 And thank you. And then I don't want folks to miss our wonderful beginning. So let's do a, let's do a panelist vote. Should we give it another minute or should we go ahead and go? Panelists, raise your hand if you think we should just start. Okay. All right. Great. All right. So I want to begin by introducing Rebecca Vasquez Ortiz. I think she may be ready, but it looks like you are you ready to get moving there? So Rebecca's going to start us off with a bit of an acknowledgement and then we'll we'll go from there. And we can't hear you. At least I can't hear you. No sound. I think a microphone problem. Okay. Still don't hear you. I don't know if it's your headset. There. Yes. Okay. That's good. I'm sorry. I have my earphones on and now they seem to have gone out, but I'd like to give the land acknowledgement today before we go ahead and start. Are no acknowledges that I am currently in the unceded territory of the Old Lone Nation who inhabited the San Francisco Bay Area and continue to exist as a people surviving genocide. The Old Lone people consisted of over 50 tribes and they stand the northern coast of California speaking the Chocheno language and they were highly skilled basket weavers. So as we enter our work engaging in empowering marginalized communities today, let this statement serve to further our respect and curiosity to your own community and also other unceded indigenous territories across North America. Statements are meaningless, if not followed with action. So I welcome you to open your mind to practice and raise voices at the center of spiritual, emotional and physical well-being of First Nation peoples across Turtle Island. Ariel would like to acknowledge the original inhabitants of each of our geographical locations today and give gratitude for the opportunity to live, work and learn on traditional homelands. So please take a moment to pay respect to the elders who remind us that we are stewards of Mother Earth and all of her inhabitants including the flora and Juana across the Americas and we do this today especially on the International Day of Women and we welcome you to reflect on the important role of women and Native people across North America. Thank you. Thank you for that beautiful land acknowledgement. I love all of the wonderful words that you just shared with us. So welcome everyone. We really are excited to have all of you joining us today to learn a little bit more about Arlo which is the acronym for the Regional Leaders of Open Education Network. As you may be aware Arlo is a project of the CCCOER which is itself a subsidiary of OE Global. So we're kind of nested within CCCOER which is nested within OE Global and so Arlo is about bringing together leaders from across North America, across institutional boundaries, across regional boundaries and the idea is for people that are engaged in the network to build open education strategic plans but to especially focus those plans on underserved student populations under represented students populations under met student populations in all the ways that students can be marginalized and our program is about thinking about that quite intentionally as people are building their strategic plans for open education. So I'm really excited that we have people on our panel that are participating in all of the different ways in which folks can be part of this network. So we have a couple of people that are our leadership advisors. You just heard from on Rebecca one of our other leadership advisors is Esperanza. We have collaborators with the program that do a lot of work and give advice and do one-on-one mentoring with participants in the program. We have Suzanne and Allegria here for that. We have students that are we think of our students as mentors for faculty and staff that bring their wisdom and their experiences to into the network. We have Elizabeth and Bridget here and then we have two of the participants that have been part of Arlo one from the cohort one we have Kathy Germano and then someone from cohort two we have Manisha and so eight folks here and I'm really excited that all eight of you have agreed to be able to speak to our audience today to talk more about what Arlo is about what Arlo has been about for you and so I'm going to ask each of our each of the participants here to just introduce themselves since I didn't really do a formal introduction just you know introduce yourself your institution your role for Arlo. I'm going to start with Allegria and then Allegria is going to talk to us about what she feels the Arlo program offers and things that she enjoys and has gained from being a collaborator and anything else that she'd like to say so so take it away Allegria. Thank you so much and thank you for having all of us come and speak about this amazing Arlo experience we've all been having as Karen said I am Allegria Riva de Neira and I'm an Arlo collaborator in my other identity I'm distinguished professor at Colorado State University and Pueblo Colorado. We're a regional comprehensive university and a Hispanic serving institution so we serve the underserved I joyfully joined Arlo as a collaborator last year and it has enriched my life in ways that I did not anticipate. So what does Arlo what does the Arlo program offer our participants? Well it offers so much and I don't have so much time to speak so I'm going to focus on two things information and community so in information participants get curated and digestible information that focuses on open education with the strong focus on diversity equity and inclusion you know there's there's so much out there that can be very overwhelming but the Arlo designers have taken just enough to inform us and get us on our way and then know where we can get more if we want so that is very helpful and the second one the community well the participants get a caring team of people that we can count on I think we so often work on silos and we feel very alone and we all need academic families to support us so I really think of Arlo as an academic family this is a community where we collaborate and generate a pool of knowledge that we can all use so to me that has been amazing and then you wanted to know what are some of the things I enjoy or gain from being an Arlo collaborator well regarding that I think there's both personal and professional things that I absolutely enjoy first of all I'm inspired by the leadership of Arlo I have taken a lot of the things I have learned and now I'm applying them to my own leadership so that has been amazing and I'm also inspired by the all these people who want to do good the world seems so negative and tough these days and it's just so beautiful to see that there are people who want to do good things so that has restored my faith in humanity and I'm also amazed at what people are able to achieve with very little support people come to us looking for ways to develop their strategic plans and we realize how little support they've had and how much they've been able to do and it's so inspiring I also love the camaraderie and openness to experiences that all our participants have some of them are deans and you know just to have very high positions and they still are very open to learning and experiencing open education so that is very nice I also like the opportunity to share my own experiences the good and the bad and the bad even more because it feels like any suffering that I have done to learn things had a good purpose which is that now that experience can help somebody else so I absolutely love that and the opportunity to help others the last two things I really love are the student perspective we have students who come and speak with us and it's amazing sometimes we just talk amongst administrators and professors and we don't listen to the students as much so that has been absolutely enlightening and last but not least I would say our focus on diversity equity and inclusion I know this is part of open education but we are so intentional about it so explicit all the time that it really brings it together as to what is our mission so those are the things that I enjoy how about that great thank you that was awesome thank you so much and I should mention also that alegria and Suzanne are two of nine collaborators so we have a number of others that that aren't here today so and I'm going to move next to Suzanne who's also going to introduce herself and address some of those same questions absolutely hi hi everybody I'm Suzanne Joaquin I am part of the California California Community College OER initiative and I'm also a biology faculty at a small community college at the northern California so the first thing to address is what participants get out of the Arlo experience and I think there's really two things so I'll agree I agree with you I'm going to narrow it down to two there's a whole bunch but I have to pick a few because we've got just a few minutes and one is the ability to really do a deep dive into a strategic plan I think a lot of us start this work with a plan kind of vague in our mind and we have an idea but the the the framework that that they've developed for had to actually outline the plan and then having a collaborate or work with them having other folks that are building their plans and they work together there's so few times where we get to pause and really do a deep dive into what we're trying to accomplish and I think that's just a wonderful opportunity the community I think I'll agree you talked about the community and so I'm going to second that the the sessions are great the we're also putting together ongoing sessions which is lovely so it doesn't kind of just end and the OEG connect platform as a way to connect with people more globally and so it's these layers of networking that I think can be really helpful as far as what I found helpful for for me personally I have to say it's kind of the same thing I mean the community is amazing I'm part of the collaborators and everybody else and the participants there's all these really amazing people that are part of this network and and it's just fabulous and let's see the sessions are great I do I do want to mention the student sessions are just so helpful and I think Karen you called the students mentors and I absolutely agree they've really helped me think through what we're actually trying to accomplish which is has been just incredibly helpful and that's about the if the only the only other thing I really wanted to end on is just a big thank you to Karen for putting all this together you're an amazing guide and mentor and this is why our group is so much fun to be a part of and so thank you all right that's my piece thank you for that Suzanne I think lots of people including all the people here are the reason for that but thank you thank you for that credit I'm excited to now introduce the our next two folks that are going to talk a little bit which are students and Bridget Ramundo is going to speak for a little bit and again Bridget and Elizabeth we're actually two of seven different students that we have involved so go ahead Bridget. All right thank you so much Karen so hi everyone my name is Bridget my pronouns are she easy I am a student speaker and I think I'm going to just start on my experiences and insights as a student with the RLOE program and also the faculty that work there so my first real job was actually as an intern for the Salt Lake Community College open education resources department and that was really amazing and it's what introduced me into this community and being able to speak on the last panel was very validating and inspiring and it also made me very hopeful because like some people have mentioned before this community is really uplifting it really wants to do good things for the future just really quick I want to check can you still hear me yeah okay great internet's a little bit rockier in addition to that I would say that it was also very helpful to get the perspective of the educators since you know I am a student and I get to see the student perspective but because I also want to be an educator in the future it's really interesting to see the way that people are incorporating pieces of their past in and their experience education and modernizing that to the needs of students of today in addition to that I also got to know other students on the panel and their backgrounds and their experiences were so helpful and helping to expand my and it was overall just very informative also the next thing that I was asked to bring up was what did I gain from the RLOE program and I would say that it was incredibly helpful to me because of the community that I meant earlier the outreach is extremely helpful since I do a lot of youth advocate work and I really like being able to meet other people who are passionate about the same things that I am also I do a lot of work in accessible education so speaking with the RLOE or the RLO is a great way to be able to live my values and bring that to luck it was also a chance for me to reflect on my overall experience in you know higher education and with open education resources and be able to advocate for my causes as mentioned earlier so I just want to thank everyone for coming here to listen to us and also again for the coordinators like Karen for being so helpful all right thank you so much for that really appreciate your inputs here and next I'm going to ask Elizabeth to introduce herself more fully and to also talk about her experiences and insights as a student and working within RLOE and and all of the things that she wants to tell us go ahead Elizabeth hi thank you can you hear me yes okay awesome so thank you for having me back my name is Elizabeth my pronouns are she her hers I attend Western Oregon University and I'm a fourth year student and I'll be graduating this spring which is very exciting so I remember talking about this during the last kind of session we had for RLOE and it was kind of like well how did you get here and I kind of got here by chance I had a professor that is a part of RLOE and she thought that I really just fit into this sort of program and the principles that it stands for and it really has been I would say life-changing because it brings so many people together from literally across the world and it is able to share our experiences and I think the greatest insight I realized is that we have a lot of the same struggles when it comes to higher education and I think however bringing faculty and and people that have been involved in so many areas around higher education education as a whole has been really transformative in this idea that we can really when it there's power in numbers and it has really shown me that I can continue my advocacy outside of higher education because I mean look at us all and it has really launched me into pursuing my own initiatives for open education resources and I talked briefly about how I'm pursuing a project on campus to really expand open resources because I continuously see students struggling and the reality is faculty see that and faculty and staff see that and I think that's a really important narrative that needs to be discussed because I can't remember the quote exactly but you know in order to address a problem you need to be able to talk about it and being able to afford textbooks for example is a really big topic and so being able to come to this sort of platform and have that conversation has been really really amazing and I've been able to continue to connect with people that I have met through this amazing program and I truly think that it's nothing short of being transformative in your life and really just kind of motivating me to continue advocating for people because this program has really just like meant so much to me and and it's really pushed me to just keep keep doing the right thing honestly and so I think that I just want to make sure I address yeah I think I addressed everything in the questions but I think as a whole I just really want to thank you all for really bringing me back but also continuing to listen to students I think that in higher education many times student voices aren't listened to but being able to come to a space where that is celebrated has really been really wholesome for me and so thank you so much for having me. Thank you, thank you for taking your time and being here with us and teaching us so much and and I see from your note that you might have actually another event that you have to go to Elizabeth's a leader of Oregon OER initiative and I wish you could stay and talk with us more but you do what you need to do for sure. Yeah if I can yeah I have to jump into that one but if it ends early I'll come back so they're doing a same sort of event like this but I just wanted to make sure that I stopped by so thank you so much. Great thank you. All right and so as I mentioned we have folks that have been developing the program working as collaborators and student mentors but we have participants that come into the network and work with us and so two of the participants are going to talk a little bit about their experiences they're going to talk about what benefits they got from for participating in the RLO program and they're going to share whatever they would like to share about what it means to create an open ed plan for their institution and anything else that they want to tell us about their process of creating the plan and the RLO support for that and so again I'm going to start with Kathy Germano who's going to introduce herself more fully and answer all those questions Kathy. Thank you Karen and hello everyone thank you for being here today my name is Kathy Germano I'm the Director of Learning Services at Excelsior College in Albany New York like Karen said I was a participant in this program and I'm kind of going to go off of a little bit of what Allegra talked about there's two things that really stood out to me as a benefit and the first being building these relationships so for me it was more than just building the relationships it was humanizing the work it was getting to listen and exploring strategies and having discussions such as how did you go about this or how did you prepare yourself to pivot if the conversation or the discussion didn't really go in the right direction those kind of conversations and those kind of connections really are meaningful they were meaningful to me and so I think that was a huge benefit for me the second I would say is that the this is an ongoing connection when you make connections with people and resources it's a little different than being at a conference because in the conference you get a few minutes at the end to ask questions and stuff but because it's already humanized it's already you know you feel comfortable I have no problem reaching out to anybody in this community and saying hey I got a question or or posing a question or saying do you have a few minutes I want to go over this with you I think that is like tremendously important and and it's given me so much confidence in keep going you know because this is like slow work sometimes having change in big big or small organizations so those are two benefits that I could you know speak of I could speak of more but I'm going to limit it to that but the second part is about sharing about the process of creating my strategic plan and the first thing I would like to say is there was great care in the developers of this you know it was well developed and I felt supported throughout being in the first cohort I felt supported I felt welcomed it was very inclusive and and you know I've tried to be involved in different kind of projects here and there and I haven't felt the amount of welcoming and support that this program has so I would say that's a big thing and the second thing is is that you know more directly about the strategic plan is that it's openly shared love that and it is shared by you know you know it gave me opportunity to look at what everybody else was doing and that that was really important because it really helped me reflect on some of the things that I was thinking of doing or that I was going to do and I think that you know besides being in line with being open it just helps have more dialogue so I think those are two really great parts of you know the strategic plan and I would just like to end by saying you know thank you to everybody that was in this community I feel very grateful to be a part of it and I would highly recommend it to anyone considering joining it because it is very valuable in what you get out of it so thank you. Oh thank you so much for all of that I really appreciate all of your comments so so so wonderful thank you so much and yeah the fact that every participant can look at and read everybody else's strategic plan there's no you know need to hide or keep it like just to yourself or feel embarrassed that it's not as developed as you want it to be that that that open sharing is one of the hallmarks of our of our network so I'm going to move on to Manisha and let her share her experiences as a participant as well and start by introducing yourself too thank you. Manisha Nitsigasun, Nottavi Balwant, Negavi Bimla, Nithatoskan Masnaykan Kamik, Muscochise Cultural College, Mistahi Ninanaskamon, Pemaatissoan, Emi Koseyan, Kinanaskamitin, my name is Manisha and I introduced myself in plain screen and I'll explain what I said in plain screen so Nitsigasun means my name is but Nitsi means belly button Asun means unconnected to so Nitsigasun when I'm saying it it's kinship and it's my family relationship so my name is Nitsigasun then I said Nottavi which is my father tau is the root word in Nottavi and tau stands for center of my universe then I said land acknowledgement muscochise muscoa in plain screen wide dialect urine muscochise means bear watches his hills or dense forest or trees and then I said I'm grateful Mistahi Ninanaskamon Pemaatissoan Emi Koseyan Kinanaskamitin which also means I thank the creator for creating all of you it is you I thank the creator for so I'm I'm really very grateful to be in this RLOE community I think it is fantastic you know I'm actually from India I'm and I've been working with muscochise cultural college for more than 10 years and I'm the dean of library and information services I just find this ROL so exciting stimulating and I thought rather than taking time to talk why don't I paste and summarize what Kathy said in chat you can see excellent team of people and you can hear the information from different viewpoints you know from a student point of view from you know from a collaborator point of view and you get live feedback immediately from the community itself so I just find it that you'll have lots of templates and resources because it's good to use templates like I found that I discovered student permission forms and even e-portfolios evaluation assessments like open assessments I was not aware about it see we can promote open education with these tools which we are learning that tech tools so I had like one-on-one support and in the evening there were classes in the evening and I loved it where you know the tech tool workshop carpentry style where somebody took me through some of these new open technology tools which are there and especially for languages indigenous languages and I found it very fascinating because I was able to immediately use that in my organization see any knowledge which we are learning we want to apply it and if we are immediately able to apply it in our organization then our colleagues will see the benefit of it it's a very safe community I would strongly encourage if you're interested in learning more about open education then please do join this program Kim Karen my immediate supervisor was Urooj she's you know and Wayne too in the group when I had my mission statement when I was working on this strategic plan I had you know drafting a mission statement or a vision statement which is very specific to my organization because we are a tribal college we believe as open as possible and as close as necessary so my vision statement was open education of all sorts you know as open as possible and as close as necessary so and then more questions were asked you know about the context of the statement and it helped me tune in the words so sometimes you know how to write a sentence like a mission statement which make which is meaningful to my organization as well as it is acceptable to the professional world was very fascinating and I think I can type in the strategic planning more like I typed in chat the key points which Kathy said too but I want to I want you to hear the sound of the language you know like learn indigenous languages promote indigenous open education resources and through this program I really discovered K212 Washington they have an open languages program like you can learn Sanskrit Hindi so many like less taught languages and there are open education resources available right in you know in Washington in your state so use them for me it was such a fantastic discovery to see those examples and it's a model which can be applied for other indigenous languages so I'll just take one minute so you can hear the sound of an indigenous language because they really think it's very powerful these are the syllabics ABCs you know rather than saying ABC in English these are the 36 syllabics you know so these are our basic alphabets and to me well if we are able to create more open education materials to learn the plain screen or other indigenous languages and assessments because we are in an academic environment so we need open assessments for these languages and to be introduced to these tools I was not aware of these tools I just find it very fascinating exciting can and ask them within need and ask them once again thank you to all of you you know it's a great team and I sincerely appreciate being part of this program XA Moistus so that's another final teaching in Plains Crave never say bye what we say XA Moistus which means that's it for now till we meet again later thank you thank you so much for that oh my gosh I could listen to you all day long and I wish you had more time one more thing I want to add I apologize sorry is from this training sessions when I love the structure of the program you know the both the live and earth synchronous it fits in so beautifully I have never attended a program like this so the structure is unique and someone mentioned baby steps so one baby steps in our discussions which we were having was to weave in mental health and wellness in all your programs or open education practices like you know instructors wouldn't want to know what do I do when students don't want to keep the camera on so we created like case studies so using mental health and wellness and we created these wellness kits about pow wow flow mindful beating you know ribbon skirt teachings rattle songs so you know if you're an indigenous organization you can gently introduce open education if people do not know about open education through mental health and wellness so XA Moistus and thank you that's perfect thank you so much that's really great and we're going to move on and I'm glad I'm not Esperanza who has to follow that but Esperanza is a dynamite in her own right and one of our leadership advisors and she's going to talk a little bit about what it's been like to be a leadership team member to play a role in actually shaping this program and anything else that she'd like to say so start by introducing yourself and take it from there Esperanza. Thank you Karen my name is Esperanza Zenon I'm a physics and physical science faculty member at River Parishes Community College in Gonzales Louisiana I just want to start by saying Manisha wow I'm just absolutely floored I mean you know some some presentations they just you know it's like in one ear out the other as my mother would say but Manisha's went right through the ear straight to the heart you know in a way that I rarely experience at a conference right so I want to thank you for that beauty Manisha we you know in today's climate any beauty that we can find we have to hold on to it right and so you know Arlo has definitely been a big part of that whole human process for me I've met people and and learned things that will stay with me for the rest of my life as a member of Arlo you know the warmth and you feel the love right I tell everybody you know it that that that is the key right and so I never could put it this I've been in leadership roles before I I spent quite a bit of time in military but it's a different kind of thing right I never considered myself a leader where this open process and movement was concerned right because you know I felt like maybe like some students feel sometimes I don't know enough right but this group helped me to see that leading means doing the work that that's a beautiful thing to know that you can be considered a leader in something as special and life-changing as open education because you're doing the work because you're you know learning more growing more giving more serving more right I don't know where else I haven't been involved in in much where you really could do that kind of thing right and so this idea of you know contributing to to what this program and project you know manifest as for all of us involved wow you know I sometimes I you know I'm like you know I wake up sometimes like did they really tap the right person you know you sure it's supposed to be me doing this I don't know any more than anybody else here we're all and that's a beautiful thing because I've learned from the students I've learned from the participants I've learned from the collaborators I mean Susan and I partnered together for a part of the program and I learned so much from that whole process of and working with you Susan so I really want to say thank you for that your rouge oh my goodness I mean she's just that caring comes through and everything and every word that she speaks is there right and and and so many of you as well you know that that's what's made this process so life-changing and and you know so vibrant and useful the care that we have all brought to the table here right we didn't just bring documents and and examples we brought hearts that's that's really where the work lies right you know and so this has been this has been one of those experiences that I'll treasure for the rest of my life you know and and so I want to thank you Karen you know for giving me this chance you know and you know I thought about it if I look at the panel of folks that are presenting today it's it's all women you know what what better way to to celebrate women you know today this special day in honor of women right yeah we want the whole well I'm glad that they gave us the day but the truth of the matter is we're we're it all year round right so again thank you for including me in this whole process and I would be remiss if I didn't give a a shout out to Rebecca she's become my buddy really I you know we've been virtual buddies for quite a while and and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to to meet all of you at some point in my life but Rebecca has been an extra special friend in this whole project so that's my you know that's what I have to share here today I'm grateful well thank you Esperanza you leaving me speechless which doesn't happen too often so thank you so much I really appreciate all that and gosh we're going to move to Rebecca now there's and then we're going to have a chance for people to ask us questions and move on to so go ahead Rebecca well great thank you for giving me opportunity to speak again Karen and ask others I wanted to thank you and the rest of the team from the students to the advisors it's been such an incredible experience for me but I wanted to take a moment because I know that I was granted four minutes and I'll do my best to stick to that but I wanted to say that and I haven't really shared this with many people but when I when I reached out to Arlo I was really contemplating the idea of leaving higher education because I just through years and decades of being somewhat of an imposter I just thought I don't belong here you know yes I jump through the hoops and I have a PhD in developmental psychology with emphasis in quantitative analysis and multiculturalism I did the whole I played the whole game and and I wanted to come back to my community and be back and then I said to myself I don't belong I went I was in spaces where I heard people continually attacking communities I felt that students were being painted as the deficit minded that there was so much focus on cheating and plagiarism and I just thought I don't want to be a part of this anymore and then I started looking for other spaces in particular in open education and this was driven by the seed that I started with because I couldn't afford my own textbooks I couldn't even my people couldn't even afford to buy me you know regular prescription glasses as often as I needed so early on my assessments came back that I should have been in a special ed program and left handed I didn't speak English and and the whole path I took was to say people like me do belong but it really wasn't until I entered these spaces with Arlo and other other spaces around that look beyond the idea that we just can maintain status quo and we're going to maintain marginalization of important key pockets of people across the continent and so once I was in these spaces I said wait a minute I do belong there is a role for me here there is a role for people who look like me there's a role for immigrants there's a role for English language learners there's a role for people who were assessed and bought to belong in some special category of deficient individuals but in reality as we started to build community and I felt that with Arlo and people like Esperanza who is like my sister now I started to say how can this be built and distributed around and impact students like the students who were already leaders in our particular work but students just in the community and so Arlo has been a space that has reassured me that as an Indigenous woman a person of color an English language learner all of these things that there's a space for all of us and that it's our duty to start to unpack status quo interrogate the decolonization of higher education and I'm so excited to be a part of it and I'm given it my all now because I belong in the community and I just want to inspire others to find their little small niche where they belong so that you don't have to leave this incredible area of higher education because you feel so silenced and so Arlo has given me my voice back because I was just about to exit and it's made me feel like the voice of a woman the voice of First Nations people are important in all of this and you don't have to just use traditional textbooks and traditional assessments and so I want to thank Arlo and I also want to thank all of those I've worked with to help remind me that my role is so important because my students need me and I need my students and and Arlo provides this opportunity like other spaces where we can build culturally wealthy environments and tap that on to achievement in higher education as opposed to build up working communities down so um I'd like to send her before I give up the microphone on the idea of leaving from the middle as Esperanza spoke to it she and I have worked with it together you know the team it's been incredible and realize that as you come to a space um any of us as we do doing the work our leaders and can continue to grow in our leadership role. Thank you so much Rebecca thank you for that and reminding us about leading from the middle and that leadership takes support and it takes a whole community you know if you're feeling completely on your own then that's not a good place to be and a lot of us can feel that way in the open ad world I do want to open up to questions to our audience that are here in the webinar with us today or in the zoom session or whatever we call it I see that there's a question in the chat is Arlo entirely focused on higher ed it is also involved K to 12 or lifelong learning initiatives so Arlo has been primarily about higher ed we have had a couple of folks that have had some K through 12 participation it hasn't been a huge focus as we're thinking about our future and expanding beyond what we're going to be doing I think having K through 12 be part of what we do would be it would be good to be able to bring that in now that does take other kinds of expertise and knowledge so we'd have to sort of build towards that later but it hasn't at this point in time been a been a big focus we've been mostly about higher ed so yeah anybody else that has any questions for us or would like to say anything yeah this is Esperanza now just kind of chime in regarding the K through 12 so I'm currently part of a grant project through our library system and DOE that's looking at dual enrollment for K through 12 right and I was pleasantly surprised at how much the things that I'm learning here have helped me to operate in that space of understanding you know what it what it really takes to effectively tackle a project like that and so while the focus has been higher there are a lot of things that cross over into the K through 12 arena that are relevant for this project thank you for that yeah and I do welcome people to turn on cameras and mics if anyone would like to speak I see alegria has her hand raised and do you want to go ahead yeah no I just wanted to add to Esperanza's comment because I actually took the template that we use for the strategic plan for our participants and I used it for a national organization on heritage language teaching the national heritage language resource center for an initiative we are doing there for OER so I actually think that the way that we put things together it's quite adaptable to any environment and I love it that we're now thinking you know that there's people thinking yeah how do we do this in K 12 because that would be a wonderful step thanks anyone else out there I know people can sometimes be shy about turning on their cameras and mics when you're feeling like you're just a passive audience but please please feel free to speak um we love to be welcoming as you probably have heard I just I say I'm just grateful every single day to work with this amazing group of people and anyone uh have any questions if you have logistical questions so so Karen maybe you for the for the benefit of those who might be joining and wondering how they could get involved maybe talk about cohort three that's coming up oh yeah I will share the link to our um the invitation to participate and I think Tina had her hand raised there for a second is that true well yeah great this is all so new to me so I was just maybe wanted to hear a little bit more about what um Rebecca what's about being disconnected and then how is what she's doing I mean are you are you not in a regular institution how's this working um yes Tina uh let's see what I was trying to get at was that actually I do I'm a full-time associate professor of psychology and statistics but and I have been teaching in my field for you know 20 plus years um but what what I live in a particular community where we serve predominantly students of the immigrants and so it's it's not been an easy place to be you know in the last couple of years because of just the national rhetoric around what it means you know to be a student in in some of these pockets of southern California so it just it was so heavy you know because I was one of those students when I was younger and I just thought it's too heavy for me I can't carry can't carry this and so I was exhausted the the transition online kind of like the disappearance of these spaces where we had some you know community on campus for women of color so a lot of that kind of got wiped out during you know our shift online and what I saw around me was people getting very punitive with students and no late work and you know I'm on track by tracking and you know all of this you know and I just thought it in my community it's it's uh what we call the school-to-prison pipeline and so I just felt like I'm part of like this I'm like a warden you know in the school-to-prison pipeline and it wasn't until I stepped out of my immediate community and started looking at different ways of assessing different ways of co-creating different ways of revising and providing you know all of these different opportunities for students that we centred myself is that actually the question you're muted yes yes in in summary yes I love the question for sure I think that a lot of folks struggle with you know what am I doing especially mid-career people and thinking about where am I going next and how am I doing this and open education is a way of looking towards a future that feels brighter and different and we hear a lot about higher education transformation you know instead of waiting around for somebody else to transform it into something like this is the work that we can be doing and make it making it such that it does focus on on students and especially those students that haven't been the center of focus in the past and we're building that I think that we're very dedicated to building that equity and grading yeah we could we could go on and on and on about the ungrading movement we still have a few minutes if anyone else wants to be brave enough to join us in this conversation or if any of the other panelists just wanted to add anything while people are thinking so so Karen I'll just add an experience that I had just yesterday so there's if I'm not mistaken a group call ask me I'm maybe I'm saying it wrong that's right but they reached out to me you know just wanted to do an interview and and ask me some questions about um you know how has this work and other work that I'm doing in the um in in service of stem equity um you know how is that my exposure and work in that area manifested itself in my actual classrooms right it's coming because ultimately for for us you know us faculty folk that's where the rubber meets the road really in terms of the impact that you're having with your students right and I told them that um my exposure and work and collaboration and learning from other people um in this arena has has helped me to improve my people's skills I would tell anybody that's that's you know that's going to be my lifelong project people's skills right um and you know it really has helped me to see that my students are are just as human and have just as many needs and and concerns as I do right a lot of times as faculty we take the the the mindset that it's my class and you know my way to highway kind of thinking right but when you really embrace the idea that you are there to serve your students and and be of support to them as they make their you know as their journey right um that that that's a different way of thinking about it you know I told the story that you know uh you know recently in Louisiana we went through one of the worst hurricane events that we've had and in in a in a while and you know to have students reach out to me and said I don't have any internet right now I can't do anything I'm doing this from my phone and Karen and some of them may remember I had to drive you know 30 40 miles to be able to pick up an internet signal to sit in on some meetings and to get some work done um that's when you really realize if nothing else you're you're in this together this is a together thing this is not a me versus you this is a us this is a we and that's what I really have uh appreciated about Arlo it's it's helped me to be a more we person thank you for that thank you I know we only have a couple of minutes left that may be a really wonderful thing to to end on I don't want to cut it off though because we do have three minutes I know some folks need to get going to the next session also we'd love to stick around even after the recording stops and chat with anybody if Liz will let us use the link longer for so for those of you that like smaller conversations but I want to thank everybody for coming for attending this for being here today especially the incredible panelists that have been part of Arlo and for all of you who took your time to be here with us for this hour thank you so much