 Right, I'll start sharing again. Yeah, do you want to do this? Session is being recorded. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, my name is Jane Secker. And I'm Chris Morrison. We are the co-chairs of the Association for Learning Technologies Copyright and Online Learning Special Interest Group. I thought you were for a minute. You did? OK, I know who I am. Yes, definitely know who I am today. And it is the 65th webinar of Copyright and Online Learning at the time of all students. Another milestone. Another milestone. There we go. So we've got a lot to cover today. So we've got some copyright news. But the stars of the show are colleagues from the Open Education Network. You're going to talk about their work and what they've been doing. And we're really looking forward to them. So let's move on quickly in order to take up the time. So since we last met, we've been doing some stuff, haven't we? Where were you? I went to Krakow, actually. Last month, I went to the European Conference of Information Literacy, my favorite European conference about information literacy. And again, it was really nice. It was the first time going to the conference since before COVID. It was in Poland in Krakow, which was beautiful. And this was me catching up with some European friends at a networking event they had. And it was really great. I did a couple of presentations. Yeah, so. And I've also written a blog post about it that is also celebrating the fact that next year, information literacy is going to be 50 years old. So it's 50 years since the term was coined by Paul Zakowski. So if you want to read more about that and you're an information literacy nerd, then I've written about it. But I've also written a little bit about the conference I went to. Yeah, great. And I've put a link in the chat to that. This picture on the right is an event I went to here at the Bodleian Libraries. This was a few weeks back. This is printer Gerhard Steidel, who's talking about offset printing and his work as a sort of master printer. And of course there was a Beatles analogy, but I couldn't resist taking a photo of it because as everyone knows, I'm a huge Beatles fan and there's been a lot about the Beatles as everyone knows. So we won't say any more about that because maybe another time. But it was nice to see him using that analogy. This is to let everybody know that we do have an archive of the webinars, the recordings on the YouTube channel if you want to go back to previous episodes. So it's time for a few items today. Copyright news. Copyright news, yeah. Yeah, so first item up is that Matt Voitz, who's the IFLA Copyright and Licensing Specialist, he's sending out a weekly newsletter which was being sent by email. He's moved it on to Substack. I think you still get an email to you as well if you subscribe by Substack. One just came through this morning, yeah? Yeah, so just if you're interested in the world of international copyright and how it's affecting libraries, do have a look at his news because it's great. And Matt's going to be joining us as well for our last webinar of the year, isn't he? Yes, absolutely. So that's good. The next one is... It looks like I am, doesn't it? Yeah, hot off the press. UKRI have just released this guidance on managing third-party content in research publications with a focus on open access monographs written by friends of this parish. We have Emily Hudson, Tanya Applin and Claire Painter to thank for that. So as you might expect from those illustrious names, it's extremely thorough and helpful and useful guidance for anybody who is advising people on copyright in their research publications. And we hope to have them on a webinar in the coming months. In the new year, yeah. What's this space? What's this space? Yeah, fantastic. Okay, next up, we've got an event that is happening based on some work that many of you will be familiar with. Chris and I worked with Bart Milletti to develop a code of fair practice or film education. And if you are in the vicinity of either Bournemouth or Glasgow, there are two in-person events going on. Chris is putting the links into how you sign up to those. They are not, I believe that there will be notes, there'll be a kind of transcript from each event, but they're not being recorded or live streamed. So if you happen to be near or around Bournemouth, you can go along to the event that's happening on the 21st of November. And I think the lecture from Richard Misek, who is talking about his use of, I think it's mainly Getty, isn't it? And how he's used it to make film Getty images. That'll be on the 20th of November in Glasgow. So two exciting events, but you will need to get there in person. And Chris is going to Bournemouth. I am, I'm gonna be part of the panel. Okay. Oh, yeah, I'll call for papers. I'll do this one if you want. Yeah. So really soon, this weekend, the Open Education Resources Conference that's hosted by the Association for Learning Technology. It's gonna be out in Cork next spring. It's always a great conference and there's always a small number of copyright people that come along to it. We think copyright is vastly important in the world of open education. And so yeah, it'd be good to see more people going along, maybe see about speaking at this event as well. We've both spoken at it and it's, yeah, it's great conference. It is. The next one, there is a survey out from Knowledge Rights 21 on copyright and research. So people who are responsible for copyright and research related policies within their institutions being encouraged to complete this survey. So there's the link to that for anybody who thinks that they fit that bill. Next one. We wanted to highlight this one. I think, Tim, you're on the call. Yeah, I think, Tim, we just wanted to say we love copyright height. It's absolutely fantastic. Who needs Netflix when you can play copyright heights on a Friday night? That's what I was doing last Friday. I've been thinking about the Avocado Macchiato all week, actually, and how revolted it sounds. So for anyone that hasn't seen this link, hasn't checked it out, this is Tim Riley at Aberdeen who's created this online game for students to understand copyright, the basics of it. Yeah, it's obviously fits the bill for us, kind of thing we're into. Great piece of work. And I think we should let him on to tell us a bit more about maybe in the spring how he made the game and share some tips because it's really good. And it was good to have Ice Pops part of the mix of that. Ice Pops was where you came and showed people and got some input into that, so really great. And we need to move on. One final piece of news. Mm-hmm, yes, we do. Yes, so we have now got a report out that's an evaluation of this webinar series. We're very grateful to Sarah Hammond, who works with us behind the scenes. On copyright literacy related things, but she sent out a survey to follow up from a survey we did during the pandemic and this is all informing how we put together these webinars. So if you did complete the survey, thank you very much. If you'd like to have a look at the kinds of things people have said about our webinars, things they'd like to see more of, things they'd like us to do less of, then have a read of the report and we'll probably spend longer in the new year maybe having a look at that. But we are listening to your feedback and we're very grateful for the nice things that people say about us. Yes, absolutely. Okay, so without further ado. Yeah, so I'm really delighted to introduce our speakers today. We have a fantastic lineup, but headed up by David Bills from Brunel University where your director of the library there, David, you came along to Ice Pops in the summer up in Glasgow. You haven't run away from the community. You've obviously enjoyed yourself. You agreed to give this webinar, I think even before you came to Ice Pops and we're really grateful to your colleagues, Karen, who is from the Open Education Network and is up an earthly hour of the morning to join us from the US. So we're very grateful to Karen. We've also got Helen Moore from the University of Sheffield who is in the same time zone and Joe McPhee and Sam Pike from Brunel University as well. I'm gonna hand over to David, I think he's gonna get us kicked off with what this Open Education Network is all about. So if we just get your slides up, David. David, can you, you can hear us? Yeah. Yes, I can. Thanks, Jane. And we can hear you, hooray. So thank you so much for joining us. Lovely, thank you. So hi everyone, my name's David Beals. I'm the university librarian at Brunel and I'll let all my colleagues and friends introduce themselves as they give their presentations. But I'll just start by kind of giving an overview of what we're gonna be doing in the session and we'll start with an introduction to the Open Education Network by Karen Laurison. I used to work with Karen in California far too many years ago to count that she'll be recounting her experience in the Open Education Network and seeing it grow from a relatively small collaboration of libraries to the mature community that it is now. And then we'll hear from Helen Moore. So Helen Moore, the University of Sheffield, we've been collaborating with her for the past few months at Brunel and we've been really impressed with what they do at Sheffield, at the University of Sheffield in Open Education Resources. And particularly, I think we've learned a lot from Helen about her experience in supporting academics who are interested in writing or editing their own open access textbooks. And then lastly, we'll be hearing from my colleagues at Brunel and we have over the past few months, we've been developing a pilot workshop based on the Open Education Network model adapted to the UK and we can give you our initial feedback that we're hearing from academics about that. At the end of the session, I will come back and I'll talk a little bit about the strategic implications that we're finding at Brunel because we're getting a lot of interest in what we're doing. So I can talk a little bit about that. But before I hand over to Karen, I just, one of the things that I would want to draw out is probably why we are really keen to do this now. So at the University of Sheffield and at Brunel, we are the first two universities in the UK to have joined the Open Education Network. But it's not on my part for one to try. So when I came back from the US, which was about nine years ago, I was working, I was the head of the Institute of Cancer Research Library. So I didn't have any exposure to students, but I was part of the M25 group and I was hosting a session there with other library directors. And I was really keen for somebody then to take on the work of the Open Education Network in the UK. But I was met with Sheffield polite skepticism and in retrospect, I think I can understand why. I think at that time, when we were talking about Open Education Resources, there wasn't a huge amount of engagement from academics. But I think what's happened in the intervening years makes this a really good time for us to be involved in this. So where we used to be able to say, for instance, with our collection development policies, that we would cope. I don't think we ever really felt comfortable with the number of textbooks we would provide to students. And I think we probably had, to my mind, we had an ideal student in mind. And if they met us in the library where we are, then we would commit to providing them with the textbooks that they needed. But I think we all realized that that doesn't necessarily help at-risk students and those non-traditional students who aren't able to meet us where we are. And I think we have probably underserved them. But at the same time, we could say that we coat. What I think has happened in the last few years, particularly with academic publishers and their premium pricing models is become really clear that we're not going to be able to cope as those models carry on the trajectory that they are. And I would say we're probably heading towards a US model. So when I joined California Polytechnic State University, I was kind of shocked that in the US, libraries routinely do not provide textbooks for their students. It was something that I just took for granted. But it doesn't happen in the US. And that's the direction that everyone can see that that's the direction we're heading in now. And that's why as you hear from Karen and you hear from Helen and my colleagues at Brunel, one of the things I'd like you to carry with you through those presentations is that the conversations that we're having now in the UK, we're getting a really positive reception. And where previously it was really hard to be heard, now we seem to be pushing on open doors. So as you listen to everybody talking about their experience, I would like you to bear that in mind. Because I think this is a really good time to be joining the Open Education Network. So now I'll hand over to Karen and she can talk about her experience over the last, I don't know how many years it is, Karen. Soon you will find out. Thanks, David. And hello everyone from California where it's a little after 3 a.m. And I am truly delighted to be here with all of you despite the early morning hour. And I'm very interested in hearing from my UK colleagues about how things are going. So nice to meet you. My name is Karen Lortzen. My background is in education and communications. I began my role at the Open Education Network back in 2016 when it was called the Open Textbook Network. And my responsibilities include maintaining the Open Textbook Library, developing publishing strategy, as well as external communications. And as has been mentioned, I live in California but I work for the University of Minnesota. That's about a few hours away by plane. And just so you know, when I'm not at work, I might be watching Gardner's World. So when we talked about this presentation, David asked me to give a brief jog down memory lane. And so that's what we're going to do for the next couple of minutes. So briefly, what is the Open Education Network? Well, the OEN is simply a community of people working together at higher education institutions as well as at consortium systems who support open educational practices. Thus the name change. We really wanted to encompass how our support is in a variety of open educational practices and spaces. Together through community, professional development and infrastructure, we're making education more affordable and equitable for students. Our community is primarily in North America, including Canada. We also have an Australian member and now two institutions in the UK. And we were also really excited recently to welcome a consortium with international members. So we're really working together on how to support a more global network and translate some of these programs into different contexts. So let's begin our brief jog right on by the Donut Shop. The Open Textbook Library was first to launch in 2012. You can see here how we've grown since then. Many more visitors in a day, many more book records, which of course reflects all of the creation and publishing that's happening around the world for OER. And also many more faculty book reviews. And I'll talk a bit more about how we get those book reviews and how that number has grown in just a moment. Now the Open Textbook Network launched a couple years later in 2014 and I came on board a couple years after that. And at the time that I started my role, there were 31 academic libraries as well as seven library consortia. Those consortia represented multiple campuses and so all together we had around 250 campuses represented in the Open Textbook Network. Now we have more than 1600 campuses in the network. And as you can see, that's quite a bit of growth in a short amount of time. And it's been really exciting. How did this happen? You may wonder, how can we explain this growth? Well, the short answer is truly through people power. Our community who are like you, mostly librarians but also administrators, instructional designers and other roles, they've really worked together globally as well as worked hard on their campuses locally to accomplish a lot. And it's because of them that the library has grown in terms of its collection and use. And it's because of them that so many faculty are adopting and creating Open Textbooks often sometimes now including with students. Now one reason why the community was able to gain traction was because they were not starting from scratch. We shared with them basically a strategy and methodology. And we created and offered an adoption workshop that they could adapt and implement locally. So briefly, this workshop strategy involves outlining the pertinent issues in higher education which you are all too familiar with. That includes the need for greater equity and inclusion among students. We then introduce OER as a strategy for addressing some of these inequities. And then finally, at the end of the workshop there's a call to action. We invite faculty now that we've introduced OER to review a textbook that's in the Open Textbook Library. And this really gives people an opportunity to see if there's an open resource that might work for them. And it's really important to note that of those faculty who review an Open Textbook almost half of them will go on to adopt one. What sometimes comes from the workshop are questions about faculty, how faculty can create their own Open Textbook. I'm sure you can imagine people say, this is great, we love the library but there's nothing here for me. So they ask how they can create one and we have programs to support that. In the last few years they've also been asking about Open Pedagogy in their classes. And so really the Open Education Network has grown to develop strategies and programs that can support those needs as well. Now, before I talk about community and support and resources, I'll say that as probably most of you or all of you know, there's facilitating workshop and then there's facilitating a workshop. And it really takes some finesse and strategy to host a workshop that's engaging, that motivates people to take action, especially in this time when we're operating in an era of compressed time and lagging energy. And that's really where the community support and resources come in so that people don't feel like they're alone in doing this work. And on this slide, you can see a brief glimpse of what community support and resources look like. We provide a place for people to connect and ask questions which happens both in our Google group listserv and at regular events. We offer faculty development, engagement strategies, as well as a range of materials that we've developed in the community that support recommended practices and training. We also offer infrastructure. For example, we offer a data dashboard that helps people manage the workshop, things like scheduling, inviting, collecting data about what happens at the workshop. There's also of course the open textbook library and in publishing, we're exploring and informing the development of a variety of publishing platforms. So there's your glimpse at some of what the OEN provides. And now why does this matter? Well, I didn't take you on a brief jog down memory lane at this early hour to leave you feeling kind of wondering how you might be able to do something like this on your campus. I simply want to leave you with the feeling that despite the lonely joggers that I've featured as a metaphorical image in my slides, if you do decide to pursue this work, you don't have to do it alone. There's a proven methodology. There are people who want to help you. And as we've seen over the last several years, we really can accomplish a lot working together. So thank you. After all that jogging, it's time for a healthy snack. And so with that, I'm gonna hand things over to Helen Moore at the University of Sheffield. Great. Thank you very much, Karen. That's a really great introduction to the network. And so I'm Helen Moore. I'm a faculty librarian at the University of Sheffield. The University of Sheffield joined the OEN in January of this year. And for a long while before that, we benefited from the experience and expertise of its members via webinars and mailing lists. So we've been able to make good progress in several areas as a result of that. And over the next few minutes, I'm just going to describe some of the work that we've been doing. So I'm going to outline the three main areas that we've been able to make progress in. So the first is around developing supportive guidance and infrastructure, getting institutional support, not only through the approval of an institutional policy, but through the establishment of an OER working group. And then thirdly, around the creation and publication of OER, I'll wrap up with some of our current challenges. And I'm hoping that after all of the presentations, there'll be time for some discussion. So move on quite quickly. So we've spoken extensively to academic colleagues and those who support teaching across our institution, just find out what their reaction is to open educational resources. And we knew as we started talking to people that they would want some supporting information because you just know that the next question is, where can I find out more? What resources are available? So the initial steps we took were to set up an OER webpage and it was just a really simple webpage and we created an OER email address as well. And the next bit of work was quite a substantial piece of work, where we worked with our White Rose colleagues at Leeds and York on a project and that culminated in the production of an OER toolkit. And we've got them linked at the end of the presentation that you can see. And I'll also share a link in the chat to an article we published recently about our experience of working together and creating the OER toolkit. We took out a subscription to press books quite early on, and that's an authoring tool that's widely used in North America and Australia. And then we joined the Open Education Network, not only because of the benefits that it brings in terms of the expertise and the resources, but also because we wanted to demonstrate our commitment to open initiatives. So secondly, as well as talking to colleagues on the ground, simultaneously we were having discussions with senior university leadership as well. And this led to the development of an OER policy, which was approved by the University Senate in December last year. The inclusion of OER as criteria for demonstrating effective teaching in our academic career pathways. And that's been really, really valuable, just having something like that to point to when we're talking to our academic colleagues. And then thirdly, establishing the University-wide OER Working Group. So this is an academic-led working group. It's chaired by a faculty director of education, which has been really valuable. And I've just listed some of the areas that we're taking forward over this initial period of time. It's got a limited lifespan, this working group. So we envisage it will just last for two years, and then hopefully it will evolve into something else, maybe a community of practice, something like that. But in this initial two-year period, this is what we're focusing on. So there's currently an institutional survey on the awareness and use of OER, and that runs until the 24th of November. We're evaluating some of the tools and platforms available to support OER. So in addition to press books, which we've already evaluated, we're looking at things like Manifold, which the OER is also piloting, Quarto and other tools as well. And then you might have come across the, I think it's the Council of Australian University Libraries. They've developed a lib guide called the OER Publishing Workflow, which is a fantastic resource. And again, there's a link to this at the end of my slides. And we're looking at changing that so that it's suitable for a UK market. And we'll share that work when that's been done. We're also hoping to develop some case studies from examples of people across the institution who've used and created OER. And following on from what Karen said, we're developing workshops for people who've expressed an interest in exploring OER, using some of the resources offered by the OER. And then the third area that we've been able to take forward is academic colleagues wanting to share their teaching materials and publish OER. And we're maintaining a pipeline of individuals and groups. And we've currently got about five or six people at any one time at various stages of this creation process. And we support them in a number of different ways. So we have an initial discussion with people and we give them an overview of options, including open book publishing by repress like White Rose University Press and an explanation of OER, including Creative Commons licenses. We talk about time scales, student involvement, the choice of platform, the importance of accessibility, issues, export options, being able to get usage statistics, those sorts of things which might influence their choice of platform. We are also able to offer some small parts of money. So we support them in terms of helping them to draft a proposal to bid for money. And this proposal goes to the library's senior leadership team for approval. Last year we awarded two small grants and this year we anticipate we'll receive maybe three or four bids for funding. We also support them by offering press books. So we expect our authors to take responsibility for the content. We don't really get involved on the content side of things, but we take responsibility for the metadata. If anyone's in receipt of library funding, then we ask them to meet with us on a regular basis. So it's usually monthly. And that's to help them keep the project on track, discuss any issues as they crop up. So it might be around third-party copyrights. And we also offer support for those who've not yet applied for funding. The library helps them in terms of discovery and preservation issues. So we work with colleagues in the metadata team and scholarly communications team to ensure that our books are indexed in our discovery system. And we work with our digital preservation team to get advice about longer-term preservation. And then finally, we offer some support to our authors to promote books once they've published. Generally, we help them to develop some kind of promotion strategy. That sounds really grand, but it's not that grand. And we announce the book's publication on our web pages and social media channels. So what are our current channels? We have many. I think one of the things is really around increasing awareness of OER and encouraging academics to explore the wealth of OER that's already available and discoverable via the Open Textbook Library. Sheffield, our academics are currently more interested in publishing than we're using existing material. But we hope this will change over time as people become more familiar with OER. With regards to branding and sharing material, the OER Working Group has been a really useful forum for discussing topics that are relevant across the institution. But one of the areas currently under discussion is developing guidelines around how we brand Sheffield OER. And another matter that academics have raised is reaching a decision about what material can and should be shared beyond Sheffield. So these are all things that, as an institution, will address. And then we're trying to gather an institutional picture of who's using and creating the OER. We've got some data from the survey that we did with our White Rose partners, but that was almost two years ago. So we're trying to update our knowledge a little bit with the current survey. And then thinking about an institutional record in the same way that institutions keep a close eye on research outputs via Chris, like Simplectic, we're beginning to discuss how we record published teaching outputs and whether our Chris should and could undertake this role. And then finally, staffing and support, we have no dedicated OER staff. And we're trying to move towards a model where the relevant subject librarian supports individual OER projects with support from our relevant colleagues like copyright people, metadata people. And then at institutional level, we're really reliant on the OER working group to do a lot of the heavy lifting. I think in the longer term, we'd benefit from an OER administrator to manage press books and keep track of the ongoing projects, but we don't have that in place at the moment. So before I hand over to Joe and Sam, these are some of the links to the resources that I've referred to during the presentation. But at this point, I am going to hand over. Thank you. Thanks, Helen. You've actually handed over to Anne. To start with, and I'm just going to be introducing our project and how we got to the point where we are. So of the team who are involved and who you'll be hearing from today, you've already heard from David. My name is Anne Hutchinson. I'm the head of library academic services at Brunel. So I look after the academic liaison librarians and the digital skills. Sam and Joe are also involved in this project part of the the working group. And you'll be hearing from them in a moment. And one of the reasons why Sam and Joe were involved with with this project at this stage is that both of them are supporting subject areas where for various reasons that we have programs which are making extensive use of education resources, which are already available, open access. So OK, just an overview of what we're going to be doing just now. So what are our motivations for exploring OER at this at this point? I'm not going to go into the into a lot of detail about the drivers or philosophy behind why we're doing this right now. But in part, it does suffice to say that that EDI is is very high on on the agenda for why we're we're looking at this. So we're also going to be looking at the these actions that we've been taking and how we've been developing approaches to inform and engage our academic colleagues. So the initial work that we started doing some initial work on open textbooks, OER, particularly open access journal articles about five years ago. And there was lots of interest at that point from the university senior management. We talked with on paywall. We looked at other sources. The OER and itself was not on our radar at that point. And we were also finding irrespective of that that open textbook or generally ebook availability was was limited. And some of the stuff that was available wasn't suitable. OER journal articles, on the other hand, are now integrated into our reading list workflow. So we're always looking for an OER option there. In twenty twenty one, twenty two percent of total journal articles on reading lists were OER were OER, but a much higher proportion of these per high percentage were of newly added of newly added journal articles were were OER. So that for between that time and now we'd let things carry on pretty much in the same way. But with the appointment of David as university librarian in twenty twenty two with his experience with OER and open textbooks, and that's brought us again right to the top of the agenda for us. So as I said, we've formed a working party. That's myself, David, Joe and Sam, as I said, academic liaison librarians with programs within their subject areas that are already making extensive use of OER materials beyond journal articles. And also this collaboration with with colleagues at the University of Sheffield. And joining the Open Education Network. It was particularly important to us to explore what other work was going on on the open textbooks here in the UK. Nobody wants to reinvent the wheel. So although their remit is rather different, we've been talking amongst other people with ebook SOS. And we are particularly interested in the current JISC projects, open book futures. And we're going to be talking with them a little bit more extensively. We have been looking at their work as well. But we're very happy that what we're doing here is complementary to their existing projects. And we're also looking to international colleagues in the States and also in Australia, finding out what what they've been doing. And at this point now, I'm going to hand over to Joe and Sam. And for a bit more detail about how we developed our workshop. Thank you, Anne. I think I'll take it from here. So I'm Sam Piker, as one of the academic liaison librarians. And I work with a group of mainly STEM subjects, which include several TNE, transnational education programs. So when we set about developing our pilot workshop, we really used that OER toolkit. So we had a good look at the material on there and the slide deck and looked at all the different approaches that have been taken in using that. And we really looked at how we could adapt it not just to a U.K. context, but also thinking about how it fitted in with the Brunel organisational strategy that's just been developed and all the different challenges and opportunities that we're dealing with as an institution. So once we've done a lot, once we've done all that work, we put our own content together. We had a group of academics, a small group who had agreed to review the content before we went ahead and ran the workshop pilot. And they gave us some really useful feedback, just giving their thought, certain areas that could be maybe be developed or explained or expanded on further. So then we had a group of students so then we decided to work with the academic practice and development unit. So the team at Brunel that run all the different kind of CPD and teaching qualification programmes and they helped to advertise the workshop to their network and we were able to get a fairly good group of academics together. So I think I'm going to hand over to Joanne now who can talk about how all that's gone and progress so far. OK, so I guess one of the things you used to mention is just around the aims of our workshops. So one of the key aims of the workshops that we plan to introduce was raising awareness of open textbooks as an open education. So that was one of the major things that we were interested in exploring. But we also wanted to make visible the open education network and our new membership of it so that academics could be aware of the work that we are doing. As Sam was mentioning, we've tailored the workshops to the context at Brunel. So we really wanted to reflect current challenges that academics were facing but also learn more about them from the discussion within the workshops. One of our key aims is also to look at open textbook adoption as one of many approaches we at the previous work we have done on introducing open textbooks and raise a lot of concerns from academics about the availability, quality, appropriateness of open textbooks. These are some of the things we're trying to address from within the workshops but also introducing opportunities for these textbooks in terms of their practice, how they can demonstrate their engagement with EDI issues within their teaching. And also at this point, we are interested in promoting options to review, adapt and publish open textbooks. But we are just a very exploratory stage right now. So this was just to make visible those opportunities with a view for introducing them in future. So just in terms of our progress and positives in introducing open textbooks so far, we were very pleased with our initial level engagement with the pilot workshops. After only a very brief period of registration and not a lot of marketing, we had 10 attendees with almost double that number expressing interest. And attendees came from across our three colleges and were at various points in their academic careers. So we have we feel we have some good evidence that people across the university are interested in this area. Our workshop achieved its main aim of raising awareness of open textbooks. So 71 percent of participants who responded to our post workshop feedback indicated that they would consider the inclusion of open textbooks in their reading materials after attending. And I would also note that although nobody said no, they wouldn't be interested. There were just a few maybes. More than that, I think everyone in the workshops was open to and curious about open educational resources and structure and context of the workshop worked well, although we have some ideas about additional activities. We can potentially introduce to help us make the narrative more about the local challenges and issues, as well as some suggestions for future workshops I'll discuss in the next slide. I do want to really highlight that one of the biggest impacts of the workshop was not in the day itself, but in the stakeholder conversations, the planning of the workshops generated. As we discussed our plans with friendly academics to agree to be consulted, that sparked additional discussions about opportunities that open education resources might bring in areas like equality, diversity and inclusion, work and teaching. And those conversations brought up different avenues for us to explore. And it felt positive and exciting to be leading the discussion in those areas. I was really energized to hear that our work was being met with an encouraging response. The conversations have also meant that we are being involved in the wider discussion of larger university projects and policy where OER might have an important role to play. I also want to highlight that we have really benefited from the resources and support from the Open Education Network, so including from our Yuki colleagues at the University of Sheffield. It has been very helpful to be able to access the extensive resources such as the adoption workshop slide decks, but also the various recordings and links available via the OEM platform. And this has contributed to us being able to develop knowledge and our teaching in this area in a much more agile way as we're basing our work on a lot of great experience and existing practice. Similarly, when tailoring it to the UK market, we have benefited from the pioneering work of the University of Sheffield and their generous sharing of their insights and approaches. Just move that along. So following our review of the workshops we're planning to make some small modifications to the workshop approach with the potential to include an early activity to gauge real academic knowledge and experience of OER. We're also looking to run the workshops through other education hubs and channels. We have identified some additional workshops we can offer that are aimed at people at different levels of experience of OER. And so for more experienced academics who want to offer workshops about curating and publishing open textbooks, but we're also considering sessions for early career academics outlining their options when it comes to reading less textbook choice. We've been inspired by colleagues at Sheffield, so we have employed a student intern who will be undertaking a project mapping possible areas in the reading less where open textbooks might be offered so we can have a more research informed discussion with academics. Other next steps to help us with enabling academics to engage with opportunities to modify and adapt open textbooks as well as publish. We are progressing with a subscription to the publishing platform Pressbooks. And once we have that in place and we learn to use it ourselves, we are very excited about the possibilities for curating open textbook textbooks to meet the need of our student populations. Finally, David in particular is using this early work to initiate discussions about OER at a wider universal level. So I'm going to hand over to him to discuss this in more depth. OK, thanks, Joe. I am aware we've got ten minutes left, so I will be really brief on this just to say that as Joe was describing her experience with senior lecturers, they were planning the workshops and it was really positive. So our Associate Pro Vice Chancellor for Quality Assurance, she's leading one of the strategic strands around access and participation. And she was basically she really wanted to be involved in any of the conversations that we were having on campus because she really wants to include this work in her strategic planning. When I was talking to our Pro Vice Chancellor for Education, again, you can often tell when you're having conversations with senior leaders, the parts that they're really excited about and the parts where they're thinking, I can't spare the time for this. For this, she was really open about what can she do to help us to communicate this more widely on campus. So we've agreed in January she's going to really support us in a wider communication roll out and how we can get engagement across the whole campus and include that in her teaching excellence and strategic strand as well. Joe and Sam, they've both mentioned sustainability, equity, diversity and inclusion, all of these things, they're so self-evident in the material that the Open Education Network is providing. I would just encourage everybody to have a look at the material that's available. But one thing I would also say that you would have heard from Helen and you would have heard from Joe and Sam, the support we've had for the Open Education Network, there are real benefits to being members. And one of them, I think, is that we're part of that community. So we get to talk to peers in a completely different educational context in the US and Adrian Stagg, particularly in Australia, has been really helpful. And we have been able to develop our program really quickly. And so feel really confident about what it is that we're doing rather than starting from scratch. So that's been really helpful. And one last thing I would say as well, just when it comes to one of the barriers that we have is that when you look at the Open Textbook Library, obviously it's very US focused. So we are expecting that a lot of academics, we think, OK, we are interested, but we need to grow those UK specific resources. And I've been having some really good conversations with Karen and with Dave Ernst, who's the executive director of the Open Education Network. And they're really interested in how we can develop that local infrastructure so we can build up the number of local textbooks in the Open Textbook Library. And I'd encourage people to have a look at that as well, because what is really good about the Open Textbook Library is that it is peer-refuge by academics. So academics are looking at that. They can see that other academic colleagues can tell you the strengths and weaknesses of the material in that Open Textbook Library. So I'm in conversations with Dave Ernst and with Karen about what we can do to build up the UK network. And I'm also, I think, in December, we're talking at the Scornwall Content Strategy Group about what we would need in the UK to kind of build up the network as well. So over the next, let's say, three months, we're going to be really thinking about what we can do to build up the network and build up the infrastructure in the UK. So I realize we have, with our enthusiasm, we have talked up until five to 12, so I'll hand back to Jane and Chris. Thank you so much, David. Hopefully you can you can hear us. That was excellent presentation. I see that you do have your contact details here and I'm just shoving those in the chat. Can I ask a question? Are you specifically recruiting, effectively, for people to join up to this network? I assume that that is the case, more of the merrier? I would say absolutely yes. I mean, Aaron can maybe talk a little bit more about that. But what I would say is that even the fact that there's only two of us right now, we have really benefited in the UK just from being part of the network. And I remember when all those years ago, and Karen and I were working together at California Polytechnic State University, when Cal Poly joined, there were only five universities in the network. That was before Karen joined the OEN. So one thing I'd encourage people to think about is it sounds really small right now, but in the last 10 years, it's grown from those five universities to now that's 1700 campuses. And I would really encourage people to think about what we can do in the UK to replicate that. Yeah, it's been very slow, haven't we, I think, to a door... We have been. ...to take books, yeah. I wonder if we can do a straw poll. Can those who are on the session say, if they are interested in joining the OEN, it'll be good to see how many people have heard what you've had to say. I can put a poll up if you want, Bruce. Oh, you can put a poll up? Yeah, OK, well, if you put a poll up... Yeah, yeah. So yeah, perhaps you can talk... I mean, what's the process of becoming a member, expressing an interest? How does that work? Sure. Well, you can email me and I'd be happy to connect you to Barb Thies, who is our director of community engagement and can talk with you about the details of what's involved in joining the OEN. You can also go through our website and drop us a note that way. There are community fees so that you contribute to the health and sustainability of the community. And when you join, Barb will take you through an orientation, introduce you to all of the resources, introduce you to the Google group, and then annually we have a get-together where you can network and learn from other people in the OEN about what they're doing. Great. The thing that's been on my mind hearing what you're saying is really impressive to see what Sheffield and Brunel have done. I guess for those of us who are in a situation where we're interested in open education, but it's not our job, we don't have that specific role. And what are the prerequisites for really actually being able to give the time and attention to this? Clearly in Brunel's case, David, if you're heading the library and it's your, you know, an interest of yours, having someone in the leadership position who really is behind it is an important one. But are there any tips you can give us for those who want to explore it but aren't sure how much bandwidth they have or how much appetite there is in their institution? Yeah, Chris, you've really landed on a key question that many people ask themselves across the network is how do I find more time and energy to do these things, even though I want to do them, I might be really stretched then. So I think that's one of the really valuable ways that our community can support one another. There are a lot of community-created resources out there where you can sort of orient yourself to OER, some of the common challenges that you heard from Helen and Joe in terms of questions about, you know, are these resources right for me? How do I develop a publishing program? Do I want to develop a publishing program? Those things kind of take time to uncover and it can be much more challenging, obviously, if you don't have support from leadership. And so we help people define the programs that work for their capabilities so that they're not trying to emulate programs in a context that maybe is very much unlike where they are. All right, I'll just say that. Thank you, I'll say that. Yeah, Helen. I just wanted to add to that and say, don't wait until you get buy-in from senior leadership or from the university more widely because you could be waiting for a long time. And just start, whatever role you're in, if you've got an interest in OER, start talking to people, make those connections across the university and you will generate some interest, but don't wait until you've got an OER policy or strategic buy-in because you could be waiting a long time. Whoever's interested. I think that's really good advice, Helen, actually. Yeah. And it's relevant to Paola's question. Can individuals sign up even if their institution hasn't formally given it backing? Membership is for institutions. So individual people can't join the OER, but there are other lift serves and communities that I can drop in the chat. Okay, great, thank you. Thank you. Also, can I just add one other point to that, which is that I don't think the seniority is that important because what we have been offering, so when Joe and Sam were talking to lecturers, they could see the opportunity immediately. And it wasn't about seniority, it's that the open education resources work that we're doing kind of provide solutions to things they're thinking about. So I'll know that Sheffield, when it comes to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, that their conversations feed straight into that and they do win our strategic planning as well at Brunel, so when people are looking, how can we, we have UN Sustainable Development Goals as part of our strategic plan? How can we improve our impact there? Then this is a solution and people are interested in it and they actually want to talk to us. It's not as if we're having to push this on people. They hear about it and they're interested to hear more. So it's not about seniority at all, I don't think. Okay, thank you so much. We are now at time. Thank you so much for your coming along. So we've got the polls. We have seven people that are interested. They said they are 14, who said they're not sure yet, but I think that you've gone a long way to helping us understand what the network can do. I'm certainly very interested in this. So yeah, thanks again for taking the time to come and talk to us. Yeah, absolutely. It's been a really great presentation. Yeah, this is really interesting and I think it's a really good point as well that waiting for policies is never a good idea. And we all know policies take forever to update. So yeah, yeah, link the way with practice and talking to people. So we've just got a couple of quick things to run through before we leave you as it is now midday. So our next webinar will be the 8th of December, where we're running what we're calling the Big Fat Copyright Quiz of the Year with Matt Hoyts who's joining us. He's the IFLA Copyright News person, but we've got a couple of topics that we're hoping to talk about in the new year and we'll add to that as well. Hopefully we'll see if we can twist Tim's arm to come and talk to us about copyright height as well and how we can put that together. We just have one last thing, I think, to leave you with. Yeah, we do. Chris, you can tell us. Yeah, so this is a podcast that we were made aware of through Maria who is a regular at the webinars whose husband is a best-selling author of historical fiction and along with his pal Steven McRae, they run this podcast. So this is a great podcast if you're into historical fiction and writing. And if you tune in, there will be a future episode featuring a couple of copyright self-confessed copyright geeks. Who might that be? Talking about copyrights and AI, so we just thought we'd let you know. And lots of other things. That was in the pipeline, but also if you're interested in a great podcast about historical fiction, that's one to check out. So thank you again, everyone, for your time and we will see you on the 8th of December. Yeah, have a good weekend, everyone.