Great. Well we'll slowly get underway here now and we still
got a couple of folks joining us but we'll get started. Thanks
for joining us here today. It's great to see you all. I'm gonna
just briefly share my screen for a title slide of what we're
doing here today. So we're having kind of like a school
days show and tell and Affordable Learning show and
tell, with some highlights from around the state to talk about
different efforts that are going on a snapshot of some of the
work being undertaken in the state. Hopefully you can see
that slide now hopefully I've shared the right screen. And let
me advance to tell you about who is talking with us today who
will be sharing. So first we have Casey, who is at Fletcher,
Casey is one of our newer Affordable Learning folks in the
state of a newer person supporting Affordable Learning
affordability at Fletcher. And so Casey will be talking about
projects, she's involved in Casey's been participating in
the faculty cohort program. We have a faculty member from
Fletcher who was selected for that. So, Casey may touch on
that as well about that faculty cohort librarian participation.
After that, we have Jim from North Shore. Jim is also going
to share different affordability work that's going on at North
Shore and highlights of that work there. After that we have
Damian from St. Joseph seminary college, and he'll be talking
about impacting the library resources from coursework to
library research projects, following him we have Michael
and Michelle from LSUA, they'll be talking about open textbook
network, workshops, specifically they hosted a spring workshop.
It was the first one that they had led and so they'll talk
about that first time, effort, preparing for it promoting it
leading it, and highlights from offering it both face to face,
and online and how they achieved great participation and
completion of that effort. And finally, we'll have Laurie at
Loyola Laurie will be touching on curriculum driven
acquisitions CDA Laurie always has a great process where she
works closely with faculty to engage them throughout this
process, and that's oftentimes a question that I get from folks,
wanting to know kind of best practices for integrating
faculty feedback into that CDA process and so, Laurie will be
sharing her approach to to that effort. So I'll stop sharing
that slide now and we'll get underway with our first
panelist, which is Casey I'll turn it over to you.
Hi everyone, I'm Casey, I'm the reference and instruction
librarian at Fletcher. I just started in January, and this is
my first library job. Prior to graduating in December. Prior to
this job. I had no idea about Affordable Learning. When I was
in school I always thought about ways I could really save on
items like textbooks I would either share with other students
or very often I just rented them because it was too much to
afford. Though I had no knowledge of Affordable
Learning. When I joined Fletcher they had a great history of
success with Affordable Learning. Um Fletcher first
became involved in 2015. And last year they saved over they
reached the goal of over a million dollars saved in
textbooks for students. And so far this year I've been helping
out with OER tagging. This is where we ensure that courses are
properly tagged and labeled so that students know if their
books are no cost or low cost online that's been fun. I've
also been helping with spreadsheets, for OER keeping
track of how much money students actually saved. And then this
past month I've been a part of the faculty cohort with Miss
Emily. In this cohort various faculty members including one at
Fletcher like she mentioned, I'm a working towards creating a
syllabus for OER. I've learned so much in this, though it
myself I'm not creating a syllabus, I am participating in
the readings and the assignments that she gives out each week.
And I love the open dialect that we have we have a discussion
every two weeks so we all come on and just talk about what
we've learned I typically don't say much I just absorb it but
it's so much knowledge spread throughout the cohort. I
consider myself a lifelong learner and being a part of the
cohort and so much I've learned so much about OER and Affordable
Learning. Thank you.
Great, thank you. Casey that was such an exciting introduction to
all the things that you're working on. I just made a note
about the different tracking and spreadsheets that you have, you
know, I think a frequent challenge is managing all that
data and the fact that you all at Fletcher, have a real active
role in the course marketing effort. So you're doing an
additional level of tracking and managing of data, making sure
that the courses that have adopted either open or
Affordable Learning are designated as such. So, you
know, either here today if folks have specific questions about
that. Or perhaps in the future we'll have to arrange a deep
dive look into those efforts, I think it's always helpful to
have frequent reminders and sharing of how, how we approach
that data tracking. Thank you.
Yes of course I'm actually I think my boss is in here now,
Yeah, I was just thinking about Jodie's sharing of that as well.
and remember earlier, what a few months ago maybe she did a whole
Yeah, I was just thinking about Jodie's sharing of that as well. talk about, she dove into it as well.
Yeah, I was just thinking about Jodie's sharing of that as well.
Yeah, we have that recording but you know as your process
changes, we'd love to hear more and feel free to ask any
questions in the chat as we go. We, we may have some time as we
go and then we'll have time at the end as well. So, great,
thank you Casey. So next we have Jim Hey, Jim. Hello. Hey.
So my name is Jim Bass. I am also new to this role. I started
back in December, as the OER and Curriculum Support Librarian at
Northshore Technical Community College. Prior to that, I was
serving my first librarian position at LSU Shreveport, as
the first year, success, and under. First Year Experience and
undergraduate success librarian. But this was actually my first
real interaction with OERs and affordable learning at North at
LSUS my focus was trying to get students used to the new
environment of college to making the transition from high school
to college and how different it can be. But I never thought
about how things like textbooks could play a huge part in the
first year experience until I really took upon this job. And
what I'm seeing is just in the short time, we actually have
numbers for our current OER savings from 2018 2019. And
we've saved a combined over $100,000 just in those two
years, and it's been and we're continuing to try to support
more faculty to take upon these OERs. One thing that I also
serve as is the online bookstore manager so I have access to all
the materials that are being purchased, being able to see
what's being used, but I also am in a position to promote OERs
and I can see how OERs are being used in that capacity. So it's
really been kind of a unique experience to be able to see
both sides of that. In terms of supporting OERs at Northshore. I
recently participated in the open textbook network workshop
where I had several faculty members participate where they
attended this workshop to learn about OERs specifically from the
open textbook network, and how they could possibly use these
free materials in their class. And the response was, was great.
The reviews they gave for those materials were great. My current
goal right now is to really get to the math department involved
in this initiative because it's a huge program at Northshore.
Right now, like it's being able to see work in the bookstore,
you can also see the prices students are paying for each
material, and for each class they're paying at least $65 per,
per their for their math labs. And so being able to do move
something to like MyOpenMath or Lumen Learning or something
along those lines would be a huge step forward to going more
OER for Northshore. And we actually just released our two
years strategic plan, and our goal is to actually double the
amount of OERS that we have now in the next two years, and I can
only imagine, just by juggling it, the kind of saving students
will see, and that it should just make their time in college
more affordable, more less stressful. And just a more
enriching experience knowing that they no longer have to
worry about whether or not they can afford the materials they
need to learn. So it's been it's been it's only been a short time
but it's been an exciting time and the level of enthusiasm from
faculty to embrace OERs has been great. There's a lot of support
from the administration the fact that they would include OERs in
the strategic plan is a huge step that really was excited to
see and be a part of. That's great, Jim, so thank you guys.
Oh and I just wanted to say too since I'm new at this, I'm
looking to learn more about the current OERs that are being used
at different institutions. I'd like to do some sort of
presentation for the faculty Math Department on the
MyOpenMath. MyOpenMath. So if any of you have used that
before, faculty using that I'd love to hear from you. And to
see what your experience has been like, so that we could
possibly use that in our own program. So thanks.
Great yes I know that RPCC has adopted MyOpenMath, I'm not sure
if we've got anyone from our RPCC on the call, but I can
start that connection, for sure. They've got a real avid user of
MyOpenMath. There. Just to follow up on something else you
said Jim, you know one thing I think about with this open work
is the need for collaboration in order for success, whether it's
collaborating with faculty. The course marking people the
bookstore students. It's interesting that you occupy this
dual role also being the online bookstore person, it brings to
mind for me in the, in the OTN Open Textbook Network Train The
Trainer for those who participated in that, either in
the past or this spring. There is a slide in there that talks
about you know what are different ways that you can
strategize your OTN effort. And one of the suggestions is
collaborating with the bookstore and having a conversation
around, what are the highest costs textbooks or what are the
courses where the bookstore might stock a lot of textbooks
and then students aren't buying them for whatever reason so
let's find these areas that might be pain points and
collaborate around that and you as the online bookstore manager,
you have that data that's such an interesting perspective to
hold.
It's fun, it's kind of funny too, because I'm the OER so I'm
trying to make resources free but I'm also in charge of an
institution that's supposed to bring in revenue. And so I'm
almost trying to put myself out of business. In one aspect of my
job which, as ironic as it is, it's, I have a lot of support to
do that. Just because I think Northshore has is doing a lot of
great steps to see, to make Affordable Learning a huge part
of their program. So it's been really great to serve both of
those roles.
Great, so I'm just peaking at the chat to see about the. Any
questions or comments and I see my goal is sharing also an
interest for online lab alternatives. It's good to know
that that's an interest for online labs being like chemistry
labs, Michael or, or like the homework management systems.
Either way, both
yeah basically anything that provides an interactive platform
when I'm trying to wean professors off of My Math Lab a
lot of the Pearson's the Cengage products. They provide wonderful
all in one tools for our instructors. But of course, at,
you know, price point of 120 each for our students it's a bit
steep so the text is one thing but any of that interactive, you
know, whether it's
chemistry or mathematics. Anything I can get my hands on.
Yep,
that's great that brings to mind that we should, you know, I'll
look at scheduling a session where we have some of those
faculty who have adopted Lumen products for the homework
management function or my open math, and maybe they could share
and we could, you know, either share the recording with your
faculty or invite them to that session too and have a dialogue
around that.
That would be wonderful. So, yeah, if there's anything I can
do to help that I'd be more than willing to. Great.
Okay, great. So, I'll keep moving forward and then we'll
have time for more conversation at the end as we go. So next we
have Damien you're up next
Hi, my name is Damien, and I teach literature and language
here at St Joseph's north of New Orleans near Covington. The goal
always is to foster collaboration between faculty
and librarians library staff, and at the same time, help the
students know that we're there for helping them in any way we
can. And I'm sure all libraries try to foster that spirit of
welcome this to all students, knowing that they can meet
deadlines and actually asked librarians for all kinds of
assistance, we ran into the issue of wanting students
instead or also, to help the library. And so this came about
in a new way. It's very difficult to incorporate OERs
and other digital technology, software for learning languages
because the contact and communication in dialogues and
conversation is always key. However, in a class. There's
always one or two overachievers who seem to be leaving the rest
of the class behind because their memory skills are superior
or because they've lived in a Spanish speaking country or
because they have friends who grew up speaking Spanish with
them
on two overachievers, who I didn't want to be bored
undertook a project with me, we received an acquisition in the
library of a large collection of Spanish books in Spanish. And so
we narrowed it down to 97 to complement what we already
possessed on the stack in the stacks, and the two
overachievers were invited to undertake a project, working
with me, and the library staff to, first of all, decide were
these books already in our catalog. If not, put a bookmark
ring that said NIC. We were also required to find five attributes
about that book that the library could use in the catalog. And
because these were students of Spanish, it not only facilitated
their use and practice of using Spanish in a real life situation
with library books, but it helped them to see how their
Spanish could be used in a very practical manner very practical
way. So they were able to understand, oh poetry novel, its
drama and to write those on information sheet for the use of
cataloguing these books. And so in the long run. It helped the
students learn more about the language undertaking vocabulary
that was present in the titles of books, it helped them to
understand the process of cataloging books, and all the
information librarians require in order to either hang that
book in a mark record or to put it into the catalog. And it also
provided them the opportunity to know that their efforts were
somehow going to impact the catalog, and if they ever went
to look up any of those books in the future, they would see their
work being effective, and then essentially extending the shelf
life of their undertakings in this project. As long as we have
a catalog. And so that was a shot in the arm for them. Wasn't
your typical assignment for a Spanish class, but it helped
them to take part in something that was a contribution to our
library. The other course another idea that came up, had
to do during the pandemic. And I taught, I was teaching World
Literature III. And there was one student who was particularly
slow, so I had to help him with his essay, and as the pandemic
hit and we went into isolation and began using digital
technology for teaching. I came up with the idea of using his
essay to somehow impact the library's catalog. We studied
this book, parts of it Don Quixote, and we actually have
from the films for the Humanities and Sciences, a set
of five DVDs. But if a professor opens up the case, there is
nothing to indicate the content of these five set of CDs are
cased into two different volumes. And so the student
accepted the challenge of watching all five CDs and a
numerating the chapters from the novel Don Quixote on each of the
CDs, so that we would have the ability to produce a little
guide that has all of the episodes. Limunated in on each
of the CDs. In addition that had an impact on the catalog of the
library, because we couldn't find in WorldCat OCLC any
indication that anyone had a listing of the content of these
DVDs, even though they exist in many libraries, and so we
impacted OCLC, or WorldCat as we call it, and our own catalog by
actually placing a listing of all of the episodes that
correspond with the novel, and that also correspond with the
five CDs, CDs or sorry five DVDs, as they're cased and
distributed by the National Endowment for Humanities. So
that was a way to help an underachiever student or an at
risk student contribute to the library and undertake academic
research and scholarship in a way that would make him feel
very proud about his contribution. And again we told
him if you ever look this up on WorldCat, or even our own
library, you'll see your work displayed there as long as well
in perpetuity as long as we hold on to these DVDs and that
format. So that was a surprise for us being able to use student
learning projects that have an impact on the library,
essentially the, the collaboration, but also the
impact on the catalog. Thank you.
Thank you Damian I don't know if you would use this language to
describe that effort but to me, you could think of it as a
service learning type of project where students are, um, you
know, engaging both with like an academic subject matter, but
that that engagement results in something that is supporting
others helping others,
There is a group that is assigned to undertake that. But
these students that actually the requirement for these students
to be able to undertake this project is that they had to have
a working knowledge of Spanish, and that's not true about the
other group of students who undertake that service in the
library. Just as you described it again this was only a result
of somebody both all of the students were students of mine
in Spanish, and so I knew that it would be a great challenge
for them to undertake that. But again, it's something that is
new to our campus that none of the librarians know Spanish, but
the guides were proficient enough in the language, to be
able to use the knowledge they had in one course to undertake
these projects to have an impact on the library's catalog.
That's great. I you know I think there's probably an interest
among a lot of folks on the call about engaging with classroom
learning and finding overlap with library projects,
identifying those shared goals and opportunities you occupy a
unique space it seems like to me. Where you have so much
historical involvement with library efforts and have a deep
relationship with the library so you have that type of knowledge
of both sides of things your class and library efforts.
Oh, we actually gave the librarians, the opportunity to
give input to the students in determining their grades as
well. So, they had a. They gave extra credit for both of those
projects, they thought it was good.
And I see Laurie sharing that they've done a similar thing,
finding that overlap between library efforts in a classroom
with the intro to grad studies course where they did archival
Work, work, I'm sorry, where they the students worked with
archival materials researched on them, and then created an
exhibit I love those examples I think you know as others have
examples to share, please do share them it's so helpful to
have examples to point to as folks think more in this space.
Thank you, Damien. Thank you. Okay, next up we have Michael
Waller and Michelle Riggs from LSUA.
Hello everyone, I'm Michael, obviously, sorry, Michelle
couldn't make it so it'll be just me, but just know that
everything that was done we did it together is very much
cooperation, especially when it came to some of the more time
intensive legwork that we had to do for some of these steps,
definitely needed her help on a lot of this. But, like, Emily
said I'm just going to talk about some of the preparation
execution, and hopefully some positive if we do this again,
some things that I'm going to keep in mind. Some of the
standard preparation that we took was, you know, I'm sure
most of you are familiar with if you've had a workshop on your
campus. We made sure that our finance office had a mechanism
in place to distribute the funds. We then reserved at
meeting space. Then we went on to familiarizing ourselves with
all of the available textbooks. Well, most of them as quick as
we could, in the open textbook library, and we familiarize
ourselves with many of the wonderful workshop resources
that were provided by the network. I can't say how
valuable that is enough on we had a tight turnaround time. I
didn't know that this was a thing that we could do until it
was like, you know, a day or two to decide, and those workshop
resources Emily were like oh couldn't have done it without
them so you know that's really, really helpful. And then one
extra step that I took this kind of standard prep was created an
Open Stax educator account, so that I could sample sample some
of the Instructor Resources. Most of you probably know Open
Stax is one of the main publishers for those open
textbook library textbooks. They're the ones that are a
little bit more polished they're usually more highly reviewed.
They've got a lot of good ancillary resources and I knew
some of our instructors would be interested in some of that so
took about two weeks I think a little bit less than two weeks
to have that approval as an educator, once you do that I
could pull a lot of like the, the course cartridge is where
you can preload into your learning into your LMS. They've
got some really great stuff. Hopefully some of our faculty
will take advantage of that soon.
But some of the more useful preparation steps, really took
advantage of LSUA being a relatively small institution, we
only have a few librarians and it's a small school but we use
that to our advantage. Started with meeting with the head of
our academic affairs to discuss timing applicability and
promotion and beyond some of the just general, you know
communication and relationship building. He recommended some
better some improved times and dates that would work with most
faculty class schedules. So that was super valuable and then went
on to mention some specific names of those who have shown
interest in new methods and resources so we put them on kind
of a priority list. Next I contacted our Office of
Institutional Research and Effectiveness and had them
generate a list of all current courses with the course code
name, description and instructor. The reason for that
is we were going to take some of the, the initial effort of
finding the most appropriate open textbook for a specific
instructor for a specific class, something that they were
teaching at that time. So with that course name and
description, we just went through the catalog found
something that would be appropriate. That way, when we
invite them it is, hey look at this one book, and obviously
they could look at others, but I did not want to invite them to
browse several hundred textbooks, even though, you
know, if we can do more of the work for them I found that
that's really useful for soliciting some response. We
started by focusing on the 1002 thousand level courses, and then
paired faculty with some appropriate. Some OTL textbooks.
Of course this was around the middle of March, and all of this
was in the middle of planning as our campus began to close. So we
had to make some last minute adjustments. Mike had to work
with our court our Campus Coordinator for Safety and Risk
Management to get all kind of bureaucratic approval just to
have us meet in person. Because while some people were working
at home, there were still some who really wanted to meet in
person, and we wanted to be able to accommodate that. And then we
had to work with our IT department to get like a Zoom
Pro account for a couple of reasons I don't remember why,
but just a couple of last minute changes. Then when it came to
promoting it. We created a nice looking event flyer PDF for
distribution. Everyone likes to look at some colors and some
pictures. So I use a lot of the Open Stax textbook images there.
It's pretty good graphic design. So I put together a little flyer
that looks pretty good, and had the link for the application
form built into it so that, again, we could make it as easy
as possible. Out of close to 600 courses that LSUA was offering
last semester. We ended up pairing it down to about 80. And
then we paired that, again, that list down to 23 faculty, making
sure to include someone from every department, because not
only do we want them to say yes, but we also hoping that they'll
talk to others in their department. Now we didn't, we
got only six up from six different departments, we didn't
get every department but most. We then wrote individual emails
to each one of those 23. In it was a specific invitation just
to them, and with the suggested text with a link to it, so that
they just click on it, see what it is right in that same email
and then click on the forum to say yes, I want to just go
straight to the workshop registration. We had planned a
second round of general invitations to be sent to all
the faculty. But that wasn't needed because within about two
to three days we had all 10 registered for the workshop we
only had 10 spots. And we had a couple of others on a waitlist.
We had to tell them that reservations were first come
first served. That $200 stipend went a long way. It really is
useful LOUIS. I'm very thankful has identified one of the
barriers. And that was super useful. So we had a couple of
faculty placed on the waitlist. And that was really important
because there were like three or four last minute dropouts, that
we had to switch around. So that waitlist was useful it was just
a lot of checking email regularly and communication. Now
some of the online and face to face hybrid workshop, it. We
just wanted to make sure that everyone had the option to meet
online for safety reasons,
there were only two participants that couldn't make it. Who
didn't let me know. So we had an eight out of 10 attendance and
three met online and five met in person. If we do this again and
it's a hybrid meeting I'm going to pay more attention to the
hardware setup in the meeting room itself. I made sure we had
basic functionality, the day before, but there really was not
an open conversation between the online participants and those in
the room, they started to try and ask each other questions but
then like I had the camera looking at me and I had to pick
it up and, you know, move them in the mic was on the camera
itself so they couldn't hear our faculty, they really wanted to
talk to each other a little bit more. And it was a little bit
isolating for those online I, you know, reminded them a chat
is a function. But it's still a lot of people not knowing the
etiquette. For a hybrid meeting so you know those are just some
more social. Professional challenges to get over, but they
out of the eight seven wrote reviews. And I yeah that's a win
for me, because there was a lot of communication following the
workshop, and it felt like at least I fostered an open line of
communication between the library and specific faculty, if
it didn't foster within each department. A lot of the
questions I got with the same so I was asked Do I have to adopt
the text, if I want to review it. Do I have to adopt the text
or receive the stipend. Can I select an alternate text to
review, one instructor specifically wanted to pick a
different book in his area just because it had far fewer reviews
and he wanted to be a little bit more community minded so of
course and you know I covered all this in the workshop, but
they, you know, wanted a little bit of hand holding, and I'm
glad to do it. And a couple people wanted to see some of the
additional Instructor Resources which I could provide for them.
And then of course it was just a sorted questions about logistics
and communications, but following that, I think they
felt a little bit more comfortable. Hopefully this
moves us very slowly once, of course, closer to OER adoption.
But we'll see. Hopefully if they're more LOUIS offered
workshops in the future, then I'll jump on it because we had
growing interest I had a couple faculty who called me slightly
angry, asking why they weren't invited, and how dare they, and
I had to. I had to you know tell them it was about a, you know,
the course they were teaching there wasn't really a good
textbook to pair but of course I'll you know meet with you
individually and found out really through some of that
after I smoothed over some of the rest, rough edges that some
place for growth is in the three and 4000 level courses where
instead of them assigning textbooks, they often pull
material from all kinds of different places and a chapter
or two from various textbooks would work better than adopting
the entire textbook. So, next semester I'll be working with
several professors on pulling select chapters and then
updating some of the, you know, updating some of the images and
the references and stuff. But I think it went pretty well.
Thank you, Michael. That was such a helpful, step by step
approach you gave me some very actionable suggestions. Things
to include in future Train the Trainer or on our Task Portal
article things that we're not specifically mentioning, you
know the notes that I took included. How you all went
through the open textbook library and really developed a
sense of what coverages there and what gaps are there. That's
a great idea. The setting up your all's Open Stax educational
account, so that then immediately you can support
faculty as they want to explore those resources, since they too
may have to have that two week approval time. And so by you all
having the account you could really support them. Strike the
you know strike the iron while it's hot. How you worked with I
think it was Academic Affairs to get their timing suggestions and
faculty name suggestions, working with the Office of
Institutional Effectiveness for that course ID course listing
export. How you emphasize graphic design in the flyers to
make them. You know eye catching all of these are things that we
don't really touch on in that Train the Trainer and so it's so
helpful to see how you all built off of that and customized it to
your environment. Also just really noteworthy for me is how
you spoke to the challenges of hybrid, you know, in reading
about what college campuses are thinking about in the fall. So
much of what I see is an exploration of that hybrid
model. And so, I've never done any type of library instruction
or faculty workshop in a hybrid model, not that I can recall.
And so it's interesting just having that little bit of
perspective, from you. Having done this workshop as hybrid,
and some of the, the challenges that you identified a big one
being the challenge of having that type of community, back and
forth and conversation among the in person and online
participants. I think well, just like we've all really, you know,
built a lot of capacity really quickly with Zoom meetings,
maybe we'll also build a lot of capacity really quickly with
hybrid type of stuff but that especially to me was really
interesting. Since I you know I think we'll all be thinking more
and more about that moving forward. Oh yeah and Laurie is
mentioning she'll be teaching a first year seminar and a high
flex model in this fall. It'll be challenging. Yes. I'd love to
hear you know from others here if you've done that type of
hybrid workshop or class library instruction.
So Emily, one of the things that we're talking about for the fall
is having a group of student assistants or student workers to
help the instructor manage the hybrid nature of having some
students in the classroom and some students online at any
given time, as our classrooms are really not set up to manage
the whole class being in their classroom at the same time I
mean, and that's the way it's going to be for me and I'm
thinking I'm going to do, meeting with half of my class
online and half my class in person Monday, Wednesday, so I'm
teaching Monday Wednesday Friday this semester in the fall, and
then Friday doing sort of like a everybody online lab day kind of
thing where we work on some exercises together, online,
probably from my dining room. Um, so yeah, so we've been
talking about the challenges of managing that hybrid environment
and hoping that we will have some of our work studies who
wouldn't who wouldn't otherwise have a job because that job
isn't available to them anymore of deploying those students out
to help help faculty manage the classroom environment like that.
Yeah, and it sounds like Michael to you had like physical
limitations like what you're speaking to Laurie just the
classroom limitations with that hybrid model. So, thanks, thanks
for sharing that Michael because I feel like you. You know, got
us thinking about how the pandemic impacts all of this
work, too, but also how you know there's still opportunity for
these types of efforts, even with a lot going on and pulling
at our attention so thanks for sharing that. And you kind of
ended thinking about higher level classes and how OER made,
typically hit lower level, and different ways to support those
higher level classes. One way that I think of as being
available to support those higher level classes includes
our Curriculum Driven Acquisition Program, the CDA
program. And so, I'll turn it over to you now Laurie to talk
about how you specifically work with faculty in, in terms of
CDA.
Well, I'll tell you the thing about what I do is i'm
relentless. And I've just gotten myself into every opportunity
that I possibly can to talk with faculty about about Affordable
Learning and about etextbooks, and I feel like I still have
such a long way to go. I mean I've been doing this since LOUIS
started in fall of 2016, Casey I swear I want to be able to do
what you're doing in terms of tracking but like, it feels to
me like it's just too much and and we've bought some and LOUIS
has bought some And so trying to keep all that sorted out it's
really really hard in terms of the total impact. I was supposed
to be doing a research leave in July this year and it's just not
going to happen because I wasn't supposed to teach in the fall I
know I am going to teach in the fall. So, um, instead of doing
all that work I'm going to be adapting my class to teach in
high flex. But it's exciting because it means that our
enrollment was high enough that I was asked to teach my first
year seminar again. So what do I do, um, okay. So just like
everybody with CDA, I get the bookstore list, and I go through
that and I, and I have been manually grabbing the ISBNs, why
do I do that I mean it takes a long time, partly because then
I'm looking to see who's using what, and I'm familiar enough
now. With that, that one of the things that I've been seeing is
like for example, people will assign Greek, or Greek texts,
and we own the Harvard Loeb Library so I might go to a
faculty member and say hey you're asking your students to
buy an addition of this wire ease and Harvard Loeb when it
when they're really good translations, and they're free
for the students and we own it like it's not even a
subscription. So those are the kinds of things that I can do
and I can also kind of see where there's been a departmental
level adoption, multiple sections using the same text,
things like that, or just kind of getting a sense of, um, even
if my ISBNs don't match Are there other alternatives that I
can look at. So I do the same thing probably that everybody
else does I paste it into the Gobi alternate format. and then
I create two folders of that I create things we already own, so
that I can kind of look at reuse, and then things that are
possibilities, from the possibilities, I create I export
out a spreadsheet. And to that spreadsheet, I add the course
number. The, the course name the instructor, the enrollment, and
then a textbook cost. So then what I do and let me see if I
can share my screen. Um, see here. Yeah. So this, let's see
here share. This is what I did for the emergency CBA in the
spring, and I would, you know, because I mean normally you know
adoptions may not be great. By the beginning of the semester
but by mid semester when we went online adoptions were pretty
good. And we're you know obviously with the bookstore.
You know we're higher than they would ever have been. So, um, I
ran this, and some of them like this public choice economics
class. He probably already had two books from CDA and I added
three more. Um, meditations on first philosophy is an
interesting one, that was a real negotiating process with those
faculty and Emily knows about this, We had six sections of
that class, and the ISBN did not match the addition that they had
chosen, but there were six sections of the class, and they
weren't necessarily using it until after they moved online,
and I got all three professors teaching all six sections to
agree to use a very slightly different addition, so that we
can move to CBA. So this was a win. So, the other is like you
can see a couple where I've known that those have have
matched in the past like the design the lettering and type. I
just hadn't bought it before because our design faculty
hadn't had a lot of buy in, but I use these kind of emergency
situations to say, hey, let's try.
Or like I don't even wait like that faculty member probably
never responded to my emails, and I just don't care, I put the
books in Blackboard in the LMS. And if, if they don't respond
their students find them. I've had advanced calculus class
where the faculty member have never responded to a single
email that I sent him. And um. It didn't matter. The book got
used 1100 times in a year. So, I'm having faculty buy in is
great, but I would say as long as you have access to your LMS,
it doesn't necessarily it's not necessarily a requirement. The
other great thing that I have at Loyola is really wonderful
support from our provost and from our vice provost, our vice
provost is somebody who was an early adopter Carolyn McGregor
of our CBA etextbooks. In one of her I knew it was a sociology
class but I can't remember it First Year Seminar I think was
an elective. And so she was used to it and she's been just a huge
proponent of it to other faculty and anytime I talk about it on
social media or whatever she immediately tells the provost.
I've done presentations for the Academic Affairs Committee of
the Board of Trustees. I've done I you know the Provost gives me
a shout out every time I get funding from LOUIS, so it's been
great because it just, they hear about it in a relentless way
about what we're doing with etextbooks. Now the one thing
that I haven't gotten as much as I would like is for faculty to
agree to choose a different textbook that might be available
as opposed to just saying, is my textbook available. So, and
sometimes like they hear about the LOUIS funding and they
think, Oh, I'm going to get in on that but of course by the
time LOUIS funding is announced, it's already passed. Now that
said, you know, we did a summer fall pass and I'm hoping that
you know I've been throwing stuff in my order cart. In Gobi
as I've been talking to faculty and I've had a few people where
instead of one particular book that they would have had their
students by they're using two different books, like in a vocal
pedagogy class two different ebooks, neither one of which
would have been okay for if you were only choosing one book that
you can substitute to. So, and I had another faculty member who
wanted to use an out of print book which is a whole messy can
of worms. So I went through Gobi and found some books for him.
Um, you know, and was able to give him some alternatives. So
Teri's asking how has use been overall are CDA titles and I
would say, in most cases pretty high. I'm in our music therapy
program where our students don't really have to buy almost a
single textbook, and we have moved all of their reserves to
ebook. Those are hugely high, and those students count on the
fact that we own everything in etextbook. And the fact that
they, they love the fact that they don't have to buy their
textbooks. In some classes I think where the faculty member
has less buy in, and maybe the books aren't as expensive. We
have less usage. We have I have a couple. I have one book of The
New Jim Crow, that is being used I think in three different
courses, and when I find that out by you know looking through
the through the the textbook adoptions, I'll just throw them
into the class whether the professor knows it or not or
whether they respond or not. So, um, the other thing that I did
this semester was, um, we had a teaching conference. Two weeks
ago at Loyola where it was just all about we're moving to
Canvas, we're working toward moving to high flex we were
talking about inclusive education and all these things,
it was a week long teaching conference. We just had huge buy
in from our faculty about attending the teaching
conference. It was interesting the etiquette. There was some
squabbles going on in the chat, there was no smoking this cigar
smoking.
Um, you know going on there, um, something just happened somebody
shared their screen. Okay, yeah. And, um, but one of the things
that I did at the beginning of that week was, I sent out an
email to all faculties saying we don't know if we're going to be
able to do physical reserves safely in the fall. We also
don't know if you or your students are going to be
physically on campus, which students will be sick and have
to stay home, which students aren't going to have access to
the library, which, you know, when we might we have to at some
point because of a hurricane or because of a second lockdown
move online. Let's think ahead and move to ebooks, as much as
we possibly can. As a result of that I have had many many
faculty reach out to me. Um, about it. And I would say, with
not much success in terms of because they're so set on their
textbook that, um, you know without some wiggle room, but
you know I do have an opportunity to say well we don't
have this book but we have this with this book already in this
like we don't have this informatics for healthcare but
we have Healthcare Informatics you know whatever. And so you
know it's it's been it's been a process and I think just the
more I put myself out there, um, you know to faculty. I'm also on
the curriculum committee so I've been able to work with, um,
we're doing our first inclusive access with Pearson, I was
involved in the negotiation of that and the biology faculty
originally came to me to have me help them. Negotiate through
that process to think about it. I tried to get them interested
in OER. The problem is, those are pretty high. What's the word
I'm looking for high enrollment courses and they really wanted
that easy. grading of homework and tests. They get with the
Pearson product. However, we negotiated a really good deal
for our students and it's going to be a course fee so it's going
to be easier for them to apply financial aid So, and I've been
involved in the whole process, getting together IT, the
bookstore all of that. So, um, I think that's pretty much it. Um,
oh so the one thing that I do I mentioned tonight I create this
spreadsheet and I do it in Google Sheets and Loyola has
Google suite for the whole campus our email was all Google
and we and so what I do, once I create that spreadsheet that I
shared with you is I share that with all the faculty, sometimes
with their department chair or Dean, definitely with the vice
provost, um, just to say like, Hey, this is what I'm doing, I'm
sharing this with your faculty member. Just so you know that if
they don't respond. I'm still doing it. And our Dean's and our
Vice Provost of course are so you know they already know about
this. And so I think then they are going to be much more
willing to nudge their faculty to get them to participate. So,
like I said, I'm relentless. I'm everywhere. And I just you know
i i share. I share the great news and I share the not so
great news you know, and, and I work with them wherever they
want to meet me.
Thank you, Laurie yes I was so curious about if using Google
Sheets had some unique advantage I know just working with you in
the past you all always use that. And so it's, I finally got
to you know see the inside advantage of using that in the
shareability of having it be a Google Sheet versus a
spreadsheet so that's really,
they all see each other's, and then like the vice provost sees
it and their Dean sees it and they see what everybody's
matches where.
Yeah, I love that. Um, so folks feel free we've got about five
minutes left, feel free to chime in with any questions either
unmuting yourself, or in the chat, just a couple of things
that I wanted to mention to you, Laurie. One thing I really like
about how you approach CDA is it is sort of holistically thinking
about your whole collection. So you're going title by title
through those adoptions that must take a tremendous amount of
time, but then the advantage is that you can do that work where
you see okay this is a related to Greek, what do we have in our
collection, what do we have in our databases that aligns with
that and so you're really thinking about collections and
services in a very holistic way that we're at a bigger school I
wouldn't be able to do that I would say takes me about a day,
and
I, and when I did the when I did the emergency one, I actually
stayed in my office, an extra week because it was so much
easier with my huge monitor at work, to be able to do that
work.
And I wonder if you could too just briefly touch on. So you
talked about you know faculty buying is great but the real
power is getting it in front of students eyes and key to that in
your experience is the LMS access. So could you just
confirm are you going into each course shell and adding
something to that course page or how what does it look like
yeah so in Blackboard, of course, like I said, we're
moving to Canvas. And it's going to maybe look a little bit
different but we in the library have administrative access to,
you know, like the back end of Blackboard, and so I what I've
been doing is I go in and under like they'll have their syllabus
and then they have course material and somewhere in there
I add in etextbook or etextbooks folder. And then in that folder
if they have multiple etextbooks, then I'll have like
a heading, where I say, These etextbooks were all provided
free of charge to you by the Monroe library or the Monroe
Library and Affordable Learning Louisiana, give a shout out to
LOUIS. And then I tell them how to log in from off campus give
them the proxy information, and then I tell them that if they
have any problems logging in, they should call the IT Help
Desk give them the number and the hours, and if they have any
other problems that they should email me with a screenshot, and
then under each one. I give them the link a citation. And then I
say like, this is a JSTOR ebook with downloadable chapter PDFs
or. This is an EBSCO eBook with some limitations where you can
email yourself 100 pages at a time if you need more than 100
pages. Here's how to do that. I've even done that with three
user three concurrent user where I've said, because we only have
three concurrent users here's how to get in, get your stuff
and get out and not lock it up for everybody else, and we've
made that work. But it's only because I can, you know, and
some, some faculty members will copy over from their previous
semesters. But what I've discovered in some cases, as
we've changed like how we would log into proxy and things like
that they haven't changed that so it's better sometimes for me
to just go in.
Great, thank you for sharing that process. I'm not sure how
many folks have access to their LMS in that way but it's really
helpful to get a sense of what that looks like and how you
approach that what all you include. So two minutes left for
those who don't
let me have well who don't necessarily want me to do that
for them Emily I send them all the text to put in.
Great. Yeah I know, um working at LSU we would, you know
advocate that faculty early on that they include it in their
syllabus. But the syllabus is not always the most visible
location. A place like that just right within the LMS is so much
more visible to students. So,
I also encourage faculty who have initially adopted a
textbook that then matched, and we added to email from the LMS,
to tell their students that we are providing an ebook version
of their textbook and that they don't have to buy it, to let
them know, because that's one of the few ways that faculty can
just sort of email everybody in the class and I just encourage
them to both put it in the, in the,
in the syllabus and to email their students as an
announcement to let them know. Great.
Great. Well, we are, we timed that really well, um, any, were
there any last minute questions from folks that I'm not giving
time to, I think, I think we, I think we did everything. It
looks like. Everyone got a lot of good information so thank
you, Casey Jim Damian Michael and Michelle and Laurie This was
so helpful for me to get a lot of clear information and ideas
of what folks are doing, I feel like I have a full page of messy
notes, things that I'll be including and thinking about so
I appreciate you all sharing that today and thanks for
joining us. Everyone wishing you a safe and dry afternoon.
Thanks Emily.
Good seeing you. Bye everyone.