 So thank you, everyone. And welcome to our presentation. We are so glad to share this space with you on a Saturday afternoon. So my name is Regina Gong. I am the OER and Student Success Librarian at Michigan State University. And I am here to present with Rajiv. Can you just introduce yourself for a bit? Yeah, thanks Regina. My name is Rajiv Ranjan and I'm an assistant professor. I teach in the Urdu languages. And I also teach SLS, second language acquisition courses in my field program during the summer. Yeah, so what are we going to talk about today? So we've had our introductions already. I am going to give you a brief overview of the MSU OER program. And I'll hand it over to Rajiv to talk about our collaboration with the OER in Hindi, Urdu, and Kimai. And we'll have about five minutes for question and answer for our presentation. So the MSU Libraries OER program is on its third year. And I am a full-time librarian leading the program. So with the OER program comes an OER team, really awesome team composed of our publishing assistant that does print on demand services. We also have a copy editor who does work with our OER authors. And then we also have an accessibility coordinator who does accessibility report for all the OERs that we are producing. And the employee that's assigned to the OER program does a lot of our cover images for the OER that we create. And you'll see some of that later. The OER program is also part of my purview. I have an annual budget for the award program of 50,000 every year. And we are also an institutional member of the Open Education Network. And just this year, an OpenStax institutional partnership program participant. So what are the goals of our OER program? Rajiv, just like hit enter until you get to the end. Okay, thank you. So the goals of our OER program, like many OER programs out there are really to reduce barriers for students in terms of educational costs. And more than that, the platforms that we have encourages our faculty to adopt, do adaptation and creation of OER. And to do that, we provide technical support for our instructors in order to implement the OER in their courses. And also we want to influence pedagogy, right? So we want to be able to support our faculty in innovative pedagogical models that leverages the affordances of OER. And like I mentioned earlier, we have an OER award program work in. We provide an incentive for instructors to encourage them to use OER. So as you know, OERs are free, but it's not free to create them. So we award faculty and support faculty in their work. So this are the categories of awards that we have. So it ranges from adoption, which is, you know, adopting an existing OER, adaptation when you do remix of multiple OER, and creation and development of new OER. So Rajiv here got creation and development of new OER for the Hindi text book. And of course we also have continuous improvement. So continuous improvement are for those OER that faculty want to improve upon, either to create new content or create interactive exercises. More interactive exercises. And the scaling up of OER are those courses that will scale up across multiple sections of the course. And this is the URL for the open textbook publishing site that we have. So we have press books as our authoring platform. And you can go to that site if you want to check it out. Next slide please. And this is our latest titles. So so far we have 10 titles here. And we have more titles that are slated for release this spring. And these are the services we offer. And these are the things that I work with faculty in order to support them. So as a librarian, I help them find and discover, curate appropriate OER that they are going to use for their course. We provide a technology platform so that they can create the OER via textbooks. So like I mentioned, we have copy editing, we have accessibility evaluation. We provide a lot of professional development opportunities, both on campus and online training for faculty and also networking and professional development through presentations in national conferences. So now I will turn you over to Rajiv to talk about his projects. Thank you, Regina. So hello everyone, as you know what Regina just explained without her and her support, I would not be here. So thanks to her and the OER MSU library who supports the instructor like me and teachers like me. And with her help and support, I have published the basic Hindi one last year. And we are, I'm working, basically the one is in the copy editing and basic, which is done by the Tanak. So, so after being trained by Regina and our library colleagues. I am here Daniel Stider, who is our little coordinator and supervisor for less commonly taught languages. We also advise and help our other little instructor like the Tanak. So, so we are on the board as a team. So me, Daniel with Tanak and the Regina and her team from the OER side we put things together to create this valuable material. So when I got this OER award I was new like in the morning I was hearing the system how do you use FIP or how do you, what platform do you use how do you create how much challenges it is to put the FIP and all those things I was new. So I went to go and I watched tons of YouTube videos and attended tons of training program by our librarian and led by Regina. So I learned a lot, but then the support is their technologies there but then as instructor as somebody who's creating the content. I had to decide what are the consideration I'm going to do in my book. So first question as in again in the morning session, my colleagues those who are representing less commonly taught languages, I want to add my voice to their concern that less commonly taught languages do not have kind of trained teachers. So I think the language they're hired, they're also had on a fixed term basis or not on a tenure basis so they're just come here teach and and go walk your dog so they do not have even incentive to kind of do something forward looking so what I thought this would help me and I know this is like the tenure and promotion I'm not on a tenure track again but this actually gave me a lots of kind of pedagogical and educational and professional capital in the field so I would say that even if it is not going to help us non tenure track people, but it does put us out in the in the more open area and more collaborative sense so the first thing I wanted to do because the Hindi books are traditional, but this is the tip pedagogy has been modernized. What should I do, should I shake the world of my Hindi or a South Asian language world, or should I make a certain balance. So that was something can I, and then the pandemic hits as soon as I got the award then I had to think about the people are talking about social interaction can textbook itself and interact with the audience. So can it be used by a standalone audience who does not have access to the language instructor, who are my readers is this for legal instructors and teachers is this for hated students or non hated students. What should be my proficiency goal, and I come from a second language acquisition background my PhD in SLA, generative approach of SLA from University of Iowa. I'm not just brass off my SLA mine and I'm thinking what should be my technical framework and pedagogical approaches and teaching techniques, and then if the edge five piece available can we gamify a little bit so I thought mixed method would be a good idea. So this book, or not just this book which is the example of Hindi that you see but Urdu and Kamai and incoming book that I also, and I just thanks to Regina that I also got the person with the person instructor we are co author of a person text book. Now these books have eight chapters, the first chapter is on a script because you know like either you're talking about Percy and Hindi or Urdu or Kamai, they're non Roman language is non Roman script so it takes lots of time. And then the chapter two to eight has a similar structure it starts with the title, and it announced the goals of the chapter like can do sort of statement, then it reviews the previous chapter then there are two or three reading. Every chapter has a study abroad section so somebody who's preparing for the study abroad, I kind of imagine conversation and situation, and it has a grammar points and I'll tell you why I included that, and it ends with the cultural nodes and extra optional online material. Very quickly, not much to kind of dig in about the SLA thing, but the socio culturally standing tractionism combines together. So the idea was to create something that interactive or the conversational material which also has lots of socio and cultural content built in so thematic buys wise conversation and then before the reading or listening so each reading is also audio recorded as a close CC close caption for somebody who is has the accessibility issues, and then it has a pre reading and post reading and during reading activities defined. So that critical approach is socio social interactionist theory. So if you see this example that I kind of screenshot this so you can see that there is a conversation one by one, and then the right side you will see that the, the h5p material which you have the prompt and you can drag the correct response to that. This is also like a helping kind of a step by step and I'll talk about the pedagogical approaches. So when I'm thinking about the pedagogical approaches, you know the Kagan and Dylan, they talk about micro and macro approach and when I'm trying to put it in my classroom. Typically, my classroom has 80% or 70% haters and 30% non haters, so I cannot just avoid non haters or avoid hated. So, and that's true for all less commonly taught languages in my point of view. So what I wanted to create is something mixed. So when you are thinking about the heritage or HLL the macro would work better which looks at the top down. So you give the authentic material and they track it induce it to the certain level, and when you're talking about the non haters, it bottoms up so to use it. So that's sort of the methodology or pedagogical approaches that I was thinking when I'm writing that book. So you saw in the previous picture when I wrote, I give you the example of the conversation. That's my crew, but these kind of activity or these kind of reading is macro which is like give the authentic material or the SS sort of thing, and you can see this highlighted point or underlying words in Hindi, and even do. These are the words that you can click and the grocery so the vocabulary acquisition is also put together in that way. So there's a list of vocabulary, but also glossing while reading so either the if I'm a kind of a person who loves to learn in an inductive way or deductive way. I try to create something that fits lots of different style of learning approaches and pedagogical approaches that little teachers could have. So this is another example you can see that the, the days example based on grammar on the first S5P where there is a very concrete micro approach one and one grammar instruction, but then you'll see that pre leading or listening activities or even recording stuff where there is a task based instructor is instruction or communicative approach that I tried to kind of mix and match. I think I touched upon that a little bit deductive and inductive or implicit or explicit. So when I teach the master program which has lots of foreign language teachers as cool teachers those who take this master's program at MSU, and we do that kind of action research where they always try to do like which which approach is better implicit approach or explicit approach, you know, so, and then they collect the data so that was also in my mind that how do I mix it both because the result is still out the debate is still ongoing some research shows that implicitly based or some research shows explicit is better. My personal knowledge about this is like it depends on what features you're teaching so if it is an interpretable feature or feature that does not have any semantic contribution in the language. You can use explicit, but if there is a semantic value of certain features in the language implicit could work so I'm not one or the other side, I'm still I love all approaches and all pedagogical approaches so that inform my kind of how do I frame this. So you'll see that chapter six and chapter eight I gave you the example. So if, if let's say that I'm a person who wants to teach implicitly, I will teach the reading and listening thing first and try to highlight implicitly those grammar points which would be 8.6, 8.7, 8.8, 8.9. But if I'm a teacher who wants to kind of teach explicitly or deductively, then I'll teach the grammar first and then the reading and listening would be the more input to kind of strengthen those grammatical points or to reach the like the in the beginning of the chapter where this can do a statement or goals that can be reached. And so there are lots of like, again, I voice again with the little instructor that there's not much. And if, even if there's much I saw a presentation where they kind of copy the bookmarks oh this is a good material book market. This is a good material available in Hindi or do come I, but it is all scattered so I thought when I'm writing a sort of a comprehensive textbook for a semester or two. I want to kind of gamify this so this thanks to we are library help that the book is accessible on a phone. So if the students are taking a bus to come to classroom they can still play this kind of drag and drop game or true or game and they can check their answer and our library has also enabled our we are to hook it up with our D2L which the platform we use to teach so you can also assign it as a homework. These are a couple of more example of like how we're trying to gamify this you have already seen in today's conference. Many colleagues those who are creating or your materials they're all are using h5p are not unique, but this is something the part of our all the books which I'm and Regina we are really proud of. These are the projects we can see that I have basically one out, my is being copy edited, we have Turkish Uzbek Vietnamese and I forgot to mention that we have a person and Augustine is here hopefully we can collaborate with the University of Michigan for Indonesian. And so these are the project where Regina is our kind of base without her without our library we can't do it, but then me and Daniel, and the colleagues like with on or Augustine and our Turkish and was bacon structure, we all collaborate and we kind of a part of a family to produce something. I'm really proud to say that our book Hindi book at least is being used in three different universities, and people are using the study abroad program, which is American student of Indian studies, because the two years study abroad program was online, and they wanted these materials to kind of teach language scholars are the basic basic knowledge level students. So, last words, our color is going to go ahead, we have two and a half minutes. So I just really want to summarize our library and faculty partnership, you know using this three C so communication collaboration, and ultimately connection. So, as what Rajiv has mentioned, you know, he brings the expertise, not just in the content but in the pedagogy for for teaching the languages that he teaches. From the get go what we established is our communication. So open communication and constant and regular checking in. So before this even, you know, come into fruition, we sat down, and I talked to him about the sign. So we're going to render this in press books. You know the outline for for the we are and I think it really helped him as the as he designed this really awesome we are. And I really see it as a collaboration. So there are strengths that librarians bring into the table that can help faculty become more successful as they create this we are. So accessibility, all this interactive exercises, making sure that all of the videos are captioned, making sure that the images that they incorporate are all openly licensed. What else Rajiv what else did you get out of our partnership. Everything I mean we just are like, you know, like in India we say like we are child, and if our librarian want to mold in a certain way we do have a content and the teachers are expert of their language. But as I said in the onset of this presentation that not all of us have those expertise so maybe I know Hindi better, but some of the colleague knows the OER platform better. And, and I'm not where I'm today. I look back two or three years ago when I got the OER first time award Regina. I feel like, oh my God, I'm going to do this what is press book, you know, and, and thanks to hold, hand holding of all of us and the support that I have here with Daniel. You know, Celta like Emily is here so this is like a MSU is a big family. And the key point guys is the lunch that we have and we'll talk and we'll, we'll decide things and how can we can move forward so this close collaboration and sharing our expertise. And that makes it really beautiful and it is, it is good, not for MSU, but out there at other universities in India and anywhere people want to use so I'll, I'll like, just open it for questions. And I'm going to stop saying so that people can jump in for the conversation. Is that okay Regina. Yeah, and I just want to address Carl's question question here if, obviously we have a really great participation from our language faculty shout out to Shannon here who's also one of our OER award recipients and really doing awesome work with the Russian OER. Yes, we are, I am working with faculty from different disciplines. So, so far. So if you look at our published titles, there are titles there for organismal biology neuroscience neurobiology. We have published our third round of OER awards and we have faculty teaching biology education. And so, you know, it's, it's not limited to just languages, although language, our language faculty really are so committed in turning all of the language courses into OER. We are more focused on a pedagogy. That's why we kind of shine because we just dive in like how to teach it right. But the neuroscientists, they know how to draw the concept and they are good so we put lots of and and the OER website that we our library has lots of copyright free material for images so I don't have to go in in a mire and click the picture of oranges and apples. This is the whole copyright free images available that I can use and little door has like Daniel has put together years of years of years of collection of those material that also helps. So it's a collaboration at many level with many people. Thank you very very much for answering that question and if we have time for a couple other questions here. Anybody wants to know how do you do a collaboration I wrote and say collaboration is beautiful when it works. But it doesn't always work. And so I wanted to ask you. So the strategic sauce the special sauce so the how do you get things to work is it communication or what are the special takeaways that we need. Well, I hope I hope in your institutions you are collaborating with your librarians or whoever is in charge or leads your OER program because really that is a secret, you know that is in itself the secret. You know if you harness that expertise that that librarian can offer and also the expertise that of course the faculty OER creator can can have. So I, there's, there's a lot of times when I connect the faculty from an external institution with a librarian from their institution because they just don't know. Right and it really it really is helpful for you to reach out to them, because they have a lot of times the OER program resides in libraries and so you know there they'll be really the really the people who can support you in your projects. Well, I thank you for saying that because I say that often, but it's good to hear other people join especially coming from a librarian. And part of this conference is to get developers to talk to other developers and share their stories many of them. And I think what Rajiv was Rajiv was talking about about feeling overwhelmed at first, not having the technical expertise, having the content experience in Hindi and or do whatever but not really knowing how to put all the pieces together. The key player is of course your library or your open educational librarian, and they exist on college campuses and oftentimes we don't know about them so. You're promoting yourself and the good work that you're doing in the libraries, because they're they're really the glue that kind of puts these things together.