This week’s readings bring us a variety of perspectives and thoughts on the use of Open Educational Resources and Open Textbooks.  Robin DeRosa, a professor at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, discusses the multiple considerations in adopting Open Education Resources in her essay, “OER: Bigger Than Affordability.” While DeRosa points out that OERs can be an economical choice for the college/university classroom, she also challenges educators to rigorously question the concept of open. DeRosa reminds us that OERs are not just about cost but they are intrinsically tied to issues of social justice and who has access to knowledge and who does not. DeRosa also underscores the relationship between OERs and technology and how this intrinsic relationship can actually detract from the openness of a given resource. As all of us scramble to flip our courses to distance-learning formats, how are we considering these challenges while keeping in mind that not all of our students will have access to the necessary technologies to continue their educations this semester?

A pioneer of the Open Textbook movement, Rajiv Jhangiani offers his thoughts on how faculty view OERs in his essay, “A Faculty Perspective on Open Textbooks.” Jhangiani offers possible faculty perspectives on the moral, financial and pedagogical benefits of adopting open textbooks in the higher ed classroom, highlighting the flexibility and effectiveness of open textbooks. While advocating for the use of open texts, Jhangiani also highlights another important issue related to open textbooks – faculty labor. The development of open texts is largely left to faculty, often with little to no institutional support.  While administrators frequently support the idea of OERs and Open Texts, colleges and universities need to create more effective systems of support to assist faculty in the creation of OERs and supporting materials.

With the work of DeRosa and Jhangiani in mind, and with our work this week to create accessible courses for our students during this unprecedented time, I wanted to leave you with some questions to ponder for our virtual meeting on Monday:

• How are OERs and open texts that much more important during times like this? How would OERs/open text aid courses that need to move online quickly?
• What does “open” really mean when we talk about OERs and open textbooks? What are the multiple levels of considerations needed when faculty are trying to create something that is truly open?
• Lastly, and related to the closing of Jhangiani’s essay, take five to ten minutes to imagine what the ideal open textbook would look like for one of your courses? What is the content? How is it structured? How is it accessible? And what voices are represented therein? Taking time to envision these considerations may help us one day create them.

* Please note that the Salter reading is currently unavailable online.

I hate Blackboard, but for the time being I’m using it with my students in my undergrad Education class anyway. Our readings and class discussions, especially last week, gave me a lot of very helpful strategies I can use, and am using now, to try to make Blackboard work as well as possible for my students. If you have any practical tips for what you do (or don’t do) to make Blackboard actually work well as a learning tool, I would love it if we could gather and share them here.

Meanwhile, I’m especially thankful to Ayo for the reminder that the best way to find out what works (and what doesn’t) for students is to ask them, so I did that today. By doing so I learned something very useful that I thought might be helpful to others:

Apparently when students are using Blackboard on mobile devices they can’t access any Word documents or PowerPoints that are uploaded. However, they can access PDFs. I didn’t know that – and had uploaded all kinds of assignment guidelines, my syllabus, etc. that were either in Word or PowerPoint. So, now I’ll be converting all of those to PDFs and re-uploading them – and making sure I convert to PDF any other files I might share in the future.

As I mentioned in class, another strategy I use is NOT to require students to submit any assignments on Blackboard – they’re required just to e-mail them directly to me. This seems to work well for everyone, including me.

Apologies if any of this is very obvious to some or all of you – I’m guessing that I may not be the only one who is new at this and still figuring it out. Thanks!

In Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, John Bean discusses the link between writing assignments and critical thinking, and provides numerous suggestions for instructors to incorporate the two into their own courses. Students should be seen as more than just an empty repository for us to dump all of our course content into; we should also focus on developing students’ skills in engaging with the material, thinking critically about it, and considering other sides or opinions to an argument or theory presented. Writing, Bean argues, allows for this process of critical thinking to occur (including through writing and revising multiple drafts of an assignment), and a final written product is evidence of the critical thinking process. Bean also discusses the importance of including writing assignments that are more exploratory and personal, as opposed to only teaching professional, academic writing. Incorporating different kinds of writing assignments can help students find a writing style that works for them with while giving them experience with forms of writing that they are less comfortable with. Different students may excel at and benefit more from one type of writing assignment over another; there isn’t a best or one-style-fits-all assignment that can facilitate the development of critical thinking, and these differences and different ways of developing critical thinking skills should be taken into account as we develop our courses.

With this in mind, I have some questions for us to consider:

• Do you include writing assignments in your course? If not, does one of the misconceptions about writing and critical thinking prevent you from doing so? If so, do you agree with Bean that these misconceptions are actually misconceptions?
• Bean states that “teachers need to articulate where they stand with regard to traditional academic writing” (50). Where do you stand? Do you feel it is more important for students to complete more academic writing assignments in your course, or do you emphasize more personal or expressive writing?
• In Chapter 2, Bean discusses that college students focus more on right answers than on making an argument and defending it while considering counterpoints to their chosen argument. Do you think that high school adequately prepares students to begin thinking beyond being right, or that high schools should place more emphasis on the development of critical thinking and writing skills for all students? Should developing these skills be primarily on the shoulders of undergraduate instructors?
• What modes of assessment do you use in your classes? Do you rely on primarily one method to make up the bulk of a student’s grade, or do you use multiple kinds of assessments and assignments? Do the same students succeed on all the assessments you use, or is there a noticeable difference in students’ work and ability across assignments? Do you take students’ differences into account when designing your course?
• Though Bean focuses on the struggles of college students, we as graduate students spend a significant chunk of time writing. Do you face any struggles with your writing and writing process, and how do you overcome them?

Hi everyone, I’m starting this thread so we have a place to share any websites or other projects and platforms that we find in our travels – including any that might be directly or indirectly related to the research or project concept that one of is is working on, or just any that are interesting or inspiring… I will share a few I’ve found below, and would love it if you would do the same!

             This week’s readings addressed effective pedagogy and practical teaching/learning methods. In A Hippocratic Oath for Ed Tech, Audrey Watters compares medical professions to educational ones. Although the Hippocratic Oath is not a legal document, it is a widely known set of ethics that medical professionals are expected to abide by. The main tenet of the oath is to “do no harm”. When we approach education, there are also many ethical questions we must address. Watters writes about the political and economic power sewn into the educational-technology sphere, however those who wish to teach should generally agree with the idea of “doing no harm”. Teaching is a selfless and labor intensive profession, and regardless of the amount of money available in ed-tech, I wonder how many incentives are actually obtainable by the majority of CUNY faculty. In medicine, many doctors have the opportunity to profit from the bribes and coercion of tech companies, and we hear stories of doctors straying from the Hippocratic Oath all the time.

• If we were to adopt a sort of oath for educators, would you see this as being effective and respected by the faculty at CUNY? I don’t know what the statistics are here on instructors sponsored by Pearson, Google Certified Educators, and the like that Watters mentioned.
• What are some messages in the Hippocratic Oath that are important in your own education or pedagogy? For me I feel it is essential to be able to admit when I do not know something, rely on and respect the knowledge of colleagues, use warmth, sympathy, and understanding, respect the privacy of students and treat them as people rather than statistics or numbers on a “chart”, and fulfill my obligation to all students regardless of their abilities.
• What would an educational oath need to include, especially here at CUNY?

             We also read Bill Pelz’s three principles of effective online pedagogy. These were to let the students do (most of) the work, use interactivity, and strive for presence. Educators are encouraged to provide tasks for students to take the lead, interact with others, and establish presence through discussion. The presence could be social, cognitive, or teaching. Mainly Pelz seems concerned with facilitating the class through discussions either between students, with the instructor, or online. There are many examples laid out in the article of activities that fit the model.

• This was written in 2004. I was wondering if anyone thought these techniques would be useful in their own courses. Do you already use or participate in some of these activities?

             Ryan Cordell recounts an early teaching experience with the hindsight that his proposal was rightfully turned down. He writes “How not to Teach Digital Humanities” using his own experiences. The article is mainly concerned with how to present the idea of digital humanities to undergrads who aren’t concerned with the meta-arguments and semantics of academia. He argues that we should find a new term for Digital Humanities, as these two words no longer accurately describe the study. In addition, both the title and the content often turn students away. Cordell suggests starting slowly, with small increments, scaffolding to ease students in, and thinking locally to make the matter relatable.

• The other day I read a sign at City College calling for a student action meeting to discuss the inadequacies of everything from curriculum to MTA schedules. Do you find that CUNY students aren’t interested in the politics of academia? As Cordell says, they may find the topics of digital humanities interesting if they were introduced to it in small doses.

             I enjoyed the One Feminist Online Media Mantrafesto from Feminist Online Spaces. The “mantra” and “manifesto” essentially emphasizes the need for access to facilitate a long chain of other desires. These include, but are not limited to democracy, safe spaces, and visibility. The list starts and ends with access.

• Is accessibility the proper starting point to create progress? This assessment seems to be fair. We need to start somewhere so why not here. Also, how can we facilitate more accessibility here at CUNY?

Finally, I just wanted to provide a space to talk about the Digital Sustainability lab we had on Monday because I feel like we rarely have an outlet to discuss it, since this is as good a place as any. While I did not find a lot of what we reviewed to be very relevant to my current project, I was wondering if anyone else had concrete plans concerning the preservation of their digital project? What are your experiences using archive.org (if any)? Also, if you are coding HTML/CSS, python, and etc, which of the tools that Stephen showed did you find most and least helpful (archive, bagit, webaim, emulation, WARC, etc)? I’ve barely gotten started learning how I might develop code, so a lot of those resources were too advanced for me, but I am interested to learn what works for others.