 Good morning. Welcome to this session of OER 22. I hope you've all had a lovely morning. It's very early for our presenters here, 3 a.m. Jacob says, so they win the award for most dedicated presenters for getting up this early. And they'll be sharing with us today scaling success, inspiring change, reflections on launching the California Alliance for Open Education. So I'd love to welcome Jacob, Jamie, Thomas, or Tom, as you probably prefer, to OER this morning. Lovely to have you all. Thank you so much for getting up this early. We're looking forward to your presentation. And I will hand over to you all now. Thank you very much. So as she said, I'm Tom Clovis, and I'm presenting today with Jacob Jenkins, who is an Associate Professor of Communications. Jamie Hannins, who is an Associate Professor of Nursing. And then our other two team members who are here but not presenting are Janet Pinkley, a Librarian, and Alicia Virtue, our Dean of the Library. So what we're going to do today is we're going to give you some background that led to us establishing the California Open Education Alliance, and then how we developed it, and then just reflections on where we are right now. So the California State University system established the Affordable Learning Solutions, which was a system-wide effort to reduce course resource costs for students. Out of that, our University, California State University Channel Islands, established OpenCI in the 2016-2017 academic year. And our first coordinators were the one and only Jamie Hannins and Jacob Jenkins. We were the first university in the 23 Campus California State University system to establish Z majors. We had a communications major, a early childhood studies major, and a health sciences major, where all the courses within the major students can take without purchasing any course materials. In addition, we have a Z track in nursing and a Z credential in special education. You can see that we fostered a climate of open education resources for our students. And in that very first year, we saved our students over $259,000. That nearly doubled the next year, and we saw rapid growth after that, as you can see on these slides. For this current academic year, we have saved our students over $3 million. And that is for a whopping total of $73,305. So you can see that this effort by our faculty has really paid off and benefited our students significantly. In addition to direct efforts to reduce textbook costs and course resource costs for our students, OpenCI took a couple other initiatives. So we've impacted over 70,000 student enrollments during the six years that we've been working on this effort. We also OpenCI funded an OER textbook in introduction to U.S. healthcare systems. That has been edited by me with collaborating with 20 authors across the United States, and will be published this August. That aligns with one of our Z majors, health sciences, and will further reduce the cost because that was one of our foundational core courses that several of the faculty were still using some traditional textbooks, and they've committed to using this textbook once it's available. And then a multidisciplinary group of faculty conducted a campus-wide survey to evaluate the impact of course materials on students. It was published in a special issue of the Journal of Interactive Media and Education, and it offered the first known empirical evidence of textbook affordability as a social justice issue because students from undergraduate groups were less likely to purchase course material at all, less likely to have course material, required course materials on the first day of the class, and rated stress and anxiety as being caused by needing to spend so much money on their course materials. This article that was co-authored by Jacob and Jamie and others received the Open Research Award from the Open Education Global Organization, and now I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Jacob Jenkins. Thanks, Tom. And can you hear me? I assume. So, Tom asked, offered a little bit of background about, you know, like why we even began the California Alliance for Open Education, sort of how we got here. So, my part was to offer a little bit of detail about the development, and I think our thought process here was that if you're chiming in for the presentation, you might be interested in how we did it, right? And you might be wanting to start something similar yourself somewhere else or, you know, something complementary. So, to give you a little bit of background, you know, the idea in a lot of ways had been floating around for a while in our minds, I think, in the sense of trying to break down some of those silos between all the different institutions of higher education in California, which we'll get to in a moment, the idea of scaling out and sort of sharing out some of the success that we'd had on our campus that Tom was just telling you about, specifically the Z major development that he mentioned that was the first in the entire CSU. So, from that, you could also trace it as we listed here as being the first thing back to a SPARC grant through the Mickelson 20 million Mines Foundation. So, that's really where the idea sort of, you know, met some traction and started moving forward. The SPARC grant initiative is just like it sounds, it's supposed to spark an idea. So, it's a $25,000 grant that you can see that's not usually enough to maybe make something completely sustainable or to get it, you know, completely fleshed out, but to spark the process. And so, that's exactly what it did. It got, like I said, the idea that had been floating around for a little while, some thoughts we've been thinking to really get us to move it forward. And as we shared it back with the CSU, if you remember, Tom mentioned the Affordable Learning Solutions Initiative is out of the entire California State University system. So, as we shared this initiative idea back with the CSU, they also even offered matching funds, as you can see on the screen there, of an additional $25,000. And then a third major component that we're listing here that I think was kind of, you know, the starting point to get this going was the professional web design. So, just seeing a moment, one of the major components of the initiative is our web presence. Being in the world, we're in these days. We don't necessarily need a full building and things like this. We're wanting to especially collaborate with people at other institutions online even works, you know, better in that way. So, we are not web designers ourselves. So, again, if you're wanting to start something similar or something like that, and if you're wondering how to get started, we really could have hired out of web designer. I think that's how we were originally going to do it. But we were fortunate enough through the CSU that they have in-house web designers. And that's who we ended up working with. So, if you put those three components together with the funding for our fellows, we'll talk about in a moment, and fellows for the behind and funding for the behind the scenes work, you know, through the matching funds and the Spark grant, and then the professional web design. If you go to the next slide, Tom, and the mission of the California Alliance for Open Education, as you can see on the screen, is to equip leaders across California's higher education system with the collaborative training, guidance, and resources needed to reduce course material costs and increase student success. And a few things there to emphasize would be maybe at the very beginning there just the idea of campus leaders across California's higher education system. So, if you could maybe go to the next slide, perhaps, Tom, that to maybe give a little bit of context or understanding with that, that in California, being a state in the United States, if not everybody on this call realizes this, there are three major systems with the community college system, the California State University system, which Channel Islands is part of, there's 23 campuses in total, and the University of California system, as you can see, they all have a different flavor to them, sort of a different approach, maybe a different stakeholder group. And a lot of campuses within these systems were doing great things. I would especially point toward the California Community College system that was just doing great things. And, you know, naturally just being human, we're oftentimes in silos, though, and we're not, you know, working together on these things. And so one of the major aspects or one of the major hopes of the California Alliance was to break down those silos. That's what the beginning of the mission statement about across the entire education system. And then to share the training resources and whatnot that maybe brings us to the next slide, Tom, if you could advance, is, oh, it's a different slide that I'm seeing on my end. Could you go to the next one? Maybe you can come back to that one, is what's to develop a website so that we could share out the resources that we had developed, for example, in developing RZ majors so that then once we, you know, increase that collaboration across the different systems that we could also use that as a hub to share out resources that other campuses have developed. And the website is broken down into, you know, there's like an about and there's a contact, but then there's resources as one of the major components of it. And then the other is projects. And within resources, that's what I was just alluding to about sharing back some of those things that we developed broken down into Z major development specifically, campus promotion and then community outreach. And so just seeing how you could go and see the resources about maybe how other campuses had spread the news among your faculty, maybe how they collaborated with student organizations or student governments, maybe how they had developed projects that worked externally with community stakeholders, these ideas so that you could so we go learn from each other, right? So there's a mission, you know, we developed the website, which is really a major component thanks to those matching funds and to that in-house web designer at the CSU. Another major thing through the development, if you can go back maybe one time to the just go back to now maybe with the fellows was we launched the inaugural fellows program with the idea of getting four fellows from across this entire system. So we opened it up to the UC, the California system, the CSU, the California Community College System, I mean the CSU, to try to get four fellows to work on a research project together, some sort of project that had some deliverable. We left it really wide open the very first time doing this that we wanted to see what creativity, what ideas they brought to the table. And so that would again increase this collaboration, break down the silos, but then hopefully something would actually come out of it that would be able to go on the website under those resources and is one of those projects that we're working on. And currently just for record they're coming up with a roadmap, maybe you could say like a resource guide, two of them, one focus for faculty, one focus for administration that has nodes, this is a term we've been using, that as you go through the map of just detailed information for different points in the process of what step one would be, step two would be, step three would be, and they're trying to make it visual, interactive, and some things like this. So just to give you some taste of an idea. But that's been great for a number of reasons that I don't want to step on Jamie's toes. In fact, if she's going to reflect on some of the the positive of that interaction and the collaboration, but just the fact that we get representation from community colleges from the CSU here, and we're working together, meeting monthly on this project. So that alone has been a positive aspect of it. So we started the website, the fellows program, maybe skipped forward twice time to go past that. Then another aspect that through the development was the idea of a steering committee. This slide I'm particularly excited about, I think we're all proud of it for lack of a better term. People on a call like this probably would recognize several of the names on here. We wanted to gather the steering committee to give us some guidance, a sounding board, right? We can meet with periodically, quarterly, semesterly, to get direction, flesh out ideas, future directions, things like this. And I mean, honestly, I think we kind of started at the top, you know, who we think of that we would love to work with that would really bring some great energy and great ideas, get some different representation from different parts of the community college system or the higher education system, including the community colleges, CSU and whatnot. And so we're very proud of this because we reached out and everyone was so willing and so excited about it. So you can see, you know, from the president of Compton College, James, you know, as a close friend of ours has been doing great work over at College of the Canyons with Z-Degrees and Cable Green at Creative Commons. And you can read the names for yourself. So we gathered the steering committee together, you know, reached out individually to them. And that was part of the development. And maybe go forward. Is there one more, Tom, in my part? Yeah, which would bring us then to moving forward. You know, this is all very much in process. We just launched the website just a month or two ago, as you saw in the slide or two ago, if you noticed during Open Education Week, we still considered somewhat, you know, a beta version of the website in the sense that it's not fully fleshed out yet with those resources from other institutions quite yet. You know, some of the information that's already outdated at this point, even as we add new steering committees, because it's, you know, changing so fast at this point. So we were still updating that. But as we move forward and things get settled in, some other potential future directions we would like to explore would be the possibility of Z-certifications, as you can see, as other programs start to, you know, reproduce some of the things that we've done at their own institutions, perhaps some awards programs. And again, you can read yourself, but the, you know, the possibility is just sort of endless. And we're excited about where it could go, depending on what our steering committee, how they guide us, and maybe even some feedback we get today from you all. So that's a little bit about how we, how we did it. Hopefully that's helpful. If anyone, again, had some questions about that, and then we can answer specific questions later. And otherwise, I'll pass it to Jamie Hannins, who's just going to tell you about some reflections about lessons learned and things like that. Thank you, Jacob. So really on this Reflections piece, I think this whole process from the initiation of OpenCI and really Jacob and I, as faculty getting involved in this initiative, you know, we're both from different disciplines with Jacob in Communication. I'm a nursing and Tom, of course, in Health Science. Really, there was a huge learning curve, I think for us initially, getting involved. Some of you that maybe have been involved in OER for a long time, and really been publishing OER and been part of the initial kind of growth. We know that with COVID, of course, that growth has kind of been pushed forward in many ways because of the need to transition courses online to really rethink what kind of materials we're using that are accessible to students that may not be traditionally in the classroom. But that really, you know, into our sixth year, there's a lot of reflections, I think we could both add to in the sense of where we started and how we've grown, as well as really pushing forward the, I think, culture of campus to really think about student needs and think about how students may be, especially on our campus as a Hispanic-serving institution and a huge number of students that are either needing financial aid support or having to choose between, let's say, basic needs and textbook costs, how important that is to their success in advancing their education. And some of the unexpected barriers, specifically with now this kind of sixth year, but also first year of launching the California Open Education Alliance, is really looking at, we've done this on our campus, we have spaces where we connect with other CSU campuses and talk about the great work that they're doing. We do have relationships and conversations across the other systems, but instead of really recreating the wheel and individually working on course-by-course or program-by-program, how can we a little bit more intentionally share? And why it's listed as an unexpected barrier is really because that ability to share cost systems is challenging. And thinking about how to connect, you know, conferences such as this one are great ways to connect, but how do we go from our two or three day conference time here to staying connected to be able to share the details? And so that website development was really, I think, important in thinking about how could we share across the systems, how could we not have individuals doing the work alone, and we are thinking about how to really make that less isolated. And so I'm not sure if others have those same kind of situations where you know other campuses have similar courses, have faculty that are working on this, and can share back so people are launching and taking steps together instead of starting from the beginning. But it's still a challenge and we, as Jacob said in March, just launched the website. We're still looking for people to share, we're still trying to figure out how to scale that website as a resource and somewhere where individuals or campuses or leaders can go online and submit materials so that it's not just about Channel Island sharing back what we've done, but we know there's lots of other great work being done out there that could have impact and stir other ideas. We don't want it to replace repositories such as Cool for Ed or any of the other great resources that are out there, but we want to find ways to connect people that might have similar approaches to things such as getting students involved, how to work through your Senate or other committees, how to get your leadership supportive, and really thinking about that in an intentional way to grow OER. So Tom has been involved in working on publishing and open text, and so even things like sharing out the resources that are there or the process that goes into that, rather than just the context of the new open textbook or open stacks or pieces of what's available, also how that happened. I think the future sustainability is a challenge that probably many campuses have. Many people have worked on OER efforts, I think, without funding from the beginning, and so I think that's always a challenge in figuring out where to get the funding, where to make it sustainable, how to make it sustainable, how to make sure you have leaders on your campus that can push it forward. We really feel like our Dean in the Library, Ella Shiverchua, has really helped us take the next steps in looking at a more sustainable effort, specifically with OpenCI and having that be kind of a core component of our campus, but then where does that stand? And one of the barriers or challenges that we're looking at solving in the future is really, how do we sustain the California Open Education Alliance to continue to be this place where we can connect? And through the California systems, which are large systems, being able to use that as leverage to move things forward. And then, Tom, if you want to go to the second to last slide, many benefits, some of which I've started to mention, but we did not expect the ALS team, and they've always been a huge support of our campus, but we did not expect them to match funds, which was wonderful because it really helped us be able to launch and think about things into next year. This summer, we're going to be working on efforts to look at our general education courses really closely and ask some questions about how we use, we have a, it's called a CID code, so it's a course identification code that indicates courses across the system are similar and maybe have similar learning outcomes and so how to make those connections across the systems. And if our GE courses are already on a Z pathway, then how we can leverage that information as well. We really, as I mentioned, had this administrative engagement and alignment to our campus and wider California state initiatives that created a place for support to continue to grow this effort. The project development from multiple stakeholders really is important, I think, for us to think about as a team. We have, you know, a vision or an angle from the library and how the library can partner and push initiatives forward and how we can work with the library to find resources that are available to students through the library access as an option as well as, you know, from the faculty angle as well as from a administrative vision or perspective on how do we keep moving the initiatives forward and tie to those campus priorities as well as using the campus data to support where we've come from, how far we've gone and using that to leverage maybe future support. And then lastly, the leadership team that we have been able to recruit for our planning moving forward has been phenomenal. We really don't think that we are the only voice with oh, we are leadership and really feel like we are kind of on the baby step aspects of that in some ways or at least in California and maybe don't have the larger international perspective. And I think it's really important that we keep the vision and the maybe conversations that these key OER leaders are having in the efforts to move forward because they may have ideas that can push us in a different direction of something we didn't think of. So we're really grateful for that steering committee membership. And that's all I have. So I want to leave the last five minutes for questions, conversation, maybe what's been done on other campuses, things we perhaps haven't thought of yet. And of course, our contact information to reach out and Tom and Jacob, feel free to add anything else as well. So does anybody in the, oh, okay, we have a question here that I mentioned there was a shift in the campus culture to be more focused on student needs. You'd love to hear more about that process. I really think as Jacob always says, we started with the low hanging fruit and really getting faculty engaged on our campus at the very beginning who were already either using low or no cost resources or really had a pulse on student needs. We did an initial call to see if faculty were interested in redesigning their courses for low or no cost. And that was in our first year in 2016. Because of the rapid growth that you saw back on a few slides ago, there was really this, I think, embracement of faculty engagement. And we did a lot of marketing at faculty really like swag, cups, t shirts, stickers, I mean, things that kind of made it fun and made us have a name to our effort. And then I think more faculty got engaged and really started thinking about the impact of students, followed by the research really getting an assessment of our students and our campus. There's about 7,000 or a little over 7,000 students on our campus. So we are one of the smaller CSUs. But I do think that that data and sharing that data out also made a big impact. I don't know if Tom or Jacob, you want to add anything to that that I missed? Well, I was thinking of the basic needs initiative because just I agree with everything you just said just to add maybe a different angle if that's how the question was being asked. And that within the CSU around the time that this was all beginning, I suppose, a basic needs initiative really got traction and took off that Rashida Crutchfield, which was one of our steering committee members, right, was a big proponent of that and that they did a CSU wide survey of students and found that what about 10% of CSU students reported experiencing homelessness in the past six months and what about 50% there's a 40% maybe food insecurity during that same time period. And so across all the CSU campuses, there's really an initiative about student needs in a more holistic way about housing, emergency grants and things like that. And so I think that was part of that idea of the shifting the campus culture through to student needs as well as we really see the textbook affordability as being a what do you call the non tuition costs. So it's one of those things that really adds an extra burden to specific student populations. So I think that was part of the shift as well though about raising this campus culture for student needs was the basic needs. And then maybe while I'm talking and then you all can take back over with the next question I see coming in about what I'm seeing is that uniform across the state, this idea of the awareness or was it more clusters. And I guess my initial reaction was yes and no, in the sense that I do think California is on the cutting edge in the States, as far as awareness of OER and development. And again, I really point to the community colleges, if I didn't do that well enough during my segment before, because they have been developing Z degrees for a while now, they've really come together to collaborating wonderfully, we're trying to learn from them and stand on their shoulders in some ways. And so on one hand, you have that. And on the other hand, yeah, it's definitely clusters though, right. And so within the systems, we have different clusters and then even on campuses, we just have clusters of activity. I think just in a natural way, not that anyone's doing anything bad or wrong, but that's part of what we were trying to increase in collaboration to where we could really learn from each other. You know, even on our campus, we just have found over the past years that there's always things going on that we don't even know what's going on, right, a building over, you know, we didn't know that someone had developed an entire class or a number of, you know, sections have been replaced with a no cost text. So I'd say that there is awareness, but there is still clusters. So a little bit of both going on. Yeah, and specifically as recognition, we have done tried to do some campus centered acknowledgement and recognition to also grow that effort and kind of it goes back to that campus culture and even getting administration involved in acknowledging faculty that he have either maybe made a change that had a big impact in total savings or had a big impact on students and trying to recognize that. And then I think in our wider affordable learning solutions meetings, we do try to collaborate and yes, Robert has the next comment of my sense is California has a more joined up coordinator approach the most places. I think we do in some ways. I do think we still have work to do, but the affordable learning solutions has been central to having the CSU campuses, the 23 campuses meet the court, there's a coordinator for each campus and we meet each year if you want to apply for the grant funding for the next year. It is $15,000 for the year typically. And so it's not tremendous to really sustain all efforts, but it is it's a great amount to really still have a campus coordinator and have someone pushing forward and have a point of connection between the campuses. But as Jacob said, the California Community Colleges have also have also done a lot of collaboration that we look to. Thank you so much Tom, Jacob and Jamie for your presentation. It's been fantastic. And thank you for joining us so so early in the US as well. We really appreciate you being here with us. It looks like there's no more questions. So thank you everyone for joining us. We have got a short lunch break now until one o'clock and then join us again for our next session then. Thank you. Thank you.