Wendy Vélez-Torres is a Senior Instructional Technologist at Coppin State and recorded a ten-minute session for Open Ed 2021 entitled “Our Journey into Course Redesign with OERs.” Velez-Torres mentioned that Coppin State is located in downtown Baltimore, and the majority of students are first-generation students, according to Velez-Torrez. They designed a summer workshop/professional development opportunity to incorporate more OER. Participants engaged virtually over three days with two-hour sessions and received a badge and certificate. Participants completed a pre-test and indicated that faculty did not know the difference between OER and what is not considered OER. With this information, Velez-Torres talked about materials that are OER and follow the “five Rs” for reuse, revise, remix, redistribute, and retain. OER-low cost and Z-courses were also described. Next, Velez-Torres challenged faculty to redesign one unit and complete a redesign plan, including objectives and cost to students. They also have access to a public website to find OERs. As part of the program, faculty explored this resource. On day 2, the faculty reviewed using quizzizz.com! I didn’t know about this resource! In another session, Velez-Torres introduced faculty to resources for evaluating OER. The faculty also explored the Open Education resources from The Hewlett Foundation. On the final day, they reviewed using Family Feud and then completed an OER implementation plan. The plan included a timeline for the faculty to plan. Faculty learned about OER commons, Pressbooks, and MERLOT Remix. After the workshop, participants receive personalized attention and help redesign their activities. The presentation is shared at tinyurl.com/OpenEd2021 with a text version available at tinyurl.com/OERJourney This short presentation shared a couple new tools that I didn’t know about and clarified some often confusing terms.
