 All right, welcome everybody to our discussion panel on open education degrees. This is Una Daly from the Community College Consortium for OER and I'm pleased to be here with six experts in the open education and OER degree. I wanted to give you a little bit of context for why we're having this panel at the beginning of the semester during a very busy time for folks as we know. Not only of course is this a really exciting emerging area at our community colleges, but the year of open celebration, the August theme was on open education degrees and we had over 10 folks contribute open perspectives on that, that are our same topic here. So we had the Sebastian from Achieving the Dream who runs the OER initiative, OER degree initiative there. We had a number of colleges who are participating in that submit perspectives. We also had the California ZTZ program which is the zero textbook cost degree program contribute perspectives. Of course we had Tidewater who many of you know, one of the leaders in that area who did the first Z degree and so we also had some folks who are outside the community college. We have Thomas Edison University and Open Kaplan. So when you get a chance, do check out those perspectives on year of open and today we have some new perspectives to share with you as well. As many of you know, the Community College Consortium for OER is a community, a practice for open education. We work with colleges throughout the country and in Canada. Our most recent members are Mercer Community College from New Jersey and Frontier College from Colorado and those are our first colleges in those states. So we're very excited to have them join us in the consortium. We have webinars throughout the academic year. You can go to our website at any time and find out about those. They are free and open to our education community. I wanted to mention a couple of other activities that are coming up in the next month related to OER and OER degrees. Next Wednesday, there will be a Twitter chat on open education degrees. So I know we're going to be answering a lot of questions today, but this discussion can continue next Wednesday on Twitter using the Eden chat hashtag. We have two webinars coming up in September and on starting an OER initiative. We have two folks who are two colleges who are relatively recent to the OER world sharing how they got their initiative started and then September 27th will be a focus on faculty and librarians selecting OER together. So I hope that you can come to those as well. Now I want to give my panelists a chance to introduce themselves and then we will get going on the actual panel discussion. And Quill, I'll have you start if you may in a quick introduction. Hello everyone, I'm Quill West and I am the open education project manager at Pierce College in the Tacoma area of Washington State. I have been working in an open education degree in one way or another for the last five years and I'm excited to be here to talk with all of you today. And I forgot to mention that I'm also the leadership president of CCC OER. And just briefly as we get started because part of my job here is to remind everybody of things. If you have not clicked on the mute button on your microphone, please take a moment to do that for the icon of a microphone in your yes. Thank you Quill. I'm going to mute everyone and then let my panelists unmute themselves. Okay. All right. Thanks so much everyone. All right, Kim, you're up next. Can you please introduce yourself? Sure. This is Kim Thanos. I'm one of the founders and the CEO of Women Learning. We have been working with institutions around the country on OER degree programs for about the same time frame as Quill. Probably all this started about five years ago, just over five years ago. We are providing technical support for achieving the dream grantees in their degree programs and probably working with about 30 or 40 other institutions around the country that are really pursuing a full OER degree program. So look forward to hearing about the experiences of everyone and sharing some of what we've seen through that. Thank you, Kim. We're really thrilled that you could join us. I know that it's a hard squeeze sometimes, so really appreciate that. And Amanda Coolidge, who is joining us from her vacation at Prince Edward Island, tell us about your work up in British Columbia. Sure. So my name's Amanda Coolidge. I'm senior manager of open education with BC campus and our office is located in Victoria, British Columbia, but also in Vancouver, British Columbia. And our role as an organization is to work with all of the public post-secondary institutions, so colleges and universities across British Columbia to work in the areas of educational technology, professional learning, and open education, and as well as on some collaborative projects with other government groups within our province. So within the open education group, we have an open textbook project that started in 2012. And just recently, this in the last six months, last four months, we've announced that three of our colleges and universities will be starting Z creds, which is our version of Z degrees. So I'm excited to talk about that later today. Thank you, Amanda. And it's great to have Amanda in many ways here, but also really speaking from a perspective of being involved in the idea of a Z degree or Z cred only for the last six months or so, gives a different perspective from those who've been doing it for four or five years. So thank you. And I'm going around in a circle here. So next up, James Glappa-Groce Clegg. I'll let you introduce yourself. Yeah, hey, everybody. Thanks, Una. James Glappa-Groce Clegg with College of the Canyons in usually I say sunny Southern California today. I'm going to say really hot Southern California. It's 110 degrees Fahrenheit or 42 degrees Celsius here today. At College of the Canyons, we're working on OER in many different ways, including two pathways. One is a career technical education certificate in water systems technology. So we're really, really happy to be working on a CTE pathway. Also, we're finishing up a transfer degree in sociology, which again will be all open or all OER is all OER. That's one part of what I do. Another part of what I am very happy to do is to serve as a technical assistance provider for a statewide zero textbook cost grant program here in the California Community Colleges. And the California Community Colleges, we have 114 colleges serving well over 2 million people. So there's a great potential for impact there. So looking forward to chatting with you. All right. Thank you, James. And next up, Preston Davis from NOVA. Yes. Good afternoon or maybe morning, depending on where you are. I am Preston Davis, Director of Instructional Services at Northern Virginia Community College. I have been involved in OER pathways for five years or so. Currently have two programs in place and are developing a third pathway built on open resources for our students here at NOVA. And in addition to that, I'm involved as one of the Vice Presidents for the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources. And I'm glad that you all are here. And we've got a good number of folks who are really interested in OER and open pathways. And I hope that you find this very informative. Thank you. Thank you, Preston. And Preston was one of the pioneers in this who started a program back in 2013. So we're really pleased to have you, Preston. And TJ Bliss from Wiki Education. Welcome and tell us a little bit about your background. Hi, everyone. Yeah. So I am at Wiki Education, which is a nonprofit located in the Bay Area. But the reason I'm on this panel is because for the last three years, I was the program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation responsible for open educational resources and was able to provide a lot of funding toward OER degrees, including the grant to achieving the dream and worked with many of the people on this call who were involved in legislation in California. And so have been involved in the idea of OER degrees for a while and have been watching it from a 30,000 foot vantage point across the nation. And actually, throughout the world, there are people working on OER and open education degrees on a global scale that may not actually be represented on this call out of New Zealand. And so I have kind of a global perspective on what's going on, as well as a, you know, a North American perspective. And so I'm excited to hear what people have to say and to weigh in where I can. Thank you, TJ. We're pleased you could make it as well. So I want to just give you a little bit of the logistics for those of you who normally attend our webinars, you know, we usually operate a little bit differently. And we're hoping that this works and that you'll be patient with us. We have a set of questions that we put together around open education degrees. And each of our panelists has ownership of one of those questions. And they're going to read the question. And I have a slide for it and they will answer it. Other panelists will be invited to respond. And we'll be moderating the chat window as well and trying to answer some of your questions. But because we have five questions, we're only going to spend about six to seven minutes per question. And at the end, we will open up to a full Q&A from our audience. And we will be continuing this conversation in a week and through other social media options. So thank you for coming. And I will now turn this over to our first moderator, which is James Galapagrosclag for Q1. Hey, everybody. And Una, forgive me. Do you want the video on here? Sure. Please. Hey, everybody. And Una, you didn't tell me we were going to be claiming ownership over a question. So I just want to be clear that we're putting an open license on the question, right? I don't need any attribution. It really should be just public domain. And anyway, I'm really thrilled to start us off with the question. I'm trying to address the question of why should we care about OER degrees or zero textbook cost pathways or however we refer to them. And there are so many answers. We could really fill the whole time just discussing this. And I know and I hope others will chime in here as well. But I'll start off sort of at the macro level. And I'd say that we should care about OER degrees if we care about the positive impact of higher education on society generally. We're with the community colleges here. Most of us are with community colleges. And we start off by saying that community colleges are the great higher education experiment of the 20th century. We're open education or open access institutions, right? We succeed by serving the top 100% of students who come to us. You know, we have nearly 50% of all undergraduate students in the United States. 40% of all first time freshmen in the United States are in community colleges. Roughly 50% of all African American students, 50% of all Latino students, and so on are in community colleges. So the impact, the potential impact and the real impact we have is tremendous. But the cost of attending higher education in the United States in particular is tremendous. We know, unfortunately, we know that 30% of community college students roughly are hungry. We know that roughly 15% of community college students are homeless on any given day. And we know that the cost of student debt in the United States, $1.4 trillion is just staggering. And as incredible societal costs, if we think about delayed home ownership, delayed marriage, career choices because you have to pay off the student debt and so on and so forth. So if we believe that higher education is a social good, then we do believe also that we want to increase participation in higher education. And because of these data that I think we all know and that I pointed out, we have to reduce the cost, the societal cost of increasing participation and the actual individual cost of participation. There are a lot of initiatives out there across the United States and around the world really that are trying to do that in the U.S. and community colleges. In particular, we have conversations around guided pathways and college promise making the first couple of years of community college or first couple of years of undergraduate free. And then guided pathways saying that we can do a better job of not only getting students in but getting them out in a logical, coherent fashion by designing pathways around majors and providing appropriate supports to students. But I think the real glue that ties all of this together, these costs, reducing costs, increasing participation, and providing a coherent pathway to students is OER. You provide the ultimate academic freedom to faculty. You provide the lowered cost. You provide a coherent direction and path to students. So again, I think OER degrees and the use of OER generally, but particularly the degrees, are sort of the glue that ties all of these different concerns together. With that, I know we're limited on times, so I'm going to kick it to, I think TJ wanted to participate in this particular answer as well. Yeah, sure. I'll just say a few words about why we cared so much about OER degrees at the Hewlett Foundation. The Hewlett Foundation has invested almost $200 million in open educational resources, and a lot of that has been in higher education. But it wasn't until recently, the initial focus at Hewlett was on big, big name universities in the U.S., like MIT and Stanford. And the reason behind that was because we wanted to give some validity to the idea of open educational resources and thought that by going with these prestigious, well-named universities that there would be, that would help with that. And I think there was something to that. But recently, we realized that we needed to shift and focus on how OER can help those who most need that help. Because I'll be honest that the students at MIT are not the students who need OER the most. And so we started looking at what the opportunities might be in community colleges. And there were a lot of community colleges already working on this, and Una and the folks at CCCOER and many others have been focused on that for quite some time, even before Hewlett really got into it. But the idea of an OER degree that could have an impact on students holistically, to help them be able to plan from start to finish, know what their costs were going to be for college, number one. And then also the advantages that it would confer to faculty who would be working on a similar project and toward a similar goal. So we had focused on individual faculty and individual courses through the open textbook movement that Hewlett was behind and helping push. And realized that the time had come that we could push for more institutionalization of OER adoption through OER degrees. And there were colleges like Tidewater and Nova that were leading out on this early. And those models attracted people who were interested in, you know, who had money and who could put some money behind this. And so I think just from a philanthropic's perspective and why would you invest in something like OER degrees, maybe that can be helpful to see what the rationale was there. That's all I wanted to say. Yeah, this is James. Thanks, TJ. This is James again. Just one more perspective from sort of on the ground in an institution. What I found is that promoting the degree pathway really gives a rallying cry or a cause to the faculty in a particular discipline. That's what I've been fortunate enough to find in my own institution of college of the canyons. I think that, you know, some faculty, some departments have gotten so sick of me bragging about all the work that our sociology department has been doing and our CEO bragging about our sociology department and seeing the press releases, you know, that they say, hey, I want to get some of that love too, you know. I want to do that for my students too. There's this, I hope, well-placed competitive nature around doing what's in the real benefit to the real benefit of students and saying that, you know, my department's making the biggest difference in the lives of our students. I hope there's some of that out there. Thank you, James and TJ. And our audience is participating, but mostly in a, yeah, in a cheering you on. We have a few questions that we will take up later that are slightly separate issues. So thank you very much. That was a great introduction. And now we will go to Q2. Why should my institution focus on OER degrees instead of OER course adoption? And Amanda, this is your question. Sure. So one of the things, like with BC campus and with our BC institutions, we've been really focused on OER course adoption for the last four to five years. And the reason for that initially is because that was a way to really start getting invested interest within the community and ensuring that people knew what open was. We were looking at adoption numbers really, and we were just wanting to sort of get the buy-in slowly, but surely across institutions. And we've actually had a significant amount of courses that, and faculty who've been adopting, that it really became much more evident that what we were looking for is what we wanted to refer to as high impact adoption. So the idea is, can we do it at scale? Can we make a significant difference in access to education across British Columbia? And also to start making the, making courses and degrees much more consistent in terms of the way in which they were developing the courses or using the OER. So for example, an institution may want to start focusing on OER degrees because it's, Paul has said this with Paul, Paul Stacey said this in the chat, is it is a much more strategic goal in the sense that you're not just looking at one off. Like what, for example, what if that one particular instructor no longer teaches that course next year? Would that following instructor then take on a faculty role of using the open OER in the course? And so when we start looking at OER degrees, it's about making a change across curriculum, making a change in teaching and learning practice with faculty from across curriculum. And it's about making a greater impact and actually making a bigger difference for students. So what we're doing is improving the student experience across their entire degree rather than in just one course. Because what we know is that one student may be taking a biology course and then they're, which might be using an open textbook, but perhaps their physics course is not taking or not using an open textbook. And what is the cost of that particular physics book? And what is they, what is happening for that student who has to then purchase that particular book or that particular course material? And so if we're able to look at it from a degree perspective, whereby we can ensure that the students are having to pay zero cost in terms of resources for the degree, but also an opportunity for faculty to really change the content and the curriculum and the way in which they teach and an opportunity for students to become much more involved either through open pedagogy or open practices or even just a general working knowledge of how creative comments works or how open works and what that can bring to them in the future in terms of literacy as well. I'll stop there, but if anybody wants to add on or if you have questions about that, I'm happy to chat about. Or if you want me to expand more, I'm happy to. Thank you, Amanda. Yes, let's invite in other panelists who might want to share as well. TJ, I wanted to leave you a second. So let me just jump in for a minute. This is Kim. I agree with everything Amanda said and I also agree with Paul's comment in the chat that there's this kind of strategic focus and emphasis that comes with an OER degree program. That's amazing. I just have to say that I do feel like over maybe the last year that I have sensed that with institutions that we're working with that are doing really good important work in OER that is not directly on the path towards an OER degree that we I start to hear more kind of sense of apology around that, but you know we're doing good things but we don't have an OER degree program and I just wanted to just pipe in and say I think it's amazing to do any work that's moving us towards greater student success and sometimes an OER degree program cannot be the right strategy for an institution. That might be that there's one department that is really challenging or entranced around this that you know can hold up a degree program that you know it might there might be better progress in looking at other approaches and so just just to call out a couple and we just over the last two weeks since classes started at select community colleges students in their math courses alone only math have saved more than half a million dollars in textbook cost and they're seeing great success rates and really exciting kind of day one engagement in those courses. Cerritos College you know has worked to really improve outcomes in two of their high enrollment business courses and over the last year and a half they've been able to increase the average grade in those courses by three quarters of a letter grade and there is no difference between the success of Pell eligible and non Pell eligible students and both of those initiatives could only happen using OER and both of them are having real impact on students today and neither one is part of a formal OER degree program right now and so I just I would say that if there are obstacles on campus to doing an OER degree program that that's that's it's one approach and it's a really powerful approach but it's not the only powerful approach so I think there are a lot of great ways that we are just just give me one minute here I just was I was um hi um I just wanted to add on to what Kim was saying and I completely I agree with that and come absolutely and the reason one of the things I just wanted to share is that while we put out the call for Zed creds within our system it we it is good for us to let you know that there were certain institutions that we were targeting for this because of their maturity within open education their working knowledge the fact that they had a champion at the institution the fact that we knew that some of the courses that might be under consideration had already adopted and so in that sense those institutions um were doing already they were ahead of other institutions across British Columbia and and in some cases as Kim says you know we are working with institutions that are smaller with across the um province that are very new to open and in that case what we're working with them on is you know smaller stuff starting at the beginning so it's just wanted to add that yeah thank you Amanda good clarification and thank you Kim for sharing on that um there were some um great points that were brought up in the chat window so do definitely take a look at those um and we're going to move on to our next question and Preston this is your question great thank you very much so in terms of uh what longer term changes uh do we hope OER degrees will bring to our colleges states countries uh I think that first and foremost I will say with our institution and I know that many community colleges in particular face the same challenge and that is with degree completion um community college students do not complete uh at a rate nearly as high as four-year institutions and that's a real emphasis that we have at NOVA and many institutions are really working hard and what an OER degree does is it helps to define the pathway for students who actually often need that additional guidance in order to know what is an appropriate course so that they don't take erroneous credits that are going to impact their time to degree and will also help them make sure that they're on a pathway if they plan to continue to a four-year institution to transfer and get credit for the work that they've completed at a community college in particular so I think that the the the completion is is really a major reason why a degree pathway makes a lot of sense particularly for community colleges but for any four-year institution or beyond you know it makes sense to and I think that the the term that was used earlier by Kim I believe was you know the strategic planning that is involved with planning a degree program that forethought really does help solve a lot of problems and reduce obstacles that you might encounter but I also think too that we need to remember that you know the idea is to increase access and affordability for our students so we want to make sure that we are keeping in mind that students who are worried about putting food on their plate or whether they're going to make rent or other types of really foundational issues related to to life and survival those things take precedence and they really do impact on students being able to focus and be successful and and if we can in some small way have a positive impact on their ability to afford to go to school while they are balancing their other responsibilities just those small incremental savings can really add up substantially our institution for example since 2013 when we started offering our OER program has saved students over three million dollars and so that really translates into a lot of small savings over a period of time amongst a large number of students and so the impact can really snowball in a very positive way and so we see this as really a social justice and equity issue in my mind I think it provides everyone particularly those who are at a disadvantage the additional support and direction and understanding that can hopefully get them past that finish line and really make a major difference in their lives which is going to benefit the community as a whole so I'll open up to any other comments that you'd like to make yeah this is James if I may uh I'd also add that that's great president absolutely it your your comments reflect what we what we uh the way we see things here at college scanning certainly and I think throughout the state of California in addition I think something that higher education public higher education really needs to get better at and that is responsiveness and contextualization for industry so leveraging OER in a certificate pathway and maybe not a degree pathway but a certificate pathway that adds up to a certificate an industry based sort of certification responding to rapidly evolving and changing needs of business and industry is certainly in the interest of everyone our traditional curriculum process is quite cumbersome and we are using openly licensed material and aligning that we if we're using openly licensed material we can more quickly and more context in a better contextualized way align that with the needs of business and industry to provide them with graduates who have certifications in their areas very good point thank you okay we will go ahead and move to question four unless there was anything in the chat window that you wanted to address briefly uh Preston uh I'm gonna have to come back to that I uh I need to go through and look at a couple of things in the chat window but I'm certainly happy to come back to some of the comments sure absolutely and this is tj there was a question in the chat window about the the feedback to question three again the impact that OER degrees would are having actually on teaching on faculty practice uh I can't speak to that directly because I'm not at a community college though I know that there is a belief that this actually does impact faculty practice and and Preston maybe you've seen that at your college and James at yours uh as well uh and it is research that is there is some research happening on that through the achieving the dream OER degree initiative that we'll be looking at what happens to faculty practice uh when they adopt OER in general but particularly in the context of an OER degree so I don't know if either you James or Preston can weigh in on that now or but I do understand that there is research happening on that and it's a great question and it's something that should be attended to right thank you for pointing that out and I will just say quickly that one of the things that we have really seen is this increased collaboration among faculty which I think has been very beneficial for our program and for the faculty themselves because it gives faculty an opportunity to share with their colleagues when they might have a lot of experience developing materials that they are teaching to their own students but when they're working in this sort of team approach to create a course using open content or creating content for a particular course in a team environment you really get the best possible solution when you know the old saying none of us is as smart as all of us we really see that in the way folks are collaborating and it's not just faculty at our institution in departments like English faculty collaborating with with one another or or things of that we see folks sharing among other institutions within our system or other institutions across the country even you know internationally sharing ideas materials resources and so the whole idea of how you're able to share content share ideas that is something that we have seen our faculty embrace and it's really become something where we design this planned approach and we've seen faculty sort of take and and run with it and take it to the next level and and that is something that I think makes all of a smile because that really shows the impact in the buy-in. Thank you Preston and TJ for bringing up that question about teaching quality it really is an excellent one and not one that we directly addressed here so I want to now switch to Q4 which has really been led into by this discussion what are the benefits and challenges of sharing complete OER degrees with other colleges and this is a question for Kim Thanos. Thank you Una um I think I might be like the foremost expert in ways not to do this and so it's nice to be able to get out in front of it and talk about kind of what we've seen around sharing that's happening well and some of the considerations to think about upfront around this you know as I was thinking about the question I really felt like there are almost four levels that need to be addressed upfront in order to support effective sharing and so the first one I would say is very personally at the faculty member level there's a question that that is am I willing to share and you know the reason I say that that's an important one to address upfront is we're thinking about institutional programs for OER degrees is that you know really often for faculty members just acknowledging that this is a real question very early in the project and helping faculty members think about that and become conditioned to that idea of sharing out as they as they move through this work provides an opportunity for a dialogue provides an opportunity for requests for support and things like that that you know might address that question well you know alternatively if we get to the very end of a project and I'll confess that this was the case with the first OER degree program that we worked on with Tidewater we really didn't address the question of sharing until we got to the very end of the project and faculty members were caught off guard by it and they felt like they had had expectations change on them through the process the distinction between openly licensing something and actually sharing it out in a way that others can find it and discover it and reuse it you know those those are two different things for a faculty member and there are different levels of kind of confidence and support that are required for each of those so I think that's the first level of sharing or the first question to address the second question is am I able to share this which all comes down to licensing and in the achieving the dream grant project this has the most aggressive licensing requirements thank you TJ with which we've ever worked and it's been both just I think a real gift in helping do some really important work that has an opportunity to move the field forward quickly because of the ability to share and it's also been really challenging and so for the achieving the dream OER degree programs everything used within these degree programs must be openly licensed so the distinction on that would be if there is a good set of materials for say introduction to computer applications or a course like that that is openly available on the internet but is not openly licensed at your institution you might say well an open course just links out to that and acknowledges that it's copyrighted material but that it is available and for this the open licensing of each of the artifacts that's required in the course is actually one of the requirements of the grant and the benefit of that is that everything that's created within this grant program can be reused openly across the community so I do think that question of you know really thinking through from an institutional perspective what are our goals with our degree program what licensing would we encourage or for providing funding what licensing would we require and the questions that come up most often are the the one that I mentioned before that is material that's not openly licensed but is freely available the second most common question is using library resources which within an institution can really extend what's available for students to access and use or faculty members to use in the courses but when it comes to sharing with others that library collection might not be something that someone at another institution either in the community or even within a single system might have access to the third question we see is this very practical technical question that is can I expose my work you know if I'm building everything within kind of native content in Blackboard and I want to share that with someone who is using Canvas or Desire to Learn or sadly worse yet Moodle when it comes to that kind of open sharing that can be really challenging to do and so you know from a from a very practical perspective early on in the planning of the project it's great to really think about what are the tools the platforms the technology solutions we can use to help faculty members create OER in a way that is easily shared across institutions and then probably the most challenging is that same question with an added level of complexity which is is there a way that I can create work that I can expose and share with others in a way that provides them full permissions to retain reuse revise remix and redistribute the content and so you know if I'm going to say well the way I share out is through pdf you the revision opportunities and remixing opportunities with the pdf are more challenging and so you know thinking about the five r component of sharing upfront does allow I will say in all of this there's never a perfect solution there are always trade-offs that have to be made but I think that it allows the the organizations to think about those trade-offs and make those decisions in a more deliberate way rather than just getting to the end of a project and kind of running into a wall around around the sharing that makes it more challenging for that to happen any any other panelists want to weigh in with kind of their questions or experience or comments around that so Kim this is you you were sharing three levels I must have missed the fourth one okay so the first isn't my willing to share the second Emma is am I able to share due to licensing right the third is can I expose my work and then the fourth is can I expose and enable full five r permissions in the way that I'm sharing got you okay yeah three and four kind of related that that's a wonderful summing up um I'd like to give our other panelists a chance to respond to that if they if they would like this is quill and I think one of the things when you're considering those four levels and kind of the institutional buy-in to that is part of it so it's you know the institutional attitude and belief and culture around sharing but it's also the mindset of how can we leverage the best possible experiences for our faculty and students um the resources that we have at hand meaning both open materials but the materials we have available to us through our institution in a way that that fosters that sharing and actually incentivizes both the sharing and the creation I think in a lot of ways um the benefits get drowned out by the focus on resources themselves rather than the focus on the actual sharing practice um because that's a harder thing to talk about but it because it's much um it's cultural it's much more cultural than I can create a course and that's a thing it's an artifact I've created it exists it's very different than I'm changing my perspective on what it means to be a sharing part of a community thank you quill I think culture um does really come into play here all right Kim if you didn't want to address any of the questions in the chat window I think we'll just move on to our last question and then we'll come around again uh to to uh some of the discussions that are happening um some great discussions happening all right and sorry here we go and quill this is your question what are these I'll let you read it because I've got the chat window on top of this line okay yes so and thank you all for the chat window I'm having a great time chatting with folks but I'm gonna talk now so um my question is what are the next steps for OER degrees and um I originally thought about this as my responsibility to talk about the future of of open education degree work um and I kind of got tied up in that and then I realized that steps are incremental and it's smaller than what is the future of our movement um so um and I'm gonna hit on a lot of the things that have already been spoken about and talked about in the chat window but um I really do think that um the sharing between institutions needs to be bigger and easier and better um and we've already had some discussion both in the chat and amongst people about how to share resources how to share completed courses um and I want to add to that conversation that not only do we need maybe not new databases because there are lots of places out there where things are shared but easier to um more flexibility and adoption um and adoption in those resources months they're shared um and there's some great platforms out there but those things need to grow because it has to be easy for an institution to find a resource like it decide to use it and adopt and adapt it to what the local institution needs and wants um another step for us um it has really um I'm hoping that the research out of the OER degree initiative and the achieving the dream project um will lead to some really great student feedback on what great practice looks like with open education um I I think that we have an idea from the institutional and faculty perspective I don't know that we have great information on what inspires students to learn with these resources what inspires them to interact with them and work with them um and so I'm really excited to hear some of the qualitative feedback that they're starting to get but I think that our institutions should be collecting and sharing that material um that information about what works um I think um there's already a push for the increase um in materials um and in courses that support wider institutions wider degree pathways and I'm thinking in particular about for example the career and technical education program that James um James College is working at uh on I think um in community colleges that is a big gift because in a lot of ways the students in our professional technical areas or career and technical education areas um are really more stuck in their educational um the materials choices they have because they are produced by industry or because there's very few of them I'm thinking about some of the for example nursing programs that are out there um those materials are very very expensive and those students are kind of stuck because there is no other place to go even if the faculty wants to go there um and so I'm hoping that we can begin to branch into some of those areas to increase options um particularly in whole degree pathways um and I think that in a lot of ways we've started to do some of that work but it's more intensive work in terms of there's nothing that exists um that can teach small engine repair but we need we need people who can do small engine repair we need to support their time in our institutions in any way possible um and then I'm going to end on this one because there's a lot of different things that I think we need to think about in terms of sharing our materials and how to work with each other and how to bring about and spark the um importance of the local educational experience because I do think there's a lot to be said for we can be sharing across institutions and everybody writes a comp one class and there's like 17 really good ones out there right now um and we don't need new people to keep making comp one over and over and over again we need to be adopting an adapting comp one but I also think that we need to be um highlighting what it is that makes composition one at Pierce College special and different than composition one at Tacoma Community College which is you know 12 miles away and the reason for that is because what we do as teachers is really really important um and we need to be highlighting that that um that significance that what the teacher brings what the local institution brings that culture is necessary and you can preserve that culture while adopting and using other people's materials because I think there's a lot of concern about that um in the faculty um space and also in the student space um so and then I said I was going to end on this um and this is a big one for institutions that have been doing this work for a while um and that is making plans for how to revise and adapt um revise and update materials as they're created um I think that that's a step that every institution has to invest in but I think that maybe we can be thinking about how to invest in it as a wider community so that not every institution is responsible for updating the change in the pre-calc one textbook that we're all using and I think some fields have adopted that easier than other fields have done um but I think that's some of the effort and work we need to invest in so um I'm really really interested to hear from all the other panelists on this and in terms of time um we have a couple of minutes so I'm curious to see um if anybody else wants to chime in did I miss anything that's a next step uh this is James I just want to call attention to some of the themes from the chat uh Jim and Kim were both uh with others were talking about the uh need for a more strategic and and considered collaboration between OER degrees and other large initiatives such as guided pathways or the college prom college promise uh initiatives to name just a few and then Kelvin has has shared a lot of really helpful information about uh competency-based education and the opportunities for uh alignment between OER degrees and uh the CBE movement and I think those those are right on absolutely right on there was something that came up earlier in the discussion as well around articulation um so most of um our speakers here are at community colleges or work directly with community colleges but Amanda Coolidge works with both community colleges and universities and Amanda do you want to speak for how obviously articulation has a local context uh usually regional um do you anticipate any issues with articulation between your uh zed degrees at community colleges and your four-year colleges and universities yeah that's an interesting point um we I so the institutions that we're currently working with are actually uh Quantlin Polytechnic University Thompson Rivers University and then the Justice Institute of BC I am not entirely sure um how the courses will transfer over what we're doing our best to so because we're learning from a lot of lessons learned that especially what we've heard from today um we're definitely taking notes on this one um is that when we meet our first initial kickoff meeting is going to be with all of the institutions who will have the Zed cred and the idea is to go through all of the courses that are involved with any of the certificates that they're planning to host and identifying where's the overlap so for example can this actually be used in your own course why are we recreating a first-year certificate or sorry a first-year course in English when perhaps we can reuse one that lumens created or atd and how do we do that and then the hope is that basically um as one of the things that um the project managers interested in doing is as those courses um become developed is to put them out for peer review from other institutions so perhaps we may get some feedback from a college or we may get some feedback from a university or an institute and the idea there is to make it a bit more open and transparent in terms of the development but to also gain feedback and so when it comes to the articulation committees um what we're hoping is that if they are able to easily sort of plug and play the material then we're hoping that they'll be able to do that with courses there may be the chance that they will have to change or adapt some of that material but overall um we tend to we haven't seen a ton of push pack from different articulation committees in terms of using OER or the development of OER and so if we can get more of a buy-in in terms of seeing the um the actual progress that's been made and already sort of the collaboration within the upfront stage we're hoping that that might sort of alleviate some concerns. Great thank you Amanda. Other panelists who'd like to share their local context around articulation? All right. This is TJ I'll say I'll say a word about this because I mentioned earlier some work that's going on uh on the global stage which really has a lot to do with articulation and you know some some of the comments in the chat feed have talked about the next steps being institutions sharing with each other and really partnering together to develop degree programs that perhaps cross institutional boundaries and then when you do that you really have to pay attention to articulation so I would recommend you know people interested in this question should look at the work that Wayne McIntosh is doing at the OER foundation it's called the OER University or OER Universitas so you can find it on google the thing about Wayne is that everything that he's done every conversation that's ever happened every meeting that's ever occurred is fully open and you can read about it so if you like to read you can just read it the experience that they're having with 50 plus universities from across the world right so different institutions in different countries agreeing to contribute individual courses toward an entire degree that then any student in the world could take for free and then credit would be conferred just through an assessment fee and basically what Wayne and his his folks are trying to do and have been quite successful in doing is is getting that articulation agreement so they've worked through a lot of the challenges they have a lot of experience doing that there are several institutions in in North America a couple in the U.S. that are involved in this as well so it's just an example and a place to learn some lessons about this but I really think that that's where OER degrees are headed and it will take some time and some of these things will need to be done at the state level because of state laws and some may be able to cross state boundaries or provincial boundaries but but there is a good example there of people trying to figure this out and it really does come down to articulation and the agreement so that credit can can count for the students thanks for sharing that that that global picture TJ and I know that California and Virginia have been working on this and New York is working on on these issues around articulation because they're they're looking at the whole system of public higher ed around OER I'm not saying they've solved all of them but they're actually looking at it so that kind of a vision of looking at it from a complete state system perspective is very helpful anyone else want to share on that one all right um I was there any more around guided pathways that came up quite a few times in our chat window and there's been some great discussion around that and the relationship with OER degrees and obviously there's a huge overlap there was there any any other would anyone like to add more about that from our panel hi this is Preston I can just say really quickly that we are in the process of implementing guided pathways and in doing so are very having direct conversations with our largest transfer university in our region as a real partnership between the two institutions and so as as much as our OER degree pathways have been well received and and and and have gotten a lot of support the idea of the completion agenda and partnering with a four year institution those formalized guided pathways have really uh become you know the the main attraction and and the real attention that uh leadership at our colleges is focused on and I don't think that that necessarily means anything bad or negative for our OER pathways I think it means that what we will see is how our institution is providing pathways for transfer and completion and then how we can incorporate our OER pathways and use the guided pathways to inform additional course development so that the OER courses that we are offering as an institution fit into the guided pathways to completion and to transfer in a seamless way thank you thank you Preston for sharing that those partnerships that are going on and are really powerful um we're just a little over the hour now and I just want to give each of my panelists a chance to give any closing remarks that they would like and um we will just start um I think at the top with uh James Glap of Gross Club who we started with and just work our way through and any closing remarks James for this discussion today gosh Luna well first of all thanks to you Luna and thanks to the community college consortium for open educational resources and the great work that you do bringing us together uh and secondly uh what a what an honor and and what fun to be part of this community it's just just fabulous thank you thank you James um Amanda you're up next sure yes thanks for having me um as you know we're very new to this um to to starting off with our Zed cred so we will be um following up with some blog posts sort of lessons learned as we move through and talking about sort of our progress to date so be sure to check that out and um of course it'll be great to reach out to all of you as well to um get more suggestions and feedback as we go on so we're always looking to share and collaborate thank you thanks Amanda for joining us I I've heard you guys up in British Columbia say this before that you had a late start and you have a way of catching up and uh taking the lead so I'm excited to see what you guys come up with uh Preston you're up next hey I just want to say thank you I have learned a great deal from being able to participate in this session with with such a great group of of presenters as well as audience members and the conversation in the chat has been fantastic and I really think that we have an opportunity to continue this conversation and really gain some momentum and I know that I'm not only speaking for myself when I say that those of us at CCCOER are more than happy to offer assistance to others to to help so again thank you all for participating today thank you Preston um and absolutely um Preston is on our board and um we we're open to questions and helping others at all times and Kim Thanos thank you so much for coming today Kim closing remarks oh just to thank you as well I completely agree with Preston it's so fun to have a chance to interact and get different ideas and perspectives and appreciate the chance to do that thank you thank you and Quill I'm going to turn it over to you uh to close out our uh discussion panel um can I say ditto to what everybody else said um thank you again for the opportunity to participate but also thank you for all of your wonderful comments in the chat window I think we had a really good discussion happening there and um I'm thankful for the opportunity to learn from everybody um and I will just say please join our community of practice you're looking at a slide about CCCOER um and we do have a website cccoer.org right um please join us there um when if you would like more information about our organization thank you all for coming um and thank you so much to our amazing panelists and we are looking forward to seeing you in the coming months at more of our online activities and of course for those of you who are going out to uh California in October we look forward to seeing you there as well uh thank you and have a great afternoon uh one more thing don't forget about the year of open it's still ongoing absolutely