SCHEV Open Virginia Advisory Committee (OVAC) Webinar Series Part 1: Open Education: Student Success and Faculty Autonomy

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.