hands of skilled teachers, OER have the potential to transform the classroom experience by: promoting representational diversity, helping to create for all new students a sense of belonging, which can enhance their well-being and academic achievement; engaging new students in active and authentic learning through the inclusion of rich media and interactive assignments; encouraging new students to think of themselves  as scholars and researchers, contributing to rather than simply consuming from the knowledge commons.  

In this panel faculty describe their own recent experiences in using OER to enhance the learning experience for new students, especially in light of reported learning gaps due to COVID disruptions in K-12 education. Panelists will address a number of questions relating to this topic, including the following: have faculty noticed such gaps with incoming students in the past year and if so, what open educational or open learning strategies have helped bridge these gaps? Do faculty anticipate lasting changes in learner preparedness or expectations due to COVID-19 disruptions? What overall strategies or practices have proven most effective in setting new students on the path to academic success?

The Many-Sized Open Digital Anthology: Literature in Context (Presentation) - Tonya Howe (MU); John O'Brien (UVA)

Room 321/Breakout Room 3

This presentation will showcase Literature in Context: An Open Anthology of Literature, 1400-1925, a NEH and VIVA-supported anthology-in-progress of reliably edited digital literary texts for use by teachers and students in K-12 and higher education.  In line with the conference theme, Literature in Context enables instructors to create their own digital coursepacks, selecting the texts they need from the archive and assembling them into purpose-built collections for particular classroom situations. In this way, the project is open to further adaptation by its users.  

VIVA Update

Anne Osterman, VIVA

Wrap Up:

Liz Thompson, JMU