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Syndicated, Virginia Group

Musings on Chp. 1

In Chapter 1 of Open & Integrative, Bass and Eynon note that many students are entering higher education with “uneven academic preparation,” with some of the students coming from “dysfunctional school systems” or other challenging circumstances. They go on to discuss the boon liberal education would be to those students with its emphasis on “critical thinking, problem solving, historical perspective, integrative learning.” As I reflected on passages from Chapter 1, I wondered–are higher education institutions really prepared to do this work?

So often, students from the backgrounds that Bass and Eynon describe are left to feel rudderless in a swiftly moving academic stream–and reminded over and over how their backgrounds or life challenges will make things more difficult for them or haven’t prepared them in any way. However, many of these students have already used critical thinking, problem solving, and the like before entering higher education institutions (sometimes before entering secondary institutions). Where are the spaces that help these students understand that they already possess some of the very skills that help people to be successful not only in college, but in life? Where are the appreciative approaches to educating students? Are the integrative approaches institutions use integrative across the experiences they will have (are having) in college, or do they also include integrating some of the very useful skills these students developed prior to attending the higher education institution? With technology, for example, were these students already using technology in integrative, open ways prior to their higher education experience? If so, how will institutions gather this information?

Open Participants, Syndicated

well lit rabbit holes

Noon I ducked down to our local “Maker Space,” which has open hours ’til 1:00.   I’ve been going there for years whenever something’s weird with whatever version of my dynamo hub light I’m trying to get rolling.

Long story short:   the person who knows how to take gadgets apart & put ’em together was coming for the 1:00 thing, which seems to be an open Python and things like that session.   Facilitator is a person who teaches Python to people in Information Science grad students who are “non-STEM,” and, she says, often phobic about math as soon as it turns into “x=” something so she has found other ways.   It was interesting to hear conversations among people in the University community.

It also took ’til 4:00 to figure it all out and get it back together and get it charged and… now I have to find the right thingy to put it on the bike, and no I didn’t so much as *touch* the tech project.

This a.m. I discover a tweet talking about David Wiley of Lumen Learning’s latest blog which talks about people using “open” in ways that aren’t open enough…we need those 5Rs…  oh, and the comments are closed. Nothing ironic there, is there?  The comments and tweets on blogs about that blog make me realize again what a tight-knit group these guys are (lots of insider references).  (My opinion:  if you’re going to want a certain definition for a term, then don’t give the term a name like “open.”   Hello?   It already has a ton of meanings and interpretations. Name it after somebody, maybe… )

It’s time to do some courage-seeking …

 

 

Syndicated, Virginia Group

End of another era

Approximately seven years ago, I left a rapidly growing medical practice for an uncertain future. I didn’t have a plan.  Come to find out, I didn’t have much of an idea about my core identity either, because what I had was so integrated with my profession. The year(s) after I left medicine was (were) very dark, but they provided me with all the opportunities to hit rock bottom, to make mistakes, to ask for help, and to be brave in a Paul Simon, Cool, Cool River  kind of way.

How many times have I blogged about how difficult it is when someone asks me about leaving medicine?  I can think of three separate post and a handful of tweets, but there have probably been more. I haven’t liked it very much. The comments about my questionable work ethic,  my presumed student debt and the disappointment to my family, the rumors that I must be addicted to drugs or alcohol or guilty of extreme malpractice — I’ve heard them all.  All of those things would flash through my head – along with a healthy dose of self-hatred (for not being able to stick with it, to prevent burnout, to advocate for myself better) – every time some stranger would casually ask me why I left medicine…and then walk away after a minute or two leaving me to re-play my answer in my head over and over and over again.  I never answered well.

Things changed last week during my MBTI certification.  In one day five different clusters of people walked up to me and asked me why I had left medicine (it’s a long story on why they knew I was a physician in the first place – even when I don’t include it in my intro, it invariably comes up. It’s such a large part of my perspective on life that it always does).  I have no idea what made this day different. Maybe it was the intensity of the experience, the fact that they were all genuinely curious. Maybe I truly am done with feeling victimized by others’ assumptions.  I don’t know.  But I finally got my answer in place in a way that doesn’t leave me torn up after I’m done giving it.

Today hasn’t been the greatest day.  It wasn’t the worst, but I’ve moved on to my next hangup, -the next professional hurdle I need to move past.  I’ll save that for another day, but I want to take a moment to celebrate this victory for what it is. I deserve this.

So.  My two minutes on why I am no longer a physician.

Why I Am No Longer A Physician

By Laura Gogia

Three reasons.

  1.  A lack of resources.  I went to work in an underserved, isolated region straight out of residency training. I was the only gynecologist, the only female surgeon, the only surgeon who was also the mother of tiny babies.  I worked in a hospital culture rife with sexism, sexual harassment, bullies, mediocrity, and general dysfunction.  I had no mentors, no peers, no backup, no help, no call coverage, no vacations, no strategies for dealing with desperately poor, uneducated, holistically unhealthy populations. I was all in, but I was unprepared.
  2. A lack of opportunity. A lack of peers means a lack of professional development. Medicine is easy enough to keep up on via conferences and reading; surgical skills require practice and interdisciplinary training.  I refused to place my patients at risk for the sake of my learning curve.  My surgical skills were out of date in three years and that was unacceptable to me.
  3. I wanted something different.  I love people and their stories but I am not built to engage with so many people in intensely important (sacred, even) one-on-one scenarios everyday, nor am I built to work the same, limited number of diagnostic algorithms day in and day out. To be happy, I need more freedom, more quiet time, and more creativity than the proper practice of medicine allows.

There.  That’s the whole story.  It’s actually quite simple and logical. It’s also entirely forgivable…maybe even brave and very smart.  And I can say it without wanting to cry or throw up after I’m done.

On to the next challenge.

Featured Image by Chad Madden, http://www.unsplash.com

Syndicated, Virginia Group

A New Model for OER: Anthologies Instead of Textbooks?

I have heard that sometimes adjunct faculty are assigned to teach a class at the last minute, often with the textbook already chosen and sometimes with a syllabus to follow. No one should argue that this is an ideal situation. But I also wonder how often instructors teach their courses to meet the align with the textbook they are using, rather than teaching the way that works best according to their context (e.g. students and their understanding of the subject)? I know I did it this way when I was a new faculty member. One of the claims regarding open source textbooks is that they lead faculty to think more deeply about their pedagogy and their contexts. This is what popped into my head when I read Cathy Saunder’s wonderful thought-provoking post: “How Good Can a Course that Follows a Standard Textbook Be?”

For some years, I’ve wondered why there tend not to be open textbooks in English Literature or Composition. OER publishers have told me that they prefer to publish open textbooks that have a large market. English faculty have told me they don’t typically use textbooks, but rather anthologies with commentary. Cathy made two points in her post that caught my interest:

“The class is, however, a huge one, with over 100 22-student sections taught each semester, and the instructor community is correspondingly large (even with many of us teaching 3 or 4 sections a semester).”

“Because 300-level composition courses with similar learning goals are rare, we don’t really fit into an existing market (though this doesn’t, of course, keep textbook reps from trying to convince us that they’ve got the perfect book for our class).”

These points made me think that there is indeed a large market for suitable English OER, and that we might be able to expand Cathy’s model of creating and sharing resources as follows. An OER publisher connects a group of interested instructors, who work together to develop not a textbook, nor an anthology, but a collection of readings, annotations, commentaries, and other resources. The OER publisher creates a platform that would allow instructors to easily create their own anthology, by picking and choosing from the collection of resources, which the platform would then turn into a finished book.  The book could be made available in a variety of digital or print formats for free or modest prices. One could imagine asking students to contribute to the collection as well in the form of renewable assignments that David Wiley has discussed and Robin DeRosa has experimented with. The platform would also keep the master copy of all finished books created, for use by those adjuncts who are hired at the last minute or anyone else who didn’t wish to create their own customized anthology.  What say you @OpenStax & @LumenLearning?

Syndicated, Virginia Group

Welcome to OER Week of OpenLearning’17

Open Educational Resources metaphorOER, which is an acronym for Open Educational Resources, seems like a no-brainer to me. In my 30+ year career teaching Principles of Economics, I have used a variety of books, including traditional commercial textbooks, books written on economic subjects for lay audiences (in lieu of a standard textbook), and no text book at all. I’ve concluded that most intro books are pretty much the same, and that any experienced instructor can teach effectively using pretty much any intro text. Why then should we ask our students to use commercial textbooks that cost $75, $175 or $375, when there are free or very inexpensive alternatives available? Yes it takes some time and effort to adopt and transition to using a new text. I don’t discount this, but as professionals don’t we have an obligation to do that if we think it would be better for our students?

Over the last few years, I’ve adopted OER for my intro courses. Before we go further, let’s get a few myths out of the way. When I talk about OER this week, I’m not referring to class materials, bits of content, what used to be called learning objects. I mean open source, complete printed or digital texts edited and published by organizations with solid reputations. These are not self-published books.

For faculty who don’t have experience with OER, there are five key questions we will explore this week:

1. What is OER?
2. How good are open source textbooks?
3. What do instructors and students who use OER think of them?
4. How do we find OER in our discipline?
5. What comes after adoption of OER?

Monday: What is OER?

Open educational resources are much more than simply free resources. In addition, OER give students and teachers the following five rights:

  1. Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
  2. Reuse – the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
  3. Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
  4. Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)

While you may not yet fully understand the “5 Rs,” as David Wiley calls them, but understand this: they dramatical change the role of a textbook in a course (or at least they offer the potential for that).

And/or

And

 

  • Join in – Open Dialog Session: The Open Textbook Library
    Are you concerned about higher education access and affordability? Open textbooks can help ease the burden of textbook costs for students and provide faculty with high quality, customizable course content. Join us for a discussion of textbook costs and student success.

4pm EDT; Tune in via Zoom & submit questions via Twitter.

Tuesday: How good are open source textbooks?

How can we be sure that the quality is equal to that of traditional commercial textbooks? Are open source textbooks peer reviewed? Do they go through a comparable quality control process?

And

 

  • Join in – Conversation with John Hilton III about the research on OER efficacy. http://OpenEdGroup.org
    12 noon via Zoom conference

Wednesday: What do instructors and students who use OER think of them?

  • Faculty panel on OER usage (recorded video)
  • Student panel on OER usage (recorded video)

 

  • Join in – Twitter chat 2:00-3:00 pm

Thursday: How do we find OER in our discipline?

  • Interview with Open Textbook author, Caitie Findleyson (recorded video) Twitter

 

  • Join in: Q & A with Caitie Findleyson, TIME: tbd

Friday: What comes after adoption of OER?

Some have called open source textbooks the gateway drug to something more bigger. As the week comes to an end, we can pursue two possible threads

1. Perhaps the best attribute of OER is not that it’s free, but that it makes instructors think profoundly about how they teach the course.

2. Digital Courseware as a textbook alternative

And/or

And/or

Join in – Twitter conversation 2pm – 3pm

Syndicated, Virginia Group

Open Pedagogy Praxis

This week’s focus for OpenLearning17 has been Open Pedagogy. Co-directors Amy Nelson and Shelli Fowler have provided an engaging array of readings and activities that have inspired some great dialogue (don’t miss today’s Twitter chat at #OpenLearning17). Inspired by all that I’ve been reading this week, I talked with a colleague here in my library about our “Roadmap to Research” course (a face-to-face, 2-credit class) and how we might be able to fold in some open pedagogy praxis. We also need to be thinking about how to move this course into an online environment and the whole OpenLearning17 cMOOC experience is helping me think about what that could look like.

I have been especially inspired by Robin DeRosa’s Extreme Makeover: Pedagogy Edition and am thinking about how we might have students collaboratively create the learning outcomes for the course. I am excited about the possibilities and wish that I were the one teaching it next, but perhaps I can focus on what the course could look like in an online environment while others are teaching the F2F class.

As I said in Wednesday’s Twitter chat, I was never trained to teach (many MLIS programs have “user education” courses, but those are often not required), so I am a clean slate, with no formal training to undo. This lack of training has always seemed a hindrance to me, but after reading Amy’s interview with Shelli about Contemporary Pedagogy at Virginia Tech, I now realize that it might be a gift. I have only habits to break (that’s easy right?).

So Amy and Shelli, thank you for an inspiring week! See you in the Twitter chat.

 

Syndicated, Virginia Group

Open Pedagogy Praxis

This week’s focus for OpenLearning17 has been Open Pedagogy. Co-directors Amy Nelson and Shelli Fowler have provided an engaging array of readings and activities that have inspired some great dialogue (don’t miss today’s Twitter chat at #OpenLearning17). Inspired by all that I’ve been reading this week, I talked with a colleague here in my library about our “Roadmap to Research” course (a face-to-face, 2-credit class) and how we might be able to fold in some open pedagogy praxis. We also need to be thinking about how to move this course into an online environment and the whole OpenLearning17 cMOOC experience is helping me think about what that could look like.

I have been especially inspired by Robin DeRosa’s Extreme Makeover: Pedagogy Edition and am thinking about how we might have students collaboratively create the learning outcomes for the course. I am excited about the possibilities and wish that I were the one teaching it next, but perhaps I can focus on what the course could look like in an online environment while others are teaching the F2F class.

As I said in Wednesday’s Twitter chat, I was never trained to teach (many MLIS programs have “user education” courses, but those are often not required), so I am a clean slate, with no formal training to undo. This lack of training has always seemed a hindrance to me, but after reading Amy’s interview with Shelli about Contemporary Pedagogy at Virginia Tech, I now realize that it might be a gift. I have only habits to break (that’s easy right?).

So Amy and Shelli, thank you for an inspiring week! See you in the Twitter chat.

 

Open Participants, Syndicated

Customized, Personalized, Individualized, Competency Based, Project Based, etc.

SABIER, The Stone Arch Bridge Initiative for Education Resources, welcomes the Feb. 22nd announcement by the Bush Foundation that it will devote most of the $7 million-plus it spends annually on education to the “School Design for Individualized Learning” initiative. The Bush Foundation awarded the MPCC, The Minnesota Partnership for Collaborative Curriculum, the Local Government Innovation School Category, Overall Winner in  2015.  SABIER, is taking the work of the MPCC to the next level by ensuring that teachers have the necessary support to engage in large scale customized learning

The Minnesota teachers of the MPCC are well on the their way to innovating a shift where students’ learning styles, cultural backgrounds and career aspirations are all taken into account.  Encouraging teachers to use the openly licensed and Minnesota standards aligned curriculum that has already been created and paid for by 206 Minnesota school districts allows them to make the crucial classroom and student level decisions about curriculum that are necessary. Teachers can revise and tweak the content for their students using their direct knowledge of the students’ learning styles, cultural backgrounds and career aspirations.

By incorporating well-designed Open Education Resources, OER, curriculum in a learning management system and adding teacher experience along with the professional development and training for this type of learning, students no longer need to be physically present in a classroom to gain the learning experience necessary to apply real-life skills. Also, approaches like Project-based learning allow students to not only learn new facts, but to apply them as they will someday be required to do in their careers. In addition to gaining social learning experiences with their classmates, the digital learning experience opens the world to the student, allowing them to converse and learn from people around the world. Imagine, in the middle of a cold winter in Minnesota a snow-day is turned into learning journey to another part of the world from the comfort and safety of their home.

All current generation Learning Management Systems allow districts to report the results on any kind of assessment as frequently as they want. More importantly, students can be  given immediate and specific feedback about their responses by their teachers. Teachers can use this type of tool combined with their experience to quickly correct misconceptions and provide students a better understanding of concepts. This is already available; districts just need to decide to start doing it.

The Bush Foundation spending on education is about 3% of the approximately $240 million per year spent on textbooks in Minnesota. The state could realize a savings amounting to 3 times the Bush Foundation spending by merely not spending 10% of what is currently being spent on textbooks and instead use free openly licensed materials that are just as good or better than those textbooks. But even better, the award winning, high quality, free, digital, full course learning materials enable interactive engagement of students and allows teachers to then accommodate those different learning styles, cultural backgrounds and career aspirations.

Missing so far in the implementation of the free open education resource curricula and the realization of all the possible customization has been a way to take the money that’s currently being spent on textbooks and divert it to paying for teachers to acquire the training and skill to make all of the possible customization a reality.  The Stone Arch Bridge Initiative for Education Resources, SABIER, was created to supply that missing element consistent with the 2016 Online Digital Learning Advisory Council Final Report, a Minnesota legislatively established council. SABIER works with school districts to make the changes necessary so that all of the customization and personalization is realized. Districts are able to use existing money and available philanthropy dollars to pay for the initial teacher training that’s necessary to become proficient at using open education resources.  It’s the next step in transforming ‘how kids experience school, how teachers teach and even how classrooms look.’

This post was a collaborative effort of the following:

Lori A. Peterson, PhD., RODC, SABIER Board Chair and Consulting Director of Integral Consulting Group

Sheila Norton Rindahl, SABIER Open Practice Consultant and eLearning Product Manager at cmERDC

Elliot Soloway, PhD., SABIER adviser, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, University of Michigan, Co-Director of the Intergalactic Mobile Learning Center

Seth Leavitt, SABIER Board Member, Mathematics Teacher, Online Learning, Minneapolis Public Schools

Olivia Mullins, PhD., SABIER adviser, President of Science-Delivered

Dewey Sloan , Attorney, SABIER Board Member, former middle school science teacher

Dan McGuire, SABIER Executive Director and former elementary teacher

 

Syndicated, Virginia Group

The Search

needle in a haystack

We’re back in familiar territory for me on this one, though it’s less on my mind at a community college. Our faculty aren’t the ones doing a lot of the publishing, but we certainly benefit from others publishing OA.

One of the main places my mind goes when I consider OA and this ideal future of all OA research, is finding it. Probably because I’m a librarian, right? As I mentioned in my “Are We There Yet?” post, one of the concepts I sometimes try to emphasize to students is that searching for any kind of depth of purpose is a lot more challenging. Google can provide a very good answer or two very quickly. It’s not good at exhaustively searching and providing every relevant thing to you. You start scrolling down or paging through your Google results and pretty quickly you see the pages aren’t all that helpful. Google wants to have fantastic precision, not recall. Library databases are looking for great recall. They are also much more limited in the resources they provide to the user. They provide facets and filters and controlled vocabulary to help you search more powerfully.

My point is that I think the database layer of library resources will still have a purpose even if all of the content itself is OA. My hope would be that it’s a whole lot cheaper. But I think the tools and added functionality will probably still be of value in assisting the finding of the OA things. Unless someone out of the goodness of their heart wants to create a free version that works really well… But I think in this case, actually paying someone is a better idea in terms of reliability. That’s often the snag with open, free content.

In addition, I think publishers would argue that they add value to the published content through editing, marketing, etc. You can take issue with that and disagree, but I think that would be the publisher counterpoint.

As an E-Resources Librarian, another place my mind goes is… what about the usage data? I wouldn’t need it to determine cost effectiveness if the content is all OA, but I would certainly still want to understand the usage of resources by Germanna students in particular. What are their research habits and how can we better serve them? We use the usage information we get from our databases to help inform us in that. I don’t know how we would get that information otherwise, unless we kept a search layer from our vendors at the least.

And that’s the end of my scattered thoughts about OA.

Syndicated, Virginia Group

#OpenLearning17 is Connected Learning

I was a bit daunted when I was asked to be a co-director for the Open Access week of OpenLearning17, and had mixed feelings when I realized that my co-director was a total stranger in Egypt.  Would this person be a good collaborator (yes!) and how would we plan a week of activities together when we were so many miles apart (Google Docs!).  I could not imagine a better experience.  Maha and I both embraced the spirit of collaboration from the start and have had a great synergy and a likeness of mind, but also a welcome diversity of experience and knowledge.  I hope that will come through in the activities we have planned for week 7.

So from this learning facilitator’s perspective, OpenLearning17 has definitely been a connected learning experience, both as a student and as a learning facilitator. I have learned a great deal through connecting with Maha and through our collaborative design of the learning experience for week 7 and I hope she feels the same. Teaching is always a learning experience for the teacher and I am grateful for having been nudged out my comfort zone (that is where the best learning experiences happen!).

I hope you enjoy week 7 as much as I have enjoyed planning it with Maha!