 Hi everyone, welcome to launching an OER Curation Service and Framework. I'm Matt Ruin, Scholarly Communications Librarian at Grand Valley State University. I'm Chelsea Bulle. I joined GVSU in 2021 as the first OER Curator for this project. Hello, I'm Erica Schiller. I joined GVSU in 2022 as the second OER Curator taking over for Chelsea. Today we're going to discuss a framework and tools we developed for curating lists of OER for educators, share some of our experiences in implementing an OER Curation Service, and highlight opportunities for similar documentation to make OER discovery work more sustainable. The position and work we'll be discussing grew out of a grant that the GVSU Libraries received in early 2021 from our President's Innovation Fund. This is an incubator or seed funding program for new ideas, in our case for accelerating the use and creation of OER across the university. When proposing this initiative, one of my goals was to make it easier for faculty to adopt OER. Faculty often report time is the biggest barrier to OER engagement, so I thought why not set up a dedicated position to cut out some of that time, specifically to cut out the learning curve for searching and discovering potential OER. I won't pretend that helping faculty find potential OER is particularly novel, but as I planned for our grant initiative I realized there was an opportunity for this position to find and curate OER in a way that was standardized, could be shared and reused beyond GVSU, and could help make invisible librarian labor more visible. After all, anyone on an OER librarian listserv is familiar with discussions about resources for particular courses, and sharing is at the heart of the OER movement. So what if we had a more systematic, structured way to share the information that many of us are so regularly gathering? This grant initiative was a perfect opportunity to explore this idea, so the OER curator position evolved. The resulting position had parallel objectives, curating potential OER for courses, but also developing documentation and tools to make those curations more standardized and shareable. The documentation objective began with a template for structured shareable curations and a straightforward web form for faculty to request a curation, but later expanded to include a user guide, detailed description of the curator's workflows, and tracking spreadsheets. As the position evolved, we also took some time to analyze our results, identify challenges and time sinks, and figure out alternative approaches. Now let's take a look at the OER curation templates. The OER curation template was designed to present what we thought was the most useful information to faculty. Curations are created both for specific courses by faculty requests or created for high enrollment courses. The audience for curations is faculty who are interested in OER and made a specific request for curation for their individual course, librarians who are alerted about a new curation for a high enrollment course in their subject area, and potentially other faculty and librarians who discover the curation in the institutional repository. The template lives in a Google Doc for easy copying and organizing. It includes the course code and course name. We use the table contents. The first section is an overview of course, current materials, and the search. In the scope notes section, we discuss the scope of the course and what the faculty is seeking if the curation is for faculty request. Then in the current textbooks, we list materials currently used in the course. This is taken from either the faculty submitted syllabi or the syllabi record for the course. Then we do a brief overview of the search. We list what OER repositories or sites we consulted in the search. Then we overview what limitations were encountered, or explain that there were actually loads of OER for the topic, but we narrowed it down to say five to ten that seemed like the best fit for the course. Finally, in the gap analysis section, we discuss the gaps that were discovered when conducting the search. This section is generally only used for faculty requested curations. Then we finally get to the good stuff, the OER options. We generally utilize two categories, promising OER options and stretch research options. Promising OER options are OER that make an excellent fit for the course. They require little to no adaption and can easily be adopted to replace current materials. Stretch research options are OER that are discovered during the search that have potential but are a stretch to include. Stretch resources may fit somewhere within the course scope, be from a similar field, but require significant adaption or remixing to fit the course, or be most appropriate as a supplemental material. Each entry in the resource section includes the title of the resource, a citation, where the resource is available from, the link in the next bullet point, formats the resources available in the CC license so faculty members can know what they can and cannot do with a resource, and a comment section where annotations are being used. The template itself and all curations are licensed CC by NC. You're welcome to use the curations as is for your own faculty to copy a curation you think would be useful and make tweaks to or to use the template as is or with changes. You can access the template within the shared public drive at bit.ly slash OER curation drive and see completed curations in scholar works at GVSU. As part of my time working on this project, I analyzed the information gathering process and its general workflow. When I took over the OER curator position from Chelsea, the wonderful template you've seen was already more or less perfected. The question was then, how do we develop a workflow that complements it? How can we locate and synthesize this information in a timely fashion while ensuring consistent quality? Matt and Chelsea had already identified that scope creep was a serious issue, particularly when it came to assessing individual resources. It was very easy to dive too deep into one item. During my own curation, I identified two additional problems. First, each curation took between three and seven hours. This major variation in time came down to differing availability of resources across subject areas. Depending on the course, there could be anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred items that needed inspection. There was no way to be certain how sizable the pool was until the curation process began. Finally, the work did not suffer interruptions well. It was extremely difficult to put down and pick back up again. This became more of an issue. The more analysis was required for curation. Since the position was part time, it was almost impossible to spend seven hours in one sitting working on a single curation. The consequence of all these interconnected issues was that it was extremely difficult to predictably fit a curation into a daily schedule. So how do we address these problems? How do we mitigate them? The first step was to identify and codify a consistent workflow. I ultimately identified four overarching phases to the OER curation process. Phase one, gathering basic information and preparing for the search. In this phase, information such as the course title, course description, textbooks used by instructors in previous semesters, and other info leaked from the syllabi of record is compiled into a separate notes document, which is created for the purpose of tracking the search process. Phase two, searching. During this phase, databases are searched and items are collected. It's important to note that items are not analyzed during this step. The point is to compile a bullet point list of things that look like they're relevant and have acceptable quality. Five databases are always consistently searched during this phase. Open textbook library, open stacks, press books, OER commons, and Merlot. Phase three, assessing resources. During this phase, items are assessed for usefulness. Criteria identified as important are legibility, visual quality, currency, and coverage of topics important to the course. Separating searching and resource analysis into two distinct processes immediately dramatically improved the ability to break up the work. Phase four, assembling the final document. Finally, the information is assembled and codified in the curation template. Any remaining blank sections in the template are also filled in at this point. Dividing the work into these phases not only improved the workflow, it also solved the issues of scheduling. This way, the work could easily be divided into sections that could be completed in a much more reasonable amount of time. The additional documentation meant that it was easier to pick up at the last stopping point and nothing ever needed to be done twice. For future use, this search process workflow was also recorded in a step-by-step document. The intent was that this document could be used by any future newcomers to the position to easily and practically pick up this workflow without person-to-person instruction. Ideally, a student worker who is comfortable with databases might even be able to complete this process without excessive supervision, which is the reason for the fairly informal voice used within the document. This document is available in the shared public Google drive at bit.ly slash OER curation drive. However, this documentation is only part of our story. We also want to discuss some of the challenges that we encountered when the idea for this project meant reality. Some of those challenges were structural and systemic. The position of OER curator was designed as a precarious part-time contract position, which means almost anyone employed in the role will be juggling other responsibilities from additional employment to ongoing studies. Precarious positions like this also typically lack full-time benefits like vacation, sick, and bereavement time to handle the realities all workers inevitably encounter. We were and are working through an ongoing pandemic creating stress and uncertainty, not to mention the chance of actually getting COVID. But we also navigated more individual, personal challenges, and we think it's important to acknowledge them too. Too often we all see conference presentations showing the ideal state of a project, but reality? Reality is messy, and we all have different roads to travel. I joined the project as the first curator. It was exciting work. It let me dig into OERs, more intimately get to know the current landscape, and was a fun puzzle. There was anticipation for challenges with remote work, but I've been working remotely for years before the pandemic, so that did not concern me too much. I was working full-time as an academic librarian when the contract started, but I had also been working multiple jobs from the majority of the past decade, so I wasn't too concerned about fighting over them either. But then I experienced a family death within the first few weeks of the contract beginning, which presented a challenge I didn't think many people anticipate. MAP provided a lot of flexibility and grace to accommodate the shift in my life priorities, but I was extremely under water. For months I was operating under, I'll catch up next week, until finally Matt and I discussed letting the project go. During the months I was handling my family priorities, Matt treated me with the most kindness and flexibility of any supervisor. This obstacle provided us the opportunity to evaluate the way we approach curations. We initially designed the curation template as an ideal, everything we'd want to include. They would take a few hours for general education courses with a variety of open ed materials like psychology, but specialized courses could take over seven hours. Matt suggested removing the annotation section that accompanied many early curations. Grief for me came along with a lot of executive dysfunction. I'd often find myself 90% done with the curation, having found enough OAR options, but stuck on synthesizing materials in my thoughts the way I wanted to for annotations. This is such a rich, great section providing detailed comments about the resource perfectity, but it can take more time than actually finding the resources. Ultimately, the choice to remove annotations from the template streamlined the process. We could reduce more curations and still provide a rich list of options for faculty. Annotations would be a stellar inclusion in curations, particularly for faculty requested curations, but annotations do provide a lot of additional information that may not actually be used by the recipient. But streams licensed the curation process to not complete annotations for every curation as faculty can evaluate resources themselves. The most intensive part for faculty is to find OAR and the curation solves that and allows them to focus the time investment on evaluating if materials are a good fit for their course. We took what was an obstacle and made positive changes to the process. The ability for Matt to be adaptable allowed us to improve the process and make both the work and the curation more crisis resistant. I will admit I wasn't expecting face challenges and I got flexibility to actually improve the process ultimately. But the process did improve and is more realistic to adopt by future curators, librarians, and others interested in providing similar services. I want to talk a bit about disability and how it became relevant to this project. Disability is the only minority category that anyone can join at any time. This is especially true now in the time of COVID. Disability came up while I was in this position because I am disabled. I have a genetic disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome that, to greatly simplify it, causes joint pain. There is an unspoken consideration that all workers with a disability must face. How much do you reveal about how pervasive a part of life it is? Will it change how your colleagues look at you? Will they treat you differently as a result, whether with negative prejudice or by minimizing your professional capabilities? Having a disability and attempting to work means constantly juggling not seeming disabled with the harm that it causes you to hide it. Here's a practical example of the problem. It rains overnight and I wake up with pain in my fingers, so it's painful for me to type. A keyboard with less mechanical resistance might be less painful to type on, but if I'm concerned about the long-term consequences on my relationship with my supervisor should I bring it up, I probably won't say anything and will just work with whatever I have. As a result, my hands take longer to recover and I'm in pain and hiding it for a week instead of two days. This OER curator position was the first position I've had where not only did I not feel obligated to hide my disability, discussing it was completely normalized. It was treated not only as a simple fact of life, but was openly pragmatically addressed. I was accommodated without being coddled and without my capabilities being diminished or underestimated. The sense of relief and freedom I felt as a result was indescribable. I now feel more confident advocating for both myself and others in the workplace as a result of those experiences. As the project lead on the GVSU Library's OER grant and as the supervisor for this position, I had the opportunity and responsibility to practice my values when we ran into challenges. In hindsight, some of the factors that I think helped make this position more accommodating and safe included acknowledging and discussing my own challenges. As someone who lives with both depression and ADHD, I could draw on my own experiences with executive dysfunction to suggest strategies for prioritizing and initiating tasks, though, of course, it's always easier to offer advice than practice it yourself. I tried to approach challenges by asking how can we move forwards from here, whatever the reality of here is, rather than how are we going to catch up to an imagined trajectory for this position. Sometimes that meant reframing our approach to the core curation work. And sometimes it meant asking what other work, like analyzing and documenting workflows, might create long-term value. The nature of this position, new work for us, an exploratory element, and a temporary duration made it easier to adopt changes and let the work evolve to fit reality. And, very importantly, my own supervisor shared and supported a human-centered approach to the project, giving me the space to be flexible in turn. These factors, as well as Chelsea's and Erica's own openness and flexibility, gave us an opportunity to try accommodating the messiness of reality by adapting the work to the worker rather than the other way around. I hope that I and the libraries will be able to carry this approach of flexible human-centered work forwards. I think it's going to continue to be important for future projects, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact and disable people and as remote and all too often precarious work continues to be a feature of higher education. All right, now where can you find the documentation we've been discussing? We've created a public documentation folder in Google Drive. You can view the documentation at bit.ly slash OER curation drive. The link is case-sensitive and the OER is capitalized. The drive includes our documentation, the curation report template, and an annotated version, a user guide, examples of curations which are all released CC by NC. Please feel free to create your own editable copies to reuse, modify, and share. Grand Valley's existing OER curation reports live in our institutional repository, Scholarworks at GVSU, as both PDFs and editable .x files. These are also licensed CC by NC. So what's next for GVSU? The grant funded position ended in August, so currently OER Curator is just another name for MAT, at least for curation reports that faculty submit. Proactive curations for high enrollment courses are low on the priority list, but MAT is currently working with a student employee to pilot student-led curations, taking the workflow and documentation we all developed previously and exploring how it can be simplified and what aspects of the work can be effectively tackled by a student rather than a full librarian. The main motivation for this student pilot is that it's a lot easier for the libraries to add new student positions than add librarian positions, even temporary ones. Students are up to support retention and everybody loves retention. I'm also consulting with my liaison librarian colleagues to assess how useful the high enrollment curation reports can be as outreach tools. Some have already combined curation reports with lists of library subscription resources to support faculty and we're looking at ways to make that easier and more effective. Both of these efforts contribute to some bigger strategic questions. Does OER curation warrant a dedicated position of some sort for the Grand Valley Libraries? Or does it make more sense as an extra component of my work and that of our other librarians? Those questions will take a while to answer. In the meantime, I'm the most excited about opportunities for these materials beyond GVSU. As we've mentioned, we designed the curation documentation to support direct reuse of the curations we've put together, but there's also potential for reuse as a set of training materials for people new to OER work. They've worked well getting Erika and now my student assistant up to speed and I hope they'll work well for others too. The OER curation services was designed for GVSU faculty but is easily adapted by anyone. We see curations as an opportunity for structured systemic approach to improve the OER community's work overall. Many of us working in open ed regularly help find resources, but what happens to the work afterward? Are we just creating the library equivalent of disposable assignments, emails or spreadsheets that are used once? Let's stop reinventing the wheel and let's reach beyond our individual institutions. The OER curation template and approach we've discussed today is a renewable option. We'd like to invite others to use the template, create curations and openly share them out. Finding OER could take up a lot of time, one of the most precious resources in higher ed. We could ease the lift of finding OER if even a small number of OER librarians or other staff share their curations. Let's practice our principles and build a shared library of OER recommendations to reuse and adapt. That's our big idea. Reusable and consistently structured tools for sharing the results of OER discovery and evaluation. Not only with the educators who requested them, but also with a much wider community of practice. So what do you think? We would love to hear your ideas, questions and concerns. If you're watching this video during our official time slot for OpenEd 22, we're active in the chat and ready to respond live. If you're watching this asynchronously at another time, please feel free to comment on the documentation we've shared at bit.ly slash OER curation drive and keep an eye out for listserv conversations about these ideas. Thank you so much for your time and we hope you have a wonderful day.