Open Educational Resources Task Force Meeting: March 17, 2020

Conference Call

Members attending: Annette Alvarado (Loyola University Chicago), Elizabeth Nelson (McHenry County College), Anne Shelley (Illinois State University), Sue Shultz (DePaul University), Janet Swatscheno (University of Illinois at Chicago), Linda Zellmer (Western Illinois University)

Members absent: Sara Benson (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Anne Chernaik (College of Lake County)

Staff attending: Elizabeth Clarage, Anne Craig, Lorna Engels

Tasks Assigned

• Sue Shultz will take meeting minutes.
• Janet will create a CARLI OER website review google doc for everyone to sign up for specific sections.
  • Task force members will review and update their assigned sections on the website by April 21.
  • The following categories were assigned during the meeting:
    • Background reading: Sue
    • Professional development: Anne S.
    • Creative Commons: Sara
    • Repositories (courses, textbooks, and other): Janet
    • Illinois Higher Education data: Elizabeth C. will check the links
• Task force members should think about important items to include in the formal plan for continued support of OERs by CARLI for discussion in our April meeting.

Decision

• February minutes approved.

Announcements

• Member Announcements:
  • Linda: Participated in a departments and unit heads meeting last week at WIU. Faculty are concerned about students not having access to books if they did not buy them before the coronavirus campus decisions.
    • Their library building is open, but many librarians are working at home.
    • We need to counter the message that publishers may use to sell inclusive access during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
  • Anne S.: Illinois State’s Textbook Affordability Committee distributed a survey two weeks ago to faculty on OER awareness, as well as more granular questions ranging from reasons for choosing an open textbook to student behaviors when expensive textbooks are required. They have received 160 responses so far.
    • The Library Dean and Anne met with the Provost and AVP for Undergraduate Education to discuss funding for the establishment of a program for adoption and creation of OERs.
  • Janet: All public OER events have been cancelled. They were planning a workshop for faculty with an outside speaker but this will not take place this semester.
    • The OER Textbook Sprint will also be pushed back to fall semester and Janet will work with campus to organize.
  • Sue: Sue and her colleague Ashley McMullin are working on a benchmarking study of OER initiatives in libraries of peer and best practices institutions. They just completed the survey phase and will conduct interviews in April.
  • Elizabeth C. shared for Sara:  The OER Week presentation streamed on UIUC’s YouTube channel featuring Jasmine Roberts has been viewed 200+ times: https://youtu.be/ZXynJXVRIJ0
• CARLI Announcements:  
  • Anne Craig:
    • Steps have been taken to shut down borrowing and delivery service, as well as updating their website. The CARLI home page COVID-19 provides updates: https://www.carli.illinois.edu/covid-19-and-carli-latest-updates
    • All CARLI staff are working from home; in-person events through April 30 have been cancelled.
    • As of the day of this meeting (3/17), the June 24 migration cut-over day is still on. Much of the work can be done remotely.
  • Elizabeth:
    • CARLI staff has stopped running a batch job for materials that would become overdue. The due date and status are not changed, but items will not go into overdue status or cause patrons to be blocked. CARLI always recommends that members do not charge patrons of other libraries, so there shouldn’t be overdue fines.
  • Lorna:
    • The Getting Ready for PRIMO VE webinar, organized by the Instruction Committee and the Public Services Committee, will take place from 9:15-3:15 on April 2. The in-person person option scheduled at Joliet Junior College has been cancelled. Registrants can attend selected portions of the online event, or the entire forum. Registration is available through the CARLI calendar: https://www.carli.illinois.edu/getting-ready-primo-ve-webinar-registration
    • Certificate in OER Librarianship: The first portion of this certificate was delivered through distance learning. The in-person portion scheduled for April 6-8 has been cancelled for the time being.
      • Elizabeth shared the link for the Certificate’s website, which includes the syllabus and course modules: https://canvas.umn.edu/courses/178527

Discussion

Goals for 2019-2020 (from survey in Fall 2019)

• Proposal to CARLI Board to turn the OER Task Force into committee:
  • The proposal was well-received by the board and they approved it.
    • Anne Craig attended the meeting, and Sara, Janet and Elizabeth C. attended virtually.
  • CARLI will take care of the administrative things that need to be done. It will be folded into CARLI’s regular committee process.
• Updating the CARLI OER website:
  • Two people on the survey listed training materials as a priority.
  • The website has been updated as needed by Elizabeth C. but we haven’t thoroughly checked links and added updated content.
  • Janet will create and share a Google doc where we can sign up for specific categories to review. The following categories were assigned during the meeting:
    • Background reading: Sue
    • Professional development: Anne S.
    • Creative Commons: Sara
    • Repositories (courses, textbooks, and other): Janet
    • Illinois Higher Education data: Elizabeth C. will check the links
  • We can drop in current documents in any category
    • We will also review documents to determine which should be removed due to age/being outdated.
    • Categories to be added to the site:
      • Inclusive access. Anne S. suggested adding a report that Linda brought to the group’s attention.
        • Also, add a document that explains the different between OERs and inclusive access.
      • Open pedagogy
  • The deadline for completion of the web pages review is one month from the March meeting: April 21.
• Formal plan for continued support of OERs by CARLI after this year.
  • The task force will become a committee, as noted above.
  • For our April meeting, what would a formal plan look like: include some of the things that CARLI has already been doing such as securing funding.
  • The CARLI Board has funding to devote to OER training, but we should also consider programming and other ways to support OER.
  • Linda discussed State House Bill 4992 which has been assigned to the Higher Education Committee. This introduced a degree in the foundational documents about America which was weighted heavily toward western civilization. Linda suggested an amendment: eliminate the western civilization degree and then add proposal from CARLI for funds to promote OERs.
    • Elizabeth noted that because the legislature is out due to the virus, if something was not assigned to a committee before they left, it might not go any further.

Next Meeting

The next task force conference call will be on Tuesday, April 21, 2020, from 1:00 – 2:00 pm.

Meeting ID: 30439149
+1 217 332 6338 (local Urbana Champaign number)
+1 312 994 8410 (local Chicago number)
+1 888 983 3631 (toll-free)

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