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Student Textbook Access & Costs With the current shifting landscape, unemployment, and more, students are facing new burdens and challenges. The rising cost of textbooks and access challenges should not be another hardship they are struggling to overcome. Now is the right time for faculty to make a change in their assigned course materials. Open Educational Resources (OER) Openly licensed course materials can less the cost of education for students and provide faculty with quality content specific to their course. The licenses for these materials allow faculty to provide students with a customized, curated resource freely in digital format and for very low-cost to print. The Workshop During the Intro to OER Review Workshop, you will learn more about OER and the supporting resources available to faculty in Montana. After the workshop, faculty attendees will be invited to write a short review of an open textbook from the Open Textbook Library. This workshop is the best, easiest way to learn about and begin engaging with open educational resources. The goal is to inform and encourage the use of OER. Attending Who: Everyone is welcome. Faculty are the decision makers and target audience in making the change to OER. Every member of the educational community is valuable in supporting and effecting positive changes across our institutions. So, we encourage faculty, instructional support staff, library and bookstore staff, administrators, etc. to attend. How: Register for the specific workshop that you would like to attend. You will receive a calendar invite with connection information as well as a follow-up email with slides and recording after the event. The Review To further continue academic scholarship in open education, faculty attendees will be invited to review an open textbook in their field. This peer-review process is openly published. Faculty are welcome to review more than one textbook if they choose. There is a 6 week deadline to complete review(s) after the workshop date. The Schedule October 8th, 4 p.m. October 14th, 10 a.m. October 19th, 2 p.m. October 27th, 11 a.m. November 6th, 12 p.m. November 10th, 2 p.m. November 16th, 4 p.m. December 2nd, 11 a.m. December 8th, 1 p.m. December 14th, 11 a.m.

If you missed this week's webinar for Perfecting Your Virtual Workshop, you can see the archived recording here. Members of the OTN community have also collaborated to create this 7 Tips for Hosting Virtual OTN Workshops. While these are aimed at those teaching Textbook Review workshops, the tips presented by myself and my excellent co-presenters are good for teaching in a variety of online formats. This was a great webinar to be a part of and has me thinking about other applications in this online teaching environment. Much of our professional development comes in the form of webinars and workshops in higher education. This is a great way to learn something new, get a few ideas that we can implement, and leave not feeling overwhelmed or exhausted with information. Yet, when we teach online, we stay far away from this format for sharing information with our students. So, I am proposing a social experiment in teaching online webinar style. I will be hosting a workshop on how to do just that June 2nd. Mark you calendars! Registration information will be up on the TRAILS website. And if you are teaching and would like to try out this experiment with me, let me know.

Great comments about dropouts and OER policy here. I am especially intrigued about the Title IV requirement becoming law. Check out this great interview with Hal Plotkin. US Congress renewed Affordable Textbook funding! Woohoo!

I've put together some great new webinars for the next couple of months. You can download our webinar schedule here and share it out widely with your colleagues. We also have a broad list of professional development opportunities from a variety of others in the broader open education community that can be found here. This is a living document that will continue to grow. New TRAILS webinars in the coming weeks: Good News! Yes, after requests, I have added a bit more content to that webinar and will be presenting it again. Incorporating good news into your online class, May 28th @ 1PM. OER From the Top! Creating a Textbook Affordability initiative on your campus from an administrative and leadership perspective. Reviewing case successes and challenges as well as best practices from policy, advocacy, and marking perspectives. June 12th @ 10AM. The Art of the Online Class Lecture: a new approach to translating the live lecture to the online environment. June 22nd @ 1PM. More opportunities are coming soon. Sign up for these or share them with your colleagues. .

There was some great participation in today's webinar on "Adding good news into online courses". Great questions and insights were shared from participants. I'll add the video recording link here as soon as it is done processing. For those who missed or joined in late, here's a quick guide to adding good news into your course. In higher education, we know that in addition to subject matter, we are teaching how to be a college student, how to be an adult, how to engage with the world or the scholarly community, and more. How you engage with your students, to help them to not just understand but to interact with your material, to see its value in their world, to apply concepts, etc. is a teacher's constant challenge. Many of us are faced with the additional struggle of trying to do this in new ways and formats in a time when our students are struggling to connect, access, and even find value in the courses they are taking. It is easy focus your attention and time on just getting information and assignments to your students. Yet, today more than ever, what you and your students need is to hold onto the one thing that defines us. Our Humanity. Today humanity in the classroom is imperative. Regardless of the subject that you teach, human connection is paramount in surviving and learning. Research has shown that this connection improves: motivation engagement resilience mental health a sense of belonging physical health and more... Adding some good news or moments of humanity to your course regularly will be valuable to you and your students. At least once a week is recommended. If you were teaching face to face, adding a some kind of human interaction as often as your class was previously schedule to meet will provide you all with a more connected sense of togetherness. Ways to connect Share some good news - a short video or article of good things happening in the world Let your students share - created a wiki or discussion board where students can share a photo or statement of their favorite moment that week; ask them to share their favorite news sites Share positivity from your field- share an article, link, or video about a positive way you or others in your field are making a difference today Share Yourself - be honest about a moment you experienced, positive or not, in your teaching each week. This minimizes their frustration while connecting them with you as a human. Create a helping space - you can't do everything. Make a place in your course shell for students to help each other with questions about the class, life, local resources, etc. This could start with you sharing the helping resources your institution has available to them. Make an object space - a page or module in your course where you can post and students can readily access positive objects like a photo, poem, etc. that are less informational and more about connection like images from this Instagram page. A few trusted sites for good news and inspiration sources (these sites have been sharing good news for years and have a wealth of it!) The Good News Network Soul Pancake Happier SunnySkyz The Hunger Site Free Hugs For self-help, HackSpirit, TinyBuddha, and DailyOM are worth visiting. And here's an old favorite to remind us all why humanity is worth sharing.

Institutions of higher education have risen to the challenge of meeting their students online instruction needs. With a lot of hard work by many, flexibility, and full utilization of the great instructional support resources our institutions have, needs are being met and answered. Open educational resources are a valuable and relevant answer to those student and faculty needs. I have been delighted to help the faculty who've reached out to me for support in locating and transitioning their courses to these materials. In higher ed, we are doing it together. It is equally important to me to acknowledge our colleagues in K12 who also have been rising to meet the challenges without the support services and online teaching platforms higher ed has access to. In a time of crisis, they have also risen to meet their students' needs in remarkable ways. Huge shout out to all of you for the work you have done and that is still ahead of you. OER are as broadly available for K12 teachers as they are for higher ed. In fact, some institutions start their OER programs focusing on dual-credit courses and early college course offerings to ensure all students have equal and affordable access to the same level of textbooks and other learning materials. Here are a couple of materials to get our K12 colleagues started with open education. Please download and share with your friends and children's teachers. We really are all in this together. K12 Resource Guide OER FAQ

Please use and share with your colleagues widely. Found another great resource you would like to share? Let me us know and we will add it. A downloadable copy can be found here. Faculty Advice: Remote Access & Open Education Getting Students Text Access Many students are without access to their textbooks or other course materials, and finding online access can be a challenge. · Check with your campus library! Many texts are accessible or can be made accessible through the library eBook collections. · Cambridge University Press Core Textbooks are available for free online adoption through the end of May 2020 · RedShelf - Borrow up to 7 ebooks from major publishers for free through May 25, 2020. · VitalSource - Borrow up to 7 ebooks from major publishers for free through May 25, 2020. · Brief review of copyright practices during COVID-19: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10baTITJbFRh7D6dHVVvfgiGP2zqaMvm0EHHZYf2cBRk/preview Consider Open Educational Resources Why Open Education ● Content found on the internet and provided by commercial publishers is under “all rights reserved” copyright unless otherwise specified ● Open licenses allow copyright holders to specify in advance, and in perpetuity, that their works can be reused, customized, and widely shared by others ● Openly licensed materials can be accessed online for free or in print at low cost ● Students are already struggling to pay for their education. With the skyrocketing costs of textbooks, over 60% can’t or don’t purchase your required text and struggle in your class. Open materials allow all your students to equally succeed. ● The research shows that using open educational resources works! ● Find a wide variety of resources at https://trailsmt.org/find-oer/ ● See what other Montana faculty are already using: https://www.opentrailsmt.org/resources How to get help: ● Open Educational Resources (OER) contact on your campus: Ask your Librarian ● Statewide OER Coordinator: Christina Trunnell ● What is OER and How to get started: https://www.opentrailsmt.org/ ● Ask and answer questions on the statewide OER listserv: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mt-oer-discussion-group ● Ask or search answers on the national Open Textbook Network listserv: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/open-textbook-network ● Learn more with archived webinars featuring national OER experts: https://www.cccoer.org/webinar/ Student success ● Students will need extra care, patience, and clarity as they experience disruption and hardship due to being laid off, child care, family care, tech snags, and more. ● OER can be made available in print at low cost. If a bound copy isn’t already available for purchase, upload a pdf to https://www.lulu.com/ so that students can order copies. Let the bookstore know the course materials you plan to adopt. ● OER can be made fully accessible. More info in PCC’s Accessibility Handbook and from the accessibility services department: [accessibility contact info here] ● Affordable course materials are going to be more important to students than ever. If you don’t find OER that will work for your course, consider using library resources. ● Students will need a place to voice their experiences during this time. Consider adding a discussion board or forum in your online class just for the students to vent, connect personally, and help each other troubleshoot their online experience. They need a safe space to do this. ● SIMPLIFY! Don’t be afraid to cut out content. As John Green said in a TEDX talk, “intellectual engagement instead of ironic detatchment” while inundating students with too much information is the key to quality learning. With so much newness being forced upon them in the world and the classroom, focus on the key elements of your course. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1caQ1jG4_ncY5eQgs5F72jBlPb62qQ8Yl/view ● Reach out to others in the community for ideas or help. Here are some open licensed materials faculty and instructional support members have already created: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iQtZoDphA5XYKHR32zUYJ9imjCh4c1DOfg14MRB7G_I/edit?usp=sharing We are all in this together. See the Advice sheet for Students for some free resources to share with them. This post was adapted from Pandemic Support Sheets for Faculty & Students is adapted from Open Oregon Educational Resources and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

I keep reading phrases in like extraordinary times, challenging times, or similar descriptions that try to connect where we are at and the changes happening around us. I do not write today with that in mind. I write to say that today, teachers, support staff, and administrators are doing the same job they have always done. They are standing up for the universal human right for everyone to have secure and equal access to a quality education today. Each and every one of us deserves something to hang on to, to look toward in the future, to know that there is something that is ours alone that will carry us forward wherever we choose to go in whatever landscape the world provides us. This us is not you and I, but the ever binding race of humanity. Today is no different than any other day in that the profession of education still stands to provide the opportunity to earn and forge our individual ways through this life with hope, with perseverance and personal cost, with defeats and setbacks, with triumphs and successes. Education does this not as individuals but as a profession seeking everyday to make the world around us better, to keep giving hope to each individual who enters into its doors. Whether its a kindergarten student learning their letters or a graduate student hoping to publish their research, education works to meet the needs of its students. We know that we aren't perfect. We know that there are areas that we fail and that we excel in. We also know that every day we continue working to give every human access to the education they deserve. Today is no different than every other day in that each of you working in this field are still doing this regardless of the times we are in. For that, you, my fellow members of this profession, are worthy of honor and gratitude. Thank you. Our path is the same, even if it looks new or less traveled. Open Education Today is no different than days before in that there are a variety of resources and sources by which education provides the materials students need. What has dramatically changed, without an end in site, is our students' ability to use, access, and acquire these resources. Open education is a field within education that provides quality materials and resources without cost, with unlimited ease of access. For the last couple of decades, open education has worked diligently to be the answer and equalizer for quality and equitable education. In a time when publishers and digital platforms are working hard to change practices and give students access, open educational resources do not need work. Their free and open access has always been there and will continue to be. What is different about today is that need for consistent, affordable, and equitable access to educational resources is no longer an area of education that we can afford to discuss. Today's student has more access and financial challenges than they've ever faced. Open educational resources (OER) are no longer a subset or portion of education that can be investigated or tried with proverbial toes dipped into the water. They are not the future of education. They are the today and tomorrow of education. What is different about today is that how education responds to our students' needs and challenges today will define how we move forward as a profession. We have the opportunity to stop trying to address the issues of textbook affordability and make some monumental changes to a system that is very broken. As members of this profession, there has never been a better time or a greater need to change our standard practices of doing business in the classroom than today. Today is about getting education to our students. Let's take this unprecedented opportunity to not give them more financial barriers, sign publisher contracts or commitments that they will have to abide by for the future, or providing more access walls for them to traverse. There is a world-wide community just waiting to help you find the way.

Was there ever a more obvious pair as open educational resources and online instruction? These are natural and easy partners. Why? Because open educational resources (OER) do not all approach providing information the way traditional academic publishing resources do. They are customizable, curated, specific, and flexible. This means that your students are not getting all the information on a topic possible. The chances that they read the materials increases when students know that they are being given material that is digestible and relevant to the lessons or tasks at hand. This means that instructors are relieved from the pressure and struggle of covering too much in a course, trying to make the text fit their course, or adapting their course so much that their students don't even use the materials assigned to pass the course. OER gives instructors the freedom to match course materials with exactly how they teach and what their students need to learn. Need some convincing? This recent article from Inside Higher Ed has great insight from faculty across the U.S. Read what they have to say about making the change. The challenge for many instructors changing their courses to online instruction or to OER is the approach to identifying course materials. In general, instructors are looking for learning materials on their subject, ie. broad coverage. Then, they look for coverage within that text for specific topics. That's too much work and hard to do without getting overwhelmed. Approach it in steps. Not by course, but by each topic and lesson taught. This may sound like more work, but will ultimately be easier and help both instructors and students succeed. Need a little help? That's what we are here for! The TRAILS Intentional Design course was created to help faculty do just this. It will take you step-by-step through the process of changing your course to OER. Montana faculty can join in here with colleagues across the state. The course is free, asynchronous to meet your time needs, and can be taken by any instructor, regardless of their location. Join the class here. The Open Learning Institute is offering to waive all course fees, allowing faculty to register and use their online courseware at no charge. Learn more here. More tactile of a learner and don't want to go through a course? Use this Faculty Workbook for a quick step-by-step guide.

Instructors have a lot to do right now, especially those who have never or rarely taught online. The learning curve is mighty, the workload is substantial, and I know you all needed a break this week. Take care of yourself! You are no good to your students when you are overwhelmed, exhausted, and completely frustrated. Even if it is just for a moment, take a break and remember that we are all going to get through this. Do a lesson at a time, a week at a time. Use your librarians. They have always been here to help you find materials and get students access. It's what they do. Ask for help! Yes, I know we aren't used to that practice, but it's time. Simplify! Simplify! Simplify! I know you're being bombarded with all kinds of materials and resources on how to change your classes to online. This is the simplest and most relevant tool, by far, that I have seen. Thank you to David Buck from Howard Community College for sharing.