 Okay, thanks for the introduction. So my name is Winnie, I'm an open education ambassador at Spark and prior to this, I worked in an education nonprofit that served underserved students and connected them with post secondary opportunities. And before that I was the student body president at the University of Houston. Hi everyone, my name is Haley Bob. I also work at Spark's open education team as an open education coordinator. I'm based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and I'm a former student union president at my university, the university blood bridge where I studied psychology. So we wanted to share a few facts before we jumped right into our presentation. The first is that the average cost of college has risen four times faster than the rate of inflation over the past 10 years. Another fact, 63% of students have actually skipped buying or renting a textbook yet 90% of students have worried that foregoing these materials would negatively impact their grade. Yeah, so I was the student body president at the University of Houston, as well as the director of the Texas Student Government Coalition, which spanned across 26 student governments in Texas. And one of the priorities for my administration was absolutely focused on textbook affordability. And with that came the interest in open education and establishing an open pilot program here at the university. So the very first thing that I did when I got into office was send out a survey that would help us understand what the student body costs of textbooks are on our specific campus. I noticed that sometimes, you know, when you go to administrators with national statistics, there is a moment where administrators can be like, well, this is happening nationally, but we don't know if it's happening on our campus. So there's kind of a gray area to deny that potentially this is happening. And it's also good for you to know as the person who's going to be, you know, pushing for this for textbook affordability from a student perspective where students are at. So I sent out a survey to the student body and what we found were some really interesting statistics that I'll share in a minute. The second thing is we went to the provost with those statistics and we discussed, you know, look, we think that we need to bring an open pilot program get faculty interested. Start start a committee. What can we do to get open education on our campus and our provost was amazing and reached out to the dean of libraries to start a pilot program that was funded for $20,000 to 20 professors to try in the fall semester, a year later. So in that year, we actually spent a lot of time, you know, bringing faculty to the table and asking questions, you know, this kind of common questions around open ed and why faculty with the common questions that faculty have. And then also I was able to be a part of all of those meetings. So I was able to provide a student perspective as to why things were necessary. And then understanding and navigating the faculty concerns and issues came throughout the year. The first thing is that student voice has leverage and power. So many times faculty and admin are restricted and what they can say, and what they can do about initiatives they're very passionate about but students are the end consumer of any textbook affordability initiative or any affordability initiative in general, and students have a lot more leverage and power and are not really controlled by the administration. At all at the institution to say what they want to say and to implement what they want to see happen right to correct wrongs on campuses. So student voice has a lot of leverage and power on the campus. The second is that it's critical for faculty to hear from students and to be proactive about textbook affordability. So in that survey I mentioned earlier, 60% of the students said that their most expensive book was above $200 40% of students actually responded that the textbook alone has caused them to take fewer courses, not register for class they wanted to take and or earn a poor grade. And the biggest stat to come out of it that shocked me was that, despite all of these concerns, 78% of students responded that they had never had a conversation with their faculty member about textbook affordability. So there's this gap between okay there's an issue, and then potentially a feeling of student powerlessness like oh this textbook is decided before I enroll in the class there's no way I can do anything there's nothing I can say or. I'll just have to, you know, change courses or whatever it may be, or bite the bullet so it's critical for faculty students to hear from students, a faculty to hear from students and also be proactive. And then knowing your audience is key figuring out what open means for them. So if you're a student advocate on your campus and you go to faculty member and say, just say hammer in that textbook affordability point. A faculty member is going to still have a lot of questions right so you need to know when you go to faculty member what it is that's important to a faculty member and changing their text or introducing open to their classroom and then what's important in an administrator. What did they want to know that's important for them right. Fourth is that data is important when speaking to administrators, you need specific data that other specific data of your campus and data of what other institutions have done to transition to whatever program you're trying to bring to the campus. In this case, open. So not only do you need that national piece or similar institution piece so like if you're a big university finding finding a big university that is able to match this this date the data or match your campus statistics so that they can see okay this is another institution that's similar that's done it, but you also need campus specific data that works so hard because they're not able to really contest your campus statistics right if you survey the students, this is a problem, there's no way to deny campus. And then last is change happens fast and the right pressure is applied so this is more of a motivating statement for students. There is always a way to get to the table with an administrator or faculty member always. And if you find yourself oftentimes ignored, or felt like you're just not heard or you can't find the community that wants to start open. You have options other than just constantly sending emails or trying to get a meeting. Go to your school newspaper and say I want to do an opinion piece on open education. And that that is very, very quickly you'll see change right away if that if that happens. Okay, on daily. So I'm going to go next and just sort of talk a little bit about my experience. The reason we wanted to structure the presentation like this is kind of just to highlight that there is no one student story there's no one student advocate story. And there's no one way to mobilize students on your campus. So in our context, from institution to institution and between when he and I even country to country when he being American and me being Canadian we both had very, very different experience in our roles as advocates. But we've come out with a lot of very similar, I guess sort of lessons learned or strategies to engage others in this work. So hopefully, you know now that we are sort of both of us straddling a little bit the both the student world and now being in the professional world in the first few years. Hopefully we can share some of those lessons learned with you. But before I get into that I just wanted to sort of give a little bit of background about, you know, myself and then why I feel like I should speak about this. When I ran for student government I was first elected in Canada in 2016 as vice president academic and my students union and in Canada those roles are structured as a full time job. So we have an office and we work 40 hours a week which is you know usually a bit more than that. But it's a full time job in which, you know, especially for my role the VP academic is very internal focused and for a student coming in. So not only are you trying to learn the ropes of your job, but it's very challenging to learn, you know, the bureaucratic systems that govern your university, but also sort of the cultural nuances that go on around that. And particularly for, you know, myself, being an undergraduate student at the time and as well I was the first person in my family to go to university. These were some really big challenges that I sort of needed to navigate right away and one year was barely enough time to do that. So I didn't go into my role knowing about OER. It was actually other student government leaders, notably from from BC, who, you know, introduced me to this idea at a conference. And it really grew on me and it became something that I wanted to incorporate into my platform. So alongside some other student government leaders in Alberta. We ran a provincial campaign called textbook broke Alberta, you know, based on what we knew at the time the textbook broke BC campaigns but which also originated out of US Perg. And it was had a huge impact on my campus. We were a campus that, you know, had a few advocates sort of sprinkled around, but really didn't have a dedicated channel for making this work happen. And that was something really big for us to kind of, you know, I actually was approached by, you know, staff in our university teaching and learning center. There was a faculty member who reached out to me, and then as well and I know that this doesn't happen to everybody but I actually had a representative from our bookstore reach out and say, you know, we know that we are is something that's gaining in popularity and we can work, you know, with you to make sure that this is something that you know we can be on top of but also be supportive of students and in Canada our bookstores are part of an ancillary service so it's not a private entity so I know that that makes the dynamic a little bit different. But it was that student that campaign that really sort of brought all these like unlikely allies together and got everyone in the room for the first time to chat about this work and and what we could do. So through there we were able to do a lot of lobbying institutionally we were actually successful in implementing a grant fund for faculty to start adopting these materials. And then through some of the organized student networks in Canada both at a provincial level and at a federal level we were able to lobby this issue to both provincial and federal policymakers so that was very very exciting to be part of. And then after that, you know, it just became very important to me that I felt like there were already some very established people who are doing this work and I thought that was fantastic and I so admired them but in my mind I was like you know if we really want to spread this further and make a change then we need other students to be on the board, and we need students to realize the power that they have to do this work. So I, you know, kind of took it upon myself to, you know, speak at a couple conferences and try to, you know, motivate not only students to advocate for this work but to try and help faculty librarians other institutional allies to help students to do this work. So on the next slide. These are just sort of some of the strategies that I've learned in my time specifically targeted at institutional allies who want to mobilize their students. I know especially this year. It's been an incredibly challenging year all the students that I've talked to. It's very different to feel, or very hard for them to sort of feel ownership over their role or to feel like they can do everything that they set out to do under such strange circumstances. So hopefully some of these, you know, will will help you to be able to work with your student government. So I'll just run through them really quickly. The first is establishing strong relationships with them. And just because you know students aren't lobbying for this already doesn't mean that they don't care about this issue. Absolutely. So something that you can do is identify, you know, are there students who are already advocating for open education at my institution. So what is your student government. Are there, you know, clubs organized around this. Are there specific students who have brought this up to their instructors or or to the library that you know of that you can pull in, sort of identifying what students are, you know tapped into this already. And what others are in a good position to do so and how can I connect with them meaningfully so one thing that I sort of like to recommend to people as to how the government isn't able to run like a full blown textbooks campaign, encourage them to communicate to students to talk about course material affordability in their course reviews. This may not specifically connect to we are. But it's a way to sort of, you know, shift something in students minds that say, you know, these books are expensive, but they don't have to be this way. I know we only have a few minutes left so I'm going to just speed through the next two maintaining momentum throughout turnover one of the biggest challenges of student government is, you know, sort of maintaining connections with them once their years over. So identifying what or who represents institutional memory for the student movement on your campus here in Canada are student unions have the majority of them have full time paid staff. And Canada is usually a great avenue for you to go to sort of, you know, maintain longevity through turnover year after year. And also thinking about how we can solidify goals through policy so whether it's a resolution, whether it's you know just a policy statement saying this is something that we support and something that we want to continue working on into the future. So even if the council that comes after you, it's not one of their top priorities it's still solidified and you're in your governing documents and it's something that you can come back to year after year. And then amplifying impact thinking about how you as somebody who has a better understanding of the campus community, how can you bring students to the decision making tables. You know, pull up a chair beside you at the meetings where you're trying to advocate for this and bring a different perspective, and somebody who you know as when he mentioned may be able to say things a little bit more frankly than you are. So what's all about helping students realize their power and opening doors for them. So, again, how can I help student leaders especially undergraduates navigate the bureaucracy, what do they need to know who do they need to talk to who's in a good position to receive this information. And then lastly how can we publicly celebrate champions of open education. You know the way that it worked out for me when I ran that campaign and sort of you know being the person to stand there and and hold up the flashing light and say you know this is an issue I care about that helped attract other people to me and it brought more people onto my team to be able to do that work. So how else can we be sort of like waving that we are flag and attracting our people on campus and maintaining a sense of community who can be working on this issue together. Yeah, so. That was awesome. So we have some common questions which I think you know we've had some questions in the chat already so you know we can kind of start answering this question from James. How can faculty admin encourage student governments to take up or when there are many other issues competing for their attention. So, Haley and I get this question a lot after any sessions, the sessions. So the number one thing is that student governments often there may be a more pressing issue on your campus every campus is so different and every, you know, every campus has their own different struggles so even though your student government is not working on it I promise you there are a million and one other students that are interested about textbook affordability or want to be put on a committee or want to be in the room when these conversations are being had so if you are reaching out to the student body you just can't seem to get to them, try the senators as well or other, however their structure, each of them may be different sometimes their senators or executive cabinet members whatever it may be. You can try some of them as well, you can try reaching out to the administrator that usually oversees the student government or is their admin person. If that doesn't work, you can find other students on the campus so it doesn't have to be someone from student government, as long as there is always a room for a student. Next to you, then there should be a student next to you is kind of the idea. Okay. So any other questions. I feel like we can talk about this forever. 20 minutes is such a good time to try and get this to and it's something that, you know, I and I know when he feels so passionate about so happy to take, you know, follow up questions through only global connect. So we've got two minutes I'll try to answer one question there's what are the other reasons and affordability that students have to engage in we are plenty. I'll try to give my one minute elevator pitch but there's tons of research I know I know many of you as advocates, you know, are aware of most of this already but tons of research that says that, you know, by by adopting these resources students feel more compelled to. I don't really know how to put this. I guess research aside anecdotally like when I'm a student in a classroom and I see that a professor has taken the time, you know, to acknowledge my situation as a student and say you know here's something that I want to do to ease the burden on you. I'm way more likely to really appreciate that prof I'm way more likely to want to show up at their class every day. I'm way more likely to want to put in the extra effort for them if they're going the extra mile for me. And also the diversity perspective, where, you know, open books are more likely to reflect and be diverse and how they're written or change to be that way, whereas we've seen examples of Pearson and sing a text that are, you know, wildly either accurate, you know, there've been quite a few scandals per se about that so open texts reflect diverse populations more and overall is more equitable tool for students as well.