OER Core Elements Academy 2021

As an instructional designer my goal is to help faculty take advantage of what exists as OER for any particular subject matter.  I know that many faculty members are concerned about student expenses and access to affordable learning content.  My priority is probably curating and making OER available to faculty.

As an instructor and course developer, I need OER for our Competency-Based courses.  I'm particularly interested in Project Management for Safety and Health, as most of the PM guides I find are geared toward Engineering, Business, or Computer Science. Also, the current Project Management Body of Knowledge is Edition 6, published 2021; while all I can find in OER resources is Edition 4, published in 2008 and some in 2016. I'd like guidance on finding more current OER resources.

Hi, everyone,

My goals are to learn more about OER creation and development.  I teach freshman-level English and Humanities classes and I've used OERs for several years now.  There are some really great resources out there, but there are also definitely some areas that are lacking.  Honestly, I would say that my biggest "need" right now is simply the ability to magic up the time to work on building materials for areas I want to see covered.

As an aside, for anyone interested, I recently started using a newish OER for my English 2311 Technical Writing class - I've really appreciated how accessible and organized it is and my students have just raved about how much they like it (because I ask them to give me feedback on the resource).  It's available on the OER Commons - https://www.oercommons.org/courses/technical-and-professional-writing-genres-beta-openokstate/view 

Beilfuss, Michael, Staci Bettes, and Katrina Peterson. Technical and Professional Writing Genres [Beta]:A Study in Theory and Practice.  E-book.  OSU Library, 2020.

I'd love to hear from anyone using awesome English or Humanities OERs!  Please post them here or in the group folders.  Thanks!

edit* I checked this on 6.9.21 and it looked like maybe the source link wasn't working, so I updated the link.  If it doesn't work for you, I also put this resource in our group folders.  Cheers!

Hi Mandy, Thanks for the recommendation. I just added it to my list of OER sources for an undergrad professional/technical writing class.

If asked, I'll say that [Beta] in the title means that it is a work-in-progress, not the final form. Correct?

~sw 

Hi, Susan - Yes, my guess is that the [Beta] is in the title because the authors are perhaps still working out any editing/proofreading issues.  

This is awesome and just what I needed! Thank you.

Greetings and good timing! This week our institution started an OER project which partners subject librarians with OER-friendly faculty.

I'm a humanities librarian looking for,

• Undergraduate technical/professional writing textbooks
• Graduate-level art history/art pedagogy items that challenge the hegemony

I'm almost finished with the graduate-level art history/art pedagogy items but I'm struggling to find an undergraduate technical/professional writing textbook that contains current information. Some copyright dates are current but the information is dusty.

Any recommendations from the group?

~sw

I've been using OpenStax Anatomy and Physiology OER for my AP I and II courses for a few years now and have made modifications to the textbook content, powerpoints, etc....but am still in the process of developing resources for homework that come close to what the big publishers are offering.  I've done work with Quizlet, videos with embedded quizzes (in Canvas), and developed learning pathways this last few semesters.  So I'd like to see what others are doing and how they are producing the review/homeowork resources that are often lacking in OER course resources.

https://openstax.org/details/books/anatomy-and-physiology

Thanks for the opportunity to be a participant in the OER Core Elements Academy 2021! Through this training, I hope to obtain the skills needed to develop innovative student-centered academic content. Additionally, I aim to liaise with educators/institutions proficiently engaged in Open Education practices and pedagogy so I can formulate criteria to effectively assess the many existing OER materials.

I am new to OER but am tasked with finding resources and providing links on the library webpage for our faculty to use in their courses.

My goals are to improve the design of my own OER resources and add additional OER resources that are useful and relevant to my courses. My first priority is for my World Literature I course this fall (covering world literature to the 17th century), but I'm also interested in OER resources for ENGL 1301, ENGL 1302, and World Literature II. 

I agree with Dr. Palmer above--I'd say my biggest need is finding the time to be able to work on this. 

Hello everyone!

I teach psychology (FTF and online) at Lamar State College Port Arthur and am new to using OER and OEP (Open Educational Practices). I also participate in an OER Task Force on our local campus. Our campus was accepted into an OER connection with OpenStax and Rice University, which carries with it support for our efforts to become an OER-friendly campus. I was also pleased to realize that the chairperson for the department where psychology lives is also an OER CEA-2021 colleague. 

 I currently use the OpenStax General Psychology textbook in online and face-to-face General Psychology courses. 

Link: https://assets.openstax.org/oscms-prodcms/media/documents/Psychology2e-WEB_0eRvAre.pdf

My current OER goals: G1-find OER textbook for Lifespan Psychology courses; G2-design one OER assignment for General Psychology; G3-design one OER assignment for Lifespan courses; G4-participate in a live, synchronous breakout group discussion; G-5-incorporate tiny habits principles to achieving OER goals;  G6-incorporate positive growth mindset principles into achieving OER goals; G8-incorporate OER into the self-coaching book I am writing; G9-reviewing recording of OER CEA-2021 Session 1;

Current OER needs: N1-identifying  an OER textbook for my Lifespan Psychology FTF and online Lifespan Psychology courses; N2-additional skills and knowledge in the areas of OE Resources and  OE Practices (collaboration, curation, design, leadership); N3- link to the recording, when available, of the OER CEA-2021 Session 1

Current OER priorities: P1-setting aside one hour per day to work on OER goals; P2-collaborating with a teaching colleague on selecting a Lifespan Psychology OER textbook; P3-sharing OER and OEP ideas and suggestions with LSCPA colleagues (teaching faculty and librarians); P4-creating active-learning assignments incorporating OER and OEP into General and Lifespan courses; P5- learning more about OER and OEP being used successfully by my LSCPA colleagues as well as fellow OER CEA-2021 colleagues; P6-completing OER CEA 2021 homework assignments in a timely manner; 

Reflections-

As I review the goals, needs and priorities I have listed above, I realize the boundaries between these categories are somewhat blurred and that is ok! I appreciate the postings in the Discussions so far. Seeing the goals, needs and priorities of my fellow OER CEA-2021 colleagues has led me to realize there are reassuring overlapping goals, needs and priorities with my own as well as some interesting differences. 

I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this cohort and look forward to future collaborations and discussions. 

I am especially eager to review the recording of our June 2, 2021 session when it is available. Surprisingly (to me), I am recalling parts of the presentations, even without access to the recording itself. :-) I am glad I thought to jot down some notes as the live presentations were occurring. Those notes are helpful reminders of what I hope to accomplish during the duration of the OER CEA-2021 and beyond, the needs I have identified so far, as well as associated OER-OEP priorities.

I was glad to see some familiar names in the Discussion postings and the chat postings from June 2, 2021. 

I do feel somewhat (ok- a lot) intimidated by the vastness of the OER-OEP universe of possibilities. That vastness  represents great challenges  ahead for me and my colleagues, including you! I could say that I am experiencing an OER-OEP crisis at this point in my professional life, a crisis in the sense of the quote attributed to John F. Kennedy:

“The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis. ' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger--but recognize the opportunity.”

For me, there is danger of getting bogged down in the mire of perfectionistic details and also the opportunity to make progress toward the worthy goals I have set for myself. :-)

I am glad to have you as companions on this journey and quest for better and more effective OER and OEP!

Hello everyone,

Another of my goals was to access the recording of the overview session from June 2, 2021. I eventually did find the resource which included the recording. I am sure you have already accessed the recording as well. 

The link to the resource is as follows:

https://oertx.highered.texas.gov/courseware/lesson/927/overview

The actual link to the recording is as follows:

 https://iskme.zoom.us/rec/share/HJfcxlDSn5fD5fWP58I9zmkRqF5H03zSgngWU8587XBonN6zHomLswsEG2hM7uWo.QjfiVqkCHQuV6hSu

Thanks, everyone, for your contributions to the overview session. I am looking forward to future presentations and discussions! From my recent explorations, I can see there is much to learn and experience about OER and OEP.

Immediately after our live session on June 2, 2021, I was concerned about how to access the recording. Later, after listening the recording, I heard Megan mention that the recording would be available in the group area. 

Thanks Megan for all you are doing to make this academy experience successful. 

Listening to the recording, I was glad to be able to review the comments made by the OER experts who will be associated with this academy. I feel reassured listening to these experts, one of whom I hope to reach out to as part of the homework activities listed in the EPRA list suggested for us.

Searching for reliable resources is an integral part of my role as an instructional designer with Houston Community College. My goal is to be able to fully understand what is considered OER and when I have the "green light" in integrating these resources into a course without having a cost. I have taken a few classes in the past, but the various ways in how to attribute and distinguish class is still an opportunity for me.

I truly believe in the OER program and concept and really hope that this movement continues to gain traction in all of education.

Greetings!

Glad to be part of this OER Core Element Academy and appreciate the opportunity to learn and discover more about OER, connect with experts, leaders and other participants and discuss more on this topic. My interests are mainly on: helping faculty to incorporate OER in distance learning course development, and explore the strategies and best practices on OER adoption and creation.

Hello everyone! I have been an English instructor and am currently an Instructional Designer. My OER goals are to simply become familiar with OER and how it can benefit faculty and graduate students as they develop online courses. My priority is understanding how OER is able to benefit the various programs and departments across campus, 

Greetings everyone!

My goals are to improve my own understanding and comfort with OER so that I can guide others in the effective use of these resources. As an instruction designer, I want to be able to answer questions and help faculty members who want to incorporate OER into their course design. As an instructor myself, I would like to improve my own use of OER. Finally, as a doctoral student and researcher, I'm very interested in studying the effects of OER on student learning.

Hello everyone!

As an Instructional Technologist at my local community college, I have seen firsthand the substantial impact that OER can have in higher education institutions, and I have always been curious of how online educational resources can be fully and effectively utilized to enhance online learning and performance. My OER goals are to become knowledgeable and more familiar with online educational resources and how these resources can be fully utilized, maximized, and implemented to benefit students and faculty. My priority is to understand how OER can impact learning and performance at my campus and what kind of resources and strategies can be implemented to achieve this across all disciplines.

Hi Everyone:

One of my goals is to locate available OER materials (textbooks, exercises, powerpoint slides, videos, or more) for some mathematics courses. In particular, I am interested in: college algebra, trigonometry, and probability and statistics. I wish my students will enjoy learning and be more engaging through OER. Our mathematics department is serving a large population of these groups of students; OER can help them save money. My current need and priority are find out some suitable textbooks. My next goal is to develop OER materials by myself.

Hello! I currently use an OER in our student success course for first-year students and would like to gain more knowledge and ideas on how to revise the content in the future. 

I'm an instruction librarian at a community college.  Most of my teaching is one-shot though at times I've taught dedicated course sections.  My goal is to find OER materials that can be adapted to work for my students with a focus on information literacy and how to perform academic research for undergraduates.  I'd like to use OER so that my students don't have to purchase textbooks and to locate lesson plans that could work for one-, two-, or three-shot instruction series workshops.

As more and more colleges move to "no textbooks" in order to save money for students, I am constantly looking for OER material. I am fairly well covered for my compostion and research course. but I need material for my Intro to Lit and Tech Writing courses to be able to move completely away from purchased textbooks. I would like to be able to share this knowledge with my peers at work too.

Hi, Rene - I'm looking for resources to use in my English 1301 and 1302 classes.  I'd be interested to hear what OER resources you are using for your composition and research courses. 

I posted this OER textbook that I use in my technical writing classes - https://www.oercommons.org/courses/technical-and-professional-writing-genres-beta-openokstate/view 

Beilfuss, Michael, Staci Bettes, and Katrina Peterson. Technical and Professional Writing Genres [Beta]:A Study in Theory and Practice.  E-book.  OSU Library, 2020.

https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/english-textbooks/8/

This is a good one that I use parts of. I mainly use Purdue Owl for all MLA formatting, in-text citations, and works cited pages. I walk them through the site. I also have short stories from public domain that I use for reading material.

Thanks!  I'll look into the one you listed.  Like you, I use the Purdue OWL and either lit from Project Gutenberg or articles on current topics.  Another general composition resource I really like to use is the Tips And Tools page from the UNC Chapel-Hill Writing Center:  https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/  

I also recently found a collection of essays on the OER Commons:  https://www.oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/81708

Thank you so much!

My goal is two-fold. I am an instructional designer and I also teach. So I want to try to find resources that will benefit my students, but also become more familiar with the resources so I can help faculty with their courses as well. 

Yay, Crystal!

As a librarian I am interested not only in where good solid OERs reside (plenty of repositories out there), but also how others have been championing OER at their colleges/universities. My priorities are to save the students money, of course, and also to present useful information to our instructors about how they can best use OERs and foster OEP (Open Educational Practices) in general in their classes.

Greetings,

I am an instructional technology training specialist for the University of Texas at Dallas. I am interested in OER fo help instructors add materials in their courses and also add instructonal design resources for instructors interested in course design resources. 

As a supervisor for an OER Librarian and I looking to learn more about how Librarians can effectively advocate for OER on their campuses.

I'm an Instructional Designer and I have been working with the library as part of their OER Grant project to form a Community of Practice around OER and OEP. My goals are to build this Community of Practice in order to encourage and support more instructors using OERs and to create a culture of Open Pedagogy at the same time. 

My goal as an instructional designer is to become aware of OER resources and materials so I can suggest to the faculty members I work with. 

Hello! I'm a librarian who is new to OER, so I am here to learn more about the resources and how to support professors who are using OER (or who want to.) I'm also interested in finding, curating, and creating OER of my own, likely in the area of information literacy and recognizing disinformation.

My goals are to learn more about OER and to learn about creation and development of materials for my classes. I currently use an OER text for my sociology classes. One of my classes does not have a good text. I am hoping to gain the knowledge to improve what I currently present to my students. 

Greetings, I am looking for ways to help faculty use and create OER. I also manage an online teaching certification program for faculty and TAs, which contains publisher-based online pedagogy content and I am looking to find/ create OER content for it.

The textbooks my students have to buy are expensive.  The prices have really increased a lot for the same textbook over the years.  We can't even cover all the material in those textbooks, so we pick the chapters that address our SLO's, which is a waste of money that students pay.  Because of this, I created my own FREE materials, and I don't assign textbooks for students to purchase for my classes.  Other instructors have asked to use my materials for their courses as well.  So now, I need the next step...how to make them OER acceptable and what to do with them so others can use the materials?? 

I'm an instructional designer and my primary goal is to help faculty create OER materials for a course where we have already searched for materilas and come up short. My secondary goal is to curate materials for specific faculty as they need. 

I teach two online mathematics survey courses for a small college where I am the only math faculty. It is frustrating to have students spend a lot of money on textbooks basically to use the publisher's online homework/assessment utility. Since I have no previous experience with OER, my main goal is to learn the ins and outs and to discover what is currently available. As I alluded to above, I need to find or learn how to make my own online assessments to go with whatever materials I use. My main priority is to currate materials that are available so that I can determine what is lacking.

My Department Chair kind of tasked me with finding OER Resources (mostly textbooks and accompanying exercises) for three classes in particular:  Discrete Mathematics, Linear Algebra, and Differential Equations.  However, I teach many of the gateway credit level classes as well, and our students are still being charged money in fees for material from and access to Pearson (mostly), Cengage, McGraw-Hill, etc.  Most of that material honestly is just badly written textbooks, badly done videos, and badly cobbled together exercise sets with overly complicated descriptions of how to do the problems, especially Pearson.  And at this point, College Algebra, Stats, and Math for Liberal Arts are incredibly standardized in content and curriculum, both because of educators, but also just because they've existed for 100's to 1000's of years.  We don't need a specially appointed textbook from one of the big publishers for this content -- most of us could honestly teach these classes blind just out of our heads.  And the students certainly don't need to pay for expensive access to a big publisher's online platform.  What the students do need is honestly better textbooks if they're gonna have them -- which OER can easily provide -- and access to an online platform -- which OER can also easily provide.  So selfishly, and for my students, I'm also looking for textbooks and resources for College Algebra, Stats, and Math for Liberal Arts.....

Hi everyone.  I'm an eLearning manager/instructional designer for UT Dallas.  My goal is to learn more about OER so I can help my faculty effectively use these resources to enhance learning.

My goal is to assist faculty in locating and creating OER and to become a better advocate for OER on my campus. One of my priorities right now is to asses the interest in creating and using OER on our campus so I need to create a survey. 

As an instructor within a competency based program teaching core curriculum I am focused on providing accessible materials to my students.  This has lead to the desire to incorperate OER into our courses.  I am focusing on the courses that I priairly teach (Mathematics and Psychology).  I know there are a lot of resources out there but they can sometimes be limited for some of the more specialised courses.  Thus I am hoping to get a better idea of best practices when it comes to authoring OER materials. 

Greetings,

It is so interesting to see all the posts you have made regarding your specific needs and journey. Not many of us our Life Science instructors but I saw a few. I teach General Biology and the two course Anatomy & Physiology for pre-nursing. We adopted Openstax for Biology in 2013 and Anatomy & Physiology in 2018. The biggest challenge is the quality of images and the interactive animations. These were well-developed by publishers (as well as the homework platforms, however from personal experinece I have not found publisher homework platforms very satisfying for a number of reasons). Many of the concepts in life science are visual and dynamic so having this resource is really important. I would like to be able to develop my own, but I am not certain where I should begin to get the quality images needed.

I am also part of an OER team that was formed in 2017 for the college. This work on our campus has exposed me to many individuals that do not know what OER is or know where to get resources and help. I really want to provide more guidance and support to our academic and workforce OER migrants.

THANK YOU

Hello! My goal is to learn more about OERs and how we can utilize them in our developmental education program.

My goals are to learn more about OER options and how to evaluate resources. At some point, if the resources aren't available might consider authoring a resource. I do think about the cost of books/resources for students and make an effort to minimize required items. Textbooks range from $200-$400 in operations and supply chain but have found materials that work for less than $100 for my classes. I have hesitated in looking for resources due to concern of whether they are changed frequently/kept current and will be available long-term. Have not wanted to build a class around a resource to find it has been deleted or moved with no notice. 

Hello everyone. I am a librarian at a community college. My goal is to learn more about where and how to locate OER materials, to become a curator of these materials to share with our instructors. I would also like to learn how to market these materials to our instructors. I teach information literacy and would like to incorporate OER where I can into these sessions. 

Good Morning,

My goal is to find the Open Educational Resources (OER) available. Then, I will better assist faculty make the transition from publisher materials to OER. Also, I want to find an Applied Statistics for Business OER for my courses. Thank you for your time and consideration. Have a great day.

Andres

I am working on a graduate classes in curriculum and instruction.  I would like to use OER for those programs. My university is not pushing for OER as far as I know, but I am very interested. I would like to help defer some of the costs of a graduate degree by using OER.

Hi everyone, 

I joined this OER academy to make time to work on an OER for Mexican American Studies. I've been working on putting something together for my course and for the department to offer to other instructors of the class. But I simply haven't had time to finish this project and I thought being part of this academy would help me make time to complete it. As Program Coordinator for the Interdisciplinary Studies & Humanities Program at HCC, I am also very interested in exploring the different OERs available for Humanities in general so that I can communicate these options to our instructors. 

My goal is to learn more about OERs and to help faculty take advantage of what existing content for different subjects.  I don't have a particular need other than learn more.

Greetings All! 

My name is Donnie Kirk and I am a communications instructor at Vernon College in Wichita Falls, TX. As a result of COVID (and thankfully so), I am now an online/hybrid instructor for Public Speaking! My students in essence follow a scaffolded method for navigating through assignments. The read (text, websites, etc.), quiz, create/develop, post to the discussion board, and reflect within each unit/assignment. All activities then build to a live discussion and/or presentation event whereby students sign-up during meet weeks to participate/present (multiple/days and times are offered each meet week to accomodate all schedules). I never thought I would embrace such a methodology--but I LOVE IT! And students report that they love this format as well. 

For the online component of the curricullum, I am always looking for ancillaries to incorporate into my course content. I am in the course to learn more about OER, what is available, and how I can implement in my courses if applaicable. I'm also interested to see if there is activities and assignments that I might be able to contribute. 

Thanks for you time! 

Cheers, 

Donnie Kirk

Hi all! 

The unviersity where I work, The Univeristy of Houston, has a OER resource for lower division English which is where I mainly teach. I've only taught from a standard (and expensive) textbook before (and to be honest, never with as much success as I'd like. Lots of guilt for making my students shell out the bucks for those books) so this coming fall I want to better use the OER provided by my English department. What is there is great and the curation of the materials is organized and easy to follow.

The program is looking for new OER materials to add all the time, and so I hope this training can help me contribute materials for review for potential inclusion in our OER guide. I'm also really interested in created OER resources. I often rig up handuots and powerpoint presentations for my classes that I've refinded over the years and shared with others. It would be lovely to refine those even further using OER practices and share them in a more formalized way.

I'll also add, I'm very interested in incorporating more anti-racist pedagogy into my course. A composition course is about writing, but students can write about anything and discussions of social issues often arise naturally. I'd be particularly interested in crafting lessons, activities and readings that encompass and enact anti-racist elements. 

Ok, thanks, bye!

-Josie

Mostly, I am just interested in exploring OER resources, I want to be able to bring some ideas to my colleagues who teach Sociology as we plan to begin exploring changing textbooks and I would love for us to consider OER. 

Thanks, 

Laura

I teach the learning framework and would love to have an OER like Austin Community College. I am new to OER and would love to see what everyone else is using. Thank you.

Hi This is Ning from UT Dallas Geoscience Studio. It is really an exciting program and I am glad to be part of it. Please feel free to contact me at nxw121030@utdallas.edu

Thanks!

Greetings! I am an Instructional Designer, and I would like to learn more about OER resources. I would like to be able to integrate them into my professor’s courses. The less students have to spend on books and other materials the better. I have looked at some OER resources in the past. However, the design and quality were very basic. Hopefully I can find better resources now. 

As a poli sci faculty, OER is important to allow all the students to start a course on the same playimg field..

I teach psychology, sociology, and education classes. Several classes have converted fully to Openstax textbooks to help reduce costs for students. I have been using OER for 3 years now. My goal is to gain more information to help my fellow colleagues to help use OER resources. Our needs for the college is understanding how to evaluate/vett material. My priority is to gather/curate resources to take back and share with other faculty.  

As OERs have become more popular, I am hoping to better understand the various websites available to instructors who are interested in adopting such resources in class. It seems there are many free textbooks online, but which textbooks have been peer reviewed and approved by other instructors in the field? I hope that our cohort is able to answer such questions, in addition to conceptualzing a methodology for evaluating free OER resources online. 

Like many of my colleagues, I am seeking a less expensive medium for my students. I know there are quality materials out there at little to no cost but finding such high quality resources can be a challenge. 

Keith Elphick

Thank you for the opportunity to participate in the OER Core Elements Academy 2021! My goal is to learn about OERs as much as possible in order to develop and implement good quality OERs in my courses.

My initial goal is to provide the necessary support for faculty who are seeking materials for OER.  Although we have a couple of faculty who have published, a lot of others do not realize that I exist - even though I send out emails stating that I am here for them.  I am the best contact they have for finding materials or helping with any OER questions they have, but it is hard now that after a COVID pandemic, a lot of people are still rebooting back to normalcy and might have forgotten what  I can do.

My goals are to utilize open educational resources to reduce cost for students, to increase library access for students and to use materials that are not bound by copyright.

I need to investigate the website given to me by Thomas Bahlinger in the SAC library i.e. sacguide.libguides.com/oersac/.  We spent some time together looking over the website and seeing other contacts that I can make regarding  OER resources. My priority is to review this website extensively during my time off  before the fall classes start and to incorporate the information into future classes.

Hello all,

My goal is to learn more about OER for science classes that are easy to access for everyone. Finding a source that covers all the SLO's clearly is a little bit challenging.

As a librarian newly exposed to OER, I am eager to develop a strong foundation of OER Resources and practices. Working with other librarians in my department, I would like to develop virtual sessions that would introduce interested faculty to OER and become their support as they create and implement OER resources.  I will be focusing on my liaison areas of business, architecture and education. 

My (goals) are to learn more about how are institution will benefit from OER and how it will effect students, faculty and staff.  I am a Coordinator / Instructional Designer for the Distance Education Department.  I have been exposed to some resources such as Creative Commons, Khan Academy, OpenStax and Lumen Learning but that was about it and I would like to learn about more (need). My (priority) concerning OER is probably to explore the resources and options that would best suite the institution that.

Goals: To have a better understanding of OER and to get information about available ressources.

Need and Priorities: To identify the ressources that may replace the existing textbooks wherever possible.

As a librarian who specializes in the STEM fields, especially for engineering & computer science, open educational resources are critical for progressing in both academic research & real world problems. My goals are to be able to find practical resources in these fields for both undergraduate students, in order to assist in learning the basics, and to find premium resources for graduate students & faculty focusing on research. While I'm fairly familiar with OERs for STEM undergraduate students (used to be one myself), I feel like the bigger challenge with be bringing OERs to faculty without the stigma of free == poor quality (at least relative to paid resources). I hope this group helps expand my knowledge of high-end OERs.

Hi, I'm Jamie Miranda from St. Philip's College in San Antonio.

My personal goals/needs are to curate additional quality materials for my courses that will engage my students. I already author much of what I use in my courses, so curating more CC materials would be very helpful. 

One of the issues that I found is that GIS Textbooks are expensive and created more for Academia and not Workforce. Texas has specific Course learning outcomes for the course in the WECM manual. I would like to create a complete Z degree for GIS at Houston Community College. In my efforts, I want to create a Canvas Sandbox for each course with text and exercises with quizzes and final projects, but set it up for the Texas Skills Standards Board and HCC assessments.

Mike Boucher

Hello, everyone!

I'm an associate professor of English at McLennan Community College in Waco, TX. My current OER goals are to build resources for a new course I'm planning to pilot (English 1301 Plus) in Spring 2022. I'd like to have resources that don't require students to purchase a textbook, and I hope to avoid constantly reformating online courses when a textbook is updated. I also hope to advocate for OER in my department and across campus. Recently, a colleague of mine created an open English 1301 textbook, and I'm interested in using it and creating additional resources.

For needs, I don't have loads of experience with OER, so I'l need some patient support from others :)

For priorities, I really want to learn to evaluate resources, to share them collaboratively with my colleagues, and to create my own materials (when the time comes).

Thanks everyone! I'm looking forward to it!

Jessica Zbeida

I would like to learn more about OER especially if there are OER photos that we can use

I serve as the Director of Professional Learning at Odessa College.  Our Goals include continuting our work with OER after our receving a grant from Lumen and Achieving the Dream.  As time has gone on, we see that those who started the initiative, are no longer with the institution.  So, our goal is to create an infrastructure that supports the development and sustainability of OER at Odessa College.  Our priorities are to have a fresh start and reset to make sure we are all on the same page.  We will start with our OER Bootcamp and then create a process to help adopt OER.

I'm interested in learning more about how to develop OER and use the resources effectively in my courses.

Hello, I am Stephanie Gibson from St. Philip's College in San Antonio. My personal goals are to curate quality materials for my English Composition and Literature courses that will help me support my students. I already have most of my courses set as OER, but findign more CC materials would be awesome. I look forward to finding new materials with this team. 

Hello everyone!  I am looking to be more familiar with what OER is and how I can use it in my classes.  I also want to start using OER to help with cost in my courses for students.  I want to make sure that whatever I use is of high quality.  I am excited to learn more.

Hi, I'm a professor at UT Dallas - backround in information systems and cybersecurity, as well as human capital management.  I'm interested in developing a better understanding of OER resources, limitations on fair use/restrictions on use, and ways to present these effectively to students. Have tried using OER books, but am not sure they are really being read, even though they are free. I see Dean Hendrix' ROI, but do the students really see that value.  

I also have a strong interest in developing and sharing materials.  One of my case scenarios that I developed for a course I was teaching back in 2016 was used in that course for several years and  is currently being re-used by another IHE as part of their hiring process.  It could be used in a number of courses if it was available, but it doesn't really fit the "established" norms of cases (ala Harvard Business School Publishing and others).

Hello, Bill, as you have expressed, My interest in developing materials and incorporating OER resources within my courses.

My goal is to just get started.  I need to see how others are using OER for basic English language courses and writing for general business courses.  My priority is to get something in my courses before the semester ends.

We are just getting started with OER at South Plains College and as the Director of Libraries I am working closely with our Dean of Arts and Sciences, our Digital Resources Librarian and our Instructional Designer to help create a coordinated effort to best support OER.  We so far have found what, Dean mentioned in his talk today, just getting started is the key and hence being in this cohort.  We want to make this an easier process for our faculty, for the benefit of our students  My priority is developing competencies to help facilitate the above and becoming more skill in curating OER.

Hello Colleagues!

I would like to gather and organize resources for the English department.  So far, I see that we need to add to the categories on this site to include Rhetoric and Composition and the different literature courses.  

At Clarendon College, we have gone to OER (non-cost) text requirements for as many courses as possible. Two years ago was when this faculty requirement began. I have found quality resources in OpenStax, but have not found many lab resources in OER. I look forward to this training and hope to grow in my ability to find these resources for our students.

I would like to use the resources provided to curate additional material for my courses. I've been using OER for a few years and have really enjoyed the process of selected course content. Looking forward to the course and resources!

As an instructor, I am interested in exploring in more depth how to look and evaluate OER resources that can be used in my Geology courses both on the lecture and lab components. I also would like to learn more about how to distingush what is and not copyrighted and the different types of copyright materials. I also have interest in learning OER for instructional videos (field trip, labs, images and animations).  I am looking forward to learn and share with this community. 

I teach courses related to audiology, language and deafness - serving students in programs for both Deaf Education and Speech-Language Pathology. I want to cultivate interdisciplinary practice, and a respect for diversity. The published materials I use often require a disclainer, are only partially used, and are more medical/clinical than meet student needs. I am working to develop materials that are a better match, that reflect school-based practices and the diversity of children that we serve.

My goal is quiste simple; I want to learn more about OER, how to use it? where to obtain information? and how to put it together for a college level Spanish class?  My priority is to help students obtain a good education without having to pay so much for books.  My needs are information and access to all that is there for our students.

Share your current OER goals, needs & priorities by replying below.

1. Goals - to learn enough to design a course that I can use.

2. Needs - find extensive Speech material.

3. Priorities - focus on the foundation class and eventually design each of our Speech courses.

Dr. Karen Cunningham

I would like to learn more about OER to provide better supporting services to faculty who are in various stages of searching for, using, and creating OER; using appropriate licensing and attributions.

I have used OpenStax US OERs for teaching US History I & II. I can see there are many possibilities for creating OERs for several topics. My goal is to learn how to create and curate OERs in my academic discipline of American Religion & Culture. I would like to do create one first in English, then work on a Spanish language OER. The priority is to learn how to create and curate OERs to share beyond our university.  

I am the University Librarian at Texas Lutheran University, Seguin. 

Hello, Everyone,

I am here to learn more about current OER materials, textbooks, etc. to help students write better at no cost to them. I worked with OER content a few years ago, and I'm hopeful the number and quality of these resources have improved.

Hello everyone,

My goals are to learn more information about OER and to explore various options. In addition, I want to learn more about the tools, resources, design, and implementation of OER. Lastly, I want to investigate how OER can be used to construct a more engaging and collaborative learning environment.   

Rosa

My goals for participating in the academy are to (1) explore and discover more resources for my courses, (2) learn more creative ways to design course learning activities & assignments, and (3) share the resources with fellow faculty and studens. 

Hi Everyone,

My current OER goals/needs include curating and creating some OER materials for some of my upcoming spring 2022 courses Women in the Visual Arts, Latinx Art, and Art & Social Movements.  Within this goal, I'm prioritizing the curation part with the hope of finding useful formats/templates that I could then go on to create my own materials.

Thanks!

Sara

As an Open Education Librarian, my current goals are to 

1. Have a greater understanding of OERTX and how I can utilize its community capabilities on my campus.
2. See what other resources are provided through this platform so I can include them in OER Requests.
3. Understand how OERTX can support authoring and remixing of open content. 

OER searching and content creation are the priorities of our current Textbook Affordability Initiatives and I believe this academy will help me archive these goals. 

My Goals

1. to get a better understanding of OER

2. How to apply it

3. how to find stratagies of successfult teaching faculty and staff how to search and use OER successfuly as a tool.

My needs and Priorities

I just want to get a better understanding of where to start?  How to approch navigating all the OER content and how to develope/ house the information?

Hello all,

I am currently looking to help create a pathways style IRW course at my CC and am needing reliable resources to enhance my the IRW course. I would also like to create sources for other instructors to utilize for IRW in the future.

Holly 

I am chair of our institution's OER committee. I am looking to provide more training and resources to my college. While I have a solid understanding of the OER principles, what constitutes OER, etc., I struggle to find quality OER resources. My attempts to find quality resources my field of political science, has been frustrating. 

Hello, fellow faculty members. My interest areas are Global Business Practices and Global Supply Chain Logistics Management. Our major academic publishers are confronted with limited academic publications in global business practices, maritime operations, business technology integration, and transportation practices. As a result, OER implementation and utilization will contribute to our efforts in providing Real-Time business practices and theory in the classroom.

Goal: Publish an OER Minorities textbook by Summer/Fall 2022; also Publish various Modules, Lessons, PPTX, and Syllabi.

Needs: What do I need from my librarian to help with authoring? How do I find open source photos and other graphics?

Priorities: Get together what I need to start the authoring and start using OER for Summer 2022.

I teach freshman and sophomore level English classes at Lamar State College Orange.  

I would like to create an OER text for my students to use in ENGL 1302, and then move on to doing the same for ENGL 2322, 2326, and 2331 (British, American, World lit respectively).

I NEED to learn a lot more about what goes into the creation of an OER text.  My priority is to learn all that I can in order to try to achieve the goal of having OER texts in the discoplines I mentioned.

My goal is to better familarize myself with the landscape of OER so that I can make more informed and educated decisions on the types of resources I recommend to my faculty. As a librarian, I want to make sure that I am recommending the best resources for faculty and students to use in their courses. As someone who works primarily with helping faculty access online course materials, this is and will be a important function of my job moving forward.

My goals are to learn more about OER  content creation, development, and continuation.  I would like to learn more about grants that are available to community colleges.  Also, if creating additional faculty resources is possible: test banks, lab workbooks, etc.

Hi All,glad to be part of this group! I am a Biology Instructor at HCC. My goal is to (eventually) move from a "low cost" course for Intro Biology to a "No-Cost" Course. I am excited to learn how to better navigate the OER world, find relevant resources for my courses and to learn about the authoring tool.

My current OER goals are to

• increase my understanding of the OERTX platform and how I can use it to support the faculty at San Jacinto College,
• develop a working understanding of how the OERTX platform supports content authoring,
• use this additional knowledge to enhance the OER development opportunities at San Jacinto College.

In additional to these goals, I would like to find quality OER for the technical course to share with those programs.

Hi,

My goals, needs, and priorities are:

Goals - encourage success in my myth courses;

Needs - find a good text for my classical mythology class;

Priorities - create online supplemental assignments for mt myth class.

Thanks,

Ed

I am the Program Coordinator for a Homeland Security & Emergency Management program. The challenge for me is developing OER courses that will eliminate the need for books. However, there is very little information besides FEMA or that is current that provides free material in developing an OER course. The costs of books are keeping many students from participating in the program. I am looking for options that will assist me in developing courses that require no textbook.  

My name is Jerryl Lowe.  I am the Instructional Designer at St. Philip's College in San Antonio, TX.I work in the Instructional Innovation Center where my primary responsibilities include assisting our faculty/staff with pedagogy and instructional technology related projects.  My OER goals are (1)  Find good OER resources that will assist our faculty/staff, (2)  Find good OER resources to use when I develop workshops.  Our needs are to help our faulity/staff understand the value of OER resources and how using them can enhance their course preparation.  My priorities include creating a course example using OER resources to demonstrate how to use them.

I'm Denise Arellano, an instructional designer and adjunct at Texas Woman's University, and former full-time professor. I started using OERs about 10 years ago in protest of the horrific textbook costs and the higher-than-retail mark-up the university bookstore charged for a popular press resource I assigned for one of my courses. 

At present, we have a cohort of instructors working to adopt OERs for their courses, so current goal is to be familiar with what is new in OER Land so I can support their efforts!

I am Aparna Godbole and I teach courses in Information Technology. My goal is to search for existing OER content or explore open-licensed materials to develop OER courses in my area. I am particularly interested in learning about curation and how to use OER authoring tools.

I am an English department chair at a CC, and our adjuncts and embedded dual credit faculty all use common textbooks. Full-time faculty have the option to create their courses using OER materials, and I would like to give our part-time faculty this option as well. However, I would like to do the leg work in curating materials for them in order to make it easy. My goal for this academy is to learn more about where to source/vet OER materials that I can curate for any faculty member in my department to use. I already use OER in one of my own classes, but I want a wider selection of materials to share that would work for multiple classes/approaches to a course. 

As a course instructor and sometimes developer, I want to begin to shift away from traditional textbooks to OER for my students.  To do this, I need to become more familiar with how to curate and use OER.  My priority is to do this with an eye toward my subject matter, nutrition and food science.  My limited experience with OER to date has left me feeling like there is much more out there for core subjects and fields, and much less for niche topics.

Casey Tiernan

My goal as a instrucitonal leader is to provide the students with quality low cost materials.  

I am aware of OER and have used some OER in my courses, but I feel like there is a lot that I don't know.  I want to learn more about the creation and development of OER. 

My name is Ricardo Lopez.  I am the the Program Coordinator for the Dr. Frank Bryant, Jr. Patient Simulation Center and Nursing Laboratories at St. Philip's College in San Antonio, TX.  I assist faculty with developing and implementing hands-on clinical learning activities for health science students  My OER goals are (1)  To find evidence-based clincal instruction resources and (2)  Incorporating this resources into experiential learning activities

Thank you, Megan.  Hello, everyone. 

I am June Levitt, an Associate Professor of Communication Science and Oral Health at Texas Woman's University. I teach science and clinical courses to future Speech-Language pathologists. Since the beginning of Pandemics (spring of 2020), I have developed three OER textbooks, primarily derived from OpenStax. My goal is as follows. 

1. Write two more OER textbooks for the courses I routinely teach,
2. Establish the review mechanism for OER books in my discipline, and 
3. Find a grant program to put my OER effort into work units instead of my weekend and midnight project. 

The OER representative is Sharon Moore at Tarrant County College.

I learned that there is a whole new world out there associated with OER!

 My OER goals are to explore resources, get familiar with websites, and find useful information relevant for Teacher Education.

Hello,

My goals for joining this academy are tiered. 

• First and foremost, I would like to know where I can find OER to use in my Biology classroom and lab. Of course, I am searching for content, such as free textbooks, but also ideas for homework or collaborative learning activities to use in the class as well. Activities that can be conducted face to face and in the remote learning environment. 
• Next, I would like to know exactly how to go about creating OER resources for the course concepts that I cannot find existing OER material for. I am concerned with students using Chegg and other "homework hep" sites that post the answers to publishers' questions.  
•  I'd like to know that the content that I reate is of the highest standard and meets all required accesibility and copywrite laws, I don't want to get into any trouble!   

Hello, everyone!

My goals for joining this academy include:

• As an instructional designer, I would like to know where I can find OER to support faculty.
• Since I will not be using the resources directly,  I need to learn more about how to navigate the portal so I can help faculty locate free textbooks, but also ideas for homework or collaborative learning activities to use in the class as well. Activities that can be conducted face to face and in remote learning environments.   
•  As an instructional accessibility designer at my campus, I am also interested in accessing these materials to determine how accessible they are for students with disabilities. 

Goals: Have fully OER courses for ENGL 1301, ENGL 1302, and Literature courses that can be modified based on student needs.

Needs: I would like more resources for the English discipline to include Composition/ Writing 1 and 2, Literature sources that help engage the students beyond reading short stories, etc., and compilations of fiction, poetry, drama, etc. for teaching literature courses.

Priorities: Find more sources for ENGL 1301

Hi everyone, as an English Instructor I'm interested in finding quality readings, assignments, and execises that will help my students develop their critical thinking, communication, and collaboration skills and give them a sense of what it means to belong to a community and be a good citizen.

Goals: My goal is to learn more about OER.  I have utilized some OER in the nursing courses that I teach, but feel like I still have a lot to learn about these resources. 

Needs: I have found it to be challenging to find good, quality, nursing OER resources, so this would be my need. 

Priorities: My priority is to set aside time in my schedule to explore OER. 

I teach ESL (English as a Second Language) at a community college and write ESL materials for Pearson, a large publishing company. I'm also working towards a PhD in Learning Technologies. 

GOALS: In addition to the writing I do for Pearson, I'd like to also write OER textbooks to share freely with other ESL teachers.

NEEDS: More than anything, I need more time to find and evaluate existing resources. I don't want to reinvent the wheel.  

PRIORITIES: My first priority is to do a systematic review of current OER materials for English language learners. Next, I want to fill some of the gaps by writing my own materials and contributing to the ESL repository.