it's open education week!

I am posting one day early this week so that you don't miss out on any of the Open Education Week events/resources - so enjoy, and have a Happy "Tuesday Eve"!

OK, so the majority of this week’s Tech Tuesday Tip credit goes to Psychology Faculty Extraordinaire, Dr. Alisa Beyer – who, among other duties, moonlights as your CGCC representative on the District Maricopa Millions (Maricopa’s own OER initiative) team. She thought it might be useful to highlight OER this week, as it actually IS Open Education Week! https://www.openeducationweek.org/

You may recall an OER Google survey coming to your inbox last Fall, asking whether or not you used Open resources, if so, in  what context, and if not, why not – Alisa shared those results with me, and I used the Adobe Spark Post app on my iPad (also available for Google devices, and as a web-based tool from your computer) to compile some of her results into this infographic:

Tech Tuesday Embedded Tip: The Spark app was SUPER easy to use – probably even easier on my tablet than on the computer – and has a ton of templates to help you display your information in a visually appealing way. Results are so easy and attractive, you may start churning out your OWN Open materials for your discipline area…

Of particular interest to me, since I do in fact use my own videos, review questions, and ebooks, is [5] Why are you not using OER? Survey respondents who were not using OER reported the following:

• 29% happy with current publisher materials
• 29% unaware of OER
• 30% need time to investigate

Now I’m not going to argue with anyone who is happy with the current materials, but for those of you who were not aware of the international OER movement, or who are aware but just never seem to have the time to start digging in, this is your week! There are a TON of cool resources at your disposal, whether you look at them now, or bookmark them for later.

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RESOURCES FROM ALISA:

• There are lots of webinars on various Open Education topics this week for OE week events (webinars you can sign up for and watch later if life is hectic) – you can see this screenshot for a sample, or go to https://www.openeducationweek.org/
• We also have a table going on for students to check out to find out how to find low cost/no cost books (which may or may not be Open materials) and to know more about what Open Education is.  If people wanted to stop by, it is at Bridget Hall at Williams and outside Student Center Pavilion at Pecos.
• A few places with links to explore Open Education Resources:
  • https://guides.lib.uw.edu/bothell/open/oer
  • https://www.smartcopying.edu.au/open-education/open-education-resources/where-to-find-oer-materials
  • https://courses.lumenlearning.com/catalog/achievingthedream
  • https://open.bccampus.ca/
    

• Inspired and looking for funding, we also have the Maricopa Millions 2.0 grants (last opportunity for this year is to get it in by 4/15). https://maricopa.instructure.com/courses/811971/pages/maricopa-millions-2-dot-open-oer-development-grants?module_item_id=13627363
  

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RESOURCES FROM MARY:

• If you didn’t already know this, my 2015-2016 sabbatical leave was primarily about creating your OWN materials, and as part of that work, I created a resource website for faculty (https://create-oer.weebly.com/). Housed there, among other things, is all of the content from the “Digital Storytelling to Digital Instruction” workshop series, including
  • A sample page of videos and the tools that I used to create them, including info regarding costs, ease of use, etc. (tech tools are definitely NOT one size fits all – you need to assess based on instructional need, your tech comfort level, what kind of learning curve you are willing to tackle, and so on): https://create-oer.weebly.com/sneak-preview-tools.html
  • Overview of Digital Storytelling: https://create-oer.weebly.com/digital-instruction.html 

• Storyboarding (with some templates to get you started): https://create-oer.weebly.com/storyboarding.html
  
• AND perhaps the most in keeping with this week’s theme – Collecting Multimedia! A variety of sources for images and audio that avoid any messy copyright issues: https://create-oer.weebly.com/collecting-multimedia.html
  

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So dive on in and educate yourself – and be open to Open Education!
And if you ever have questions or need assistance regarding Teaching, Learning and/or Assessment, your friendly neighborhood CTLA is (as always) happy to help!