Open Education Events

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Connecting the Opens: Open Education Week 2025
Lener, Edward F.; Walters, Tyler; Walz, Anita R.; Neser, Laura; Guimont, Corinne; Surprenant, Aimée; Young, Philip (Virginia Tech, 2025-03-03)
The 2025 Connecting the Opens panel discussion features brief overviews of open publishing, open educational resources, and open data to provide some general information on the topics. Finally, presenters will discuss how aspects of open have impacted their career development as well as how they have incorporated open practices into their research and scholarship, and the audience will be invited to participate in the conversation.
Open Educational Resources: Tailor Your Textbook, Not Your Course Design
Neser, Laura; Walz, Anita R.; Grey, Kindred (2025-02-13)
Instructors often design course content around commercial textbooks, which dictate the sequence of topics and impose financial burdens on students. This poster presentation explores an alternative: using existing open educational resources (OER) to create custom textbooks that align with your course structure. By adapting OER, instructors can organize topics in the order that best suits their teaching, providing students with free, accessible materials. Additionally, many institutions offer grants and technical assistance to support the development of these tailored resources, offering a flexible, cost-effective solution that prioritizes course objectives over predesigned textbooks. In higher education, the traditional textbook regularly serves as the cornerstone of course design, yet the widespread reliance on commercial textbooks has long been a point of contention. These textbooks often dictate the sequence and depth of topics covered in a course, forcing educators to adapt their course design to the textbook rather than designing a course that best matches the instructor's pedagogical approach. Additionally, the high cost of these textbooks places a financial strain on students, sometimes hindering their academic success. However, there is an alternative approach: adapting existing open educational resources (OER) to develop textbooks or other course materials tailored to the instructor's pedagogical approach and course objectives. OER are freely available, openly-licensed educational materials that can be reused, revised, and redistributed. They are most commonly released under a Creative Commons license which allows adaptation with attribution to the original author. These licenses enable educators to legally modify and share educational content, which is essential for freely creating customized textbooks that meet specific course needs. Adapting existing OER to generate customized textbooks represents a significant advancement in higher education pedagogy. Educators can break free from the constraints of commercial textbooks by adopting and adapting OER, allowing them to customize content, reduce student costs, and enhance pedagogical flexibility. This presentation draws on the examples of co-author Dr. Laura Neser’s adapted open textbooks, Introduction to Earth Science (2022) and Introduction to Earth Science, second edition (2025). Since its publication in 2022, Dr. Neser’s textbook has been downloaded over 170,000 times, not including additional views of the HTML version of the book at https://pressbooks.lib.vt.edu/introearthscience/. Moreover, at least 54 colleges and universities worldwide have adopted all or part of the textbook, which has been viewed in 100 countries. The poster presentation aims to equip educators with the knowledge and tools needed to identify, adapt, and integrate OER into their courses. This process includes: (1) identifying suitable OER materials that align with course objectives; (2) adapting these materials to fit the desired course structure and sequence; and (3) utilizing grants and institutional resources to support the adaptation of OER-based textbooks. The grants presented on this poster are specific to Virginia Tech faculty; however, similar resources may be available at your own institution to support the adaptation of OER materials in your courses. By adapting OER, instructors can create customized textbooks that are free, flexible, and aligned with their pedagogical goals. This strategy offers a practical solution to the limitations of commercial textbooks, fostering a more student-centered and flexible approach to course design.
Opening Assessment in Problem-Based Courses: A WeBWorK Pilot Case Study
Walz, Anita R.; Hart, Heath David (2024-10-08)
This presentation was delivered at the 2024 Open Education Conference in Providence, Rhode Island Large-enrollment courses tend to produce assessment headaches for instructors in nearly any discipline. And when courses depart from testing and grading by hand, assessment can become even more complex. These assessment challenges can reduce the likelihood that an instructor chooses an open textbook. While subject matter experts have begun to generate human created and/or AI-written/human edited test banks for their topics, these testbanks typically align to QTI formats, which are multiple choice, lack graphics, and don’t meet the needs of some courses especially those in math-intensive disciplines. In 2023, Departments of Mathematics and Statistics at Virginia Tech, with support from the University Libraries Open Education Initiative began piloting WeBWorK, an open-source hosted software solution already used at many institutions. We present a case study of this pilot project, discuss project framing, decisions, impact, WeBWorK and OER adoption, and our hopes for the future. Attendees of this session will be able to: -Describe programmatic efforts to explore homework software in a campus or system environment. -Meet other people dealing with math assessment and mathematically-rich homework software issues. -Find further information regarding low-cost and open homework systems -Be able to articulate the use case for a system like WeBWorK. -Summarize our programmatic efforts, reflecting on decisions made, the capacities of our team members, barriers and lessons learned, and results part-way through year two. A recording of this presentation is available at: https://youtu.be/y8iTeyQJLFE
From Closed to Open: Laboring to Revert Rights and Republish Existing Works
Walz, Anita R. (2024-10-10)
This presentation was delivered at the 2024 Open Education Conference in Providence, Rhode Island. Rights-reversion is a powerful tool for broadening access to books which are still-in-demand but paywalled or out-of-print. Converting these works to Open Educational Resources (OER) broadens their availability and meets reader and instructional needs while utilizing existing workflows used by those who create open textbooks. This presentation describes rights reversion, presents multiple case studies, documents the labor involved in rights-reversion and re-publishing workflows, and provides tips and tools for working with authors and publisher-copyright-holders. Attendees of this session will be able to: -Articulate a summary of what rights reversion is. -Describe what makes something an Open Educational Resource (OER) -Explain rationale for including rights-reversion-to-OER as part of their publishing program -Describe why rights-reversion-to-OER might add value to the communities they serve, and similarities and differences to what they might already do in their community or institution A recording of this session is available at: https://youtu.be/zvjNtRt7sng?feature=shared
Open Education Forum 2024: Connecting the Opens
McNabb, Kayla B.; Lener, Edward F.; Griffin, Julie; Guimont, Corinne; Pullen, Brandie; Walz, Anita R.; Orth, Donald J.; Surprenant, Aimée (Virginia Tech, 2024-03-18)
University Libraries’ faculty, Corinne Guimont, Anita Walz, and Brandi Pullen will provide brief overviews of open publishing, open educational resources, and open data to provide some general information on the topics. Finally, presenters will discuss how aspects of open have impacted their career development as well as how they have incorporated open practices into their research and scholarship, and the audience will be invited to participate in the robust conversation.
How the Sausage Gets Made: Building State-Wide Support for Open Education Initiatives
Cohen, Sarah Faye; Butterfield, Robert; Gallaway, Terri; Thornton, Glenda; Walz, Anita R. (2017-11)
Over the last few years, we've seen increasing state-wide support for open education. But how does that support begin? Who's behind those initiatives and what are they doing to advance open education efforts at the state level? This panel presentation will share the experiences of initiators of state-wide programs across four states (Ohio, Virginia, Louisiana, and Wisconsin). While each panelist has gained state-wide support for open textbook adoption, they have done so in different ways and with different degrees of mandate. The panelists will have the opportunity to share their processes, their lessons learned, their successes, and the status of their efforts, helping attendees identify avenues for their own state-wide initiatives while also demonstrating there is not just one way to establish or implement support. One thing these panelists will certainly agree on though --it's worth the effort. Link to conference site: https://sched.co/BXeR
Library Selection -- and Uses -- of Printed Open Textbooks
Walz, Anita R. (2017-06-07)
Open educational resources (OER) are available in a variety of formats, including print. This presentation highlights potentials for use of printed OER as a promotional tool for OER initiatives in college and university settings. This presenation was delivered at VIVA (the Virtual Library of Virginia) Annual Collections Forum 2019 in Richmond, VA.
Conversation: Discussion and Hands-On Exploration of Open Educational Resources
Walz, Anita R.; Pannabecker, Virginia (2015-02-05)
This conversation session was hosted at the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy in Blacksburg, VA on February 5, 2015.
2023 Spring Open Forum: Connecting the Opens: Open Access, Open Data, Open Educational Resources, and Establishing Your Online Scholarly Presence
Walz, Anita R.; Young, Philip; Petters, Jonathan L.; Miles, Rachel A.; Surprenant, Aimée (Virginia Tech, 2023-02-20)
Join the University Libraries for a presentation for future professors regarding open access, open educational resources, open data, and establishing an online scholarly presence. University Libraries’ faculty Philip Young, Anita Walz, Jonathan Petters, and Rachel Miles will provide a brief overview of each topic, with discussion to follow.
Open Education Week 2022 Open Course Tours Event
Thompson, Liz; Finlayson, Caitie; LeClair, Renee J.; Binks, Andrew P.; Goodwin-Jones, Robert; Leek, Danielle; Westcott, Stephanie; Ghaphery, Jimmy; Thomas, Judith (Virginia Tech, 2022-03-09)
This event sponsored by SCHEV-Open Virginia Advisory Committee (OVAC) provides four virtual tours of courses utilizing Open Education Resources (OER) and/or Open Pedagogy. These course tours are designed to move beyond the basics of OER to show how OER are being implemented in actual courses by colleagues in Virginia, in a variety of educational contexts. A summary of the Virginia Course Materials Survey and information on VIVA Open Grants available for OER is also presented.
Open Education Forum 2022: Connecting the Opens: Open Access, Open Educational Resources, and Open Data
Walz, Anita R.; Young, Philip; Petters, Jonathan L.; McNabb, Kayla B.; Surprenant, Aimée ; Binks, Andrew P.; LeClair, Renee J. (Virginia Tech, 2022-02-21)
Join the University Libraries and invited guests for a panel discussion for future professors regarding open access, open educational resources, and open data. University Libraries’ faculty, Philip Young, Anita Walz, and Jonathan Petters will provide a brief overview of each of the three topics. Selected Virginia Tech faculty will be invited to share about their career development and how they have incorporated open practices into their teaching and scholarship. And, we will moderate a robust conversation among attending graduate students.
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.
Open Education Forum 2021: Connecting the Opens: Open Access, Open Education & More
McNabb, Kayla B.; Miles, Rachel A.; Wolfe, Mary Leigh; DePauw, Karen P.; Ogejo, Jactone Arogo; Tucker, Thomas J. (Virginia Tech, 2021-03-01)
Join faculty presenters from around the university, University Library faculty, and the Future Professoriate Graduate class in a robust discussion about nuances, similarities and differences in the "opens." Learn about open access (OA) trends in the U.S., Europe, and at Virginia Tech. Learn about the differences between open access and open educational resources (OER). Presenters and panelists include Karen DePauw (Dean, Graduate School), Jactone Ogejo (Biological Systems Engineering), Mary Leigh Wolfe (Biological Systems Engineering), Thomas Tucker (School of Visual Arts), Kayla McNabb and Rachel Miles (University Libraries). Slides from this presentation are available at http://bit.ly/pfpopened2021
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.
Moving STEM Documents Online: Sustainable Workflows for Accessible Content
Sorge, Volker (2021-03-04)
Although for many years there has been a steady push to move teaching content online, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this trend, suddenly forcing all faculty to focus on delivering teaching and learning online. However, rushing material online without understanding some of the requirements of usability and accessibility of web content will not only lead to a negative student experience, but may also threaten fair and inclusive education for many years to come. This threat is particularly potent in scientific subjects where equations and diagrams play an integral role in education and present a major obstacle for accessibility. This talk will discuss how to overcome these obstacles and present techniques and technologies that enable the conversion of existing documents to accessible web content with relatively little effort but high impact on inclusive STEM education. This presentation includes a general introduction to web accessibility and usability issues related to scientific online content, past and future. This will include the implications of accessibility and requirements for barrier-free access to STEM teaching with the perspective that the Web is nevertheless the ideal platform for hosting and curating modern math-based content. At the end of this presentation, attendees will be more familiar with a set of open source software for conversion of mathematical documents from standard sources (like LaTeX, Word or text) to accessible web content. The presentation will highlight how specific tools like pandoc and TeX4ht allow for bulk conversion of documents resulting in material that can be directly rendered and made accessible in any browser using MathJax. Presenter Bio: Dr. Volker Sorge is Professor in Document Analysis and Accessibility at the School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK. He leads the Scientific Document Analysis group whose research primarily focuses on mathematical document analysis, diagram recognition and handwriting recognition. For many years Volker has worked on STEM accessibility. As a visiting scientist at Google he integrated mathematics support into the ChromeVox screen reader. As a member of the MathJax consortium he has worked on formula accessibility on the web. Most recently, in collaboration with the PreTeXt group, the NFB and the American Institute of Mathematics he contributed to the automatic transcription of LaTeX textbooks into tactile Braille books. In his start-up company Progressive Accessibility Solutions (progressiveaccess.com), Volker focuses on exploiting pattern recognition and image analysis technology for automatically making STEM diagrams accessible for use in teaching and science. Volker Sorge has studied Mathematics, Computer Science and Philosophy at the University of Würzburg, University of Texas at Austin, and University Saarbrücken. He holds Research Masters in Mathematics and a PhD in Computer Science (Computational Logic). This is the feature presentation of Virginia Tech's 2021 Open Education Symposium.
Re-envisioning Accessibility for Math-Intensive OER
Walz, Anita R. (2020-11-10)
Video recording available at https://youtu.be/Kioa84gNUl4 The accessibility of publications is critical for learners who rely on screen readers. What happens when an OER you plan to use, remix, or are creating is math intensive and you neither know LaTeX nor the accessibility options involved in presenting machine-readable equations? Issues abound! How can math display in OER be re-envisioned? This highly-interactive presentation builds off of the experiences of six people at three different institutions who met up to discuss their respective math & accessibility journeys, math-intensive OER accessibility failures, successes, and solutions that work for their level of capacity. From the extremely labor-intensive to the “automatic,” this case study-based presentation will aid participants in what not to do, and how re-envision processes and decision points for creating, adapting, and retrofitting OER that contain equations. Participants will have opportunities to share their knowledge regarding tools, solutions, and approaches in a common document and will leave with a tool kit of potential solutions for different electronic environments and platforms. Learning Outcomes: Participants will be able to summarize standards, common issues, and options for displaying, printing, and developing screen-readable math in OER; Participants will be able to recall specific issues with math display in OER as these will be connected to particular examples of OER; Participants will leave with a tool kit of potential solutions for different electronic environments & platforms. Participants will also be able to share their knowledge regarding tools, solutions, and approaches.
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.
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.
Introduction to Open Educational Resources (OER)
Walz, Anita R. (2020-10-06)
This presentation provides information in response to commonly-asked questions about OER, including: What are OER? Where can I find them? How can I use them? How do others use them? And how -- and where -- can I share what I made? Presenters were encouraged to complete a presession survey to identify levels of knowledge and areas of interest. A definition: Open Educational Resources are freely and publicly available teaching, learning, and research resources in the public domain or which have been released under an intellectual property license that permits free use and re-purposing by others. OER include a broad range of formats.
Faculty & Student Panel Discussion: Issues in Course Materials Access and Use
Walz, Anita R.; Cox, Larry A., II; Falls, Jonathan; Filer, Kimberly L.; Mantha, Anurag; Meinke-Lau, Billy; Poff, Ron (Virginia Tech. University Libraries, 2020-03-03)
Faculty and student panelists will discuss the interplay of issues such as equity, cost, persistent access, customization, and pedagogical affordances in relation to open course materials, as well as implications for career advancement in academic contexts when creating and using such materials. We’ll consider a variety of perspectives on these considerations, challenging one another to engage with the complexities of championing openness in higher education.

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