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• Concurrent Session 1: 10:10-11:00am
• Concurrent Session 2: 11:05-11:30am
• Concurrent Session 3: 11:35 – 12:00pm
• Concurrent Session 4: 1:05 – 1:55pm
• Concurrent Session 5: 2:00 – 2:25pm
• Concurrent Session 6: 2:30 – 2:55pm
• Concurrent Session 7: 3:00 – 3:25pm

Campus Center Auditorium

Arrival, Registration, Breakfast 8:00-9:00am

Welcome: A Conversation with Michael Feldstein & Don Kilburn – facilitated by Marilyn Billings 9:00am-10:00pm

Concurrent Session 1: 10:10 – 11:00

Room 162

Everyone’s a Critic: Student and Peer Review for Better OER
Ian McDermott, Christopher McHale, Elizabeth Jardine, and Elizabeth Arestyl; LaGuardia Community College (NY)

ABSTRACT: Due to perceived shortcomings or lack of awareness, many faculty and students are hesitant to explore OER. This session introduces two approaches that allow students or faculty peers to provide valuable feedback during the creation and use of OER materials (and for faculty to document activity for promotion/tenure).

SESSION DESCRIPTION: This session will introduce two methods of reviewing OER materials currently in practice at LaGuardia Community College. We will explore the benefits of implementing programmatic review for both students and faculty and use an interactive poll to engage the audience about OER review practices at their institution. All levels of experience are welcome.

One approach strives to include student voices in evaluating OER textbooks. Students work with library faculty as paid interns to evaluate sample chapters by completing a series of qualitative and quantitative surveys to generate feedback for OER improvements. The project has three goals. First, to create a tool for engaging students in critical thinking around education and open access. The second goal is to make all the project’s learning materials and processes available as an OER resource for use by other institutions and OER initiatives. Our final goal is to increase student awareness and empower them to advocate for OER options in higher education.

Another approach to review OER is in-house peer review, which is exemplified in our College’s Learning Matters Assignment Library (LMAL). Housed within the City University of New York’s (CUNY) institutional repository, the Assignment Library contains OER that have been reviewed by faculty members, revised as necessary, and serve as model assignments addressing the College’s core competencies. These assignments count toward College contributions in faculty members’ annual evaluations, which is important for reappointment, promotion, and tenure. The LMAL can serve as a model for other institutions looking to credit OER development by faculty.

PRESENTER BIOS: Elizabeth Arestyl, LIS Student – CUNY Queens College, Assistant to the Deputy Chief Librarian, CUNY LaGuardia Community College

Ian McDermott is an Assistant Professor and Instruction Librarian at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York, where he serves as the Library’s OER lead. In this capacity, Ian has organized OER workshops for classroom faculty and convened an OER working group at the College. He is particularly interested in exploring the intersection of OER and critical pedagogy. Previously, he worked as an art librarian at Yale University and served as Collection Development Manager for the image database Artstor.

Christopher J. McHale is an Assistant Professor and Access Services Librarian at LaGuardia Community College. Principal investigator of a grant project that is collecting student feedback on textbooks with the goal of informing future use and development of OER textbooks. Contributor to the College’s Learning Matters Assignment Library (LMAL), a collection of peer-reviewed OER assignments meeting the College’s core competency standards. Over 12 years of experience managing physical textbook reserve collections in academic libraries.

Elizabeth Jardine is an Assistant Professor and Metadata Librarian at LaGuardia Community College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY), also serves as a Campus Coordinator for CUNY’s institutional repository, which houses the Learning Matters Assignment Library, conducts faculty professional development around scholarly communications topics, and organizes the MoneyBoss personal finance and entrepreneurship workshop series for students. Previously she has worked in cataloging and indexing for the Modern Language Association, Columbia University Press, and The New-York Historical Society.

Room 163C

Communicating Open: Policy and Advocacy in Open Education
Nicole Allen, SPARC

ABSTRACT: Public policy is an important component of the environment around OER.  Policy can be leveraged to help advance the use and creation of OER by providing resources, creating programs or giving direction to institutions and schools.  It can also be used to remove barriers. This session will provide a briefing on current US policy around OER. Participants will learn how to communicate and advocate for OER and open policies.

PRESENTER BIO: Nicole Allen is the Director of Open Education for SPARC. In this role she leads SPARC’s work to advance openness in education, with a dual focus on public policy and engaging the library community to advance this issue on campus. Nicole is an internationally recognized expert and leading voice in the movement for Open Education. Starting during her own days as a student, she has worked tirelessly to elevate the issue of college textbook costs and access to education into the public spotlight and to advance openness as a solution in both policy and practice. Drawing on her perspective as both a Millennial and as a professional with more than a decade of experience in this field, she has been widely cited in the media and has given hundreds of talks and trainings in more than a dozen countries on open education, open policy, and grassroots advocacy.

Nicole’s career began in 2006 with the Student Public Interest Research Groups, where she worked with college students across the United States to organize numerous large-scale grassroots campaigns on college affordability and related issues. In 2013, Nicole joined SPARC to develop and lead a new program on open education, which has since evolved into a robust community of practice of academic librarians at hundreds of campuses, and a diverse advocacy portfolio spanning state, national and international policy.  She also continues to work with students through the Right to Research Coalition and as part of the organizing team for OpenCon. Nicole graduated from the University of Puget Sound in 2006 with a Bachelors of Arts in Philosophy. Currently she splits her time between her home in Providence, RI and SPARC’s headquarters in Washington, DC.

The true value of open goes beyond reduced or no cost, it greatly increases academic freedom for faculty and content freedom for students, which can change the way faculty and students approach their teaching and learning.

Room 165

Open Education in Connecticut: State and District Progress
Douglas Casey, Kevin Corcoran and Irene Parisi (mixed institutions)

ABSTRACT: Connecticut became the 20th state to join the GoOpen movement last in 2017. Come join this panel discussion showcasing the successes, challenges, and opportunities in planning, implementing, and sustaining OER at the state and district level.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: This session provides an unusual blend of voices, speaking to leaders and practitioners alike, those in PK – 12 and higher education. Doug Casey, the state’s education technology director, will share Connecticut’s work leading to its adoption of the GoOpen pledge. Those efforts include work led by Kevin of the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium, in chairing a statewide task force on open textbooks for institutes of higher education.

State leaders have forged a working plan to ensure success in the adoption of OER, including the establishment of a governing body and structure, needs assessment for an OER repository, identification of potential funding sources, and outreach and awareness efforts. The panel members will share updates on this work — progress and setbacks alike — toward the goal of creating a vibrant OER community. Connecticut’s OER efforts address the needs of higher education and PK – 12, bridging these two different cultures around the common goals of building awareness, establishing a shared platform, providing professional supports, ensuring sustainability, and providing a future-ready learning experience for teachers and students.

Moving from the state to district level, Irene Parisi of Greenwich Public Schools will discuss her district’s GoOpen commitments and progress. Hers was the first Connecticut district to take the pledge, beginning with the curation of a K – 5 social studies curriculum to support the implementation of the national Social Studies Standards. She will share details about the adoption of Schoology as an OER platform as well as benchmarks for assessing material quality.

The session will engage attendees using digital tools such as Mentimeter and Twitter to enlist questions as well as gauge their input on one or more practices they will START, STOP, CHANGE, or CONTINUE as a result of what they learn.

PRESENTER BIOS: As Executive Director for the CT State Commission for Educational Technology (CET), Doug designs and manages strategic plans that ensure the successful integration of technology in Connecticut’s schools, libraries, universities, and towns. The CET oversees statewide programs such as its flagship research and education broadband network, the CEN.

Doug’s prior experience includes managing technology and security for a network of magnet schools that are helping to close the achievement gap between urban and suburban learners. He began his career as a middle school English teacher and brings a diversity of experience to every challenge — from managing online publications for the Smithsonian Institution to systems engineering for the U.S. House of Representatives and national security agencies. He holds a BA from the College of William & Mary, MA from Georgetown University, and MS from George Washington University. Outside of work, Doug enjoys time with family, mission work, and triathlon.

Kevin Corcoran has been the Executive Director of the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium (CTDLC) since 2011. He joined the CTDLC in 1999 and has been responsible for developing and growing the products and services offered to support eLearning initiatives. Kevin also runs Connecticut’s Adult Education Virtual High School that supports the Adult Credit Diploma Program statewide. He currently sits on the WCET Steering Committee and co-chairs the WCET e-Learning Consortia CIG as well as the NENY Blackboard Users Group, and Northeast OER organizations. Kevin received his B.A. in English from the University of Connecticut and his M.B.A. with a specialization in Technology Management from Walden University.

Irene Parisi serves as the Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, and Professional Learning for Greenwich Public Schools in Connecticut, where she has provided instrumental leadership in that district’s design and implementation of a holistic digital learning plan. Prior to her work in Greenwich, Ms. Parisi served as the Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment for the East Windsor Public Schools. An educator for twelve years, Ms. Parisi has led the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and technology integration, with special attention to the implementation of digital learning with mobile devices. Additionally, she has a strong background in curriculum development, instructional strategies, and professional learning as a classroom teacher and literacy coach

Room 168C

Small State, Big Challenge: Creating a Community of Practice for Rhode Island Librarians
Dragan Gill, Lindsey Gumb and Daniela Fairchild,  The Rhode Island Open Textbook Initiative

ABSTRACT: The Rhode Island Open Textbook Initiative began with a challenge from the governor to save students $5 million in 5 years. Collaboration between 11 participating institutions and the state requires flexibility, shared responsibility and communication. We will share our successes and lessons learned in expanding campus efforts across the state.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: Following the announcement of the governor’s challenge in September 2016, the Rhode Island Open Textbook Initiative formed a steering committee, comprised of one librarian from each participating institution. Over the past two years, we have rapidly expanded OER outreach and advocacy with faculty and administration, data collection, and self-education into the nuances of OER. Concurrent to expanding campus efforts, the committee has also set goals, created a robust community of practice, and established shared data management strategies. The organic evolution of the original steering committee into a true community of practice has strengthened our communication and engagement with each other, with an increased understanding of each member institution’s strengths and common challenges.

Participants will engage with the panel and each other to draft a set of questions in order to identify potential new partner institutions, to align institutional missions and cultures, or to find common ground in sometimes unlikely places. Panelists will share individual perspectives of how the initiative has worked from their unique vantage points (a public college, a private university, and the state government). This intermediate-level panel will be of interest to anyone seeking to explore ways of identifying new or different partnership opportunities and mapping out the practicalities of scaling such initiatives. There will be time for audience Q&A via Twitter, Sli.do, and/or in-person questions.

PRESENTER BIOS:

Dragan is co-chair of the Rhode Island Open Textbook Initiative Steering Committee, with Lindsey Gumb, and a reference librarian at Rhode Island College. In addition to providing the campus and state with support for OER adoption, she is involved in several cross-campus projects to support data collection, management and sharing.

Daniela runs the education portfolio for the Rhode Island Office of Innovation. Through this role, she supports data collection and reporting, as well as marketing/messaging of the effort and elevation and support of librarians within and across campuses. Daniela’s work at the RI Office of Innovation broadly supports non-traditional projects and initiatives that improve how Rhode Island residents interact with our state’s systems and bureaucracies.

Lindsey is an Assistant Professor and the Scholarly Communications Librarian at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. Along with Dragan Gill, she serves as the co-chair of the Rhode Island Open Textbook Initiative Steering Committee and has been leading the charge on OER adoption on her campus for the past three years.

Room 804

Journeying Along the Open Road
Michelle Beechey, Monroe Community College (NY)

ABSTRACT: This session includes a discussion of the challenges, pitfalls, barriers, and successes experienced by five State University of New York (SUNY) institutions chosen for the Achieving the Dream Grant Initiative in 2016. We will share the adventures of librarians, instructional designers, faculty, and administration who have been working to build and maintain the Open Road.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: Presenters from SUNY institutions will discuss the complete pathway the OER initiative on their campus is traveling on which includes: recruiting and supporting faculty, how to search OER for content areas, being an OER cheerleader, marketing techniques, and sustainability of their OER program. Methods that have been successful, and the barriers we have run into, while developing a fully OER degree program for the Achieving the Dream Grant will be addressed, as well as how OER are now being implemented beyond those grant efforts. Ways that librarians, faculty, instructional designers, and administrators have collaborated will be introduced.

This session is beneficial for all, but especially geared to beginner or intermediate levels who have limited or no experience developing an OER initiative. Attendees will leave the session with resources to begin their own initiative or expand on existing OER efforts.

We plan to use Poll Everywhere and lead group discussions.

PRESENTER BIOS: Michelle Beechey is the Achieving the Dream Grant Manager and OER Librarian at Monroe Community College.

Concurrent Session 2: 11:05 – 11:30 (25 minutes)

Campus Center Auditorium

Creative Commons Certified
Ethan Senack, Jennryn Wetzler, Creative Commons USA

ABSTRACT: The CC Certificate helps us work together to build an equitable, accessible, and innovative world through sharing open knowledge and culture..

SESSION DESCRIPTION:The Creative Commons Certificate is an in-depth course about CC open licenses, open practices and the ethos of the Commons. Creative Commons officially launched the Certificate this year, as an effort to empower open advocates around the world. This presentation will provide background on the Certificate, how interested parties can get involved, what the class entails, and where it’s headed in the future.

PRESENTER BIOS: Ethan Senack is the Policy and Outreach Manager for Creative Commons USA, where he works as an advocate for OER and a more open society. Before taking on that role, he spent four years with U.S. PIRG directing advocacy efforts around affordable, accessible higher education. With a background in campaigns – both electoral and non-profit – Ethan has spent more than 8 years organizing constituents to make their voice heard.

Jennryn Wetzler, is the Assistant Director of Open Education at Creative Commons, Jennryn seeks new ways to build and support the global open education movement. She focuses on CC global network open education projects such as the Creative Commons Certificate program. Prior to CC, Jennryn worked on open policy and open educational resources (OER) at the U.S. Department of State, piloting OER use for public diplomacy and global partnerships. She’s also enjoyed gaining a different perspective of education through international development work in Thailand and Niger. Jennryn has a Masters in ‘Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs’ from American University’s School for International Service. She currently lives in Maryland with her husband Nick. Jennryn enjoys teaching yoga and supporting women as a birth doula in spare time.

Room 162

Bridging the PreK-12 and Higher Ed Divide
Kristina Ishmael, New America (D.C.)

ABSTRACT: PreK-12 and higher education often feel like two separate worlds. The increased use of OER in both systems provides the unique opportunity to bridge the divide by sharing best practices and lessons learned. This session will explore how PreK-12 and higher education can collaborate on all things OER.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: This session will begin with a quick pitch of exemplar PreK-12 districts and potential opportunities for higher ed collaboration. Once the stage is set, the presenter will open up conversation to highlight higher ed examples, and then facilitate a brainstorm of tangible ways that PreK-12 and higher ed can collaborate. All stakeholders at all levels are invited to participate and contribute to this conversation about collaboration across PreK-12 and higher ed.

PRESENTER BIO: Kristina Ishmael is a Public Interest Technology and Education Policy Fellow at New America where she supports states, districts, and educators transitioning to Open Educational Resources (OER) to rethink teaching and learning. Prior to this role, she was the K-12 Open Education Fellow in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology, the Digital Learning Specialist at the Nebraska Department of Education, and an elementary ELL teacher in Omaha, Nebraska.

Room 163C

OER Adoption as a Social Justice Issue: The Significance of Framing
Lauren Slingluff (Wheaton College) MA

ABSTRACT: At both Bristol Community College and Wheaton College, adoption of OER is being framed as a social justice issue. The idea of creating a more equitable classroom by removing financial barriers to student success has fostered greater faculty and student engagement in each institution’s burgeoning initiatives. Learn more about how OER adoption benefits students and how framing and marketing it as a social justice issue contributes to greater interest.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: Bristol Community College and Wheaton College may have substantial differences in their respective student populations, but at each institution, OER and greater leveraging of “Open” is being framed and marketed as a social justice initiative. By highlighting the inequality in the student experience of courses that carry high textbook costs, a broader array of people have been brought into the OER initiatives at each institution. This session will highlight not only why OER and Open in the classroom is a social justice issue on our campuses, but how by examining it through this lense we can foster broader support on our campuses. This session will include qualitative and quantitative data from our respective campuses that demonstrate the different experiences students have in courses that utilize OER, compared to those that do not.

PRESENTER BIOS: Lauren is currently serving as the Interim Dean of Library Services at Wheaton College, and at other times is the Associate Dean of Library Services with oversight of the Library Collections group.

Room 165

Dos and Don’ts: Faculty Perspectives on Designing and Teaching Successful OER Undergraduate Courses
Dawn Levy and Dorina Tila, Kingsborough CUNY

ABSTRACT: Learn best practices and practical tips for curating and incorporating OER materials from Business faculty utilizing Lumen Learning platform at Kingsborough Community College. Presenters will address topics including choice of appropriate OER materials, course redesign, learning management system incorporation, student assessment and methods for gauging faculty and student satisfaction.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: Faculty are intrigued by the possibilities of OER to engage and provide access, but are often equally as intimidated by the vast sea of information and plethora of logistical concerns connected with potential adoption. This presentation aims to demystify the process and provide faculty, and those that support their efforts, with a way to get started or enrich their current OER offerings. Rationales for adoption, course redesign, choice of materials, faculty supports, student supports, student assessment, course assessment and overall satisfaction will be analyzed through the dos and don’ts framework. By enumerating some of the most common practices at each stage of the process, attendees will walk away with tools for immediate use and implementation.

Attendees will interact with the open readings, videos, simulations and assessments on the Blackboard LMS in the same manner as students and will also navigate the back end of the course shell from the faculty course design perspective. Attendees will also be surveyed on their current level of OER familiarity and usage. While faculty at the beginner and intermediate levels of OER adoption might gravitate most to this presentation, it is equally appropriate for instructional designers, librarians and faculty support staff who seek to assist faculty in OER adoption, enhancement and improvement.

PRESENTER BIOS: Dawn Levy, JD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Business at Kingsborough Community College, The City University of New York (CUNY), where she teaches Business Law and related business courses in both traditional and hybrid formats and is a lead OER adopter. She is an Advisory Board member and peer faculty mentor at the Kingsborough Center for e-Learning (KCeL) and is a member of college’s Advisory Committee for Online Learning and Programming. Prior to teaching at CUNY, Professor Levy was a corporate associate at a New York law firm practicing corporate, securities and real estate law.

Dorina Tila, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Business at Kingsborough Community College, The City University of New York (CUNY), where she teaches economic courses in both traditional and hybrid formats and is a lead OER adopter. She is a peer faculty mentor at the Kingsborough Center for e-Learning (KCeL). Prior to teaching at CUNY, Professor Tila worked in Transfer Pricing-International Taxation at Big Fours.

Room 168C

Elementary Statistics OER for Instructors and Students
Davorin Dujmovic, Suffix County Community College

ABSTRACT: We are presenting selected open educational resources for teaching and studying Elementary Statistics, including textbooks, free software, free online journals, free online data sets, advances online resources for instructors. We are also sharing our own resources used in teaching Elementary Statistics in both 2-year and 4-year institution of higher education.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: I plan to introduce a survey of relevant online resources I came across during my 17-year long career in teaching Elementary Statistics in 2-year and 4-year institution. I will conduct Q&A session and post the presentation on my own public (org) web site with all the links I will introduce in my presentation. Some of the resources will be my own free lectures and tables, permanently hosted on my website. I will distribute the poll about resources to collect data about what the attendees found the most helpful.

PRESENTER BIO: Davorin Dujmovic is tenured associate professor of mathematics in Suffolk County Community College. He earned his Ph.D. in mathematics in University of South Carolina in 1994 and since then he has been teaching mathematics as a temporary full time assistant professor in University of Minnesota, Mount Saint University, and University of West Alabama.He is an author of numerous presentations and papers on the subject of pure mathematics and technology of teaching mathematics. His interests are in the field of mathematical logic, probability theory, and technology in teaching mathematics. He is also involved in SUNY OER initiative.

Room 804

Scaling OER Adoptions in a Centralized Course Model
Jeremy Anderson, Rachel Eidelman Baum, and Maura Devlin, Bay Path University (MA)

ABSTRACT: Over the last two years, The American Women’s College has developed or redesigned 60 centrally-managed courses using an OER-first strategy. Achieving this approach has required intentional processes for curating, adopting, mixing, and managing resources. Our lessons learned can be applied in a variety of academic models.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: The American Women’s College (TAWC) serves new normal students through an access mission. We have developed over 60 courses, starting with our highest enrollment courses, using an OER-first strategy. Adhering to a centralized course development and delivery model has enabled us to reach thousands of students and to save them over $300,000 in the last two years, which we anticipate doubling next year.

To curate the OER necessary for this endeavor, TAWC has engaged three primary methods to get to this scale. We began by targeting courses that have full OER texts available from providers such as Lumen and OpenStax. Second, we have hired subject matter experts to generate content and to remix materials. Finally, we have worked closely with professional research services through our library and an external partner (Ed Map) when materials have been spread farther and wider. Attendees will learn about these strategies and will consider how they may apply in their contexts.

TAWC has confronted several challenges in this journey. We have developed methods to assure the quality of curated OER, to remix materials more easily, and to manage content over time and across systems. Tools such as document templates, subject matter expert training courses, and standard curation and quality assurance processes have facilitated our work. We seek to share this experience and tools with attendees with an eye to helping their own adoption efforts.

jeanderson@baypath.edu

PRESENTER BIOS: Jeremy provides leadership of the instructional design, online user support, infrastructure, and analytics teams in support of an access mission at The American Women’s College at Bay Path University, the first all-women online undergraduate college in the US. In this capacity, he creates, enhances, supervises, and manages the processes and functions relating to instructional, learning, and administrative technologies for all stakeholder groups. Jeremy is passionate about OER and adaptive learning as strategies to expand access to high quality, low cost higher education. He is earning his doctorate in interdisciplinary leadership from Creighton University.

Rachel Baum’s passion for open scholarship, social justice, and the intersection of the two led her to her work at Bay Path. She developed and leads the university’s Longmeadow-campus based OER initiative and served on the leadership committee for OER adoption at Bunker Hill Community College. She hopes her work inspires librarians, students, and faculty to be advocates for open knowledge.

Maura has been supporting adult women students at The American Women’s College for 13 years. In her current role as Deputy Chief Learning Officer, she is responsible for oversight of academic programs, curriculum development, academic quality, and student learning. Maura completed her Ph.D. in Educational Policy and Leadership at University of Massachusetts Amherst with a dissertation entitled When Mom Goes to School: Maternal Education and Intergenerational Mobility. She is an advocate for adult college completion and tools and strategies, such as high quality OER, that foster academic success.

Concurrent Session 3: 11:35 – 12:00  (25 minutes)

Room 162

Using Learning Data to Drive OER Content Improvements
David Wiley, Lumen Learning, david@lumenlearning.com

ABSTRACT: The rich data streams generated by today’s digital learning tools offer huge opportunities to assess the effectiveness of OER content and make data-driven, iterative improvements. This session will discuss efforts to identify the most difficult outcomes in a course and make improvements to measurably improve student success.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: With the rich data streams generated by today’s digital learning tools, there are huge opportunities to assess the effectiveness of OER content and make data-driven, iterative improvements. An ongoing problem in higher education is that teaching materials and courseware are either not assessed for effectiveness or are assessed using only measures of satisfaction rather than of actual learning gains. When we use data to guide where and how we improve learning content, it creates a virtuous cycle producing even more effective instructional tools and practice to continue improving student success.

This session will discuss the work that Lumen Learning is doing to identify the most difficult outcomes in each course as revealed by rigorous analysis of a wide range of learner data, work to understand why students are struggling in these areas, and improve the content and assessments associated with these outcomes in order to measurably improve student success. All the content improvements made through this process are released CC BY.

PRESENTER BIO: David Wiley is co-founder and chief academic officer of Lumen Learning, an organization dedicated to increasing student success, broadening access and improving the affordability of education through the adoption of open educational resources. Previously, David was Associate Professor, Department of Instructional Psychology & Technology at Brigham Young University. A social entrepreneur, David founded or co-founded Lumen Learning, Degreed and Mountain Heights Academy. In 2009, Fast Company named him one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business. David conducted a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Instructional Technology at Utah State University, and earned a PhD in Instructional Psychology & Technology from Brigham Young University.

Room 163C

Do No Harm: Questioning the Long-Term Implications of OER
Steve Phillips and Lindsey Carfagna, Thomas Edison State University’s

ABSTRACT: In our rush to scale OER, are we considering the inequities built into emerging models that could cause potential harm? How is institutional isomorphism potentially driving homogenization and consolidation of these harmful models? This presentation will explore three epicenters of potential harm: the student, faculty, and institutional levels.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: In the midst of a crisis of access and affordability in higher education, OER are seen by many as a remedy. They provide educators with a lever to directly impact their students’ success, and policymakers and philanthropists with a straightforward solution to the impossibly complex issue of providing equitable education across byzantine systems and bureaucracies. Over the last decade, considerable progress has been made in diffusing the benefits of OER across the globe.

However, while advocating for a better future for our students, we must continuously question the long-term implications of our actions. In our rush to scale, are we considering the values and inequities built into the emerging OER models, or how institutional isomorphism is driving the homogenization and consolidation of those models? Without taking a critical perspective and challenging this homogenization, we may end up reproducing existing inequalities in new forms.

We hope to engage with the audience around these themes, and focus on three epicenters of potential harm: the student level, the faculty level, and the institutional level. We will cover issues like student privacy, academic freedom, sustainability, and colonialism. The discussion will be geared more towards intermediate or advanced OER practitioners, and will feature group discussion, web-stream Q&A, and live-tweet interactions with the presenters.

PRESENTER BIOS: Steve Phillips serves as the Associate Director for Thomas Edison State University’s Center for the Assessment of Learning (CAL). An ardent advocate for access and affordability, Steve has led the development of numerous open and competency-based education initiatives, including the Open Course Option, JetBlue Scholars Program, and the Precision Learning Direct Assessment Program. Currently, he is pursuing his EdD in Higher Education at Temple University exploring the utility of faculty coaching models.

Dr. Lindsey B. “Luka” Carfagna is a visiting scholar in the Department of Informatics (Connected Learning Lab) at UC Irvine, works full time as a Learning Experience and Assessment Specialist at Thomas Edison State University, and teaches sociology online as an adjunct professor. She can usually be found lurking wherever connected communities meet economic, educational, and ecological challenges and her dissertation focused on how young people utilized open learning resources and practices as a buffer for hard economic times after the 2008 crisis and subsequent recession.

Room 165

OER in Sustainability: A Flexible and Adaptable Learning Experience
Brian Jacobs and Juliette Goulet

ABSTRACT: Environmental Science faculty at Brookdale Community College leveraged the power of open by enhancing existing OER to create a robust turnkey course. Presenters and participants will discuss how working with OER in the classroom creates flexible and adaptable learning experiences that can be continuously revised as knowledge—and standards—change.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: When faculty in the Environmental Science Department at Brookdale Community College (BCC) searched for OER to align with their Principles of Sustainability course objectives, they were unable to find a resource that met their needs. Using content from an existing CNX text as a foundation, BCC developed a robust, turnkey resource, while also updating, restructuring, and enriching the available open materials. panOpen, a learning platform founded on OER, provided the tools and support system to facilitate this redesign. Faculty collaborated with panOpen’s instructional designers to effectively modify and edit existing content, in addition to building new interactive assessments, videos, application-based assignments, and supplementary materials such as digital slideshows, student study guides, and mapped test banks.

This session will focus on how innovative teaching and learning models can be supported by a more dynamic model of OER through which the content becomes an extension of the teaching. Juliette Goulet, Department Chair of Environmental Science at BCC, will be joined by Brian Jacobs from panOpen for a discussion with conference attendees to explore:

• why the freedoms offered by OER are of most value when they are supported by the right tools for customization and adaptation, and analytics to help faculty track student success;
• strategies for developing effective turnkey OER courses and the impact that the shift to OER has had on the Environmental Science Department at BCC; and
• the value of using open content to develop flexible and sustainable learning experiences that can be continuously revised as knowledge—and standards—change.

Suitable for faculty who are using OER, or interested in using OER, in their courses. All levels: beginner, intermediate, advanced.

PRESENTER BIOS: Brian is the Founder and CEO of panOpen, a learning platform designed to support institutional use of OER. He has devoted his career to improving the accessibility and effectiveness of educational materials, beginning with his first company, Akademos. Brian holds a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Cornell, where he was also a Visiting Assistant Professor and Visiting Fellow. He has received fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, University of Goettingen, and Yale. Brian is the co-editor of Essays on Kant’s Anthropology and his articles on OER have been published on EdSurge and Inside Higher Ed.

Juliette is the Department Chair of Environmental Science at Brookdale Community College. She earned her doctorate in Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior from the City University of New York where she studied the effect of climate on the diversity, density, and distribution of wintering landbirds. She has been working to design student-centered environmental science courses that promote success through holistic development. This includes developing skills for acquiring and communicating knowledge, learning how to learn, how to think deeply, leadership skills, civic engagement, and formulating a clear value system that guides life choices and demonstrates personal character. Working with panOpen has allowed her to design an affordable curriculum that supports these lofty learning objectives.

Room 168C

A Move from Disposable to Renewable Assignments 
Veronika Dolar, SUNY Old Westbury (NY)

ABSTRACT: The structure of a writing intensive Food and Wine Economics course will be presented. The course is based on OER enabled constructionist pedagogy. The main guiding principle in this class is the movement from disposable assignments destined for the garbage bin towards renewable assignments where students’ work adds value to the world.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: “Learning occurs through construction, annotation and maintenance of learning artifacts” (Anderson, 2012).

During my presentation I will first introduce the concept of constructionist pedagogy. I will then showcase my upper level writing intensive Food and Wine Economics class. The main focus of this OER enabled constructionist pedagogy is to transform students from being knowledge consumers into being knowledge creators. I will also present some material from the award-winning “A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students”.

Part of the presentation will also use real time polling (Poll Everywhere). Participants will be invited to explore my online Food and Wine Economics class web page and to review some of the websites created by my students.

The presentation should be interesting and open to all participants regardless of their familiarity with OER resources or knowledge of online technology.

PRESENTER BIO:Dr. Dolar has a very rich international experience. She was born in Slovenia (at that time still under Yugoslavia), obtained her IB diploma in Italy at the United World College of the Adriatic, studied in Canada and obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Her current research interests include health economics focusing on eating decision, nutrition and obesity, labor economics, and economic education.

Dr. Dolar I currently working at SUNY Old Westbury. She is an advocate of constructionist pedagogy and believes that we learn best when we are actively engaged in constructing something that has personal meaning to us.

Room 804

Building Pressbooks for OER Hugh McGuire, Pressbooks

ABSTRACT: Pressbooks is an open source platform for publishing “books”, adopted by many OER projects including: OpenSUNY, Unizin, eCampusOntario, UC Berkeley, BCcampus, and LumenLearning. In this talk, we will review Pressbooks’ new OER-focused features, mostly funded by eCampusOntario and Ryerson University in Toronto. We’ll also look a the future roadmap.

SESSION_DESCCRIPTION: We’ll give an overview of Pressbooks as an open source OER publishing platform (that produces web-native interactive content, PDFs and EPUBs), and how various educational institutions are using Pressbooks. We’ll also focus on a host of new and upcoming OER-focused features, including:

• graceful support for interactive elements, including audio, video, phet simulations, open assessments- native support for h5p interactive element builder
• cloning and version tracking
• submission to DSPACE repository
• LTI / and common cartridge support
• Single Sign On (SSO)

We’ll also solicit feedback from the crowd on features that might help support their OER efforts.

Pressbooks is an open source platform for publishing “books”, adopted by many OER projects including: OpenSUNY, Unizin, eCampusOntario, UC Berkeley, BCcampus, and LumenLearning. In this talk, we will review Pressbooks’ new OER-focused features, mostly funded by eCampusOntario and Ryerson University in Toronto. We’ll also look a future roadmap.

PRESENTER BIO: Hugh has been building web tools and communities that bring books onto the web for a decade. He is the founder of https://pressbooks.org, the co-founder and Executive Director of the https://rebus.foundation, and the founder of http://libribox.org. He is the co-editor of “Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto.” You can find him at @hughmcguire.

Campus Center Auditorium

Lunchtime: 12:00 – 1:00

Concurrent Session 4: 1:05 – 1:55  (50 minutes)

Room 162

University and Community College Collaboration for OER Success
Chelsea Contrada, Tim Dolan, Jeremy Smith, Karen Hines

ABSTRACT: Since UMass Amherst began their Open Education Initiative in 2011, community colleges throughout the state have used the UMass model to inform their own initiatives. Representatives from UMass and three community colleges will share how this collaboration has shaped local OER work, an future plans to move their initiatives forward.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: In the seven years since its inception, Umass Amherst’s Open Education Initiative has served as a model of OER success for the state of Massachusetts and beyond. The Massachusetts community college system in particular has looked to UMass for guidance, and this collaborative relationship was instrumental in the success of the statewide Massachusetts Community Colleges Go Open grant initiative. This panel will include one representative from UMass who will give an overview of the UMass Open Education Initiative and share plans for expansion and growth. Three additional panelists will represent three different Massachusetts community colleges. These panelists will discuss the ways in which UMass has served the community colleges as they have developed their own initiatives and created a regional community of practice. Panelists will also cover how each institution plans to move their initiatives forward as they pursue scale and sustainability, including new opportunities for inter-institutional collaboration.

This panel is for beginner and intermediate levels. Attendee participation will be sought both before and during the presentation. Engagement will begin online with questions sought via Twitter using the conference hashtag. We will also use live polling and invite audience questions and discussion in the last 10-15 minutes.

PRESENTER BIOS: Chelsea Contrada has been the OER and Outreach Librarian at Springfield Technical Community College in Springfield, MA since 2016. She earned her M.S. in Library and Information Science from Simmons College. Before working at STCC Chelsea was a clinical librarian in a hospital library. Her interests include health literacy, open pedagogy, open access, and the role of information access within social justice movements.

Tim Dolan graduated with an MLIS from Simmons College in 2016, and currently works as a reference and instruction librarian at Greenfield Community College. His role at GCC is expansive, but areas of particular interest include media literacy, open access and open education, and developing intensive, integrated information literacy curricula with faculty across disciplines.

Jeremy Smith is the Digital Projects Manager in Scholarly Communication and the Communication Department Liaison at the UMass Amherst Libraries. His previous position was as the manager of a grant funded project to digitize the entire W.E.B. Du Bois manuscript collection, housed in the UMass Library Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA). Prior to acquiring his Masters in Library Science (MLS) in 2009, he was a staff producer and editor for the Media Education Foundation (MEF), a Northampton-based non-profit video production company founded by UMass Communications Professor Sut Jhally.

Room 163C

Taking Action! ACT @ PSU: Getting Started with a Grant Initiative
Amanda Larson and Julie Lang, Penn State University (PA)

ABSTRACT: This panel will discuss the collaboration between University Libraries and Teaching and Learning with Technology at Penn State University to create a grant initiative for faculty to adapt or create affordable content as a holistic course transformation that is outcomes centered.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: Do you want to start a grant initiative at your institution? Learn how to take a three-pronged approach to transform undergraduate courses and disrupt traditional published materials. Panelists will discuss the Affordable Course Transformation (ACT) grant initiative at Penn State University (PSU). ACT is a grant-based, affordable course transformation program for teaching faculty who want to transform their course to displace high cost published materials with open and affordable resources. This initiative is a collaboration between Teaching and Learning Innovation and University Libraries who will work with faculty to transform their courses by adapting or creating open educational resources to meet the outcomes of their courses.

During the panel, Julie Lang and Amanda Larson, will facilitate an active learning session with participants where they will learn about the process of starting ACT@PSU including:

• Engaging the campus community (PSU has 24 campuses)
• Researching other initiatives
• Creating a project plan
• Benchmarking grant stipends
• Roles of stakeholders and project leaders

By the end of the panel session participants will be able to create and implement a project plan, identify strategic partners, utilize an online OER replacement toolkit for identifying, tracking, and evaluating open resources. Our goal for this panel session is to transition from a presentation to a large group discussion where participants can ask questions and share their own experiences. We will encourage active participation with the use of Poll Everywhere and Twitter.

PRESENTER BIOS: Amanda Larson is the Open Education Librarian at the Penn State University Libraries in Pennsylvania, where she coordinates affordable content initiatives across the campuses and provides guidance on copyright, creative commons licensing, and project management. She also serves as a liaison for faculty to other University units creating OER.

Julie Lang is the Open Education Resource Coordinator with Penn State University’s Teaching and Learning Innovation Unit. She works with students, faculty, and staff at all 24 campus locations to advance the adoption, adaption, and authoring of open content to benefit students at Penn State and beyond.

Room 165

Practicing Open Pedagogy in Professional Development 
Monica Poole, mcpoole@bhcc.mass.edu, Proshot Kalami and Danielle Leek, Bunker Hill Community College (MA)

ABSTRACT: How can we practice open pedagogy in OER professional development? Bunker Hill Community College has utilized the “open” principles of access, sharing, and equity in designing professional development for OER creation, implementation, and scaling. Using the framework of open pedagogy, participants will reflect on their own experiences with professional development.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: We would plan to begin with 5-10 minutes of introduction from us as facilitators, where we would share a few prominent definitions of open pedagogy for participants to grapple with in the session and reflect on how we applied open pedagogy to designing professional development for OER at Bunker Hill Community College. For us, open pedagogy relies on access, sharing, and equity, and there is ample complexity there to explore. We will reflect on how we have practiced open pedagogy in the design and delivery of institutes and workshops about the topics of open pedagogy and open educational resources, and share a candid analysis of how that has changed, grown, struggled, and improved over time. We will also establish an understanding of the ways that open pedagogy and culturally relevant pedagogy sustain each other, and use that as a foundation for the discussion. Following the introduction that frames the session, we will pose some questions for substantial reflective discussion among participants, which will ground their understanding of practicing open pedagogy in professional development in their own knowledge and experience. Participants will be invited to remember past experiences leading or participating in professional development in any context, and then to consider and reflect on those experiences through the lens of open pedagogy. This session is geared toward participants with some basic familiarity with definitions of OER and “open” in general, and will be most useful for participants who have a hand in designing professional development for OER work at their institution.

PRESENTER BIOS: Danielle Leek, PhD is Director of Academic Innovation & Distance Education at Bunker Hill Community College. Danielle’s research focuses on strategies to promote student equity and engagement through digital technologies. Her work on OER is centered on the ways that open resources can better connect students and community members in reciprocal partnerships. Prior to working at Bunker Hill, Danielle was an Associate Professor of Communications at Grand Valley State University and Director of Professional Learning for Campus Compact.

Monica Poole serves as chair and professor in the Department of History and Social Sciences at Bunker Hill Community College. She co-chaired the College’s recent revision of its General Education curriculum and serves on its OER leadership team. Her past scholarly work highlighted collaborative constructions of intellectual property during the emergence of copyright law, and a current project critically applies contemplative practices to repairing inequities of knowledge and power. In 2017, she was a fellow at the West African Research Center in Dakar, Senegal. Her education includes an AA from Edison Community College and an MA from Harvard University.

Proshot Kalami serves as Associate Professor at Bunker Hill Community College, where she is part of the College’s OER leadership team. She received her PhD at UC Davis, and has taught at the University of California at Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis, and Loughborough University (UK). A past Fellow of the Interweaving Performance Cultures research center in Berlin, her scholarly publications include books and articles in performance studies and world cinema, and Farsi translations of works of philosophy; her creative work includes documentary film, visual art, and poetry. Her current research addresses the performance cultures of the Persianate world.

Room 168C

1:05-1:30pm

Developing and Teaching Non-Science Majors Human Genetics using OER at a Community College
ZMG Sarwar Jahangir, Kingborough Community College (CUNY)

ABSTRACT: Teaching human genetics using OER to undergraduate non-science majors has the potential to boost enrollment since it provides free learning resources replacing a priced textbook. However, there exist limited OER for human genetics and, hence, it is imperative to create one by mixing and matching cost-free resources available online.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: I plan to present before the attendees the goals and objectives of the course, Human Genetics, for teaching non-Science major undergraduates at Kingsborough Community College of The City University of New York (KCC-CUNY). Since, there exists limited OER for teaching human genetics, hence, it is imperative to develop an OER by mixing and matching resources available through various platforms. During this presentation, I will bring-in a selected list of resources currently being used for teaching the above course at KCC-CUNY. These will include, (1) Open Education Resource for General Biology/and Molecular and Cellular Biology, https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/bio-oer/gene-expression/, (2) Genetics Home Reference, US national Library of medicine, https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer, (3) Khan Academy, https://www.khanacademy.org/coach/dashboard and (4) Free Genetics Textbook, http://opengenetics.net/open_genetics.html. I selected topics independently from these free resources and listed them as topics to be read by the students. In addition, the powerpoint presentations for teaching were supplemented with a few additional resources from my personal designs and collections.

PRESENTER BIO: ZMG Sarwar Jahangir obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology from The City University of New York in 1995. While a student of Ph.D., jointly with his mentor he obtained a NOAA grant in ZMG Sarwar Jahangir, Ph.D., MCD-Biology, CUNY, 1995. During 1992 -1995, jointly developed transgenic lake sturgeon, Acipenser fulvescens, with bacterial β-galactosidase gene with a $145,000 grant from NOAA. Again in 1999, received another $125,000 NOAA grant as CO-PI for developing microsatellite DNA fingerprints for American goosefish, Lophius americanus population identification. During 2002-2004, he worked as a consultant for developing melanoma vaccination using vaccinia virus.

He is an Assistant Professor and Director, A.S. in Biotechnology Program at KCC. He teaches Recombinant DNA Technology, Animal Cell Culture, Human Genetics, General Biology, and Biology for Non-Science majors and supervises research students supported by grants.

1:30-1:55pm

Lessons in Adopting OER in a Biology Course
Young Bae Kim, North Shore Community College (MA)

ABSTRACT: In a demanding and high-stakes biology course, a small flaw of the course materials could have a big impact on the satisfaction of students and the course evaluation as a result. An instructor who created a no/low-cost science course discusses his experience and lessons from it.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: Incorporating OER’s into a high-stakes science course is very challenging. Particularly when the OER’s contain any flaws or shortcomings, all blame and complaints come to the instructor. In this session, I would like to share my experience in generating a no/low-cost science majors general biology course. I will also discuss some feasible ideas, and also pros and cons of having OER’s in the course from the standpoint of the faculty. This session is composed of a half presentation and a half discussion. I will present my experience in the first half of the session and discuss the feasible strategy of switching a course to a no/low-cost course and necessary support from the college administration. My experience and the ideas obtained during the discussion may be applied even to non-OER, to say, regular classes, where commercial textbooks are used.

PRESENTER BIO: Young Bae Kim is an Associate Professor at North Shore Community College, and also serves as the coordinator for the Biotechnology Program. He is a molecular cell biologist by training and teaches many courses in biological science areas. He has been an OER advocate and generated many his own no/low-cost educational materials over the last several years. He has also switched a science major’s biology course to a no/low-cost course using his own materials and other available OER materials.

Room 804

1:05-1:30pm

Using the OER Commons Toolset to Build Community and Curate Collaboratively
Melinda Boland, ISKME

ABSTRACT: This session to look at some ways to implement an OER strategy beyond authoring or developing a repository. We’ll look at examples from across the United States and dive into what made each initiative successful.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: This 25-minute presentation will include a brief walk-through of the collaborative workflow tools on OER Commons, showing specific examples of how communities of practice can come together to curate, organize, and evaluate OER. We’ll also look at ways that curation is achieved on an institutional basis, focusing on course development and identifying supplemental materials. Finally, we’ll examine best practices around curation, focusing on quality over quantity.

PRESENTER BIO: Melinda Boland brings over 20 years of experience in the educational technology and publishing space to ISKME and OER Commons. At ISKME, Melinda manages a team of project managers, information management professionals, and designers who together produce all of ISKME’s OER products and services.

1:30-1:55pm

Should This Just-in-time Competency-based Skill-builder Web App Go Open?
Mary Ann Perry, Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) (NH)

ABSTRACT: We built a grant-funded learning platform and competency-based skill-building modules to help under-prepared students overcome common academic skill gaps while working on course assignments. Early research results show students actively use “JUICE” overviews, tutorials, and practice games and provide compelling evidence of improved persistence. Should JUICE go OER? How?

SESSION DESCRIPTION: In this interactive session, participants can log in and explore a new library of academic skill-building resources designed to be integrated into course assignments and help students build critical reading, writing, and basic mathematics skills while doing their coursework. The learning modules are powered by JUICE, a personalized learning application first developed for working adult students in the College for America (CfA) online Associate’s degree program at SNHU. JUICE stands for “JUst-In-time, Contextualized, and Empowering” academic assistance and has been funded by a Dept. of Education First in the World (FITW) grant.

As participants explore, they can review and comment on preliminary research evidence, including randomized control trial (RCT) in-progress results and a preliminary complier average causal effect (CACE) analysis suggesting that students who use JUICE are more likely to stay enrolled. We will also share pilot test data from Bay Path University Women’s College, where they have had positive results.

Finally, participants will be invited to answer the question: Do these interactive learning resources have OER potential? We will identify and prioritize important requirements and considerations for sharing and sustaining this type of learning application as an OER resource — first by ranking and discussing requirements in pairs, then by reporting back to the group.

PRESENTER BIO: Mary Ann joined SNHU to build JUICE after 14 years at Pearson Education where she led higher education learning technology strategy and development for flagship online homework and assessment products. Mary Ann has a diverse background including an Ed.M. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from Boston University, years experience in software development and technical publishing, and experience teaching and writing curriculum for refugee education. Mary Ann also volunteers as a coach for the Babson College WIN Lab Entrepreneurial Leadership program.

Concurrent Session 5: 2:00 – 2:25  (25 minutes)

Room 162

Two [Public Higher Ed] Systems, Both Alike in Dignity
Ann Fiddler and Alexis McMillan Clifton, SUNY OER Services

ABSTRACT: Two public university systems ~ $8 million ~ one year ~ 75 campuses

What SUNY and CUNY did to support the rapid adoption of OER using $8 million in state funding. OER leaders from both systems will present the strategies and rationale behind what was done to effectively spend $8 million to scale-up OER adoption and student savings.

SESSION DESCRIPTION:  What SUNY and CUNY did to support the rapid adoption of OER using $8 million in state funding:

• CUNY issued RFPs – ALL eligible campuses applied and were accepted
• SUNY offed baseline and per-enrollment incentives and three requirements for participation; 56 campuses committed
• Professional development offerings were frequent and regional
• Partnerships were formed, or put in process
• A printing service was piloted
• An OER course identity process was implemented

The result was rapid and dramatic increases in:

• OER course identification and creation;
• Enrollments in OER courses;
• Savings for students;
• Faculty interest and engagement

With another year of funding now in place, our strategies are shifting and maturing daily!

PRESENTER BIOS: Ann Fiddler, Open Education Librarian, directs and coordinates all OER activities from the CUNY Office of Library Services. She works closely with the OER leads on all CUNY campuses to achieve the ambitious outcomes of their OER grant projects. Ann works tirelessly to educate and advocate for OER across CUNY.

As Executive Director of SUNY OER Services – Alexis McMillan Clifton works with State University of New York (SUNY) institutions to establish, support, and expand their OER programs. She helps to identify each institution’s goals for open education, as well as to foster collaboration between campuses to expand options for effective open practices.

Room 163C

Employing FOSS Tools to Improve Learning and Increase Opportunities
Sean Murthy, Western CT State University (CT)

ABSTRACT: In addition to reducing costs, free and open source (FOSS) tools offer new opportunities for both students and instructors. This presentation shares first-hand experience with the FOSS tool ClassDB and outlines how ClassDB has replaced a commercial system, aided student learning, reduced instructor effort, and provided new opportunities for students to learn modern skills employers seek.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: This presentation is for people in any discipline, any level of experience with FOSS OER tools, with an open invitation for all to share their experience. I expect the presentation to be interactive throughout. I plan to begin the presentation with a poll of people who use FOSS in their teaching. I expect to have a prepared presentation to serve as a guide and incorporate audience examples in the presentation. In addition to focusing on the items listed in Objectives section of this proposal, depending on the audience dynamics, I hope to discuss the following aspects of employing FOSS in teaching: criteria for FOSS selection; means of adopting FOSS in teaching; factors that aid and impede student success; publishing and documenting FOSS tools; logistics of procuring, licensing, deploying, and maintaining FOSS tools. I plan to share my experience building and using the FOSS tool ClassDB but will generalize the idea so audience members can relate my experience to their own experience and needs. I hope to have 1-2 of my students who were involved in building and using ClassDB also share their experience. Finally, I will share with the audience the complete code and documentation for ClassDB so they can review, adapt, and critique any aspect of it. The current version of ClassDB is at: http://bit.ly/ClassDBRepo.PRESENTER BIO: Dr. Sean Murthy is a member of the Computer Science faculty at the Western Connecticut State University. He also heads the Data Science & Systems Lab (DASSL, read dazzle) which conducts research in data science and data-intensive systems. Dr. Murthy has extensive experience in Computer Science teaching and research and has also been an employee or consultant in Information Technology industry. He has developed many commercial and open-source software and has published peer-reviewed papers in Computer Science.

Room 165

Beyond Cost Savings: OER’s Game Changing Effect on Increasing Collaboration and Inspiring Local Initiatives
Jody Carson, Sue Tashjian, Dr. William Heineman Ed.D., Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs, Northern Essex Community College, Dr. Barbara McCarthy, Ph.D., Vice President of Academic Affairs, Massasoit Community College

ABSTRACT:  The leadership team of the Massachusetts Community Colleges Go Open project will share the process of how an idea evolved into a successful statewide initiative. As a direct result of this work, 120 faculty from 14 community colleges collaborated to save students $1.2 million in textbook costs this year alone.

DESCRIPTION: A statewide initiative, funded by the federal TAACCCT grant, wrapped up this year for the Massachusetts community colleges. While some of the community colleges had an existing OER project, this new initiative has created quite a buzz about the cost and quality of instructional materials across all campuses.  

The Go Open Project was selected as a finalist for this year’s prestigious Bellwether Award, which gave the project national recognition and increased the conversations happening around OER across Massachusetts.

We will talk about how the Mass CC Go Open Project has created a robust group of faculty, staff, and administrators working together to make higher education more affordable and accessible for all students.

Room 168C

Building an OER Culture: Achieving Scale without Losing Focus
Andrew McKinney, Pamela Thielmana and Allison Lehr-Samuels, Baruch College (NY)

ABSTRACT: This presentation will showcase the OER Initiative at Baruch College, run out of the Center for Teaching and Learning. We will highlight our efforts to achieve sustainable scale while not losing a faculty and student centered approach.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: The OER Initiative at Baruch College, run out of the Center for Teaching and Learning, is tasked with leveraging the funds granted to them by the State of New York to achieve sustainable scale. “Sustainable” scale means, however, not losing a faculty and student centered approach while increasing the amount of faculty and students involved and impacted by the initiative. Our presentation will center on our efforts to achieve that task through building a culture around OER at our college and supporting faculty as they look to develop resources that work for both the specific needs of our community and the broader needs of higher education OER in general. We will detail our tactics for maintaining a bottom-up, faculty directed initiative while keeping our eyes on larger projects with the potential for maximum impact at the college. Specifically, we will discuss our efforts to get feedback from both faculty piloting OER and their students and talk about how that data informed our support for faculty. We will also discuss how our feedback collection helped shape our implementation of a structured OER Seminar in this semester and share some best practices we gleaned from that process. Last, we will spotlight some of the larger projects we’ve helped our faculty work on, from a multi-faculty Environmental Science textbook project to a built from scratch web based logic proof grader. This presentation is geared towards all levels, but will be most useful for those running initiatives or thinking about doing so.

PRESENTER BIOS: Andrew McKinney is an OER Fellow at Baruch College’s Center for Teaching and Learning and PhD candidate in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is also the Senior Digital Pedagogy Fellow at the New York City College of Technology’s (City Tech) OpenLab and an Instructional Designer for City Tech’s OER Initiative.

Pamela Thielman is an Open Educational Resources Fellow at Baruch College and a Ph.D. candidate in Theatre and Performance at The Graduate Center, where she also completed the certificate program in Interactive Technology and Pedagogy.

Allison Lehr Samuels is the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and a Lecturer with a focus on Entrepreneurship in Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College.

Room 804

Implement OER in Five Steps
Andrew Marcinek, Worcester Academy (MA)

ABSTRACT: This presentation will focus on the implementation strategies for PK-12 school leaders. The focus will walk participants through five key areas and five groupings of probing questions schools should consider in order to make this transition.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: This session will briefly discuss the “why” of open educational resources and quickly shift into the how. Participants will be engaged in real-time polls through poll everywhere in order to gain a better insight into why we are implementing open educational resources, how schools will strategically implement open educational resources, and who will lead and support this work moving forward. We will look at some implementation case studies and analyze what worked in each case, and what we would improve upon or do differently. This session is geared towards the intermediate and advanced attendees.PRESENTER BIO: Andrew Marcinek is currently the Chief Information Officer at Worcester Academy in Worcester, MA. Most recently, Andrew served as the first Chief Open Education Advisor for the US Department of Education. As Open Education Advisor at the U.S. Department of Education, Andrew focused on expanding and accelerating the adoption of open education policies within the Department, encouraged the expansion of such policies across the federal government and supported initiatives that dramatically increased the curation and sharing of open educational materials by educators throughout the country.

Concurrent Session 6: 2:30 – 2:55  (25 minutes)

Campus Center Auditorium

iOER – Interactive Open Educational Resources: The Next Steps
Peter Shea and Jim Grenier, Middlesex Community College (MA)

ABSTRACT: In the first NE OER Summit, Peter Shea and Jim Grenier explained what interactive open educational resources were and why they were needed. In this presentation, they will present a model for creating impactful iOER initiatives.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: We will use interactive polls to gain information from session participants. We will also attempt an exercise where participants can begin creating iOER themselves.

PRESENTER BIOS: Peter Shea serves as the Director of Professional Development at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts. In addition, he is an instructional designer, a teacher, editor, and writer. He is an advocate of highly immersive learning experiences, particularly in regard to traditional academic subjects. Currently, he is working on the promotion of iOER (interactive open educational resources).

He has worked as a book reviewer for eLearn magazine and co-authored a chapter in the book, Transforming Virtual World Learning: Thinking in 3D (Cutting-Edge Technologies in Higher Education). He has served as a learning game judge for the Serious Play conference and as a co-editor of the start-up journal, Future Learning. Recently he co-authored a book chapter on games/simulations as tools for educational assessment.

Jim Grenier serves as Director for Online Education at Massachusetts Bay Community College and is an advocate for greater access and online learner empowerment as a member of Mass Colleges Online. He feels most at home in the classroom, whether virtual or face-to-face, and teaches at several colleges and universities in the greater Boston area. He is grateful for the opportunity to connect with all of you today.

Room 162

Case studies: Creating Successful OER Institutional Initiatives
Nicole Finkbeiner, Kathy Labadorf and Jillian Maynard  (mixed schools)

ABSTRACT: How do you effectively encourage faculty to transition to OER? What are the key elements of a successful OER initiative? Kathy Labadorf from the University of Connecticut and Jillian Maynard from the University of Hartford discuss the specifics of their OER initiatives and how they increased the number of students impacted by OER through a strategic plan and structured activities. Moderator: Nicole Finkbeiner from OpenStax at Rice University.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: Kathy Labadorf from the University of Connecticut and Jillian Maynard from the University of Hartford discuss the specifics of their OER initiatives and how they increased the number of students impacted by OER through a strategic plan and structured activities. Moderator: Nicole Finkbeiner from OpenStax at Rice University.

No interactive activities planned. Geared toward intermediate and advanced, but could also give beginners a good long-term plan and goals.

PRESENTER BIOS: Nicole Finkbeiner is the Associate Director of Institutional Relations for Rice University’s free textbook initiative, OpenStax, where she focuses on developing and managing the relationships with faculty adopters and administrators. A graduate of Kellogg Community College, Western Michigan University, and Michigan State University, she worked in college relations for community colleges prior to joining OpenStax. When not promoting Open Educational Resources, Nicole fills her time reading, working out, and dragging her friends to random cultural events.

Kathy Labadorf coordinates the Affordable and Open Educational Resources efforts at the University of Connecticut. Up to this point, UConn Faculty have adopted, adapted, and revised OER textbooks as well as revised entire courses using materials which are openly licensed and freely available to students from the University Library and the Web. In this our 3rd year running, our Faculty are now producing OER textbooks, all embracing the CC-BY licensing.

Jillian Maynard has been a Reference Librarian at the University of Hartford since August 2015. She graduated from the University of Rhode Island with an M.L.I.S. and an M.A. in History. In addition to reference services at the University of Hartford, in which she offers one-on-one research help to students and faculty, Jillian is also helping to grow the overall information literacy instruction program and is working closely with professors in the History department, with a goal of embedded librarianship. She is also co-chair of the campus-wide OER (Open Educational Resources) Committee, and led the institution’s effort and involvement in the 2017-2018 OpenStax Institutional Partnership Program. Additionally, she is a part of the Connecticut Information Literacy Conference Planning Committee.

Room 163C

Empowering Student Ownership of Course Materials Through Open Pedagogy
Brian Jacobs, PanOPEN, Steve Burke, Rockland Community College

ABSTRACT: English faculty at Rockland Community College leveraged the power of open by creating a multi-modal digital text using panOpen, a learning platform designed to support institutional use of OER. The presenters will discuss how OER, coupled with helpful learning technologies, can foster a robust and organic learning environment.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: At Rockland Community College (RCC), recent curriculum revisions in the English Department’s College Writing courses have led to the creation of modules organized around a central theme. The content of these modules is primarily open. At RCC, moving to open presented an opportunity to fundamentally rethink the way course materials for College Writing are produced and shared, and this rethinking has changed the pedagogy itself. All open content in the College Writing modules is curated and delivered by panOpen, a learning platform designed to support institutional use of OER. Among the platform’s features is the “class notes” tool, which allows students to actively engage with both the texts and each other through marginal notes visible to the entire class.

Stephen Burke, who worked on the redesign of College Writing at RCC, will be joined by Brian Jacobs from panOpen for this dialogue with conference participants. The session will focus on how faculty can leverage the power of open by creating multi-modal digital texts that enable innovative forms of student engagement.

We will discuss:

• how working with OER cultivated a pedagogical environment in which students took control of the learning;
• ways in which course materials can become “living texts” as students are welcomed to the conversation;
• strategies for utilizing digital learning tools to enhance student learning and achieve course outcomes; and
• future plans to create a culture of open scholarly discourse which is refined and supplemented by future peers.

Suitable for faculty who are using OER, or interested in using OER, in their courses. All levels: beginner, intermediate, advanced.

PRESENTER BIO: Brian is the Founder and CEO of panOpen, a learning platform designed to support institutional use of OER. He has devoted his career to improving the accessibility and effectiveness of educational materials, beginning with his first company, Akademos. Brian holds a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Cornell, where he was also a Visiting Assistant Professor and Visiting Fellow. He has received fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, University of Goettingen, and Yale. Brian is the co-editor of Essays on Kant’s Anthropology and his articles on OER have been published on EdSurge and Inside Higher Ed.

Stephen Burke teaches in the English Department at the State University of New York’s Rockland Community College, where he also serves as Chair of English, Philosophy, and Religious Studies. Stephen has previously taught as an adjunct professor at Saint Thomas Aquinas College, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Binghamton University. Along with Dr. Katherine Lynch, Stephen is currently developing an open textbook for first year college writers with panOpen.

Room 165

(Math OER) + (Personalized Learning) = Student Success
Andrew Bulawa,  Dr. Manachanallur S. Ravi, and Josh Baron, Queensborough Community College (CUNY)

ABSTRACT: Mathematics faculty from Queensborough Community College will share their experiences using the Waymaker OER analytics-based personalized learning platform for their introductory statistics course. This will include a discussion of analysis of student success data, such as final course grades and completion rates, as well as findings from a national research study.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: The past decade has seen most college-level mathematics courses moving to rely on a combination of textbook content and technology platforms. While this combination provides clear instructional benefits for students, it has also resulted in increasing costs.

For the past academic year (2017-18) mathematics faculty at Queensborough Community College (CUNY) have been involved in a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Next Generation Courseware Challenge (NGCC) grant exploring a personalized learning platform, called Waymaker, in their introductory statistics course. In addition to supporting personalized feedback to students and analytics-based faculty tools for student engagement the system leverages existing openly licensed content from the Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative (OLI) as means to keep costs low.

Mathematics faculty from Queensborough CC will share their experiences using the Waymaker platform and provide brief demonstrations of the tools and course content. Analysis of student success data, such as final course grades and completion rates, from the semester prior to use of Waymaker and this current academic year will be presented along with data from a faculty and student survey. This data will then be compared to larger national studies on Waymaker and its impact on student success. The session will conclude with brief Q&A session that will use questions submitted via twitter by the summit attendees and others following the event.

PRESENTER BIOS: Andrew Bulawa

Dr. Manachanallur S. Ravi is an assistant professor at Queensborough Community College where he teaches a range of introductory and upper-level mathematics courses. He’s areas of speciality include Algebraic Geometry and its applications to Linear Systems Theory. He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Rochester

As Executive Director for the Northeast at Lumen Learning Mr. Baron works with faculty, student groups and institutional leaders on effective strategies for the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) at scale. Prior to his current role, Mr. Baron was Assistant Vice President for Information Technology and Digital Education at Marist College where he led the office of Academic Technology which was responsible for supporting instructional technology initiatives, including distance learning, faculty training, and student support.

Room 168C

Learning By Doing in Open Education
David Wiley, Lumen Learning

ABSTRACT: Learning science research is clear that students learn by doing – interacting with the content through questions, activities, and simulations. This session will discuss ways to identify opportunities in a course for enhancing content with interactives, and look at various options for creating interactive content.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: Years of learning science research tells us that students learn by doing – interacting with the content through questions, activities, and simulations. The ability to deliver immediate, targeted feedback to students on their understanding of a concept is one of the key benefits of digital learning tools. Yet, much of OER remains static text and video. There’s a good reason for this: interactive content has traditionally been difficult to create, often requiring content authors to have programming skills in addition to subject expertise.

New tools such as H5P are making it easy for anyone to author interactive content and include it in their course. In this session, we will discuss ways to identify opportunities in a course for enhancing content with interactives, and look at various options for creating interactive content.

Room 804

OER and UAT: Are Your Materials Working for Your Students?
Don Vescio, Elaine Vescio, Worcester State University (MA)

ABSTRACT: User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is associated with software development in which an application is tested with carefully designed protocols and specific tools to make sure that it functions as intended. This presentation offers an introduction to UAT strategies and their use in developing OER course materials.

SESSION_DESCCRIPTION: The first third of this session will ask participants to review simple examples of smartphone applications, with the goal of collaboratively developing a preliminary list of characteristics that help describe effective application design. Then, this preliminary list will be applied by participants to representative OER course materials to transition the conversation to User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and course materials design. The second third of the presentation will provide an overview of specific UAT tools and processes, with particular emphasis on participants experimenting with them in small groups. The final third of the presentation will focus on participants brainstorming ways in which they can apply a limited range of UAT processes to their own teaching. Participants will be able to access extended materials on UAT processes and tools, along with their application in instructional design, online after the conference. The emphasis of this session will be hands-on individual and group exploration.

PRESENTER BIOS: Don Vescio is a member of Worcester State University’s Department of English, whose scholarly interests include contemporary critical theory; narrative theory, composition, and rhetoric; information design and architecture; and post-1950s American fiction. He has founded writing centers at three universities and had served over ten years as Worcester State’s Vice President of Information Technologies/Chief Information Officer. After working in technology, he became Worcester State’s first Vice President of Enrollment Management, where he also was responsible for the university’s marketing. Finally, he is the principle of a consultancy that specializes in information design and data presentation for private sector corporations.

Elaine Vescio teaches advanced marketing and business-to-business courses at Worcester State University. Her strong entrepreneurial background has enabled her to establish a  regional company that assisted thousands of people to achieve their endurance sports goals. Her current research interested include the organizational dynamics of start-up companies; quantifiable best practices associated with online learning; analytics and market analysis; Universal Design for Learning (UDL) curriculum development; community formation and classroom instruction.

Concurrent Session 7: 3:00 – 3:25 (25 minutes)

Room 162

The [Hi]story Lives On: Using OER and Renewable Assignments to Engage Students
Dr. Leslie Lindenauer, lindeauerl@wcsu.edu,  and Aura Lippincott, lippincotta@wcsu.edu, Western CT State University

ABSTRACT: The presenters redesigned an undergraduate history course to utilize an open history text, and a three-part renewable assignment that approaches topics in American history through storytelling. The presenters will discuss the open-pedagogy approach and will share sample student work, early impressions of student success, and the impacts on student learning.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: This presentation explores open pedagogy, open educational resources, and group project-based digital storytelling in an undergraduate American History course. The presenters redesigned American History to 1877, HIS 148 to utilize The American YAWP open history site, and a three-part renewable assignment in which students work on a collaborative project that approaches topics in American history through storytelling – using historic sources to develop virtual exhibits. The presenters will discuss their experience designing OER-enabled renewable assignments, including on-the-ground experience implementing this open-pedagogy approach in the classroom, and releasing the creative-commons licensed materials for open use. Presenters will share sample student work, early impressions of student success, and the impacts on student learning. The audience will be asked to share their experience with open pedagogy on their campuses. They will also be invited to brainstorm solutions to challenges identified in the first version of the new course.

PRESENTER BIOS: Dr. Leslie Lindenauer is Professor of History and Non-Western Cultures at Western Connecticut State University, and Director of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. Before entering academe, Dr. Lindenauer worked as a museum educator and administrator.

Aura Lippincott is Instructional Designer at Western Connecticut State University where she works with faculty across the campus to design engaging and effective courses. As part of the design process she encourages faculty to consider open resources in the selection and design of learning materials

Room 163C

All for One or One For All: Using Open Pedagogy in the First-Year Composition Classroom
Krista Jackman, University of New Hampshire

ABSTRACT: This session will present assignments that integrate open pedagogy. Students invent, curate resources, create content, and use media to develop and publish work openly in The Explainer Project. We will use Padlet to collaborate, reflect, and share resources. Participants will leave with tools and advice for their own OER integrations.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: The first-year writing classroom is a community where students engage in the work of making meaning, in ever more sustainable ways. College student are savvy consumers, and they look to higher education for an experience that reflects value, not disposable work. Our students tire of composing, submitting, and then forgetting, their writing moldering away in a digital boneyard. Students appreciate pedagogy that reflects the practices and demands of the world. Open Pedagogy fosters coursework that prepares students for the conversations and communications they face daily.

It is easy to embrace the aspiration to use more open practices. How to start? Shifting to an open classroom can include adopting openly licensed content, in addition to creating open materials, and developing assignments that ask students to collaborate, network and work in public spaces with their scholarship.

This session will present advice for first time adopters, in addition to two different approaches to integrating open pedagogy. Both assignments use MyPages, a website building tool. In one assignment, each student determines a theme, and then creates a public website to showcase sustained argument that illustrates their writing, in a variety of genres. In another assignment, the class works in small groups to first, determine the content necessary to support the different units of freshman composition. Students curate resources, create content, use media to teach and publish their lessons openly in The Explainer Project, the course website. This session will be interactive, using Padlet, an online virtual “bulletin” board, to collaborate, reflect, share resources.

PRESENTER BIO: Krista Jackman, is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of New Hampshire. A 2012 winner of a Faculty Excellence in Teaching award, Krista teaches a wide range of courses in the Composition Program. She works closely with Academic Technology, the Honors and Discovery programs, Residential Life and the library, to develop curriculum that integrates inquiry, technology and holistic engagement with university culture. In 2017, Krista was chosen as one of the UNH OER Ambassadors, and has since then, been committed to making substantive and sustainable changes to her courses through the use of OER and Open Educational Practices.

Room 165

Student Perceptions of Learning with OER Materials
Emma Bojinova, University of Connecticut

ABSTRACT: In this presentation, I will share my experience with teaching a general education course in applied economics with OER materials. An analysis of student perceptions of learning with open education resources will be provided based on an online survey administered at the end of the semester.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: The University of Connecticut has been encouraging faculty to create or adopt Open Educational Resources in their courses through the UConn Open and Affordable Initiative. As part of this initiative, I have adopted an OER textbook in my Principles of Agricultural and Resource Economics course. This is a large general education course taught every semester and my choice of adopting a microeconomics textbook available for free to students through OpenStax has been widely accepted and highly appreciated by students taking this course. In this session, I will discuss my reasons for choosing an OER textbook and my experience with teaching this course over the past two semesters. An analysis of student perceptions of their learning with the OER textbook will be presented. I have collected data for two semesters through online surveys. The session will also provide opportunities for discussion with the participants and will also focus on the effects of OER on teaching and students learning and performance.

PRESENTER BIO: Emma Bojinova is a faculty in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Connecticut. Previously she worked as an assistant professor of economics and finance at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY. Courses taught include Principles of Agricultural and Resources Economics, Applied and Resource Economics, Population, Food, and the Environment, Principles of Macroeconomics, Business Statistics I and II, International Trade, International Finance, and Statistics for Managers. She has a master’s degree and a Ph.D. degree in economics from the University of Kentucky (2004, 2008).

Room 168C

Subversive and Sideways: The Canadian Concept of Open Through Reimagined Educator Development and Open Textbook Creation
Peggy French, eCampusOntario

ABSTRACT: Both the open educator and the discipline expert spheres require concentration to thrive. To boost impact on practice, eCampusOntario, a not-for-profit organization, reimagined educator development and open textbook creation and adaptation. It is time to discuss: the tensions experienced; hiccups, hurdles, and successes; as well as how initiatives have evolved.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: eCampusOntario Program Managers and educators from its 45 partner institutions investigated Simon Bates’s model for the modern educator and grounded its fledgling 2017 summer institute on the model’s six attributes. The first two thirds of the session will guide participants through concepts and activities centred on: a teacher for learning, a technologist, a collaborator, a curator, an experimenter, and a scholar. The “Extend” experience, rather than teach a technology or skill, challenged educators to grow or extend their understanding of educator across six modules. This conference presentation provides a flavour of Extend through quick activity samplers. Participants gain ideas how to adopt and | or adapt our 12-18 hour, openly licensed educator development program.

The last third of the presentation highlights the unique partnership between eCampusOntario and Pressbooks. To support our Ontario educators’ exploration and experimentation with open textbooks, we sponsored key improvements to the Pressbooks EDU platform that now benefit all users. These enhancements, as well as eCampus Ontario’s various levels of support for collaborative open textbook creation and our hands-on accelerated adaptations using the SPRINT methodology, are highlights. Participants can learn from our reflections, redirects, and readjustments to design and develop their own initiatives to support educators in OER creation and adaptation.

PRESENTER BIO: Peggy French, Program Manager with eCampusOntario (on secondment from Mohawk College), has committed close to 20 years to building interactive and impactful learning environments – whether online or face-to-face. Her Masters in Educational Technology (University of British Columbia) and Library and Information Science (Western University) as well as a Bachelor in Education (University of Windsor) combine for a unique perspective as she works and explores at the intersection of technology and education. Having taught kindergarten to graduate school, she has a solid understanding of teaching and learning at every stage and across all modalities. Her commitment is to researching, communicating, and optimizing effective and efficient technologies to facilitate learning and development for learners and educators. In her other life, Peggy explores the restaurants and reading spaces of her current home of Hamilton, ON and relaxes with her ornery, orange cat, Dudley.

Room 804

Mastery Learning with OER and Knewton’s Alta
Adam Rooke, Knewton Alta

ABSTRACT: Knewton’s Alta provides powerful adaptive learning, quizzing and testing while integrating high-quality OER to provide comprehensive courseware at a dramatically lower student cost.

SESSION DESCRIPTION: Integrating the highest-quality open educational resources, Knewton’s adaptive technology, Alta, addresses key challenges and delivers a variety of benefits to users. Alta improves learning outcomes with a focus on concept mastery so students are more likely to retain, recall and successfully apply knowledge in future coursework. Using Knewton’s in-house Data Science team, the effectiveness of Knewton’s instructional and assessment content is measured daily and iterated/revised in response to those data, eliminating the need for “new editions”. Because of the use of OER materials, all this is done while dramatically lowering the cost of course materials for students. Attendees will go hands-on in the product to experience the student adaptive learning process.

PRESENTER BIO: Adam Rooke has 17 years of experience in higher education with a diverse background in leadership, sales, product development and design. As a General Manager for Knewton, Adam works directly with faculty and administrators at 2&4 year universities across the Midwest and northeast. Previously, he worked as the head of enterprise partnerships at Packback, Inc. – an edtech startup in Chicago, IL. Before that, Adam developed digital products as a brand manager for the McGraw-Hill Education math team, after 8 years in 2&4 year and private sector sales and sales leadership. Adam spends his free time writing and performing original music and lives with his wife in downtown Chicago.