Round Three Illinois SCOERs Subgrant Awardees Abstracts

The “Illinois SCOERs: Support for the Creation of Open Educational Resources” Subgrants, funded by the Open Textbooks Pilot Grant received from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) and the U.S. Department of Education. Awardees will create open textbooks and ancillary materials for courses which have large enrollments or are in the focus area, “The Human Condition: Care, Development, and Lifespan.

Project Abstracts

The College of DuPage OER Accelerator for Physics and Addictions Counseling Courses

The College of DuPage OER Accelerator for Physics and Addictions Counseling Courses submitted by Lauren Kosrow will focus on developing new OER for a high-enrollment general education Physics course and remixing OER for two Addictions Counseling courses during a summer 2023 accelerator retreat. While College of DuPage (COD) has a well-established Open Education program on campus, this accelerator will take standard OER development processes and condense them into a three-day retreat for faculty with the assistance of a digital publishing consultant. The new physics course OER will provide a broad overview of physics concepts without burdening students with complex algebra and calculus that are often included in commercial publications. The addictions counseling OER will be developed to meet the rigorous standards set out by the Illinois Certification Board while including career and technical expertise provided by experienced faculty, which no existing OER currently achieves. After the completion of the retreat, faculty will have adopted their OER textbooks and respective ancillary materials for their classes to implement by Spring 2024. From academic years 2019 to 2022, over 11,000 students have saved over $3 million because of instructor adoptions of OERs at COD. This project will not only result in additional student savings taking the Physics course, but it will also move the needle in making the Addictions Counseling degree and certificate programs closer to becoming a zero-cost textbook program. Over the long term, faculty feedback from this accelerator will help COD Library staff integrate it into regular practice and encourage additional faculty into developing their own OER on campus through this method.

Teaching Photography: Critical Literacies for Creative Practice

Teaching Photography: Critical Literacies for Creative Practice is a curriculum guide with ancillary materials proposed by Larissa Garcia for college-level photography classes at Northern Illinois University. It will compile readings, assignments, lesson plans, and assessments that scaffold learning and incorporate information and visual literacy instruction to foster critical thinking for eight common courses/topics in a photography program. When the book is completed, it will serve as a model for studio art education and is intended for use by photography educators and students.

Authoring Culture: The Foundations of Twenty-first Century Writing

Kim Hale at Columbia University proposed Authoring Culture: The Foundations of Twenty-first Century Writing, which aims to empower college students with lifelong skills as authors. Authoring Culture's focus on creativity and activism constitutes a new approach for writing instruction. The key concepts give the resource an unusual breadth among college writing textbooks, which, based on a review of available writing and rhetoric OER, often focus on conventional academic writing only and rarely encourages multimodal writing. Whenever people exercise their ability to influence thought, opinion, or behavior, they are practicing authorship. Authoring is central to the human condition, playing a pivotal role in human development. Authoring Culture equips students with critical thinking tools needed to build authorial effectiveness and prepares teachers to help students develop these skills. Many college instructors now assign non traditional authorial tasks to introduce students to the varied authorial challenges of their twenty-first century textual landscapes. While some college instructors still require students to produce conventional genres of academic writing such as the argumentative and researched essay, others call for websites, videos, podcasts, or social media campaigns. Authoring Culture teaches critical thinking skills necessary to develop and produce media and text that empower students to see themselves as creators of culture, and arms them with the knowledge and skill sets to decide how to best represent, distribute, and preserve their ideas.

Preparing College of Business Students for the Post-Pandemic World

Liesl Cottrell and Concordia University Chicago will create Preparing College of Business Students for the Post-Pandemic World by updating required content in two core courses with open access materials. The primary subject of this proposed open education resource (OER) project is to improve the undergraduate student experience by adopting and creating open access materials for two intentionally chosen business core courses, positively impacting students at the university-wide level. The Concordia University Chicago (CUC) workgroup members plan to eliminate cost and accessibility barriers for two core courses required for all students seeking business degrees at CUC by adopting open access textbooks and creating open access ancillary materials for MGT-2001: Leadership-centered Management and MKT-2101: 21st Century Concepts of Marketing. While all business majors and minors at CUC must take these courses, many students in other disciplines enroll in these courses for foundational knowledge. Current OERs and open access ancillary materials will be integrated into the university’s learning management system (LMS) to improve the student learning experience, retention, and satisfaction scores. At this time, students enrolled in these two courses must purchase expensive textbooks and access codes to the publisher’s online learning platform, or they will be unable to submit required assignments. If students do not purchase these resources, the likelihood of passing these classes declines. By eliminating textbook costs and allowing students to submit assignments solely through the university’s LMS, and providing experiential learning opportunities for all business students through newly created 3D printing assignments and professional marketing tools used in the real world, CUC students’ learning outcomes, marketable skills and confidence will substantially improve, increasing their opportunities as successful entrepreneurs in an uncharted, post-pandemic business world.

The OER Guide to Media Writing

Mark Poepsel from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville proposed a project to develop The OER Guide to Media Writing. This guide has the potential to serve as a textbook for introductory Media Writing courses around the world. The text builds upon existing, readily available open educational resources texts. It merges and amends several existing chapters, and the project will also require the writing of new chapters, the development of ancillary materials, and the addition of professional stories from the field. This text will also include assignment suggestions and writing samples. There is not, to date, a comprehensive introductory Media Writing OER text. The OER text that most closely resembles what is proposed here is a text on writing for strategic communications, which is the source of the “existing, readily available open educational resources texts” referenced above. The proposed new textbook will be as up-to-date as possible regarding professional social media use in the media industries. As social media platforms change hands and as U.S. policy towards certain social media platforms may change rapidly, an updated text in Media Writing must account for this changing landscape. Special attention will be paid to media literacy topics including the importance of accuracy in the face of misinformation and disinformation, the importance of considering the sources of information shared widely on social media, and best practices for audience engagement. The traditional aspects necessary to include in this type of text including information gathering, interviewing, newswriting basics, grammar reviews, style discussions, broadcast writing formats and  rationale as well as writing for advertising, public relations, and long-form journalism will be covered.

Creating a Textbook and Ancillaries for Nurse Anesthetist Students

Dr. Chaya Gopalan from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville proposed Creating a Textbook and Ancillaries for Nurse Anesthetist Students, aims to develop open education resources (OERs) that can enhance learning and teaching in the classroom. Students in Certified Registered Nurse Anesthesia (CRNA) programs lack an OER for the basic anatomy and physiology content that fits the learning objectives needed to be successful in their profession. This grant aims to start with the OpenStax Anatomy and Physiology textbook, which will undergo significant revisions to include original details and custom course content to support learning objectives not met by existing open resources. Innovative learning materials, including an interactive textbook, lecture videos, quizzes, a study guide, and presentation slides for each chapter, will be developed to increase intellectual reasoning and knowledge. OERs will be developed in one year by a strong team led by a highly experienced anatomy and physiology professor. The published OER and ancillaries will be adopted for a course in the fall of 2024. Feedback from students on their experiences taking an OER course will be gathered during the fall of 2024. The experience and results from the project will be disseminated at local, regional, national, and international conferences as presentations, workshops, and manuscripts. Thus, this award will 1) help increase access to high-quality learning materials, 2) reduce the cost of education for students, 3) provide resources to promote the use of OERs and 4) offer a platform for educators and researchers to share their experiences and best practices in the use of OERs.

Development of Ancillary Teaching Materials and Labs for Anatomy and Physiology Classes

Roosevelt University will be creating Development of Ancillary Teaching Materials and Labs for Anatomy and Physiology Classes under the direction of Dr, Barbara Anderson. At Roosevelt University there are students enrolled in nursing, allied health programs or that have aspirations to apply to medical school or other professional graduate programs/schools who take Anatomy and Physiology either as a pre-requisite or requirement. There are Anatomy and Physiology OER textbooks available, but they do not include ancillaries like adaptive readings, formative assessments, retention activities, supplementary videos, lab materials, and other quizzes that can help students self-check their understanding and further facilitate their learning. Nor do they include PowerPoint slides and test-banks for the instructors. The project will produce two different types of notetaking/activity guides. One is more basic and straight-forward whereas the other will provoke more critical thinking. The former will include fill-in-the-blank and labeling activities. The more advanced guide asks students to explain and apply information. Both will contain videos, games, and online anatomical quizzing materials. The two different types of guides allow professors to choose which is best for their teaching style and level of their students. Moreover, it means that the same text can be used in multiple classes. In addition to the notetaking guides, labs will be produced that include instruction for dissection, labeling activities, and other activities to work with models and learn anatomical structures. Anatomical images will be commissioned to include racial, size, and gender diversity instead of the typical slim, able-bodied, white, cis individuals. This will allow our students to see themselves reflected in the material as well as prepare to serve a diverse population. The lab materials will concentrate on the reproductive, muscular, skeletal, and cardiovascular systems. The reproductive system materials will include modern understandings of female reproductive anatomy, in particular the full extent of the internal clitoris that are not present in most materials (O’Connell et al., 2005). We intend to have anatomical illustrations created to show trans and intersex individuals to normalize their anatomy within the curriculum. Neither of these are available in most Anatomy and Physiology textbooks. The images and materials will be included on slide decks that can be used by professors in the lab and lecture classes. The 3D printer will be incorporated to print items, like heart or reproductive structures so students can better understand the organs’ structure which will lead to a better understanding of function.

Chemistry OER Laboratory Manuals

Dr. Saadia Khan at Triton College proposes to create Chemistry OER Laboratory Manuals for three courses that recently transitioned to the use of an OER textbook. The lab manual is essential to the success of student in courses requiring a lab component as they prescribe procedures, proper etiquette and guide the student on how to perform effectively, efficiently, and safely in a lab environment. The project addresses the dearth of supplemental and ancillary materials for general education chemistry courses, specifically materials that are affordable and enhance inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility. The project includes a diverse team of faculty, staff, and professionals in the field. The proposed project will be completed within a nine-month period.