Boise State’s Open Educational Resources Group invites you to join them for three learning opportunities for the fall semester. The group is a community of practice that includes instructors, technologists, instructional designers and librarians focused on open education resources, commonly abbreviated OER, and practices. Open education practices include the “resources, tools and practices that are free of legal, financial and technical barriers and can be used, shared and adapted in the digital environment.”
The goal of the OER Group is to provide an informal opportunity for practitioners and those interested in this work to learn from each other and experts in the field. To be notified about future opportunities and receive emails about open education please request to join the Boise State OER Group.
Questions? Email oer@boisestate.edu.
Designing for open: exploring OER for instructors
Abbey Elder, Open Access & Scholarly Communication librarian, Iowa State University
Thursday, Nov. 10 at 12 noon
Are you concerned about the impact that rising course material costs have on your students? Have you ever wanted to explore alternative options, but didn’t know where to start? In this webinar, you will be introduced to open educational resources (OER), free and openly licensed materials that you can adapt to fit your course’s needs. In addition to learning what OER are, participants will leave with a greater understanding of how to find, evaluate and integrate OER into a course. For those interested in learning more, the presenter will share additional resources, including their book, The OER Starter Kit, a handbook for faculty interested in OER.
Please register in advance for the Nov. 10 meeting.
Building accessible OER
Sherena Huntsman, assistant professor, Department of Writing Studies, Boise State University
Friday, Nov. 18 at 10 a.m.
Join Sherena Huntsman in this demonstration on the application of digital accessibility practices. Dr. Huntsman’s work is grounded in centering the student experience with legal policy standards to understand the practical application of accessibility within the development of course materials. Discussion will include the use of alt-text, text description, captions, word processing tools and student inquiry. Participants will identify areas for consideration and learn tools to implement accessibility strategies into their digital course materials, including OER.
Please register in advance for the Nov. 18 meeting.
Revising and remixing, oh my! How to better serve student learning with OER
Amber Hoye, director, World Languages Resource Center, Boise State University
Sharon Westbrook, French instructor at Riverglen Junior High
Brittney Gehrig, lecturer of French, Boise State University
Madelynn Ruhter, French instructor at Capital High School
Thursday, Dec. 1 at 3 p.m.
This past August, a team of Boise State instructors and Idaho K-12 instructors published the first of four French open educational resource (OER) textbooks, FI: An Interactive Workbook for French 101. Available as a complete curriculum, the team not only revised and remixed an existing OER text, but also created significant ancillary materials including assessments, task-based activities, cultural reflections, slide decks and embedded authentic materials. In this session, the group will explore how they approached project management of this large scale endeavor and prioritized incorporating inclusive and multicultural representation while eliminating student costs.