2022 Open Education Conference

Over the last decade, the Open Education movement has provided compelling examples of a grassroots effort to reduce cost to students. The movement has transformed the way students access textbooks and course materials and helped lower educational costs and make learning resources more accessible. While the main driver of OER in the United States has often been student cost-savings, there has never been a standard for measuring cost-savings of OER. Additionally, a growing body of research is showing that OER benefits students in faculty in many other ways that are not currently captured by cost-savings estimates. With support from the Hewlett Foundation for the National Consortia of OER (NCOER), MHEC partnered with three regional compacts: New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE), Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), and Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) to lead research OER topics important for policymakers. MHEC has a history of leading conversations around cost savings and led efforts to create a set of common principles and frameworks designed to provide more consistency and reliability in how the field measures cost savings and how we should examine the benefits and costs of OER to make better decisions. This report starts by acknowledging the role that OER has played in reducing students' financial obligations for learning materials and tries to give policymakers an understanding of how other disruptors such as textbook rentals, library resources, inclusive access and other commercial approaches compare to OER.

The report goes on to analyze state-level OER legislative trends and provides findings from a survey of state and system-level OER programs. This work leads to a series of six principles drawn from the literature and further refined by the workgroup designed to guide policymakers and decision makers in understanding the benefits and costs of OER. Finally the report concludes by discussing two frameworks:
- A Student Cost Savings Framework to provide guidance that will lead to more consistency in the calculation and reporting of cost savings to students; and
- A Cost-Benefit Framework decision-makers can apply to understand more fully the various costs and benefits of OER that are both monetary and non-monetary and accrue to various stakeholders.

The report also highlights a number of key enablers that make it easier for states and institutions to understand the benefits and costs of OER. After discussing the report, members of the advisory committee and state level OER leaders will discuss their OER work and the role that this resource will play within their SHEEO office.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Learn about the process to develop the principles to guide leaders in measuring the benefits of OER
• Use best-practice recommendations for measuring cost-savings of OER
• Use a cost-benefit analysis framework designed to help states and institutions fully understand the multiple impacts of OER on students, faculty and institutions
• Define concrete examples from state leaders about how they look at the benefits of OER in their state context

This past year, Montgomery College faculty and students paired up for the Social Justice Ambassadors Program to decolonize learning, with funding from an internal grant. Through this program, eight students were paired up with faculty members based on academic interest and disciplines. Over the course of a semester, student and faculty pairs worked to decolonize an artifact from the faculty's course and co-created open resources that will be available for others to use. The pairs were supported by the program team and a series of workshops. Altogether, the group comprised of full-time faculty, part-time faculty, students from different disciplines, deans, student affairs, staff, and counselors.

This discussion will allow various team and program members to share the successes and challenges of this program and debrief on the outcomes. The panel discussion will include team leads, faculty, and students involved in the program and will provide an overview of the resulting decolonized artifacts. Artifacts include podcasts, assignments, and course content.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Identify ways decolonizing higher education can take place in a community college
• Adopt strategies for including student voices in course planning
• Discover tools and strategies to plan and execute similar initiatives at home institutions
• Examine examples of sustainable and open decolonizing projects that can be adapted across disciplines

Are you new to open education and want to learn more? This session will cover the basics of OER and open pedagogy. Whether you're an instructor, librarian, administrator, instructional designer, or student advocate, you'll leave this session with a wealth of resources to help you kick-start an OER initiative or your adoption, adaptation, or creation of OER.

Learning Outcomes:
- How OER differ from free resources
- Where to find open textbooks and ancillary materials
- What resources are available for customizing OER
- How to incorporate open pedagogy into teaching
- How to collaborate with partners and build an OER program
- How to raise awareness of OER
- How to connect with other OER advocates

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Explain how OER are different from free resources
• Find OER from a variety of sources, as well as resources for customizing OER
• Find ideas for incorporating open pedagogy into teaching
• Connect with campus partners and other OER advocates
• Raise awareness of OER at their institution

ZTC (or Zero Textbook Cost) programs provide a cost-effective solution for students to take courses and save on textbook and resource costs. However, when we started developing ZTC courses, we did not expect the variety of perspectives on what an "open course" could look like. Having the opportunity to develop multiple ZC (Zero Cost) courses for the Thompson Rivers University, the ZTC Associate Science degree provided us with new insights about open learning design awareness and perspectives. In this presentation, participants will have the opportunity to compare and contrast a wide variety of lenses and perspectives of "open learning design". Emerging and common themes of open learning design, within asynchronous and synchronous online and face-to-face ZC courses, will also be explored. Participants will leave with a variety of design options to consider as they navigate their open learning design process from their context.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Develop awareness around ZTC open learning design perspectives and approaches
• Consider how open learning design can be integrated into a variety of learning contexts
• Identify personal open learning design readiness and distinguish between ADOPT, ADAPT, CREATE, CONNECT

Even before the shift to online learning, instructors have struggled to find instructional materials that are both rigorous and reflect the broad diversity of students. Textbooks, in particular, often center content and narratives unrepresentative of the students using them. (Prescott, 2020) According to Melanie Forstall Lemoine, Ph.D. of Higher Ed Connects, a student's culture impacts their learning. In fact, culture has an impact on the way a student receives information, perceives it, and communicates. Culture shapes a student's beliefs and way of thinking which plays a role in their overall education. To ensure classrooms are equitable places, colleges and universities need to not only acknowledge this, but also engage in it. (Lemoine, 2019)

In March 2020 at the start of the global pandemic in North America, it became evident that post-secondary institutions across BC would have to pivot to online teaching. As a result of that need, BCcampus began the development of an open collection of openly licensed exemplar courses. As courses developed by instructors in BC came to BCcampus for inclusion in the collection it became evident that the courses lacked inclusive, diverse, anti-racist, and decolonized content. To address the lack of inclusive, decolonized, and anti-racist OER curriculum BCcampus hired a curriculum equity, diversity and inclusion consultant, Chanelle Tye. Chanelle will join the presentation to share how they have been working with BCcampus to develop an equity, diversity and inclusion strategy for the creation and adaptation of OER.

Further, presenters will share a guide that was developed to support an author in writing an author statement. An author statement is how an author can communicate to users of an OER what they can expect from the resource (like a foreword or preface). It outlines five areas of consideration (pedagogical perspective, openness, Indigenous perspectives, social justice, and author positionality) and then provides a number of questions to help the author think through those areas of consideration in a more concrete way. These areas of consideration are not the only topics that might be addressed in an author statement, but they are areas that BCcampus would like to see authors addressing intentionally.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Create, adapt, and/or adopt inclusive, diverse and culturally relevant OER content and pedagogical practice
• Develop author statements to address inclusive, diverse and culturally relevant OER

OER is well-known as a tool that supports equity and brings free learning materials to students and faculty. But getting faculty to convert to OER is a lot of work. Some colleges and universities have programs that provide stipends or release time to support faculty in the adoption, adaptation, or creation of OER. Others host paid OER training programs or fund OER specialist positions on campus. These are wonderful and effective measures! But what if your school doesn't have the funds to do something like this?

Whether your school is low-resourced, just starting out, or between grants, there is still much that can be done with limited time and zero budget. In "OER on a shoestring... or barefoot," I will share what we did at my large urban community college to create a visible and impactful OER program that cost no extra money and required limited unpaid labor. You will learn which of these activities were the most impactful, what I'd do differently if I were to do it all over again, and what I hope the program can achieve in the future.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Employ multiple strategies for reaching out to colleagues and departments
• Compile a list of campus allies to work with and gain buy-in from
• Recognize that smaller impacts necessitated by low resources-- are still important and impactful to many students

Open pedagogy is an excellent way to engage students in creating content in the classroom and building transferable skills that they can use in other courses and future careers. In October 21', Hilary Bussell, Social Sciences Librarian, decided she wanted to incorporate open pedagogy into the course revision she was doing for International Studies 4850: Understanding the Global Information Society. In this course, students use information literacy concepts to explore how information is produced, disseminated, and interpreted across the world. A mutual colleague connected her to Amanda Larson, the libraries' Affordable Learning Instructional Consultant, to talk through a plan to make this transition. Through a series of conversations, we collaborated to identify the tools and pedagogical strategies that would be used in the class. The end result was a scaffolded learning experience where students would work in Pressbooks to complete their assignments and then decide at the end of the semester whether they would openly license them, share them publicly while retaining their copyright, or hide them from the public view. Bussell also decided to incorporate the social annotation tool Hypothes.is to facilitate asynchronous reading discussions.

In this session, we will collaboratively define open pedagogy with participants through an interactive activity using Mentimeter before presenting on how we collaborated to redesign the course and scaffold the experience students had working in Pressbooks to create their assignments. We will then offer suggestions on how to use Pressbooks/Hypothes.is or similar tools to replicate a similar experience for students using open pedagogy.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Understand and collaboratively define open pedagogy
• Learn how to scaffold an open pedagogy assignment
• Learn how to collaborate on a project using open pedagogy
• Leverage tools that enable an open pedagogical approach to teaching

Slides: As Google Slides View
Slides: As a Scrollable Web Page

The #GoOpen National Network is a community-led effort to broaden K-12 engagement with OER. Having emerged as an opportunity to redesign #GoOpen when the U.S. Department of Education sunset the initiative in early 2022, the #GoOpen National Network is modeled on collaborative leadership.

Participants will learn about #GoOpen lead partners and steering committee efforts to develop leadership structures, engagement tools, and strategic plans to support shifts and actions aimed at advancing OER in the K-12 domain. The presenters include leaders from ISKME, CAST, Foresight Law + Policy, and members of the #GoOpen Steering Committee, who along with many others, recognize the need for a network where states, districts, and organizations are equal partners, and that individuals, including practitioners and those with lived experience, can participate and have a voice as contributors on equal footing.

Presenters will also provide a tour of a new centralized hub for #GoOpen engagement. The hub is being developed to support a broad-based national platform of participation, with states and districts with established OER initiatives, collaborative working groups, resource curation of curriculum, as well as resources about OER policy and practice, and general announcements and relevant updates about the K-12 landscape generally.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Engage with partners and contributors focused on re-envisioning #GoOpen as a community-led coalition
• Understand needs and wants of the K-12 ecosystem based on results from a #GoOpen community survey
• Understand the ways to participate in the national network for K-12 OER
• Join the hub platform and its groups, tools, and resources to participate in the network
• Identify, use and reuse resources about OER policy and practice that they can apply to their own context

When starting out using OER at your college/institution, it can seem like everyone else is much further along with their OER programs, and you are not aware of resources for those beginning OER programs at their colleges/institutions. Join us to hear from a panel of educators from smaller community and technical colleges that are recently new to OER as they discuss how they got started, recent accomplishments, things they would do over, what they wish they knew when starting out, and future plans.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Take away one new strategy to try at your institution
• Find resources to help you with your institution's journey
• Meet others who are starting out on their OER journey
• Ask panelists questions

The Online Learning Consortium (OLC) is a collaborative community of higher education leaders and innovators dedicated to advancing quality online, blended, and digital teaching and learning experiences that are designed to reach and engage the modern learner—anyone, anywhere, anytime. We strive to create opportunities to increase access to quality online, blended, and digital learning that center on equity and student success, and we position the dimensions of diversity, equity and inclusion as a touchstone for all of the work that we do in service to our community and to the field.

In this session, we will discuss the results of a Summer 2022 survey collected from our international community of faculty, instructional designers, institutional leaders, and other learning professionals. We will specifically address the conference theme—"Rise to Action"—by sharing the actionable steps our community members have taken around the world to leverage the opportunities and meet the challenges related to open education. By drawing upon the span and diversity of OLC community members, institutions, and partners, we will provide an extensive view of open education from a highly-diverse set of perspectives focused primarily on higher education (but including K-12 and corporate) at the course, program, and institutional levels.

We will discuss our findings related to these and other questions:

How is open education defined within your local context?
How does your course or program address social justice?
How have you engaged students in discussions around open education and learning?
What steps have you taken to make your institution more affordable to students?
How has your institution incorporated diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility into your strategic mission?
What steps have you taken to make open education sustainable at your institution?
What policies exist that foster or hinder open education at your institution?
How do you address open education in your professional development opportunities?
What strategies have you used to increase awareness and adoption of open education at your institution?
How have you addressed the most significant barriers to open education?

Attendees will leave this session with specific strategies that advance open education within their courses and programs and at their institutions at-large. Attendees will have the opportunity to share in real-time the approaches that have worked at their own institutions, building upon the #OpenEd22 conference community for inspiration, motivation, and ideas that lead to action.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Understand how a diverse set of institutions have advanced open education within their local contexts
• Take actionable steps to advance open education at their institutions
• Draw upon the contributions of #OpenEd22 community members through a collaborative document

Sign up to receive a notification (or provide feedback) on this resource: https://bit.ly/interest_hek12 

This presentation builds on the presenters' 2021 OpenEd presentation, titled "Boundary Spanners: Bridging Gaps Between Higher Education and PreK12" which asserted that many personnel in higher education want to share their knowledge with a broader audience but lack the ability to create materials that best meet the needs of PK12 students. Over the past year we have developed a toolkit for higher education faculty, librarians, instructional designers, graduate students, and undergraduates who aspire to build respectful and productive outreach relationships and open educational resources for and with PreK12 teachers. The openly-licensed toolkit includes editable course materials (readings, slides and presentation transcripts, sample communication templates, assignments and partnership evaluation forms) for self-study and guiding graduate and undergraduate students through diverse topics including working with minors, educational standards-related issues, copyright, open-licensing, and acceptable uses of third-party works, empowering teachers to provide their expertise, and adapting and sharing openly-licensed works. Funding for the toolkit was provided in part by the IMLS-sponsored Scholarly Communication Notebook.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Identify significant pain points in higher education outreach to PreK12
• Envision applications for the materials in higher education settings
• Discuss issues related to next steps for OER-making collaborations at their higher education or PreK12 institutions

Open educational resources (OER) can serve as a powerful tool to help educators facilitate class discussions about race and equity. Yet, some educators may be unsure of how to locate and utilize relevant OER and what their role should be in these important conversations. How can we better understand how OER are being used and communicate the ways it can empower educators?

This question helped inform new messaging research conducted by communications firm GMMB and research firm Zebra Strategies, with the support of the Hewlett Foundation. We will first review findings from messaging research with educators, administrators, and students as well as developed fictional "personas" of educators with a desire to address race and equity in their work that can help communicators effectively tailor their OER messaging to different target audiences.

Equipped with these insights, participants will be guided through a three-step framework that will put the research into action. Using an interactive format, participants will be able to craft a plan that is relevant to their local context by guiding them to clearly identify a specific goal, who they need to help reach that goal (i.e. audience), and by applying the insights from the research, developing strategies that will drive action.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Understand the motivations and drivers of educators likely to use OER and address race and equity in their education
• Incorporate research-based communications principles into their own communications about open education and equity
• Develop actionable communications frameworks centered on helping educators who want to facilitate discussions on race and address equity in their work

While students yield the greatest benefits from textbook affordability initiatives, many students may not engage in advocacy with faculty or university leaders about the high cost of their education. Students may lack the knowledge or skill (like knowing who to talk to or what to say), the confidence to reach out, or may believe that their voice doesn't matter and they can't make a difference. This presentation describes a grant-funded, tiered student training program designed to promote grassroots student advocacy for textbook affordability. In this presentation, Textbook Affordability Student Ambassadors will highlight critical features of the training program, strengths of the initiative and opportunities for future growth, and share news of the campus-wide achievements made by students.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Describe strategies for leveraging student passion and skill to promote textbook affordability goals
• Understand what students need to become involved in making their voices heard on campus
• Describe campus stakeholders who may be partners in textbook affordability for students

Policy is one of the key ingredients for sustainable, effective open education efforts. More than a decade of coordinated open education advocacy has paid off with significant advancements. In the United States, Congress has established a federal grant program for open textbook programs, and numerous significant state-level policy initiatives have led to increased adoption, awareness, and creation of open educational resources. In Canada, sustained provincial support for open education programs has laid groundwork for potential national action. Across North America and the world, the opportunity around open education policy has been underscored by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This session will provide attendees with an overview of open education policy in the U.S. and Canada led by experienced advocates engaged in the day-to-day work. We'll review exciting developments from the past year and provide a look into what goes into big policy wins, along with analysis of what the long-term impact of these policies will be. We'll also share insight into what's coming up in the next year, including the outlook on potential national developments, which state and provincial policy trends to watch, and how open education advocates can best take action in their communities.

The discussion will be enriched by including both the U.S. and Canadian perspectives, drawing analysis and lessons learned from both contexts. Speakers also have their roots in student advocacy, so particular emphasis will be given to the important role of students in advancing policy. Whether you are an experienced advocate or completely new to policy, we hope you will participate!

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Explain key open education-related policy trends throughout the United States and Canada
• Identify upcoming open education policy opportunities that may emerge in the next year
• Apply recommendations and resources for how to advance open education policy in your local context
• Reflect on key differences in policy development between the American and Canadian contexts

We would like to submit a proposal about the Open Educational Resources (OER) Leaders Network in Quebec. We would first present an overview of the context on OER in Canada and Quebec as well as the motivations for the creation of the OER Leaders Network within the framework of the Digital Plan (funded by the Ministry of Education in Quebec) for higher education. The Ministry of Education wanted to establish a network of OER leaders as a community of practice that would be built through a series of activities, meetings, webinars including a week of intensive training offered by the Creative Commons organization, which resulted in certification for those who participated. We will explore the challenges of implementing this network as well as those related to its ongoing continuity and development

Moreover, and more importantly, the intention of this presentation is to describe the concepts and prototypes that were developed during this week of intensive training (on Creative Commons Open Licenses) with participants from this network (librarians, teachers, educational advisors from the post-secondary education community (college and university)). These innovative, complementary and collaborative projects were focused on OER training, promotion and research, providing a toolkit to equip and empower the network. These tools and prototypes really deserve to be documented and promoted.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Identify and describe the situation et emergence of the OER movement in Quebec
• Identify specific strategies for collaborating with practitioners and create a community of practice
• Learn about an innovative portfolio and tool kit for the development of Open Education

For the past 4 years, the HBCU Affordable Learning Community has been building the organizational, programmatic, and technical foundation for their Affordable Learning Solutions program for all HBCUs. Nine (9) HBCUs have been institutionalizing the Affordable Learning Solutions strategies, modelled after the programs develop by the California State University, MERLOT, and Skills Commons which are internationally recognized for providing access to free and open educational resources to millions of faculty, staff, students, and the broader education and workforce communities. Another eight (8) have initiated some elements of an AL$ project on their campus. The leaders of HBCU institutions such as Tennessee State University, Southern University, Bethune Cookman University and others within the HBCU AL$ community, in partnership with MERLOT-SkillsCommons have designed an open portal that provides easy access to:

• The largest aggregate collection of free and open e-textbooks, open courseware, open access journals, open learning objects, and more.
• Over 50 general education courses with multiple free and open e-textbooks aligned with the course curriculum.
• Free and open collections of virtual labs in STEM and workforce development curriculum.
• Over 100 free and open teaching ePortfolios that showcase faculty's adoption of OER across a broad range of disciplines.
• A free and open library of planning tools, guidelines, and professional development resources to support HBCUs developing and implementing their own AL$ programs.
• Free and open methods for sharing their use, reuse, revision, remixing, redistribution, and retention of OER that they have adopted and authored.

The MERLOT project has been scaling the adoption of free and open educational resources across the nation and around the world since 1997. Other higher education systems have already institutionalized the CSU's Affordable Learning Solutions program such as the University System of Georgia, and the Open SUNY system. "Putting educational innovations into practice" has been the mission of the MERLOT project and our ability to cost-effectively design and deploy open educational services such as derivative AL$ websites for institutions, enables us to fulfill this mission. Through the MERLOT institutional partnership processes, we learn about the innovative practices from our collaborators and in turn incorporates these innovations into MERLOT's baseline services.

The session will cover the research findings on the student adoption of Open Education Resources (OER) and their recommendations which include the following:

1) The need for OER awareness and benefits .
2) The need for hands on workshops.
3) The need for culturally related materials.
4) The need for more information about OER in their discipline.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• The participant will understand student needs and readiness for successfully adopting and creating OER
• The participant will understand strategies for adopting and creating culturally relevant OER materials
• The participant will understand Student Effectiveness of professional development programs to build capacities for AL$
• The participant will understand Student Qualities of existing tools and technologies (e.g. MERLOT and others) to support AL$ programs

Feb 24th, 2022 changed the lives of thousands of librarians in Ukraine. On that morning, Russia launched a terrible large-scale war against Ukraine. Efforts are destroying the Ukrainian people as a nation, erasing its history, culture, science, and education.

Despite this, Ukrainian librarians are determined to continue supporting students and teachers: often in extreme conditions. They are taking the chance to implement Open Education (OE) solutions at a time when most at need.

It is still early days for OER in Ukraine. In recent years, the Ministry of Education and Science has prioritised engaging in more systematic work to bring Ukrainian academia closer to the European research and innovation community. Select open practices exist in some institutions; however, OE and OER are not yet mentioned in official national documents.

Since 2007, academic and university libraries have embraced openness and explained it to academics. Starting in 2019, the academic library of the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technology (USUST) has been working on OER locally (for teachers and librarians), nationally (for university librarians), and internationally. The experience gained with the European Network of Open Education Librarians, e.g. in workshops, survey participation, translating OER into Ukrainian or via contacts from different countries, has been extremely useful.

At the university level, faculty discussions on the benefits and opportunities of OER for distance or blended learning (e.g. during the COVID-19 pandemic) are ongoing. However, the interest of teachers/authors has been limited to isolated cases until now.

But the librarians continued their "Small Step Tactics - Little by little, but constantly!"

During wartime, the USUST's rector and vice-rectors have given more of a green light to the OER community, supporting the library's calls for introducing new models of information support for distance learning in Ukrainian. As a result, we have held meetings with key stakeholders; started conducting library consultations for teachers as potential OER authors to cover copyright and licencing. We also saw over 200 academics attend an online event, something we had never seen before. We have looked at technical possibilities to create, curate and preserve open textbooks and use multimedia in them, developed guidelines to produce open textbooks, created an open textbook and placed it in the institutional repository and in the Open Research Library. We have started to develop two new ones.

This has come about through the focus and determination of many USUST teachers and librarians. They share noble and strategic goals of great importance. This undertaking protects social justice and inclusion for current and future generations of students. It is crucial for those wounded in this war who will not be able to attend university physically but WANT TO STUDY AND HAVE THE RIGHT TO DO IT.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Learn more about the Ukrainian context of OER and OE
• Have a better perspective on the work Ukrainian Librarians are doing in a time of high-level crisis
• Analyse and discuss which aspects of this experience can inspire them to move forward in their context

The Regional Leaders of Open Education Network (RLOE) centers on building diverse human networks with a focus on perspectives that shift power to marginalized communities. Our model aims to create conditions for the inclusion of diverse voices to shape a new vision for open education critical to OE sustainability.

The RLOE network explores open education leadership and community expansion with social justice and equity at the forefront. The following components and stages of network development define our work:

1. The network is composed of people across the United States and Canada in these roles: leadership advisors, collaborating open education and underserved student-support experts, students that serve as mentors to faculty/staff/admin, and program participants. Our advisors, collaborators and student mentors are heavily represented by people with lived experiences and identification with BIPOC and/or LGBTQ communities.

2. We ran three cohorts of 30-38 program participants per cohort: Fall 2021, Winter 2022, and Spring 2022. Our open RLOE.org website provides content for learning, links to numerous resources, and a space for connection.

3. We began each cohort with synchronously and asynchronously building an online community for three weeks that grapples with contextualizing OER and Open Pedagogy within the enormous systemic problems inequity and racism bring to students who are often underserved and underrepresented. During these weeks, participants were paired with our collaborating experts that helped them begin the process of open education strategic plan development that targets underserved students.

4. After the three weeks, participants have ongoing monthly check-ins with their assigned collaborators and as much ongoing support as they desire throughout the duration of the grant period (2021-2022).

5. Leveraging OE Global's OEG Connect platform, asynchronous discussions in the RLOE OEG Connect group continue during the year.

6. We also run monthly RLOE "un-webinars" that are opportunities for participants from any of the cohorts to explore particular topics more deeply, engage in discussion, share ongoing development of their strategic plans and get support.

7. We held an in-person RLOE Summer Summit in Boston in July 2022 consisting of many members of the RLOE network to share ideas and continue community building.

In this session, RLOE network members will share how they are leveraging the power of open education to "lead from the middle''. Representative participants will talk about their process of strategic plan development and how their individualized plans align with their particular institutional stage of readiness and mission.

As we consider priorities for the future of RLOE, we consider these questions: How are networks key to the sustainability of Open Education? How can we expand the inclusivity, effectiveness, and connections of the RLOE network both within and beyond North America?

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Understand what the Regional Leaders of Open Education Network is and why it is important for Open Education sustainability
• Explain the value in building diverse networks and empowering underrepresented communities to become leaders of open education
• Describe who our underserved students are and how to support student success
• See models for open education strategic plans that target marginalized communities
• Learn how to support or become involved in the RLOE network

Many institutions, states and school districts are using Open Educational Resources (OER) for reasons that are as much about innovation as they are about economy. OER are available for any curriculum and can be accessed, used, adapted, and re-distributed at no cost. And with careful consideration in the creation and curation process, they can be accessible to learners with disabilities and others who need accessibility supports to be successful in their learning. In this interactive session, we'll introduce openly available protocols for evaluating the accessibility of created or curated OERs in a number of formats (Word and Google documents, PDFs, videos, and more).

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Define what is meant when we say a resource is accessible
• Explain the four foundational principles of accessibility in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
• Get started vetting for accessibility with an openly available protocol
• Get started with creating accessible materials using readily-available tools and with guidance from an openly available protocol

The OER Starter Kit for Program Managers is an open peer-reviewed and open copyedited textbook that was published this year to help individuals and groups who want to build and manage an open education program. The text covers learning about open educational practices, soliciting team members, collecting and reporting data on your program's outcomes, and more!
Join the contributing authors to learn about the book's creation process and how you can leverage its content in your own work. This session will start with an overview of our project's design and production, before jumping into an open discussion with the audience about the work involved in managing open education programs.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Understand, replicate, and customize our open peer-review and open copyediting process in the publication of their own open textbooks
• Apply "The OER Starter Kit for Program Managers" in ways that fit their local needs
• Extrapolate lessons learned from other program managers for use in their own context

Panelists will discuss their grant Remixing Open Textbooks through an Equity Lens (ROTEL): Culturally Relevant Open Textbooks for High Enrollment General Education Courses and Career and Professional Courses at Six Public Massachusetts Colleges' goal to create 72 culturally-relevant textbooks to improve student learning outcomes, particularly from underserved communities.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Determine strategies to identify, engage, and involve key stakeholders
• Identify opportunities to incorporate external collaboration with community members and subject matter experts
• Create a process for supporting OER design: onboarding faculty to an Open publishing process, locating content, assessing for cultural relevance, building and maintaining in a CMS
• Discuss KPIs and their importance to assessing impact using a COUP Framework (i.e., Cost, Outcome, Usage, and Perceptions)

Awarded the 2020 U.S. Department of Education Open Textbook Pilot 3-year grant, the California Consortium for Equitable Change at Hispanic Serving Institutions with OER (CC ECHO) is developing culturally relevant OER and faculty training materials to meet the critical needs of postsecondary students at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). Allan Hancock College, College of the Canyons, College of Marin, and West Hills College Lemoore are the four community colleges that lead this consortium.

Twenty OER projects are in development that vary in scope from a first of its kind microscopy cellular slide collection and lab materials to textbooks and ancillaries for various disciplines. These free and open resources have been carefully curated to address gaps in high-impact courses across the curriculum. A few of the initial projects include an Ethnic Studies textbook, a Structural Racism Guidebook for Faculty, an interactive Human Sexuality textbook as well as materials for Computer Organization, English, and Kinesiology. All developed through a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion lens to ensure that students' lived experiences are included and structural biases can be identified and addressed. Additionally, OER and equity training modules for staff and faculty have been co-created to facilitate and promote the sustainability of these resources. Dissemination of OER and training materials is targeted at faculty and students at California Community Colleges and federally recognized urban and rural HSIs, emerging HSIs, and national colleges and universities.

Join us to learn more about the CC ECHO grant and to see a showcase of our completed and in progress OER projects!

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Learn about completed and upcoming CC ECHO OER projects
• Ensure that diverse voices and perspectives are represented in OER
• Understand how a college can adopt grant-created OER and faculty training

This presentation will consider principles of open learning design, as explored in our forthcoming book chapter which considers the position of open learning designers as ‘Thirdspace professionals', and highlights our lens as open advocates, open researchers as well as learning designers within higher education (HE) contexts. An intentional, reflective, and open learning design can provide the impetus for a "rethink and redesign" (Ladson-Billings, 2021, p. 73) of teaching and learning environments and curricula. We propose and expand the conception of intentional, reflective and open learning design. Through conceptual frameworks and personal experiences, we explore how an intentional open learning design seeks to honour all voices. Designing for openness encourages negotiation of practices in HE learning spaces (Cronin, 2017), emphasizes the importance of peer review and critical approaches to knowledge (Paskevicius & Irvine, 2019), and advocates for opening at the margins (Bali et al., 2020). Within the presentation, we would like to expand upon some key concepts from the chapter which include: how to design for human-centered learning within learning ecosystems shaped by personal and professional learning experiences, digital fluency awareness, relationship-building, assessment strategies and learning pathways with an emphasis on process, and learning as process over learning as product. We will also consider how community, networks and a "knowledge-creating culture" (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2018 p. 86) facilitate sustainable learning that will shape the future iteration of these shared guiding principles. A variety of open learning design potential characteristics and possible activity and learning design examples will be explored. Participants in this presentation will explore and develop an awareness relating to their personal connections to open learning design. Participants can contribute to an open document with lived experiences and examples of the principles of open learning design in action.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Develop awareness of open learning design perspectives and approaches
• Consider how open learning design practices can be integrated into a variety of learning contexts
• Identify challenges to open learning design from contextual roles and responsibilities
• Examine research relevant to open learning design principles and practices
• Share how open learning design impacts higher education while considering impact to students and educators

For more see our book chapter - ‘Open Learning Designers on the Margins’ - https://doi.org/10.25375/uct.21355089  

Librarians have played a crucial role in establishing, leading, and managing OER programs across all types of higher education institutions. As they increasingly take on the responsibility of running OER initiatives on campuses, there have been variations in positions, responsibilities, workload, and support from their institutions.

In this presentation, we will talk about how we transitioned from our former roles to the current positions we now occupy. More specifically, from a community college librarian where OER was just a part of the job to a full-time OER librarian at a research university. Another involving the transition from an Open Education faculty librarian at a research university to a full-time Open Pedagogy focused staff position at another research university. We will discuss the experiences that led to our decision to leave our former institutions and the challenges we face as we take on our current responsibilities. The many issues surrounding OER and the labor that goes into a librarian's work is a conversation not often discussed but one that needs to happen transparently in order to continue building sustainable OER programs. We will discuss specifically - emotional and invisible labor, overwhelming pressure to succeed and workloads, and the process of transitioning from one institution to another and how that's changed our work. Whether you are thinking about transitioning to a new role, changing institutions, or planning to take on more OER responsibilities, this presentation is for you.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Gain a new perspective on the experiences of librarians transitioning into new roles and institutions who are working in open education
• Understand the decisions that come into play when making career decisions
• Apply the lessons learned from this presentation to future opportunities in open education

Slides for Download
Slides as a Single Webpage

The Driving OER Sustainability for Student Success (DOERS3) Collaborative is a group of 28 (and growing) public higher education systems and statewide/provincewide organizations that are committed to supporting student success by promoting free, customizable open educational resources (OER). Launched in 2018, DOERS3 helps member organizations implement, scale, and sustain OER by advancing research and policy, sharing tools and learnings, and showing how OER can foster equity and student success.

DOERS3 positions member organizations to realize the promise of high-quality, accessible, and sustainable OER implementations to achieve equity and student success at scale. Leveraging the collective strength of the Collaborative, DOERS3 members build capacity to take established OER initiatives to scale and shape national and state innovation in the areas of OER research, data, policy, accessibility, equity and quality.

Join four experienced DOERS3 leaders, from four regions of North America, who will share updates and insights gained through their membership in DOERs, their networking experiences, and their works within the focal areas of Capacity Building, Equity, and Research working groups.

This session will start with a presentation on the exciting work of the DOERS3 Collaborative, include an interactive discussion between panelists on the learnings to date through the collaboration, and then move to audience Q&A so participants can engage with the presenters and raise pressing questions.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Articulate what the DOERs3 collaborative is and how membership contributes to networking and sustainability of OER

Researchers will share findings from two studies that explored whether and how OER use leads to more open and equity-oriented instructional practices in postsecondary settings, and, in one study, how these changes were experienced by students. Summary presentations on the two studies will be followed by Q&A with participants.

Across the two studies, researchers explored the ways in which instructors incorporated open and culturally responsive practices into their courses and the kinds of institutional supports needed to enable this transformation. One study involved interviews with faculty, students and administrators, and course observations at eight community colleges that were purposefully selected for their institutional commitments to OER. The primary aim was to understand how instructors used affordances of OER to transform instruction, how they conceptualized equity in relation to their OER use, and what contextual factors supported or impeded the use of open educational practices. The other study involved interviews with faculty across six academic departments, two each at three comprehensive universities within the University System of Maryland. The primary aim was to understand faculty use of OER in relation to the content and teaching affordances theoretically made possible by open licensing.

Both found that instructional innovation enabled by OER is still emergent. The first study identified a number of ways in which a targeted group of instructors have changed teaching practices and developed a framework that maps out what the dimensions of open and culturally responsive practices can look like across course components. The presenters will provide an introduction to the framework and share examples of practices observed in their research.

The second study found that faculty had a strong interest in capitalizing on the content affordances made possible by open licensing, particularly with respect to adaptation of content, but identified significant barriers to that activity. The presenter will share an analytical checklist to help those supporting faculty in adapting OER understand the conditions that would enable that adaptation to take place. The study also found little evidence of open pedagogy or other significant changes to instructional practices accompanying the move to OER, and the presenter will discuss some implications related to this finding.

As time allows, we will seed the Q&A session with these questions:
1. What is an open educational practice that you have used in a course, and what was the impact?

2. What challenge(s) have you experienced or do you foresee in using an open educational practice?

3. How does your institution currently support changes in instructional practice as faculty move to OER?

4. What other supports would be needed to support open educational practices at your institution?

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Identify some ways in which OER use can enable open and culturally responsive practices across key elements of a course
• Describe individual and institutional barriers to adopting open and culturally responsive instructional practices
• Identify steps their institution might take to support OER-enabled instructional transformation

OER programs often start with affordability as its primary goal. This is particularly true because of the exorbitant cost of college education and the need to provide learning materials that are not only affordable but tailored to the needs of the learners who will benefit from them. As with all OER initiatives in college campuses, the support and partnership with students to advocate and sustain the efforts are of critical importance.

In this presentation, student government leaders from the Associated Students of Michigan State University (ASMSU) will talk about OER advocacy and partnership with the OER librarian at the MSU Libraries. Students will share their experiences in advocating for OER usage, adoption, and creation through the drafting of the OER Bill, leading the OER awareness week, funding support, and other strategies that will inspire others to take action. More importantly, we will share our stories of how OER has impacted our lives as students beyond cost savings. We invite everyone to engage with us as we unpack our stories against the backdrop of the upheaval we have experienced in the last two years brought about by the global pandemic.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Learn about ways to engage students in OER advocacy
• Understand how OER has impacted students as they navigated the challenges of online learning
• Be inspired by the stories we share

As a community-driven professional development program, the Textbook Success Program (TSP) has been engaging individuals and institutional representatives in open publishing across North America to create and adapt OER in a supportive and collaborative learning environment through facilitated cohort and team work. Participants collaborate on key issues revolving around equity-centred open education practices and connect with the broader Open Education community to strengthen (inter)institutional capacity for future open publishing projects.

Since the first long publishing cohort launched in 2019, the TSP program has grown rapidly. Many higher education institutions have engaged with the TSP, and the Rebus Community has continued to support the creation of accessible, equitable and inclusive resources and learning experiences. Our curriculum is regularly reviewed and facilitated by committed Open Education advocates who are also recent TSP graduates. This reflects our continuing program evolution in ways that describe our evolving practices of human care and inclusive open publishing support.

Our session intends to demonstrate how the inclusive facilitation of the Textbook Success Program works to support positive change across the three central aspects of education: the practice (the mindset to know and do better); the pedagogy (actions taken to bring change into our classrooms); and the policy (requiring leadership-induced shifts in the university system). We frame what is important about open educational resources and practices. We focus on the equity-centred approach advanced by Venet (2021, 17), which requires a fundamental shift from a reactive stance to a universal proactive approach implementing practices and systems that allow for the building and maintenance of an equity-centred ecology in which we can juggle practice, pedagogy, and policy simultaneously.

We hope to show how the facilitation of inclusive professional development in cohorts can help shift equity to the centre of teaching at universities and support the building of sustainable personal alliances and/or institutional structures that continuously foster equitable teaching and learning. In addition to highlighting how inclusive cohort facilitation enables positive change, we will discuss certain aspects of facilitator training, past challenges in programming, and solutions that improve the quality of professional development.

References:
Venet, Alex Shevrin. (2021). Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Understand the role of the Textbook Success Program in facilitating equity-centred open education resources
• Learn how TSP facilitation supports practice, pedagogy, and policy to promote open education
• Appreciate how collaboration among different stakeholders improves processes in OER development at the institutional level
• Plan for a project/ initiative of comparable nature in their institutions

Open pedagogy refers to assignments that are created by students for an audience beyond the instructor, often using digital tools. In this process, students have the potential to develop materials, collaborate, and express their own unique ideas through active engagement with a real-world audience. While research shows many benefits to using open pedagogy in the K12 classroom, it is still not widely used at that level. As teacher educators, we see this as an equity issue as open pedagogy assignments have the potential to center students' unique ideas and perspectives through dialogic engagement. Despite this benefit, we recognize a resistance to open pedagogy due to a lack of personal experience and knowledge around the use of open pedagogy assignments. We argue teacher educators have an opportunity to increase the use of open pedagogy in K12 schools by modeling open pedagogy, providing a space for practicing teachers to explore their own experience with assignments, and encouraging reflection of learning through open pedagogy. Ultimately, we see teacher educators' intentional instructional design around open pedagogy as a way for practicing teachers to engage in their own learning, so that it influences their own teaching practices.

Within our presentation, we are extending a previous study that looks at the importance of the collaborative nature of open pedagogy assignments for preservice and practicing teachers. Specifically, we now consider how practicing teachers reflect on their own implementation of open pedagogy assignments as it is connected to their own learning through open pedagogy assignments, their ongoing reflections, and their personal and professional use of open sources. In our presentation we share our qualitative study of approximately 20 students enrolled in a masters of education program, focused on culturally responsive pedagogy and literacy. Within two courses, students completed an open pedagogy assignment and reflected on their experiences through small group discussions, written reflection, and interviews. Findings show how practicing teachers present their identities through their own open pedagogy assignments, how it shifts their understanding of open pedagogy for their own students, and what they believe their next-steps are in implementing open pedagogy. Based on our findings, we share instructional moves that can support teacher educators and practicing K12 teachers to utilize open pedagogy to design more inclusive assignments that center students' perspectives.

Within our session, we will:
Engage in a community-building activity
Share a framework for understanding open pedagogy assignments in the K12 classroom
Share our study on the impact of teacher educators' open pedagogy assignments
Engage in a discussion on implications for teacher educators and practicing teachers
*Throughout the presentation, we will have opportunities for discussion and reflection

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Understand open pedagogy
• Identify open pedagogy assignments for teacher educators and practicing teachers
• Understand opportunities for open pedagogy to center student perspectives
• Apply findings to create open pedagogy assignments in the K12 classroom

This statewide professional development course was created by library faculty member Jen Klaudinyi at Portland Community College. The course explores how open educational practices and equity-informed teaching approaches can improve curricular materials and remove barriers to student success. The core of the course is a four-week exploration in small groups to build learning communities that can dive into innovative ideas together. Optionally, participants may continue the course for another four weeks to implement their learning by revising or creating a professional development resource, OER and equity plan, or other relevant materials related to next-steps.

Open Oregon Educational Resources contracted with RMC Research in summer 2020 to conduct research on the impact of the Equity and Open Education Faculty Cohort Model. This presentation will share the results of that research, including analysis of faculty and student surveys, faculty interviews, and a faculty case study. RMC's findings show that this professional development model is effective and can be adopted/adapted by other states and systems with confidence.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Access an openly licensed course that explores how open ed practices and equity-informed teaching improve curricular materials and remove barriers to student success
• Access faculty- and student-facing instruments to assess PD in equity and open ed
• Consider challenges faculty face when incorporating open ed practices and equity-informed teaching into their courses
• Understand which elements of PD contribute to success in incorporating open ed practices and equity-informed teaching

Link to slide deck
Link to handout
Link to expansion one-sheet

Numerous pieces of legislation around textbooks, OER, and inclusive access have been passed across the United States the past few years. In Texas, SB 810-focused on transparency around OER-was passed in 2017. In 2021, Texas passed HB 1027, mandating transparency around inclusive access programs.

In this panel discussion Texas Digital Library OER Ambassadors will share experiences working with their respective campus partners to implement practical and innovative solutions in response to this legislation. This panel will have a special focus on the innovative sleuthing and problem-solving necessary to craft frameworks supporting these mandates. Librarians will also shed light on the practical mechanics necessary for setting textbook legislation into motion at Texas institutions, including ensuring representation of critical players on system-wide and institutional task forces and highlighting virtues of the legislation in conversations with campus partners.

The Texas Digital Library (TDL) is a collaborative consortium based in Texas and rooted in higher education. Texas Digital Library builds capacity among its membership for ensuring equitable access to and preservation of digital content of value to research, instruction, cultural heritage, and institutional memory. In 2020, TDL expanded its services to include support for Open Educational Resources (OER). Charged with developing a Community of Practice, TDL's OER Ambassador program provides a forum for member libraries to discuss and share challenges and achievements around OER initiatives that impact student success, retention, graduation rates, and the cost of higher education for college students in Texas.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Create a game-plan to support cross-campus collaboration in support of legislative mandates around OER and textbooks
• Leverage OER and textbook legislation to help improve the campus experience for students
• Connect with campus partners to navigate complex technological and infrastructure challenges posed by legislative mandates around OER and textbooks

The State of Connecticut launched an OER grant program for Connecticut higher education institutions in 2019. This presentation will focus on the development of the program from the initial state legislation, to the formation of a representative statewide council, to program implementation and the successful completion of our third grant cycle. We will share our experience designing the grant program within the legislative parameters, including defining "impact" in an inclusive way, developing the application system, evaluation criteria, awards process, and the reporting and dissemination requirements. Additionally, we will discuss the evolution of the program based on successes, challenges, lessons learned, and updates to the original legislation, which included the development and delivery of a survey measuring the status of OER across institutions of higher education in Connecticut. Finally, we will provide attendees with a curated list of resources to help them in advocating for their own statewide grant program.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Identify the features of a state-wide grant program that promotes the review, adoption, and creation of open educational resources and implementation of open educational practices
• Explore aspects of the design, implementation, ongoing management, and evaluation of a volunteer-run statewide grant program
• Utilize internal and external expertise in the design, development, and implementation of a survey instrument that measures the status of open education

Slides

Climate change, and the resulting harm to our global biodiversity, is one of the world's most pressing challenges. The complexity of the climate crisis requires global, national, and local actions informed by multidisciplinary research and educational resources. Creative Commons, SPARC and EIFL are launching a 4-year global Open Climate Campaign to address this challenge.

The goal of this multi-year campaign is to promote open access to research and OER to accelerate progress towards solving the climate crisis and preserving global biodiversity. If we are going to solve these global challenges, the knowledge (research, data, educational resources, software, hardware) about them must be open.

https://openclimatecampaign.org

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• Learn the details of the Open Climate Campaign and how to join
• Understand the important role open education specifically and open knowledge generally has to play in solving the world's most pressing challenges
• Discuss how connecting open education with other social and environmental justice movements can positively affect the public good

This session will explore how the University of Idaho Library is leveraging a unique blend of Open materials, course reserves, and controlled digital lending to create zero cost courses for students that forefront faculty's intellectual freedom and autonomy to design courses that feature a blend of open and traditional materials.
While the University of Idaho Library offers robust support of Open in the form of fellowships and funding, we have found that many of our faculty have particular texts that cannot be easily replaced with an open analog at this point in time. By combining new course reserves technology with the ability to embed in course management, a new controlled digital lending program, and a renewed commitment to our Open programs, the Library is now supporting more zero or low cost courses than ever, with whole departments taking advantage of these programs to create (approaching) zero material cost degree pathways.

By attending this session, attendees will be able to:

• A pragmatic approach to Open doesn't have to mean abandoning Open programs, digital reserves can be a "gateway" to more formal Open practices
• A well designed LMS and course reserves integration can help supercharge the impact of e-license and reserves options
• Students care about cost and impact not the license
• Controlled digital lending restrictions and limited licenses remain a source of frustration for students, demonstrates how fundamental "access" is as a benefit of a truly open text

https://bit.ly/OpenEd-CCT