Open Educational Resources Committee Meeting: April 21, 2022

Zoom / Conference Call

Members Attending: Amber Burtis (Southern Illinois University Carbondale), Denise Cote (College of DuPage), Catherine Galarza-Espino (Morton College), Kim Hale (Columbia College Chicago), Dan Matthews, co-chair (Moraine Valley Community College), Christina Norton (Bradley University), Tineka Scalzo (City College of Chicago), Chris Sweet, co-chair (Illinois Wesleyan University), Tamara Townsend (City Colleges of Chicago)

Member Absent: Janet Swatscheno (University of Illinois Chicago)

CARLI Staff Attending: Elizabeth Clarage, Anne Craig, Michele Leigh, Nicole Swanson

Board Liaisons: Karen Janke (Erikson Institute), Jacob Jeremiah (Oakton Community College)

Tasks Assigned

• Minutes taken by Tamara Townsend.

Decisions

• March minutes approved with minor change regarding name of notetaker.

Announcements

• Illinois Library Association Public Policy Committee
  • The Illinois Library Association Public Policy Committee has discussed funding for academic libraries to support open educational resources. The funding would be similar to the per capita grants for public libraries. Also noted that school libraries have been funded by the State. One of the discussions that might take place would be how funding for academic libraries might work.
• Member Announcements: None offered
• CARLI Announcements
  • Michelle Leigh has been accepted to be part of OEN Manifold Pilot Project. Leigh will be working on a project creating a text and ancillaries for an animation course, will learn about how Manifold works, and if OEN relationship continues, can teach everyone how to use the program. Says it is a cool program and she is impressed. Manifold is an authoring platform that works with HP5 ancillaries. Integrates nicely with LMS.
  • Several upcoming OER workshops and PDA programs.
  • The Commercial Products Committee hosted a forum on accessibility which included a presentation on platforms utilized by different institutions and policies for equity and access.
  • The status of adding Pressbooks to the OER Commons platform.

Discussion

• Continuing Education
  • OER Course: Understanding and Promoting Open Educational Resources: The people running the May course were not on the call. Elizabeth says there are six registered for the May course.
  • CARLI OER Faculty Workshop: Asked for comments on the February and March workshops. A shout out to all instructors and says everyone has been great. There were 32 attendees at the March workshop.
  • OER Office Hours: No feedback offered on the March Office Hours. Christina asked if possible to ask preliminary questions of the attendees before the session. Chris suggested getting emails from registrants to follow-up. Christina clarified that she would do it as a poll during the office hours to get feedback on where attendees are. Christina will write Elizabeth with the questions she wants included on the poll.
  • Future OER Program Offerings
    • The committee discussed what new options or repeated session that it may want to offer for summer. Options to consider: topics with repeated interest, reaching out to experts in the field to run workshop or webinar. These options might dovetail with new business as well.
    • CARLI will offer workshops for the Illinois SCOERs grantees and those workshops are open to all CARLI members. Workshops will be on Creative Commons, Instructional Design, 3D Printing. These might align with things the OER committee might want as well.
    • Ideas Shared:
      • Are there are repeat questions or interests? Noted that during previous discussions the committee selected elements of a level two course to do as a workshop or office hours discussion.
      • Perhaps starting with open OER Office hours for things we may want to consider for workshops to determine interest, if a lot of interest, then create workshops.
      • Suggestion about hands-on creation workshops.
      • Reviewed the attendance the sessions on Open Pedagogy. Nicole ran the attendance and noted that more CARLI members attended the first session, and the live session had more attendees. Another suggestion was to create a way to connect attendees with a person for questions or collaborations. Nicole clarified that the Open Pedagogy programs were open to people throughout the Professional Development Alliance, and was also shared with OEN and MAC. There was some discussion about attendance for such topics with other groups, and Elizabeth mentioned a presenter on open pedagogy that might be considered. Committee members noted that the committee could have a program in the summer. Nicole says 158 people watched the recording of the  CARLI Open Pedagogy session, the second had lower live attendance. Recording for Nimble Open Pedagogy shared.
      • Committee discussed if a next level OER course targeted at librarians would be worthwhile to develop as it would cover some topics from office hours and workshops. It may be a good idea because of the time put in on the topics. It was noted that for interested parties it would be worthwhile. It could be good synergy between topics and it would be helpful to see how things are created, getting students.
      • Committee discussed the gaps in the OEN Certificate Program that can be filled in with student focused efforts. Discussed idea of a tiered approach to doing programs on how librarians can encourage student involvement, and if having a statewide survey that individual libraries can share on campuses to gather data that we can use to support our future state efforts for OER funding and then share the results. Asking what students spend, how many times they buy but don’t use, how are they impacted by cost, etc. This could be a future program that could be of interest and involve students in. There was agreement that there are lots of reasons why a survey would be interesting and useful, and would give us a snapshot of the same data to share with student government etc.
      • There committee will revisit at its next meeting, then put together a working group on level two OER programming as a project. There are two parts to this agenda item including summer course offerings.
  • Summer OER Offerings
    • OER Course: Understanding and Promoting Open Educational Resources
      • These courses typically have good attendance. Suggestions for offering the course in June and July. Discussion on frequency of offerings. Last summer, the committee provided one in June and July then would add another session if those filled-up quickly. Says CARLI was full for all four workshops and had to create waitlists. Suggests that scheduling a second session for the months as backup would be a good idea. Suggested to put the June ones together then consider July.
    • OER Faculty Workshops
      • When the OER Faculty Workshop was offered last July, more attendees were librarians from out of state. There was high in enrollment in first year. Now the session consistently has 35-36 attendees. Committee decided to wait until Fall after the August, September crush of activities passes to offer this program.
    • The committee discussed specifics for the summer offerings. The minimum enrollment would be equal to the number of instructors.
      • Date set: Tuesdays 11am,
      • Date set: Wednesdays 1pm,
      • Instructors: Chris says he will do one, but not both. Dan says either time frame works for him. Kim Hale says she might be available but will have to check schedule. Christina says she will do one of the classes for June. Chris says we will follow up, put dates out and put on agenda for next month. Dan asked to send on the email list before the end of the month.
• IACRL Spark Program
  • CARLI presentation on the Open Illinois Hub. This program happened on April 1. Committee discussed the session. Noted it was a fun session and that it is something to build on in the future. Those who attended were thanked for their support.
• Open Illinois Hub presentation at ILA Annual Conference proposal
  • The draft proposal is in Committee’s Box folder.
  • The proposal has been submitted. No selections have been made yet. The ILA Annual Conference is in October.
• Creative Commons Certificate Bootcamp meeting report
  • Committee members and CARLI staff met with Creative Commons staff to discuss a Creative Commons bootcamp for CARLI members. Inquired into Creative Commons willingness to do in-person bootcamps. These bootcamps are five-day long immersions. Also, inquired for a CARLI members only online certificate program. Due to the cost, it is important to gauge member interest in the program. The committee discussed the benefits of a group attending at the same time. The Midwest Higher Education Compact has an agreement with Creative Commons to provide a discount on the individual registration fee.
  • Chris, Nicole, and Elizabeth will work to create a survey to gauge member interest and share with committee members.
• Illinois SCOERs Updates
  • Applications currently being scored, everyone has until Monday to score and will then the review committee will meet to discuss. Announcement should be made by the 15th. Workshops are being planned, and as dates are lined up for summer will update. OER Office Hours are suspended for now but will resume once the announcement is made to be available for people with questions.
• Statement to the Illinois College Textbook Affordability Task Force Re: OER
  • The committee reviewed the Statement to go out to Task Force. Many thought it looked really good.
  • It was suggested other ways to put forward the statement including members of the committee signing individually, allowing members the ability to refrain. Also suggested opening up to the email list for signatories which may allow more signatures. The Task Force timeline is a draft report due October 1st, with final report March 31st, but not sure when they will start drafting the content. The committee wants to make sure that if we want to make a statement that it is part of the consideration.
  • Overall question about whether the task force is working on collecting findings. There has been one meeting so far, and the next meeting is devoted to different facets of the topic.
  • Denise is a member of the task force and was asked to present in July on community colleges. She asked the best way to get in touch with people that can give her information on their schools. Chris suggested sending out a blast email for feedback. Elizabeth posted link to task force communication. Tineka and Dan volunteered to provide information on their institutions.
  • The committee noted that under scope on the task force website, publisher avenues for course materials are listed and OER is listed last in bucket of other institutional resources.
  • The committee discussed if there should be a single statement or if they should encourage individual statements. There was the suggestion that everyone look at the draft, and offer comments as the best way to move forward. Encouraged everyone as individuals to take their own paths to reach out to legislators on the topic.
• Advocacy
  • A person from the UI System has agreed to conduct a training session for the committee on advocacy and how-to walk-through process.
• Committee Annual Report
  • The annual report is historically compiled by chairs, but often shared to committee for input on the draft. It is due at the end of May, but if final draft can be completed earlier that would be better. The chairs said that they would divide up the sections to share at the next committee meeting.
• OER Webpages Review
  • The committee discussed a review of the CARLI OER webpages for the current content and to update. The group discussed looking at the pages to have them updated by the first part of May.
  • Submit feedback to Elizabeth through Google Docs. She will distribute to the group and will list the different sections for comment.
  • Consideration for legislator/administrator webpage on OER
    • The committee discussed creating a page on the OER webpage on legislators for future outreach, something that explains OER and benefits and statewide funding initiatives. Asked if this sounds worthwhile for the webpage. Some committee members thought it sounded good and that it connects with advocacy efforts.

Next Meeting Dates and Deadlines

The next committee meeting is May 19, 2022 at 1:00 - 2:30 p.m.

Minute Taking Rotation (Alphabetical):
Denise Cote
Kim Hale
Christina Norton
Tineka Scalzo
Janet Swatscheno
Tamara Townsend