Browsing by Author "Rebar, Beverly"

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    SCHEV Open Virginia Advisory Committee (OVAC) Webinar Series Part 1: Open Education: Student Success and Faculty Autonomy
    Rebar, Beverly; Walz, Anita R.; Westcott, Stephanie; Geary, Tom; Woodward, Tom; Rondeau, Sophie (2020-09-18)
    SCHEV Open Virginia Advisory Committee (OVAC) Webinar Series Part I: Open Education: Student Success and Faculty Autonomy Fall 2020 Virtual Events on Open Education: Student Success and Faculty Autonomy. Join us for lightning rounds of presentations, small group discussions, and expert panels. Welcome: Beverly Rebar, SCHEV Institutional OER Policies - Highlighting Virginia Tech's Guidelines for OER & Open Textbooks Anita Walz, Virginia Tech In 2018 the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation that required public institutions to develop and approve guidelines for Open Educational Resources and/or Low Cost materials. This lighting round talk gives the history of the legislation, provides information regarding how the charge was interpreted at Virginia Tech, and describes the resulting contents of Virginia Tech's Guidelines for Open Educational Resources and Open Textbooks which were passed by VT's Board of Visitors in June 2020. It will also make brief mention of the status, types, and contents of guidelines at other Virginia public institutions. Lessons from the First Year of VIVA Open Grants Stephanie Westcott, VIVA Three rounds of awards in VIVA’s Open Grants Program have offered some lessons about the support for faculty as they adopt, adapt, and create Open Educational Resources in Virginia: (1) The need is great, with nearly two million dollars in support requested in under 18 months; (2) The advantages of this work go beyond cost savings and include faculty autonomy and student engagement; (3) While enthusiasm for this work is high, some disciplines and course levels are better represented than others, leaving work to do. This presentation will elaborate on these lessons and suggest opportunities and directions for the future. Using OER to Amplify Diverse Voices in Multiple Modalities Tom Geary, Tidewater Community College Increased access and affordability are often touted as the key benefits of open educational resources, but perhaps the most significant advantage is the inclusion of marginalized perspectives in different modalities. Zobel (2015) writes, “OERs expose students to potentially more diverse texts than they might normally see in any traditional textbooks” (para. 6). In this lightning talk, I will argue for the importance of amplifying diverse voices in readings, videos, and podcasts to engage students in multiple learning styles and share my strategies for incorporating OERs by minority scholars in my technical writing and composition courses. Building OER in WordPress Tom Woodward, Virginia Commonwealth University WordPress is the ubiquitous open source software that runs a large portion of the Internet. It can be customized to do virtually anything. We’ll look at how VCU has been able to build bespoke textbooks, interactive 3D media, geographic data visualizations, customized student portfolios, multimedia timeline tools and much more using WordPress as the foundation. Learn about useful plugins and economical development patterns. All of the examples are public on the web and the code for various plugins and themes is available in GitHub. Bringing it all together: Mapping OER with Virginia faculty review Sophie Rondeau, VIVA Identification and discovery of appropriate and high quality open educational resources (OER) is a significant challenge for faculty and is often a barrier to adoption. In response, the VIVA OER Course Mapping Project Task Force is developing a listing of OER through VIVA Open that align to Transfer Virginia courses. Virginia faculty are invited to “sprint” review the curated content for quality of explanation of subject matter and comprehensiveness. The results are increased engagement with and among Virginia faculty, exposure to available OER in their discipline, a faculty reviewed seal of approval, and greater insight into their valuation of curated OER.
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    SCHEV Open Virginia Advisory Committee (OVAC) Webinar Series Part II: Open Education: Student Success and Faculty Autonomy
    Rebar, Beverly; Soholt, Chris; Bai, Yu; Brown, Anne M.; Thomas, Judith; Davis, Preston (2020-10-23)
    SCHEV Open Virginia Advisory Committee (OVAC) Webinar Series Part II: Open Education: Student Success and Faculty Autonomy Fall 2020 ESL Composition II Handbook Chris Soholt and Yu Bai, Northern Virginia Community College This presentation showcases the ESL Composition II Handbook developed for ESL 41 at the Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) Loudoun Campus. The Handbook is being piloted in Fall 2020. This presentation includes both the instructor and the students' feedback to the Handbook and insights into the development of OER. We hope that our work will encourage our fellow faculty to embrace, adapt and create OER to reduce the cost for students and to improve the quality of education by making it more personalized and adaptive. Using Open Science Framework (OSF) and GitHub to Promote Student Training and Research Transparency Anne M. Brown, Virginia Tech Open access practices can be a cornerstone of undergraduate research training to encourage best practices with data and research reproducibility. Our research lab utilizes platforms such as GitHub and the Open Science Framework (OSF) consistently and with a structure to train and promote research outcomes and products. In using these tools and introducing them to students early, we are promoting a culture of research training and reproducibility in our students, while also documenting and providing all workflows and tutorials that our students utilize in an open way. This approach provides a digital footprint of student work, strengthening their portfolio and recognition in the field, and making our research and training more transparent. This talk discusses the creation and organization of a research lab centered OSF and GitHub page and how it is used by students and researchers. Privacy and Surveillance in Digital Courseware Judith Thomas, University of Virginia Much digital courseware, including “inclusive access” products, pose a threat to the future of open education. Purporting to address the textbook affordability crisis, publishers have devised automatic billing models for products that gather a lot of student data, which is then put to various uses, including product development and learning analytics. Students must agree to privacy terms in order to access the materials, and have no say in how their data is gathered, analyzed, and used. In this talk we look at a few privacy notices from major vendors and discuss the ethical implications of this type of data capture.
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    SCHEV Open Virginia Advisory Committee (OVAC) Webinar Series Part III: Open Education: Student Success and Faculty Autonomy : Getting Started with Open Educational Resources
    Elder, Abbey; Walz, Anita R.; Rebar, Beverly; Davis, William Preston (2021-03-05)
    Would you like to incorporate open educational resources (OER) into your course, but aren't sure where to start? In this workshop, Abbey Elder, Iowa State University, guides you through the processes of finding, modifying, and creating OER. The workshop includes a set of practical tools and strategies for approaching their OER journey, as well as a better understanding of the support available for instructors in Virginia. Speaker Bio: Abbey Elder is the Open Access & Scholarly Communication Librarian at Iowa State University. Her work uplifts and supports instructors who are interested in open education, open access publishing, and other scholarly communication topics. Abbey's handbook for instructors, The OER Starter Kit, has been used in professional development programs across the United States, and was adapted into a reusable workbook in 2020. This event is part of the Open Education: Student Success and Faculty Autonomy 2020-21 Webinar series sponsored by SCHEV's Open Virginia Advisory Committee.
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    SCHEV Open Virginia Advisory Committee (OVAC) Webinar Series Part IV: Open Education: Student Success and Faculty Autonomy: Listening to OER Stakeholders in Virginia
    Rondeau, Sophie; Thomas, Judith; Rebar, Beverly; Ghaphery, Jimmy (Virginia Tech, 2021-04-09)
    This presentation will discuss Virginia OER stakeholder interviews conducted by SPARC Open Education Leadership Program participants, Judy Thomas (UVA; 2019-2020 SPARC Open Education Leadership Cohort) and Sophie Rondeau (VIVA; 2020-2021 SPARC Open Education Leadership Cohort). Come prepared to contribute to the conversation as Judy and Sophie invite attendees to share their perspectives on open education. This event is part of the Open Education: Student Success and Faculty Autonomy 2020-21 Webinar series sponsored by SCHEV's Open Virginia Advisory Committee.