Tonight we watched an Open Ed 2021 session by Ariel Anbar and colleagues about the Open Skill initiative. The session entitled “OpenSkill: Open Tools, Co-Development, and Workforce Readiness” described the OER barriers to adoption and the need for improving workforce training. Anbar is the PI for the Department of Education-funded program. Anbar shared a quote: “workforce readiness requires training in essential skills – the skills needed for personal, academic, and vocational success.” David Schonstein demonstrated some OpenSkill tools designed to address important skills: Chart It, Review It, Plan It, and Tour It. The tools seem very flexible and can be integrated into different Learning Management Systems. The Chart It tool allows instructors to share graphs and then prompt students to analyze the data. Review It allows students to peer review assignments and provide information about the feedback. I am interested in finding more about this tool! Plan It allows students to create organizational frameworks that can be integrated into LMSs and graded by instructors. Schonstein also explained that OpenSkill has created textbook replacements on topics such as English composition, introductory chemistry, and student success. In the demonstration, the instructor is able to include the Open Skills tools as LMS external tools.
Lisa Young from the Maricopa Community Colleges shared their experience in their community college system with over 100,000 students! As part of the process and collaboration, Young mentioned that they had to map their objectives and communicate with the three institutions to design and implement the tools. Emma Franck, Program Coordinator from Miami Dade College spoke about their involvement in the consortium and incorporating the course content packages. They met virtually and used Slack to exchange ideas with the team and help create Open Skill. The final college partner was Marc Nash, program coordinator at Ivy Tech Community College, who described how versatile the tools are, including using the Tour It for server tours. Schonstein closed by emphasizing that these are open source tools to promote active learning and teach essential skills. They did mention some grant support for implementation that I will look into. Their website is openskillhub.org and kept me entertained for a while! I wonder if we can include the biodiversity or barcoding and Plan It content/tools in the BIT 295 course…
