Oregon community college and university representatives attended and presented at the 2024 Open Education Conference, an annual convening for sharing and learning about open educational resources, open pedagogy, and open education initiatives. This dynamic gathering celebrates the core values of open education that strive to realize education ecosystems that are accessible, affordable, equitable and inclusive to everyone, regardless of their background.

Conference Takeaways

Here are some of the takeaways that Oregon attendees are thinking about after the event.

OER is awesome, and I’m glad I’m participating! –Michael Russell, Mt. Hood Community College

I attended many sessions on AI and OER. I was blown away by the many resources we have. I used Poe.com recently in my document design class to show students how they might design a newsletter (and I used it myself for writing a letter of recommendation for a colleague). I also introduced my Communication Software students to Sendsteps for creating a presentation using AI. –Amber Lancaster, Oregon Institute of Technology

I loved how this conference focused on open education’s roots in resistance. There were so many great sessions that provided innovative ways to work toward the justice and inclusion components that are key to this work. –Tori Stanek, Columbia Gorge Community College

A lot of really incredible people are involved in this endeavor, across the country and around the world. I’m also realizing how many professionals work on open education projects as volunteers and how few are actually directly compensated in any way for the efforts they make on behalf of their students, institutions, and the world. I am newly motivated to advocate for more/continued support from government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and public institutions. –Anonymous

Textbook affordability is a huge concern for students, so many of whom face serious financial challenges and time commitments. The community of open education, and the educators committed to creating, improving, and promoting these resources, is driven primarily by a desire to serve students and increase equity. Open educational resources are a key tool for mitigating a range of issues that shape the economic/intellectual/access landscape of higher education. –Anonymous

Presentations

Oregonians were represented on the program. Here are the presentation materials created by our colleagues:

What to Do with Data: Increasing the Visibility of OER Work through Academic Program Review, Rayne Vieger and Allia Service, University of Oregon.

Many OER programs strive to collect data about OER, textbook costs and affordability. This data is immediately useful to evaluate your OER program, plan internally, and tell stories, but how do you get it in front of decision makers? At UO Libraries, we’ve integrated textbook data into our annual and decennial university-wide program review process by using a flexible data model that lets us create customized dashboards for multiple audiences. By filtering these dashboards by department, we can provide academic leaders with ongoing, relevant, and timely data so they can set goals and monitor progress. Before 2023, the OER team had no role in the program review process. By creating these flexible dashboards, we gained greater buy-in from university admin who integrated us into program reviews; broadening our audience and increasing the visibility of our work as OER professionals.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Reflect on opportunities to incorporate OER data into existing university processes and initiatives
• Describe the best practices for structuring data to support flexible use for different audiences and types of reporting
• Identify strategies for making OER and library textbook affordability labor more visible to institutional leaders

Developing Open Educators Through K-12 and Higher Ed Connections, Amy Hofer, Open Oregon Educational Resources; Jennifer Lantrip, Pacific University; Kim Read, EvolvEd Consulting.

This project, funded by the Hewlett Foundation, promotes open education in Oregon’s K-12 schools through expanding the educator network with an interest in open education for equity. Faculty who train preservice teachers are invited to a paid opportunity to redesign their curriculum using OER with an equity lens. Faculty receive training, support, and grant funding to redesign their curriculum. Preservice teachers not only benefit from using OER in their courses, but also learn about opportunities to utilize open resources and practices with an equity lens in the classroom. Learn about OER connections between K-12 and higher education, the project’s goals and plan, and lessons learned during its first phase; and consider whether this model could be adapted to your context.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Explain connections between K-12 and higher education for open education and equity.
• Describe this project’s goals and plan to expand the educator network with an interest in open education for equity and consider their transferability to other contexts.
• Describe lessons learned from this project and their transferability to other contexts.

Elevating Open: Uniting Equity, Inclusion, and Antiracism through Collaborative Programs, Joy Shoemate, College of the Canyons; Heather Blicher, Open Education Global; Millie Gonzalez, Framingham State University/ROTEL; Kimberly Puttman, Open Oregon Educational Resources.

The Community College Consortium for OER at Open Education Global is a community of practice for educators aspiring to expand access and empower students, particularly those who are marginalized. To encourage this collaboration, the panel will spotlight open education programs that prioritize the creation of equitable, inclusive, and antiracist learning through the use of open pedagogy and instructional design, with dedicated faculty, equity consultants, and advisory coaches, to name a few. The featured programs include the Remixing Open Textbooks through an Equity Lens project (ROTEL) from Massachusetts, the Open for Antiracism program (OFAR) from California, and the Targeted Pathways project from Oregon. Two of the three programs involve both universities and community colleges, while one focuses on community colleges alone. Attendees will be prompted to identify components of the programs they can incorporate into their own work and institutions through polls and discussion.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Identify aspects of the highlighted programs that they can implement at their own institutions to focus on the need for equity, inclusion, and antiracism in OER.
• Gain insight into the structure of EDI open programs that demonstrate unique and collaborative approaches.

It’s Time to Think Big: Alternate Visions and Models for Statewide Impact with Open Education, Boyoung Chae, Washington State Board for Technical and Community Colleges; Amy Hofer, Open Oregon Educational Resources; Julie Curtis, Pressbooks; TJ Bliss, Idaho State Board of Education.

As open education begins to achieve traction, state- and system-level initiatives can play a significant role in developing policy and implementation paths to achieve broader goals around affordability, access, student success, and knowledge-sharing. They can establish models, align incentives, and provide infrastructure shared across system members. They can lend legitimacy and offer support, funding, scale, and collaboration opportunities around open education. But because every system is different, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to defining a winning strategy and structure for effective initiatives that achieve meaningful impact with open education. This panel discussion invites three architects of statewide initiatives to share their distinctive visions and strategic choices aiming for system-level impact. They will also compare operational approaches and lessons learned for achieving large-scale impact with open education.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Understand alternate visions and implementation models for operationalize support for open education on a statewide level
• Find useful artifacts and resources practitioners and leaders may find helpful in architecting and building their own open education initiatives
• Recognize considerations and success factors for implementing OER effectively at scale in complex organizations
• Apply lessons learned from experienced practitioners who are leading impactful statewide initiatives supporting open education within varied political, fiscal, and organizational environments
• Develop approaches for ensuring open education initiatives are designed in the service of broader strategic goals of state and system-level leadership

Reconsidering Success: Equity Goals for Open Education, Jamie Hazlitt, Loyola Marymount University; Amy Hofer, Open Oregon Educational Resources; Vince Mussehl, CVTC; Millie Gonzalez, Framingham State University/ROTEL; Jennifer Jordan, University of New Mexico.

Coordinators of OER development projects have effective ways of responding to perfectionism: save that idea for the next edition, the open license means that the community can improve your work, etc. When a project has equity goals in mind, though, there are additional considerations about sharing when more time in development could result in a product that is better aligned with those values. Combine these challenges with the unique opportunities and pressures that accompany working with federal funding to support OER, and it’s no wonder that authors and creators committed to equity and inclusion may be overwhelmed. This discussion will include a panel of participants who are working on ambitious OER development projects funded by the federal Open Textbook Pilot fund. We want to explore the tension between the logistics of sharing a usable product, and the process of working with an equity lens. We will do this through storytelling with live polling, as well as ample Q&A time.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Consider the relationship between working in the open and working with an equity lens
• Analyze OER projects developed to increase equity at different higher education institutions
• Identify challenges, and strategies for overcoming them, to support equity-focused OER projects within a multi-institution consortium
• Explore techniques to incorporate equity into open content.

Untapped Potential: The Role of Disciplinary Associations in Open Education, Kristin Whitman, Oregon Institute of Technology.

Disciplinary associations (i.e. scholarly and professional associations) represent tremendous untapped potential to grow the open education movement. Association groups offer the networking tools to share information about OER, raise the visibility and prestige of open education, recruit authors and peer reviewers, and develop communities of practice around OER materials, providing a vital boost to their sustainability. This presentation will discuss the results of a study that used both semi-structured interviews and a series of case studies on association OER work. It will discuss the potential benefits and challenges of association engagement with OER. It will also address concerns about potential inequities that could arise if associations engage without fully embracing the values of the open education movement. Finally, a model will be advanced for open education advocates to begin conversations within other disciplinary associations.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Identify the benefits to the open education movement that may result from OER advocates engaging with disciplinary associations.
• Identify the challenges that OER advocates may experience when approaching associations about engaging with the open education movement.
• Identify the potential benefits and challenges that disciplinary associations may experience from within, if they choose to engage in OER work.
• Engage with the concern that disciplinary participation in OER work could reinforce existing power structures within academia, and identify ways to avoid this outcome.

The Intersection of OER & Community Engagement: Increasing Equity Through the PCC Ready Bag Project, Taryn Oakley, Portland Community College.

In the Pacific Northwest, we are faced with a 1 in 3 chance that a large earthquake will hit our community within the next 50 years. At Portland Community College, most of our students are not prepared for a disaster of this magnitude. The PCC Ready Bag & Community Resilience Project was created in order to increase equity on our campus through education, community building, and free “Ready Bag” starter kits. This project utilized community engagement and OER to create a truly student-centered project where students created openly-licensed materials to share with their community (and beyond). Asking students to become the educators positions them as change makers in their communities. In this session, the OER resources that were created by PCC students will be shared. We will discuss the process, the takeaways, and the lessons learned along the way. Participants will be encouraged to reflect on disaster preparedness resources for their own community.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Understand how community-based learning can be used to engage students in creating culturally relevant OER content
• Identify ways that student-created OER content can be adapted to be used in your local communities to increase preparedness and community building

Student Advocacy: Fighting Against Automatic Textbook Billing, Aishah Abdullah, SPARC; Elizabeth Braatz, Portland State University; Pedro Almeida, University of Alberta; Katie Wagman, Michelson 20MM Foundation; Graceanne Hoback, Florida State University.

The rise of automatic textbook billing programs, commonly marketed under terms like “Inclusive” or “Equitable” Access, has sparked important conversations about textbook affordability and student choice. This session includes a panel of students who will provide a brief overview of these programs, exploring their impact on students. Attendees will learn how to collaborate with students to address the challenges posed by these models and ensure student needs are prioritized. The session will offer practical strategies for working with student organizations and governments to advocate for transparent, student-centered approaches to textbook affordability.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Identify the main ways students are negatively impacted by automatic textbook billing
• Learn about the student recommendations when it comes to these programs
• Learn how to engage and work with students on this issue

Open Pedagogy in Action: Students’ Perspectives on Authoring a Textbook on Language Learning, Faith Adler, Logan Fisher, Bibi Halima, Cameron Keaton, Addy Orsi, Abhay Pawar, and Keli Yerian, University of Oregon.

This presentation showcases an Open Pedagogy project in which students wrote an open-source textbook from start to finish. Five diverse University of Oregon undergraduate students and one graduate student project manager created ten multimedia, interactive textbook chapters for LING 144, Learning How to Learn Languages. This text focuses on the theory, research, and strategies for learning languages, including heritage languages and indigenous languages in danger of disappearing. Team members collaborated weekly for six months, dividing up work on writing, illustration, case studies, and multimedia elements. This book will become the main text for LING 144 (serving 200 students per year) and will be a living document that future students can annotate and update for course credit. In the presentation, team members will tell the story of their process, highlighting the purpose and content of the project and its Pressbooks platform.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Identify the successes and challenges of an example of a student-created Open Pedagogy project.
• Identify the timeline and resources necessary for a project of this scope.
• Identify the roles and processes of a student team.
• Appreciate the benefits to students of leadership and agency in Open Pedagogy.
• Appreciate the benefits to faculty in facilitating student-led work.
• Appreciate the value of contributing to open educational resources.

Cultural Humility and Responsive Teaching in Allied Health Prerequisite Courses, Rachel Sanchez Thwing, Portland Community College.

Anatomy and Physiology (A&P) Courses are often identified as gatekeeper courses because: 1- they are required for many health-related professional programs, and 2- they exhibit high withdrawal and failure rates. The success or failure of A&P coursework within our postsecondary educational system is essential to institutional achievements and our national public health. Moreover, students learning A&P for health majors may require more support than students learning the content for biology majors because of the known disparities in the course prerequisites. This lightning talk discusses embracing cultural humility as educators, recognizing that students are experts in their culture, and creating meaningful, culturally responsive content to support student success in A&P courses.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Consider cultural humility as a concept
• Describe examples of culturally responsive teaching
• Consider the value of student-chosen multimedia projects and peer critique
• Describe examples of current and relevant H5P wraparound activities to support student learning with puzzles and quizzing strategies

OER Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of Academic Librarians, Kristin Whitman and Riley Richards, Oregon Institute of Technology; Jenn Monnin, West Virginia University.

The aims of the Open Education movement are supported by academic librarians, but it is not known how much this group is generally aware of OER and relevant concepts. A knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) survey was developed to measure OER competencies in academic librarians. The KAP survey is often used in allied health fields to determine a baseline by which to measure the success of subsequent educational interventions. The objective of this study was to validate a survey instrument to measure the KAP of academic librarians toward OER. Validation methods include drafting a survey instrument, determining face/expert validity, and administering the survey to three separate samples. The data was analyzed for reliability and validity. The validated survey instrument can be used to investigate the relative levels of KAP within librarian sub-groups, e.g. medical vs. engineering librarians, etc. or in a pre/post test situation within a single institution.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Describe the utility of an OER Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) survey to study an academic librarian population
• Identify the validated research instrument as an available tool to determine baseline OER knowledge, attitudes and practices among academic librarians
• Use the validated research instrument in their own experimental or descriptive research design across librarian groups