How Are Those Summer Projects Going?

Hello, July! How did it get to be July already?

We saw a good number of sharing of goals for your summer open pedagogy projects in our introduction topic, with some highlights shared below.

How are you doing on your projects? Do you have any updates, needs, questions? Use this space to share an update, or if you did not get a chance to share, reply below with a description of your own open pedagogy project.

Shared Projects

These are projects we heard about earlier:

from @keldred2

I maintain (and created) our OER Intro to Philosophy course. I use summer to enhance this course (and the Intro to Logic course), and this summerā€™s focus project is to add further ā€œappliedā€ activities to the Intro to Philosophy course. Rather than merely pass tests about old dead guys, I want to offer students more opportunities to apply philosophical ideas to situations in everyday life (e.g., personal, political.) Iā€™ve started down this road, but there is so much more to do. I believe the course could be more interesting for the students (and the instructor!) and also, itā€™s possible that such projects could level the playing field a bit in classes with students working at a diverse array of skill and academic-experience levels.

from @JudyWestley

I am an Associate Professor of English at Columbia State Community College in Tennessee. I am part of a team that received a grant to create an OER version of one of our composition courses. We are currently working on the course. One of the assignments for the course asks students to create a pod-cast like recording, then post it where other students can listen to it and comment on it. Eventually, I would like to offer students the option of attaching a CC license to their recording, but itā€™s not currently part of the assignment. I would really like to learn as much as I can about Open Pedagogy. I still consider myself a neophyte. It would really be interesting to discuss with others what kinds of tasks, learning activities, assignments, etc., work well with open pedagogy.

from @DDLAKE22

I have been teaching online since 1997 and have been involved with OER since 2017. This summer I am developing many timelines, course presentations, and interactive videos for my classes.

from @gleuburke

I am new to using open education sources in my courses - which has not been currently embraced in my department. I teach upper division courses in Molecular Diagnostics and Clinical Microbiology, but feel that OER can provide the structure I need in my courses, while I add industry level standards of clinical assessment - which are never accurate in published textbooks. My goal this summer is to continue to grow in understanding the use of OER, to search materials for my Spring 2022 courses. I teach at the University of Alaska Anchorage

from @amandataintor

One of the possible roles for my return in the Fall is as OER coordinator for the campus. As part of my sabbatical, I designed an introduction to Open Pedogagy self-paced course in canvas for my faculty, and Iā€™m hoping to complete its first revision this summer.

from @Carbeau

I have to a curate an exhibit (where students create an online exhibit that identifies the ways in which ancient and modern artists have illustrated the great myths and depicted the gods and goddesses through the visual arts) assignment in the Master that students like but is not as engaging as I would have hoped (itā€™s a BONGO assignment). Maybe a living assignment, where everyone works together, would work better. Iā€™m hoping to get more insight and exposure to open pedagogy to create a more interactive and engaging course. I am super excited to spend the summer with all of you.

from @sfigueroa2

I am working on a project to create OER that integrates culture and language while promoting Culturally Responsive Teaching and accessibility. As part of my project, I will attend conferences, workshops and create language learning modules in Canvas. If anyone would like to see a more detailed version of my plan, please let me know. And if anyone has any info on great OER Resources in Italian, especially those based on open sources and authentic materials such a movie shorts, stories, films, literature and more, please let me know.

from @Amy

I teach composition at Lewis-Clark State College. As part of the OPAL Fellowship for Idaho educators last year, 2 colleagues from another institution and I created this OERā€“Write What Matters 2. This summer, Iā€™d like to put together an OER of collected personal narratives (categorized by theme or exigence or mode) from former students. Iā€™m hoping to be able to use this to enhance modeling/high quality artifacts for current students. The secondary goal is that those ā€˜newerā€™ students can contribute their pieces so that itā€™s a renewable project. The final goal would be to incorporate audio or visual (as part of a future project).

from @ahuard

Iā€™m more familiar with open access resources than pedagogy, so Iā€™m interested in learning more. My goals for the summer are more about learning about the types of options available that I can bring back to the 40-50 instructors I oversee than anything concrete

from @Deb

I am a curriculum developer with the College of New Caledonia in Prince George, British Columbia. I am proud to be able to live and work on the unceded territory of the Lheidli Tā€™enneh. I am interested in learning more about open pedagogy. For the summer I am working on writing an open textbook with two other team members and working on editing an open textbook to add H5P content to it.

Hereā€™s an update on what Iā€™m considering for my Introduction to Philosophy course, which is currently OER, fully online, and asynchronous. My intentions are to (1) deepen connection to UN Sustainable Development goals and (2) to foster greater transparency between course content and the ā€œoutside world.ā€ A significant percentage of course assessments (Discussion Questions and Assignments) already pertain to UN Sustainable Development Goals. (I am an advocate of ā€œapplied philosophy.ā€) Right now, all ā€œdiscussionā€ is internal - it takes place within the LMS, students interact asynchronously with each other. I would like to try moving some selected ā€œdiscussionā€ (related to UN SDGs) to the world outside, as discourse between students and someone they choose in their family or community. Initially, I would offer such opportunities to earn credit as ā€œbonusā€ work as I perfect a rubric for reporting details of dialogues for credit. My vision is one where students have an opportunity to ā€œdo philosophyā€ in the classic sense of dialogue. If the ideas and questions they encounter in the course material intrigue them, itā€™s possible that in person conversation may be more satisfying than asynchronous posts. Itā€™s also possible that community conversation partners may be inspired. (I do not intend to discontinue asynchronous discourse within the LMS.) Hope to set up a trial assignment for the fall semester. Lots of thinking through this remains to be done.

Hello, Everyone! I am pretty much finished with the assignment I am creating for my OER supported course. I made a sample podcast to use as a model. I also added a lot of options to enhance the accessibility of the assignment for learners. It should appear in OER Commons as part of the grant project soon.

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Congratulations, Judy. This sounds like a fantastic project, especially with the accessibility features prioritized. I canā€™t wait to see/hear it! :grin:

That is great news, Judy. Weā€™d love to ā€œhearā€ more about the podcast and how the development went for you. I bet @unatdaly might ask you to share more in the August 12 webinar, if possible.