Open Education: Open Education Week

Open Education Week 2023

International Open Education Week is again at the same time as Virginia Tech's Spring Break, so we are providing a selected list of synthronous webinars, events, readings, and recorded events. For further international 2023 Open Education Week events, visit https://www.openeducationweek.org

(printable/clickable flyer)

SELECTED EVENTS

Monday, March 6th

• 3pm EST Welcome to the LibreVerse
• 5pm EST Getting Started with Open Educational Resources. [or Recording of past event sponsored by SCHEV.]
• 7pm EST Creative Commons: Sharing Knowledge for the Public Good

Tuesday, March 7th 1pm EST Culturally Responsive Teaching & Open Educational Resources (interactive)

Wednesday, March 8th, 3pm EST Equity and Open Education Faculty Panel

Thursday, March 9th

• 3pm EST Faculty and Student Experiences with OER
• 4pm EST OER and Digital Accessibility

Friday, March 10th, 1pm EST Making Zero-Textbook-Cost Courses Visible

SELECTED READINGS

Colvard, N.B., Watson, C.E., Park, H. (2018) The impact of open eduational resources on various student success metrics. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 30(2):262-276. 

Clinton, V. & Kahah, S. (2019). Efficacy of open textbook adoption on learning performance and course withdrawal rates: A meta-analysis. AERA Open 5(3):1-20.

LINKS FOR ANY TIME

Virginia Tech Open Education Grants

VIVA Open Grants

VIVA Course-Mapping Project

VA Course Materials Survey

VIVA Open Portal

Open Educational Pratice in Action Hub

Open Pedagogy Notebook

Open Education Week 2022

International Open Education week was at the same time as Virginia Tech's 2022 Spring Break

Before OPEN EDUCATION WEEK

Connecting the Opens: Open Access, Open Education Resources, and Open Data

Recording available here

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 provided 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.

Introduction to Open Textbooks for VT Faculty, Staff, and GTAs 

The workshop covered

• Discussion of what you like / don’t like about current course materials

• Course material impacts on students

• What we mean (and don't mean) by "open"

• Creative Commons licenses

• VT's Guidlines on Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Textbooks

SCHEV-Open Virginia Advisory Committee - Virtual Course Tours 

Wednesday, March 9, 2022 Recording available here

This event 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 was also presented.

Open Education Symposium 2021

Connecting the Opens: A Panel Discussion for the Future Professoriate

 View the Video Recording

Join us for this panel to learn about the different "opens" in the field, including open access, open education, and open data from Library faculty, and to hear from faculty across campus on their experiences and insight with OER.

Panelists: Dean Karen DePauw, Graduate School; Kayla McNabb, University Libraries; Rachel Miles, University Libraries; Jactone Ogejo, Biological Systems Engineering; Thomas Tucker, School of Architecture and Design; Mary Leigh Wolfe, Biological Systems Engineering

Open Education Symposium Feature Presentation:

"Moving STEM Documents Online: Sustainable Workflows for Accessible Content"

Dr. Volker Sorge 

Video, slides & informational handout

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.

See the Accessible STEM Resources list for more ideas on creating accessible STEM content!

Speaker Bio: 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). 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.

"Getting Started with Open Educational Resources" (for a Virginia instructor audience)

Presentation, links/resources, and video

Abbey Elder, author of the OER Starter Kit

SCHEV-OVAC (State Council of Higher Education for Virginia - Open Virginia Advisory Committee) event.

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, will guide you through the processes of finding, modifying, and creating OER. Participants will leave the workshop with 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.

2020 Open Education Symposium at Virginia Tech -  March 2 - 4, 2020

Monday, March 2nd  6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. Connecting the Opens: a Future Professoriate Grad panel discussion

VIDEO RECORDING AVAILABLE HERE

Karen DePauw, Vice President and Dean for Graduate Education 

Steve Ellingson, Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Freddy Paige, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Tyechia Thompson, Post-Doctoral Associate, Center for Humanities

Philip Young, Institutional Repository Manager, University Libraries

Peter Potter, Director of Publishing, University Libraries

Anita Walz, Assistant Director of Open Education and Scholarly Communication Librarian, University Libraries (Moderator)

Tuesday, March 3rd  2:00 - 3:15 p.m. Panel discussion: Issues in Course Materials Access and Use

VIDEO RECORDING AVAILABLE HERE

Larry A. Cox, Instructional Designer, TLOS (Technology-enhanced Learning and Online Strategies)

Jonathan Falls, Student Government Association (VT SGA)

Kim Filer, Director, Associate Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning and Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

Anurag Mantha, Doctoral Student in Civil and Environmental Engineering and co-founder of Food Access for Students

Billy Meinke-Lau, OER Technologist, University of Hawai'i at Manoa

Ron Poff, Assistant Professor of Practice, Management, Pamplin College of Business

Anita Walz, Assistant Director of Open Education and Scholarly Communication Librarian, University Libraries (Moderator)

Tuesday, March 3rd 3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Lightning rounds + expo  

VIDEO RECORDING AVAILABLE HERE

Publishing Tools: Pressbooks & Overleaf (Robert Browder and Sarah Mease)

Open Source Virtual Reality Dog/Cow/Horse + Haptic Cow (Michael Nappier, Todd Ogle, Kiri DeBose, and Jonathan Bradley)

Creative Commons (Anita Walz)

Odyssey and CC BY licensing (Lisa Becksford)

Open Textbook Library (Kirsten Dean)

Making Podcasts (Joe Forte) 

Wednesday, March 4th   Introduction to Pressbooks (Robert Browder) (Newman Library, Room 427) 

2019 Open Education Symposium      Monday, March 4, 2019

EXPANDING OPEN EDUCATION IN COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES

 [WATCH THE VIDEO / VIEW PROCEEDINGS] Poster & Lightning Round Session (CFP now closed)

• Writing and Publishing OER for an Upper-Level Genetics Course (Christine H. Terry, University of Lynchburg)
• The Career Center and Open Education (Garnett Kinniburgh, William & Mary)
• Open Learning '19: a cMOOC for Exploring Open Education (Sue Erickson, Virginia Wesleyan University)
• Class Book Projects and Collaborative Technologies (Robert Browder, Virginia Tech)
• Integrating an open science project as an open educational resource (Matthew DeCarlo, Radford University)
• Open, Accessible, Reusable: Creating a Open Learning Object Repository for Learners and Educators (Lisa Becksford & Kayla B. McNabb, Virginia Tech)
• No graphing calculators, no license fees: free software for the mathematics classroom and beyond (Jason Lachniet, Wytheville Community College)
• A Discussion on the Use of Open Educational Resources on Campus (Britton Hipple, Darren Maczka, Sarah Donnelly & Leanna Ireland, Virginia Tech)

Library / Library Studio Tours

[WATCH THE VIDEO] Keynote Presentation by Dr. MJ Bishop Improving Access, Affordability, and Achievement with OER

[WATCH THE VIDEO] Panel Discussion: Facilitating Openness at the University: Connecting the Opens + Making Change Happen

• MJ Bishop, Associate Vice Chancellor and Director of the William E. Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation, University System of Maryland
• Benjamin Corl, Associate Professor and Interim Department Head, Department of Dairy Science, Virginia Tech
• Karen DePauw, Vice President and Dean for Graduate Education, Virginia Tech
• Diana Franco Duran, Doctoral Candidate, Civil Engineering, Virginia Tech
• Ellen Plummer, Associate Vice Provost for Academic Administration, Virginia Tech
• Nathaniel Porter, Social Science Data Consultant and Data Education Coordinator, University Libraries, Virginia Tech
• Peter Potter, Director of Publishing Strategy, University Libraries, Virginia Tech
• Moderator: Anita Walz, Open Education, Copyright & Scholarly Communication Librarian, Virginia Tech

Keynote: Dr. MJ Bishop, Associate Vice-Chancellor and Director of the William E. Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation at the University System of Maryland

Open Education 2018 Symposium -- March 19-21, 2018 -- Virginia Tech Event Flyer Announcement

[Watch the Video] Panel Discussion: Getting Comfortable Working in the Open

Taking a transparent, public or open approach to one’s work as an instructor or academic can be daunting for even the most competent and skilled faculty. Faculty, students, and a librarian from five different Virginia institutions of higher education are involved in working in the open -- in their teaching, publishing, creating with students, and/or building or leveraging learning experiences. Panelists will discuss their motivations, opportunities leveraged, and challenges they encounter in taking  non-traditional and open approaches to teaching, learning, and publishing.

Panelists: 

Matthew DeCarlo, Radford University

Susan Erickson, Virginia Wesleyan University, Associate Hub-Director #openlearning18

James Harder, Virginia Tech

Jennifer Kidd, Old Dominion University

Kathryn Murphy-Judy, Carrie Hamilton, and Savannah Aigner, Virginia Commonwealth University

Amy Nelson, Virginia Tech, Steering committee member, #openlearning18

Moderator: Anita Walz

[Watch the Video] Keynote: Open Educational Practices: Equity, Achievement, and Pedagogical Innovation Speakers: Anita Walz, Avalon Roche. Keynote: Rajiv Jhangiani

Dr Rajiv Jhangiani is Special Advisor to the Provost and a faculty member in the Psychology Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, British Columbia, Canada. He earned his Ph.D. in Social & Personality Psychology in 2009 from the University of British Columbia and has published articles and chapters in political psychology, the scholarship of teaching & learning, and open educational practices. The most recent of his two books is Open: The philosophy and practices that are revolutionizing education and science published in 2017 by Ubiquity Press. He is also the author of two open textbooks and editor of a third in psychology.

Lightning round presentations - Open Practices in Higher Education  Presentations by: Jennifer Kidd, Cliff Shaffer, Steve Greenlaw, Steve Ellingson, Jyldyz Bekbalaeva, and Robert Browder

[Watch the Video] Panel Discussion: Connecting the Opens: Open Access, Open Education, Open Data

Open practices represent opportunities to align scholarly and instructional processes with scholarly ideals, ethical stances, real work impacts, and aspirations for a more just and equitable world. There are many types of “open.” The three we will discuss, open access, open education, and open data practices may appear distinct and siloed from each other; This is only a surface-level view. In reality, these open practices areas have tremendous areas of overlap. Their underlying values reflect similar aspirations for the common good, and aims of overcoming some shared problems found in research and instruction in higher education and in society in general.

     This panel features students, faculty, and administrators with wide range of expertise in the three areas of open access, open education, and open data. Join us for a stimulating conversation in which we come to understand the differences and similarities between the opens, their purposes, and their potential.

Presentations: Peter Potter, Anita Walz. Panelists: Karen DePauw, Rajiv Jhangiani, Philip Young, Jon Petters, Mayra Artiles, Monti Abbas. Moderator: Peter Potter

OTHER 2018 events: Creating eBooks: A Discussion of Tools, Technology & Techniques; Workshop: Unlocking the Power of Experiential and Active Learning through Open Pedagogy (Rajiv Jhangiani); Wikimedia Commons Share-a-thon; Wikipedia editing training.

Open Education Week 2017     Read the Blog post. 

* SGA Exhibit - Newman Library, 2nd floor Commons. Exhibit planning specs.

EVENT RECORDING + Event handout + links discussed in presentation * Seven Platforms You Should Know About: Share, Find, Author, or Adapt Creative Commons-Licensed Resources

Platforms include: VTechWorks, Merlot, Open Textbook Library, OER Commons, Odyssey, Overleaf, and Pressbooks /Rebus.

EVENT RECORDING * The Potential of Open Educational Resources: Virginia Tech Faculty & Student Panel Discussion

Panelists include faculty adapters and authors of Open Educational Resources (OER): Jane Roberson-Evia (Statistics), Mary Lipscombe (Biological Sciences), Stephen Skripak (Pamplin), Anastasia Cortes (Pamplin). Publishing expert Peter Potter (University Libraries), and students Mayra Atiles (Doctoral student, Engineering Education), and Jonathan De Pena (Senior, Finance) also join the panel. Moderated by: Anita Walz (University Libraries)

See VT Libraries' official Open Education Week 2017 page for a full list of events, including events.

Open Education Week 2016

Research Presentation: Are textbooks too expensive for students? A first look at a survey of 300+ Virginia Tech students in national context.

What we mean (and don't mean) when we say "Open Education"

Keynote Presentation: Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener of the NOBA Project  View event video 

Project Showcases

SGA Open Education Awareness Campaign

That I May Share: Approaches to sharing original learning materials

Open Education Week 2015  View Blog post

Student Government, Academic Affairs Committee Kickoff SGA Academic Affairs Committee explored students' textbook buying experiences, practices, and habits. View event tweets

Lecture/Discussion: "Get Creative (and stay legal): Copyright Compliance with Open Licensing, Creative Commons, and Open Educational Resources" View event video

Led by: Anita Walz, University Libraries. This session was designed to introduce educators and authors to conceptual and useful aspects of open licensing of content, Creative Commons licenses, and Open Educational Resources. The session introduces open licensing and Creative Commons, rationale behind open licensing and the sharing economy, how (and why) to openly license, where to archive, and will provide guidance on finding, properly attributing, remixing and using openly licensed resources. Session examples included openly licensed works for teaching & learning, presenting, and publication.

Student Panel Discussion View tweets from 2/23

Led by: Hannah Thomas (Class of 2016), Chair, Student Government Association Academic Affairs Committee

The SGA Academic Affairs Committee reflected on what they learned from their Kickoff Event and on their experiences buying textbooks, the impact of textbook prices, and their thoughts about the prospect of open educational resources, open textbooks in particular.

Panel Discussion "Authors, Adopters, and Adapters of Open Educational Resources: Considering the Possibilities for Faculty Teaching and Student Learning" View Event Video

Panelists: Dr. Peter Doolittle (Assistant Provost for Teaching & Learning, Professor, School of Education, and Executive Director of CIDER), Dr. Greg Hartman (Associate Professor, Mathematics, Virginia Military Institute), Mr. Heath Hart (Instructor, Mathematics, Virginia Tech), and Mr. Mohammed Seyam (Doctoral Student, Computer Science, Virginia Tech).

Introduction by Julie Speer, Associate Dean for Research & Informatics. Opening remarks by Anita Walz, Assessment, Open Education & Online Learning Environments Librarian.

Mohammed Seyam discussed the value of openly licensed material as a student, research, and graduate assistant. Heath Hart reflected on his adoption of an open educational resource and a (subscribed) online textbook in, “A Rousing Success and an Unmitigated Disaster.” Greg Hartman discusses his experiences authoring open-source (CC BY-NC) textbook, “APEX Calculus” http://www.apexcalculus.com. Peter Doolittle discusses the open education movement from a teaching and learning perspective, moving beyond just content into process. Presentations are followed by audience and panelist discussion.

Open Educational Resources for Instructional Designers View Event Video

Led by: David Ernst, Chief Information Officer (College of Education and Human Development, Univ of MN) from the University of Minnesota Open Textbook Library.

Instructional Design faculty, staff and students from across the University joined fellow instructional designer, Dr. Dave Ernst, now Chief Information Officer of the College of Education and Human Development at University of Minnesota to explore rationale and possibilities for incorporating open educational resources instructional design philosophy and work. 

Discussion topics included: 
- Open and OER - what it is and what it isn't
- How to attribute OER
- Finding, vetting, and retrieving OER 
- Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open textbooks as a solution to student affordability issues
- OER as a solution for copyright complexity
- Unique contributions to supporting faculty by the instructional design community
- Supporting faculty adoptions of open educational resources

Open Educational Resources workshop for Librarians View Event Video

Led by: Kristi Jensen Program Development Lead for the eLearning Support Initiative (Univ of MN University Libraries) from the University of Minnesota Open Textbook Library. 

Kristi Jensen discussed the importance of and possible areas of involvement for libraries and librarians in open textbook and open educational resource initiatives. Learn more about open textbooks, open educational resources (OER), and how library employees in many different roles can support the exploration of open educational resources and open textbooks.

Kristi discussed:
- Open and OER - what it is and what it isn't
- How issues of affordability can impact student academic success
- Open textbooks as a solution to affordability issues
- Identifying barriers to adoption of open textbooks and how to help overcome those barriers
- Supporting faculty adoptions of open textbooks

Open Textbook Adoption Workshop for Virginia Tech Faculty (Requirements for $200 stipend include: application, workshop participation, and written review of an open textbook.) Event presentation

Led by: David Ernst, Chief Information Officer (Univ of MN College of Education and Human Development) from the University of Minnesota Open Textbook Library.

Open textbooks can help alleviate the burden of textbook costs for students and provide faculty with content that can be customized for their course. Open textbooks are full, real textbooks, used by many faculty across the country, and licensed to be freely used, edited, and distributed. After the workshop, you will be asked to write a short review of an open textbook. Your review will benefit other faculty considering open textbooks. Stipends of $200 will be given to faculty for their participation and written review.

The Open Textbook workshop is a project of the University of Minnesota's Open Textbook Library. 

Open Education Week 2014

Faculty panel discussion: Exploring Innovative and Open Educational Resources View Event Video

Panelists include: Dr. Clifford Shaffer, Professor of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, Dr. Benjamin Jantzen, Asst. Professor Philosophy, Virginia Tech, and Dr. Bruce Mahin, Professor of Composition and Music Theory, Radford University 

Open Education is a learning, creating, and sharing-centered international movement focusing on open educational practices. Open educational practices encompass adopting, adapting, and authoring educational resources freely and openly so that others may use, customize, and share them. Open education also includes development of open courses, and design of renewable "non-disposable" assignments in which students are co-learners and co-creators. Open education aims to engage faculty in real-world active learning strategies, reduce access barriers to education for students, and promote creation and sharing of public goods. Open Education also includes freely available and openly licensed open educational resources, also known as OER.

OER Defined:
OER are freely and publicly available teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license [such as a Creative Commons license] that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge. - Adapted from the Hewlett Foundation

Within higher education, Open Educational Resources tend to include:
- Open textbooks (free and openly licensed/Creative Commons licensed textbooks which allow others to customize, reproduce, and share without Copyright concerns)
- Textbook alternatives (free and openly licensed text, video, images, simulations, practice questions, open software selected by educators to match course learning objectives and preferred pedagogy)

For more information about Creative Commons and open licensing, please see our Creative Commons page. 

For more information about OER and to learn how OER are being used by students and educators, see our OER Overview page. 

Empirical Research on the impact of OER Adoption / John Wilton and the Open Education Group (U.S. Focused) (2015)

Adopting OER: A Case Study of Cross-Institutional Collaboration and Innovation / EDUCAUSE Review (2013)

The logic of OER: "Adopting OER is Better for Everyone Involved" / David Wiley (2015)

The Cost and Quality of Open Textbooks: Perceptions of Community College Faculty and Students Proponents of open educational resources (OER) claim that significant cost savings are possible when open textbooks displace traditional textbooks in the college classroom. . . 

Fixing the Broken Textbook Market: How Students Respond to High Textbook Costs and Demand Alternatives (2014)

VIDEO: Supporting Students to Succeed with Open Education (Lumen Foundation)

VIDEO: Get Inspired [making education more affordable] (OpenStax)