 Hey everybody, thank you so much for joining us. I am Veronica Howard. I'm a faculty member in the University of Alaska Anchorage psychology department. But one of my favorite hats to wear is actually as a co chair of UAAs textbook affordability committee. And I get to work very closely with one of my favorite colleagues in the whole world DRC Hutchings. I'm going to turn it over for that introduction. Hey there. Yes, I'm DRC Hutchings. I am an associate professor of library science. My more informal title is instructional design librarian and also sort of a de facto OER librarian. And so happy to be partnered with Veronica Howard on our UA textbook affordability initiative. All right, and I'm getting a notice here that our screen may not be fully shared. But let me know a little bit more about what you mean there is that I can try to fix it. What we're going to be doing today is talking a little bit about how to try to build up a program how to facilitate faculty support faculty involvement. At a time when our resources may not really draft. Unfortunately, what I'm hearing is that the the screen share has started, but folks can't see it, which is a small challenge that I've been having lately. I'm going to try it one more time but what may happen is I may have to step out and come back in order to get folks to see my screen. And now yes, no. All right, give me just a moment I'm going to step away and then come back in just a moment. Alternatively, Professor Hutchings if you were able to do the screen share we might be able to move along differently. So what we're trying to do here just is to talk about the ways in which you can build up a program to facilitate faculty adoption of open educational resources at a time when your resources may not be the most robust. What I'm going to do here is sorry I'm going to step away for just a moment and come right back. So what we find under these kinds of circumstances is that sometimes you just got to be flexible so I'm going to check one more time just to see if things are less technology right it makes fools of everyone, myself especially. So we're talking about building a robust program to the extent that we're able to when our resources are limited. Now, there is a small amount perhaps of irony or even perhaps hypocrisy here when I say our resources are limited. I'm very, very grateful the RC and I to have the support of some grant funding. We were fortunate enough to receive the USDA's NIFA Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students serving grant. And this is designed to help promote and encourage students from diverse populations, particularly Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students to come into agricultural sciences into natural sciences and so we're making the best use we can of these grant resources to help support faculty and making this transition to open or free access resources. We also couldn't possibly do this kind of work without a lot of really wonderful colleagues and peers and mentors. So a quick shout out here to folks like Matthew Matthew Bloom and Jeffrey Galant, who have given us resources and support Kailin Nagel who's got some really wonderful advice we want to share with you. Other researchers and practitioners like Marina Roberts, Amy Nussbaum, Virginia Clinton, John Hilton, and so many others. And these are folks in our open community. We also have colleagues here at our university, like our missed musketeer, Heather nice who was one of our earliest partners in this work, our vice provost for student success Claudia Lampman, our dean of the college Steve Rollins, Dave Danenberg who is our close colleague Heather Nash Catherine Schild, Zoe Dietz and so so many more people. I imagine that you're probably here because the title is enticing right so you want to open and create an open initiative. Well the best places that you can go for advice on how to do that and how to be effective to do that are places where it's already been demonstrated to be efficacious so you might be checking out programs like BC campus who has a long and established making resources open, or statewide initiatives like open Oregon, right the amazing work that's being done by Amy Hoffer and colleagues there. You might look at I mentioned Jeff Galant who's an amazing colleague you might look at affordable learning Georgia another statewide initiative really promoting open adoption and creation in the state of Georgia, or you might check out programs who are doing things like Maricopa millions smaller geographical area, but they're working together and kind of a consortium model to promote this adoption to support faculty and making this transition. Now one thing that you're going to discover that all of these have in common, or that presentations and how to build a robust program have in common is that not only are they led by amazing researchers amazing people people who are strong and passionate about what they're doing. They also have resources, right they have the resources for people to do the work, and they also have the resources for people to come to conferences like these to present the work. And when DRC and I for sort of doing this work. We're coming from the University of Alaska anchorage we're coming from an institution that when I joined it in 2013 was beginning to lose resources or enrollment was declining our budget was certainly being slashed. This is an open enrollment institution, right in the state of Alaska we have no community colleges so we serve everyone from the student who might otherwise go and complete their a degree at a smaller cost effective community college to folks who want to pursue advanced training PhDs postdocs. We also live and work on the land of the deny to El Nania unseated ancestral land. And we have that obligation to be supporting students in the best way possible. We have a small university and we have very limited resources. And that's where our story begins. So Veronica and I met at the 12th annual open education conference in November 2015 in Vancouver BC. We had both taken up an offer from the faculty development director on our campus for a funded trip to the conference in exchange for just a small time commitment over the course of one year. We only had to go and learn, then come back to discuss whether and how we could bring we are to our university. And speak for them when I say that the conference ignited a fire in us. I mean here we are six years later, presenting to you. We really took the ball and ran with it, building our initiative from the ground up. Thus, our initiative has modest origins. It was very much a grassroots effort led by three of us in what really was our spare time, if that's a thing. Veronica and I plus a third person, Heather nice who made that faithful trip to Vancouver with us. And she was an instructional designer from the faculty development department who sadly left our team and the university a few years ago. So, the work wasn't officially in any of our workloads, and our group had no official home within the institution. We didn't belong to any department or committee, or exists in the official governance structure. Our initial strategy was to partner with groups on campus who were already doing closely related work. For example, we piggyback on other trainings to spend just a few minutes highlighting we are, or we'd ask if we could do an entire OER session when an organization was planning a multi session professional development event. And perhaps even more importantly, we would speak to anyone who would listen, and to many who wouldn't. In all the meetings and conversations we were part of by nature of our real jobs. If there was anything even tangentially related to textbook affordability, we'd be right there bringing it up. There's actually an ongoing joke that Veronica in particular is the OER Kool-Aid person. Any mention of the word open or OER or any kind of affordability or textbooks or diversity or equity inclusion, or student success in any context and Veronica virtually burst through the wall to tell you about textbook affordability. Oh, yeah. Now, over time, we began collecting data, however we could, with Veronica taking the lead on conducting research with our local students and faculty. We also worked to get bookstore data, though that what they provided initially was very limited until about fall 2019 when we moved to an online bookstore company. And before long, we began aggressively pursuing funding, applying for every institutional grant that we could make an argument for, and a couple national grants as well. The way that we had planned to develop this initiative was really born out of my history doing work in organizations as well as my background at the University of Kansas. So what we typically do when we're talking about developing a kind of grassroots community endeavors, we might use something like the stages of community readiness. And this is like a nine step structure where you're looking at the role of the organization or you're looking at the initiative within a context of a complex structure or organism like a community. We go from stages like no awareness, nobody's talking about it doesn't really seem to be an issue for anyone through things like when you start bringing it up initially you get denial or resistance then when you're there long enough delivering the message long enough. People start paying attention they have vague awareness or maybe we start moving into something called pre planning where the folks who make the decisions recognize that something has to be done and they're beginning an initiative. Now, this is just a model it's one that has a lot of benefits in terms of giving us a structure of what to expect, but it's also built on some assumptions. I'm going to talk about those in a moment. If you want to learn more we do have additional resources so I'm just going to pop those into chat just one more time in case anyone wants to have a look at some of those. Particularly the work of plastic and colleagues or the work on implementation science could be really beneficial to review. Now when we're talking about making this change within an established institution, typically we're looking at five different structures or five different major components that we're looking for things like knowledge is the community aware that there's been a problem to be addressed or an opportunity to be capitalized on. What's the current climate of the institution not like geographically or in terms of weather but like, what do people think about how what's their attitude towards the initiative that you're trying to do, in this case textbook affordability. What's currently being done what are the current efforts that are being achieved or try to tackle the same issue looking at things also like resources and leadership, and those two things are of course very very important for making any kind of change, because they, they really can contribute greatly to how much time how much effort and what you have to do to really shift the needle. We were in those initial stages, beginning to assess things like awareness of OERZTC we've done some surveys we've tracked some data we get some information from students and faculty and you know see what the issue is and we're moving along at a modest brisk pace right we're getting small pools of money to do this work. Again, life happens. In this case in 2018 Alaska experienced the second largest earthquake that has ever been on record in November of 2018. It was catastrophic for many, you know the state shut down most of our infrastructure was heavily damaged, but the hurricanes are really robust right we pull together we help one another. This is certainly not the first the last or the only time that we've experienced disaster so this little thing is not going to get us down. Perhaps a less charitable person might say that that wasn't even the worst thing that happened that week. In 2018 we also had a new governor installed in our state, and the governor ran on a platform of really promoting a pool of money to come back to citizens and Alaska we have something called the permanent fund dividend, and it's a yearly annual payout from the dividends from oil reserve funds and many Alaskans, especially those in remote areas locations really rely on those funds low income Alaskans really struggle as well. So the primary focus of this platform was let's get you more PFD money, and Governor Dunleavy was installed in 2018 and just a few months later in their annual budget they cut $134 million from the University of Alaska system, and it doesn't probably seem like very much for larger institutions but for the University of Alaska it was 41% of our combined budget for the state. And it put us in some really tough spots, the Board of Regents went on to later declare exigency. So in summer of 2019, the university was entering exigency there was talk of discontinuing many programs of letting many faculty go. And it created some challenges. It also created many changes now remember this occurred in summer of 2019 and what you can see is the impact that some of these situations have had on our organization I'm giving you here is just a gantt chart showing you who's here in the time that we've been working on this in earnest we've had four different chancellors we've had three different provost. At one point I believe our chancellor was our provost at the same time. Some of the directors are major partners for our initiative, like the faculty development director the multicultural center director the native student services director. Those folks left their posts they they went to other universities, and it took a number of years two and a half years for us to install a chief diversity officer, even after the position was formally created in 2017. It created kind of a challenge. And I'd love to be able to tell you about the leadership closer to actual faculty like the deans of each of our colleges. Unfortunately I'm a psychologist and not a mathematician so finding records first of all archivaly was difficult, and then tracking those over time was even more difficult. At the same time that we're also losing many of our peers. So, in the period under review here we've lost 28% of our faculty and 46% of our staff. Our one saving grace has been our vice provost for student success who has been our rock who has been our champion. And she has declared that she's retiring at the end of this year. So, this is the backdrop of where we find ourselves. Things were real bad, but then we got a federal grant for nearly half a million dollars. So, some ray of sunshine in the darkness. So remember. So remember how I said earlier that we applied to every grant that we could make an argument for or that you should do that. Well, our current grant is from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. For a program focused on helping Alaska native servings institutions address educational needs within what they call a broadly defined arena of food and agricultural sciences related disciplines. So we argued in our proposal that we are, especially in lower division general education courses improves retention and graduation rates for all majors, including within the food and agricultural sciences. Our grant funded program is officially called the Alaska Open Education Initiative, and it focuses on four key elements. So we promote adoption of OER and zero cost course materials through faculty development and support. Our specific efforts there include our textbook affordability fellows a an OER slash ZTC certificate program miscellaneous workshops and one on one support. And we'll talk about some of those in later slides to come. Students are textbook affordability student ambassador program or TASA. That begins actually later this week, and it import empowers students to advocate for themselves within the context of textbook affordability and beyond. In the lower left partnerships, we are forging reforging thanks to all that turnover and strengthening key partnerships to leverage resources and further culture change at our institution and impact data. We are collecting information on adoptions such as who our adopters are and the number of students they reach cost savings adoption sufficiency impact of OER or ZTC on student performance. Now the central pillar of our faculty programming is our textbook affordability fellows program. This is a year long faculty professional development and support program designed to encourage and facilitate the transition of courses from commercial course materials to zero cost course materials. In order to complete the program and receive their $2,500 award faculty need to complete a number of deliverables. And you can actually find a checklist of our deliverables among our other session resources in the linked materials in the chat and also using this QR code on this slide. So first they participate in a week long training and intensive training rather in May scheduled for the week after faculty contracts and and before summer semester begins. We structured our intensive similarly to what was a long running program at our university called the technology fellows program, which teaches course design along with a theme related to using technology and teaching. So our version of the fellows is heavy on textbook affordability and related topics with some strong elements of course design training. Our fellows program is thoughtfully designed, according to instructional design principles, while also teaching faculty how to do better instructional design themselves. We considered what skills faculty need to effectively do the work of switching to ZTC materials and use that develop to develop our outcomes. Then we applied backward design to develop how we would assess those outcomes, then which activities and content faculty would need to work through in order to be successful. We were careful to keep the training relevant and place specific. And lastly, we have embraced it iterative process collecting feedback and improving the program from year to year. By modeling effective instructional design and explicitly teaching the fellows to improve their own instructional design, we maximize success within the courses that have moved to ZTC. For those of you who are interested in senior curriculum, it will be available for public use within about a year, and it will be openly licensed. Now returning to those program requirements. In addition to the intensive faculty must of course transition at least one course to zero textbook cost and commit to sticking to it for at least two semesters. From our experience, nearly everyone who sticks with ZTC materials for two semesters continues on doing so after that. Why is it two semesters well, if the first semester ends up being a bit rough, they're at least committed to improving the course for one other round, which again improves the longevity. Next, we require the fellows to give back. That is to share their experience transitioning to ZTC materials with our university community. We allow a great deal of flexibility so faculty can find a way to do this in a way that works for them. And our reasoning for doing this is twofold. Givebacks build awareness of our local initiative. This is important since research like Spillaboy at AL, found that faculty who are aware of an OER initiative are more likely to adopt OER themselves. Also, research like Lane at AL has shown that faculty are more likely to try a new pedagogical strategy if a trusted peer is also using it. Another key requirement for them is to share their data with us. Now, this isn't currently a requirement for the fellows to collect particular data in a particular way. Rather, we ask that if they do collect any data within their course, and we encourage them to do so, related to the use of ZTC materials that they then share that data with us. Now, in order to help our faculty meet the requirements, we provide ongoing support beyond the week long intensive. We ask that they meet with me as the instructional design and OER librarian at least once during the program here at a time that they find most useful. For some that will be some hands on help scrounging up hard to find OER and ZTC materials that meet their needs. Others will get assistance navigating Creative Commons licenses while remixing a work or brainstorming ideas for an open pedagogy assignment, or some other need related to their adoption of ZTC materials. In our required monthly meetings throughout the year, we keep track of their progress, fellows inspire each other, or can is right. And we provide additional timely trainings based on their needs. We also send out weekly emails that are a mix of reminders inspiring messages, summaries of neat resources that we've found and announcements about upcoming webinars and opportunities we may have come across. Our fellows have told us that together with the regular meetings, the emails serve as effective regular reminders that they need to keep working on their adoptions and courses, in addition to providing them with helpful content. Now let's talk outcomes. We've closely tracked our fellows and the impact of this program. Looking at our first two cohorts. There are 20 faculty members who have taught 238 zero cost zero textbook cost sections from fall of 2019 through spring of 2021. Again, 20 faculty members teaching 238 sections. Now this has saved about 5241 students, nearly $500,000 and estimated textbook costs. Now, again, we're only talking about our fellows here. This is not other adopters that we have reached through other means through our programming. And our third cohort of the textbook affordability fellows is nearly halfway through the program now, and we anticipate all 12 participants to complete. Well, and I think that the thing that is really valuable there is not only are the faculty changing the courses that we contracted them to change we're supporting them to make a change in a specific course for two semesters. We're starting to discover that their open transition is proliferating to other non target courses, plus many of them are serving as advocates and evangelists to others in their department really speaking back to that lane article about how when you trust someone when you work closely with them you're willing to try something different. All of this is an on a very basic level embedded within the science right so as we mentioned the beginning I'm a psychology professor, but my background is really in something called organizational behavior management. In this particular case what what we're looking at is, I look at the world I look at everything that we do within this kind of three lens structure so this is a reference or a figure taken from a wonderful systems analysis article by Dean and really what I'm looking at here is not only how does the individual performer fit within their context not only are we collecting data or performance information about the individual worker, but we're also seeing how groups on a process level or achieving outcomes and then how does the organization as a whole embed within the culture and the environment in the community that they serve. Marcy and I are working we're always, you know, even though we're focusing here on the performer level even though we're focusing on the behavior of our faculty our faculty adopters etc. We're really thinking about that larger structure in the way in which we can help embed and insulate this program within the organization. We've also taken a sort of three term contingency approach here when we're looking at the behavior of faculty right you often hear faculty just won't adopt faculty just won't make that switch. Well, why not. Right. And when we look at it from that kind of behavior analytic or operant conditioning paradigm when you're trying to explain behavior, whether it be adopting or ZTC or voting in favor and helping to support us make this institutional change will typically we look at that behavior in context. We look at the consequences that the behavior produces are the faculty compensated for their work they recognize for making that transition. Are they connecting with and seeing the results like improved student learning are they impacted beneficially by improved student retention are they seeing that their work impacts the organization. Right. And we also look at the way in which the culture the context surrounds that behavior. So with faculty aren't adopting do they have enough time. Have they had sufficient training. Do they have competing task demands like other stuff they have to be doing. Are they finding sufficient resources in some fields like mine. There's just not enough available we are for someone to adopt so they'd really have to create it in order to use it. Are there enough support staff right DRC is mentioning that she has a lot of support for our fellows because she's an instructional design librarian. Are there librarians are their instructional designers, is there a method by which folks can do this adoption in this transformation. And is there a need right going back to culture is there a need does anyone even know that this exists. So in these two areas context and consequences where we focus most of our efforts right. If we want to shift adoption we need to really be highlighting some of the things here from the context we need to make sure first that people know it's happening we need to see that they're seeing others do it that that it's a path that they can achieve. We need to make it easier to share resources, if we come across the RC and I, something that could be potentially effective for someone who's not currently in our fellowship program will send it out to them and say hey have you seen this really awesome open resource in your field that could speak to your course. And then the next time the fellowship becomes available those folks are more likely to come and join us or to at least apply to be part of the program. And also, as we mentioned before we're starting up our textbook affordability student ambassador program or task the program. And so what we're doing here is actually supporting students to self advocate to talk to faculty to share their stories of how the cost of course materials impacts their education and impacts their trajectory through college. And we're also developing an easier access and easier route into our adoption we're creating self paced resources and a self paced training certificate. So maybe a person can't commit their full summer, but they can certainly go in and self train through some material that could be relevant to them. We also work very very hard to shift the culture so that there are consequences favorable outcomes for folks who make this transition. So we're working hard with university leaders to promote. Oh we are in ZTC adoption in our associates of arts courses, the courses that get students a two year degree, doing that by making time available and increasing recognition. We're doing things like working to embed. Oh we are in ZTC explicitly in faculties promotion and tenure guidelines this is consistent with some work that's done by the doers group you can find a link in our resources, and was initially presented on by folks at universities like Pittsburgh State, really effective because if if we are is a high impact teaching strategy to support diverse students, if it's not in the pnt guidelines folks who aren't familiar may not identify that and reward that behavior. So really encouraging faculty to collect data on their students performance or students feedback and satisfaction, so that they can really be connecting with that possible reinforcer of helping their students and seeing the impact that it makes in their lives. And then finally we're working really really hard to refine our data collection methods. As you mentioned earlier the data that we have available and who's using open is multiply problematic at our institution, simply because we don't yet have course marking we don't yet have a course system that faculty are using consistently to indicate that their materials are free to access. So we can't even begin to honor and identify folks who are using open if, if we don't know who's actually doing it. So, refine data collection at an institutional level is something that we're definitely working on, which then helps to contribute. It fosters the institutionalization of this intervention. Now, this is just an overview a highlight of our program and all the work that we're doing to try to instill it within the organization and protect it from a lot of the stuff that we shared with you at the beginning. So what I want to do is just move very quickly through some practical advice. I mean, when you have an intervention like this that's not part of the institution that requires people to stand up and to demand it to move that needle. You got to find a champion. And there's a lot of really wonderful research about who are your champions who's going to be the person who can operate on a really lean schedule of reinforcement. I mean, for people with certain personality characteristics. So maybe someone who has self confidence who's persistent, who's energetic and risk prone. Let me clarify when I say risk prone what I mean is someone who's not sensitive to extinction for their behavior not being rewarded or someone who's not sensitive to maybe being punished a little bit for speaking up for the cause you want someone who's going to speak truth to power and take a risk. We also see that in leadership behavior, someone who has strong vision for change someone who pursues unconventional means, someone who helps develop and lift up other people and their potential, and then finally giving recognition to those around them. You also look for someone who's got maybe a lot of experience someone who's maybe in middle management who knows lots of different people, someone who has some decision to making authority in depth knowledge of their organization, and who has some diverse experiences that they can pull on to make this work. Now you can have multiple champions but these are the kinds of qualities that you're looking for and someone who's going to stand up and do that work. I also have some additional advice and I'm going to turn it over to DRC here to continue to tell us what you can do to do this. So first off, find your people sort of related to your champions there but even if you're lucky enough to have a partner in crime like I do in Veronica, you are going to need other allies who can help you write grants, who's on board with your goals and is willing to speak up in the meetings that they're in that you aren't which adopters do you have would be willing to present their work to other faculty. Also look for faculty who share your values and beliefs and target them for making the switch for OER or ZTC. Kayla Nagel, formerly of US Perg, gave us some advice that really stuck with us. It's not your job to change people's minds. It's your job to find the people who already believe the way you do and join together to do the hard work. We encourage you to embrace that advice as well because it's really helped us prioritize where we're going to put our very limited resources. Next, be flexible. Think creatively about funding opportunities. You might have the best luck with things that seem only tangentially related to OER where you can come up with a strong argument for their connection. Remember, we didn't get an OER grant. We got a narrowly focused student success grant that advances our entire OER program. We got an error. Excuse me. We are using OER to meet the goals of the funding agency. Similarly, you need to be flexible when promoting OER and ZTC on campus. How can access to resources, promoting student success, raising diverse voices, etc. All that wonderful benefit of and potential for OER tie together with emerging initiatives on your campus, such as those seeking to increase student development, promote DEI, encourage retention, etc. So look for synergy. Also, get data. Data is the language of most administrators and it's going to be the foundation of what faculty adopters are looking to see. Remember that all data are valuable, quantitative and qualitative and brainstorm helpful data points and work to get it from whoever might have it. People will ask you for data often, including administrators who need it by the end of the day today because there might be this exciting opportunity, but I have to have it today. And then just for the sake of time, I'm going to hop in here, just a couple more things. Speaking very loosely, you got to find reinforcers. Like we said, this is this is a tough gig. You have to find your reinforcers as well as those of others, the people who can contribute to this probably aren't going to be adequately compensated. So you can find someone who needs grant writing who needs to do some research, maybe for promotion and tenure for someone who can be motivated by the things that you can offer because it's very likely not money, get those on your team. And bear in mind that most OER CTC pioneers probably aren't going to be compensated. You can also join together to help other people meet their goals when you have mutually beneficial relationships. So we work with, for instance, Native Student Services to help them support and retain their students. And we're also interested in promoting and retaining success for Alaska Native students as well. We also make sure that we're very careful to never ask someone to make this change without benefit. If we can't help them highlight something that's going to reward them. Is it in their P&T file? Is it somewhere else? And finally, you know, be honest. This takes a lot of work. Transformation takes a lot of work no matter where you cut it. And many faculty are losing out on the deal when they're switching from OER CTC. We're also very careful to always advocate for the voice that's not in the room. If we're meeting with faculty, we talk about the benefit for students. If we're meeting with students, we talk about some of the challenges that faculty have, etc. Be patient. You know, progress isn't always linear. And you're going to have a lot of setbacks. And you have to be tenacious. DRC wasn't kidding when very often this face is the face that people think of when they think of open educational resources or CTC. Don't give up. Be that person on your campus. I want to reserve some time for questions, but thank you. Thank you so much. So we did have a question from Elizabeth. Could you share your methods of findings for getting data from the bookstore? What did you ask for? How did you negotiate the fact that your goals were existentially threatening to them? Well, we were very lucky that we had some advocates like the Vice Provost. We actually have the person on campus who oversees the bookstore as well. And from their perspective, it's really a question of give us this data or we're going to another bookstore. And so the bookstore in order to keep their contract with us gives us those data. You may not be in a similar situation. So you might have to go a different way of identifying who's using OER CTC. But there's likely a solution, even if it takes some time and some careful consideration. I'm going to pause everybody right here. We are at at time. So I am going to go ahead and stop the recording.