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Browsing by Author "Blicher, Heather"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    But what do you REALLY think? An OER collaborator perception survey
    Walz, Anita R.; Blicher, Heather; Grey, Kindred (2023-10-17)
    Since 2013 the Open Education Initiative (OEI) at Virginia Tech https://guides.lib.vt.edu/oer has supported faculty in exploring, adopting, adapting, creating, and freely-distributing open educational resources of various formats. In an effort to identify how to document, strengthen, streamline, and advocate for program permanence, the OEI conducted a formal, anonymous survey. The survey population included faculty and staff open education collaborators who have or are partnering with the OEI since an initial series of grants in 2016. While we keep in close contact with collaborators throughout the entire development process, we believe that anonymous feedback will help us to gain additional insights after projects are completed. We seek to uncover additional aspects of faculty/staff motivations to participate in the OEI, areas for program improvement, and observations about the program from a faculty/staff viewpoint rather than our own perceptions. Our program, institutional context, core values, and earlier, informal findings informed the openly-licensed survey instrument. We will discuss expected findings vs. actual findings from the survey, and our plans for responding, including possible asynchronous online learning modules designed to streamline labor-intensive steps. We hope that these will expand the reach and impact of the OEI while keeping workloads within reason for members of the OEI.
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    Class Slides for Fundamentals of Business fourth edition
    Poff, Ron (2023)
    Class slides for Fundamentals of Business, fourth edition (2023) are freely-available, screen-reader friendly, openly-licensed, and editable. The slides align with the freely-available open textbook, Fundamentals of Business, fourth edition, which was designed for use in Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business introductory level business course, MGT1104 Foundations of Business. The collection includes chapter-level .ppt slides for chapters 1 - 8 and 10. The remaining chapter slidedecks will be added as they become available. The open textbook, Fundamentals of Business, fourth edition, is freely available in PDF, ePub, Pressbooks, and other formats at https://doi.org/10.21061/fundamentalsofbusiness4e An online, interactive, accessible version of this book is available at: https://pressbooks.lib.vt.edu/fundamentalsofbusiness4e. About the license Unless otherwise noted, the book, slides, and contents therein are licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike (CC BY NC-SA) 4.0 license (human readable version) | legal code, which allows anyone to remix, tweak, and build upon the work for uses which are primarily non-commercial. New works must acknowledge the original work and be non-commercial. Derivative versions must be licensed under the same CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. See Creative Commons' Best Practices for Attribution for further information. Help us! If you are an instructor reviewing, adopting, or adapting this textbook and/or slides, please help us understand your use by filling out this form http://bit.ly/business-interest How to adapt and share the slides Instructors are encouraged to customize the slide deck by adding their own content and examples. According to the Creative Commons BY NC SA license, customized and shared versions of the slides must: - Retain the original copyright statement - Be released under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY NC SA) 4.0 license - Include a link to the original slide deck source: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/105157 - Include brief statement regarding whether or not changes were made - List the name of the adapter Find, adapt, and share resources Instructors are encouraged to share their versions and other resources created for this content area via the Instructor Resource Portal in OER Commons. Errata and error reporting http://bit.ly/business-feedback Accessibility Virginia Tech is committed to making its publications accessible in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. All figures within the slides have alternative text. Contributors Slide creation: Ron Poff Accessibility: Heather Blicher Figure design: Kindred Grey Project management: Anita Walz
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    Class Slides for Sustainable Property Management
    Hopkins, Erin A. (Virginia Tech, 2023)

    Class slides for Sustainable Property Management (2023) are freely-available, screen-reader friendly, openly-licensed, and editable. The slides align with the freely-available open textbook, Sustainable Property Management, which is the required text for Virginia Tech's Department of Apparel, Housing, and Resource Management, PM 3674, Property Management Operations. The collection includes chapter-level .ppt slides with questions and activities for each of the eight chapters. The open textbook, Sustainable Property Management, is freely available in PDF, ePub, Pressbooks, and other formats at https://doi.org/10.21061/sustainable_property_management. About the license
    Unless otherwise noted, the book, slides, and contents therein are licensed with a Creative Commons NonCommercial ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) 4.0 license (human readable version) | legal code, which allows anyone to remix, tweak, and build upon the work for uses which are primarily non-commercial. New works must acknowledge the original work and be non-commercial. Derivative versions must be licensed under the same CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. See Creative Commons' Best Practices for Attribution for further information. Help us!
    If you are an instructor reviewing, adopting, or adapting this textbook and/or slides, please help us understand your use by filling out this form How to adapt and share the slides
    Instructors are encouraged to customize the slide deck by adding their own content and examples. According to the Creative Commons BY NC SA license, customized and shared versions of the slides must: - Retain the original copyright statement - Be released under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY NC SA) 4.0 license - Include a link to the original slide deck source: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/11342 - Include brief statement regarding whether or not changes were made - List the name of the adapter Find, adapt, and share resources
    Instructors are encouraged to share their versions and other resources created for this content area via the Instructor Resource Portal in OER Commons. View errata
    Report an error     Accessibility
    Virginia Tech is committed to making its publications accessible in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. All figures within the slides have alternative text. This work is published by Virginia Tech's Department of Apparel, Housing, and Resource Management in association with the University Libraries' at Virginia Tech Open Education Initiative. Contributors
    Slide creation: Erin A. Hopkins
    Accessibility: Heather Blicher, Kindred Grey
    Figure design: Kindred Grey
    Project management: Anita Walz
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    Doing the Work: Developing a DEI Toolkit to Center Equity in Textbook Creation
    Blicher, Heather; Vold, Veronica (2023-10-16)
    Open Oregon Educational Resources received federal and Governor’s Emergency Education Relief funding to develop openly licensed, targeted pathway materials with an equity lens for Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS), Sociology, and Criminal Justice. This project redesigns high-enrollment courses in disciplines that lead to in-demand occupations where high-quality openly licensed course materials with an equity lens are not currently available. To support author teams, we push beyond the traditional concept of OER as an affordability tool to include a throughline that focuses on diversity, equity, and inclusion. We developed a DEI toolkit in Pressbooks to engage participants in OER development strategies that center equity in the labor-intensive process of textbook creation and design. Recognizing the challenges of coordinating training sessions for a large project team and the need to accommodate learner variability, we created an interactive, accessible toolkit that provides participants with synchronous and asynchronous options for engagement. It is designed to be flexible, allowing team members to participate and learn at their own pace, with regular and sustained interaction with equity consultants, instructional designers, and other specialists for questions and feedback.
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    From Potential to Possibility: Virginia Tech's Journey in Developing Inclusive OER
    Grey, Kindred; Blicher, Heather (2023-10-13)
    Accessibility is an essential component in developing open educational resources (OER). It amplifies the reach and impact of OER by extending usability to a broader audience. It ensures that everyone, regardless of their abilities, can fully participate in and benefit from course materials, to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the content effectively. This expanded audience enriches the learning experience for all and encourages collaboration, diversity, and innovation. Accompany us as we take you through Virginia Tech’s journey making open materials increasingly accessible over the years. Hear about our beginning accessibility efforts, how we are currently approaching accessibility, and features we would like to incorporate in the future. We’ll highlight standard features that make learning resources more accessible and also share a few new features that Virginia Tech’s program has incorporated, such as QR codes, podcasts, Aria tagging, and PDF remediation. We also invite diverse perspectives into the process, including individuals with disabilities and educators specializing in accessibility who provide insights on making resources more inclusive from the outset. Lastly, we’ll talk about some features that we have in the pipeline, such as offering multiple languages and audiobooks. We recognize that new user needs arise every day. Let’s use our time together to stay curious about accessibility features and build a community to support each other.
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    Other Duties (And Places) as Assigned: How Analog Approaches Are Impeding Progress in Online Librarianship
    Blicher, Heather; Neel, Rebecca; Howard, Joy (ABC-CLIO: Libraries Unlimited, 2022-10)
    Just as librarians have intentionally developed and strengthened face-to-face services according to ACRL Standards, so too should we intentionally create and support standards-based online work. To accomplish this work, we need both dedicated, experienced librarians and progressive organizational structures that embrace the post-traditional work environments needed to fully support online and post-traditional students. The inequities felt by both online librarians and the academic audiences they serve (students and faculty) can be traced back to the gendered nature of librarianship as a whole. We have an opportunity to address this narrative and resulting practices and policies in this moment of social change, but it requires a confrontation of commonly accepted norms in the field (hegemony) and the internal inequities that are showing up in the analog/digital divide within our field. An intentional focus on equity is vital for truly successful distance programs because if we view distance services as secondary or less optimal to traditional, on-campus services we are automatically relegating distance library users to a secondary status within the library community. And if distance services truly are less optimal, we simply need to redesign them. Problems Addressed: Equitable work environments Opportunities for upward mobility in the DOL area of the profession Empowering fellow librarians
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    Where OER & DEI Connect: Intersections that Matter
    Blicher, Heather (Virginia Tech, 2023-05-25)
    As the keynote speaker for the 2023 Affordable Learning PA Summit (ALPA) in State College, PA, I discussed the intersections between open educational resources (OER), diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and the overall importance of DEI in higher education. To face these challenges, I included inclusive course design principles, language guides, and image repositories as examples of equity tools.