Track Session Type

Sustainability: Grant Acquisition & Management, Sustainability, Engaging Student Leaders, OER for Resilience, OER Community Building, OER and Technology

Presentation Type

Panel Presentation

OER Level of Expertise

Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced

Audience

Faculty, Librarian, instructional designer, Administrator, Staff

What I Wish Someone had Told Me: Insights on building sustainable impact with open education

Session Abstract

Veteran leaders of trailblazing open education projects and programs reflect on key lessons they have learned (and/or continue to learn) about community-building, establishing sustainable support systems, and demonstrating impact with open education. This session brings together visionary minds representing different contexts of open education, ranging from system-level initiatives and multi-institution collaborations to institution-level capacity-building and program-level learning design transformation that empowers students using open pedagogy. Attend this session to benefit from the creativity and collective wisdom that comes from sharing what we glean from failures and successes in the OER journey.

Keywords

Sustainable support systems, demonstrating impact, community-building, learning from failure

Objectives of the Session

Identify insights and approaches that contribute to increasing sustainability and achieving meaningful impact for open education initiatives

Full Description of the Session

This session brings together panelists who have led significant open education initiatives in a variety of contexts. They have pushed boundaries and forged trails for others to emulate. By bringing together visionary minds with wide-ranging experiences, this panel discussion will surface insights that apply to multiple facets of the OER journey.

The session begins with a real-time poll inviting attendees to share their context and experience level with open education. Leading into the discussion, the moderator will invite attendees to consider the panel questions. This approach provides opportunities for everyone not only to benefit from panelists’ perspectives, but also to reflect on their own lessons learned. Panel questions may include:

• What is a key insight you wish someone had told you when you were getting started with open education? What person or experience taught you this lesson?

• Community is in the DNA of open education. What’s an essential lesson you’ve learned about supporting and sustaining a community around open education?

• Share a notable failure and what you learned from this failure.

• Describe a moment when you realized your work was making a real difference. What did this teach you about “impact” and how to demonstrate impact?

In the final ten minutes, the audience will be invited to join the panel discussion with questions and comments. A final online poll will invite attendees to share: What is a key insight you have gleaned in your work with open education? Poll results will be captured and shared after the session concludes.

Presenter Bios

Panelist: Marilyn Billings, ROTEL project, formerly Head of Scholarly Communication at University of Massachusetts Amherst

Marilyn Billings, is the faculty consultant and coordinator of the Publishing Support Team for the U.S Dept of Education funded ROTEL project. In this role, she coordinates a small team of copy editors, an interactive media specialist, and a technical editor. The team works closely with the faculty as they complete new or adapted texts, providing guidance and support throughout the publication process primarily using Pressbooks. In her previous position, Marilyn was the lead on “all things open” including open access, open education, among other responsibilities.

Panelist: Millie Gonzalez, Library Dean Framingham State University

Millie Gonzalez is the Library Dean of Framingham State University and a Principal Investigator (PI) of the Remixing Open Textbooks Through an Equity Lens (ROTEL) program funded by the federal Department of Education's Open Textbook Pilot grant program. She also is the co-chair of the MA OER Advisory Council which leads statewide open education efforts with the MA Department of Higher Education.

Panelist: Terry Greene, Trent University

Terry Greene is enthusiastic about open, networked, and connected online learning and brings that to his work as Senior eLearning Designer for Trent Online. He holds a B.Ed. in Elementary Education from the University of Alberta and a M.Sc. in Instructional Design & Technology from the University of North Dakota. He is interested in both the cutting and trailing edges of technology in education. Especially those uses that increase the human element in technology-enabled learning. Hint, hint, those are probably the more open ones.

Panelist: Andrew McKinney, City University of New York (CUNY)

Andrew McKinney, PhD is the OER Coordinator for the Office of Library Services at the City University of New York's Central Office. In this role, he helps oversee the CUNY OER Program which supports, promotes, and incentivizes the use of Open Educational Resources and Zero Textbook Cost materials at all the undergraduate serving institutions of the City University of New York. He earned a PhD in Sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center and in his 18 years at CUNY he’s been a student, a teacher, an open educational technologist, an instructional designer, and an administrator amongst other roles at multiple CUNY institutions. He is an ardent supporter of public higher education and the role that OER can play in expanding access to the most equitable and radical version of what it can be.

Moderator: Julie Curtis, Pressbooks

Julie Curtis is VP of Growth & Strategy at Pressbooks, a position that builds on her experiences directing market intelligence, strategic partnerships, communications and marketing strategy for multiple organizations in the edtech space. Julie loves building teams and brands that become indispensable partners to the organizations they serve. Julie has a lifelong love of learning, a B.A. in English from BYU, and a Master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Publishing Permission

1

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Presenters

Terry Greene, Trent UniversityFollow
Andrew McKinney, CUNYFollow
Julie Curtis, PressbooksFollow
Millie Gonzales, Framingham State UniversityFollow
Marilyn Billings, ROTELFollow

Start Date

5-4-2024 2:30 PM

End Date

5-4-2024 3:20 PM