Open Educational Resources Task Force Meeting: July 17, 2018

Conference Call

Members attending: Annette Alvarado (Loyola University Chicago), Anne Chernaik (College of Lake County), Anne Shelley, Chair (Illinois State University), Sue Shultz (DePaul University), Janet Swatscheno (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
 
Members absent: Connie Ghinazzi (Augustana College), Kathy Ladell (Northern Illinois University), Elizabeth Nelson (McHenry Community College), Linda Zellmer (Western Illinois University)

Staff attending: Elizabeth Clarage, Anne Craig, Lorna Engels

Decisions

• Sue Shultz volunteered to take minutes.
• May and June minutes approved.
• Task Force meeting schedule for FY19: will continue meeting the 3rd Tuesday of each month at 1:00pm.
• The open call scheduled for October will replace the regular monthly October conference call meeting.
• Task Force Chair for FY19:  A decision will be made in late July about who will chair the task force in the year ahead.

Tasks Assigned

• OTN Workshops Survey
  • Lorna will send the survey out in another few weeks.
  • We will discuss again at our August meeting.
• Anne Shelley will email an acknowledgement to those who expressed interest and left their contact information.
• Elizabeth C. will give the person who left their phone number a call (bookstore).

Announcements

• Member Updates:
  • Anne Chernaik, Kathy, and Anne Shelley will be presenting at the Open Education Southern Symposium in Fayetteville on October 2. They will be talking about CARLI OER initiatives.
  • Anne Shelley:  She presented a half-day workshop at Illinois State University (ISU) on adopting affordable course materials. The workshop was offered through ISU’s Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology: 10 faculty attended.
  • Sue: The OER Working Group of the DePaul Library is in the process of analyzing data from two OER/open textbook surveys sent to faculty and students at their institution during Spring Quarter.
  • Elizabeth Nelson: The curriculum for the McHenry Community College freshman experience course (MCC 101) will eliminate the textbook for the course.
  • Annette: There is a bilingual social work master’s degree program that will be offered at Loyola and 75% of the course materials are OERs. They have successfully located Spanish OERs.
  • Janet: Two OER textbooks are in development at UIUC through the iSchool. The subjects of the books are library science and technology. Both books will be published this fall.
• CARLI Update:
  • They are currently in the budget planning process and will hear about allocations soon.
  • I-Share Next RFP still moving along.
  • They are also waiting to hear about a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. If awarded, the grant would provide continuing education for CARLI members, specifically training to help CARLI members use data-driven evidence to make the case to their administrators that libraries help with graduation rates and retention. This would begin August 1 for three years if awarded.
  • The final draft of the strategic plan was completed. This will provide a good roadmap for the next couple of years; it includes five strategic priorities.
  • Quite a few libraries are adopting the new VuFind search interface as their primary search to their local online catalogs.

Discussion

• OTN Workshops Survey
  • Selected findings that the TF discussed were:
  • A number of individuals plan to give workshops on their campus.
  • There were positive responses to the idea of more webinars.
  • Members are at different phases of involvement with OERs on their campuses.
  • There was some level of interest in co-presenting.
  • Q5: Responses were positive to the resources we selected and posted on the website.
• Additional Continuing Ed and Outreach
  • There will be an open call for CARLI members to the Task Force on October 16.
    • This call will be scheduled for 1 hour: members will be able to call in and ask questions about OER promotion and advocacy on their campuses.
    • During our August conference call, we will decide who will moderate and who will field the different categories of questions.
    • A moderator would be necessary if there were multiple TF members on the call.
    • A moderator could allocate questions to participants based on the category of question.
    • Anne Shelley offered to moderate if no one else volunteers.
    • Task Force participants:  Have someone who has presented a faculty workshop already and someone from CARLI participate.
    • We will promote the open call in the CARLI August and September newsletters.
    • OER Commons and publishing platforms were discussed as possible topics.
    • Should we have representation from different types of institutions (two- and four-year, private/public)?
  • Inquiries for Workshops
    • Olive Harvey and Chicago State: The decision to provide workshops for other CARLI institutions was postponed at this time.

Next Meeting Dates

Task Force Conference Calls:

• August 21
• September 18