Our First Spring 2024 MATC OER Community Hour will be on May 3rd at 10 am. This event is an opportunity to share your OER journey with the MATC OER community, ask questions about OER adoption/creation grants, and learn about new opportunities. 

Here is the link; https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYscuCsrzooGtEZgXOwfZO7iJV5s4jDnFiC

GRANT OPPORTUNITY!

WTCS OER FACULTY GRANT

Our Spring 2024 Faculty Feature is with Dr. Rebecca Garcia Sanchez, the lead faculty of MATC's Healthcare Services Management (HSM) Pathway. She has been at MATC for 18 years and is the Lead Faculty/Program Chair-Healthcare Services Management (HSM) Pathway (HSM and HUC). She's currently on the (district-wide) Faculty Credentialing Review Committee (FCRC) and HC Pathway Lead Faculty Council. In addition to MATC, Dr. Rebecca Garcia Sanchez has been a Full Board Committee member and Expedited Reviewer-Medical College of Wisconsin, Institutional Review Board (IRB) since 2018. 

1. How did you learn about OER?

There was information sent about an OER workshop being offered by CVTC (Vince Mussehl). As I already was utilizing resources outside of textbook use for three HSM courses, I was interested in transitioning other program courses to OER. 

2. How do you use OER in your classes? (This can include what materials you use, how you found them, and why you use the particular ones you use.)

Given that the healthcare industry is ever-changing, it is important to not only be on top of emerging trends, but also have flexibility in course materials and learning. Textbooks in my disciplines (healthcare management, human research, etc). tend to be very static and get dated rather quickly. Many times, the target audience intended for the designated textbooks do not include the unique learning needs of our student population. 

The HSM curriculum utilizes multiple resources rather than one. It depends on the individual course. The goal was develop a diverse student-centered experience that provided an opportunity for all learning styles. For the recent transition of HSM-144, Introduction to the Business of Healthcare, I was able to utilize the OER search engine (on the OER page) and went for a deep dive. For a module-OER textbook chapter, videos (from You Tube and other sources), online journal and newspaper articles, MATC library, PBS. I also had some links from the resources shared from the CVTC (Vince Mussehl) workshop. Why this done-emphasize student soft skills development. All HSM courses are case study/project management based (no multiple choice/true false). 

3. What is a highlight of your experience teaching with OER?

I am down to two courses needing OER transition (7 out of 9); I am excited that HSM will be an OER only program starting in the Fall. HSM and HUC are online only offerings. MATC is the only WTCS institution offering HSM and HUC.I get students from all over the region rather than just within the district. When it comes to brass-tacks, it is really about the student and their experience while in the program-it is critical to provide learners the tools needed to be successful as a future healthcare professional.  Approximately 82% of HSM and 95% of HUC (tableau) are economically marginalized;  it is critical to employ mechanisms that minimize barriers. Student retention and completion have increased and/or remained at 90% or higher (some have been at 100%). 

If you want to learn more about the exciting work of developing and using OER for Health Services courses, please reach out to Dr. Rebecca Garcia Sanchez.  

***

In the Fall of 2023, Dr. Krystia Nora also talked to another Faculty Feature: MATC Professor Paul Carrier, who leads Culinary Arts and has utilized OER materials in his courses since he started teaching at MATC in the late 1990s. He was a keynote speaker at the Fall 2023 WTCS Open Education Symposium on Fri. Oct. 27, 2023. See the video below:

Check out the OER Repository of WTCS courses and the WisTech Open website.

Visit the Call for Proposals for submission instructions and criteria. 

Webinar: Tuesday, April 23, 2024 | 2:00 p.m. CT

Get Certified by Creative Commons

REGISTER

This webinar presents another great opportunity to learn from our Midwest peers who have experienced the CC certification course. We will be joined by Molly Ledermann, Washtenaw Community College faculty librarian and Michigan OER Network Steering Committee member, who will describe her experience and how getting CC Certified has helped her work in Open Education. Also, Craig Finlay, OER and STEM librarian at the University of Nebraska Omaha Libraries, will describe his experience in the CC Certificate course and how he subsequently partnered with CC to develop a microcredential course, based on CC Certificate content, called Open Educational Resources for Librarians and Educators.

The CC Certificate is a training program and investment in open advocates, educators and leaders around the world. CC built the program to strengthen people’s practical expertise in open licensing, copyright, and recommended practices in open knowledge and culture movements. The program runs 10-week online courses three times per year; while there are courses for educators, academic librarians and open culture, everyone is welcome to join. Additionally, CC offers 1-week “bootcamps” for small groups, upon request. With CC-recognized open licensing expertise, graduates note they become the "point people" for open licensing at their institutions. Read what else graduates are saying in CC testimonials.

Register today. See you over on Zoom!

2024 Spring Webinar Series

Webinars are Wednesdays at noon PT/ 3 pm ET except where otherwise indicated

This series is free and open to the open education community and we encourage you to invite your colleagues to attend or watch together and continue the discussion afterward.

More information about the speakers will be posted a couple of weeks prior to the webinar on our homepage as well as sent to the  CCCOER Community email list.

If you can not join us live, we will update this page with a link to the slides and videos a couple of days after each webinar. Webinar archives are also available at https://www.cccoer.org/webinar/.

College Students Deserve Better Textbook Options
Tap Into Newark | February 23, 2024

Don’t Scrap the Textbooks Yet
The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal | February 22, 2024

Diamond Open Access: Global Paradigm Shift in Scholarly Publishing
Unesco | February 21, 2024

Unleashing the Potential of Culturally Relevant Learning with OER
New America | February 20, 2024

Textbook Affordability a Top Faculty Concern
Inside Higher Ed | February 16, 2024

The great equalizer: How education is transforming from privilege to universal right
Digital Journal | February 14, 2024

The Shift to Open Educational Resources (OER): A Step Toward Our Vision of Equity-Centered Mathematics Education
WestEd | February 13, 2024

Preparing for OpedEd24? The Open Education Conference is thrilled to announce the public release of the #OpenEd23 video recordings. Session recordings may be viewed at any time on Sched. 

Liz du Plessis and Mannon Allard-Kropp of the University System of Missouri created a short, three-hour, self-paced instructor training on OER in Canvas, with four sub-tracks instructors can choose from (Exploring OER, Evaluating OER, Leveraging Pressbooks and H5P for OER, and Exploring Open Pedagogy). It is located on Canvas Commons by searching Kropp, or Missouri Online): Introduction to OER for Instructors (geared primarily for higher education).

Fill in the cost of your textbook and see how much will be saved by using OER, moving to cheaper texts, or moving to ZTC (zero textbook costs). The University of Missouri-St. Louis is pleased to announce the publication of an Open Dataset about the affordable and OER courses offered at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL). The dataset includes information such as course names, IDs, instructors, meeting patterns, enrollment numbers, and more. This dataset is not exhaustive, but it does include a helpful data dictionary to help orient researchers, educators, and students to better utilize the dataset to explore potential student cost savings and patterns in affordable and OER course offerings at UMSL. There's also an accompanying data visualization of this data on Tableau Public.

Creative Commons just completed working with Carnegie Math Pathways at WestEd to openly license (CC BY-NC 4.0) their Quantway and Statway courses. Learn more about this work in mathematics OER.

Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute has released Unlocking the Digital Age:  The Musician's Guide to Research, Publishing, and Copyright, by Kathleen DeLaurenti and Andrea I. Copland. Based on coursework developed at the Peabody Conservatory. This book serves as a crucial resource for early career musicians navigating the complexities of the digital era. 

The Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) has released Writing for Digital Media by Cara Miller, associate professor and director of the English Program at Anderson University. This open textbook, made possible through a Textbook Creation Grant from the PALSave: PALNI Affordable Learning program, addresses the evolving landscape of writing in the digital age. 

Dr. Franco Pestilli at the University of Texas at Austin has recently published his open education project: Foundations of Psychological Data Science I. Dr. Pestilli’s project is a comprehensive course which “lays the foundation for data science education targeting psychological and brain science students.'' The course utilizes python (though no prior coding experience is required) and Jupyter Notebooks, and includes examples, tutorials, and assignments for students.