A Fierce Commitment to Teaching: Michigan Faculty Voices on OER

Okay, so good afternoon everybody. My name is Elizabeth Rodriguez. I am the Dean of Academic Innovation and Technology at Laredo College and this year I had the honor of serving with CCCOER in their professional development committee and today I will serve as your moderator. Let me just click over to the next slide. And just a little bit of history on CCCOER if you're not familiar with the organization. We are part of OE Global and it is a vibrant community of practice dedicated to advancing open education through collaboration, shared learning and meaningful connections. We bring together educators, institutions and organizations who are passionate about involving improving teaching and learning through openness. Through professional development opportunities such as these, webinars on emerging trends and best practices and active listserv and the leadership of our executive council and committees, CCCOER supports a growing community of over 90 members across the 31 US states and Canadian provinces. At its core Oops, sorry. At its core, CCCOER embodies the belief that communities of practice are about learning how to do things better together and that collaborative spirit drives everything we do. So that is a little bit about CCCOER. So just a quick reminder about our book club. The book club is actually part of the equity diversity inclusion committee and they are um having four different sessions throughout the summer months. The first one May 28th is on global perspectives on open education and there is a link already on the website and I think that we're going to share the link to the website where you can get more information and you can see a little bit more about that and you can register through the website as well. Um, each session covers a different topic as you can see here and then they'll be also sharing articles. And just so that you know, even if you register for one um, and then you skip one and then register for another, you won't miss anything. So it's it's they don't it's not a continuation of the topic, but it's a specific topic um, throughout the summer of the book club. So any questions on that? Okay. All right, so now I'm going to hand it over to Heather. Um, she's our director of CCCOWEAR and she's going to be talking about her experience with this particular um, group of educators. Heather. You're on mute. Thank you. Um, I won't take up too much time. Um, I just wanted to uh, share before we get started that I attended the Michigan OER conference at Washtenaw Community College last year and one of the things that really stayed with me the most was the camaraderie among this particular group of people, which is why I invited them and I was so excited that they accepted it uh, the invite to be here today. Um, there was such genuine care for teaching, for students um, and for each other that it it became really easy to see why their work with OER has been so impactful. And I'm excited for you to hear not only about their practical experiences and strategies today, but also to get a glimpse of the collaboration and the fierce commitment to teaching that drives their work. So I uh, thank you for letting me introduce you in that way and I'm going to hand it over to Molly and please take it from there. Sounds great, thank you. Um, we'll just quickly introduce ourselves. So um, I'm Molly Letterman. I'm a faculty librarian at WCC. I'm liaison to all three of these folks here. I'm liaison to English, humanities, social sciences, languages, and the arts, and I lead the campus's OER initiative. And this fall, we're going to hit the milestone of over 100 courses developed with OER. That's That's really exciting. So, I'll turn it over to K. Uh good afternoon. My name is uh K Graves, pronouns he and his, and I am a humanities and global studies faculty WCC. Um and I'm excited to be here to talk about the humanities and arts experience with OER. And I'll pass it to Mary. Good afternoon. My name is Mary Mulholland. Um I pronounce she, her, hers, and I teach in both the English department and the education department. Um I do a little bit of both. I specialize in children's literature, um but I also teach a lot of introduction to uh teaching courses. So, um I've been working with OER for um over 15 years, and I just love being able to reduce barriers of access for students and and create a more equitable educational experience for them. Josiah. Hi. Uh my name is Josiah Jackson. I am an English faculty member. I teach writing and literature, uh and I really love working with OER uh because it really for me, at least, allows students uh to kind of see into the back end of education and get uh a little more stake in the game when they are actively thinking about their materials instead of just being told, "Here, you need this." So, I've really enjoyed working with OER, and I'm excited to be here with you all today. Thank you. Um we can go to the next slide, if that's okay. Um and let's go to the next slide. We just introduced ourselves. So, I'll give you a little bit of a quick background and context on Washtenaw Community College before we start asking our our panel lots of questions. Um, just so you kind of know what our where our college is and and how big it is. Um, we're located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, sandwiched between two four-year institutions. So, Eastern Michigan University is two to three miles down the road in one direction and University of Michigan is about two to three miles down the road in the other direction. Um, we have 10,000 about 10,000 FTE students and this year WCC is celebrating its 60th anniversary, which is pretty exciting. Could you go to the next slide, please? I'd like to turn it over to Mary to talk a little bit about an interesting piece of that history and our our fierce commitment to teaching. Yes, so um it's so funny the way this this happened cuz it sort of happened backwards. I was meeting with a former English um faculty member who was one of the original faculty members. And she and I were having lunch and she talked about receiving her um you know, like you've been hired, welcome to your first day um telegram, which she received in 1966 welcoming her um for her first year of teaching and part of it thanked her for her fierce commitment to teaching. And um and that that phrase was so uh you know, salient for me and especially then she she continued talking and she was then talking about the the second summer um of of Washtenaw Community College's existence was happening during the time when Detroit was on fire um because of the infamous um Detroit uprising or riots, depending on how you want to call it. Um, and there were fears, even though we're you know, an hour outside of Detroit, um there were some fears that uh our WCC campus was going to also be lit on fire. And so WCC faculty and staff and folks in the neighborhood around the community college came and just hung out all night at the college to protect it. And it just meant so much to me in thinking about in our current uh, political space about how the world feels like it's on fire. >> [laughter] >> And um, so it's inspired the sort of mantra among all of us about our own fierce current fierce commitment to teaching and really trying to think about what that means in this moment in time and what actions we can take to stand up and protect our our education and our our students. So all of us here today are wearing I'm going to just move a little bit our fierce commitment to teaching t-shirts >> [laughter] >> that we had made for the college to kind of help again create a visible symbol of of really wanting to stand up for for education and justice. So. Mhm. Thank you. Go to the next slide, please. And just I think as Mary was saying you can you can feel that fierce commitment to teaching and I think it's really evident when you look at what work we do around things like OER. So for example, OER have been in use at WCC since you know, we have stats from around 2015 but as Mary was saying they've been in use even before that. And we started kind of a formal initiative in 2018 to say like how how can we really move the needle on this? And so we started building a campus culture, we had advocacy, we built a faculty cohort program to provide wrap-around support to faculty working on projects and started course marking our catalog so students could find those no and low cost materials. And since then we've added over over 80 new courses using OER. Like I said, we're going to hit over 100 this fall, and we now have three full Z degrees, six Z certificates, and we just received a $200,000 grant from the state of Michigan to to amplify our OER efforts. Go to the next slide. And the the impact at WCC is is huge. Just in the last year, we saved students almost $3 million in in new textbook costs. That's over 16 million since 2017. And I love this snapshot of of one semester. So, one semester at WCC, there's 20 departments using OER in 410 course sections, which means 11,000 student seats of of free textbooks and $1.1 million saved. So, we feel like our impact is real, and it's it's because of the commitment of our of our faculty and the great work they do around OER. So, now let's let's hear from our WCC faculty, and yes, please post questions. Well, we're going to I'm going to ask questions of our panel to beginning, and then we'll get to all your questions in the chat and from participants at the end. So, the first question that I want to ask is kind of related to to getting started in in OER work. So, what motivated you to switch to using OER in your courses? I can start. For me, I've been using some iteration of OERs even before I knew what they were called since about 2015. And two main motivators for me, thing one, of course, is cost, textbook cost. Trying to make sure that students, you know, they're already spending so much money on their education, and having worked pretty intensively within the community college setting, and also being um someone who went to community college, I know that textbooks can be a huge barrier for students for their success. Um and so by using an OER, you pretty much guarantee that they're going to have access from day one, and you don't have to worry about them trying to source that somewhere else. Um I'll also speak to just briefly my discipline, which is um humanities, and so I'm primarily teaching sort of art history adjacent courses that tend to be very interdisciplinary, um wide range of humanities uh elements that go into that, as well as mythology and religion. Uh and those textbooks uh tend to be pretty directed towards the Western worldview, right? They're very Western-centric. Um and while that's a beautiful area to study, and I myself am a lover of the Enlightenment period, right? And that's a lot of white dudes, right? So that's that's what it primarily is pulling from, but there's also other people and other stories and other elements that can can and are a part of that narrative that unfortunately do get left out a lot. And so um one of the benefits of OER is being able to leave that stuff in, or direct student attention towards it more intentionally, um and I'm able to do that through using an OER. I'll go next on this one. Um I think part of the big reason that I like to pursue OER is um I was [clears throat] and I am technically still a first-generation college student, and I remember showing up to college my first time and feeling utterly tricked and bamboozled by the college system, that not only did I pay all of this tuition money, in fact all of my money to go to this college, uh but now you're telling me I need 600 more dollars for books that I'm only going to read one chapter of, and maybe they'll use it. I remember the like blinding white rage I felt on one of my first semesters of college, when the teacher on the first day was like, "Oh yeah, we don't even use it. I just have to list one." And then when I tried to return it, they would only give me store credit on it. So um I think that using OER is a good way to build trust with students and also to Kay's point, one thing that I have found in my career is I have never found a textbook that I actually like everything that's in it. And so, why not build one where I like everything in it and then I know what's there and I know how I want to use it. So, I really like the academic freedom it gives you and I like the honest connection you can make with students through it. Yes, and I will I will follow up everything Josiah said. Um, the first OER textbook I made was for a composition course and I was getting just so frustrated with how expensive the composition textbooks were and even when I tried to get like the condensed [clears throat] editions, like they were okay, but they didn't have all the things that I wanted. And so, OER just finally gave me the freedom to like get the I mean, in writing instruction, students do not need a lot of written text first of all. If you've ever tried writing, they need [laughter] to spend a lot of time writing. So, I was able to like really skinny down to like the essential what they did need to help them with the writing instruction, but the other thing that I was able to integrate that I loved was getting student My favorite thing about some textbooks was when they had the student example essays and we were able to get permission from students to use their essays as example essays in the OER and that just also just felt so authentic that I could be like, look, like these are literally your peers. They're not even like fancy textbook pretend students. Like these are like literally your classmates. I know these people. They wrote these, too. Like you can write this as well. So, so that was one thing. Can I talk about the OER or should I wait for that later, Molly? Go for it. Okay. So, that was a the first one that I made was a real OER, but thinking about what Kay was saying with humanities and just like not being able to find books, textbooks that that really feature like the diverse range of of humanity. One of the courses that I teach is diverse children's literature, and I was really struggling with finding textbooks that even came close to addressing the true diversity of of of the communities that my my students are serving in. And so, um and that the field itself is just constantly changing, right? So, there's kind of two things. One, like both trying to find all the diversity that I knew I wanted my students to explore, but also um things keep changing. I mean, one of my units we talk about book censorship. >> [laughter] >> Like, I teach book censorship I talk about book censorship in much different terms now than I did in 2019. Like, things have changed. Um and so, OERs or the faux OERs allow me to pull from library database articles that are current and and and speak to the current times. So, that's that's the other thing I want to say that I love about OERs. Awesome. Um um my next question's for Josiah specifically. So, you had the unique experience of inheriting a course that was already using an OER. Um what was that experience experience like in the sense of what um why did you decide to continue to use that instead of switching to a commercial textbook or and did you um adapt it at all from there or make any changes uh to it to expand it or anything like that? Yeah, great question. I actually inherited Mary's OER. Um and one thing that I enjoyed as uh she mentioned was that uh it's small. It is a really great uh writing guide in that it gives you what you need to get in, you get some examples, and then you're able to get out. And so, what uh we had there I didn't feel the need to edit or adjust it all, but as I was building out and redesigning the course um alongside this text, um I was able to bring in so many other open educational resources um and marry it with the textbook itself, but then also doing this faux OER thing where we're putting in these readily available um pieces. And what was really nice in that process was that I had a faculty librarian to help me out uh because one thing that I am want to do is stumble into some copyright issues every now and again and be like, "Oh, I'm sure it's fair use." It's not always fair use. Um and so it was really helpful to have uh an information expert with me in the form of Molly to be able to help pull like, "Oh, that is openly available. Uh we have to email this author to see if we'll be allowed to use it." I believe I emailed four different people saying like, "Hey, I really like your article. Can I use it in my course?" Every single one of them said, "Sure, you have full permission to use it." Um so it was a really good experience to be able to use what existed, um not have to be sold by 15,000 sales representatives saying you should use my book, um and actually finding things that are going to be much more relevant uh and uh recent for our students. What surprised uh any of you most when you transitioned to OER materials? What was most surprising to you? Well, I'll speak for myself just briefly, just building on what Josiah said, um is the uh level of support that is available, right? I feel like when I first started out, cuz I was an adjunct, so I was, you know, I was out there on my little island doing what I needed to do to survive, right? And um there wasn't a lot of support and I don't know that there was really that much incentive for faculty of any variety to move to OER, um at least where I was teaching at previously. And so, um you know, coming to WCC, I've been fortunate to be with the institution going on uh this will be my third academic year coming up, um and Molly has just been such a brilliant support for anything that we might need and uh I've emailed her so many times about I'm trying to find this very niche thing." Or, "Oh, I can't find this one particular story that I'm trying to to put into this textbook. Can you help me out?" And she's been phenomenal in doing that. And I really think that for most faculty, when they're thinking about transitioning to a new textbook of any kind, it's scary, especially if they've been using the same kind of textbook for decades, right? Um and the idea of moving to an OER, I think sometimes people think free means not as high quality. And so, obviously that's not the case. Um but having support can make approaching this um transition less intimidating. And having the support and the guidance sometimes um it takes a lot of the guesswork out of it. And so, I've been very appreciative, surprised in a positive way um for that. I think for me, uh one of the surprises was just in the I mean and I think like the academic mind shift that had to happen when I realized like I could that I could not only adopt kind of bits and pieces from different OERs, but that I could actually even like if I hated a sentence, I could rewrite it. Right? Like [laughter] it just feels very it was very much like not I mean I'm I'm definitely the oldest person on the call. So, like I can just say like it was just not how like it the the mind shift that I had to take of like this is okay. Like I can remix this. I can I can like take out whole paragraphs that I think are, you know, irrelevant and I can add a little bit if I need to. Um so, for me that was definitely a pleasant surprise, but also, you know, took a took a minute. Yeah, I can speak. Uh I think my biggest surprise with OER happens inside the classroom with how much immediate uh trust and credibility you get from a group of students when you tell them, "Hey, all your books are free. You don't need to spend money on it. I get that it's expensive to be alive right now, let alone alive and a college student. And just how much buy-in and if you have an open and honest conversation even about the textbook industry, about the way that these things make money, how much rapport you can build with students when you actually talk to them just as people and how thankful they are to get one less bill on their plate and to be able to see the curtain pulled back a little bit. That's such a good point. Do any of you want to comment some more about how students respond when they learn that they have free openly licensed materials? Yeah, as soon as Josiah started talking about the students I was like, oh yes, like the first day of class and I mentioned it and like everybody's shoulders just like relaxed. It was like a collective exhale of like Oh my gosh, cuz they also they're waiting, right? It's like they're you can tell that they're waiting for the other shoe to drop for me to be like, actually, like you didn't think you needed anything but you have to spend $300 and when I'm like, oh no, no, no. No, no. Um if yeah, it I feel like we all need any sort of mental health reprieve we can get and if I can give that gift to the students of one less thing they have to worry about. Another idea that I have when it comes K was mentioning earlier that there's kind of this pervasive idea in our overall overall culture that if it's free, it's got to be bad, right? Or if it's free, it's got to be of lower quality. But what I find is that students also come in with like such a mistrust of capital A authority that not using a Pearson or not using one of the big names also helps to ground it more in their lived reality than some of the elitist ideas that they might be thinking that college holds, right? That you're like, no, this is we built this for you because we think it's good and will work for you, not oh, here's the cookie-cutter fit into it. So, I think it also uh trusts them with their autonomy a little more. Absolutely. Did you want to go ahead >> Okay. All right. Two very brief things. Um I do want to build off something that Mary said earlier about being able to update the text pretty readily, too. I I often think of them as being like living documents, right? So, the nice thing is that you can um rapidly update them with more recent scholarship. And I think for my students especially, when we're talking about, you know, like the ancient world or we're talking about, you know, the Middle Ages or the Enlightenment or the Renaissance or any of these things, they feel pretty stagnant in students' minds, right? Um but there's always new scholarship that's being produced. We're always finding out new things. And so, I get to update the text with that stuff, and they can see that there's more and more things. Like most recently, um they're using an Everyone has different opinions on AI, but I do think this is a really good use case for it if we are going to use it at all. Um is they're pulling like basically the fragments of burned texts out of Pompeii that have been there since Vesuvius erupted, and they're scanning it using some kind of technology, and then they're feeding that into AI, and they're able to get a clear picture of what is remaining there. And then they're able to translate those things. And now we're getting all these new interesting narratives out of Pompeii that we otherwise would not have access to. And I can tell students about that, and it's a new interesting area that they also could eventually go into study, right? Somebody who does this for a living is is really fascinating. Um but in addition to this, right, as a part of the sort of diversification of materials, um I think students are often very surprised when they encounter those narratives that are otherwise left out of a textbook, right? To talk about um how, for instance, during the Northern Renaissance, you might imagine that everything is fairly insular as they're coming out of the Middle Ages, but this is and has been a globalized society for centuries. So, you get all of these really fascinating depictions of people with melanated skin coming out of, say, Germany, or even depictions of the saint, St. Maurice, from the Holy Roman Empire as a as a person of African descent that they otherwise would never see in any other textbook unless it was a really good one. I haven't encountered one yet that includes this. They're all OERs that are including this stuff. And so, it's just a really great way, again, to sort of challenge the canon or expand it in ways that are really meaningful for students to see themselves represented in material. I love that so much, Kay. The other thing that I was thinking about with what Jess I was talking about with the with the especially with these faux OERs that I build for my students who are going into education is not only can I build, you know, current material for them, [clears throat] but I'm also helping professionalize them by by showing them examples of articles from well-respected publications. They're like, you know, these are places like, please look at the School Library Journal. That's a great place to find things. And and all these different resources that I can share with them without even having to explicitly teach them, but they just might notice like, oh, like we're always going to this one website. Like, it always has really good stuff on it, right? That that that that is another, especially for the faux OER side of things, is just so helpful and and adds another dimension that textbooks just could never begin to touch. Absolutely. I'm speaking of the students too as as you're all of you talking about it. Have you seen any differences in in student preparedness or engagement when when you switch to OER materials. I can hop on this one. Um, I have found that um so many students have been almost Pavlovianly trained to hate a textbook that when I need to open my textbook, it is time to be bored, kind of read it, and disassociate. Whereas if you can upset the expectation of what a textbook is, what learning materials are, um I'll give an example out of the diverse children's literature course I teach. Um, Debbie Reese has an amazing blog all about uh using children's literature focusing on different uh Native American communities. Um, and when we go to that blog and see that oh, this got updated six days ago, that is so much more impactful to a student than oh, here's this article from to me 2012 was yesterday, but for them 2012, many of them were in middle or elementary school, right? So, um I think that uh having them see the world happening within their materials and not just the materials echoing the world that may they may never have even known is a really powerful way to do uh and encourage student engagement. Any other thoughts on engagement? I'll just maybe make a note that one of the other positive things about making the OER is that you can customize the activities, right? That go along with the readings and things of that nature. So, that's something that I've also really enjoyed making is like little and I know it sounds maybe I don't know, it sounds silly to me to say like yeah, like I make worksheets and we do these exercises, but they're all very applied things, right? Cuz I'm very much an application-based instructor. So, when we're looking at stuff, we're not just looking at art and kind of, you know, pontificating about it or un-me-apping at them for, you know, 10 minutes about some Leonardo da Vinci piece, but we're actually learning how to critically look at and think about and talk about and write about art. Um and so, the OER can allow for that to be to feel more integrated, to feel more organic. Whereas, if we were using some other textbook, it might feel like a supplemental, um component, but it's really integrated. And I think that's a very powerful thing. Um and students appreciate that. Like, I see it come out in the data that everything feels very aligned and organized. Um and as a faculty, you can only hope that that's one of the main things they walk away with is that, you know, you had your stuff together and everything felt good and they left with a positive experience. Oh, that's such a good point. I just was talking to a faculty member recently who was talking about their OER, and she said, "There's nothing in here that students don't need." You know, she had really just take like that everything in there would be exactly what students need and nothing else. So, yeah, to make it feel more relevant to and integrated. I love that. Um so, we've been talking about why we love the OER, but let's dig into the work of the work of OER. Um because I know already in the chat someone was saying something about the labor involved. So, how much time did it take you to transition your first course to OER? Cuz that's always the hardest one, right? And and maybe think about that and also what would you do differently or what have you done differently the next time? Um so, I I did one of the early college OERs, and um I was They don't The college doesn't do it anymore, but they gave me a sabbatical for it, and it was the best. And I used it. I used So, that was like, how much time does it take? Like, well, I had a semester-long sabbatical. Um Um, and that was phenomenal. Um, and they don't do that anymore, which is so sad. Um, so yes, I would say ideally you need a good semester to just get it done. Um, now our college moves to has moved to a stipend model, which just means you just add them on top of all the other things. As if you have nothing else to do. Okay, what are you going to add to that? Yeah. I was going to say I think it sort of depends because I think my first one it probably did take me a little bit longer. Um, I was just kind of grabbing stuff and putting stuff together. I'm sure that there were probably some some copyright concerns. We won't need to speak of that. That that textbook is no longer in existence, that first one I made. Um, but I think the first one that I did correctly, it probably did take me a semester to to really put it together and feel like it was in a solid place. Um, I would say since then though, the ones that I built after that I feel like I've gotten quicker with it. But it sort of depends too on what's available, right? So if there's a OER a couple OERs that you're just remixing stuff, I feel like that goes pretty quick. But I am certainly running into the issue right now with the textbook that I'm developing that I'm like, I don't know if I love any particular collection of things. So now I have to like figure out what that's going to end up meaning or looking like. Um, and I'm not totally sure yet. So that can be a challenge, right? Is um, figuring out what resources you're going to use and then if they don't exist, how are you going to make the things that you need? And that does take a little bit more time. Yeah, one thing that I found when doing OER work cuz I mostly do these faux OERs where we're pulling resources, but it's not like one bound text all together. Um, is what one thing that I found was more time-consuming than I anticipated was, uh, finding wonderful, beautiful, excellent, [clears throat] open, free resources that I liked, but would not be good for my students, right? I think sometimes as educators it's easier for us to forget that we already know what we know, and our students do not have the same entry points to these knowledges we do. Um, and so that's what I found to be a little more time-consuming than I anticipated was like, "Oh, this is perfect. I love this. This is so good." And then I'm like, "Oh, I have a master's degree in this. Of course I find this interesting and accessible." No, okay, I have to put this beautiful file on my own desktop for my own, uh, edification later, and now I need to go back and find something else. Um, but I have having done this a bit, I've become a better critical reader and like, uh, self-audience-aware that, "Oh, okay, just because I like this doesn't mean it's going to be the best fit for this." Um, and I think that speeds up the process cuz I would agree with what my colleagues have said. Takes about a semester to write a good OER and put it all together, um, but the more you do it, the quicker it becomes. Can Can any of you talk a little bit more about your experience with like finding and evaluating content for your course? What things worked well? What What kind of advice would you give for others, um, that are just embarking on the process? I really embrace a spreadsheet, and I feel like that's saying something coming from English. Like that I didn't naturally like gravitate towards spreadsheets. I think Google has some really nice little template table things that made things easier than ever before, um, that I wish I'd had. I know the first time I did it, I had a Google Doc that I was using. I think Molly was like adding things to and I was adding things to, but oh, I wish I had a spreadsheet just so I could like do quick little rankings of things and add my little notes about like this was great, like this was terrible, um, because it's so it's so complicated and there's so many there yeah. You know, especially every year there's more and more OERs available to search from which is great, but it also means that there's more to sift through cuz you don't want to miss a gem. Like I think Molly when you were helping me with my composition one, it was something like that had just appeared. Like I'd done all this research. I thought I had everything I wanted to do and then you found this one that was like perfect. It was so good. Um and I had to kind of restart all over again a little bit. So, yeah. Yeah, I would echo the spreadsheet. I do love a good like annotated bibliography, too. I mean, I know that's a little bit more time-consuming, but I do think that it is helpful to cuz you know, you look at so much stuff. It's like what was in this one again? What did I like? What did I not like? Um all of that is is a key factor and I think yeah, sifting through so many things. I would also add and I've I've come back to this. I think this is where I started in my OER journey and I kind of left it and now I'm coming back to it is returning to primary sources, too. Um I know that they can be a little dusty and clunky to work with, but occasionally when I have a class and we've been in it for a little while, to challenge them with something that maybe is a bit tougher to read um from a primary source or sometimes you have an easier an easier text that is a primary source that somebody's written and um I think those can also be really good resources that sometimes um we might neglect to look at because we're so focused on what other things are kind of being written that summarize, but I think especially in the age of AI where you can get a summary of anything in 2 seconds, right? Um coming back to that primary source and really wrestling with that um I've seen some really interesting discussions and responses, too, from students who might not otherwise encounter those texts. Mhm. And while I do appreciate a spreadsheet and nobody tell the Lorax, I am such a I need to print it out type of person to be organized and I have found that a lot of the things that I best work with are when there is just marked up in pen and move this over here, put this here. I can physically stack them in the ways I want them to approach it. It's all I like to imagine myself building an electronic course packet. I'm like, okay, just how are we going to get through it and then literally pulling it out when it's not time to be there. I think one thing I try to teach my writing students and all my students is there's no right or wrong way to do X, Y, or Z. There's just the ways that'll work for you and the ways that won't work for you. And so I encourage everybody to even if it is a little silly like me printing everything out, if it's going to create a better product and a better process for you, lean into those things. Don't try to always bend to the most efficient way of doing things because that's for machines and not for people. That's such a good point, you know, and to make you feel better, Josiah, I know there's a faculty member from WCC in the audience today who said I'm down to deciding between two OERs, but I really I just need to read them. Could I get a print copy? So the library paid to print both of them for her so that yeah, so that she can literally look at them, mark them up, and decide, you know, maybe move pages around and things like that. Um so yeah, any process that works for you. Um so for those of you that remixed and adapted materials cuz that can get challenging when, you know, you want to change stuff, but since there's all the different licenses and you have to follow the license and things like that and and pay attention to copyright, um can you describe any processes that helped you with that part part of it? Yeah, I can jump off here um because uh Molly, you did it with me. Um I remember I sent you a long list of links uh in a Google Doc and you sent back to me in that same Google Doc a bullet point under legal, illegal, legal, illegal, oh have to ask about this one, more research needed. Um and then we were able to find really good strong uh substitutions for the things we couldn't use. We were able to ask permissions. Um what I find uh and I kind of talked about this earlier. Uh people who write this type of stuff generally really want people to read it. And so if you just ask authors, they're almost exclusively very excited to say yes to getting their work disseminated, especially for free to students. Um and I thought I was going to come up against like well, let me ask my lawyer and we'll see if we can open the copyright da da da, but every time it's just been sure. I had uh a website I was using for good PowerPoints uh and like how to use low language, good images. Uh and I was so sad cuz the guy redid his website so all of my links died. Um but I was just able to email him and be like, "Hey, do you have an archive of this uh uh article?" And within 36 hours he sent it back um with updated links and like a special way for students to reach out to him if they ever want personalized coaching. And I was like I would never have thought that would have been what would happen. Uh I just think uh it take the leap. Um I'm remembering when I was remixing like a couple things were really helpful for me. One was having my own outline of like what I needed like what kind of content I needed for each area. Um and then I did also have paper. I don't want to be like I'm all tech cuz you know, I definitely had paper and I think I had different colored um highlighters that I was using to like indicate which type of license each one you know so I knew like this one I can't I can't change you know I can't move with this content around and this one I can't you know like trying to like help me figure out like what pieces work I could remix and what was going to go where. I think there were numbering involved too. It gets complicated. It's It's not It's not simple. It's true. I think a color coding is a good idea. Kay, what were you going to add? Oh, I was just going to say yeah I I would echo everything that everyone else has said and I think this is also one of the the benefits sometimes of those old dusty texts because they tend they've entered like the the public domain, right? So you don't have to fuss with some of those things. Although this is something that that Molly and I did have to work on with one text I believe I had emailed you about a couple of different ones but there was an older text it was in the public domain but there are some translations of it that were not and we were trying to figure out how we kind of work around that issue cuz especially with you know mythology or religion or what have you these are a lot of translations and so you have to find the ones that are freely accessible but I did want to jump in and and maybe it's only tangentially related cuz I did mention artificial intelligence and LLMs already. One of the ways that I have used them that has been useful and this is also sort of a tricky thing because you don't want to put people's stuff into AIs that have explicitly said no and this is something that is being added into a lot of um creative commons things. So if you are an AI user and you are thinking you're going to use that for your your text definitely check the licenses before you just start throwing people's stuff in there. Um but with the public domain stuff I mean it's already been scraped by all of the LLMs anyway so you you know you're probably safe there question mark it's probably a gray area. Um but I have used um AI for to help with translations and accessibility. So I just if is it okay if I just briefly talk about that? >> Yes, please. That's such a good Mhm. Yeah, so for example, um there In some of the cases, there's an older way, and I'll just talk about Mandarin for a moment, an older way of translating um Chinese text was using the Wade-Giles form of um pronunciation. And we've largely moved away from that on a a global scale. Now things uh it's partially cuz it's inaccurate and and a little bit colonial. Um so you use Pinyin now, and Pinyin actually include the tonal qualities that go along with the language. It's more accurate. Um and so I have had cases where I've used a text and asked the AI to provide the Pinyin uh translation for the names and things of that nature. And that has been really helpful because it cuts down a lot of time for me to have to manually go into that process. And of course I do check everything cuz you know, AI does make mistakes. Um but it can be a way to maybe rectify or correct some of those things, too. I've also have that happen um with some indigenous languages. Um I'm trying to remember there was maybe one or two other ones. Um Hmong Hmong was another language that I had it help with, and I was able to get that checked by someone who actually speaks the language, right? So they could say like, yes, this is accurate. Um and so that's that's a positive thing to use, but of course it gets complicated with the licenses and with all of these other elements that already make um maybe building your OER a bit more challenging, but it is also an option. Thank you for sharing. I'm I was hoping you you'd talk about this cuz I think the work you've been doing there is pretty awesome. Um yeah, um I'm I'm just going to ask our panel just two more quick questions, and then I want to make sure we get to all the questions in the chat. So we've You guys have mentioned a little bit about institutional supports that are helpful. Can you just quickly talk about like what has been most helpful to you, and what kind of supports do you wish you had as a faculty member? So what's really helpful? What what would you love to I mean, Molly, you are really helpful. So, [laughter] having having a faculty librarian who who listens and then just like finds amazing resources, like oh my gosh. Um I could never I don't know that I ever would have started the journey or completed it or wanted to do more of it without you. So, so that that is huge. Um I'm sorry. Now I just got distracted because I'm like, what else do you need? You just need Molly and then you're fine. >> [laughter] >> Um time. And I mean again, and our institution has made the choice to to not give you so much of the time and to give you money, which is better than nothing. Like I like Um I don't want to discount that. Um and honestly, I should also probably add up all the time that I've saved because you know what? The textbook company people, like they don't come to me anymore. And they used to spend they used to eat up a lot of time in my hallway. They would come to my office and oh my gosh. And anyway, so there's a little bit of time saved there. Then I guess I I can use all that time to build OERs. And I'm sorry. Now I'm forgetting all the questions again. >> No. No, you're good. I said, what would be more helpful? And you said, time. That's perfect. So, go ahead, Kate. Oh, I was just going to add on to that. If you are a faculty lead and you have other faculty or part-timers, it also saves them time when you make these things because they're usually pretty easy, right? To pick up and integrate them into You know, I got mine are like a Google Doc file and we're going to migrate them into Pressbooks and all that good stuff. But they're super simple, right? So, there's nothing you need to add in. There's nothing you need to integrate into Canvas necessarily unless you want to. Um and so, that saves them a lot of time cuz they can just pick it up and use it. Um and so, it's a perk. Yeah. Delilah. Um I think reiterating having a information expert is really really helpful. Like uh I feel like as faculty I'm a content expert in my world, but I'm not necessarily a book-making expert or a copyright expert. So, having all of those things, um and I think also, uh giving yourself permission, and I know this is hard for educators to do, uh but your first draft should not be an A+. Right? >> That's such a good point. Yeah. >> Like, giving yourself that freedom of like, I'm going to write something. Period. I'm going to write something, and then I can try to make it good as I keep going and refine it in doing it. But, trying to, I think, undertake I'm going to build the perfect thing at my first time, you and every first-year writing student ever, right? It's like, no. We need to be able to give ourselves the freedom to write a okay OER and then turn it into an amazing OER. That's so good. I love it. Um one sentence each, maybe. What advice would you give to a faculty member who's like, OER curious, but hasn't quite taken the leap yet? Or two sentences. It doesn't have I just mean like a We'll just do a quick round robin on that one. What advice would you >> You you just you just got to try it. It's like, you know, try a new food. Like, just give it a try. Give it a little taste. Like, just Yeah. I like that. Like a toddler. Just just taste [laughter] it. So, in my house, we have a saying that is, if it sucks, we'll leave, right? So, just give it a shot. If you hate it, you can always go back to something else or choose something else, but you'll never know unless you try. I like I like that, that you don't you don't have to stick with it if it's not working for you. That's such a good point. Josiah? Uh I would say, yeah, trying to get me to one to two sentences is crazy. Um but, uh no, I would say that uh, it's not working now, so it's worth trying to make something new. That is That's good advice, too. I love that. Yeah, it doesn't hurt to try to try to make it better. Um, Heather, I want to make sure you've been tracking questions or someone's been tracking questions in the chat. Or Um, let me see. I don't know. Heather, were you tracking the questions? I I was so engaged in the conversation. >> I know. Yeah. We [clears throat] We have a We have a couple people that were tracking questions, but um, I can jump in and say, let's see. Um, I'm going to go to the first one. As Hold on while I scroll down here. >> chat. I put it in the chat. Sorry. >> Okay. Oh, I see I'll I'll ask this first one I see here. What makes OER work sustainable instead of becoming one more thing faculty are asked to do? Uh, I'll hop in here. I My answer is just really quick. Don't do it alone. Right? A shared burden is always easier to carry. Um, I cannot imagine trying to do one of these by myself and I think it would just be something else to do, but doing it in partnership, um, which is something I like about the model we have here when you write an OER, you need to have a second reader and other people to give you some feedback and I think that's uh, while some people might see bureaucracy there, I see like uh, community uplift. Right. And I think for me I see it so tied to curriculum, but like I know something's not working either because something in the field has changed or my students are like, what's going on with this? And they're You know what I mean? Like they're not getting what I need them to get out of the existing OER readings or whatever. And that that's just I mean, that's just teaching Like that's my job. Like literally. Like if I can't respond to their needs, then um, it it you know, it But again, that's the great thing about OER is it can be just a little tiny thing. It doesn't mean you have to like get a whole new textbook. Like, I just have to like precision cut like what's wrong and fix that one little piece. Mhm. Um, back to the fierce commitment of teaching, what gives you hope when you think about the future of teaching and learning? Um, my students give me hope. They're amazing. Um, they're just amazing human beings, and getting to be human with my students and and getting to create a a caring community is the only buffer I know of to to to counteract all this madness. There's another question here. If you could tell another institution one thing about building this kind of culture, what would it be? That it takes institutional investment, not just faculty passion. I would echo that. It has to come from the top. I mean, the bottom can can advocate for it, but the top has to support it, and it's it's better if they also can support it with funding or release time or something, right? Because um, people should be compensated for their labor and um, experience in education. Absolutely. I agree with that wholeheartedly. I think we have time for another question. What is the most important point to make OER a success? So, I think just briefly, in addition to just trying it out, I would also say be okay with piloting the thing that you've made, right? Like, the first the draft, I mean, it can be a little rough around the edges, but try it out because you won't know if it's going to work until you've tried it, right? And some of the most profound kind of takeaways on whether or not something is going to land right or um you know, that choice of reading was the correct one is by piloting it with some students and seeing how they respond to it and then saying, "Okay, yes, that went exactly how I wanted it to or even better or oh, maybe we need to make some some adjustments, right?" And you know, you take time between terms to do that and then that is how I typically have refined my OERs and each time they get a little bit better. Yeah, that's that's awesome. Well, thank you so much. It was such an amazing conversation and and let me just say that I think you all are so fierce and I know what Heather meant that she wanted to bring you all to to this community and share your story because um just as important as our you know, our students' voices are, I think faculty voice who are who are advocates of OER are just as important. Um we need to hear more from our faculty. And so, thank you so much for such an amazing conversation, for the amazing work that you're doing at your institution. I I'm I'm just so inspired. So, thank you so so much. Um and I'm going to go back and share our presentation really quick and kind of draw us to a close. Um so, just so that you know, this was our final webinar for the spring semester and wow, right? What a way to close our spring um webinar series. Um but you can certainly visit our uh website for upcoming webinars and and future webinars and I think um one of the ladies will post that in the chat. Um and just like always, we'd love to hear your thoughts, how we can improve, what things you liked, um what your thoughts are about today's webinar. Um I I think hearing from from this community helps us to improve the work that we're all doing. And so, by all means, please, um share your thoughts. And just a quick thank you for everybody who joined us today. I'll ask Heather to jump back in and kind of give the final thoughts to close out our webinar. But thank you again to this amazing group of a faculty who shared their story today. Truly inspiring and very fierce. >> [laughter] >> Thank you so much Elizabeth. I don't know how I can how I can top your closing because I think that they're fierce as well. And I just want to thank the entire panel and and Molly for being the moderator. I just appreciate all of you so much for being here today. And thank you all of the attendees for being here. We we love having you here and we love if you pass on the recording to other people and we can spread the word. Thank you so much and we'll see you next time.