 Great. I think the recording has started. Hello, everyone. This is Una Dailey from the Community College Consortium for OER. And we're just so pleased that you could join us today. And thanks to everyone who's introducing themselves in the chat window. This is the fourth in our series of timely OER tutorials. And these are 30-minute sessions of a very kind of straightforward tutorial about topics. And then after the 30 minutes, we will switch to a Q&A format, where we will turn off the recorder and then we'll just, we'll be able to dig into some of the material and any questions that you might have. And it's optional if you can't stay for that last 30 minutes, feel free to exit after our tutorial. Today's topic is designing courses with OER. And we're so happy to have Elaine Farrelly-Plourd with us to present. And she is the OER program coordinator and instructional design specialist in the CUNY system, but also she works with the SUNY colleges as well. So those are the State University of New York and the City University of New York. And her day job is helping faculty to design their courses with OER. And so we're just so pleased that she could come and share with us today. Thank you, Una. Okay, so I'm going to get started. If I'm talking too fast, tell Una and she'll tell me. So again, I'm Elaine. I am a spark fellow. I'm an OER program director and I'm also an instructional designer. So I've been doing OER for a few years now. It feels like a really long time. And I'm just going to kind of go through my process. It's a lot to take in, but hopefully you'll get something out of it and you'll feel like you can go back and have some resources. So now we're just going to start out with talking about the learning outcomes from this 30 minute session. First, I just want to add something which is about trauma, but I won't belabor the point. Then we're going to talk about OER course design, backwards design, course mapping, and a little bit at the end about alternative assessment strategies. Again, please save your questions for the Q&A, but all questions are welcome. So like I said, there are some three puzzle pieces to OER course design, but I'm just adding this fourth because I'm from the New York Metro area, as Una said, and as you probably know, we were ground zero for something terrible again. And we really, the strain on people with their jobs and their relatives and their circumstances, we've been finding that we have to be extra careful and thoughtful about our deadlines, about our accessibility, about communications. So I just wanted to bring that to the forefront because as you're designing courses in these times and these overwhelming times, think about the trauma and ask yourself, how can we leave students stress levels without lowering our standards? How can we take care of ourselves and our students in this distant learning environment? So as you probably know, trauma does a lot of things to people and essentially everyone's sort of at a disadvantage now. So when you think about accessibility, when you think about, you know, all of your deadlines and assessments, let it be informed by trauma. I've given some resources we can talk about later for learning more about this. And also take care of yourself. This is really stressful. So we've been trying to let people know that, you know, it's okay right now to be a little overwhelmed. It's okay to sort of relax or change or, you know, just reinvent how you're teaching, especially in the distance environment. Okay, so let's get to the nitty gritty of this. We're going to start with backward design. So first, before we really talk about backward design, I'm going to paint a picture of my ideal world. And here's part of it. In a perfect scenario, your OER project would have all of these players and all these people would be 100% on board with your OER course conversion. And whatever I present this slide, people kind of laugh at me and basically tell me there are all these people at once and they don't have stipend money and they, you know, so that might be true, but please just know that this is the goal. This is the aspiration. I'm going to continue with my perfect world theory. I'd encourage you to check this out at another time, but, you know, 15 weeks to complete a full OER course conversion is not a ton. It's really not a lot to ask. So, you know, these are all the steps to doing it right. And we can definitely do accelerated timelines and all kinds of things, but if at all possible, give yourself all the time that you really need to convert your OER through all of these different stages. And if anyone has any questions about the stages, I'll be happy to chime in in the Q&A portion. Elaine, I think it might be worthwhile just mentioning what the stages are. There might be folks who are joining us on the phone as well. Okay. So you'd want to give yourself a couple of weeks to even initiate a course conversion. You want to pick, hopefully you have a program director or instructional designer, someone you want to pick, and then you want to go through that backward design process that we'll talk a little bit more about. You want to be able to really make sure that you have everything in place before the conversion starts. Selecting OER, as you guys have probably learned from other webinars about searching, about licensing, about the design and delivery, about the accessibility. And then lastly, the review would be great if you could have a bunch of different people with eyes on it to see if everything is really at the standard that you need it to be. And then if all the attributions are done, everything is accessible by assistive technology. Again, this is this ideal world stuff. But so initiate, select, license, design, integrate, and review are the steps. And ideally, you'd give yourself a whole semester to reinvent your course. Right. Again, now we're in a trauma situation. Now we're in a crisis. And maybe you're not going to have the time to do it, but maybe look at this later and accelerate this for your own course conversion. Does that cover it? Do you think that that's okay? I can move on. Una? I'm sorry. Yes. That was perfect. I think it just helps people to understand what an ideal situation would be. Right. This is an ideal situation. And by the way, there are these stop points and sometimes people really can't go on, especially in the selection process where people think that what, what's there is wanting. And they have to go back to the, or they are a librarian and look some more and find things in the library. So it can be complicated in time is so essence, so of the essence here. Okay. So we're going to move into. Backward design, the actual principles of them. So it's really simple. It's really simple. Actually, it's just the reverse of the traditional approach. So let me read a quote from Grant Wiggins. He's the learning by design. Proponent. And he says instructors typically approach each course design in a forward design manner, meaning they consider the learning activities, how to teach the content, develop assessments around those learning activities, then attempt to draw connections to the learning goals of the course first. The backward design approach has instructors considering the learning goals of the course first. So I have to full disclosure. I am not great at this process. I typically meet with faculty, sit down with them and sort of do just work, fill out a worksheet, you know, what are the different units or modules? What, what are you looking for? And, you know, what can we get to some understanding of what kind of OER and what kind of assessment you need? I am always blown away by how, how thoughtful and in depth and how complicated every subject matter is. So I find this process to be always really enlightening, but difficult. And so these are just some templates based on the backward design, the learning by design website that sort of just allow me to kind of walk through this. And then if I am consulting with those team of ideal experts that I showed earlier, I would be able to have something to bring to them to go through this learning plan that we're developing or co-developing. So, um, so then course mapping, backward design, I mean, they're, they're related, all of these things are related. And so with the course map, this is just more of having a document, having a place to record what you've, what you've come up with for the OER course design. So, especially around the licensing attribution, because with, you have to make a logical and sort of linear course plan. And the map is really helpful for that. And it's so much easier. I cannot stress this enough to do it at the beginning rather than to go back and try to do your license and attribution after it's, I've done it. And it's, it's really no fun. I mean, down till your open images, every little thing, um, you know, do it right at the beginning, do it right the first time if possible. So here's an example of what course mapping is. So again, like with backward design, we start with the learning outcomes, the objectives of the institution, which it does vary. I'll get into that in a bit. Um, and, you know, just trying to design that instruction. And then we create a map, a visual tool to design the course. So, um, this is just, this is some, uh, broad strokes. I'm going to show you some examples now of a course map. And so again, uh, like I said before, what are the outcomes? What are we looking to assess? Uh, what kinds of topics have you done before? If those are aligned with the textbook, we want to align them with OER material. And so, uh, this is what a course map looks like typically. So, uh, this is one that I'm going to provide it for me. It's weak module, the outcome, the assessment that goes with it, the material, the license, and any notes. So this is a more simple one. This is a more complex one. Um, it is, it's kind of hard to read. I apologize. I kind of tried to split it up so you would see the, the topics, the estimate of hours, the reading assignments, the concepts, but in this case there was a lab. So lab activities are a really difficult thing to organize a special virtual labs. Um, so I've given a list of virtual lab, uh, OER resources, um, in the resource slide, but just know that especially when it's, uh, an OER that's very complex, having a course map is essential. So now I'm going to show a course map that I did. Actually, I'm going to open it in my browser. So give me one sec. So, um, when I was working at Medgravers, which I still am, um, Medgravers has a social justice, um, civil rights focus. So this is an American history course that we redesigned for with giving equal weight to the African-American experience in American history. So I'm going to actually open it. Um, oh, what did I do with that link? Give me one second. Technical difficulty. Grab the link. Apologies. I'm going to open it and we can talk about it. Uh, you might have some questions about, uh, what it looks like or what the different sources are. So feel free to open your mic while I'm trying to find this. Oh, I put the link in the chat window. Oh, well, that's helpful. Yeah. I think, you know, what's really interesting about this course, it's, it's US history from pre-Columbian, uh, through the present, as many of you know, is a required course at community colleges. Sometimes it's split into two. I know at my local college, it's history, like 17A and 17B. Um, but this, this course has been redesigned to use OER, which is, which is of course exciting. But I think even more exciting, it's, um, it's, it's redesigned from to represent an African American point of view, which is generally left out of, um, our US history textbooks. And so it relies on a lot of primary sources and, um, and I think Elaine's going to explain about that to us. And another thing I hope Elaine will share with us is some of the alternative assessments. So what are the alternatives to giving your students a multiple series test about dates, dates and locations. Um, that might be more meaningful for their actual learning. Well, in this case, because it is a minority serving institution, uh, giving equal weight to these, these modules that would be found in any American history course. Um, we went back and we did some really interesting things with the primary sources, for example. So, um, you know, we, we, we found, um, all the, we are and, uh, CC zero content that we could for these first Americans for the natives for English being the English coming to America's and slavery. I mean, we went through, uh, and found a lot of really great things, but we also went back to some books from, you know, centuries old books to, to look at firsthand accounts of how people thought about the peculiar institution. And then we provided a lot of interactive media for the students to react to. So, um, in the case of what, what kind of alternative assessments we did here, well, after they visited teaching tolerance, you know, they, they would either get to write an essay or do a podcast or have an interview with a friend of theirs. Um, you know, we, we got library access to some great documentaries, like Eyes on the Prize. Uh, this semester added the 1619 project from the New York Times and those, uh, instructor resources that came with it. And like you can see here, hopefully you can see there is, you know, there are things that are rights reserved and there are things that are OER. Um, but you know, it made the course very dynamic and, uh, the students were of course very interested in history from this perspective. So they were able to express themselves in so many different ways. Um, again, you know, I can talk about different alternative assessments, but just always have that backward design in mind where what is the outcome? What is the, what is the expectation and can it be delivered through a podcast or an infographic or a comic book or, you know, all of that. That's completely up to you, but more often than not, it really can be accomplished. And with so many different learner styles and approaches, it's actually been quite surprising how good it, it, it's worked out. So again, this, this link is available on the chat. If you want to check out these sources, all these links should be working. Um, and I'm going to go back to the slide deck. So we'll just spend the last couple of minutes talking about, um, what I was saying, the alternative assessments. It, so I know that our next speaker next week or whenever is going to talk about universal design for learning and accessibility issues. Um, so I'm not going to go too deeply into it, but you should just know that alternative assessments, you'd yell basically is, uh, you know, you have such a variety in learning styles and, and abilities and disabilities. Why not match that with variety in how you present the materials, various different modalities and formats. And why not also change up how you assess the material, give people a choice. Um, so again, the students who isn't a great essay writer or has, um, you know, other issues dyslexia might want to do, uh, an interview or podcast. A student who has a stage fright might want to write that essay. And you know, there's a lot, I mean, anxiety again is a huge, so many invisible disabilities are out there and so many strengths are being ignored in our traditional format. So this slide was great. I got it from a colleague on the Twitter. Um, I asked him for an attribution, but, um, it, a traditional assessment is teacher selected. A traditional assessment has one right answer. Um, it is leveled by the grade and it is very content specific and sanctioned by a time and space and predetermined. And it's a traditional audience and it's unimodal. So one way communication. Whereas alternative assessments can be students selected. There can be multiple right answers or right ways to present. And, uh, the students can assess themselves. They can, uh, or peer, peer review, uh, that can be a really interesting and dynamic way to make your course more interesting. Uh, sometimes they'll focus on something that isn't strictly in the, the content is from a different discipline, but it's applicable to the learning outcome. And, you know, it's, it's just a, it's just an interesting, more dynamic, interactive way of doing things. It's not right for everyone, but if there's a way to think especially in this distance learning environment, how to get creative with your assessments. OER allows you to do that. OER allows you to, I mean, you're already there. You're already redesigning the course. You're already doing all the materials. Why not, why not look at different ways to do assessments? So I do talk about this and I do link to some of the different, um, technology platforms that are available for alternative assessments. Um, they're not all super easy, but anything I link to is free, free for a student, free for an instructor. Um, so I encourage you to look at that and ask any questions about any of those different things. So again, here are some examples of, like I mentioned before, of different ways that students can prove that they've understood the material. Um, and these are, some of these are specific, like the voice thread, which is a sort of call and response audio format. Um, I think an interview is great. I think a podcast is great. Um, and, and those who are really skilled designers can do pretty amazing things with making a game, um, or an infographic. So again, you know, uh, we just encourage you to, if you're going to go with OER and go with things that are open, open it up, open your mind up a little bit. All right. So that's the resource, uh, page, uh, organized as the presentation is organized. Uh, so, uh, first, I wanted to highlight these videos about trauma and form teaching. Uh, there are about 30 minutes each. Uh, these are some resources from Columbia with just how to, how to adjust, you know, the way you would communicate deadlines and, and expectations and try to, you know, modify it just a little bit. Some great links for self care that you can also share with students, uh, online meditations, you know, different yoga at your desk, different things that are on this. This is from University of Buffalo. Here are some good, uh, layouts for our backward design. Like I was showing you with the templates and sort of a lot more information about the steps in backward design. I think it's pretty self explanatory, but I think it can be, it can be a struggle for some people to reframe how they've done things when they've done it the same way for so long. There is a link for OER that, uh, that's from CCC OER of just searching, you know, your, uh, your, your search engines, your, uh, repositories, all that stuff that you guys will get familiar with if you're not already. And then of course I have in all vanity provided my, uh, adapted dream team and that workflow that I showed you in Word and in PDF. And you can adapt that workflow to your own institution, to your own OER conversion. Um, I have some, uh, course mapping tips, uh, just some highlights about getting through the course map process. Um, and again, that's very subjective. The institutional objectives, the higher order learning objectives. Those are not things that, um, I can anticipate, but I'm sure you know exactly what your, your institution wants. And, um, there's some resources in that link as well to other alignment and mapping resources. There's an article here about alternative assessment ideas beyond the ones that I, uh, provided. And here's the link to that, uh, America, uh, uh, American history, uh, course map with all the links working. So if you want to check any of those out. And then lastly here are just some, um, um, alternative assessment tools that are free for students, usually one-offs, uh, very few integrate with LMS systems, but some do. And, um, I encourage you to give them a shot. See if you, if you like any of them. So, um, let's see. So that was that. Now, do you want to explain the, um, how the Q and A works and then the assessment after the fact or anybody have any questions that you want before I move to the Q and A? Um, well, hang on just one sec. I think before we go into the Q and A, um, because we do have five, five minutes, um, do you want to share, um, an assessment that was used in the US history 200 course that you felt was a good representation of an alternative assessment. Um, and you can just share it verbally or if, you know, if there's a, yeah, I, I, I don't have any, um, actual tangible things, but like I said, um, they were able to, uh, watch two different documentaries and then they were able to either write an essay, do a skit for the course. And this is pre-lockdown. So they were in class and they knew each other. Um, they were able to make, uh, the graphics, like, you know, like just like sort of timelines and fun little, uh, histories. And, uh, there were just, there were so many. I wasn't in the class, you know, I kind of, my work here is done after, after the course is designed. Everything is working. But, um, I did hear that it was, uh, a really interesting, um, diverse bunch of assessments where people would find, uh, one person who was a freedom writer and talk about her, her legacy, even though she wasn't well known or, you know, so there were just a bunch of things that happened. And I heard it was great and dynamic and the professor and I are very much in touch. And we certainly want to talk about this more because it's, it's not just about institutional goals. It's about open pedagogy. So it's like she decided that her American history was going to be divided up in these three sections, very different from a traditional textbook. And she was able to pick and choose all of these different things to make that happen. So actually, I think that would be great if I interviewed her, I will, I will share that and, and put it out there in the world so people can hear from her, the horse's mouth, like what kinds of things the students did. Yeah, that's really super that. And I'd love to link to that from the tutorial. So, um, and, and you said that students searched out different, um, people in history who maybe hadn't been, um, heard from before and were able to present on that. Um, yeah, that's, that's pretty exciting. And I think also an example of open pedagogy along with, um, you know, um, there's historical terms for that, which I've forgotten now because I'm not a history professor, but, um, yeah, I would love to hear more about that. And, um, and yeah, somebody else brought up that alternative assessments and open pedagogy are very related. Um, I wondered if this question came up when you were talking with the professor, did she learn anything new? Um, I'm going to guess her students found resources that she was amazed by and didn't, wasn't aware of. This happens a lot. Uh, people are very, well, first of all, it's always, um, we've been doing, um, OER with stipends and grants in New York for three years. And I'm always surprised at how surprised faculty is when they find out what's out there. Um, not just in your, in your, your basic liberal arts, but in, in, in more custom interesting courses, things that can use, you know, government data, things that, you know, economics examples that are local to your neighborhood. Yeah. People are so excited still about what's out there. But yes, they learn a lot from their students when they allow this alternative assessment. And, you know, they do it in these little, you know, just toe in the water stages. And then they're so blown away, but what their students find come back with produce. Um, you know, there's a, we have a huge class at Med Gravers, which is hip hop. Um, and so a lot of students actually just make a track. You know, it's, it's just, it's, it's so interesting. Um, but at the same time demonstrating the roots of the music and what continents they came from. And I, I, I, again, I think you've just given me an idea to do a documentary. Cause it's been really, it's been really fun. It's been really interesting. That sounds amazing. Yeah. And other people are, um, saying how much they're appreciating hearing about this. So that's, that's really exciting. Um, And let's see, um, before we go to Q and a, was there anything else we wanted to share? Oh, I wanted to mention that next week, we is going to be, um, our final, um, tutorial and, um, it's on accessibility and selecting OER. Um, so it's going to be, and it's, it's going to be a great session of course. And we have a STEM faculty members, Suzanne Joaquin, who's going to be presenting on that. So for those of you who are out in the engineering and STEM area, you're going to hear about how to create alternative assessments in courses like that. Um, so we hope you will find that helpful. And I think at this point, Elaine, do you have any final comments before we turn off the recorder and switch to Q and a. I do not. Thank you so much for being here, everyone, and please feel free to ask any and all questions. I'm happy to answer what I can.