Good morning, everyone.
Welcome on behalf of
the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia
to this webinar,
which is the last of
a series of webinars on student success and
faculty autonomy that were organized by
the SCHEV Open Virginia Advisory Committee.
This is a wonderful group of people who are
experts at all aspects of open education practices
at their institutions who come to SCHEV and
help us develop policies that may
promote the use and adoption
of open educational resources
and encouraging
open educational practices throughout the Commonwealth.
I don't have time to name
all the wonderful members of our committee,
but we have a page on
the SCHEV website that is dedicated to this committee,
describes the committee's mission,
and also has names of the members on it.
Well, thank you to them for organizing this webinar.
I think it's going to be really, really informative,
especially as policymakers, such as myself,
but policymakers
throughout the institutions who can learn
a lot from those work that our two speakers have done.
They were part of the
2019-2020 SPARC Open Educational Leadership Cohort,
and as part of that,
they conducted a number of interviews with
various people in various positions across
the Commonwealth that relate to open education.
I will go ahead and do my introductions.
We have Judy Thomas.
She's the director of faculty programs
at the University of Virginia Library.
We also have Sophie Rondeau.
She's the assessment and
e-resources program analyst with VIVA,
Virginia's academic library consortium.
I think we have Sophie up
first, and I see that she's ready on deck,
so please give her your attention. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Beverly.
Thanks, everybody, for being here.
I'm just going to start screen share.
Welcome, as Beverly mentioned, I'm Sophie Rondeau,
assessment and e-resources program analyst with VIVA,
and I'm joined by Judith Thomas,
director of faculty programs
at the University of Virginia.
I'm going to move that box.
We're here to share with you some of
the findings associated with
stakeholder interviews that we conducted
as part of the SPARC Open Education Leadership Program.
We also hope to have time at the end of
the presentations for discussion.
I'd like to introduce you briefly to
the SPARC Open Education Leadership Program,
which both Judy and I have been
a part of at different times.
The two semester
professional development fellowship program
is intended to benefit
academic professionals
with different levels of experience
engaging in open education initiatives
in the areas of advocacy,
discovery, creation, licensing and stewardship
through a curriculum that invites
significant peer-to-peer interactions and mentorship.
The stakeholder assignment,
which we'll be sharing results from today,
is a core part of the SPARC program.
It involves conducting interviews with key stakeholders
relevant to the fellows campus or organizational context.
Fellows are advised to select interviewees
strategically based on who might
be in a position to support
the eventual capstone project
or other open education work.
The assignment is also an opportunity to gain
access to people fellows may not normally talk to,
such as high-level administrators, influential faculty
and policy makers and to
learn their perspectives on open education.
Now, I'm going to transition to
the findings of my stakeholder interviews.
Since I work in a consortial context,
I wanted to hear from a diverse range of
stakeholders at our member institutions.
I spoke with library administrators
to understand how they see
open education and OER
in the larger context of their libraries,
as well as to learn what they thought it
about the importance of OER discovery,
given that their support would likely be
necessary for the implementation of my capstone project,
which is a course- mapping companion kit.
I spoke with faculty with
different degrees of OER experience,
as well as library professionals working with faculty as
either an open education campus leader
or as a departmental liaison.
I spoke with a learning technologist since much of
the open education work is happening
in environments dominated by technologies.
I also spoke with a policymaker
since this perspective seemed
essential to understand how
open education is perceived at the state level.
The interviews ran between 30 to 60 minutes
and interviewees answered between 4 to 7 questions.
Everyone I spoke to had
some knowledge of the open movement,
but there were varying degrees
of knowledge and experience.
Not all the questions were
relevant to each stake holder,
and I did adapt the interviews accordingly.
Responses to the question
"What do you see as OER's greatest benefits?"
fell into two categories.
One, cost and equitable access to materials,
and two, OER's collaborative and transformative nature.
In all the interviews,
student cost avoidance was
identified as a benefit. That was clear.
The ability for all students to access the materials at
the start of the semester was also
identified by most stakeholders.
The theme or the category of
OER's collaborative and transformative nature was
noted by those more actively
engaged with open education efforts.
The ability to remix materials,
the sense of contributing to
something collectively and collaboratively
and increased engagement among faculty with
course materials were benefits identified in this theme.
Responses to the question
"What do you see as the greatest issues with OER?"
centered on themes of perception,
time, systemic and content issues.
Perception issues include
quality concerns about materials,
issues of trustworthiness of curators, for example,
who are the ones curating this content?
There was fear of being asked to do free work,
and the perception that OER are difficult to adopt.
Concerns around time centered on
the time required for effective discovery,
the significant time commitment
associated with redeveloping a course
and ongoing course maintenance when using OER.
Systemic concerns were associated with feeling pressure
to adopt OER and the threat to academic freedom,
the issues with tenure and promotion,
not recognizing and valuing open education efforts
and lack of clarity around who
provides support for these resources.
Lastly, issues associated with the theme of content,
specifically the lack of ancillaries, emerged.
One stakeholder commented that
OER's greatest benefits are also its biggest issues.
In other words, constructing or adapting a course
using OER is more pedagogically satisfying,
but may require more time and energy to
implement effectively than a traditional textbook.
There was some variation in how
interviewees responded to the question
"Do you think open educational resources
can help solve some of
the problems institutions are
facing as a result of COVID-19?"
The most common response was that
COVID-19 has forced people into online learning,
and this has been a gateway to OER.
Additionally, COVID-19 brought to light the importance of
a strong digital infrastructure as institutions with
good infrastructure seemed better
equipped in the switch to online learning.
However, OER cannot address the issue
of limited broadband Internet access
in some Virginia communities and
the rise in student mental health problems.
On the question of what role do you believe library
should play in open educational efforts on campuses,
some interviewees felt that the library was
well positioned to empower the movement.
A library administrator also
felt that library should expand
their collection development efforts to
include learning materials at the course level.
An interviewee felt that
librarians bring an important perspective on
licensing and publishing and that
faculty would do well to draw on their experience.
Lastly, several stakeholders felt that library
professionals could assist faculty with OER discovery.
Since I did not speak to students,
I asked some stakeholders what
they hear from students about OER.
Not surprisingly, the freeness of OER or
the low cost of open courseware is appealing to students.
A faculty member also noticed
increased student engagement with
the textbook when it's
directly aligned to the courseware.
Students do not care about
glossy pictures or other aesthetic things that publishers
promote. And students do
not necessarily know what OER are.
They may equate automatic billing materials
with OER and maybe
confused about why some courses
require payment and others do not.
A faculty member noted that she's
seen a decline in students doing the readings,
and she's not clear why.
Could it be the cost of course materials, or do students
think it is enough to review
lecture slides and come to class.
When asked what they hear from
campus constituents about OER,
interviewees felt that many are receptive.
There was a sense that administrators are
getting on board with OER since
the state mandated course markings
to reflect low and no cost courses.
At the same time, administrators
are reluctant to encroach on
faculty's academic freedom and
pressure on faculty to adopt is low.
On the topic of the bookstore,
there was some surprise that
the bookstore was willing to work with OER.
Adjuncts also came up with
one interviewee and the issue
of short hiring turnaround time,
which does not often provide
adjuncts with enough time for course development.
Also, they're not generally paid for course development.
The interviewee felt that
greater course alignment could reduce
duplication of efforts and ease the burden on adjuncts.
At the end of the interviews,
I gave interviewees a chance to share
anything else that wasn't covered in the other questions.
One stakeholder felt that
OER's greatest potential is
facilitating teaching and learning communities.
A library administrator stated that transparency about
the cost libraries incur in
the scholarly publishing landscape
is imperative to the movement.
Some felt that OER is
important and there is a desire to move
forward while being realistic
about some of the challenges.
Interviewees were noticing a slow saturation
across campus and that continued work was necessary.
Lastly, there was a belief that higher education is in
the midst of an evolution and
has not seen the terminus yet.
To conclude, I wanted to share
this quote from one of the interviewees,
who is clearly an OER enthusiast.
She said, "When faculty work with OER,
they design a horse and
end up with a thoroughbred, not a camel."
Thank you so much for your attention.
Now I'm going to pass the screen
and the mic over to Judy.
Well, welcome.
I'm happy to be talking to you today.
Thanks to the organizers of this webinar,
to my co-presenter, Sophie.
Thanks to all of you for being here. Let's get started.
Sophie's already set the stage for my remarks,
just grabbing a Spark program or initial assignment.
That assignment kicked off for me
an ongoing process of interviewing stakeholders,
listening to the UVA community on their perceptions and
opinions in Open Education and of OER.
In this presentation, I'd like to talk a
little bit about my methods and findings,
hoping they'll be useful in some way to
you with your own work in getting feedback from
stakeholders and will prompt you in our question-and-
answer period to share
some of your own thoughts and your work.
I took a conversational
rather than an interview approach,
gearing the conversations to
the roles in the interest of the respondents.
However, they were guided discussions
intended to elicit responses on various themes.
I coded those discussions afterward based on
those themes in order to draw some conclusions.
I interviewed and am continuing to talk
to a wide range of university community members.
You can see there's library staff, faculty.
I focused a fair amount of attention on
university administrators of various kinds,
both senior administrators and
those who are overseeing programs,
initiative centers whose support
would be critical or at least
beneficial in some way to fostering the use of OER here.
I asked questions intended
to shed light on various themes,
looking for alignment or divergence.
The first had to do with
sussing out alignment on shared values,
it's my strong feeling in this work,
that if we can anchor the discussion in shared values,
we can go a long way.
If the values are not aligned,
the road is much harder to traverse.
I also wanted to get a sense of
the perception of financial need here,
the awareness of OER,
the pros and cons for those who were aware,
what are their thoughts about the benefits and drawbacks
and the willingness to collaborate
across traditional academic boundaries.
Most of us know that universities can be very siloed,
faculty might have a laser focus on their own work.
It takes a village.
Again, something we know,
and I constantly try to
suss out the degree of willingness of
staff and faculty to work
together across traditional
departmental or divisional boundaries.
I also wanted to hear from folks
their recommendations of what should be
done in order to
promote a successful open educational resources program.
Let's think through this question of values.
These values are those that I
attribute to the use of OER,
and I wanted to see to what extent
they resonate with the community.
Students success: our highest value.
Well, universally held.
I think that was remarkable within
the first few minutes of talking
with just about everyone,
a comment was made
indicating that student success
was the driver for all of their work.
Not unexpected, but still very gratifying.
In terms of openness as an ethical stance, and by that
I mean the notion that information should be
freely shared in pursuit of equity and social justice.
This was expressed strongly by those
who've given deep thought to this issue of
how information access can help redress social wrongs.
Librarians get the gold star here.
Many others embraced this idea,
but haven't yet considered
open education in this context.
What about open pedagogy as a value?
Well, the value of improved teaching is strongly held,
but there's little recognition at this school that
open pedagogy could be a contributing factor.
A teaching expert made a salient point to me.
The content follows pedagogy, not vice versa.
A skilled teacher can create an active,
inclusive learning environment with almost any content.
I did see general openness to
the notion that OER could be a tool to further this goal.
What about affordable education?
Well, the students were passionate on this issue
and saw affordability through an equity lens.
Faculty were largely sympathetic with regards to OER,
but had reservations about the trade-off between
affordability and the perceived decrease
in quality or availability of course materials.
Another value is implied here,
the value of the highest possible quality education.
The bookstore is a strong proponent of affordability,
said they go to considerable lengths to
build affordable options and are now
promoting inclusive access licenses
as their strategy for ensuring affordability.
Librarians from the professional
schools, law and medicine,
felt that the affordability argument
was less potent for their schools.
Many reasons, but with
regards to open educational resources,
largely because of the small dent
that affordable course materials could
make quite exorbitant cost of attending those programs.
Let's talk about perception of need in this university.
This picture is changing at UVA,
and I will just say that I've been here
for quite awhile, and
the university is doing much to highlight
and address the needs of our marginalized students.
There's much more to do, of course,
but I see a strong culture shift and I see that shift in
the changing responses of
faculty and students and
administrators to this issue of affordability.
Students, yes, unqualified sense of financial need.
For faculty, they still have a little mix.
There's this sense that although
many students are financially insecure in their classes.
A legacy opinion persists at UVA
that the student body in general,
this is not an important concern.
Of course, the student body at UVA may not
have the same financial need as many other students,
perhaps some at your schools,
perhaps at community colleges,
but the reality is that need,
its recognition is changing.
And as UVA changes its demographics,
its values and goals,
I think that will become a much stronger factor.
How about awareness?
Awareness is very low,
I can say in general,
among faculty administrators with some exceptions.
Pockets, but growing groups,
of faculty are showing interest.
Librarians, it's part of our brief,
looking at information access and equity.
A strong commitment to open scholarship here at UVA and
elsewhere are folded into that notion that open is good.
Pedagogy specialists, instructional and learning design experts
are starting to engage with open education.
Student leaders,
incensed at the high cost of course materials,
understand that OER as an option.
I drew a strong conclusion from this that
raising awareness on my campus was critical.
Benefits and drawbacks align
closely with Sophie's findings.
Affordability, focused on the welfare of
students, was seen as the preeminent benefit.
For those who are even dimly aware of OER,
you can run your eye over what's now
a familiar list of considerations,
perceptions about the use of open educational resources.
I will mention one particular respondent.
A faculty member linked it to a degrading of
higher education and a net loss for students.
Actually, I'm not inclined to make
a value judgment about this statement.
I know others hold it to be the case,
and it gives us an idea of what we're
working with in terms of
the landscape of responses to OER.
To my mind, this just underscores the importance
of creating and identifying high-quality materials
so as not to turn a faculty
off before they really get started.
What about this notion,
this theme, willingness to collaborate?
Well, that's an unqualified, yes.
Everyone who's given any thought to
this perceives this as
a long and muddy road that will
need teams of people to push forward.
This was a very gratifying finding.
I did here a number of recommendations.
These came from all quarters of my respondent pool.
Senior administration needs to
demonstrate a clear commitment to open education.
If you're a senior administrator out there,
we're waiting for that clear commitment
in terms of incentivizing faculty.
This is important time consuming work faculty.
Work needs to be recognized and rewarded.
Those schools who have explicitly included work on
open education in their promotion
and tenure criteria, well, good for you.
That's a very important step.
The infrastructure needs to be improved.
Robust and accessible systems and tools need to be there.
And staff need to be there to advise, guide and train.
Outreach campaigns need to
focus on data specific to the institution.
We all draw on work that's been done
on a national and even regional front,
but what's most important in terms of
changing hearts and minds locally is local data.
Otherwise, it's way too easy for
faculty administrators to say, no,
this just doesn't apply to us.
We want to raise awareness of OER
as part of the affordability picture.
We want to emphasize OER's alignment with
institutional goals for diversity, equity
and inclusion, and also talk about
OER in the service of inclusive and active pedagogy.
These are my working matching
orders for this coming phase of my work.
I've also heard lately that communities of
interest would be a very good idea here on this campus,
as the burgeoning awareness and interest in OER
among faculty and staff,
folks who have a place in order to share
ideas and do some joint planning.
When I first started my listening
tour a year and a half ago,
I was set back by the enormity of the challenge.
The landscape here did not seem that
well prepared for OER.
But even during this hard year when all plans went kerflooey,
I've seen some small but significant shifts,
so you can just run
your eye over things that I'm looking at as
very positive developments over
the course of the past year.
At the bottom, we see mobilization of students.
Student leaders have been
concerned about this issue for years,
incensed properly about
the escalating cost of course materials.
This year, with the assistance
and support of student PIRGS,
their voice is getting louder and their
efforts are getting more organized, a good thing.
I wanted to say to you,
if you're conducting your own listening session
and you don't like what you're hearing,
don't be discouraged, don't give up.
Everyone who tells you that it's a marathon,
not a sprint is absolutely right.
Just keep listening. Thank you.
Now, what we'd like to do at
this point is turn the conversation
back to you and listen to you,
the stakeholders, as you share your own ideas.
You see our first question:
"We want to find out from you,
how do you gather feedback from your community?
What strategies have been particularly effective?"
Who'd like to share their experiences in this regard.
Judy, I'll jump in while people decide,
This is Jimmy Ghaphery from VCU.
I want to thank both of you-all
for this great presentation.
It really resonates with me,
the differences of opinion across communities,
as well as the singularity
in terms of wanting to support students success.
A lot of the feedback that we've gotten echoes that,
and I'll definitely want to do
a huge call out to our OER librarian,
Jessica Kirschner, who's made such an
effort since she's been here,
to really hear directly from the students, and having
those voices at the table has been really
important to us at VCU.
But I look forward to hearing
some other answers from folks in chat
or other people that want to unmute and talk about this.
Well, if people don't
have ideas they want to share at this point,
maybe we'll move to
the next question. Sophie, is that a good idea?
Yeah, I think that's good, and
actually we'll invite some of
the attendees because it relates
to those who had been doing this work for a while.
If you want it to move forward, Judy.
We wanted to hear from those of you in
the audience whose programs are relatively mature.
We want your advice.
What didn't work?
What did work?
What was a complete waste of time?
For example, don't make the same mistake I did.
This is a great opportunity
for those of you who've been doing
this work for a while to share with the other attendees,
and to give us some insights
into successes
and so-called failures or learning opportunities.
I know that there's definitely some people
with mature programs in our audience.
I really encourage you to share some
of your experiences with
one particular initiative or more broadly.
While people chew on that,
we've gotten a couple of good responses to
the first prompt that I think are really important.
I hope people are seeing these in chat.
Lynn Harrison really makes
really important point about how this connects up
the library administration and university
administration more importantly, for success.
I think I'm capturing that comment well,
Lynn, but please pipe up if I don't.
But it's really important.
At VCU we've been fortunate that we have had
that support and interests from our provost,
but we too are looking at
a transition with a new provost coming in.
Hopefully all the support
we've gotten up to this point will translate.
I just hear that we cannot see Lynn's comment.
Let me copy Lynn's comment to
all panelists and attendees. It's really good.
It probably looks like I just said it,
but I wouldn't say something as good as this.
Then also Anita shared some of
the Virginia Tech strategy
about getting feedback through various discussions.
It sounds like both Anita's strategy is
really individual partnerships and relationships as
well as working with larger groups.
I think it's really interesting that we're seeing
both top-down and bottom-up mobilization efforts.
I think that's really exciting that
both students are leading,
are really active voices on open educational efforts.
But also the importance of having
upper level administrative support
and how that helps to get things moving.
I appreciate also hearing about the provost at
Norfolk State and then Judy's particular experience
with students and so on.
We've got a great comment
that went to the panelists from Jenise Overmier.
Just really great specific advice to not
get overly focused on building
a super comprehensive LibGuide,
website or LMS module.
Instead, just focus on the outreach.
I think for the librarian community in
the audience that caution
about just focusing on a LibGuide
I'm sure rings very true.
Thank you, Jenise, for that comment.
Anything else you want to add on that?
I'd love to know, too, Janice,
whate outreach strategies you
found particularly effective as well.
I think in the chat to everyone, it's really interesting,
the Tidewater Community College comment about
their formalized six-week course
and from Heather Fitzgerald.
Heather, that program has
been in place for some time, has it not?
Somebody also asked, is there
an incentive for faculty to participate?
I think there is interest in
this program that you mentioned, Heather.
Sophie, did you want me to unmute?
Yeah, that's great.
Hi. This is Jenise.
I made the comment about focusing on outreach as opposed
to doing what is in many librarians' comfort zones,
which is building the most comprehensive LibGuide
that you possibly can.
I think outreach strategies
that have been effective for us,
like so many of us in Virginia,
we have the benefit of
Virginia's Open Education Network membership.
That's where we started hosting those stipended workshops.
I'm at Marymount by the way which is
a small private Catholic school in Northern Virginia.
From there, we moved to
a lot of one-on-one consultations.
That was really our bread and butter for a long time.
I think after that took off,
there was more interests from our community in general.
From there, we've gotten to
more programmatic and strategic integration with
existing faculty committees and
some of the strategic planning committees.
For example, I have
sought out partnerships with
our retention committee which
has been really fruitful for me.
Also we have internal teaching grants.
I've tried to butt my way
into getting on the committee that deals with those
and trying to get OER on their radar in terms of
course redesign which has been a little slow going.
But this year we had our first couple of applications,
and I suspect that they'll be funded,
but I'm not positive.
Really it's about thinking
strategically about the infrastructure that's
already there at your university and plugging yourself
into the places that
you feel like you might have some traction.
For us, approaching it from
an equity and retention angle,
has been enormously beneficial.
That's really helpful, Jenise, thank you.
Yeah, happy to share.
I'll put my email in the chat
if anyone had anything
specific that they wanted to
talk about, I'd be happy to talk.
There's one form about
which I wanted to mention that's been
successful here that's coming
from central administration.
Sophie mentioned the course marking project
or initiative.
When the registrar sends out a message at UVA to
faculty that says tell us what low-cost,
no-cost courses you're teaching,
there is included in that survey a question that says,
do you want a librarian to contact you to help
you find low-cost, no-cost materials.
That question gives our
particular liaison librarians a direct contact with faculty.
Even if they're not thinking OER
or don't know the term,
they have asked for someone to help
them to identify affordable materials.
That's actually proven a real boon to us this year.
Thanks, Judy. We've just had
a really great comment that reminded me of one of
your closing statements that this is a marathon and not a
sprint from Anita Walz to the panelists,
reminding us that you can often retry
things that may have failed a couple of years
ago and just not write things off,
but I think it's a really good reminder.
Anita said that at Virginia Tech,
we're making concerted efforts to retry
some things that may have initially failed.
We're right at 11:45.
We promised this would be over
by 11:45, but we have one more question prompt.
I'm having so much fun hearing people's opinions.
Yes. All yours, Judy.
We'll try to go for five more minutes.
Well, this is such a meaty one.
Sophie and I were interested in finding out
what changes at your schools do you think would have
the greatest impact on OER adoption, creation and use,
anything in there. What are
you doing to affect that change?
We'd like to learn from you as regards to this question.
I think we can solve that in five minutes.
I would love to challenge
the attendees to put something in shot
and see what rolls through.
I also see in chat
some good call-outs to the VIVA Faculty Textbook Portal.
If you're not familiar with that,
we'll get the link in chat.
Thank you, Lynn, for saying that.
Charlie also talks about
some workshops, and he was
previously asking about sharing materials.
I think that also goes to Judy's van in
the mud, that we could try to do this together.
Thank you, Sophie, for the link.
Well, seeing as we're
at 11:45, and we want to be mindful of people's time,
and I really encourage people to take
this last meaty question and marinate on it.
I also want to thank Sophie and Judy
one more time for their presentation that was
really thoughtful, and on behalf of the SCHEV OVAC
and on behalf of the entire Open Ed community.
We'll also be sending a survey out for this session.
I have that I can also put in the chat if you
want to give us your opinions now.
But thanks, everyone, again.
I hope everybody has
a great rest of the day and a great weekend.