Open Educational Resources Committee Meeting: February 18, 2021

Zoom / Conference Call

Members Attending: Annette Alvarado (Loyola University Chicago), Elizabeth Nelson (McHenry County College), Michelle Oh (Northeastern Illinois University), Susan Shultz, co-chair (DePaul University), Janet Swatscheno, co-chair (University of Illinois Chicago), Chris Sweet (Illinois Wesleyan University)

Members Absent: Anne Chernaik (College of Lake County), Dan Matthews (Moraine Valley Community College), Anne Shelley (Illinois State University)

Staff Attending: Elizabeth Clarage, Nicole Swanson

Board Liaisons Attending: Jacob Jeremiah (Oakton Community College)

Tasks Assigned

  • Janet will take minutes.
  • Committee members should email Elizabeth Clarage/ the committee listserv with potential topics related to OER challenges for the April Informal OER Discussion.
  • Elizabeth and Nicole will finalize dates for the late April/May offering of the OER Course: Understanding and Promoting Open Educational Resources.
  • Janet will start a Google doc for the Open Education Week daily email sign-up. Committee members will write posts for the CARLI OER email list during the week.

Decisions

  • January minutes were approved.
  • The committee decided that the April OER Course Alumni sessions will be opened to all CARLI members and decided that there would be a prompt to help generate discussion. The prompt will be “OER Challenges.”
  • The committee decided that it would write daily posts for the CARLI-OER email list during Open Education Week, March 1-5, 2021.

Announcements

  • Member Announcements
    • Janet: UIC’s Undergraduate Student Government is interested in donating funds to encourage faculty to use OER. The Library is interested in finding ways the funds could be spent
      • Suggestions:
        • Mini-creator fest to create ancillary material such as test banks, PowerPoint slides, etc.
        • Ask the OEN email list.
    • Chris: IWU is creating a grant program to have faculty explore using OER.
    • Sue: DePaul has wording in the university’s strategic plan about affordability, and the administration asked the library for data related to affordability.
    • Elizabeth N. created a Google form on MCC’s Library Guide so faculty can self report if they are using open educational resources and it can be made public.
  • CARLI Announcements
    • CARLI is doing a webinar series on undergraduate research.
    • Sara Benson from UIUC is going to do the Fair Use Game Show on February 25th (independently) and May 4th through CARLI.
    • May 26th and June 9th Alex Cabada from UIUC will give two session on 3D printing for teaching.
    • IPEDS— According to IPEDS and ACRL, libraries are supposed to include all open access titles if they are searchable in the library catalog
      • There are 810 titles right now in iShare from the OTL.
      • Directory of Open Access books has 33,000 titles.
    • ALA announced a new book about Open Educational Resource and CARLI is working on how to add it in the catalog as previous additions were collections not single titles.

Discussion

  • Continuing Education
    • CARLI held an informal meeting for alumni of the CARLI OER Course: Understanding and Promoting Open Educational Resources on January 27th. Attendees expressed interest in future programs which the OER Committee could be developed:
      • A session with institutions who have OER in full effect or have a strong OER program: how it was developed (from beginning to end), what worked and didn’t work, and everything in between.
      • Best practices (in general—certain things that this is how you should do for developing a program)
      • How to get support for OER / how to get OER funding
      • The OER authoring process
      • Examples of messaging to communicate OER to the right people on campus
    • There was discussion that the committee could identify some of these topics to cover in the future, we need to also look out of state for potential speakers. We could also address multiple sub-points in one session.
    • The committee could start planning two events related attendees’ suggestions:
      • Panel of successful OER programs
      • OER authoring, which could be linked to the CARLI OER Commons Hub
    • Alumni meeting details:
      • There were 18 registered for the event.
      • There was not a lot of discussion.
      • The April meeting could be open to a broader group of CARLI members than just the alumni who attended the introductory course
      • Make it open to anyone working on OER—including alumni
      • Could generate more discussion if there is a prompt.
      • Janet suggests the topic of OER Challenges:
        • Faculty participation challenges
        • Budget challenges
  • OER Course: Understanding and Promoting Open Educational Resources
    • The Course will be offered February 9, 16, 23 with Michelle and Sue as the instructors.
    • Late April/May 2021: There was a misunderstanding on who volunteered to teach. We currently have 4 instructors.
    • Anne Chernaik, Anne Shelley, Annette and Chris volunteered.
  • OER Faculty Workshop (Instructors: Annette and Dan)
    • The workshop will be offered two times: February 24 and March 23 both from: 11-1.
    • The February 24 meeting currently has 74 registered. The instructors capped registration at 100 but will reevaluate if registration reaches that number.
      • CARLI members should inform Elizabeth if they plan on paying a stipend to reviewers so Elizabeth can customize the emails that invite faculty to write reviews in the Open Textbook Library.
  • Will the OER Faculty Workshop be offered in FY 22?
    • The original plan was to develop an in-person workshop and then offer it to members and then go to campuses to give the workshop and offer stipends through CARLI. The stipends were paused for budgetary reasons.
    • There would be an expectation that the CARLI member would give a second workshop later and could use the CARLI developed material. The workshop was developed to be modular.
  • Open Education Week Activities (March 1-5, 2021)

Next Meeting

The OER Committee will meet on March 18, 2021 from 1-2pm.