Virginia's Academic Library Consortium

Registration/Breakfast

Welcome Steve Litherland (TCC), Chair of VIVA's Open and Affordable Course Content Committee

KEYNOTE

"oPPPPen education: Power, Permission, Pedagogy, & Possibilities" Shawna M. Brandle  (CUNY)

Break

"Using OER to Enhance Transparency in Calculus I"  Daniel James, Bakhyt Aitzhanova, Sophie Kemprecos,(UVA)

A 2016 study by Winkelmes et. al. found that use of transparently-designed assignments in introductory courses led to increased academic confidence, sense of belonging, and mastery of employer-valued skills in first-year students - with benefits amplified in first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students. Our team seeks to discover what a transparently-designed Calculus I couse might look like, and what impact that course might have on student retention and learning. In our presentation, we will discuss the role OER has played in that discovery, the critical OER elements - such as H5P and open source code - of our version of a transparently-designed Calculus I course, what impacts our data suggests these interventions have had on student learning, and how we think our ongoing work will evolve in the future.

"'Historical Geology': Keeping classic content current with OER" Karen Layou (Reynolds), Callan Bentley, (PVCC), Russ Kohrs (Laurel Ridge)

We have written a free, online text“book” for undergraduate Historical Geology courses, available at https://opengeology.org/historicalgeology. “Historical Geology” is Creative Commons licensed, so users can read/assign as is, or rework content to meet their needs. The text has numerous subdivisions, including 15 chapters on major geology themes(rocks, stratigraphy, geologic time, plate tectonics, mass extinctions, paleoclimate, etc.) and 25 case studies reviewing particular places, events, taxa, or phenomena. The length and format of case studies vary–some are videos, others are mainly graphical, or traditional text-based explorations. There are also 6 pages classified as “tools of the trade,” emphasizing skills such as mineral identification, reading geologic maps, and interpreting paleo-up indicators in sedimentary rocks. Finally, we feature 12 virtual field experiences (e.g., Siccar Point, the Massanutten Synclinorium, and Glacier National Park) and 14 virtual sample sets (e.g., igneous rocks, sediment samples, relative dating). Pages are rich with interactive imagery, such as embedded virtual globes, 3D models, GIGAmacro and GigaPan images, Google Maps, image galleries, animated GIFs, and self-test quizzes. Feedback from students and adopting instructors is overwhelmingly positive, citing interactive elements and free access as favorite features. Pages are extensively interlinked and also include links to outside resources; for instance, vocabulary terms are linked to relevant Wikipedia pages. In 2022, we had 2900 to 3900 visitors per week to the site. We are currently revising the site for a 2nd edition and developing accompanying lab exercises.

"Using OER to Inspire Critical Reading of Textbooks"  Michele Strano Clark (Bridgewater)

Since the number of OER textbooks is still relatively small, instructors who wish to make course resources more accessible to all students often must compromise in terms of the recency or focus of the texts they choose to use. This short talk shares the experience of a communication studies professor who adopted a somewhat outdated text that also lacked a diversity focus. The instructor was pushed to supplement the text with other materials and intentionally teach students to be critical readers of the sources they use, even the “authoritative” textbooks they encounter in courses. The talk will share examples of strategies the instructor adopted to help students uncover hidden histories about the development of media technology.

"Collective bargaining, collaborative authorship: creating an OER resource with student and community collaborators"  Piers Gelly (UVA)

Over the course of the 2023-2024 academic year, I worked with first-year students at UVA, as well as members of two local labor unions, to produce a museum exhibition titled Collective Bargaining for the Common Good, which tells the story of Virginia’s longstanding hostility to organized labor—as well as the grit and ingenuity of unionized workers who managed to win some remarkable victories under difficult circumstances.

This museum exhibition project was funded by a grant from UVA Library’s “Affordability and Equity” Program, which also supported the creation of an OER exhibition catalog that doubles as a first-year writing textbook. In this session, I’ll give a brief account of creating an OER text in collaboration with students and community members here in Charlottesville, sharing some examples from the book and some lessons learned in the process. I’ll touch on the design and implementation of the course, as well as the post-semester work that went into the exhibition and OER resource.

LUNCH

"Open Pedagogy in Psychology; Integrating Student Voices in OER Development"  Alison H Melley and  Anna S Caruso (GMU)

Psychological Science; Key Themes and Applications is an open educational resource (OER) focusing on the teaching and application of seven key themes in the introductory psychology classroom, such as how perceptions and biases filter our world experiences through imperfect personal lenses. While our primary aim is to develop a resource for educators, an additional goal is having students feel ownership and autonomy over their learning through active participation in developing and disseminating this project.
In our presentation, we highlight the importance of student involvement in strengthening our OER and how we provide opportunities for students’ educational agency. Further, we discuss putting together a four-person student leadership team to provide initial detailed feedback, create course material, and develop assignments paired with the OER that future students would find interesting and useful. Student collaboration and input have been used throughout the development of our resource. As the OER passed through various stages of completion, we gathered iterative feedback from students and faculty on the conceptualization and depth of topics, structure, and design.
For most college students, their introductory psychology course is the only psychology class they will ever take. The Key Themes are the enduring knowledge they can apply to their lives after the class ends. Therefore, it is paramount to draw on student interests and feedback when developing materials exemplifying these take-aways.

"Creating Agency in the History of Art: Prehistoric to Gothic"  Jeanette Nicewinter (NVCC), Paula Winn and Amy Marshman (Brightpoint)

The project “Adapting OERs and Creating Course Materials for the History of Art” was funded by a VIVA Open Course Grant in 2022. Over the past 2 years, the project participants created an OER textbook using Pressbooks. That textbook is being piloted in 7 ART101: History of Art: Prehistoric to Gothic sections by 3 faculty members at two of the largest community colleges in Virginia.
Many of the ways that OER adoption grants agency to the faculty and students are just beginning to be explored in these courses. This talk will discuss the initial insights gained through teaching with the resource for the first 12 weeks of the fall 2024 semester. Upon initial impression, a few of the ways that the adoption of an OER textbook changed the course dynamic was through the embedding of the resource directly into the LMS. This enabled instructors to have agency over the way the course materials were incorporated into the course shell and were integrated with other materials, such as quizzes and assignments. Quizzes and assignments were also created to directly engage students with the OER resource. Students will be surveyed for their feedback on the textbook at the end of the semester, which was an exciting prospect for students, who were being granted agency over the textbook for future classes. In sum, the adoption of the OER text for ART101 creates new ways for faculty and students to engage with the course material and with each other.

Break

Unconference and Networking Session

Network or chat with other attendees about open education topics. The forum planning committee will have some topic suggestions on tables, but we welcome attendees to take the opportunity to discuss what's on their minds with their open education colleagues from across the state. 

Break

"Empowering Students by Uncovering and Sharing the Hidden Histories of Northern Virginia: A Collaborative Model" George Oberle and Wendi Manuel-Scott (GMU)

Too often student conduct research and produce papers whose impact remains limited to their individual courses. Wendi Manuel-Scott and George Oberle have developed a model designed to promote the sharing of their original research findings in an Omeka S site after scouring local archival repositories and connecting with local knowledge keepers and elders. Manuel-Scott and Oberle co-teach courses and lead collaborative research projects with undergraduate and graduate students to explore how the ongoing logics and structures of slavery continue to produce inequality in and around George Mason University. This presentation will discuss their prior successes on digital public history projects such as the 2017 project Enslaved Children of George Mason, their 2021 project Black Lives Next Door, a co-taught course also titled Black Lives Next Door, and ongoing spatial and oral history research efforts. They will also discuss how they empower students to engage anti-racist research methodologies and complete fieldwork based on original research questions that center Black life.

"Sustaining Open projects with an ethic of care: a model for instructional design and Libraries support"  Elaine Kaye, Nicole Wilson, and Dr. Fawn-Amber Montoya (JMU), Abbey Childs (VCU) [workshop]

Do you ever see an open product or project and wonder, “How did they get there?” In this workshop, a faculty member from JMU and Libraries colleagues from JMU and VCU share their process on developing a recent collaboration. This project grew out of an ongoing collaboration among JMU faculty and Libraries colleagues, which, supported by a recently-awarded 4VA Grant, expanded to include additional faculty at VCU. The grant PI requested instructional design and faculty development support from Libraries colleagues on OER to make progress on the Voces grant goals of creating and sharing scholarship related to the experiences and histories of Latinx communities in the Commonwealth.

In the session, we will provide specific examples of supporting open initiatives with an ethic of care. This will include Grant context, details of project planning, and faculty development work. We will also discuss how building a community around open projects can be complex, vulnerable, and labor-intensive, but is critical for the creation of meaningful, sustainable, and lasting work. We will explore how operationalizing care in the conversations, program planning and implementation, and consultations can support the adoption, adaptation, and creation of OER, especially in cross-institutional contexts. In the session, participants will have dedicated time to brainstorm, discuss, and plan for their own open projects based on strategies presented in the session. This session will be beneficial to all Libraries staff and faculty, teaching faculty, and instructional designers.