Governance / Open Educational Resources Task Force Meeting: November 26, 2019

Open Educational Resources Task Force Meeting: November 26, 2019

CARLI Office, Champaign

Members attending: Annette Alvarado, Loyola University Chicago (by phone); Sara Benson, co-chair, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Anne Chernaik, College of Lake County (by phone); Anne Shelley, Illinois State University; Janet Swatscheno, co-chair, University of Illinois at Chicago; Linda Zellmer, Western Illinois University

Members absent: Kathy Ladell, Northern Illinois University; Elizabeth Nelson, McHenry County College; Susan Shultz, DePaul University

Staff attending: Elizabeth Clarage, Lorna Engels

Tasks Assigned

  • Anne Shelley took minutes.
  • Sara will ask if the Open Education Week presentation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign can be live streamed or recorded.
  • Elizabeth and Lorna will help get evaluation data from past program for the Logic Model.

Announcements

  • Member Updates:
    • Reports from Advancing College Access and Affordability in Today's Global Environment at DePaul University on November 21.  The program was jointly hosted by the AAP: Association of American Publishers and Marie Donovan, Chair, Faculty Advisory Council, Illinois Board of Higher Education.
    • Linda, Janet, and Sue were able to attend.
    • Program was marketed to faculty and administrators about lowering the costs of digital course materials and improving student success.
    • There was not a  list of attendees. Elizabeth wonders if we could get one, then invite faculty who attended to the planned April event.
    • Bookstore representatives talked about inclusive access programs. Joliet Junior College has 37 classes that have adopted inclusive access. JCC uses Redshelf for the platform. Biology class uses OpenStax textbooks. Math classes are using inclusive access. Bookstore manager not sure if faculty who are using IA have considered OER. Faculty can get statistics through the Redshelf platform on how much students are using the resources.
    • Publisher’s role in advancing college access. Reducing material costs. Discussion of each group’s inclusive access program. Publishers must offer books at “less than market value” to implement inclusive access. Students are charged automatically and must opt out during opt out period if they don’t want to purchase the book.
    • Student on panel was MacMillan ambassador – advocates for their products on campus. IBHE sponsored event but seemed like a promotional event for publishers. MacMillan had lobbyists present and rep from Redshelf.
    • Other discussion that stemmed from this update:
      • Elizabeth – OHIOLink Affordable Learning Summit – they covered one day on open and one day on affordable. IA is increasing and fewer people are buying books at bookstores.
      • Sara – There is a state law being considered. UI has Redshelf but can not tie it to student accounts so bookstore can not use it. Students don’t like having to purchase a code in addition to the book.
      • Speculation that IA is just getting set to become popular and publishers are going to start raising prices.
      • Linda shared testimony from a professor who used OERs. The professor found the same grade distribution, and felt like students still did not read the book. This faculty member didn’t think the quality or resources were as good as those from a commercial publisher:  chapters were shorter, no glossary, ancillary materials were brief. Western Illinois University has a summer stipend option that faculty can use to adopt an open textbook. Discussion about how important it is to have a stipend. Suggested idea to Provost during a recent visit, seemed interested.
      • Could the group collect testimonies from students and/or faculty about OER successes?
      • Ancillaries – OpenStax holds a Creator Fest to encourage people to create ancillary materials. Faculty come together for a day and create materials.
      • Idea: Could we pitch a DoE grant for a Creator Fest, to enhance or create ancillary resources?
      • Looked at UC Davis LibreTexts – They received first the first U.S. Department of Education grant. There are very tech heavy resources, created by faculty who are incentivized through the grant. Elizabeth noticed old copyright date and group talked about lack of CC license on some of the objects in LibreTexts. Hard to tell what has  been created from the grant and what they brought in from other sites. Suggestion to contact Dick Durbin’s office to discuss since his office is apparently dissatisfied with the distribution of grant funds for OER. Sara has connection to staff member.
      • WIU – Faculty have written their own lab manuals and they sell them to students.
      • Discussion about metafinders for OERs and their lack of materials in some areas. Task force members shared that if you know of a resource not represented, anyone can suggest items to add to add to OASIS.
      • Linda mentioned bill proposal she noticed - https://legiscan.com/IL/bill/SB2290/2019
      • Linda will provide an update at our next meeting about current legislative activity after she does some more research.
  • Sara – She has joined a group of OER leaders, organized by Rebel Cummings-Sauls. Regular phone call and Google docs for resources. Amy Hofer is coordinator for Open Oregon, offered to have a phone call with Sara B about that program if we want to learn more about state funded program.
  • The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is bringing speaker Jasmine Roberts, COM professor and OER champion to campus during Open Education Week. On March 3rd from 3:30-4:30, there will be a campus presentation that  is open to anyone.
  • Anne Chernaik, The College of Lake County has had a shift in administration and the institution is discussing OER. She is going through strategic planning again with different group. She is moving to a branch campus. The new president wants to reinvigorate the process.
  • Annette Alvarado, Loyola University Chicago has a main campus library and a downtown campus library. An OER committee was created on the main campus; now the library is restructuring committees, hopeful to be more involved and communicate better. Her constituencies are asking for more open textbooks.
  • Anne Shelley, Illinois State University is planning to do survey of faculty on affordable course materials. She presented with colleague at her campus’ Culturally Responsive Campus Community Conference (https://crcc.illinoisstate.edu/) in November on the topic of textbook affordability as an equity issue. ISU’s Textbook Affordability Committee is presenting a poster at the CTLT Symposium (https://ctlt.illinoisstate.edu/symposium/2019/) in January.
  • CARLI Updates:
    • CARLI has licensed Open Athens. Every member will have access to this authentication system.
    • Public Policy Committee of ILA is meeting next week. Elizabeth is going.
    • Created Content Committee is holding copyright webinars in December. Sara is doing one on copyright, then Hannah Stitzlein will present on rights statements for digital collections, and last one will be an open session for copyright Q&A.
    • E-mail from Chicago State University needing someone to come talk to library faculty about OER, open access, and the OTN program in 2020.

Discussion

  • CARLI OERTF Logic Model Exercise
    • The Task Force reviewed what this group has accomplished, the group’s charge, talk about what we want to do for this year, and what is sustainable for the future.
    • Task force is temporary so recommendations on how to sustain the current momentum within the consortium needs to go to the CARLI Board.
    • Janet created Google document with a Logic Model for CARLI OERTF and shared the link with committee.
    • Janet explained logic modelling and showed data that she had entered for Inputs, Activities, Outputs, Outcomes, and Impacts. Group generated additional ideas.
    • Janet will contact Elizabeth and Lorna for data from webinars, registration, and survey responses to help flesh out logic model.
    • Discussion about the proposal to the ILA Public Policy Committee for its legislative agenda. But what if there’s no funding to go along with the mandate? SPARC has a lot of resources that legislators could take advantage of. Discussion about OERTF developing text for a legislative bill? Proposal? Group decided to wait to continue conversation until Anne Craig could join us.
    • Information collected from logic exercise would be used as background to support a recommendation to the CARLI Board for the future of OER within CARLI. TF members present were supportive of suggesting that the group becomes a committee.
  • Grant Exercise
    • Sara distributed examples of a non-winning grant and winning grant applications for the U.S. Department of Education program. Group members skimmed through grant applications and look for differences. Goal is to help determine how we might prepare or how realistic it would be to be competitive for DoE grant.
    • Janet mentioned that CFP for the DoE grant included language that focused on technology.
    • The funded grant had multiple states involved.  It is not likely for CARLI to collaborate in that way , but we do have multiple institutions.
    • Discussion about lump/one-time funding for projects vs. program funding that helps sustain initiative.
    • Discussion about other funding sources besides DoE.
    • Discussion about finding a way to improve OERs that are lacking such as to make chapters longer, correct mistakes, or create ancillary materials
    • Another grant idea: funding to hold a creator fest Illinois.
    • Potential partner with OpenStax to hold a creator fest in Illinois
    • Partner with OTN to hold event to use authoring tool.
    • Could look into holding these events without a grant proposal, or it could be a grant proposal.
  • Talking about member programming
    • Should the programming be librarian focus or faculty focus?
    • Open Education Week: Maybe we partner with UI to sponsor Jasmine Roberts visit or promote the open presentation.  See if the presentation can be live streamed or recorded.
    • In-person training: If we do something, how would that relate to planned April 17 event from ILCCO/NILRC?
    • Workshops – How to empower other librarians to present or talk about OER on their campuses, invite faculty to talk about their work with OER?
    • Train the trainer workshop
      • How to introduce faculty to OER. Should also include how to talk to faculty who are skeptical.
      • The task force thought having participants create and give an elevator speech as part of training would be useful.
    • Task force needs to choose a training workshop or a conference.
    • Possibility for developing a course.
      • Possibly asynchronous
    • If we do a one-shot in-person event, we should have people prepare something ahead of time.
  • Need to update background readings on CARLI OER website.

Next Meeting

The next task force conference call will be on Tuesday, December 17, 2019, from 1:00 – 2:00 pm.

Meeting ID: 30439149
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Online meeting link: https://meet.uillinois.edu/clarage/38wb23sl