It was a day of nanopore sequencing… and lots of emails. Tonight, we watched the OpenEd 2021 session entitled “Institutional Transformation Towards OER: Community of Practice, Diversity, Assessment, and Policy,” and Patricia Westerman from Towson University started by describing their OER Community of Practice and the partnership with the Maryland Open Source Textbook (M.O.S.T.) initiative. Then, the group wrote a grant to help faculty explore OER development to reduce costs and maintain and improve learning outcomes and pedagogy. Westerman mentioned they worked with TU Library, Office of Technology Services, and the TU Office of Registrar to help support an OER course designation. Jennifer Scott spoke about the mini-grant system they have as part of the M.O.S.T. initiative with the goal of helping faculty explore and adopt OER. Scott mentioned they have awarded twelve mini-grants for the adoption and implementation of OER. The community of practice, Scott explained, allowed for new collaborations. The assessment plan was a multi-method assessment design that was mixed-methods. Karla Kubitz mentioned how they looked at both the student and faculty experiences and thought processes as they explore and adopt OER. Samuel Collins mentioned the importance of connecting methods and OER purpose to student success. Kubitz explained the utility and importance of documenting shifts in instructor use of OER. Kubitz spoke about feedback. Kubitz shared a Cultural Relevancy Checklist they use when observing a session or module syllabi. I appreciate how there are options and gathering of both instructor and learning experience feedback. Scott described how they evaluate and observe Blackboard course sites and materials. Alexei Kolesnikov talked about how the team provided the checklist they use and share it with faculty when looking at the OER materials. The group discussed sharing materials and reflecting on perceptions from faculty. Interestingly, they mentioned that mostly senior faculty had applied for the mini-grants and in some cases, junior faculty worked with more senior faculty. This is part of the essence of a community.
