 I'm Samantha Streamer-Veneroso and I will be moderating today's session with the wonderful people that you see here on your screen. I'm happy to welcome you to this discussion. Our panelists will share their experiences and strategies for finding funding sources, acquiring that funding and leading projects with funding. Before we get started, however, I want to acknowledge that our mission, vision and values are not meaningful unless we account for past inequities. The fact that racism has caused generations of harm, this shapes the experience of black, indigenous and other people of color that live and learn in our communities today. Recognizing that this year's Open Education Conference is both virtual and global. We'd like everyone to take a moment to recognize the people indigenous to the land you are currently on. Native Land Digital is a great online tool resource for doing this. I'll drop a link in the chat and ask everyone to take a moment to research the land you're currently on. Nicole, I'm not sure if everybody can see what I'm putting into chat. They can't. I'll ask somebody from our, there we go. This conference seeks to foster and promote learning and resources and action to help attendees and presenters make equity, access, diversity and inclusion primary considerations for all attendees. We will continue to ask questions and learn together. Continue to share a bit about the land you are on in chat. I'd like to take a moment to recognize the part of this land acknowledgement statement is adapted from Open Oregon Educational Resources equity statement, which is available under a CC by license on their website. You'll find a link to that in the chat. We welcome being held accountable and we welcome your feedback which can be sent to us at contact at openeducationconference.org. We are super happy to have you here today. Before wonderful panelists, each one is very accomplished and has tremendous experience to share with us. The only our work we are doing is often grassroots pushed forward by people who believe deeply in the vision of open education and the desire to serve students. While there are several barriers to scaling open or open work funding is a challenging one. Receiving funding can not only help you scale your work through the expansion of resources, but securing funding can also expand your work by giving it authority recognition and priority in your institution. Our panelists are here today to share their experiences and observations. I'll ask each panelist to introduce themselves and the lens they're using their experience with grants, as they answer their first question. So we'll go ahead and get started. Erin, can we start with you? The first question is, how did you approach the task of funding funding? What is the mindset or strategy and what opportunities have you seen out there for funding? Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Sam. Yeah, so first of all, my name is Erin Keunan. I am the Community Manager for the Open Research Funders Group, and also a professor at the National Autonomous University in Mexico and Mexico City. So I'm coming at this from two perspectives, one as someone who's worked with funders who are funding in this open education space, and also as a grantee as a professor who has secured funding and worked to create OER for the last few years, particularly for undergrads in biomedical physics. I'd like to say that I approached this, you know, starting out thinking I was going to create OER. I don't think I started out with that mindset. I started out, as I think many of us do, just thinking that I wanted to improve education for my students and provide them more kind of innovative learning experiences. And so I went into it with that mindset. I was lucky to find a funding program in my institution that is focused on exactly that. So it's not particularly an OER grant. It is a grant to improve and innovate in education, but they do have language about sharing your grant outputs and having broader impact for students and educators. So I capitalized on that. I took them out their word in that language and developed a plan to create these laboratory experiences and computational practicals for our students, and then to share all of that out through GitHub. I think that really did help us secure funding because using that language saying we're not just going to be creating materials for our local community, for our student program, where we're going to create materials for a broader impact, potentially for students and educators outside our institution. That's the mindset I went into, and we were successful. And I'm just really glad that that program exists and just would encourage institutions to have that kind of funding in place. It's really a great way to stimulate innovation in education, but also at the same time get OER out of that. Thank you, Erin. I think that perspective of looking creatively at what the grant's actually calling for and what the grant is actually asking is really an interesting way to go about this. And probably sometimes we forget we just go look for OER grants or open grants and don't actually read through and find ways to make those alignments. So thank you for that perspective. Liliana, can you talk a little bit about your work? Yeah, hi everyone. My name is Liliana Diaz-Saladucan and I'm a policy analyst at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, so with you for short. We're one of the four regional compacts and we serve states throughout the West. And we don't necessarily grant or award money to states to be able to do this work, but we do support states in being able to find the language and the talking points that will appeal to different audiences that have those funding resources. So for example, we work with states across the West and a lot of folks are interested in maybe reaching to their state legislatures to talk about how they can support OER. So we help practitioners that are doing this work on their college campuses at their libraries through their systems or institutions. And we help them connect to those state policy makers to be able to really make the case for why they need to support OER and what are the talking points that are going to connect with the state policy maker or legislator. And that's really the role that we've taken in OER to really support states to be able to make that pitch to those individuals that have resources available for them to be able to engage in this work. Great, I think again we're looking at that how do you creatively help people outside of the open world see the value of what open is and why they might want to fund it. That's a great point too. Amanda, can you talk a little bit about your experience and the Canadian perspective. Sure. Hi everyone, my name is Amanda Coolidge. My pronouns are she her and I am the interim executive director of BC campus. BC campus is an organization that works with the 25 public post secondary institutions across the province of British Columbia in Canada. We work in the areas of educational technology teaching and learning and open education. And so when we, we act sometimes as funders for institutions but I'm also I'm really going to be focused on sort of the task of acquiring funding so what it means to be a fundee. And for us the mindset and strategy is always around what is basically what are the problems or issues that a funder is trying to solve. So if we can address that when we look at provincial government funding for example so in Canada at post secondary education is a provincial mandate and versus a federal mandate. And so when we're looking at ways to increase our funding in the area of open education, we often will take a look at the priorities set out by the province of British Columbia and make the alignment to that so a lot of times if it's around accessibility or affordability or digital learning or universal design for learning all of those aspects we make the tie into open because of the vast capabilities and abilities open has for it. So when it comes down to the work of looking at external funders such as the Hewlett Foundation it's also very similar it's what is the problem that they're trying to solve, and how can open fit into that and in particular what can we provide to that funder to achieve the deliverables that they're looking to achieve. Thank you Amanda. Carrie, do you want to jump in and talk a little bit about this from your perspective as a faculty member. Yeah, so I'm Carrie the as eaten. Thank you for having me here today. I'm associate professor of digital and computational studies at Bates College which is an interdisciplinary program but I'm kind of a stem based person. Another hat that I'm wearing here is is as a director of the Rio Institute, which is focused on supporting open and inclusive stem education. So, like many others they were many hats in terms of being a grantee or a grand tour so so our institute does have, you know small grants that we award for for projects that are at the intersection of inclusivity and open stem and. I think I'm here more to talk about sort of how we have done funding. Because I come from the stem fields in the US, the vast majority of my external funding has been through the National Science Foundation. And probably in terms of the projects I've written funding for had about $8 million worth of grants, primarily from NSF, but more recently from Hewlett as our work has become more explicitly connected to open. So I think it's a sort of resonate with this idea of open work is happening in places that don't necessarily call it open ed. They call it sharing curriculum, they're calling it outreach and dissemination plans. And so I think one of the things I like doing is having these cross sector conversations and helping find synergies between these sort of very different sorts of funding opportunities and communities that work with those funders. Thank you so much Kerry that's really. I think that's a really interesting perspective and watching how NSF funding has changed and really started to embrace some other problem type solving. And I think that the resonating thing is looking at the problems the funders are trying to solve, and that you know really trying to adapt and help them see that connections with that said. So what, what have you needed to do to secure funding what who's involved in that, what kind of support should people be looking for, and how do you order some strategic ways of making that advocate advocacy. So Amanda, if you could talk a little bit about how that's worked from your perspective, that would be great. Absolutely. So I'll speak directly to one particular larger strategy that we implemented in 2019 we were given a grant from the provincial government here in British Columbia for $3 million towards open education specifically toward that. And that's actually the largest grant that has been that has happened across Canada for open education work specifically. And honestly, the best strategy we had for that was to work directly with student advocates. So basically, I realized that student government leaders are the ones who tend to be the voices that people will listen to. And in fact they're the ones that will get the meetings with the presidents with the vice chancellors and then with the legislator so for for me that was really important is to start to help them strategize the work. So working with them to identify, how do you best put together the communication plan and the strategy to then talk to our premier of British Columbia to then talk to our Minister of Advanced Education. And what is it they need to know the honest, this is the greatest part of that is that I remember them coming to my office and saying, how much money do you think you'll need and I was like, I don't know, like a million dollars and they're like, let's up it. What do you do with 5 million. And I, you know, I'm just floored because I was like, oh yeah right good luck with that. Anyway, it turns out they were able to advocate for $3 million worth of funding. And they were incredibly empowering and empowered to do that work because it was it really showcased not only how the government could really support younger generation. I'm not talking at younger generation voters. But I think also the best way that students could feel empowered themselves to see that they were making a change. Thank you Amanda that that really resonates with our opening panel on Monday and that that that the voice and the power that student activists and just students in general can have. So I really appreciate you bringing that in and again that parallel. Aaron, do you want to talk a little bit about your experiences. Yeah, absolutely so I think for me, it was key to reach out to other professors in my department that we're working in the same area so one of the issues that we had was that we wanted to do innovative things and teaching wanted to provide more kind of hands on learning and practicals and have them do experiments and really explore, but we just didn't have the infrastructure for that we didn't have equipment or materials, or even really space dedicated. And so it was really key to kind of demonstrate that need by putting together a group of professors that said we're all working in this area we're all teaching classes. You know that that could benefit from this and say it's not just me as one professor it's this cluster of professors that really want to do this together. And I think that making those connections reaching out to those folks and demonstrating that it could have impact across a number of different classes that we were we were teaching was was really a key part of forming that support structure and getting the funding. Erin thanks can you clarify and so were they all teaching the same courses or just in the same discipline or. Yeah, across classes a bit. Of course yeah not the same exact classes, but we were all teaching in the area of biomedical physics. And we were all teaching courses that could benefit from a more hands on approach so we were teaching things like physiology or biomedical instrumentation or methodology and design and all of those really, you can't really dive in there as well, until you have kind of the material that the students can really get their hands on and work with so. Yeah, that was that kind of the common interest that we all have. Thank you, Amanda your comments in chat is really good it's the common themes right now are messaging and collaboration and I would also say that sort of finding that common commonality and those common pursuits so being real aware of that sounds like an important element of this. Lilliana do you want to talk a little bit about your experience around securing funding. Yeah, so I live in the intersection of policy and higher education so one of the strategies that we utilize to support states and systems and institutions is to really help them understand that they need to be prepared for what we call policy windows. And those are moments of opportunity where you can make a pitch and position we are as a strategy or as a tool that could really address what's happening kind of in the larger political or socio environment. So two policy windows that are currently open or will open are the first is that we had you know a pandemic a global pandemic and so what was the role and impact of OER and facilitating access for students affordability, increasing learning and facilitating teaching among faculty that is a great way to be able to position OER as the impact that it drove through the pandemic. Additionally, a lot of our states still have covert emergency relief funds so I know I'm sorry for those that are international this is really US based. A lot of our states and a lot of our institutions still have some of those funds remaining and they have to use them within the next year or so before those emergency relief funds expire. You can position OER as something that can drive a multitude of issues on campus you know OER in support of student affordability accessibility both the you know ADA compliance but also to recruit students you know what is better than to help students understand that your campus utilizes zero cost or zero textbook costs or provides a pathway where they don't have to pay for textbooks. It could also be a retention strategy for students that maybe want to continue or want to enroll for more credits but maybe can't because the cost of a course materials is a hindrance to that. So you can position OER and to your administration to say hey we can use some of these dollars to address some of these issues. The second policy window is that some of our institutions are doing okay financially because of that money that came in because of COVID. But once those funds expire a lot of our institutions have not recovered their enrollment from prior to the pandemic. So what does that mean for the financial stability of your institution? Well, OER could be and can address some of those issues after those funds you know go away. So those are two policy windows that can be utilized right now. But with that you definitely need a marketing and a communications campaign. So that's very critical. So definitely that's kind of how we've supported states to be able to identify what are the policy windows that opened for them in their state and in their state context and to be able to pitch and prepare those talking points to the audience that they want to target in position OER as a strategy and as a tool in our toolkit to be able to address that. Great. So so far we've heard a lot of the strategies focusing on messaging, on having the right message at the right time and collaborations with either colleagues or students. And so those are really, really powerful strategies. Carrie, you want to bring it home for us with some of your strategies. Yeah, some things add a few more. Yeah. So, um, so I think it is sort of depends on the situation. For example, federal funding like NSF is highly structured, like you there is a call oftentimes you write for the call. It's a very, very structured process. So there's maybe some opportunities where you can talk to program officers, but it's more about these very often about reoccurring calls and up on the calendar you have a team you put together a proposal that meets the specific criteria and very structure in that way. When I started initially working in calling what I was doing open education, let me rephrase that with calling what I was doing in terms of open education. One of the big things that I was doing is I was working with partnerships with a lot of other individuals. And what happened was because I was in these partnerships, I kept having the same conversation with individuals over and over again and some of those conversations were focused on sustainability. Some of them were focused on equity and inclusion. And so, because I understood the landscape of what many people needed. I was thinking a lot about what what does the field itself need without even knowing maybe necessarily with the funder needs. So what I had known is that the National Science Foundation had this specific kind of calls to when they are actually in a number of directorates they have a call to sort of do conferences for under $50,000 and I can say this is an urgent and compelling issue that we need to talk about, because many, many projects are having the same problem. Can we bring folks together and really talk about it. And I think developing that kind of sense of this is a community need then helps make a really compelling case for the next steps. And maybe the National Science Foundation wasn't the right next step what actually ended up happening is that we got in touch with private foundations with Hewlett more specifically and and the message we had like, you know, we, we want to be equitable and inclusive so we need to remain open and accessible and free and low cost but that open ed is like the holding of it the sharing of it is not free. And so we're in a catch 22 and how do we how do we resolve this. And, and I think that was like, you know, a lot of program officers can relate to my project I invested so much and then it dies when it's done get being funded or something and they realized it is a compelling issue and the community is calling for something. So I think there was something about knowing the landscape working with the community really understanding the issues and then proposing some solutions to to that. But also I think kind of, even though I wasn't thinking about as a policy window, one of the things we realized at that conference which was just pre COVID was that you know, they were committed to low costs, but the articulation of equity and social justice wasn't there yet. It was just zero cost. And so in addition to realizing that like the crux of our sustainability issues were related to our commitment to accessibility. We also realized we needed to move ahead on our equity and inclusion conversations more and get more expertise and, and I think we happen to be positioned with the right expertise at a moment. During COVID and during the renewed conversations in the summer of 2020 to lead some of those conversations so I think it was a little bit of a combination both that we really understood what was going on in the community and secondly, that we were poised in the right place to to lead some of this work. Thank you so much Kerry I think that that you know the, the four different perspectives and the four different pieces that you all brought together create a really nice landscape for ways to think about funding and ways to think about collaborations and timing. So really appreciate that I'm going to come right back to you Kerry, and say you know how's it work what are your successes what do you want to what do you want to say you're excited about around the funding that you've received. Um, I, well I think like one thing is it's very validating to get funding for your ideas because you feel like okay like my ideas mean something and people are excited about it. Um, I think they're, I mean just being able to curate conversations on important and difficult issues and and hold that space for people that need the time and professional energy that's just really why, why we were formed to begin with because we didn't have just particular conversations in, in, especially in the science open at community. I think, but I think like, beyond that, what's really helped us is I'm going to go a little meta here was really thinking about how we were going to show impact, how we were going to show stories, I mean, maybe this is in part because we're talking about things that require systemic change from my perspective that's kind of where my head is, and that takes time and you can't show necessarily working with a curriculum developer today you're not going to show student success literally you know within maybe, you know, a week or something that that might not be possible so what are all of the ways that we can tell stories about impact. And so I think my, my greatest investment has been a really fantastic external evaluation firm that has helped surface stories of impact and success up to the top it helps us as a team process where we want to go includes an external lens helps us a little bit with our storytelling narratives. But I think it is something that's maybe more standardly done in education research grants that are federally funded they require 10% of your budget to be devoted to evaluation. It's maybe not necessarily the standard or case elsewhere and so I already came with a, I don't know, have won in response to a grant call that I needed to build in 10% for evaluation I don't know. But, but I think that has been an investment that's really really paid off to help tell the stories of impact. Thank you so much for sharing that perspective and that experience. Amanda, do you want to talk a little bit about the kinds of success that you've seen and the impact of the grants that you've been involved with. A couple things one is, I would say the success of getting the funding has been that we've seen increased collaboration across institutions across the province which is really exciting. But more importantly, I think we've seen. We've probably seen institutions now carry a lot of the open education work so really building it into their institutional frameworks into their own policies within institutions. That's been a huge thing and, and to continue to see the messaging coming from the student governments. That's been awesome to see. There was another thing I was going to say. So, oh my gosh, sorry, I can't remember now, but one of the things I was going to say is that when we do the impact of the grant so when we receive grant funding we then send it out to other institutions to then employ some of the strategies we're looking at. One of the things that we did with our grants that was really successful is rather than hiring people just outside of the institutions we actually did the comments. So what we would do is we would bring people in from institutions to for a one year sort of contract we pay their institution, the coverage of their time. That way they could take the lessons learned and anything that they've learned from the grant or the grant work that they've done and take it back to their home institution which actually showed a lot of promise when they went back to their home institution. And then it's just been really great to see. Oh, I know the last thing is, when we first got the grant in 2019, our students savings across the province in our province, while geographically large we have 5 million people. So, we, so we had in 2019 a student savings of almost $10 million. And after this $3 million investment were up to 32 million in student savings. So it really shows a significant return on investment. And I would guess that you had to set that up in advance to figure out how you were going to track that and think about how you measure what student savings looks like. We have that all too if anybody wants it so happy to share. Thank you. Thank you Amanda. Aaron, I know you have some stuff that you really are excited to share as well. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Maybe I'll just explain really quickly how the grant works because that goes directly into the impact piece so these grants are great because they recognize that, you know, for OER, well for educational development innovation in general, you might need materials and equipment to do some really innovative things. So these grants are about one year and a maximum budget of $10,000 US dollars roughly equivalent. With that you're allowed to budget for equipment and things that you might use with a student. So we were able to buy some recording devices to do things like record from their muscles or record their EKGs and things like that, which is really fun for students. So there's a, there's a great kind of non quantitative impact there when you just see how the students react to that. It also allowed us to create, to build capacity, because it gave us equipment it gave us those recording devices we also bought microscopes all this stuff that we didn't previously have to do great things with students. And in the process of using that equipment, we created OERs, but it also fed back into our research program. Now all this equipment that we bought can be used to do thesis projects or all of these other things. We also created in that process open data sets and open software. And that's something I really want to emphasize here that a really great thing we saw out of this project was the way that the different aspects of open scholarship can intersect. So it's not strictly an OER project it's an open everything project we used open hardware devices we created open data open software, and all of that fed back in so now we have great educational materials but we're also able to do more research with students. So that was a huge impact for us. And then I'll say another just really cool piece of attic data was that a few days maybe week ago, I received an email from a professor at Penn State who said that he had been struggling kind of finding educational materials to use with his undergrads in this space and he found our materials and now he was reusing them. So and I can tell you that on a personal level, hearing someone was reusing our OER was way more gratifying than any article citation. I've ever received. So for me, that was some great impact. Thank you so much Aaron and and Liana, do you want to talk about the successes you've seen. Yeah. So I think some of the, the examples of success in our region that we've, we've seen is that the folks that have been successful in obtaining state appropriations or grants, whether federal or from their state or from even their institution or their system is that they really have developed a communications and marketing campaign to be able to hone in on why the funding is necessary and what it supports. And a lot of us are doing OER work without any funding. So a lot of us are just doing this because we're committed to doing success, you know, academic freedom we're just passionate about the purpose and mission of open. And we've been doing this work, but I definitely want to share that for those that have been successful in obtaining funding. They've tracked the impact and they've tracked their processes for what they're currently doing that's been unfunded. And once you have a base level of data, whether it's quantitative and qualitative and encourage you to collect both. You're going to need those quantitative pieces of data that demonstrate the impact of your non funded project on for administrators that talk the numbers that then they have to report to their, you know, state governing bodies. But then you can turn around and use the qualitative pieces to really engage faculty with this is why we're using OER because look at the impact that it's had on student learning. So it's really important to position and to really track that data I know Carrie talked about that when she shared her comments. But it's really important to understand what you've been doing and how you've been doing it and also to have a vision of what you would want to do so Amanda talked about like when they came to her and said well, you know, how much money would you need. And so there's a case I think she's in the audience, Amy, from Oregon had talked about having a similar experience that she had written a grant that had not. She presented it it didn't receive any funding but then she had someone knock on her door and say well hey do you have any ideas for how to use this, this extra money lying around. And then she had that proposal ready to go and she had kind of the, the idea and the outline of what she would use that money for. So I think it's always important for us to prepare ourselves for when those opportunities come knocking on our door because sometimes they literally do. So we need to be able to make the argument in the case for having, you know, the data ready to back up that our pitch for for those fun. Amy Hoffer just referred to that as the black back pocket grant proposal. And that's exactly it. I, you know, Liliana, I am so struck by that comment about even tracking, even if you don't have grant funding starting to track the impact now. There are different reasons why that will help you. But it's, I think that's a really, really valuable piece of advice I think everything here is valuable but that really stands out to me. This idea that you're doing this work. And sometimes it's not recognized sometimes you're just doing it because you love it. Can you find a way to track it so you can talk about it more effectively. And so when those opportunities do come knocking you're ready to go. I just, I just love that piece of advice. We're going to switch. We're going to switch focuses a little bit and talk a little bit about challenges. And then we have one other question about after that and then we're going to jump into some of the questions that are coming in in the Q&A area and so I just want to remind remind folks that if you have questions that you'd like us to address at the end, please put them up in the Q&A area. So the next question is really about challenges you're faced. I think this time I'm going to start really let's come right back to you and talk about challenges. Yeah, well I think one of the major challenges that I've seen in in in the states that I support is that we all have an area of expertise right but when it comes to communicating and marketing the impact of where we are or the why. It can be very difficult to translate that to a different audience, when we're so immersed in our own work. So it's difficult for practitioners sometimes to be able to turn around and pitch why we are to an administrator that only cares about retention persistent enrollment numbers, you know, that they have to then report to a state legislature and then they have to translate that so that's a very difficult pivot for most of us to be able to do. And that's why I think having a community of engaged folks that are committed to OER and open education more broadly is important because everyone brings a different perspective and a different set of definitions a different set of language that can be utilized. And you can then connect with your community and say hey I'm trying to make a pitch for my president or my provost to be able to fund OER for you know adoption and scaling or support whatever it is you want to support. If you have someone that is an administrator level that is behind you and supports OER you can connect with that individual and really understand the language that you need to utilize to really make the case for someone that doesn't live in the faculty world doesn't live in the library world but really lives in like a different space and talks a different language. So I think that's something that's very important to have a diverse large network of OER champions and open education leaders in in your community. So I think there's a couple of threads in there that I think are really important to pull and that idea of you know and you didn't say this directly but one of the things that I hear you saying is sometimes you have to be able to talk the language for the person your audience and that audience may actually have, I don't want to say a different value set but a different priority and that can be really hard for us because I think in open ed we tend to be really passionate about the student and the teaching. And so it feels icky almost to sometimes talking you know the language that maybe is a little uncomfortable the bottom line business language that that sometimes is necessary. So I really appreciate you pulling that out I think that idea of having, you know, again the collaborations and other people that can help you and really having learning how to communicate it, but that OER champion or having champions and administration for you and building those relationships is also an important piece. I'm wondering if Aaron if you want to talk a little bit about some of the challenges that you've seen. Yeah, absolutely. I would say the biggest challenge for me personally was the issue of incentives. So, there was a huge contrast between how the funding body at my institution responded when we reported back on what we've been doing, and how my promotion and tenure committee view things. So the funding body was really excited. We went back to them and said, look at all this great stuff we're doing with students. And, you know, here it's all public it's on GitHub, check it all out. They responded to us you know this is great, broader impact and they even encouraged us to come back for a second year of funding, which was fantastic. I'm really excited. But I'll say very candidly that my promotion tenure committee was not very excited about what we've done. And it was really disappointing because we had this, you know, kind of huge body of evidence that we were having such a big impact on teaching and learning in our program. And the responses that I heard was, you know, we'll wear the articles. And I was like, well, this is not about articles. This is about education and student experience and learning and all of that. Eventually we did publish an article but more because I wanted to share with folks what we've done and strategies that we've used and, and even when I published that I got kind of the comments well why did you publish this all as one big article and not divided up more that would have increased your counts. And again I was like well this is not about the journal articles that's not the impact that I'm trying to show here. So I think, until we get that incentives piece in place. We're not going to get the kind of strength and development and we are that we really want to see, we have to reward and recognize people not not just through funding but through promotion and 10 year. Thank you so much for raising that here and I know that's a really important comment for a lot of people and a lot of people have experienced that incentive structure and you know that the concerns that are there. There was a good comment there was a good presentation the other day that actually looked at how they have been working on trying to restructure that that you know how to get things more included into 10 year structures. Thank you so much for that carry do you want to talk a little bit about some of the challenges that you faced. Um, I mean I think I think there's quite a good a bit that's already been shared so I'll just kind of echo. You know I think it's a pretty realistic challenge for some particular science partners in particular to imagine that there are products other than papers. That's a that's a real issue so I think this is about multiple audiences and what is the tailored message for each audience and letting sometimes let letting go of what's more important for you when you're delivering that message like you know keeping it honest and true and consistent but but figuring out how to pitch it for each one is important. I think, I think likewise, and when I think this less with respect to sort of tenure and promotion, because I'm at a teaching oriented institution, but more in talking to programs that are like traditionally stem. You know, if I say open ed, they don't necessarily carry all of the meaning that we might carry with that and so it doesn't convey the hundred emotions and practices that it does when we're talking in this space. And so being more explicit about that. If I really geek out on metadata tagging structures, right, like then, like, I'm, you know that's something that I'm understanding and other people who understand metadata and tag like my tagging ontologies might like have this whole conversation with lots of lingo and that might carry a lot. But if if I'm going to talk to you know my administrator for for some funding or something that's probably not to language I'm going to go and I've made those mistakes before and said like aren't you excited about my you know fill in the blank, I don't know, metadata, and they're like, not as excited as you are. But I think of this like my background is in a co evolutionary ecology so I think of this as like finding the mutualism. Like what is the value for you that is also a value for me, and let's like show it as like a win win. So I think like that's what I keep trying to if I make that mistake I'm like okay like how do I, maybe I was wrong about like what things they valued like I need to learn and to speak in their language. You know it's like some of us who are, you know, by cultural, like, like straddling these like different cultural spheres is not an uncommon thing. I really like, I think it's a little bit of a sidetrack but some of us were earlier talking about just bandwidth has been very very difficult lately for everyone, and I don't know that there is what the solution is yet. I'm happy to like, you know, entertain conversations about that but I think trying to find more of those synergistic spaces for people and communicate that so that it doesn't sound like something extra. It's something that should be already part of your practice, trying to find those right now, finding ways to build new leadership in the ecosystem so that we're not consistently burdening the same voices over and over again. I'm thinking about that as well because I mean obviously like you get the funding. Right now it's been a climate of high turnover and burnout and exhaustion and, especially in the teaching and nonprofit sectors and so how do we. I'll go one step beyond like how we just build capacity how do we emotionally support the practitioners that are here, so that the work is sustainable from an emotional perspective. And that's a really, really, really important perspective as well. Amanda, can you talk a little bit about the challenges you've seen. Sure. I just wanted to add one thing so Carrie just we worked with a metadata librarian for our new open collection, and she said metadata is the love language to the future, which I thought you would love. And what I wanted to say is the biggest challenge for us is and what I think for anybody who receives funding is the sustainability plan because the funding will run out. And so what do you need to do to sustain the work that you're doing. And the one thing I would say to that is, how can you take the work that you've done and embedded into the core activity of your work or of your institutions work or of other work so for how can open be a tool for other work to be done. An example for us is our provincial government has decided, you know, has new priorities which are included digital learning strategies as well as micro credentials, and how can I leverage open to be a part of that. Those priorities because I can use open as the tool. It doesn't have to be the main focus of the funding. Wonderful. Thank you, Amanda. So I want to make sure that we have a little bit of time at the end to answer the questions that have come in, but very quickly, if each of you could give one piece of advice to our audience today, what is that advice that you would give. And who wants to start. So quickly because I have one quick one. So I would say my one piece of advice is when you're trying to get funding. Don't just write people and say, when do you have a grant coming open or do you have a call for proposals coming open. When we receive that kind of information coming forward to BC campus. It's very hard for us to understand what it is you're actually looking for. And so what we want to see is what is the idea. And then I can help you find the funding to achieve that idea. Thank you, Amanda. Who's next. I can jump in because it's related to what Amanda said, I think it's important to be able to position open education or we are whatever a facet of open you're using to address the challenge that the funder is interested in and use. And I think there is a tool to address that and you can really, it's a very flexible nimble and you can do that strategically and I think that is one way to to drive forward funding. It might not like Amanda said it might not be the focus but it could be part of the process or part of the solution to whatever the funder is looking to address. Yeah, I can go off of that one. Thanks for for that because I was going to say something similar about, you know, not limiting yourself again to calls that just explicitly talk about open education and oh we are. I think a lot of funders and institutions are interested in these projects that are spanning the different areas of open and thinking about intersections and creative ways to that those can work together. And so I would just really echo what folks have said and just, you know, look for those calls look where you might insert those pieces and reach out to funders that are not necessarily only in the open education space but are thinking about open data and open code and all of these other opens, where you might also have something can to contribute with your with your project. Thank you. And Carrie. Yeah, I think kind of happen have one little add on to what has been said is, on the other hand, don't don't just chase every fancy looking car. I don't know who you are and where you want to invest your time because, you know, as we've had folks in the chat I think somebody said like that enthusiasm and passion for the project really really shows. And then I think like the second is like, you know, open is not just like available for free it's, it's, are we making things available for free that are actually like, going to help all students succeed and specifically those who have been historically marginalized in our educational system and so like, it's not just about free like open for whom is the question we need to always be asking and so like, go ahead and get funding but but don't just put whatever out there like, you know, think about that equity and inclusion up front. Great. Thank you guys so much. We have a couple questions over in the question and answer area. And I think one of the questions is if this question or if this topic is not already been spoken to. How has your work changed as a result of the changing landscape and higher ed. Specifically we see that funding coming to higher education is making great progress in some states and dramatic declines in other states. You know how how do you think see things changing around funding. Anybody want to dive into that question. I can jump in. So, like again I can only speak for the US context but across certain states we have an aversion to the language of equity diversity inclusion. There's legislative bills prohibiting that language. And so when we try to move forward open education as something that you know expands equity and expands you know and we're addressing inclusion and making sure that we have culturally relevant and inclusive materials. In some of my states that language will actually shut down any work, any open education work happening because it is something that the political environment is not ready for. So, one of the strategies strategies that I utilize is like what are the proxies proxies you know is it, are we supporting rural and frontier students we're supporting first generation students knowing that there's intersectionality in there and that we can support students of color students that have been historically marginalized and underrepresented, because they overlap and have intersectional identities. And so that's something that I have to be cognizant and aware when I enter and work in states because the language that I use shifts, and I have a focus on making sure that the work doesn't stop and doesn't stall. So that's one approach that I utilize so. Thank you. There's another question that I wanted to bring up here. Is there a situation or a time when you would not seek funding or advise not seeking funding for work that's being done. Yeah, I think, in particular, if the alignment of the funding doesn't sit with your mandate or your values then don't do it. Anybody else want to jump in on that. I mean, I might just go it's maybe obvious but going back to what Karen was saying about bandwidth. The last couple years I haven't, I could have reapplied for these teaching innovation grants and I just didn't. I knew that I wouldn't have the bandwidth. I think that we were also at a kind of a transition point in the project in terms of thinking about where it goes next and what other types of infrastructure and materials do we want to develop. So, rather than killing myself in doing that I just decided to not do that so I think there's an there's an emotional there's a bandwidth issue there that you say, am I capable of taking this on right now. Karen Karen Carrie did you have anything you wanted to add to that one. But you were about to jump in. Well I don't know I think it's been said I will say that many institutions vary in terms of the kinds of support that they can give for administration and recruitment of grants and and I think that makes a huge difference and if you are not sure about your particular institution or in terms of writing grants that are external for example, then you might find a really nice partnership with a larger institution with that infrastructure that can take that burden from you and or right in time for somebody who's a grant manager, even if it's just a few hours, even if it's just to handle some contracts, bandwidth is a huge issue and some of these little pieces can help you get into the game without having the burden of the overhead of administration. Thank you, Carrie, I appreciate that. There's a question here that I think is specifically for Luliana and I think it has to do with the COVID relief funds. Are the relief funds statewide or institution-wide? How do we tap into those funds or ask for money? Yeah, so you'll find them at both levels depending on the state. So in some states, you know, the money was given to the governor and the governor appropriated those funds as they saw fit and some governors appropriated that funding to institutions or systems or kind of their governing body within the state for higher education. So you'll learn about this if you were just to like do a Google search and just type in your state and then COVID emergency relief funds and see if your state was awarded and where the governor might have appropriated some of those funds. And then also to, you know, if you have connections to administrators, they might know that that funding has been given to your institution but maybe not communicated widely. So again, it goes back to having a diverse community of OER champions that you can connect with and then really kind of go up the ladder and say, well, hey, do you know if we got COVID relief funds? And, you know, and then again, go back to that plan and communications, you know, that pitch. So then you're ready to be able to engage in conversation with those leaders to say, hey, you have this funding, do you have any left? And, you know, I know you have to use it by certain date, you know, let's talk. So those are some strategies to be able to find if your state or your institution receives some of those funds. So this is gonna be a sort of mixed question a little bit because I think it speaks to the same things. There was a question about working with development offices in the question and answer, but Liliana, I also think there's a followup to yours. Who do you go to in your institution? What type of people are you going to in your institution if you're trying to find either the COVID relief funding or help with other funding? Well, I think it's how you're gonna position OER or open education broadly. So for example, there's a decreasing enrollment, you know, that institutions are facing right now. There's like the sphere, the enrollment cliff that you've probably heard if you work on a campus, right? A lot of our institutions haven't recovered to pre-pandemic enrollment levels. So what does it look like to position OER as a strategy for, hey, a recruitment tool to say, hey, if you go out into the community and we have all these courses that are OER or they're no cost, can we use that as a recruitment strategy? Have you talked to your admissions office? And then once you've identified kind of the pitch or the way you're gonna frame it, then you can really kind of elevate that to your administration or to your system level and say, hey, we're having an enrollment crisis or institution, can we use some dollars to rebrand some of our admissions materials or some of our recruitment materials to really highlight that we have OER on our campus. So that also creates an awareness for prospective students that are coming to your campus that you have OER, which then drives kind of that student advocacy to say, oh, we have OER, students are coming to us because we have OER. And then we can kind of open students to say like, hey, if you want increased courses that are available in OER, let's get you connected. Thank you, Liliana. So anybody else have suggestions about who you go to to get help in within your institutions? Anybody? All right, we are down to the last three minutes. I think they're, well, really we're over time because we were supposed to end at 3.55. So I appreciate your extra two minutes. I think you guys have been fabulous. Thank you so much for your time today. I hope that everybody in the audience has gained some good strategies. Do you have any last takeaway thoughts that you want to share with our audience before we go? Carrie, what's your last good word? Now, as I said, you were talking about other offices and I just wanted to throw out libraries have been a great resource for connecting to the open education space in particular. So big shout out to libraries, but also, yes, I work through sponsored programs and et cetera. And I think this goes back to Liliana. It depends what who you're pitching and for what and for what reason. And so different people can be helpful. Just talking to more people creates more conversations on campus, so I just think that's great. Wonderful, thank you. Amanda, you were about to jump in on that. Oh, I was just gonna say, keep doing the great work and keep throwing the great ideas out there and do your best to leverage open within all of the avenues within your institutions and systems. Erin or Liliana, last good word. I think I'd second everything Amanda just said. So it's a good way to close. Mine would just be to expand your community of OER and open education champions because you'll be surprised the support that you can get. Thank you, ladies, much appreciated. Thank you all, it's time for a break and then we'll pick up with our next set of sessions. Thank you.