The Power of Student Voice in the Open Education Movement

Presenters: Hailey Babb, Winni Zhang

Students are the end consumers for Open Educational Resources (OER). In order to have a discussion about diversity, pedagogy, quality of materials, and many other common conference topics, advocates must first understand what students needs are. In this panel led by former Student Body President Winni Zhang, former Student Union President Hailey Babb, the panelists will share their stories of policies that worked on their respective campuses as well as policies that can be modeled at other institutions. The presentation will discuss what a student-centric approach truly looks like, and how the OER community can continue to empower student voice in all parts of the open education movement. Understanding that each campus/organization is different, the panel will provide the audience with ample Q&A time to address the concerns the audience may have regarding their specific campuses or in general.

Learning Outcomes:
Attendees will walk away with:
1. An understanding of the importance of students in the fight for OERs.
2. A plan to mobilize and empower student voices on their respective campuses.
3. Case studies of how student advocacy at two seperate institutions advanced open education on the respective campuses.
4. An opportunity to ask former student leaders specific challenges to mobilizing students on their own campuses.
5. A new framework for viewing open education that is student-centric.

Student-created open educational resources in a first-year writing context

Presenter: Jason Godfrey

Several recent studies have investigated the great promise of student-created open educational resources (Randal et al. 2013; Azzam et al. 2017; Wiley et al. 2017). Often, these student-created items focus on developing “renewable” assignments that offer utility to future students. This study builds on previous research by reporting on a case-in-progress of first-year writing students adapting their research papers into public-facing, open-access educational resources. Specifically, this lightning talk will detail the struggles and successes of implementing literature-based best practices as well as present early stages of public perception to the student-created OER.

Learning Outcomes: Viewers of this lightning talk will be prompted to explore the following questions:
1. Does student-created OER content contribute to the popular perception that OER are “Not-high-quality”? (Allen and Seaman 2016)
2. In what ways are students uniquely capable of producing accessible OER?
3. How can assignments built to be thrown away after completion be adapted for open education?

Students and Faculty as Co-Creators… During the Pandemic

Presenters: Lisa Young, Matthew Bloom, Philip Root, Madison Reeve, Rachel Simmons, Jessica Parsons

At two of the Maricopa Community Colleges, faculty leads have coordinated the hiring of student workers as OER Specialists with whom faculty across the colleges may work to make their OER dreams come true (well, that’s the ideal). This panel discussion will showcase reflections and experiences from faculty members and student workers involved in collaborative OER projects before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Examples of projects, collaborative methods, and best (and worst) practices will be provided. Come see an example of how institutional support along with faculty and student initiative can lead to creative and exciting opportunities for OER development, even in emergency and remote work environments!

Learning Outcomes:
-Describe concrete examples of student-faculty collaboration in the development and curation of OER materials
-Describe successful efforts to scale OER student worker programs across colleges
-Describe experiences of co-creation from student, faculty, and administrative perspectives
-Describe ways of collaborating remotely

Student Creators: Developing an Open Marketing Resource for Non-Profits

Presenters: Andrea Niosi, Paris Summers, Vanessa Mora

This session is designed as a traditional presentation built using slides, screenshots, and live demonstrations to showcase how 34 Marketing and Graphic Design students from KPU were able to successfully create a large-scale OER project in 13 weeks.

The presentation is structured to walk the audience through our 13-week journey together:
1. (Andrea) How the course was structured; how the project was framed & scheduled; how guest speakers were integrated; the tools and resources provided/used; the role of anti-racism, representation, and accessibility; the use of “ungrading” and reflective ePortfolios.
2. (Vanessa & Paris) Students’ perspective on learning about Open & the SDG’s; how to conduct Open research; the learning curve on developing an Open resource in Pressbooks; collaborative and team work in a distance-learning Pandemic-induced environment; and reflecting on the entirety of the project by developing ePortfolios.

KPU students enrolled in the 4th year “Integrated Marketing Communications” course in the Summer 2020 term embarked on an ambitious project: to create an Open marketing resource for non-profits, activists, and advocacy groups who often have the least amount of marketing dollars and the fewest number of marketing resources to research, design, plan, and execute marketing campaigns.

By drawing on available OERs and by highlighting the success behind activists movements such as Black Lives Matter, the Wet’suwet’en land defenders, and Hogan’s Alley Society, students developed a comprehensive IMC Guide that takes the reader through the process of creating successful marketing campaigns.

The Open Guide to IMC includes a number of Open resources including templates for crafting Creative Briefs, developing Content Calendars, and designing Brand Identities. Students created the Open Guide for IMC to be fully Accessible and interactive with over 60 H5P content types.

Before beginning the project, students were asked to first develop a deeper understanding of a few foundational concepts: the SDG’s, the Open Movement, the Creative Commons; and Open tools & resources that can be used in Open development.

Students were then sorted into 1 of 3 groups and began a 13-week process of researching, writing, curating, editing, and attributing. By the end of the term, each student worked on every part of the Open Guide, allowing them to apply their existing marketing knowledge and graphic design skills while also developing new ones.

Learning Outcomes:
1. Identify how to engage students in open pedagogy projects
2. Learn how to organize a class-wide OER project
3. Become more familiar with how to integrate various tools and technologies to support OER development (e.g. Hypothesis, H5P, Pressbooks)
4. Acquire first hand advice and feedback from OER-authors (students) and gain insight on how to engage students in similar open pedagogy projects

Employing Students as Partners in Open Educational Resource Creation

Presenters: Kim Mears, Meghan Landry, Tiffany MacLennan

Open educational resources are linked to a more accessible and affordable format of higher education, as well as being shown to increase student learning overall (Hilton, 2016). Despite these benefits, the uptake of OERs has been slow in the post-secondary sector. Some educators have been hesitant to pursue OERs in their courses due to confusion of ownership and licensing, funding, institutional recognition, and most commonly, time (Hocevar, 2017).

This presentation seeks to address these barriers by introducing the concept of using students as partners in the creation, adaption, and adoption of OERs. The given presentation will provide an overview of three main points:
Why hiring students as partners in OERs serves as a solution to the barriers faced by educators in OER creation.
How to navigate student funding, including discovering existing grant and employment opportunities, and the training required for OER creation.
The benefits for both faculty and students for participating in a partnered OER creation.

This presentation will walk participants through a conceptual methodology of how to pair the need for greater OER initiatives on campuses, with the need for students to develop skills and attributes for success in post-secondary education and beyond. The processes and benefits students gain as full-time collaborators of OER partnerships will be based off of High Impact Practice and Students as Partners literature (cf. Kuh 2008, (Frison & Melacarne, 2017; Bovill & Felten, 2016).

Bovill, C., & Felten, P. (Eds.). (2016). Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: Implications for academic development. International Journal for Academic Development: Special Issue, 21(1), 1-90.

Frison, D., & Melacarne, C. (2017). Fostering “student voice” to improve teaching & learning methods in higher education. Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education, 1(20). Retrieved from http://repository.brynmawr.edu/tlthe/vol1/iss20/6

Hilton, J. (2016) Open educational resources and college textbook choices: a review of research on efficacy and perceptions. Education Tech Research and Development, 64(4), 573 – 590.

Kuh, G. (2008). High Impact Educational Practices. What are they, Who has Access to them and Why they Matter. Washington, D.C.: Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Learning Outcomes:
Throughout this presentation, participants will gain a better understanding of the role of students as partners (SAP) in adopting, adapting, and creating open educational resources (OERs). This session will focus on how to navigate hiring students, training students, and the mutual benefits of student partnership for both students and faculty as backed by SAP literature (cf Bovill, C., & Felten, P., 2016)

“Science Isn’t Really My Thing”: Nonmajor Students’ Perceptions of an Open Pedagogy Project

https://youtu.be/5YJk5ebsQ0w

In this session, we have invited two former students, who previously participated in the open pedagogy project we employ in a general education science course, to share their and their classmates’ perceptions and experiences participating in the project. Non-majors students have very complex emotions and experiences that shape their relationship with science. Many students enter with high anxiety and low confidence in their scientific abilities, usually manifesting in comments like “Just so you know, I’m not good at science.” We’ve noticed that open pedagogy has allowed these students a participatory voice in scientific dialogues that they are often excluded from as non-majors.

The students have previously participated in groups to create, edit, and curate websites that were then used as the “textbook” for future semesters. Students have often responded positively to this project, citing that knowing their work will help future students in this required course gives them more confidence in science, as well as gives them a more solid purpose for completing the project. Because this project is about giving students a voice in spaces they usually don’t have one, these students are excited to engage with the Open Education community to amplify their experiences. After a brief introduction to the project, students will be asked about their feelings upon entering the course, their experiences creating and editing the websites, and their feelings exiting the course, among other questions. The student presenters will also share and respond to quotes from their fellow classmates. Questions from the audience will be welcomed as well.

Learning Outcomes:
Students that enter required, general education science courses can have high anxiety and low confidence, open pedagogy can be a tool used to increase confidence, decrease anxiety, and give students a voice in science. Attendees will hear from students themselves regarding the impact of participating in open pedagogy in their required general education science course.

Presentation Slides: Science Isn’t Really My Thing

Unlikely Partners: Harnessing Student Enthusiasm to Create an OER Grant

Presenters: Betty Garrison, Jesse Akman, and Robert Miley

In 2019, following the Carnegie Foundation’s reclassification of Elon University as a national research university, Elon’s Carol Grotnes Belk Library made growing the understanding and presence of OER on campus a chief priority. Despite some individual success with faculty receiving state-funded grants, Belk Library struggled to translate those discrete achievements into significant, widespread interest.

Unbeknownst to Belk’s librarians, Elon’s Student Government Association (SGA) was working in parallel to address textbook costs. However, their attempts to manage those concerns stalled due to annual membership turnover and a lack of exposure to the open education movements and their foundational precepts. A chance meeting between two librarians and a persistent SGA representative brought the two campaigns together. Combining the librarians’ experience and knowledge with student enthusiasm and influence proved to be a successful formula: in the spring of 2020, Elon approved their joint proposal for a faculty OER grant program.

We offer lessons learned about earning administrative buy-in and maintaining that support; focusing student interest and enthusiasm by expanding their understanding of OER; and building multi-interest coalitions to create sustainable open education initiatives.

Learning Outcomes: Students sense the value of free, open resources; lack of support for OER may stem from an insufficient vocabulary for articulating these ideas. If educators provide that missing context, students can voice their support and faculty/staff can grow their OER coalition. Our case study demonstrates a 180-degree turn from failure to success in implementing OER initiatives when students act as co-leaders.

Peer-assisted learning through open research education: a medical student’s perspective

Presenters: Veronica Anayansi Moreno Mares, Matthieu Pierre, and Martina Miklavčič

Recently collected data from the Research Committee of the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA) has shown that although 98% of medical students worldwide think that research is important in medical education, less than 20% believe that it is sufficiently addressed in their medical curricula. These numbers have motivated us to create research education resources that are open, free and accessible to anyone who is interested in learning about medical research. We have created Educational Activities, ready-made outcome-based training workshops. Through these workshops, we intend to provide medical students around the globe with an opportunity to learn and explore the field of medical research and overcome challenges faced in research education, such as lack of interest, time and specialized curricula.

In this session we will present our research training workshops and their structure, explain how we created them and how they are being evaluated. Special significance will be given to highlighting their open education aspect, how they are shared among medical students and how our methods could be transferred to other fields.

Our Educational Activities are designed to be facilitated by students for students. They can be used by any student with little research experience as each manual contains theoretical information and resources for the facilitator to teach specific research skills to their peers.

Learning Outcomes: Our attendees will:
Get acquainted with 3 ready-made outcome-based interactive training workshops about medical research developed by International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations.
Get insight on the structure and distribution process of our Open Educational Activities.
Critically reflect on the role of peer-assisted education as a part of Open Ed.
Analyze how openly accessible peer education can increase the learning experience of medical students within research education.

A General Education Science OER by Nonmajor Students

There is oftentimes a mismatch between the level of knowledge required to understand even some of the most basic textbook selections for general education science courses. To that end, students in my general education science course for the past 4 semesters have been writing, editing, and curating OER websites using the Google Sites platform. These websites serve as the “textbook” for my sections of the general education science course I teach.

Instead of focusing solely on content to be memorized, the websites explore the intersection of complex science topics and society. Students are encouraged to explore ways in which their field of study also connects with the topics at hand – criminal justice majors have written about the ethics of DNA fingerprinting, political science majors have written about the politics surrounding climate change. Students have also participated in workshops to ensure the third-party materials they use are openly-licensed and/or make a fair use argument for their inclusion.

One of the goals this year is to disseminate the project so that others can reuse. While there is consideration to shift it to a platform that allows for easier revision and remixing, I wanted to share the usefulness of Google Sites as a platform for open pedagogy projects that can easily be reused by others and is user-friendly, especially for students that have institutional access to G-Suite for Education.

Learning Outcomes: Sharing a student-created OER for general education science educators.

The Student OER Advocacy Training Guide: A look into Developing Sustainable, Inclusive Internship Practices

In the Fall of 2018, Salt Lake Community College’s Open SLCC Team explored the opportunity to participate in the College’s Campus Internship Program to raise student visibility of OERs. This partnership resulted in the creation of the OER Student Advocacy and Outreach Internship, which led to the development of the Student OER Advocacy Training (SOAT) Guide. The SOAT Guide’s goals were to help interns develop skills related to advocacy within the context of Open SLCC and to establish sustainability and consistency within the internship in the long-term. Alongside these overarching goals, the interns would also develop information literacy skills and career-oriented transferrable skills.

The SOAT Guide was reconceptualized in 2019 to support interns from diverse backgrounds, especially to create a guide that was inclusive and rooted in the desire to provide equitable access to any student in the internship program. Open pedagogical practices were introduced and the presentation of information literacy concepts was developed through the use of the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. The result was the creation of an OER that was scalable, easy to update, modular, and explicitly integrated renewable assignments and information literacy into the internship program.

The redesigned SOAT Guide is self-paced with 15 modules. These modules cover internship onboarding and provide a basic introduction to OER, SLCC’s OER initiative, and an introduction to signature assignments. This is typically achieved at the pace of one module per week during the semester. However, this process is flexible, allowing the ability to adjust the content to the intern’s experiences, aptitude, or estimated internship eligibility. At the end of each semester, the intern is required to complete a signature assignment related to the OER Advocacy and the work readiness skills identified at the beginning of the semester. The renewable assignment offers the program an element of sustainability while providing the intern with the opportunity to share their unique experiences and perspectives.

In this demonstration, we will share extracts from the SOAT Guide set to be released at the end of 2020 and a Salt Lake Community College Student Release Form developed to support the best practices within the SOAT Guide.

Learning Outcomes: Following this demonstration, the conference participants will gain an understanding of the inclusive benefits of Open Pedagogical Practices and strategies for establishing long-term sustainability within OER Internship Programs.

Graduate Student Voice and Choice in Open Education

Graduate students enrolled in the University of Calgary’s Masters of Education (MEd) cohort, Learning and Leading in a Digital Age, engaged in a course on the Ethics of Education Technology. The key learning task was to co-design and co-create an open educational resource (OER). Students selected topics of interest relevant to the course, and wrote chapters for an open textbook published online as a Pressbook.

Our session delves into the design of the course, the instructional process, and learner outcomes from delivering a graduate course using an open learning instructional design. With emphasis on both the perspectives of the students who took the course and those of the instructor, this session shares insights on the process of co-designing learning experiences through the development of an OER, and how this approach impacted learning and engagement.

Speaking to the instructor’s experience, we address the following topics: Supporting students in an open learning course design; breaking down barriers to disseminating and sharing knowledge in academia; establishing adequate boundaries and constraints to guide students in the creation of their chapter; and balancing open versus structured learning to support students creating and publishing OER for the first time.

Speaking to the student’s experience, we address the following topics: How student engagement shifted knowing ideas could be published for a broader audience; how the course design enabled students to learn through contributing to the exchange and creation of knowledge; how the ‘openness’ of the assignment allowed students to weave their unique expertise and professional context into their studies; and challenges experienced by students including pressure/stress of sharing work publicly and learning to work with more ambiguity that can accompany an open learning approach.

We will address lessons learned throughout the project including: Open learning design and OER development can be successfully combined into an impactful teaching and learning experience for graduate students and instructors; OER creation can increase the authenticity of university assignments and increase learner engagement; and that there are logistics to consider when co-creating an open textbook as a course assignment (e.g. copyediting, style sheet, formatting, copyright & licensing, etc.)

Following our session, attendees will be able to:
– Advocate for open educational practices as an opportunity to provide graduate students with enhanced choice and voice in their education;
– Revise and remix a design model for open learning that can be integrated across grade levels and disciplines;
– Communicate the connections between open education and authentic, collaborative learning experiences;
– Anticipate and overcome challenges that can arise with co-designing an OER