It was a long and productive day! I ended by watching “OER Development: Working with a Collaborative Community to Create Ancillary Materials” from the Open Ed 2021 sessions. Alishia Huntoon was the presenter and shared the process of creating materials with their group. They defined OERs and the increasing number of new adoptions. OERs can be accessible too. The upper-division courses are typically more focused with fewer options, mentioned Huntoon. They connected with others and researched options. Huntoon designed slide decks with accessibility in mind and a test bank. Huntoon assigned tasks for the collaborators. Together, they managed the project and student opportunities. The most common errors were formatting issues that could be addressed. They created a spreadsheet and email confirmation system to disseminate the resources and share the test bank appropriately. While this is time-consuming, it seems to be the best approach. I thought it was interesting that even with student support, formatting consistency was still a challenge. Huntoon was encouraging and concluded that others should try this approach. I admit, before watching this I had not considered the importance of ancillary materials and sharing them openly! We often overlook how important these resources are to implementing a lesson. Co-creating ancillary materials with student help does require team management skills and having a structure in place to assign tasks and maintain consistency. I will still consider this option and ask: what ancillary materials could we share?
