 Welcome to in the room where it happens, exploring student intersections with open education beyond the classroom. So today, all of your speakers have various intersections in working with open education and students. Many of us came to open education as students ourselves. Hayley, Tiffany and Graf all became OER advocates from the student government and leadership perspective. In graduate school, I worked on a project dedicated to an OER program. Amber has been active for a number of years, employing student interns to co-develop ancillary materials for the pathways project. Most of us all work with student employees and student advocates for OER and open education from our various roles. This takes the form of both mentoring or providing spaces for students to support OER projects and outreach. It looks different for all of us, but there's a lot of exciting intersections and perspectives from our unique experiences. And that's what we hope you'll hear today as we discuss the questions we have for thinking about OER and open education for students and how they can propel this work forward outside of the classroom. Throughout the presentation will provide an opportunity for you to be engaged as well. We'd love for you to scan the QR code or visit links directly and tell us what you think. Together we can crowdsource and brainstorm ways to involve students outside of the classroom and open education. Thank you for your participation. Our first question is what are some pathways to bring students into working with open education? So I think there's a lot of work that, you know, we as allies to students can do to sort of help first and foremost educate students on this issue, help them know how to navigate the bureaucracy of the institution that they're working in. At least where I'm from here in Canada, the student leadership roles are pretty short and impactful of stuff. So usually student leaders are being pulled in a lot of different directions, especially the last few years with all the disruptions to higher ed. So I think there's a lot of ways we can bring students in, but I think first and foremost just sort of focusing on like, you know, ways to get them seats at the table ways to get them involved in the conversation and help them feel empowered to have that conversation. I think one of the biggest pathways to bring students into this is through other students. If you look at any sort of involvement, if you look at any sort of clubs, anything like that, the way you drum out more involvement, more engagement, really spread this story, really sell how impactful this can be and really get other people to understand that. It's through their peers. So to bring students into the fold and like Kaylee was saying make them feel empowered is to bring them in as creators as well. So not only advocates of we are but and the adoption of we are at universities but also in creating those materials and that their perspectives and viewpoints and creativity brings so much to the fold really make sure to to compensate the students whether that be through an hourly rate. Through credit, because even though we are is free that the work is not free and in order for students to feel empowered and feel valued. I think that that's really important for them to receive the same type of honorarium or recognition that a faculty member would receive if they were doing that type of work. So if you look at students and you get talking about some of these things. That's one part, but finding out about what we are is and then kind of what onus do we quote we as institutions or as we are advocates or whatever your role is have been translating some of this knowledge to students right away. And I know I was four years deep before I had ever heard of what I know you add to that to because it's a really good point Tiffany is in working with students having the patients. When you find that student to have all those conversations and help them find resources and help them understand what the different types of learning materials are. And I really spent some time with that so that they can decide for themselves. How does working with open education transform students and their future. It really impacts how you are interpreting your, your education as you're going through it. You know, like, like Tiffany was saying like, like earlier the better right. I feel like I was able to interact with my educational materials in a different way after coming to this work, which is, which is actually really cool. Something that I would always kind of like repeat is like it when I was in spaces, you know trying to advocate for this is that students really want. We want to own our education we don't want to rent it and oh yard is a really, really good way to do that practice toward leadership and feeling some confidence in their skills and learning how to navigate organizations and really practical on the ground ways that are outside of the classroom like there's so much additional learning, I think that occurs. That isn't always obvious, and or at least that's not the space we come at to think about bringing students into this work. We're thinking about really, how do we help spread that word. How do we advocate, not so much do students even know what we are is like we've talked about but also, how does this inform their future careers. In this project we've been working a lot with this idea of renewable assignments but renewable assignments outside of the classroom and so all the students who are involved with the pathways project they're creating a body of ancillary materials that are available for any language teacher in the US or the world to use. And I think that's a huge confidence builder it's in resume or portfolio builder like Shannon mentioned but it's also really getting. For the first time I think that they're really getting to see the value in their own voice, and that even though they have, you know, a ways to go in their education, even right now they have so much to contribute and so much to share. I think there's two in that of thinking about an information cycle, and understanding a little bit more about how these things work, and really starting to see themselves as creators as authors, alongside anybody else in academia because I think, I think those barriers get put up a lot around higher education and it can seem really scary and intimidating. And I think that's a space that's really valuable. So much to be said for the potential to have representation in your course materials. Obviously there are so many layers to this but like just one that I experienced is, you know, growing up in Canada, sometimes a lot of textbooks are American focus they have American examples. A lot of we are you're able to tailor and adapt and give some more local context that just, you know, it's a small thing but it's really powerful and sort of helping you feel represented in the material students, you know, international students are helping to contribute to the activities and it's been so rich for them to be able to share their own perspective and share parts of their culture that you know, why should we work with students as peers in open education. And how can we value that role. I'll consider myself pretty early career coming out of student government and now working in this whole time. And like, even as somebody who, you know, wrapped up before the pandemic like I feel so sort of like out of touch, sometimes with what's happening on the ground, you know, like I think with just sort of like the way that learning is has changed over the past few years and continues to adapt like we really, you know, even somebody like me who's who's sort of fresh in the space like I really, you know, don't have the context that an on the ground student would think that students are experts in their own lived experience I think the students are not a monolith I think that you know what many years we may have considered like a traditional undergrad student or a traditional graduate students has really shifted into that there is no normal demographic for what a student is or can be. And so I think you know none of us should, you know, feel like we really can speak on behalf of students as a whole because it's just impossible to have you know all of that lived experience. You know, how do we get student role and then into some academic space ish, and, and then it came to the question of, well how do we get other students in here and how do we get them to have this experience and you know how do we get them opportunities that can help them now and in the future how do you bring students into conferences and talks and how do you get them set up for whatever they want to do next and what responsibility do we have as people who have this knowledge and experience and you know ability to kind of bring students in and as peers and as mentors to us and as us mentoring them and vice like the full kind of realm of being able to share knowledge and opportunity to bring COVID we're all non trust non traditional students. Right. Something that was really a big passion for me and why I got involved in student government is because I wanted to really try to bring students back to their educational experience they are really going to challenge the institutions they're, you know they are going to be as comfortable as other people will they're they're really going to bring creativity, they're going to bring, you know, lived experience they're going to bring different experiences. They'll really want to embed their identity into into their education. And really I think that benefits both the student and you know, you know your institution. I've seen that really transform the work for me that space where we don't really know from the other side, what is working in our systems and everywhere I've worked in open education, it is the students that either come to me and say, I know that the opt out for x, y and z isn't actually working we're not told soon enough, we can't drop out of that inclusive access purchase when we want to, we get charged to us anyway, or, you know, hey, maybe that's not the best way to put something in the system for students to search for classes, because they're not, that's not going to make any sense to them if you call it that. There really is so much we can do to lift up students who are doing this work and help them be recognized and, you know, celebrated for that work. It's not easy to have a full course load and also be trying to change the world at the same time so so props to them, you're able to give payment to students like literally paying them for the work that they do that's so important. It's not, you know, we don't want to be building this culture of unpaid labor for us if we're a student or somebody who observed like a student advocating for this on a committee, you know, can we be writing them a recommendation letter can we be, you know, offering to supervise them to do like a we are a research project that they're getting for like what are these creative ways that we can, you know, be volunteering our our time and our resources to help students actually within the role itself as well. And that's really in valuing them as appear and making sure that their voice and their input can be as valued as as other people on say a committee or on a team for mentorship. I have Shannon helped me a lot with getting me up to speed on a lot of these things getting getting me up to speed on where to find resources, you know, just just spending some time to talk to me. After a meeting and make sure I understood all the things that were discussed and had the context to come back to the next meeting with even more, you know, questions with more input. So that's does a wonder students the chance to really have that that's the important to think about mentorship going both directions. It's, it's not just us as the workers and open education mentoring students and making these valuable spaces for them. It's the students mentoring us as well and in helping us know what's meaningful to them as we have these conversations about how we value the role. If, if graph hadn't been willing to share what helped him and what mattered for him, I wouldn't have that feedback to carry forward with the next student. Maybe that will look different for that student and that's okay but I think to even be aware of that reciprocal conversation that that we are peers and we're all learning all the time example I can give is that our pre service teachers are involved in creating OER and then when they have their, their student teaching year, they're able to go in and teach their mentor teachers so much about OER many of our in service teachers haven't ever heard of OER. And so it's really cool because of the tables are turned so to speak, they're able to teach their mentor teacher something and then what's really fun is that then once the mentor teacher is aware of how we are works they can start to ask some of the tough questions like how would we how should we revise this or remix this for our classroom to localize it for our students and so it's really cool to see that relationship more just so many topics that we, I don't even think we realize that we are helping each other learn about that we can then kind of spread the word modeling for each other rate. I was really fortunate to have great mentors when I came into open education. And so there's, there's also that paying it forward to me. And that that's part of that domino effect, wherever the students go and how their careers transform in the future, because we are helping teach and spread that we are peers together as a student leader. I didn't have that mentor kind of in the open ed realm at that point is without without having some form of mentorship. And I feel that they have the agency that something like open education can bring because it's a long road to nowhere when you're by yourself to it's often because I've run into this with students where they often aren't, you know, it's scary to say the thing you don't have or the thing you need. You didn't even realize, oh, I can ask for that and so making the space to touch in, especially in the virtual world that was extra challenging. How can we build a sustainable system when working with students and open, particularly in light of graduating students did really significant transition periods. So the person who is coming in after me and I sat down and I said, look, here's what I did this year. Here's what didn't work. Here's what could work. Let's have a chat about it. We had the ability to sit down and talk about transition and plan something out. That's definitely not the case all of the time. And, but I think kind of one of the an easier, easier way to mitigate that. And when you're working with students have them do accident review to understand, not just who's coming next but you need to understand where people are right now. You need to understand what your institution looks like, like where we are that sort of work is being done. You know what's coming next. Knowing what's coming next in a longer term can also set you up for better sustainability, even though you only have students for a short amount of time. You can have multiple students working on parts of a long term project. I think one of the really great things about OER is that it does have that flexibility to be able to adapt to some of the system. So, and although a lot of students are playing a short term game, usually just finishing their degrees. You can play really long term games with your OER plans and what you want to do and have a lot of students be impacted by your project and have a lot of students impact your project. It's really important to create opportunities early on. And give the students the opportunity to be involved in a year or longer project are, you know, just getting started with the project and learning how it works to becoming leaders. If they're involved in a long term project. And I also was going to say to the students who are maybe outside of the box of what you would traditionally think so it you know if you're creating math OER for example it might make them feel like oh we're going to just have like lots of math students be the content contributors but there are students from English, from graphic design, from philosophy, from all different disciplines on campus who have meaningful perspectives and things that they can bring to the table and enhance. I was really able to help me think about because we were writing an institutional plan for affordable learning here at Boise State. We're ways that we could write student partnerships into the plan. And so really because of that connection university committee yet. We're the plan and so that that role and that those places are valued as we move forward. So that kind of forces that back up to the institutional level. It's not me saying it was the whole task force the whole group and and thinking in those ways as well and then graph is talking about laterally. I think the time that I was able to dedicate to speaking to students in it or being in the room when they're having conversations allowed me to meet other players. Others is like a lot of really fantastic stuff. I think, I think it all comes back to culture when you're trying to like build sustainability on campus like you what you ultimately are trying to do is build a culture around open. Thank you so much for joining us today. We'll take the remaining time to answer any questions we have in chat, but you're always welcome to reach out to any of us if you have follow up.