 Good afternoon, thank you for joining us today for this session creating faculty student partnerships using the UN SDGs and open pedagogy on Dr. Michael Mills from Montgomery College and I'm excited to be joined by colleagues from Montgomery College and including the moderator for this session Samantha of inner roots. So it's like given a presentation dorm professional week for us. I'd like to have our group introduce themselves and first let me turn it to Shinta Hernandez. Thank you Dr. Mills. Hi everybody, I am Shinta Hernandez from Montgomery College. I'm the department chair of sociology anthropology and criminal justice. Thanks Shinta. We're also joined by several faculty members who have been participants in this fellowship. Rebecca you want to introduce yourself please. Thanks Mike. I'm Rebecca Razzavi and I am the director of a program at Montgomery College called the Southern Management Leadership Program which is a scholarship and mentoring program for students in their second year at the school and happy to be here. Thanks Rebecca. Hey everyone I'm Zev Kossin I'm a professor of anthropology at Montgomery College and also at American University. And I taught a course called human evolution and archaeology, which is what this presentation was about. Thank you. Thanks Sam. The beauty of a virtual conference is that we get to invite students to attend and participate with us in an opportunity that they may not otherwise get because of the travel and I'm really excited to be joined by two outstanding students. Jalissa you want to say hello. Yes hi everyone. I'm so excited to be here today. My name is Shilisa Mohano and I'm a government politics student at the University of Maryland. I'm a former MC alumni. Thanks Jalissa and Parveen. Hello everyone my name is Parveen and I'm an interior design student. I'm so happy and excited to be here. Thank you. And before we get started I would like to begin by acknowledging the Pistataway people the traditional custodians of the land on which we've reside in Maryland. But I'd also like for you to do more in your presentations than just the land acknowledgments that that are so prevalent today I encourage you to find out about the traditional custodians of the land on which you reside so that you can speak more eloquently about their inhabitants. Our program focuses on open pedagogy but it started with our OER work in focusing on cost savings and the work that we've done at Montgomery College over the year since we've been tracking this has resulted in almost $8 million. The number on the slide is should be 7.9 million at this point. And thanks to and achieving the dream grant that Samantha was was in fact engaged in. We were able to create a general studies online degree. Z degree and that also helped force us to start tracking our courses. And so as a result of this track and we've been able to identify these these call savings but we've quickly realized that it was more than than just saving students money. I mean that was great. We really acknowledge that we wanted to provide students with an opportunity to save money and continue their education but from a faculty standpoint and administrative standpoint it was about student learning and student success. And so we've involved the same time we've been tracking the call savings we've also been able to track the success in our Z courses and compare those to the non Z courses and break that down by ethnicity and by race by gender and what we have found is that students are doing as well if not better in the C courses as they do in the non Z courses. And then we've we've taken it just one step further and focused on social justice and Shinta and I had the pleasure of sitting in a presentation at open ed in Anaheim a few years ago and it was a presentation that cable green was not giving on the SDGs and we left there and wondered how could we marry this concept of the sustainable development goals through the United Nations and open pedagogy and so with a little brainstorming between ourselves and with some colleagues we came up with this faculty fellowship that is designed to make students agents of change in their their own community and we'll talk a little bit more about that process. I do want to encourage you as we go along if you have any questions please post them in the chat we will either answer them in the chat or at the end of the session. So this fellowship that that we offered starts in March of every year where we have a call for applications and the teams that we put together are interdisciplinary and when we first started in their campus we have free campuses at Montgomery College and when we first started we wanted to pair faculty outside of their discipline and outside of their campus we really wanted to take them out of their comfort zone and so we created a summer institute in which the faculty would get together in teams and learn about open pedagogy learn about the sustainable development goals and marry the two by creating renewable assignments those assignments that David Wiley said have sustainability or have a continuity for students assignments that mean something they don't have a shelf life and I think we've all had those assignments where you're you're given a paper to write the minute that classes over that paper and the thoughts of that paper go with you so as we've expanded the program and Shinto will talk a little bit about this shortly we've brought in some other institutional partners and the teams are still interdisciplinary but now they're inter institutional so we have teams faculty working with members faculty of other institutions so it may be that Montgomery College faculty is working with someone in Canada or on the west coast and as they go through the summer institute they're developing these renewable assignments that are used in the fall class in their fall classes. And as I mentioned students become agents of change in their own communities that creates an engagement level for the students that they may not have otherwise had as we've gone through four years of this program now we have had students tell us that they are provided assignments and learning opportunities that they won't soon forget and Jelissa and Parveen will talk about their experiences shortly. The other part of the process that is important is this faculty reflection piece faculty looking at what worked and what didn't work and then making changes as they continue these assignments and subsequent semesters. It isn't this program isn't designed for faculty to develop their assignments, use them in one semester. We really encourage them to continue this process in multiple semesters and for Beck and them I think we'll speak to that. As, as we get into the panel presentation part of the discussion. And then finally, in February of each year, we provide students and faculty opportunities to partner together to showcase what they, they've learned so that the faculty member will talk about the assignment. The student will talk about the assignment, the student will demonstrate the output of that assignment and they're just fascinating reflections of the teaching and learning that goes away in any given semester. And with that, let me ask Shinta to talk about our most current cohort. Absolutely, thank you Mike so I'm happy to introduce to you, our institutional partners for this cohort by way of their logos. So of course there's Montgomery College there and that so that was the first year is just us and then the following year, KPU, Portland Polytechnic University in Canada, joined us and they continue to join us this year. Pima Community Colleges joined us that following year and they continue as a partner. And then we've added these for this year. The Community College of Baltimore County CCBC in Maryland, Pima Community College in Arizona, Langara College in Canada, and Thompson Rivers University, also in Canada. We are excited about the contributions that are being made across North America in this fellowship. And in fact, we have a press book toolkit that we will share with you in the chat at some point today. And really this is an opportunity to take a look at what others have done in the past and adapt and adopt as you see fit for your own purposes. It's almost like a recipe book to get a sense of how we've done this fellowship and how you can contribute to the world of open education. And of course, if any of you are interested, we can talk about what an official partnership might look like later on. So I'd like to share with you the growth of the fellowship presented on the next slide as a table. And so what you'll see momentarily. I'm happy. Technical difficulties. So what you'll see here is over the course of four summers or four years, you can see the growth of the number of fellows that we've had over time. And so we're of course especially proud at this increase and we can't wait to see what summer 2022 will look like. And of course, as Mike pointed out, our faculty are paired in teams that are interdisciplinary and inter institutional. And you can see that again the seven institutional partners that we have here. What's very interesting a data piece that I'd like to point out is the number of disciplines that are that are covered or represented in this fellowship has grown from just 11 to 12 disciplines in the very beginning to now 26 disciplines. We're seeing more and more fields that we didn't see in the past and we, we are so excited to see how, how those faculty and those in those academic disciplines can contribute to this fellowship. More courses of course, in which these renewable assignments are being deployed 29 different courses as opposed to 16 when we first just started so great growth in that. The number of students have also increased, I will point out though that when you see summer 2021 and 970 students, please note that that actually does not include all of our students just yet we're still in the midst of collecting the data. Many of our faculty fellows are teaching late start accelerated courses. And so those courses begin in about a couple of weeks so those of course we don't have the data for the number of students just yet so we will continue updating this to reflect the accurate number of students. And then as Mike pointed out when he showed you the learning process or the professional development process. We don't know yet how many students will be involved in our February showcase, but you can see again. You know it's a very selective process of course so we get students who are want to be a part of that who want to partner with their faculty and be able to highlight what they have done through this fellowship and so we continue to see interest in that space. Great. And we, we are also very humbled and honored at the recognition on the next slide that we received last year by open education global. It is the open pedagogy award for excellence last year so really this award is kudos to the faculty and the students who are involved in this work, particularly those who started with us in the beginning walked on on a journey with us that was a little bit unknown, and then those of the faculties and students to continue to walk with us on this journey and just do amazing things, as you will see with these two pairs of panelists that we will talk to in in just a second so when you get a chance, as Mike pointed out, please take a look at our website that is written down there to get a better sense of the different things that the different student projects that have been done over the last four years. So now, I would like to turn us to the panel discussion itself is the most exciting part of our, of our presentation today. And I'd like to first start with Professor Rebecca Razzabi and her student Julissa Mahano. Rebecca, can you tell us briefly what was your renewable assignment for this particular fellowship, and what came out of that. Sure, I would love to thanks Chenta. Well as I mentioned when I was introducing myself I run a program that develops students leadership capabilities, but it's based around two courses in entrepreneurship. And I was really excited to be part of this project because we focus a lot in our program on something called social entrepreneurship which aligns very nicely with the UN sustainable development goals. Another kind of term that we band the about is corporate social responsibility because that's sort of at a corporate level what businesses are doing to help promote the goals of the United Nations. And that, and Julissa this might be new for you to because it is a pretty new term that term is being kind of put to the side and the new term is environmental social and governance which are the three areas that businesses are now being held more accountable for in terms of what they do to provide social and environmental justice to help to contribute to the goals like those of the United Nations. So that's a theme that we have sort of in our program, particularly in our fall course. And, and through this project, it's been a matter of we have one final project which Jalissa is going to talk to you a little bit more about, but it's actually it's important to understand that it's part of a whole semester so we do some reading around social entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility and this new term, environmental social and governance. And, and then we actually have speakers who come in who are working with companies to help them become more socially and environmentally responsible and, and have online discussion so it extends over the course of the semester at at the point where this particular project comes in they've they've had that experience. And, and then I've asked them to create an infographic about a company that they're interested in learning more about. So that's what you can see on your screen there is Jalissa's project, each of the students chose a business, and they look to see what that business was doing to help support the UN SDGs. And then the last piece of it that I just I think is is probably as renewable or as expandable to other other disciplines as anything is that this becomes part of a digital badge that students can learn so by going through all of these changes, they can earn a badge, a change maker digital badge that that the school provides to them, after they have completed all these things and can show that they've done that. Jalissa was the very first to earn this badge so I'm so pleased that she's here with us today. And that's, and so that's that's kind of a big picture of our project. Before I get to Jalissa I'm interested. So, when, when you became a part of this fellowship, how did creating these renewable assignments impact your pedagogical outlook. Oh, that's so that's so great. So in some ways it aligned with my pedagogical outlook already which was that it's really important for students have opportunities to be creative. And to also be exploring things that are outside the world of academia and kind of the academic literature and those those things so it really did align with what I think is really important for a long time is important. And a new piece of it for me was like engaging students in technology. So they used a program called Canva, which is a free tool that that students can use. And they can use it for lots of things going forward anytime they have to do flyers and marketing materials. So it gave them an opportunity to to kind of test the waters with with this tool. And they came up with things really, you know, that are beautiful and creative and, and were helped by the tools so that was that was part of what was new to me was was engaging students with that technology. And just lastly did you find that students were generally receptive to the idea, hesitant. Yeah, that's a great question. I did not realize until Jalissa and I were speaking about this later that there was some hesitancy. We just throw these assignments out and they come back with something but we don't know what they're you know how they approached it. So realizing that yes there was some hesitancy because it's a new. It's a new way of doing things that you, you know, you're not writing a paper, you're actually trying to create something that looks nice and it's concise and has all these images and all this, these kinds of things to it. So what I've done since then you were talking earlier about how I think Mike was talking about how, you know, we continue to improve our, our, our assignments, based on understanding some of that hesitancy I'm now doing more in terms of doing like live demonstrations of how to use this technology in class we did that. I'm so fortunate that we've had one semester where students have turned in assignments so I can share examples with them. And they asked for that and you know they were there I can say yeah here's jealous as assignment, you know this gives you an idea of, and here's some others to give you an idea of what's what's available to you. And the last thing that I've sort of changed a little bit actually this isn't about being resistant or hesitant but it's actually it's more in terms of my, my new understanding of how technology can help our students so this semester we're also going to be creating with another app it's called book creator if you aren't familiar with that it's a really interesting application where you can embed all kinds of audio and video and things into a virtual book or a digital book and we'll be able to take all of the infographics that the students have put together individually and put them together as a whole class assignment so I'm really excited about that as something new as well. That was wonderful, Rebecca thank you so much for sharing your perspective on this and, and I'm really pleased to hear about the continued professional development that you're engaging it for yourself that, even though the fellowship is over you are using some of the tools strategies knowledge resources that you learn from the fellowship and figuring out different strategies and such to continue your, your assignments. Thank you for that. Angela someone asked you a few questions. So when these assignments were first announced in Professor vis-à-vis class, what was your thoughts, what was your reaction. Thank you for that question and it was really interesting to hear every, all the new things that have come around after this assignment. But when this assignment was first announced I was really excited to like do some research on the goals and missions of the just because I really care deeply about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and I also care about like what corporations and companies are doing to reach those goals, because as a consumer that is what matters to me. And I'm not going to lie I was nervous at first when we, when we were introduced to this assignment because I had never created anything on Canva, which is the platform that we use to create the infographic. And I thought that I needed more skills I thought I needed to be some like graphic designer to be able to use this but it was very user friendly because Canva actually has infographics already kind of pre made for you and you just put in your information that you need so this infographic template that I use actually was already made like sections already and I just added my pictures and my text and all that so it was very nice and easy to use. Thank you I appreciate that. Now, you mentioned being new to Canva so how else was this assignment or this fellowship experience different from your past learning experiences. Yes, thank you for that question as well. This was definitely different from my past learning experiences because I was so used to, you know, writing an essay to get my point across but then this was definitely different because I had to think strategically on how I'm what kind of information am I going to put on this one page infographic to get my point across to have my professor realize that like I am understanding the material. So it was definitely made me think a little bit more, but in a good way like it tapped into my creativity, which I don't get to be creative when I'm writing an essay that's like a different kind of mindset that you have to be in. So I really enjoyed that. And I really appreciate you're saying that because I can sense the passion that is that is in you as you talk about your experience and the creativity and flexibility that you were given to really shine through an assignment like this. Thank you, Jelissa for sharing. I'm going to now turn to our second pair of panelists here. So we have professors Dev Kausson with his student Parveen Hussein. Would you mind telling us a bit about your project and your experience in the fellowship. Sure, thank you. So I integrated this project into a course called human evolution and archaeology, which is really a course about human origins and the story of the six million year journey of humans and our hominin ancestors. And so what I did I was paired with a couple of faculty partners from Quantland Polytechnic University, who were experts in sustainable horticulture. And so came up with this idea to create an ethnogony. The idea was to use to combine our two fields of anthropology and horticulture and think about sort of in two pieces think about the problem of our food systems at a global level, and how we can increase the sustainability of of our environment and our food production. So we did this in two pieces. The first piece and this was back when classes were still in person. You can see there on the slide on the bottom sort of in the middle there's a couple students who are there with their cell phones. And the idea was to do an archaeological survey. But instead of looking for archaeological remains we were actually just identifying so called weed species. The researchers there taking photographs and they're using the app called I naturalist to record to take a picture of the weeds and then upload them into the app. And then with that the students from my partner's class could identify those as well as the public. And then using that information the students had to do two things. The two part ethnobotany. And the first was to research one of those weed species. And to see if there were other sorts of medicinal or edible properties of that so called weed species. And therefore understand how those plants came to be considered needs, or how they came to be considered something that we just need to eradicate instead of for example eating or using as medicine. So that was important to think about new sort of sustainable uses of plants that really are all around us and why we consider them weeds. And then the second part of the ethnobotany was where I asked students to think of a plant that had special meaning to them in their lives. And this could be literally any, any plant that could be something with an individual connection with a family connection cultural connection anything. The same thing to create an ethnobotany where they research its, its, its origins its botanical origins how it got to wherever it was. Whether it's something that they could, you know they could submit a recipe for. And just to tell that story of what the meaningful connection is to them in their lives. So the idea was to think about this long millions of years long journey of the relationship of humans to our environments in different ways. And I would just say that the assignment, especially the second part became something that could be really easily transferred to the online format to online learning, and that's where it was in that format that Parveen was part of this, this project. Thank you, I appreciate you're talking about the evolution of the project particularly the evolution of which your pedagogical may have shifted from that face to face environment to this online environment. How else did being a part of this fellowship or creating this renewable assignment change your teaching. Well, I mean, looking back, this was, I did this really in my first year as a college professor. So, so everything that I got from it I mean it was formative to the way that I teach now in the of thinking about myself less as an instructor or a teacher and more as, you know, someone who facilitates, not just student teaching but also student teaching that I've I've learned as much from students as I'm sure they've, they've gained from me. So it's completely changed it and also thinking about ways of doing this as, as what some call culturally sustaining pedagogies right or, you know, doing assignments that that actually affirm who students are that that meets them where they are and as they come into the classroom. So it's completely changed the dynamic and how I how I approach my, my teaching, and to be able to do that toward a particular aim toward social justice or toward some of these critical crises that were that we're experiencing now is just as a game changer. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing the significance of this of this fellowship and particularly your assignments in both the short term and the long term. I appreciate that. So I'm going to turn this over to your student Parveen hello. Hello. So when the assignment was first announced by Professor Kauston, what was your thought what was your reaction. I would like to thank my professor for bringing up such an intriguing and engaging class I truly enjoyed your class. So when the ethnobotany project was introduced. It really sounded exciting to me. We had to choose a plan that that had closed our personal meeting to us and I've always had obsession for roses. And I was able to express my thoughts and understanding in a creative manner. And then the project included various segments such as the characteristics, taxonomy classification, and the cultural history which has definitely deepened my knowledge. The most unique part of the project was to come up with two recipes. And I totally love the project. Thank you. And I love that you have a love for roses, because I do too. So it's nice to see how that love can transform into something as meaningful as this. Parveen, just one more question for you. So, were you comfortable with this assignment when you first got it takes some getting used to how is this different from the past learning experience of yours. Definitely I was I was really comfortable. I was able to work in a calm environment. So like Julisa said we've always done essays and we've always do exams a lot of the times, and especially as an interior design student I always deal with designs and So I was like able to incorporate like I took the pictures on my own, like the roses pictures and then I design my own slides and then the font. So it was really different. It was a very, I must say it was a really good experience. I loved it. That is wonderful and in fact actually your response just now is a great segue to my last question for our two students on the panel. So Parveen I'll just start with you since you're already unmuted. You mentioned your major and how this assignment lends itself to your, your degree program your major. What other impact that this renewable have assignment have on your, your academic or your personal your professional growth, or your ability to make change in your communities. So a greater degree. What I understood from the project was that we need to protect our plant species as they are very precious to our world, and we need to spread awareness to our communities. In terms of preserving our plants, plant species, and as an interior design student as an individual. It is of a responsibility to my responsibility to make the world a better place. And thank you professor for teaching me. I mean us about it. Oh, I love that. Thank you so much Parveen for sharing that with us. So Jalissa, I'm going to ask you the same question what impact that this renewable assignment have on your, your academic, your personal your professional growth or your ability to make change in the communities. Thank you for that question. So the impact that it had on me was that it definitely improved my research and my presentation skills. I was able I only had one page essentially to create the most impactful like assignment. And so I had to build the requirements of the assignment, I had to show how these companies mission aligned with the UN SGG is all in one page. So it definitely helped me improve my research and presentation skills. And I also feel like this assignment prepared me professionally because as an aspiring social entrepreneur and policymaker. I learned that successful presentations are impactful when they're concise and clear. So that's what this helped me realize. And between the two of you Jalissa and Parveen you shared with us so many of the outcomes that we hope to to have students reach by the end of their fellowship experience with the faculty fellows right it's the making the world a better place it's it's increasing awareness about how we can make a difference. It's also the conference presentation skills it's the communication skills it's the leadership skills it's all of that, all holistically wrapped up in one fellowship. So thank you so much to the two of you for sharing. All four of you are so inspiring. Thank you so much for sharing your experience, Rebecca ends up as a faculty fellow, and then a special thank you to Julissa and Parveen students who we have just relied on and and just admire so much for your great work. And so now I turn this over back to Mike. Thanks, Shinta. And thank you, Rebecca said, Parveen and Julissa. I do have one, one final question for Parveen and Julissa. We have a lot of faculty, a lot of administrators who are sitting in on on this session and who will listen to the recording. What words of advice could you give them as they're looking to diversify their, their assignments the types of assignments that they provide their students. Julissa. I would definitely encourage teachers and professors to use an assignment like this, and also to encourage students to look more into the UN SDGs, and how businesses can easily incorporate this into their mission. Because for me like I was pretty ignorant to all the UN SDGs except for the ones I really cared about, because I did a lot of research on those but this assignment allowed me to expose myself to the ones I hadn't done research on so I definitely encourage people to become issues. Wonderful. Thank you, Parveen. I was just saying like, as a student, all these projects like it just, I had to like, I sat down and thought for a moment. And then it really had an impact on me so like every student like a hood, who goes through is through this kind of project school will definitely have an impact. Thank you. And for those who are attending if you have questions about the fellowship and you're interested in learning more feel free to reach out to shinter or I were we're always looking for institutional partners. We're having conversations now with a community college in Illinois and also a four year institution in Costa Rica about joining the partnership and I think it's just exciting opportunities to think about faculty pairing with faculty from different schools different different countries, different types of institution as as we move this this work forward so thank you and we'll we have a few minutes I think Samantha for for some questions. There's any any questions in the chat. Okay, Samantha just texted me and her screen is frozen so she's also having technical difficulties and civil. So if you have a question do any of the teachers house these projects publicly somewhere. And Shinta you want to talk a little bit about that the press book and the website. Absolutely so the website that the Montgomery College website that was on the slide has a wide range of both the renewable assignments from previous years as well as student projects. It doesn't have all of them but for the website we selected some to put on there. All the other institutional partners have their own respective websites that they share, or that they have their assignments as well. The press book that I mentioned earlier that is like our recipe book. That is an ongoing recipe book because as the years go on we will continue to put renewable assignments and student projects in there as well. Montgomery College has the Maryland open source textbook comments hub, which is another online repository where we house our assignments. So there are many many different places where you can find these and I'm sure if you talk to the other six institutional partners, they might have additional ones as well. James, James asked if there were opportunities to join the initiative that and absolutely we're always looking for institutional partners. I'm back sorry about that so we have one last minute any final comments or questions and anybody, any of the panelists who want to stick around or any of the participants you want to stick around afterwards you're welcome to use the room. I'm going to shut down the recording and otherwise shutting down the record.