Showing posts with label eLearning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eLearning. Show all posts

Monday, May 17, 2021

iDevelop – NSCC’s Faculty Professional Development eNewsletter (5/17/2021)

Welcome to iDevelop, a weekly eNewsletter providing faculty with information about professional development opportunities at NSCC. The intent of this eNewsletter is to spotlight the various professional development events for faculty in one convenient location as well as share best practices, resources and tips related to the teaching practice. iDevelop is being brought to you by the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation (CTLI).  

  
Sign reads: Got 20 minutes? Then you have time to learn with the Monday Morning Mentor
  
20 Minute Online Professional Development
The Monday Morning Mentor series, professional development in twenty minute snippets, will resume in the fall semester on August 23rd with the session, “How Can I Create a Meaningful Online Learning Experience for Students?”

Looking for transcripts of past Monday Morning Mentor sessions? Please email ctli@northshore.edu with the session title and we can provide you with the transcript and supplementary materials. 

Other Professional Development Opportunities
  • MCO Conference on eLearning. The 16th Annual Conference on eLearning by Mass Colleges Online (MCO) will take place on June 2nd as a virtual event between 8:00am – 1:00pm. The MCO Conference is a great opportunity to explore and discuss how colleges and universities in Massachusetts are designing and delivering online and hybrid education. The event is free for North Shore Community College faculty and staff. Please contact the CTLI for registration link. More information on the conference is available at http://masscollegesonline.org/conference/.
  • REMOTE: The Connected Faculty Summit. “After a year unlike any other, education continues evolving to solve for new challenges and priorities. REMOTE: The Connected Faculty Summit, hosted by ASU, provides a free forum on June 9 and June 10 to identify and promote the best possible pedagogy, techniques, and tools for online and blended learning, helping educators design the most engaging experience for learners. Join Pearson and thousands of educators, administrators, and thought leaders worldwide to explore the best of what we learned this past year about hybrid courses, blended environments, best practices for student engagement, driving innovation and outcomes with technology, and so much more.” (Summit description) More information and registration link available at https://www.theremotesummit.org/. 
  • 10th Annual NSCC Faculty Technology Summer Institute. In June, the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation (CTLI) will be holding a virtual Faculty Technology Summer Institute. he Summer Institute's theme is "Humanizing the Online Learning Experience" and the sessions will focus on faculty professional development around fostering presence in virtual classrooms as well as engaging students in a collaborative community through student to student interaction, student to instructor interaction, and student to content interaction. The Summer Institute will take place on Tuesday, June 15th through Thursday, June 17th from 9:30am-12:00pm. Space is limited to 45 faculty and is first come first served so please RSVP by Friday, May 28th. Faculty who attend the Summer Institute will receive a small stipend. Please contact the CTLI for registration link.
  • Dis/Misinformation: Perspectives and Pedagogies for Educators in the Post-Truth Era. Harvard University's Global Studies Outreach Center is offering their 9th annual free summer educator workshop virtually over a two-week period: July 26 - August 6. Participants can join for all or some of the sessions offered over those two weeks. More information is available at https://globalstudiesoutreach.harvard.edu/. 
Upcoming Webinars of Interest
  • How to Create Active and Engaging Learning Experiences with Zoom Breakout Rooms (Contact North webinar) on Thursday, May 20th from 11:00am - 12:00pm EST. “Zoom’s breakout rooms provide a unique opportunity to learn to create active and engaging learning experiences for students. In this webinar, participants will learn how to: move beyond holding ineffective, unstructured breakout room discussions; create distinctive breakout room roles for students to promote active participation; employ a variety of tools and techniques to enhance breakout room experiences; pre-assign students to breakout rooms or allow them to choose their own; design creative ways for students to report breakout room outcomes to the whole class; and make use of breakout rooms in large enrolment courses” (webinar description). More information and registration link are available at https://teachonline.ca/webinar/how-create-active-and-engaging-learning-experiences-zoom-breakout-rooms-1.
Interesting Articles and Resources
Share Your Teaching Resources and Professional Development Opportunities
If you have any teaching resources that you would like to share with other NSCC faculty or know of any other professional development opportunities that NSCC faculty might be interested in, please feel free to send them to ctli@northshore.edu and we will share them in the upcoming issues of iDevelop.

This will be the last issue of iDevelop for the spring semester. We will publish the first one of the fall semester on August 23, 2021. We hope you have enjoyed this weekly eNewsletter and would love your input. Please let us know if you have any feedback on the format, content, and resources or if there is anything else you would like to see in the eNewsletter.

Thank you,
CTLI  
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Monday, September 28, 2020

iDevelop – NSCC’s Faculty Professional Development eNewsletter (9/21/2020)

Welcome to iDevelop, a weekly eNewsletter providing faculty with information about professional development opportunities at NSCC. The intent of this eNewsletter is to spotlight the various professional development events for faculty in one convenient location as well as share best practices, resources and tips related to the teaching practice. iDevelop is being brought to you by the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation (CTLI).  
  
Sign reads: Got 20 minutes? Then you have time to learn with the Monday Morning Mentor
  
20 Minute Online Professional Development
The Monday Morning Mentor series will be available over the spring semester to bring you professional development in twenty minute snippets. The topic for the week of September 21st is How Can I Get Students to Engage with Course Content Before Class? The presentation is available Monday at 10:00am and is accessible through Sunday of that week. For information on accessing the presentation and supplemental materials, please view the Bulletin or the email version of iDevelop.

More information about this session (including description, topics, and learning goals) is available at https://www.magnapubs.com/product/program/how-can-i-get-students-to-engage-with-course-content-before-class/.  The complete fall 2020 schedule of Monday Morning Mentor sessions is available at http://nscclets.blogspot.com/2020/09/20-minute-mentor-online-faculty.html. 

Looking for transcripts of past Monday Morning Mentor sessions? Please email ctli@northshore.edu with the session title and we can provide you with the transcript and supplementary materials. 
  
Upcoming Webinars of Interest
  • The Dawn of the Age of Digital Learning [Virtual Summit sponsored by Arizona State University] from SEP 29 –OCT 1, 7 & 8. "The dawn of the age of digital learning has created an awakening of ingenuity, innovation and perseverance that is not defined by an individual, company, school or technology. It is an ecosystem of heart, energy and passion driven by purposeful change. This is why we bring you ASU+GSV Virtual Summit 2020 – imagining a new era in which all people have equal access to the future. Attendance will be free of charge." [from the event description on their website]. Visit https://virtual.asugsvsummit.com/2020 for more information.
      
Interesting Resources
Share Your Teaching Resources and Professional Development Opportunities
If you have any teaching resources that you would like to share with other NSCC faculty or know of any other professional development opportunities that NSCC faculty might be interested in, please feel free to send them to ctli@northshore.edu and we will share them in the upcoming issues of iDevelop.

We hope you have enjoyed this weekly eNewsletter and would love your input. Please let us know if you have any feedback on the format, content, and resources or if there is anything else you would like to see in the eNewsletter.

Thank you,
CTLI
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Spotlighting Innovations in Academic Technology at North Shore Community College


The latest edition of the Technology Across the Curriculum (TAC) newsletter, The Edge: Where Classrooms Meet Technology, is now available on North Shore Community College’s public site at: http://www.northshore.edu/faculty_staff/resources/tac.html.

The TAC program at NSCC "promotes academic excellence by stimulating and nurturing innovative ideas by faculty and professional staff that employ technology in support of teaching and learning". The TAC program supports creative uses of instructional technology inside and outside of the classroom as well as the development of new online and hybrid courses.

 Check out this year's issue to learn more about the innovations of NSCC faculty, staff, and administration in the area of academic technology.

The current issue of The Edge includes:
  • Comments from 29 TAC faculty on their projects.
  • An article by Andrea Milligan, Director of Instructional Technology and Design, and Lance Eaton, Coordinator of Instructional Design, on the Teaching and Learning Online TAC training program for faculty developing online and hybrid courses. 
  • An article by Andrea Milligan, Director of Instructional Technology and Design, and Lance Eaton, Coordinator of Instructional Design, that describes two features on Blackboard Learn that may be new to faculty: SafeAssign, a tool to help prevent plagiarism, and Rubrics, an assessment tool.
  • An article by Terri Whitney, English professor and TAC Coordinator, about the upcoming installment of a NSCC Literary Websites kiosk at the Lynn Museum which will feature three literary websites developed at NSCC, two with TAC grants.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Professional Development Through MOOCs

So it's the start of another semester and many of us are neck-deep in syllabi, new students, and recovering from winter break.  But for those that might be looking for something to stimulate and get them thinking about their work as an educator, we've assembled this collection of MOOCs that are starting up in the next week or two for you to consider signing up.

There's a great variety of them out there that can help enhance your day to day work or the bigger projects and goals in your professional life.  These were selected largely for their relevance to higher education, but we encourage you to check out some of the different MOOCs that are out there and let us know what you find! 

 Academic Integrity: Values, Skills, Action

American Education Reform: History, Policy, Practice

Bringing STEM to Light - Teaching about Light and Optics

Childhood in the Digital Age

Coaching Digital Learning - Cultivating a Culture of Change

Disciplinary Literacy for Deeper Learning

Foundations of Teaching for Learning 1: Introduction

Foundations of Teaching for Learning 2: Being a Teacher

Foundations of Teaching for Learning 3: Learners and Learning

Foundations of Teaching for Learning 4: Curriculum

Foundations of Teaching for Learning 5: Planning for Teaching and Learning

 Foundations of Teaching for Learning 6: Introduction to Student Assessment

Foundations of Teaching for Learning 7: Being a Professional

Foundations of Teaching for Learning 8: Developing Relationships

Learning through ePortfolios

Professional Web Accessibility Auditing Made Easy

Storytelling for Change

Teaching Adults: For new (and newish) Teachers

Teaching Literacy Through Film

Teaching Statistics Through Data Investigations


What MOOCs have you tried?  What has been your experience?

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Thursday, September 17, 2015

The Open Textbook Initiative at North Shore Community College


How We Got to Open Educational Resources (OER)

In fall 2013, a discussion about OER started during a meeting of the Educational Technology Innovation Group, a collection of faculty, staff and administration that meets once or twice a semester to discuss, support, problem-solve, and share some of the great things that our faculty are doing here at NSCC. From this initial discussion, Christine Goodchild (Coordinator of Public Services, NSCC Library), Andrea Milligan (Director of Instructional Technology and Design), Larry Davis (Department of History), and I began brainstorming what could be done to support the OER movement here at NSCC. After all, we were blown away by the staggering numbers we had seen surrounding the cost of textbooks for community college students ($120 per course on average; amounting to about $2,500 at the end of two years).

With the support of Karen Pangallo (Director, NSCC Library) and Michael Badolato (Dean, Academic and Faculty Support), our team explored how we could help faculty navigate OER content. Soon, Torrey Dukes (Reference Librarian, Lynn) and Dava Davanis (Coordinator Public Services, Lynn Library) joined us and we developed a LibGuide to OER. This resource continues to grow and morph, providing some great repositories of content that faculty can use for their courses in lieu of textbooks, assignments, video content, and other learning objects. 

While finishing up the first phase of the LibGuide, we heard about the Vision Project Innovation Grant call for proposals. We decided that, while the LibGuide is essential for helping faculty find OER materials, we needed to do something more palpable to help support faculty as they moved into incorporating OER. We submitted a proposal and eventually received a grant to help fund a Faculty Technology Summer Institute on OER. The Institute was a great success with some forty faculty and staff attending the Keynote Address by Nicole Allen from the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). 

Thirty two faculty attended the rest of the Summer Institute and nine faculty applied for a mini-grant from our Innovation Grant to replace a textbook with open and affordable content for their courses.  This fall, we had an additional five faculty apply for Technology Across the Curriculum Grants to also adopt, adapt, or build content for their courses and save students significant costs.  One faculty member has already launched a course with OER materials, while many of our faculty are preparing to launch their first course this fall.

Collaborating with OER

In looking at the OER movement, we realized the best strategy to pursue would be an affordability strategy. This means that when we work with faculty, we do not solely focus on OER repositories to find content, but we also rely upon the great material from the various library subscriptions. We also consider if it is possible for the student purchase to be significantly reduced somehow by mixing OER content, library resources, and a significantly cheaper book purchase than previously considered (e.g. going from $150 to $15).  
 
A neon sign that says "open"
 
The collaborative process has been rewarding for faculty and staff.  Each faculty member has been paired with an instructional designer and a librarian. The three meet regularly to find, develop and implement content for the course in a variety of ways. Some faculty have been using the substantial resources provided by the library such as their article databases, Films-On-Demand, or their great collection of digital books in ebrary. Other faculty are delving head first into completely OER content and finding free textbooks or other instructional content that they can plug into their courses for each relevant topic covered in the course. And some faculty are creating open content and contributing to the further availability of open educational resources. 

Faculty are quite energized about using OER in their courses. They are finding that using OER can change how they approach their content and students’ learning.  Several have offered the following thoughts about their experience:

Irene Fernandez
“I’m excited that I can contribute to making knowledge accessible to students. They benefit from my OER project every semester.” 

Nathan Chio
“I'm very excited about implementing OER into my African American History course. With the wealth of historical documents pertaining to African American history freely available online and in the public domain, I believe that I'll not only be able to save my students a significant amount of money but also will actually be able to offer them a better, more intellectually enriching history course.”

Anne Sears
“Working with the OTI (Open Textbook Initiative) team this year helped me think through the issues, understand fair use rules and locate rich teaching materials. I’ve put together a set of foundation readings and videos and will be able to expand case study readings and videos each semester. My students will appreciate current examples connected to specific lesson plans available in Blackboard.”

Recent Developments
These are some other developments with the OER movement at NSCC in the last few months. 

In fall 2014, Michael Badolato and Karen Pangallo launched the OER Working Group as a means of sustaining the Open Educational Resources movement at North Shore Community College.  While the Open Textbook Initiative focuses on helping faculty locate, assess, and implement OER into their courses, the OER Working Group will work on larger institutional issues regarding OER such as working with the bookstore to find printing solutions and offering tablets or with the Registrar to get special designations for OER courses. 

Professor Larry Davis was granted a sabbatical so that he could focus on working on several OER projects (mentioned elsewhere in this publication). 

Irene Fernandez and I are working on her OER textbook that she made for her sabbatical project to turn it into a physical book that can be sold in the bookstore as an alternative for students who want a physical text. 

In the spring, our team served on a panel with UMASS Amherst and the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium at UMASS Boston’s OpenEd Forum, an all-day forum dedicated to exploring and supporting OER movements in New England. We had an opportunity to discuss some of the great OER projects and our excitement about implementing OER at North Shore Community College.

If you are interested in learning more about or pursuing OER materials for your courses, please do not hesitate to contact us at itd@northshore.edu or library@northshore.edu. 


This article was originally published in The EdTech Edge, the newsletter of the Technology Across the Curriculum Committee.  The full issue can be found here.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Monday, February 16, 2015

Instructional Technology and Snow Days

Have your courses been impacted by the snow days? Are you looking for a way to continue student learning even when classes are cancelled due to weather? 
A picture of North Shore Community College Danvers Campus covered in snow in February, 2015
Source

Instructional Technology and Design has created a list of a few instructional technology tools that can be used to extend the teaching and learning environment outside the classroom walls to support your students’ engagement with the course content and facilitate your communication with them. Please contact itd@northshore.edu if you need any additional information or support to implement these in your courses.

ANGEL: A great instructional technology tool that can aid you in maintaining the continuity of your course. All face-to-face courses automatically have an ANGEL shell that provides faculty with a “private classroom” area for you and your students. In ANGEL, faculty can post announcements about the status of class with instructions on how to proceed through related learning activities; upload various types of content such as assignments, readings, lecture notes, or PowerPoint slides; link to related online resources such as YouTube videos or web sites; set up drop boxes where students can submit homework; and facilitate discussions for students to engage with the course materials. 
http://angel.northshore.edu/

Video Anywhere: A feature within ANGEL that allows faculty (and students) to easily record video anywhere in ANGEL (for example, Announcements, Pages, Discussion Forums, Drop Boxes, etc.) using their webcam, upload it to YouTube, and embed that video, as well as any other videos already uploaded to YouTube, directly into any of the content editor text boxes present within ANGEL.

 Screencast-o-matic: An easy to use screen capture software program that allows you to record anything on your computer screen (PowerPoint presentation, software program, etc) along with your voice. Screencast-o-matic can be used to create pre-recorded mini-lectures. Video files can be stored in ANGEL, on YouTube, or Google Drive. NSCC has a ProPage subscription so please contact ITD for information about pro access.
http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/

 Adobe Connect: A web-conferencing tool that can be used to facilitate interactive online course activities such as live lectures, review sessions, and online office hours. Adobe Connect supports audio, video, slide presentations, document sharing, screen sharing, whiteboard activities, chat and polling. Adobe Connect sessions can be recorded for later viewing by students who are unable to attend the live session. NSCC has several licenses for Adobe Connect so please contact ITD for more information.

TodaysMeet: A backchannel online chat tool that allows you to extend the conversation beyond the classroom and have real-time discussions.
https://todaysmeet.com/

Audacity: A free audio-recording program that can be used to create MP3 audio recordings. Audacity is simple to use and can be used to create pre-recorded mini-lectures. Audio files can be stored in ANGEL, on YouTube, or Google Drive.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets: Web-based collaborative tools (documents, presentations, or spreadsheets) that can be used by students to easily work together on a project. Available through our NSCC Gmail account under Apps.

Google Hangouts: A web-based conferencing tool that can be used to facilitate small group conversations or collaborations. A Google Hangout supports audio and video conversations, text chat, and YouTube video, screen, and Google Docs sharing. Available through our NSCC Gmail account under Apps (Google+).

YouTube: A repository of videos of all sorts with ample educational content on nearly any subject. Instructors can create videos to post here or create playlist of lectures and instructional content already available on YouTube. To share or watch a video, no account is necessary. To create a playlist or upload a video, an account is necessary. Available through our NSCC Gmail account under Apps (YouTube).

Films-On-Demand: A library database of instructional and documentary videos accessible to students and faculty through the NSCC Library. Faculty can share links to specific videos or create specialized playlists that chunk together segments from different videos. An activated library account is needed.
http://proxy6.noblenet.org/login?url=http://digital.films.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?aid=4051


What other instructional technologies have you used to extend the teaching and learning environment and to keep your classes moving forward even with snow day cancellations?

When one of my evening classes was cancelled due to snow, here is how I used various instructional technologies to keep the students on track and not miss a beat.

1. I sent an email to all my students providing them information on the activities we would be completing instead of class and directed them to the learning management system for more detailed information.

2. In the learning management system, I posted an announcement with detailed directions on the learning activities that the students needed to complete during the week to make up for the cancelled class.

3. I used Screencast-o-matic to record several mini-presentations demonstrating the key tasks and concepts covered in the chapter (we were just getting started with Excel) and walking them through the steps of the project that they needed to complete. These videos were posted up in the learning management system for students to view.

4. In the learning management system, I posted directions for a project that the students needed to work on and then submit through the assignment drop box feature of the  learning management system.

5. I also held a discussion forum in the learning management system where students posted their thoughts on and discussed with each other the benefits of using Excel, the ways it could be used personally and professionally, and the types of decisions that need to be made when creating workbooks and charts.


What specific strategies have you employed to keep the learning process going when classes are cancelled due to snow?

 




Posted by at 1 comment:
Labels: , , , ,

Thursday, September 11, 2014

20 Minute Mentor - Online Faculty Professional Development - Fall Schedule

The Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment and Academic Technology have partnered up again to bring faculty a professional development series from Magna Publications, called the 20 Minute Mentor. The goal of the  20 Minute Mentor series is to offer faculty practical professional development opportunities in twenty minute snippets that can be accessed from anywhere and at any time during the given week. Session topics cover the areas of student engagement, teaching and learning, teaching online, assessment and learning goals, and classroom management.
Word cloud of content within the blog.

 Information on how to access the  20 Minute Mentor sessions is available each week in the Bulletin and the iDevelop e-newsletter.

 New video presentations (with supplementary materials) go live at 10:00am each Monday morning and are only accessible through Sunday.

The following sessions are on the schedule for fall 2014.  
  • August 25th - How Do I Include Introverts in Class Discussions?
  • September 1st - How Do I Address Teasing and Bullying Behavior in the Classroom?
  • September 8th - How Can I Be an Effective Mentor?
  • September 15th - How Can I Enhance Students’ Self-Regulated Learning Skills?
  • September 22nd - How Can I Structure a Flipped Lesson?
  • September 29th - What Do Students Want in Online Courses?
  • October 6th - Linking, Embedding & Streaming: What’s Legal? What’s Not?
  • October 13th - What Are 5 FAQ's About Faculty Roles in the Flipped Class?
  • October 20th - What Does Copyright Ownership Mean to Me?
  • October 27th - What Happens to Learning when Students Multitask?
  • November 3rd - How Can I Enhance the Impact of Feedback in Online Classes?
  • November 10th - How Can I Make My Course Content More Accessible? 
  • November 17th - What Is Storyboarding? And How Can It Help Me Flip My Class? 
  • November 24th - What Are Five Tips for Writing Effective Learning Outcomes?
  • December 1st - How Can I Design Copyright Compliant Online Courses?
  • December 8th - Where Can I Find Flippable Moments in My Classes?
     
We would love to hear your feedback on the usefulness of these sessions. Please send your input to itd@northshore.edu.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Let’s Be Open: Answering the Big 5 Questions About Open Content for Your Classroom

The average community college student spends over $1200 annually on classroom textbooks. That means that students who complete their learning in two years will have spent close to a single-semester’s worth of their money on textbooks.  Nearly two-thirds of students at some point have not bought a textbook because of the cost (and that too has taken a toll on most of their performances within those courses). Though many of us are not aware of the specific numbers, we implicitly know and witness the result of expensive textbooks in our classes. 

For many instructors, textbooks (and their often steep prices) are a necessary evil.  Some will find ways of lessening the burden put on students by having copies available in the library for in-library use or allowing students to purchase earlier (and therefore, cheaper) editions.  But in a given course section, we’re still likely generating hundreds if not thousands of dollars profit for publishers at our students’ expense. 

But does it have to be this way?  What if the course resources and materials can be made entirely free or significantly cheap enough so that no student is making a choice between books and life expenses?  This possibility is not the future.  It is now and it’s time we take advantage of it. 
Image: Sign: Open Educational Resources
Image of OER logo
Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OER_Logo.svg

What are Open Educational Resources?

Open Education Resources (OER) are media-rich online repositories with content that faculty can use for free for their courses.  This includes but is not limited to:  textbooks, short-reads, videos, sound recordings, assignment guidelines, course notes, and even entire course packages.  The purpose of these repositories is to make materials available for all students and faculty on all subjects so that we spend less time on “reinventing the wheel” of course content and more time on engaging with our students around the course content.  Many of them are in the public domain or have what is called a Creative Commons license. Here are few examples.
 

What about access?

An immediate question of access arises with OER as they are internet based, and not all students have access to a computer (though in a 2012 NSCC technology study did show that 86% of students have laptops--to say nothing of any other devices). But let’s look at the logistics of this concern.

If a student does not have the $120 for the textbook, there is a good chance that he/she gets zero access.  In that scenario, if the argument is that one can put the book on reserve at the library for the student to use--the same argument holds true for access for OER.  Since our libraries have public-use computers, OER in this comparison is more accessible, because the student can access the online material from both campus libraries or any library that allows computer access (which is many, if not all, on the North Shore).

But if it is important to have the physical copy, many places offering free textbooks online, such as OpenStax, provide the student an opportunity to purchase a cheap print-copy of the book for $30.  For many textbooks in the math and sciences that can mean over $100 savings.

Finally, there is no delay in access with OER.  Students can access all of the content as soon as the course starts.  Instructors no longer need worry about issues of financial aid delays, late shipping by the publishers, or other issues that regularly interfere with the course lift-off. 

What about stability?

The belief that the internet is more unstable than the textbook industry might need some reconsidering.  Firstly, it should be acknowledged that textbook publishing has its own instabilities including the ability to cease publishing the book being used or to publish newer editions that may be inferior, pricier, or change things up enough to have to revise the course layout.

Secondly, even if the textbook arrives in the bookstore, many students may still have to leap through hoops to get their financial aid to cover the books (or even not have enough to cover it).  The instability of those first few weeks leaves many faculty skipping or delaying the use of course content.

Thirdly, OER content is often capable of being downloaded, edited, and inserted directly into a course shell.  This means that their stability is much more assured than the textbook.  If this is a significant concern, then one should make sure to make flexibility to download a criteria for selecting OER materials.  Though in truth, this isn’t really much of a concern any more since content available in one OER repository is often duplicated into another--that is, there are back-ups of back-ups across the Internet.

Finally, again, the content is present and ready to go from the start of the semester.  Many of us have been caught in the situation where we don’t find out until too late that the textbook we want wasn’t ordered or not enough were ordered and are left scrambling to cobble together the rest of the semester.  OER materials are available at the start and throughout the semester.


Image: Open Educational Resources - Property of Everyone sign
Image CC:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/opensourceway/6554315179/

What about quality?

Some perceive OER as lower quality because they are free.  Of course, psychological studies have shown that price influences perception.  That $200 biology textbook must be awesome whereas that free biology textbook must be a poor comparison.  Saying that there are a lot of poor selections in the OER somehow implies that this isn’t the case with textbooks, but of course, we know that’s not true.  We can look to James Loewen’s famous book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong and other similar research as a reminder of that.

Will there be poor OER material out there?  Absolutely.  However, there will also be really great content.  By using and promoting OER material, instructors will play an important role in helping colleagues sift out the good from the bad--just like they do already with textbooks.

However, OER also has the potential to deliver better content in three capacities.
  • Updating content:  Updating content in OER materials is much easier than in a textbook and the beauty is that updated content will not require another new (and costly) edition.
  • Customizing content:  Add, edit, or delete the OER resource so that it fits exactly how you want to use the material.
  • Shifting content:  Why stick with just one OER object?  Instructors can weave together the perfect course materials from numerous sources, rather than a one-size fits all source.
 

What about time?

Converting to using OER materials will take time.  There’s no question about it.  But it is time well spent, not only for your students, but for the college and academia in general.  Also, it doesn’t mean, however, that one must reinvent all of one’s courses in a single semester, but develop a strategy for how to do so in the long run.  Start with replacing one item in one course and slowly grow from there.  Faculty can also work with Instructional Technology and Design as well as the library who support such projects and will be releasing a LibGuide shortly on OER for faculty.  It will take time, but so do these things:

Finding new texts for a course (because the book went out of print).
  • Dealing with new editions of the same textbook you’re using and updating course references to the textbook.
  • Delays in teaching and learning because students don’t have access to the textbook.  
  • Answering questions about whether different versions of the textbook are acceptable.
Moreover, these things happen time and again, year after year.

Making students pay for any content beyond the course itself is the college’s means of externalizing costs at the expense of our students, and we do so for the profit of book publishers.   The final analysis is that using open educational resources not only empowers you as the instructor, it provides better access and fewer challenges to our students.  OER also fulfills the community college’s vision for civic responsibility by using, sharing, and even developing open educational resources for the public’s benefit.

This article was originally published in The EdTech Edge.  Please check it out to see other great articles about instructional technology at North Shore Community College.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)