Missouri A&OER Conference 2023

In this presentation, Robin will discuss the pedagogy that can emerge when we approach teaching and learning through the lens of open. Robin will offer a starting definition of “open pedagogy,” explore how such pedagogy relates to the use of OERs, and how access and social justice can supplant cost-savings as a dominant logic for course and program planning. She will share concrete examples of projects and assignments that use open pedagogy to engage students and positively impact the public good.

This workshop is for those who are new to the world of OER or need a refresher. It focuses on understanding students’ financial predicament and its impact on academic success. We introduce attendees to open educational resources and the benefits they can bring to student learning, faculty pedagogical practice, and social justice on campus.

ADAPT is a new online homework system developed by LibreTexts to serve the Open Education community. With support from the California Educational Learning Lab, ADAPT is designed to combine adaptive learning incorporating learning trees with culturally responsive pedagogy at minimal cost. Instructors can use ADAPT to augment OER textbooks, create exams or use it with cell phone for in-class clicker exercises. Autograded questions based on four technologies – H5P, WebWork, IMathAS, and Question & Test Interoperability (QTI) –can be used interchangeably for maximal impact. ADAPT is unique in that it is designed as a single platform with the integrated capabilities of multiple technologies. Hence, ADAPT exceeds the limitations of any single technology and provides a powerful infrastructure to handle the assessment needs for a wide range of fields - from STEM to Humanities. Open ended questions can be evaluated using a sophisticated checker to rapidly mark text, audio or other files. Currently, the ADAPT question bank has 153,023 assessments (growing at a rate of 500 assessments/week). ADAPT is a valuable general purpose “question bank” for any faculty irrespective of whether they chose to adopt it in their class. Scores are passed back to Learning Management Systems instead of independent export as CSV files. Currently ADAPT has 815 instructor accounts with 4,102 students enrolled in 97 courses. We will also introduce the LibreStudio platform for construction, storage and distribution of H5P assessments as well as the Learning Analytics Dashboard coupled to ADAPT questions.

This abstract was generated by AI: The use of AI in developing open educational resources (OERs) can be both beneficial and challenging. In this presentation, I will discuss how AI such as OpenAI and Chat GPT can be used to create and maintain OERs. I will also discuss the limitations of AI-based OERs and how librarians can best use AI to develop OERs. Finally, I will provide an overview of the current state of AI-based OERs and discuss the potential of this technology in the future.

As an academic librarian at a seminary, I am surrounded by students who are following vocational callings to take care of the needy and poor. And to live out their own life, if not in poverty, certainly not looking to be wealthy. These students already know they will often need to reach the underprivileged and the financially insecure in our society. And they themselves, like many teachers, will have neither the time nor the financial ability to buy whatever resources they need. This is why I have found it so important to teach about OER in not only my outreach to the seminary students in orientation and instructional guides for the library, but also in bringing it more to the attention of the faculty and staff of the institution. First, OER helps provide a practical lesson in considering accessibility of resources and financial restrictions for those with whom they are interacting: for both the faculty and seminary students. Second, OER shows how one can actively change traditional paradigms by embracing community, collaboration, and open communication. In this presentation I will discuss some examples of how I have implemented these concepts of OER in pedagogical tools for faculty and orientation tools for students. I believe that beyond my own institution, these practices show how OER can be a useful tool for teaching any “teacher” in the community and challenging social norms, no matter their professional title, be it minister, nurse, CEO, or social worker.

A major goal of teaching undergraduate psychopathology courses is to develop a foundation of mental health awareness and knowledge. Students often want to connect with the material in ways in addition to the text, providing an opportunity to explore A&OER options. In PY444: Childhood Psychopathology, students learn a variety of psychological disorders and symptoms applied to children. In lieu of actual clients, one way to help students connect with related topics is through children’s literature. Undergraduates often have fond memories of their own childhood books and may benefit from engaging in children’s literature in a fresh way to aid them in building therapeutic knowledge on topics such as stress, fear, anxiety, trauma, diagnosis, and grief/loss. During the Fall 2022 semester, working with a university reference librarian, students participated in a field trip to the university’s library. This field trip culminated in a better understanding of children’s literature focusing on mental health. Pre-selected books were distributed, with students reading, discussing, and presenting their books to others in small groups, completing worksheets on book themes, and subsequently processing learning outcomes as a large group. Implications from this A&OER focused activity and ideas for future directions will be discussed.

This presentation examines how the use of open educational resources (OER) aligns with feminist pedagogy. It specifically addresses the theme of “course design” by drawing on my experience teaching Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies (GWST) courses at Oklahoma State University. After obtaining a university grant for OER course design, I taught remotely in 2020, exclusively using OER in the following three undergraduate courses: Introduction to GWST, Feminist Mothering, and Gender and Representation: Body Image. One of the hallmarks of feminist pedagogy is the challenge of building community while decentring the role of the instructor. Of particular importance in the course design were the personal relationships that students could build with the course themes. By relying on OER, the courses were designed to empower students to co-construct knowledge, learning from one another by introducing topics adjacent to the course themes that emerged during the semester. Students were able to acknowledge their power and privilege and – perhaps most saliently due to the reliance on OER – their positionality. Structuring the class with contemporary OER sets a foundation for students to view the subjects alongside their peer groups while questioning how they are situated within larger communities beyond the class. Understood in conjunction with solidarity and coalition, such a focus on community, as bell hooks argues, lies at the center of a feminist value system. This piece reviews the potential of OER in relation to feminist pedagogy.

As the workplace has become more complex, the work force needs to be ICT (information and communication technology) literate. Women are less likely to have such training or practice; further more, women are under-represented in manufacturing, transport, IT and construction. These factors lead to economic and digital inequity. To address this issue, MERLOT.org has partnered with SkillsCommons.org and WISE (Women in Sustainable Employment) Pathways to build digital equity for financial, economic and digital inclusion, especially for women seeking sustainable employment, largely through OER resources. As part of this effort, MERLOT’s ICT literacy project has developed OER self-paced training modules, workshops and digital resource bibliographies to support ICT AND media literacy to help women be more marketable in these industries.