Open Educational Resources Task Force Meeting: December 4, 2017

CARLI Office, Champaign

Members Attending: Anne Chernaik (College of Lake County), Chris Diaz (Northwestern University), Kathy Ladell (Northern Illinois University), Anne Shelley, chair (Illinois State University), Janet Swatscheno (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Linda Zellmer (Western Illinois University)

Members Attending by Conference Call: Annette Alvarado (Loyola University Chicago), Elizabeth Nelson (McHenry Community College) and Sue Schultz (DePaul University)

Staff Attending: Elizabeth Clarage, Anne Craig, Lorna Engels

Decisions

• Kathy Ladell will be taking notes.
• Kathy Ladell and Anne Chernaik will co-chair while Anne Shelley is away.
• Minutes for November meeting were approved.

Task Assigned

• All task force members will have their CARLI OER website content (resource and annotations for that item) to the group’s Google Docs by January 10, 2018.  
• CARLI will contact LOUIS about collaborating on an OER event.

Announcements

• Members report on what is going on at their campuses:
  • Textbook Camp at McHenry Community College January 8-12.  This event is to promote and learn about Open Textbooks.
  • Chris is undertaking a study of syllabi for undergraduate courses at Northwestern University. He requested the syllabi and received 105 from general undergraduate courses that could possibly use OER materials.  Three courses are using open textbooks. Chris is meeting with the school Deans, the Director of Education Technology, and someone within the Provost Office to decide the next steps.
  • Western Illinois University will have an introductory OER workshop next week for choosing textbooks for next semester.  There is a grant from WIU Foundation for faculty to develop new courses or revamp their current course.
  • Illinois State University will present to the Textbook Affordability Committee on OER on December 8, 2017.
  • College of Lake County is creating a “Zero Cost Track” for textbooks.  This will track certain classes in associate degrees.
  • University of Illinois Urban Champaign will be publishing an OER in the spring.  They are also designing a study in the field of Information Science to measure the impact of OER using altmetrics. They are also looking at a local marketing program for OER materials.
• CARLI Update:
  • Records for the Open Textbooks appear in the local VuFind catalogs.  If you do a basic search in the I-Share Catalog using the terms “Open Textbook Library,” you will able to find them. CARLI has made the records available so that members that are not I-Share libraries can use the CARLI modified records to load into their local catalog.
• Open Textbook Network workshops:
  • Dates and locations of workshops:
    • April 23: Governors State University
    • April 24: Loyola University, Water Tower Campus
    • April 26: Heartland Community College
  • People who are encouraged to attend are the following; instructional designers, people on the front line and possibly university administrators. Currently only two people per institution can attend due to room capacity. There will be information be sent to the academic libraries along with the perimeters of who to invite.
• Task Force members will give a train the trainer training after the OTN workshops.
  • CARLI should ask members after the April training, for those CARLI members who were unable to attend the OTN workshop in April, would they interested in another training later and the timing for that training?
  • Possible consultation for CARLI members on how to get started.
• Open Education Week in March 5th to March 9th 2018:
  • CARLI will have a newsletter article from task force members on a different topic each day that week.
  • Hour long panel to help faculty make the switch to OER (joint event with LOUIS (The Louisiana Library Network).
    • 2 people from each consortium; Anne Chernaik will contact a faculty member to ask interest in participating.  Linda and Janet will as well, one then the other so that there are only two Illinois faculty participants, one from a community college and one from a research institution.
    • CARLI staff will contact LOUIS and propose this program.
    • The panel will address the following questions:
      • How did you get started?
      • How long did it take?
      • How did you make the case to other faculty?
      • What has been the response of students?
• Length and existence of OER Task Force
  • The Task Force should decide if it wants to ask the CARLI Board to make the task force into a committee or assign task forces tasks to an exisiting committee.
  • Possible rotation of other CARLI member libraries if this task force because a committee.
  • Task Force members should plan to service until July 2019 from there we could decide to propose a committee to the CARLI Board.

Discussion

• Expectations of OTN workshops in April:
  • CARLI will use the registration information to create cohorts by geography during the OTN workshop so that attendees have specific people that they might contact for ideas and accountability for their work at their own institution.   
  • CARLI will note on the registration that contact information will be shared with the attendees for all three days.
  • All task force members in attendance at each workshop will be introduced to the attendees.
  • A member of the OER Task Force contact the cohorts.
  • It is expected that attendees will plan to give a workshop to their faculty. Those Faculty will then be asked to complete a review of an open textbook within 6 weeks after the workshop.
• CARLI OER Website:
  • Janet Swatscheno will do the social media for the website.
  • PowerPoint slides will only be available on the website after the OTN training.
  • The task force reviewed the current sections of the website and modified it to include templates (such as agreements with faculty, faculty stipends, /getting started toolkit for surveys, documents, forms as a new page under Train the Trainer Resources.
  • Creating Open Resources will have four sections, authoring, editing, funding, and tools.
  • There will be a note added to the website that indicates to add a resources email CARLI Support.
  • The fall survey of the membership will be linked from the Overview/Introduction page.
  • Discussion of order of the subjects on the website.
  • Discussion on website categories and subcategories.
• Survey results summary by Chris Diaz and Elizabeth Clarage.
  • There was difficulties with how institutions classified themselves.
  • A one page summary with be posted on the CARLI website.
  • PDF of the survey will be on the task force website
  • Edits to the survey: the charts will be edited as the current colors are hard to tell apart.
• Future plans? Should the Illinois Library Association advocate for OER state funding?  As a group we could write a proposal to create OERs through an organization.  Faculty could apply for money to write and publish OER materials. Anne Craig and Linda Zellmer will look into whether their might be foundations interested in education that might fund OER creation in the state.  They will also see if they can identify possible state funding.  They will bring their findings back to the task force by June.  If the task force is interested in this, it would need to go to the Board and the CARLI Board makes the request of ILA.
• Anne Shelley asked about how the group will handle Task Force chair duties when she is on maternity leave.  Anne Chernaik and Kathy Ladell will chair the group during her maternity leave.

Next Meetings

• December 19
• January 16
• February 20
• March 20
• April 17
• May 15
• June 19