 Hello again, everyone. Thank you for coming to our presentation. I will just take a brief moment to do my share screen here. And let us see. I'm sure you can see that. Right. Okay, so thank you again for attending our presentation. My name is Regina Gong and I am from Michigan State University. I am the OER and Student Success Librarian there. And I have Aaron. Hello, everyone. My name is Aaron. I use he him pronouns. I am currently serving as the ASM issue or the associate students of Michigan State University's Vice President for academic affairs. I'm a third year MSU so I'm a junior this year, studying secondary education, social relations and policy. But prior to my position as the VPAA, I also served as the representative for undergraduates in the College of Education at MSU as well. And that's where I got my start for advocating for OER across campus. And then that is Aaron's email and if you want to follow him on Twitter, that is his Twitter handle. My name is Regina again. And in my capacity as the OER and Student Success Librarian at MSU, I lead the OER program as well as the OER award program at Michigan State. I also manage our open textbook publishing by press books. And as part of what I do, I give a lot of professional development presentations to our faculty, staff, librarians on various topics that deal with open. And since last academic year and onto this academic year, I have been facilitating the open pedagogy learning community at MSU. So this presentation is really all about student advocacy and support. I know that our students are at the heart of what I do or what we all do in the open and I'm so proud that I am sharing this presentation with Aaron, who is our student leader at MSU. So before we start, we just want to share with you our origin story or how we came to be here in the open. So for me, I started at a community college. So back in 2014, I became the OER project manager at Lansing Community College. So that is not far from MSU. It's just in downtown Lansing. And in that role, I led a very successful OER program at LCC. And in a community college where a lot of students are non-traditional and it's a commuter college, I was able to harness the power of student participation and advocacy by starting with our student employees in the library. I'll talk about that more as we go along, but let's hear about Aaron's origin story. Aaron, tell us about it. Yeah, so as I said before, before I came to the position I am now as the Vice President for Academic Affairs at ASM issue. Last year I served as a representative in the General Assembly, which is the legislative body for the undergraduate population as the representative of the College of Education. And you know this was a time during the pandemic. So one of the biggest and most pressing issues that I was trying to tackle is how do we make sure that we are still giving students access and access to an affordable education. Back in my mind, you know, there were many things that were often harder to push for such as decreasing tuition because those have other externality, more externalities to them, such as you know state appropriations and just, you know, cost of functioning the universities but I look deeper and think like how can we actually decrease those hitting costs as I like to call them for students which includes, you know, buying textbooks or you know seeking transportation or other costs that you don't see on your tuition bill right away. So I wanted to try to tackle that first and my first instinct is like, let's tackle the issue of the increasing cost of education materials that students would have to purchase. So in my experience, I've definitely spent at least $500 once on, you know, textbooks, e codes, which I could have used you know to pay rent to pay down my student debts to even maybe buy some gas so I can travel home to go see my parents who live an hour away. And that, you know, my experience is one of over 40,000 students experienced here at I'm issues campus so I really wanted to tackle that issue head on. Starting with you know just education materials and the cost of those so you know my first instinct was let's create a textbook library where you know a service where we can, you know, buy textbooks and check them out to students. You know, looking further into it, it was not sustainable, it was not, you know, encompassing of all the issues. So digging a little bit deeper and researching more I stumbled across open educational resources and I found the many benefits that it had not only that it, you know, addressed the overall issues of you know those increasing increasing costs of buying them but also address issues of you know how do we teach students how do we encourage students and how do we, you know, create a better learning environment for students so as I was doing my research and research more into that I happened to stumble across the MSU libraries live guide page on OER which is ran by Regina. And I found it interesting that we at MSU already had a system in place that is fostering OER initiatives. And so I said, Hey, if there's a system in place let's let's get on board with this so if Regina wants to go to the next slide I actually emailed her around October last year so almost, I think, over a month ago yeah over a month ago we or over a year ago I sent this email to her, saying that I found your web, your web page and I found it really interesting let's let's get together let's talk I want to learn more about what what MSU is currently doing and how as MSU can help. So that's kind of like my long origin story in OER. And that's how I found Regina and now my, my partner in crime as I like. You know what, when everyone said that to me 526pm. I think I like I jumped to my feet and like, oh my gosh it's like, you know, someone from as MSU is emailing me about OER. I, you know, replied right away and told him when can we meet. And I think within two days we met in my office right. Within like the week we've met virtually, and I was just a static that you responded to me in such a quick manner I wasn't expecting an email that I jumped right to let's we scheduled the meeting and I, you know, I learned more about what we're already doing with OER and how as MSU could help out with that. And as you know, all of you know you all of you here in this Zoom room working with and involving students is really critical in any OER initiative. And if you were at this morning's plenary when we were doing the Mentimeter questions, we asked, we asked the community what, what motivates you to do OER work and a lot of you says it's our student, right. And so, if we are doing this for our student, it really is critical that we let them be involved in the work that we do. So, um, yeah, so this is actually the this general assembly. Can you tell us more about this and then I'll follow up with what happened. Definitely. So our General Assembly is made out of representatives based on population from all the degree granted colleges that have undergraduate students in them so that ranges from the College of Agriculture natural resources to James Mandelson's to the College of Public Policy to the College of Nursing so each student each college gets representative representatives additionally to our other groups on campus such as the Coors and Cops which are the Council of Racial and Ethnic Students and the Council of Progressive Students as well as other major governing groups such as fraternities and sororities and the Housing Cooperative and the Students Athletes Advisory Committee. So, we have a wide range of representatives that represent, you know, all the diverse backgrounds at ASMSU. So, we have the people in like this in the side right here in the front here that you can kind of see me in the corner looking at my laptop there that's our office is the president whose kinds of navigates the advocacy that the General Assembly passes so that's the most important thing the General Assembly does is they pass our legislations and policies that we want to pursue on MSU's campus or in the broader community around us. And that is also my first involvement with our student government so I came on board at MSU in July 2019 and I really want to reach out to our student government and so you know I through our dean, we were able to get an agenda time, right, an agenda in one of their General Assembly meeting and I think that was October 2019 when I was invited to talk to their General Assembly I was given 25 minutes to talk about OER. And at the time, Aaron wasn't involved in ASMSU yet because you came on board in 2020, right, like spring. So, at the time, you know, Aaron probably doesn't know about the OER initiative because he wasn't in the in the GA assembly yet, but in that presentation that I did with the student government I was able to connect with Aaron's predecessor Brie Aiello, who was the vice president for academic affairs and she was so excited to be working with me with our OER initiative and at the time I was telling her that I am thinking of forming an OER advisory committee and I would love for her to be part of it. And so that was that was the start of my relationship with ASMSU. So as I was saying, this is the OER program advisory committee members. This is the new one now, that's why Aaron is there. The first member, student ASMSU member is Brie Aiello. And like I said, that's Aaron's predecessor and another student, student leader representing a different college. So there's two students in the advisory committee and right now Aaron is there as the VPAA and we are going to do a call for membership in the next GA assembly that I will be a guest again. So Aaron, just want to talk about how does ASMSU advocate support and champion OER? Yeah, so definitely. So one of the primary ways that ASMSU just advocates for anything is by passing legislation through our general assembly, which is again legislative body. So after that initial meeting with Regina, I said to her, let's create a bill. I mean, that's the starting point for all our advocacy at ASMSU. So over the next week and before the next full session, we're all the general assembly representatives meet. We drafted this bill. So our bills kind of have a basic structure of who's introducing it, what the bill is meant for and then kind of our argument and then later our resolve. So just to kind of go over the bill a little bit, we wanted to initially start off with what was the issue at hand and the main issue at play was that students are spending a lot of money on, you know, buying textbooks and education materials, oftentimes out of pocket if they don't if they're not eligible for Pell grants or grants from the university or from scholarships. That includes also access codes, which have been have been more prevalent in classes now and I have personal experience with that I've for my freshman year to now I have been using more online textbooks with one time access codes. And then I am using a physical textbook. So those were our first, you know, arguments and then we got into the arguments of, you know, what is we are and how that can address the issue so we talked about initially what, you know, we are is and then talking about what we are can do. So we went from, you know, OERs are, you know, these materials that reside in the public domain and permitted for free use, and they can be, you know, not just textbooks but homework assignments quizzes labs activities that students students actually have the part taken oftentimes are graded on, and then OERs also allow some, you know, customization to the content classes to fit, you know, real world issues, you know, real time issues, as well as addressing the most important aspect which is, it's not only affordable but it opens up the doors for more students as well. And then we continue with that talking about MSU is OER program and how that's in existence, and then the last part of the bill which is on the next slide. We, we did our call to action so resolve that the, the associates units of Michigan State University shall advocate that MSU's undergraduate courses utilize more open educational resources for instruction materials and most importantly when it's specifically appropriate so we were advocating that professors look at their current, you know, instruction methods and see if using an OER was something that they could utilize in their classes. We understand that you know not all courses at MSU will benefit from OER but we understand that if we can get classes that can do can use OER, that's where we wanted to start, but not only do we want to see the utilization and more OERs but just an expansion So that means, you know, expanding the program that we have on campus already expanding the use of OER to other courses, especially in other, you know, study areas that you may not initially see as beneficial of using OERs but could be. So yeah, and then we passed that over 29 so again if you look at the date between our first email and then very fast, yeah it was very fast, we worked really fast when when Aaron told me I wanted to really to sponsor a bill on OER we didn't waste time I think we crafted this bill within three days. So and I really am proud because really this is collaborative. And there's four pages in that bill. We set the stage as Aaron was saying but but also Aaron it's aspirational and I think this is unique because ASM is to you in your resolved clause, you mentioned that throughout MSU undergrad courses. Right. Yes. And so, so we have this this bill right we have this bill that the ASM is used student body has passed, and we publicize aside from that how can how can the student government help make OER sustainable. So definitely I mean the first way that we make it sustainable is that it is present on our mission. So if you go to our website, and you go through our initiatives, you will see open education resource Awareness Week. So this was actually a succeeding bill that we passed to create an awareness week that aligns with open at week, so that we can engage a student body, but most importantly faculty members on the utilization and the usefulness of OERs. And you know that's embedded within our mission as the student government is to enhance individual and collective student experience through education. So additionally with that I can go more into detail about what we did last year for our inaugural awareness week, which was from March 1 to March 5. Because of the time that was was during the pandemic, most of our events were online more informational. So we had at the beginning of the week we kicked off with a featured video featuring Regina. And throughout the week we did you know social media campaigns, and then one of the best things that we did was do a panel with faculty members who have adopted OER, and you know talked about their experiences adopting it talked about how they were very official in their classrooms, and I attended it and also was one of the moderators for it and you know the student interest and it was very, you know, that was great in my opinion you know we had about 20 to 30 students in that panel just wanting to know about what is this, you know, what can I do to you know, increase this increase this movement around campus. And another way we like to keep stuff sustainable is making sure that there's a presence all over. So one of the ways that we make sure that there's a presence of our services or our advocacy is through our merge distribution so last year we asked our marketing department to create some OER merchandising, so they created this little notebook which you know which is first off recyclable it's always out of recyclable material so it's sustainable in that way. But also stickers because we know that students love to put stickers on their laptops or the tablets or their water bottles so you know we made a sticker so students can add that to their collection of stickers and you know, other students can see it. And you know ask questions about it if they if they initially knew what an OER was. I think there's some. Just interrupt. We actually ASMSU earmarked some funds to buy this merchandise and they had so you had your designer designed this logo, right the MS, ASMSU branded OER logo of course it has to be Spartan green. I think it's 1500 is that right. We allocate actually just $1,000 as a pilot to this so a little quick context ASMSU collects a student tax every semester about $21 on which funds all the services and programs we offer but also includes a general fund where we can pull out for you know donations allocations so the GA was ecstatic to give $1,000 to start this initiative and they're probably gonna be ecstatic more to give more money so we can increase our awareness week programming in the future. And we went around the library distributing merchandise to our students who are there that was around March right right after the semester break and also some of some of your your student colleagues Aaron I think distributed it in the residential halls in the union in various locations around MSU right. And we also have some at our office at our like office space where students can come in we have a little table with all that. With all the information about our advocacy and I think we still have maybe a couple more stickers left from there but we're definitely going to get more this year because we knew that was that was such a hit especially with only only a small handful of students on campus, you know, time. Yeah, and so, you know, because you are the student government you have that pulse of the student right, but can you tell us about how do you help us advocate for we are with administration and faculty and the unique role that you as a student leader occupy in in the governance at MSU. So one of the great privileges that I have as the VP a and as well as my predecessor Brie yellow had was that we had regular meetings with you know top administrators at the university. I have monthly meetings with the provost which is the executive vice president for academic affairs at MSU, and we also have biweekly meetings with the undergraduate associate provost. So, you know, having these months of these really regular meetings allows me to really, you know, argue that these initiatives, especially we are is what's beneficial for the student body more specifically the undergraduate population. One of the things that we are currently working on right now as an organization because we had a lot of bills that dealt with undergraduate education and this is kind of one of the forefront initiatives is creating a best teaching slash instructors guideline. And that's something that we're currently working with the office of the provost to create so instructors can look at that kind of guideline sheet and see what they can implement in their classrooms to make sure that their students are successful. Additionally, you know, MSU just recently passed our strategic plan, which is a 10 year plan and goals that we want to achieve by the year 2030. And the first and the first listed goal and initiative is student success so we were able, you know, we are now able to argue that, you know, if you want students to succeed you want students to graduate at higher rates if you want students to have a more well rounded and diverse education, only ours is one of those initiatives that can that can drive that goal. So we're in talks with you know with the again with the associate provost for undergraduate education's office on how we can begin persuading faculty members and instructors to utilize we are in the classroom in their construction. Overall, you know, when it comes to student success students know what's best for their success because we're in the classrooms every day we understand we know we, we, we know like what's what's working for us what's not working for us and I remember looking at some of the surveys and many students love the use of OERs and I think we'll get that. We'll get to that and to your point, to your point, Aaron, you know the proximity to power right that you have as student leader is really integral for for us, you know, we are leaders who may not have that regular meeting right with with the provost or certainly with the associate provost graduate education or undergraduate education and when it comes to faculty, this is what we did right when when we did the Open, Open Education Aware Awareness Week, we awarded or the ASMSU student body awarded the OER leadership award to our faculty OER creators so I worked with them to determine who are the faculty who are using OER created OER and we did a list and they printed this out and Bri was still the the VPAA at the time next year when we do our Open OER Awareness Week you are going to sign this right, yeah. And I think let's get to the part, oh, if we can go, yeah, I think it's because the part obviously with faculty members so at the end of the day faculties are the individuals that get to decide how they instruct their students so we also not only conduct administrators but we also were circulating letters to you know leadership and faculty to address you know using OERs as an instruction a part of their instruction. And using that OER leadership award that's presented by the student government hopefully give a little push to faculty be like, you know students are recognizing that these are great, you know, curriculum designs or great instruction methods. Let me test it out let me see if that works for my course. And we're seeing I hope we're seeing more faculty members getting involved or you know, you know moving into using OERs in their classrooms for students. Yes, and we are we are increasing our OER creators and adopters of OER. And as you were alluding to Aaron earlier so beyond cost savings. This are some of the things that our students are telling us right how does the use of OER in their courses impacted them and this narrative. This narrative is not new to us right in our survey we are able to dig deep into the impact that we have with traditionally underrepresented students and so we have these testimonials attributed to first gen Pell eligible students and how it is impacting them. Can you speak more about this. Yes, definitely. So, you know, talking with representatives, especially the representatives who supported the OER bill, you know I was asking them, you know, what else is this mean to students, and many pointed them, many pointed out those especially who had who were already using OERs in their classrooms that they thought their instruction was more meaningful. So, you know, these OERs allow us to, you know, take present issues and insert that into the curriculum or even in the textbook, which is something that students crave nowadays you know they're not just wanting to learn about theories and you know bullet points they want to know how we can use that information in the real world when we get into our actual professions in the future. And I think that OERs allow that to happen where you know, you know professors can insert articles of you know what happened that day or what happened recently or they can insert you know information that's relatively new. So allows real world learning to occur and especially large classrooms or oftentimes OERs are used, but I think one of the most important, you know, the successes of OERs is that addresses one of the other issues that students have and that is mental health. So as MSU has, you know, long standing advocacy on improving mental health at the university. And I think OER especially at the time during COVID, you know, would would have been very beneficial to students, especially, you know, since COVID had impacted many of their financial situations impacted, you know their proximity to MSU and their access to textbooks. I remember you know herring some students say that I cannot get my textbook from the local bookshop that sells it because I am literally all the way across the across the coast, and I have to wait now to get it. And even weren't able to purchase her textbooks until a couple weeks into the semester already behind on their work. OERs allow them to immediately have that because it's again it's in the public domain, it's used. It can be used by anyone and it's readily available and again read and readily changeable when needed. And I think, you know, these testimonies speak to itself, you know, once that I love this book so helpful and well written. I enjoy the fact it was very comprehensive. The quality was great so OERs you know they match the quality of the textbooks that we were already getting and buying but it addresses those other issues that students have which is you know how my education in general but also my mental health and my well being as well. Yeah, and you know I want to address some of the things that are in the chat I have not seen it yet but you know we want to have some time for Q&A. So lastly, what can you recommend you know that we do as OER leaders so that we can collaborate more with students and student government leaders. OER has been you know some of the challenging areas in OER work and OER advocacy harnessing the power of student participation collaboration and engagement with the greater OER initiative on campus. So what might be the ways in which we can we can do that. One of the big ways that you know we OER leaders can collaborate with students and student governments is first off presence. You know I would have never figured out that OERs were a thing unless until I found out that MSU had a lib guide about it so making sure that you know that initiative is accessible and present when students are researching that you know online is something that I recommend you know if you don't have a lib guide or you know like a blog about it or a website I recommend that you you know you start one because you're able to you know students will be able to find it and then especially student leaders this we're very active in our research and our you know solution I think the next big thing is forming that long term partnership um you know and that means a lot of things you know so not only you know having partnerships with you know the current leadership and student governments making sure you have sustainable partnership so I'm a junior right now this is my second year working with Regina but in about a couple years I'll be I'll be gone from MSU which is sad to think about but I mean Regina already working on a ways and how we can get freshmen representatives you know new leaders in the organization and to to have some interest in this initiative. But also not not only a sustainable partnership but also a very personal partnership. I remember me and Regina's first meeting. Yeah we're both Filipino and I think that was kind of cool that I that you know someone who someone who I already felt familiar with was felt even more familiar and more familial, you know I feel like we're, we're basically not only friends but we're she's she's part family now. So you know students are looking for you know people who they can you know share their stories with share their experiences with. And Regina was awesome at that you know she listened to students concerns she she addressed them in a very professional but also conversational manner because sometimes we're just hired of hearing professional top we want to hear, you know, personal discussions about you know how this could be helping us so you know it's love that motivate you know love for students that that we love to see from people who are trying to help students and I see that when you know me and the General Assembly see that from Regina all the time. And lastly I think, you know, just going back to presence you know seeing how you can attend a meeting and talk about the issue and the initiative at hand, even if it's not to the General Assembly but just to the leadership. I think that's important as well. Thank you for that Aaron you're going to make me all teared up but really when when I found out that Aaron is half Filipino I was like, Oh my gosh Aaron, we are, we are, we are like family. So, I don't always see a lot of us right in academia, and when I see that one I really hold on to it and we have really this personal relationship that I hope we can maintain you know long before long after your, your days here at MSU. You know are over right so when you graduate, hopefully you will you will imbibe that that open ethos as you progress in your career in in academia. So we'll stop talking, and we'll, we'll, we'll try to you know address some of the questions that you have in the chat. And if you want to unmute yourself, please do and ask us questions. Thank you. I'm going to read your your, the things in the chat now. Oh, okay. So, the green says, could you share a copy. Yes, actually one of the bill that they pass in relation to the main OER bill is putting a CC by license in the bill itself, a first right because you don't do that. It's like, well, folks will probably want to adopt your bill and so, yes, while putting a CC license and we'll give you the link probably embedded in our presentation so you will see it. And the third, do you have a list of the questions that. Yes, I have a list of the questions so it's, you know, it's 11. No, 10 questions, not that many because we don't want to inundate students, when we do our end of the semester feedback. Yes, I can share that with with you to let me see what else is in here. Do you track how many faculty members. Yes, I do I am big on assessment I am big on tracking. So we are adoptions in my presentation prerecorded on Wednesday, you will hear more about that. So, yes, we do track, we started tracking it fall 2019 semester and have been doing that every semester. So, did higher administration help with your efforts. Maybe Iran, you can, you can address this. Yeah, definitely. So, um, we usually like our, when we meet with administrator administration, it's, you know, addressing like the bills that have passed so oftentimes they kind of guide us to other organizations like MSU on where we can start the initiative so we talked with the provost about creating and teaching best guidelines and then that she moved us to the associate provost for undergraduate education has more of the resources more of the, the tools to actually begin crafting a best teaching guidelines so soon we'll be working with possibly you know the teaching and learning center on campus or the hub, as well as working with you know the libraries I mean we already have a special relationship with libraries. They often guide us and then they can also you know support initiatives through other other governance systems throughout the university. We're still kind of in our, you know, planning phase right now but we are definitely seeing higher admins you know direct us and give us resources that we need to and advice to to like pursue the advocacy. And one question here from thoughts upon says how often do you educate the GA membership. So, I am. Ideally we do it like every semester so I, the next guest thing that I have is the November meeting of the General Assembly. Aaron, do I have 20 or 25 minutes. I think we have about 20 to 25 minutes to me, yes. So I have 25 minutes to talk about the only our initiative, the success that we've been having and also put a call out there for another member of the OER program advisory committee. And how do you advertise to students so right now we do not have OER course markings yet in our student information system. We just migrated or yeah we just migrated to a new SIS and so a lot of the campus systems are still working towards optimizing that new SIS so that is a plan in the future. Yes. Hi, I'm sorry, I just put down in the chat that we are out of time but I am going to just turn off the recording and but you are welcome to stay and talk. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, if you have any questions we can stay up to three, four.