 All right. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our panel discussion on OER textbook development at Norquist. My name is Nicole Carrier. I'm the senior editor in curriculum development, and I'm also the copyright officer for the college. And our panel today, we're going to discuss the different experiences of Norquist faculty who have developed OER textbooks. And we hope you'll find it interesting, especially those of you who are thinking of starting your own OER publishing program. I'm going to start by introducing the panel. I'll start with Lisa Sturdy, who's, there you go. Lisa has a BSCN in a nursing degree and has been at the college since 2009. She's worked in various areas, including the healthcare aid program, the simulation center, and allied health. She's currently an instructor with health administration and technology. And she has a passion for teaching and is excited about OERs because they make education more affordable. Her partner in crime, Suzanne Erickson, is an instructor with health administration and technology in the medical office assistant and hospital unit clerk programs. She and Lisa collaborated to create the two-volume OER at the language of medical terminology. And volume one provides a thorough overview of not only medical terminology, but also other topics in the healthcare setting. And volume two focuses on pharmacology. Suzanne also created the communications 1001 OER with co-author Sarah James. Oscar Vergara has been with Norquist College since 2019 and is presently the chair of the settlement studies program. He has extensive experience working within the settlement sector and with organizations that shape the landscape of services offered in Alberta. Oscar has been involved with OER textbook creation for the settlement program from its initiation. In 2019, he helped assemble a team of talented writers to create five chapters that would ultimately lead to the publication of the textbook Canadian Settlement in Action, History, and Future, the college's first OER. In recognition of the success of that publication, Norquist College has supported the addition of three more chapters for the textbook in the fall of 2022 and further expansion of the textbook is planned. Oscar has said that the creation of the textbook is a highlight of his career but emphasizes the collaborative effort that took place to complete the project. And last but not least, Alexandre Calderaro is an associate chair and the program founder of the settlement studies diploma program at Norquist College. Originally from Romania, he has spent much of his life involved in movements struggling for socioeconomic equity and justice and working in occupations that support the integration of newcomers to Canada. He has a master's degree in educational policy studies from the University of Alberta and is currently also serving as the elected president of the Norquist College Faculty Association. Oh, he was. I guess he's the past president. So before we get into the panel discussion, I just want to give an overview of OERs at Norquist College. So beginning in 2016, the Norquist College Curriculum Development Department began encouraging faculty to use OERs in their courses and by 2020 more than 20 courses were using open textbooks. That number is much higher now. Since the average Alberta student spends at least $4,000 on textbooks during their studies and that number is taken from a 2014 government of Alberta report, the college believes it is imperative to further increase OER textbook adoption. Research shows that most students delay purchasing textbooks. 65% of post-secondary students elect not to purchase textbooks. 50% choose majors based on textbook prices. 13% have considered dropping their courses because of textbook prices. And these statistics come from the 2020 Horizon Report by the Nonprofit Association Educause. So in 2020, the Students Association of Norquist College asked that the college prioritized OERs and in 2022 Norquist adopted an institutional OER policy. This policy provides faculty with guidelines for the creation and adoption of open materials including license conditions for OERs released through Norquist and how faculty time and resources would be dedicated to OER development. That same year, Norquist continued to reach out to other provincial and international organizations involved in the development and promotion of OERs and joined the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, an organization for colleges interested in OER development and networking. Norquist began to explore funding opportunities and applied for OER development grants from various organizations and foundations. The goal is by 2030 more than 80% of Norquist College programs will be Zed cred, meaning that they will have zero textbook costs to students. We're currently publishing three to four OERs per year and our OER textbooks have been well received at both Norquist and at colleges and universities across Canada. Our OERs are created using the PressBooks platform which we access through Open Education Alberta and both PressBooks and OER Alberta are hosted through the University of Alberta. So, I don't know who wants to start but we could start with Lisa and Suzanne. How did you decide to create an OER? What initiated your projects and what was the process of putting together your textbooks? The initiation of the project was actually our chair came to us and spoke to us about creating an OER for medical terminology. Suzanne and I at the time thought it was a wonderful idea but also a bit overwhelming idea because we kind of spoke about it in December and the plan was to have that project done by June. Suzanne and I are both full time instructors so we knew this might be a little bit of an issue and actually it was Andrew that said do not do it off the side of your desk you're going to need more time than that. So, fortunately enough we got funding and this allows Suzanne to work on the project outside of regular work hours and get paid to do so. So, she started the project ahead of time and then I joined her kind of in March and then we had April to June to finish the project. I'm not saying that it still wasn't a lot of work but it sure did ease the workload having the opportunity to have that extra money to allow her to do it. So, I guess our advice that was given by our colleague was appropriate otherwise you can't really do it alongside a full time position if you have a really strict deadline. I don't know if you remember the second part of the question. Maybe you could repeat the second part of the question. What was the process of putting the textbook together? Well, it was a lengthy process but a creative process nonetheless and it involved a lot of collaboration with other areas curriculum development or editor of course. Cool. And then of course our peer reviewers as well. So, a lot of it was chapter by chapter and kind of planning it out that way and kind of completing it in smaller chunks which made it more bearable. I think most of our time was spent looking for resources. So, if you can use what is already created because there's lots of OERs out there that teach on medical terminology we would look to those first and I think Susanna and I were talking about it was kind of like a puzzle. We would find one main one and that would lead you to another one because they would reference another OER. So, it was really cool to kind of find all these resources within one resource. So, if you can find that on your topic it certainly makes the project not saying easier but it does make it more manageable I would say. Thank you. Oscar and Alex, what initiated your project? It's okay. Well, we were a little bit different. We were lucky that we knew we were funded to do the OER for settlement studies and so that enabled us to work on the process and start really planning how we wanted to get it done, who we were going to hire because ultimately it comes down to the subject matter experts and writers who are already in the industry. Some of who we already employ in our faculty so we were lucky that way as well. So, for us it wasn't that much of an uphill battle for the funding but definitely getting the processes in place and hiring the writers and kind of putting it all together to ensure that it's a good contribution to the college and we're doing right by the learners. Yeah, I think for us in the SET program we have the benefit of still being a relatively new program so our program launched in the fall of 2019 and it launched as a result of a gap analysis that we had done as a result of an internal project at the college where we actually found a niche in terms of the labour market that this program could fill. It also identified a gap in a lot of the academic literature. There's not a whole lot of literature existing out there to deal with settlement workers or supporting newcomers to Canada from a settlement work based perspective and settlement work itself is interdisciplinary in scope but it is distinct. So you can't just pull from social work, you can't just pull from intercultural consultation, you can't just pull from community development, you pull elements of all that but the sum of its parts are something entirely different. So we viewed the creation of the OER as just an extension of the actual creation of the program itself which was to fill a gap not just in the labour market, not just in the student market but also in the academic literature as well. So for us because we already had done a lot of that work in building the program as a whole and we knew these gaps existed, it was a little bit easier for us than taking something that was pre-existing and adapting it and so forth. And we were fortunate in that way that it was fairly quick in the way it was able to come together and in our instance it was very, it was properly resourced which makes a huge difference. Yeah, what was your process? Because it was quite different from Susanna Mises. Yeah, our process was putting out a call for proposals, basically whatever people get from our website and based on the information on the website we would ask for people to give us proposals on the topics that they wanted to write about and of course internally we had faculty members that we thought would be really good at writing some of these pieces. So Alex has actually written two chapters which are on the OER right now. He's working on his third and so based on the content of settlement studies and what we actually learn about in settlement studies could be addressed in the OER through special topics. So right now it acts more as a supplement to the material and content that are in the courses but ultimately the goal is to have world domination and have our OER spread out universally and cover settlement work in general. And I think just to add to that I think one of the things that was touched on in the presentation prior was the team that extended beyond just the project leads and the SMEs. We were really well supported by instructional designers and the instructional design team that really kind of helped us navigate press books so that Oscar and I wouldn't have to fumble our way through it on its own and I know that that hasn't been the universal experience at Norquist so for us it was smoother in part because when I say it was resource not just money but also you know communal expertise to make this be you know a real team effort because I don't know where we would have been without the instructional designers I'll be honest with you they really worked long and hard and they probably don't get the credit they do for these OERs the way that the SMEs do but it wouldn't be possible without them so for those who actually do the design and the uploading the content and everything that's like three jobs in the one so extra tip of the cap. Yeah just to add to that it's press books for the platform that we use and it's really hard to find an expert in press books but we were able to find that internally through Robert Lawson and his team and people like Nicole who contributed and helped out with that because press books is not something that I use on a daily basis or would even dream of trying to do anything on it but I did have to learn the hard way and we all kind of encountered it in our own way and took it as it was and use it to our benefit. I think in the end if you go to the website or you go to the OER textbook you'll see not just a bunch of chapters put together it's chapters with interactive activities with all sorts of really neat things that you can do depending on your learning ability and it is geared towards adult learners so it's written with that in mind definitely the developers and the help that we got from press books people as well. Yes, Suzanne and Lisa how easy did you find it to use press books? I found it relatively user friendly but I did spend pretty much because I started on the project a bit before Lisa just because of the way it worked out. I spent like the first month watching YouTube videos on how to do it and finding resources and kind of figuring it out on my own and then playing with it so I did have to have that time to be able to do that in order to figure it out before we even started working on the project. But I would say the big playing in it once you playing it it's so easy to use and I did mention in our previous talk that we were kind of told not to do it on a Word document and bring it in to actually build within press books because we did talk about how on the dashboard which is kind of like your editing page it will look one way but then when you put it in preview which is what your actual students will see or whoever is using your textbook it will look different. So you just had to make sure that you played around with the settings in the textbook like maybe adding a space where an image is because it kind of can end up here or there but it's just playing around in it but once we got a handle of it it's actually very user friendly. So you've spoken about the advantages of having instructional designers to help you out and I edit most of the OERs at Northwest College as part of my role in curriculum development. Are there any other resources that you felt you could have had and didn't? Yeah I think that one of the things that in hindsight now going back is a little bit more on making things more accessible for students with disabilities. I don't think that's just for us. I think that's just for those of us who don't have disabilities that's a very obvious blind spot and it's one that we often have to be reminded of over and over and over again which I wish it wasn't so but it is. So I think that that's something that for me is a little more top of mind now and I think that those are just conversations going forward in OER development that we need to have college wide if not sector wide. We'll agree because we actually talked to Robert about our images and we went back in and edited them and made sure we described what the picture showed whereas when we first initially made the textbook and put it out we didn't do that. We did it on some but we weren't consistent but then we went back in and made it more consistent. Yeah and just for those of you who are wondering who the Robert is he keeps getting attention. He's sitting at the back of the room and Robert is an instructional designer and OER specialist at Northwest College and was instrumental in bringing the OE Global Conference to Northwest and to Edmonton so say thanks Robert. We couldn't do it without you. Not all heroes wear capes. Yes. How often do you do maintenance because OERs typically incorporate a number of multimedia elements embedded videos, links and sometimes these things go away or break or sometimes the OERs need to be revised which is one of the big advantages is they can be updated on a regular basis. So how do you keep track of things? How often do you do maintenance? For us we're teaching the course so we're constantly maintaining our current textbook that we're using both of them and I think I said it in my talk. Our students are great at editing and telling us if something doesn't work so if it doesn't we can fix it in not in preview but in the dashboard and then we just re-upload it if there's an issue or a concern. Thankfully we haven't had really any concerns with any of the videos but I'm sure it will come up because some of them are YouTube links so they'll let us know. Yeah I was going to just say that it's the next big question to address. It's the next big step because it's so new. We just developed our A chapters. We're adding three more but we know that coming around the corner at some point there's going to have to be some check, some maintenance and updates and so that's the next, that's our next phase. I guess you could say. So it's not forgotten. We don't go in there regularly to tweak it or anything but I do go in there once in a while to just read and to make sure and I do keep track if anybody alerts me to anything that might be out of sync or not working and so that's what we're relying on right now but hopefully we'll have a better formal process in place coming up in this next year after we add a few more chapters and then we'll take a look but very important that everybody who's worked on it has asked the same question so it's at the top of mind for sure. And the students, whenever we use it in class that is our learners are great at letting us know when things aren't working so like Suzanne and Sarah we haven't encountered any broken links yet because we're only about two years in after publication but it's coming. Do you have a review process in place to ensure the quality of the content? Yeah, for sure. For the settlement studies we have our subject matter experts come in to build the content and to work with instructional designers to ensure their activities are working. Then there's a couple of reviews that take place when the content is submitted so it'll get reviewed minimum I would say three or four times sometimes more depending on how much help the writer needs or somebody who's quite brilliant may not need too many interactions. So it really just depends on what the needs are of that particular chapter but definitely there's a few iterations and it's something that we work on when we're doing the development of the OER chapters it's something that we work on pretty much daily. It is a peer review and it's a blind process so part of the hiring process that happens is that there's been a call out that goes out for content editors that we've used in the set program and so when I submit my chapters I haven't really learned who my editor is they could be from the community they could be a colleague from within the college but the results are given. The results are given and we usually do that process two or three times before we're ready to publish. The process was a little bit different. We created the content ourselves put into press books then the other one of us would review it as a first review then of course through Robert in curriculum development, Nicole as editor and then we actually found two peer reviewers for each book and it was different individuals for both from other areas of the college then they'd review it and then we'd make changes as a result of that. Yeah one of the reasons I brought up that question is because there's a persistent myth that OERs because they are free are not the same quality as a print textbook and this is not true but like I say the myth persists. I come from a background in textbook or trade book publishing which includes textbooks and anybody can have it can create a textbook and have it published it doesn't even have to be peer reviewed as long as the publisher thinks they can make money from it. Textbooks are expensive to publish and a traditional print book publisher wants to know that they're going to get a return on their investment and so I just want to clarify that just because something exists well textbooks not only exist in paper these days but also as e-textbooks but just because they come from a big publisher like Nelson or Wiley does that doesn't make sure quality. There's some really bad textbooks out there. It also speaks I think to a certain form of elitism out there to assume that only things produced within the academia are you know valid forms of knowledge I think we've seen this at this conference here where you know some from our keynote speaker this morning you know land-based knowledge right land-based learning that is how does it how does it not get any more open than that right and we're at a point right now where we're we're reconciling the fact that community-based non-academic forms of knowledge have been marginalized and silenced and I think open ed or OER resources are a great way to tap into that and to kind of break down that that hierarchy that exists so you're always going to get pushback when you challenge things like that but I think it's well worth the effort. That's okay I think there are things that that need to be said because like I say there are there are some persistent myths around OERs that need to need to go away so lessons learned anything in particular? I think one thing that we learned is that building an OER is a big project and don't underestimate how long it will take to work on your project if you're offered to do a project make sure you stick up for yourself and know that you need the time if anything is going to be your best friend it's time and you need the time to work on it if you don't have the time then you may not make a product that suits your course your program or best suit your students and that's what we're here for is to build something better than a textbook for our students that you have to pay for that's free. Yeah I think one of the really on a lighter note one of the really neat things that we did that I'm particularly proud of but doesn't you don't really notice what what happened in the background but the the OER textbook cover was created by one of our students and we had a competition and they all got into groups or they did it on their own or in pairs and they created a digital artistic book cover and they were all great they were all excellent and we got faculty members and executive leadership to kind of vote on the the various book covers so we're really proud of that and that that's something that I had never done before I hadn't really engaged the students in that way and they took it to heart they did a great job and we're really proud of it and you can see it on on on our OER. That was a really great idea one of the things that that comes up occasion is that having having students assist in the in the the creation of OERs and have co-create help to co-create resources is that something any of you have considered? I think in a indirect way it happens with the examples that you use oftentimes in my own writing process I reflect on conversations I have in class with my learners and when you redesign your own course curriculum that's often a process as well so I think a lot of the activities that we use in the set OER are influenced by interactions we've had in the community in the classroom so I think that that is one indirect way I don't think we've done it quite as directly as of yet outside of the the textbook cover that Oscar referenced earlier and whatnot but but it is some certainly something that is always on the on the back of our minds about how to do there was something spoke about that this morning in one of the talks we were in about having the students build part of an OER for an assignment and using that way yeah so I think that would be a great idea but then again that takes time and you wouldn't you would have to know when you were putting it in the curriculum and when your big project was due so if you could do that way ahead and then you know do it that way I think that would be a great idea and what does the future hold in terms of your next project any or would you do another project having having completed a couple already so Lisa and I did one OER about a year and a bit ago and then we did another one last year together and I did it another one with another group last year as well so I would love to do another one anytime I love the challenge and the creativity like potato chips one is never enough exactly yeah and there's actually a Robert had sent us an email from a PSI in Ontario that was looking for a resource that went along with one of our OERs so that's something that would be great to do as well and if we ever get the opportunity or the time to build resources to go along with our OERs we would love to take that opportunity on so and we've slowly been getting attention nationally from other colleges who have decided to actually use some of the chapters in our OER for their studies as well so we're really proud of that and there's nothing to really stop that from expanding and so we'd like to we'd like every college to adopt some part of the OER that we've developed that would be the dream but I think ultimately we want to keep adding to our OER as it is as I said we're working on three more chapters so we'll be up to 11 chapters with the intention to ultimately allow that to replace the real textbooks we only have a couple of textbooks that are mandatory in in the program but that would be nice to eventually eliminate and replace not eliminate but maybe replace with a brand new OER that's completely functional and updated and really good reading for our students yes we're working towards Z cred does anyone have any questions is I've actually had students read them in the class you know as they're reading in the class annotate them with hypothesis and then that gives me an indication of sort of what is where it's it's it's a way that they can collaborate a little bit it's a way that I can get some feedback on quality control and and the gaps in the things that they will annotate also kind of suggest to me where they might where it might really not be communicating to them effectively so that's something that I found effective I'd like to go back they call it kind of got by me quickly how many do you want to have when of OERs how many how many courses what percentage we're looking for norquist recently published a document called reimagine a higher education and the goal right now is that by 2030 80% of the courses or 80% of the programs at the college will be Z cred meaning that the students will have zero textbook costs and I don't I'm unsure how many programs currently use OER textbooks but our curriculum development department one of the places we start with especially with new programs is to suggest to faculty that the first thing they look for for their courses are open educational resources we don't force people to create any but there are a lot there's a lot of things out there and I'm sure a lot of you are aware of you know open stocks and Libre texts eCampus Ontario BC campus so there are a lot of resources and yeah because of the licenses to instructors can pick and choose from different OER resources and combine them for their courses and I teach in our textbook free now as of us creating three OERs I think in hours we have 16 courses and only two textbooks in them so and one of those is a novel in the back no I thought we'll start with you and I think one of the it all comes down and I think Lisa mentioned it really was time right like I think you need to people cannot work off the side of their desks and produce good quality work and without the financial resources behind that time you're going to struggle I think that one of the things our sector is blessed with is really passionate talented educators who work themselves to the point of burnout to see a project through but we don't want to be in a situation where that happens because then we'll lose that passion that subject matter expertise for future projects so I think that that's a really really really big one and I think also it also spreads out the not just the workload but the responsibility and the ownership of the project you don't want it concentrated in one or two hands you want this to be a collaborative effort you want people to feel invested in in this because then all of a sudden then you have many people that want to see this thing over the finish line so I think you know that might involve you know a little bit of letting go of control which is never a problem for academics we're all we all we all have no issues letting go of things and trusting other other folks but that's that would that would be my how I would respond you had a question I'm gonna go backwards our our press books once they're published they live in a repository hosted at the University of Alberta called open education Alberta and so it's like a giant bookshelf and you can find in there you can find them just with an internet search to and I'm sorry what was the first question they're really interesting thing about the press books in the repository because there are no technical protection measures on them students can read them online they can read them on different devices they can print them up as PDFs if a student has a textbook from a typical publisher they have access to the textbook for a limited amount of time only either for the duration of the course or maybe for six months because even though if you pay for a print textbook you take it home from the store and it's yours forever but if you pay for an e textbook you're not paying for the textbook you're paying for a license to use the textbook and you lose access to that after a while students lose access to that textbook also their technological protection measures in place that do not allow you to print e textbooks and so OER just have a lot more access it's a huge advantage for students because you can like I say you can print them you can put them on screen readers and it's for me having worked in traditional publishing I think it's a huge advantage and so students can access them pretty much anyway they want so what we do is we offer a PDF and encourage students to print off their own copies if they want to so it's the in the libraries will also print on demand but we don't have copies on that for a couple reasons one that that is a cost-saving measure and also the environmental sustainability piece if you're printing off you know a hundred versions of 300 page textbooks that's a lot of forests right so we that's it's part of our commit of our colleges commitment as well to having a more paperless way of operating that that we kind of leave that open to students to kind of find their own ways to get hard copies but they are available for anyone who wants them I think we've got time for one more question do you mean about the exercises within yeah we don't actually we kind of do because I think Robert was talking to us about our medical terminology OER I think it's the one of the top five in the U of A repository so they must keep track all right so I don't know if everybody heard that but open education Alberta tracks the the user to the download rates or from books in their repository okay and I think we're at the end of our time so thank you all for coming thank you to everyone who participated in the panel and yeah