It goes without saying that the library is changing in the new age of digital content; after all, libraries have led the way with cloud computing, moving content to remote storage before we had such a cute term for it. As colleges and universities become increasingly (or entirely) digital and cloud based, we’re beginning to see the broader implications for faculty, administration and librarians. With digital content accessible from anywhere, the traditional library may be going the way of the reference book.

Let’s take a look at how the university library is evolving and what that means for different university staff members.

The web has displaced the very idea of what constitutes a library, let alone a first-class library. It can no longer be defined by the number and type of books it holds—in fact, I doubt a library’s primary location will be a physical one.

The doomed print encyclopedia is a useful example. Traditionally, librarians have been responsible for purchasing sets of encyclopedias every few years. This makes them the gatekeeper for reference materials, the library a storage unit for large sets of books and the institution responsible for a large, infrequent expenditure.

However, we’re quickly adopting a pay-per-view model that depends on content stored remotely. This has implications for how institutions purchase content and the role of librarians. Though funding issues vary from school to school, librarians—whether at your local public library or at a large university—are becoming information sherpas, guiding faculty and students through the deluge of multimedia content.

With easy access to digital authoring and media production tools, faculty are creating an increasing amount of that content. They will depend on the library to manage and store that content, while still depending on the library to discover materials. This puts a burden on libraries and librarians to catalog and sort an ever-increasing variety of educational content for teaching and learning.

The move towards a virtual library raises questions for administration and IT departments, as well. Administrators now have to think about libraries as a place to store and access educational content beyond the lifespan of any one LMS or tool. Plus, IT staff and librarians must begin working closer together on tasks such as standardizing searches and citation, as well as the sticky, complex intellectual copyright issues raised by the web.

Though we all love our stately university libraries, a move towards cloud-based libraries is happening rapidly, with the proliferation of digitized content, quality web-based, licensed content and open educational resources. How do you see the library’s role shifting in terms of content creation, discovery, sharing, distribution and preservation? Sound off in the comments.

What made Northeast Lakeview College decide to implement the online library instruction pilot program? Is there a specific group of students you are testing this program with?

Our college and instruction program are both growing rapidly, but our number of librarians is not!

We targeted a particular group of students who are enrolled in SDEV 0370 – a student development course that is required for students who are enrolled in two or more developmental (non-college credit) courses. Students who do not score high enough on placement tests may be required to enroll in developmental Math, English, and/or Reading courses.

SDEV 0370 is a semester-long course designed to help students succeed in college. The students produce a career related assignment – paper/presentation – and the focus of our instruction has been to teach students how to access and use a variety of resources to use for this assignment.

Our traditional instruction for this course was a “one-shot” session of either 50 or 75 minutes. We felt that online instruction would be more effective, providing the opportunity for the student to move at their own pace and to repeat material as often as needed. Our face-to-face instruction is also hindered by the time limit and there is material that we simply don’t have time to cover, such as citation and plagiarism. We were able to include an online module on those very important topics.

In addition, these students do come to the library for traditional instruction in their English and Reading developmental courses, so they are able to receive instruction using both online and face-to-face methods.

What learning materials are provided to students through the online library instruction?

The learning materials provided through SDEV 0370 online tutorial are videos (with captions), guides, links, quizzes, and outside tutorials (from CLIP).  Not all of these are in the SoftChalk modules.  Some are on the LibGuide that houses the SoftChalk modules.

Which features in SoftChalk have been the most useful in creating the online modules?

I personally loved the activities and quizzes provided.  I found them easy to create and a great way to make the modules more interactive.  The quizzes could be given throughout the module or at the end.  I also loved how easy it was to create modules in SoftChalk.  You could pick your template, add your content, add some quizzes and activities, and then publish.  It was the easiest authoring solution that I have worked with so far.

Are there any benefits of the face-to-face instruction that you think the students are missing out on by using the online library instruction?

There are two disadvantages:

First, students who come into the library for instruction have the ability to meet with a librarian, so they can put a name to a face and see us as a resource to help them be successful – we’re friendly and we answer questions!

To offset that, the students using the modules have had a 20-minute “getting started” demo where a librarian goes to their classroom, introduced the modules, demonstrates how to access them, and gives students the ability to ask questions.

Second, students who have face-to-face instruction benefit by actually coming INTO the library so they can see it as a place where students can gather – for study but also for some socialization.

However, since these SDEV 0370 students come into the library for instruction with their other developmental courses, they do get that exposure to the NLC Library.

When the pilot program is over, do you expect Northeast Lakeview College library will continue the online instruction, move back to face-to-face model or offer both options?

We HOPE that all sections of SDEV 0370 move to using the online modules. We are presenting our findings to college administration on this pilot program in the second week of May and will have more information then.

To learn more about the online library instruction pilot program view the recorded Innovators Webinar – Online vs. F2F Library Instruction – Assessing the Differences.

OCC was one of the first community colleges in the United States to develop Anatomy and Physiology (A&P), biology, chemistry, microbiology and other science courses totally online. The content and laboratory were directed via distance learning.

In 2003, OCC was awarded a $458,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to develop a One Day per Week Nursing Program which allowed students to attend clinical training one day per week while the didactic portion was delivered online. This opened up nursing to a whole new group of students who were limited by time, family commitments, work or distance. Almost immediately we recognized that the success of the One Day per Week Nursing Program would be limited if we required students to come to campus to take their prerequisite science courses. We needed to put science totally online.

I credit OCC’s president Dr. Jon Larson for having the vision to place OCC’s science courses totally online. Dr. Larson had returned from a conference where he saw a Colorado-based company, now called Hands-On Labs, demonstrate LabPaqs- lab kits that students could purchase and use right in their own homes. This was the missing piece we needed to solve our problem!

LabPaqs provided rigorous scientific experiments, addressed safety issues, allowed students to work individually which provides a greater depth of learning, were easy to use, and came with a lab manual at no extra cost. The bottom line was that although we had the expertise to develop online courses the laboratory portion was a challenge. Adding LabPaqs provided everything we needed to offer laboratory based laboratory courses completely online.

The decision to use the home based laboratory kit instead of a virtual laboratory experience was also based on concerns expressed by many four year colleges and universities.  Transferring an Anatomy and Physiology course is much easier if it includes a hands-on laboratory experience. The home based kit allows students to hone their critical thinking skills via the trial and error that is manifest in laboratory practice.

Hands-On Labs, Inc. had been producing LabPaqs for variety scientific disciplines and supplying them to a number of online science programs in higher education. We could now bring a total of 14 online science courses with a laboratory offered completely online and offer a complete Associates of Science degree in general studies with a concentration in science totally online.

At the time we started we were using WebCT which gradually became BlackBoard. The content was largely MS Word files and our delivery was largely huge outlines which were “all text.” Students feedback indicated that the content was boring and lacked interaction. Dr. Brown said that SoftChalk was the key to making content interactive and fun. We discovered SoftChalk was an easy way to place content online in an interactive format. I insert an interactive learning game at the bottom of each page to reinforce learning. Our students are from the MTV Generation, and they do expect interaction in the online environment.

The drag and drop exercise that provides a favorable sound when students drop the object into the right box, providing immediate feedback.

Crosswords are also a popular tool, allowing students to hone many different skills. Solving the puzzle requires the use of new vocabulary and terminology in the process. Even a simple misspelling matters, and students also learn to make inferences, evaluate choices, and arrive at conclusions.

Media, especially video, is the perfect medium for students who are auditory or visual learners. Dr. Brown said that he found that placing small video clips strategically throughout the online course enriches the learning experience for the students. It is so easy to insert a video in SoftChalk. I can shoot a short ‘talking head’ video, post it to YouTube and embed it almost immediately into SoftChalk. Publishers are providing excellent videos with their text books and they can be easily imported into online courses.

Both the use of SoftChalk and Hands-On Labs LabPaqs were the key to our success in becoming an East coast powerhouse in providing science totally online. As a result, we have attracted students from throughout the country, as well as deployed military students serving overseas.

To learn more about the online science courses at Ocean County College, view the recording of Dr. Jim Brown’s Innovators in Online Learning Session.

Educators have traditionally placed a premium on their Intellectual Property when creating textbooks and other learning and teaching materials. How does that fit with the OER agenda?

The short answer is “it doesn’t,” but I have to question the premise that there is a tradition of educators hiding their materials and copyrighting everything they write or create. Certainly there are some who refuse to provide lecture notes to students, and many more who make their living through publishing materials, but the vast majority of educators are actually quite willing to share effective learning tools and strategies that they have created. It used to be called “collegiality.”

When I first got started as a college instructor, I can’t even remember how many of my fellow faculty freely offered me samples of their syllabi, lesson plans and other resources. One way of looking at the OER movement is we’ve taken this tradition of collegiality out of the hallways and lunchrooms on campus and moved it to the Internet, broadening the participation exponentially as we did so.

OER is not trying to steal the intellectual property of educators, and educators who want to continue their relationship with textbook publishers are free to do so just as other educators can’t tell me not to post my curriculum under a Creative Commons license and allow others to access and tailor the material for their students. I think there is this fear that somehow the Open Education movement will be the end of traditional textbook publishing, or that all faculty will be required to give away their content, but that simply is not the agenda, and I doubt it is even possible seeing how entrenched many campuses are in the traditional model that means that learning only occurs with expensive textbooks and lecturers.

What incentives are there for educators to make their creative efforts available as OER?

What incentives are there for us to write a chapter of a textbook? There is the financial reward, but if you ask most educators, they would say that a larger incentive is the prestige of being published, the feedback and respect from their peers, and the satisfaction in knowing that their work will continue on and become part of a larger body of knowledge and learning.

For example, I have created open courses as part of several grant projects. These were essentially ‘work for hire’ contracts, where I was given a fixed sum for the curriculum with the understanding that it was going to be distributed under a Creative Commons license: similar to contributing to a textbook. However, I have also worked on projects where I have said that I was going to develop the content without using any copyrighted material, specifically, so that could become an open resource. I was still compensated for my design and development, and there were no additional financial incentives to make the work open. In fact, in a few spots it made my work a bit trickier, but it was worth the effort to have the content shared so I can get more feedback and continue to improve my material, and to learn how others are using and adapting the content.

This is one thing I would like to ask to anyone reading the blog – if you use OER and you can, tell the original author! This is a key part of making the open education movement effective and growing our community.

Of course the biggest incentive to participate in OER is to benefit the students; that is why I got involved in OER. I saw how students were struggling to meet the rising cost of tuition and books, the mounting debt from student loans, and the frustration they experienced at trying to buy books online from discount sellers, only to get the books late and have it effect their grades. One book may not have that big of an impact on a student’s life, but as more and more educators opt for open texts we are going to see a significant impact. For example, on my campus they estimated that last semester alone students saved over $100,000 in textbook costs in the courses where the faculty decided to use open texts and materials.

How does Creative Commons licensing fit into the OER picture?

I don’t think this would work without Creative Commons licensing. In fact, I know that I have only been given permission to use some materials because I could say that I was going to publish under a CC-by license. Educators respect the license and trust that the philosophy that drives those who use CC licenses also keeps everyone honest. The license has integrity because those who use it have integrity and we are good at policing ourselves.

 Why did you choose out of copyright materials like a Sherlock Holmes novel to begin your work and why did you decide to make that available as OER?

I have designed several courses for reading and writing instruction, from Pre-Composition level all the way through Basic Skills. These kinds of courses require that the students have to read, and read quite a lot actually! There were several approaches I could have taken. I could have had the students do searches for online non-fiction essays following specific criteria, or, I could use content that was in the public domain. I needed more control over what the students would use as reading material. Because the content was going to have such a wide distribution, I had to ensure the outcomes of the lessons would always work. I decided to go with a fixed text.

I did some research and found that detective fiction is particularly suited for teaching critical reading skills because the students were highly motivated by the stories, and because they naturally begin to use deductive thinking strategies – like those used by the characters in the stories. I also wanted reading material that was as culturally neutral as possible, and thought that 1885 London was as unfamiliar to an 18-year old student from Washington as it would be to a 40-year old student from Lebanon. The stories that I selected also allowed for a multi-cultural approach, as gender roles were quite different and surprising, as well as discussions on race and culture because London was a town full of immigrants who quite naturally make appearances in Doyle’s stories.

The project I am currently developing is an “Indigenous Peoples Reader” that uses folk stories and myths from the original peoples from around the world. About one-third of the content is from the North American continent, but I also have stories from several countries on the African continent, throughout Asia, and the Hawaiian Island and Australia.

Do you think teaching online makes it easier to find and use OER materials?

Again, the short answer is “no,” but I don’t believe that finding and using OER materials is particularly difficult for anyone. I say that, but when I got started four years ago there was almost no material for developmental-level reading and writing instruction available. The content that was out there was designed for high school students, and I did take advantage of much of that and redesigning it for an older student population.  When I hear people say that they have a hard time finding something, I think what they mean is they want something that is all packaged and neat like a textbook with a CD full of supplemental materials. The secret is that we (educators) have become a bit lazy thanks to the textbook publishers and have grown accustomed to teaching the book. OER is rarely that tidy and wrapped up with a bow, but with a little work, instructors can create learning materials that are customized to the specific needs of their students.

Are you using OER? Do you have any questions for Jacqui? We’d love to hear from you in the comment section!

The widespread use of Learning Management Systems (LMS), has led the transformation of course materials from print to digital. Unfortunately, digital content delivered in the LMS isn’t always more rich or engaging than print materials — think PDF files, Word Docs and PowerPoints. Plus, the typical online course today is still designed and published for use as a single course, which means it isn’t easy to re-use or repurpose the content in multiple courses or contexts.

But digital learning content is continuing to evolve, and the Next Generation promises to be more rich, dynamic and engaging than its ancestors. I think now is the time for educators to begin transitioning to “next gen” learning content. And here’s why…

Today’s students are demanding more interactive and engaging content that provides them with a dynamic learning experience. Next gen content is more robust and interactive by design, rich with media and based on sound instructional design. It enables easier creation, management and reuse of content because it is:

• Granular, consisting of small chunks that can be adapted and deployed in a variety of formats and contexts.
• Engaging and modifiable, supporting personalization of content, and providing detailed results tracking — all of which results in more effective learning for students.
• Portable and reusable, with a life independent of how it is organized, sequenced, and delivered in a particular context.
• Searchable — carefully categorized and cataloged to make it easy to find.

This type of content empowers educators, encouraging them to collaborate and innovate. Plus, next gen content provides educators with greater control over the organization and delivery of learning materials.

Nutrition Support Metabolic Stress lesson created by Kristin Bartholomew of Valencia Community College.

Most importantly, next gen content engages students meaningfully and effectively. Researchers at Concordia University in Montreal carried out a meta-analysis of hundreds of studies in which distance education students were engaged in three types of interaction: student–content, student–student and student–teacher. The studies were analyzed to determine which type of interaction made the greatest difference to student performance.

The results were clear: increasing student–content interaction had the greatest effect (Bernard, R.M., P.C Abrami, E . Borokhovski, C.A.Wade, R.Tamim, et al. 2009). That is, learners’ interaction with content made the most significant impact on their performance.

With ever improving content creation and sharing tools, it is becoming easier and easier to make that sort of impact on student performance. We are moving towards a world where textbooks are not the default educational content, freeing educators to choose exactly the type of content that addresses specific pedagogies, standards and student needs.

Are you using “next gen” content in your course?  Please share your experience in using more engaging, interactive content to support more effective student learning in the online classroom.

 What is Teaching Well Online and why was it founded?

Teaching Well Online is not really a program at Niagara County Community College (NCCC), but it is the foundation for everything we do to support our eLearning initiatives as they relate to faculty development. I like to think that everything we do or plan is designed to add to our recipe for Teaching Well Online. Every event, professional development, or communication my eLearning department sends to faculty is meant to support the concept, pedagogy, and best practices for “Teaching Well Online at NCCC.”  If you visit our blog, you will see that the type of content we post, tweet, or archive, all relates to our T.W.O. recipe. Our blog “Beyond the Bricks” is dedicated to learning innovation and best practices for T.W.O..

How many lessons or courses are provided to support eLearning faculty through Teaching Well Online?

Our eLearning department supports faculty teaching web enhanced (no reduction of seat time), blended, and online courses. We have over 100 online courses, 30 blended courses, and about 300 web enhanced course sections to support.

I know you use the SUNY Learning Network (SLN), Quality Matters (QM) and the Community of Inquiry (COI) model. How do these three initiatives come together in the course development and design process?  

We are fortunate to be one of the 64 campuses within the State University of New York System (SUNY). The SUNY system offers each of the 64 campuses the opportunity to be a member of the SUNY Learning Network. Through this membership we get help desk, applications, marketing, and education services support. It’s the education services through the SLN that is key to our faculty development success. They provide our faculty the basic training, course design templates based on the COI framework and QM, and faculty resources to support our faculty and eLearning program. NCCC has been a member of the SLN since 2000.

The SLN created it’s course design and development process back in the mid to late 90’s. This model was strongly driven by using the Community of Inquiry Framework. Years later Quality Matters became the most popular evaluation rubric for assessing the design of quality online and blended courses. When viewing the QM rubric you will see that many of the essential standards and rubric annotations include components of the COI framework for designing quality online courses. We use the QM rubric to assess our course design, but since the QM rubric solely looks at the design of courses we use a modified version that included items from the COI framework.

During my innovators session I will provide more details on how we are a part of the SLN and how the education services team is critical to the success of quality course design and faculty development at NCCC.  The collaboration and networking with instructional designers from other participating SLN campuses is really the key to our success. Our SLN Ning is where we share what we know!

We have an excellent faculty model we follow through the SLN, but we are still required to provide faculty development and this is where our lessons in SoftChalk are extremely helpful. We can allow anyone to go through the lessons as they are LMS independent and can be accessed without authentication.

NCCC has shared many of their guides/lessons on SoftChalk CONNECT. Are these available for other schools to use and edit as they please?

Here at NCCC we love using open education resources to support our online efforts and are more than happy to share our content with others. Yes, please feel free to use and edit any of our lessons.  I think you will find our  student success eLearning orientation, Hybrid/Blended course design process, Teaching Well Online at NCCC, and our  NCCC Easy Guides to Accessibility useful. They are all offered through SoftChalk CONNECT under the key word NCCC.

Want to learn more about Teaching Well Online? watch Lisa’s archived Innovators Session, connect with Lisa on twitter @ldubuc, and visit the NCCC eLearning Blog.

What is an “interactive article”? 

Interactivity is about a kind of give-and-take between readers, the writer(s), and the content in the interactive article.

I think of v.1 or traditional academic articles as text-based and fairly linear and sequential.  If there are images, they are b/w and 2D based.  Online articles (v.2) are those that may include some hyperlinks to sources, and these may have color or even more sophisticated imagery. I think of “interactive articles” (v.3) as those that integrate a range of interactivity (immersive games, experiential photo albums or slideshows, interactive maps and timelines, 3D visuals, simulations, and wiki and blog augmentation).  These types of articles have only been enabled with the advances in the Internet and the authoring tools to enable people to create various types of contents.

Such interactive articles actively elicit participation from the audience and integrates that into the article and related projects. This opens up possibilities for enriched reading and innovation experiences.

Why should educators consider transforming a traditional academic article into an interactive article?

Interactive articles enable an author or an authoring team to create a rich reader experience—to compete for their attention with engaging content and reading / learning opportunities. Authors are able to engage multiple audiences simultaneously.

Individual authors and authoring teams that are sufficiently situated to create such interactive articles should give this a whirl.  Creating these offers cool opportunities to collaborate and to raise awareness of the project.  However, I will say that these do involve a fair amount of work.

What are the specific features of an interactive article that most benefit the reader?

That’s a great question!  I think different parts of an article have different salience for different readers. Digital contents are shaped and targeted to a certain readership, and when that connection is created correctly, then sometimes certain features spark.

My favorite parts of interactive articles have to do with data visualizations and analytics.  Those may be integrated using various public tools or software, and they are part of the narrative of the article.  I also like parts that force tougher analysis—like case studies or simulations or complex games (which have one guessing at the algorithms on the back end).

Can you explain what it means to go beyond hyperlinking to immersive “extreme layering” and more complex and integrative experiences?

To me, I think of interactive articles with “extreme layering” of experiences to be those that are more demanding (and yet more supportive) of readers.  One aspect of a layer could be a storytelling structure that encapsulates the learning.  There can be mysteries or problem-solving aspects to an interactive article.  Maybe virtual readers are asked to collaborate around design features (see the “Participatory Design” article link at the end).  Or there may be an outdoors aspect to an article, which uses mobile devices in “augmented reality” real spaces.

There are ways to build sort of a macro-level scaffolding of ideas to engage readers…and with the mix of technologies, various authoring tools may create certain integrative effects that enrich the learning. SoftChalk 7 is one of those tools that really expands the toolkit for the creation of such contents and delivering it in a way that coheres.  Another benefit is that it enables the building of accessibility (with alt-tagging of images and the ability to include transcripts of video and audio files, for example) into the digital objects and experiences.  So one can go multi-sensory while maintaining the informational value of the interactive experiences.

Why is it important to manage expectations when creating an interactive article?

For people who’ve never gone public with a publication before, there are usually outsized expectations of what publishing will do for their lives.  Publishing is only publishing.  It involves some risks if people aren’t careful about intellectual property, proper discretion, and privacy protections. Authors have to be very fastidious about documentation and rights releases.  Of course, with open-source resources and Creative Commons and GNU licensures, a lot more is out in the world with generous releases (for articles that may also be open-source).

In addition, the process of working with various editors, publishers, and peer reviewers can be very challenging especially for those who have a huge reputation to protect (never a good idea) or a huge ego on the line (an even worse idea).

What steps should be taken to create an interactive article and what components are critical to the creation of the interactivity?

An article is all about having a logical and coherent structure and smooth transitions.  That’s all easier said than done particularly in a digital environment which offers so many opportunities for jumping from one concept or experience to another.  The transitions have to be smooth but also fit the digital realm, so it’s not like you’re just transferring v.1 standards to interactive articles.  In the presentation “Building Interactive Articles for Peer Reviewed Journals with SoftChalk 7 on Feb. 22, I focused on nine steps.

1. Inspiration and Vision
2. Political Environment
3. Available Resources
4. Topic Suitability for an Interactive Article
5. Planning and Execution
6. Alpha and Beta Testing
7. Shopping the Digital Manuscript
8. Addressing Peer Reviews
9. Revision and Launch

As for components critical to the creation of the interactivity, that depends a lot on what one is trying to convey…and the context of the article.  The point is to highlight important ideas or knowledge or skills with digital experiences.  It’s all about the value-added part.  Sometimes, it may make sense to create a virtual team to try to co-design something.  Other times, it may make sense to build an immersive game.  Maybe a digital story is the right way to approach interactivity in another circumstance.  This is all about having the “right” components that may be created given the practical limits of the team and the interactive article topic and the workplace context.

Please share with us some examples of the interactive articles you have published.

• “Creating an Online Global Health Course and Game” by Brent A. Anders, Deborah J. Briggs, Shalin Hai-Jew, Zachary J. Caby, and Mary Werick
• “The Participatory Design of a (Today and) Future Digital Entomology Lab” by Shalin Hai-Jew

Shalin’s Innovator presentation, “Building Interactive Articles for Peer Reviewed Journals with SoftChalk 7″ occurred on Feb. 22.

Click here to view the webinar recording. / Click here to view the Prezi Presentation.

Many of us involved in e-learning and education are very excited about one very big idea: open education resources, or OER. It’s easy to find out who’s making them, where to find them and how to use them. However, it can be harder to articulate why your average teacher or professor should be as excited as we are. For years, we have been dependent on textbooks, learning management systems and lesson plans. Why add OER into the mix?

OER are educational materials that can be reused, shared and (sometimes) remixed to support teaching and learning. That means that they either exist in the public domain or use an alternative license, such as Creative Commons. This includes all types of learning content, including e-textbooks, lesson plans, videos, entire courses or the SoftChalk learning objects you find in SoftChalk CONNECT.

It’s a simple concept, but a radical one. We’ve worked in closed educational systems for eons. Schools have their own curricula, and textbooks conveniently package the knowledge needed to supplement lessons. Courses are only for the students at any given university, and copyrights keep us from integrating materials fully into our learning experiences.

Ever-expanding access to OER is helping create a new reality in education. We have an opportunity to move from these closed systems, working around one another, to a truly dynamic educational ecosystem. In a recent SoftChalk webinar, Catherine Casserly, CEO of Creative Commons did an excellent job of articulating exactly why educators should create and use OER:

• OER reduce transaction costs. Textbooks and other learning materials require educators to navigate copyright laws on a day-to-day basis. On the other hand, OER are either in the public domain or are clearly marked with who has a right to use them and how. In addition, instructors save time in selecting materials, since OER are already sorted into usable “gems.”
• OER can make planning and teaching more efficient. Every year, thousands of teachers in thousands of classrooms teach the same material. For example, how many universities offer “Introduction to Statistics?” We can use OER to reduce redundancy, giving instructors access to the best elements they need to create a quality course.
• OER recognize that learning is dynamic. Learning is hardly a static process, yet many classrooms use textbooks that relate the same stories about history the same way, no matter the interests or abilities of individual learners. Sometimes our very “facts” change; consider planetary cast-out Pluto. Access to OER not only allows instructors to respond to such changes, but also to respond to the needs of their students.
• OER are scalable. Unlike textbooks or packaged learning materials, OER can be expanded, remixed and reused for maximum impact. This is because copyleft materials are flexible by design. They encourage reuse and repurposing, whereas copyright materials actively discourage such uses. Plus, OER repositories and referral services make it easy to search for the perfect combination of materials.

For students, this means engaging learning materials that meet their needs. For administrators, this means less money spent on updating textbooks and other materials.  And for educators, this means more efficient planning that keeps a world of information at their fingertips.

What’s your take on OER? Have you used or created any yet? Tell us about your experiences in the comments section. If you haven’t given OER a try yet, browse the selection of learning objects in the SoftChalk CONNECT repository.

Want more on OER? Register for our upcoming Open Education Week webinar

SoftChalk users and Creating Courseware using SoftChalk and Open Educational Resources

This presentation will highlight how two educators used SoftChalk to transform traditional flat texts into engaging, interactive OER course materials.

As a key component of the Reading Curriculum Team for the Kaleidoscope Grant, Jacqui Cain developed an interactive reader using SoftChalk to adapt “The Hound of the Baskervilles” for use in lower-level basic skills courses. Ms. Cain will explain the collaboration process and creation of the materials, demonstrate the reader, discuss the next phases of this project and briefly review two OER projects currently in development.

Malissa Attebery from Lone Star College created a World War II ecourse using the OER textbook written by Henry Jud Sage, a Virginia Community College faculty member. His original etextbook is located in the College Open Textbooks repository. Using SoftChalk, this flat text was made interactive and portable to multiple web-based learning environments, enabling the learner to see, hear, and further explore the content.

Friday, March 9 2:00pm ET Register Now

This month’s innovators webinar will feature the OC Global program and how SoftChalk is used to re-create the course textbook, making it more accessible for diverse learners, including English-language learners, low-performing students, students with learning disabilities, and students with psychological problems.

As a preface to the webinar we’re sharing a brief interview with Corey Davis, the Executive Director of OC Global today. Read on to find out some of the exciting details about OC Global, the program that gives students the flexibility to complete courses in a shorter time frame outside the constraints of the conventional academic calendar!

What is OC Global?

OC Global is a unique online offering of accelerated and self-paced core transfer courses and completely online Associate Degree programs that allow students to complete a degree on their own schedule. The core courses offered through OC Global can be transferred to any Texas institution.

OC Global offers completely online degree programs for an Associate in Arts – English, Psychology, Sociology and Speech.

What made Odessa College decide to create the program and how long did it take to develop?

Odessa College has been offering courses online since the days of the dial up modem. However, the concept of OC Global began four years ago with an idea about creating a different way for students to go to school. After three years of talking and one year of testing we have come up with what we think is an effective approach to educational environment with asynchronous learning opportunities that support a completely online community with parallel academic rigor and resources for students.

Of all the things that OC Global represents, the most important of these comes back to one thing – Odessa College’s commitment to student access and student success for ALL of its students.

How many classes/courses do you offer and how many students are currently enrolled?

We currently offer 109 Texas Core Curriculum Transfer courses including Humanities, Natural Sciences with labs, Visual and Performing Arts and the Social and Behavioral Sciences. One of our goals to offer courses that people say can’t be done online. We currently offer four completely online degrees: English, Psychology, Sociology, and Speech.

What are the advantages of taking OC Global courses?

There are several advantages:

• Flexible Enrollment: OC Global courses start every four weeks, so you do not have to wait for the beginning of the next semester to start classes.
• Courses available “on demand.” If there is a core course that a student needs, but it is not listed in the schedule, a student can request and OC Global can provide it for you, in some cases in less than a week.
• Free textbooks. One of our missions is to make college more accessible by making it more affordable and one of the ways we do that is by utilizing high quality open source content. An electronic textbook (e-book) is provided free in most (but not all) of the OC Global courses.
• Flexible due dates. All of our courses have flexible assignment due dates, allowing students to work and complete the course at their own pace.
• The “OC Global Guarantee.” This policy allows a student who fails an OC Global course to repeat that course tuition free providing they made a good faith effort to complete the course.
• The “OC Global Student Success Scholarship” This scholarship provides financial assistance to students enrolled in core courses or degree programs offered by OC Global.

Who develops the course content for the OC Global courses?

I layout the “landscape” of every course utilizing a design aesthetic and instructional approach that is based on several frameworks: Donald A. Dorman’s The Design of Everyday Things, one of the most important books you can read in designing a good online courses, and heavily rooted in brain theory; Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, another important read; Madeline Hunter’s ITIP model for direct instruction, an “old-school” teacher decision-making model for planning and delivering instruction; Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English or SDAIE strategies, an instructional approach that was originally developed to support English Language Learners at the elementary level, but which we’ve adapted to support academic language and subject matter knowledge acquisition; and AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) instructional strategies. You will find all of these frameworks at work in our online courses.

Bottom line, I design these courses for me. Even though I graduated valedictorian of my high school and attended one of the top universities, Stanford University, I struggled a great deal in school because I’m dyslexic and suffer from extreme Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. To get help in school (which I was deeply ashamed to ask for), I had to apply for accommodations and that was a painful, embarrassing, and long process. So when I began designing courses I made sure to build-in accommodations up-front. No child, no student should have to ask for the help – the instructional scaffolds – that should already be there in the first place.

I know you are using SoftChalk to development the textbooks for the OC Global program, what features have the course developers found most valuable?

We made SoftChalk our primary course-authoring tool because it is customizable beyond what any LMS allows for out of the box. To get the kind of customization that we were after with traditional LMS’s, even open source ones, you have to pay big bucks! By manipulating SoftChalk’s features we can present – very cost effectively, mind you – content the way in which it is presented in a book and on a webpage, which I see as the most intuitive and natural and certainly most common ways in which people access information, NOT the folder structure that dominates the layout of traditional LMS. Clicking on folders disrupts the flow of reading and comprehension because there is nothing to hang the next page’s content with the previous’ ones. SoftChalk “pages” structure allows for a steady stream of “comprehensible input.”

Central to our design is the idea of “one canvas,” meaning we want all of the content to be presented on one page and in one place, NOT through a series of disconnected pop-up windows. Talk about distraction! With SoftChalk’s iframe function we can limit distraction and focus attention to the content at hand, pulling other websites and document-based content directly onto one page.

Another one of our main goals is to deliver courses that can be taken on mobile devices. Using SoftChalk’s mobile friendly activities we’ve created courses in which 75% of it can be accessed on a smartphone, and about 50% on it on regular cell phone. The goal is a 100% on both.

And we wanted classes that were fun and engaging. SoftChalk’s interactive activities help make that possible.

 What feedback have you gotten about the OC Global program from students thus far?

To make use (and sense) of student feedback, you have to be able to interpret “student-speak.” Our students are not going to tell us, “The instructional design and layout of your course facilitates greater content acquisition and mastery which in turn leads increased student achievement.” They’re going to say, “This is easy.” They are not going to tell us “This course fosters a high level of engagement and student-to-student and instructor-to-student interaction.” They’re going to say, “It’s fun!” Those are the two most common feedbacks we get from students. Oh, there’s a third one: “This is different”!

 Thank you so much for your time Corey, in closing are there any additional facts about OC Global that you would like to share?

A huge part of our goal here is to not only engaging our students, but to engage AND EXCITE the entire distance education community and to encourage the exchange of open course content. Toward this end, we will be sharing our ideas and innovations including access to some of our courses through our website, www.myocglobal.com.

Finally, I want to extend my gratitude to SoftChalk, a big company who took the time to support a small community college and helped us do something great. For that, I can’t thank you enough.

Learn more about Odessa College and OC Global by watching the archived Innovators Session featuring Corey Davis.

I had the opportunity to conduct a short interview with Deanna Mayers, the Curriculum Coordinator of blendedschools.net, to find out out more about the organization and their interest in starting an OER repository for K-12 learning objects. Read on to get an introduction to BSN and then register for the webinar to learn more about the implementation!

What is blendedschools.net (BSN)?

blendedschools.net (BSN) is a not-for-profit company that provides technology, curriculum and professional development, so schools can easy create and implement online programs and blended learning in every classroom. BSN is not a school. And BSN does not sell single course enrollments. BSN provides K-12 local educational authorities with the resources they need for their teachers to teach their students online and create and provide meaningful experiences that enhance flexible, blended learning opportunities for their students.

Why did the founders of BSN decide to start the company?

blendedschools.net (BSN) was founded by Pennsylvania schools to help schools adopt and implement online teaching and learning initiatives. Initially, BSN focused on helping schools expand course offerings for small and rural schools. BSN quickly grew into helping schools provide cyber academies and online summer schools. Today, the largest use of BSN’s technologies, curriculum and professional development is to transform regular classrooms into blended learning communities.  

How many classes/courses are currently being offered through BSN?

BSN provides about 180 different one-semester K-12 courses to our member schools. The courses cover core curriculum kindergarten through high school and a wide variety of electives from music to Advanced Placement to elementary health. More than 20,000 sections of these courses are being taught in our member schools this semester.

Who develops the course content?

BSN courses are developed by certified educators to meet state and national standards, including Common Core standards.  Teachers participate in extensive professional development in technology, instructional strategies, and curriculum design. The professional development is delivered in a blended learning format, offering face-to-face training along with synchronous and asynchronous online learning experiences.  Our course development program is designed to build capacity in practicing teachers, which then influences how teachers teach after completing their course development projects. All learning objects and courses are peer reviewed and go through a copy editing process prior to releasing for use by our membership.

What needs brought BSN to acquire a private CONNECT site (Learning Object Repository)?

BSN is committed to adopting online teaching and learning technologies that expand and enrich teaching and learning. The major goals for our branded CONNECT site are to increase accessibility to high quality learning objects and promote blended learning. The site will be an Open Educational Resource named “BSN Cloud.” We will publish K-12 learning objects developed by experienced, trained teachers.  These freely accessible learning objects are peer reviewed and aligned to Common Core Standards.

The goal to promote blended learning is a long-term commitment by BSN to provide teachers and students free and easy access to high quality accessible learning objects.  As teachers begin using more online resources in a blended learning environment, the natural next progression is heightened teacher interest in creating learning objects for themselves.  Once teachers begin to act as instructional designers for online learning objects, their increased capacity increases students engagement exponentially in traditional classrooms.

What features of BSNCloud will be most valuable to your members?

The most valuable resource of BSN Cloud, our branded CONNECT site, will be the comment and rating system.  We plan to critically evaluate comments and use ratings on each learning object to influence redevelopment of our resources.  This direct feedback from the users of our content will increase the quality of our existing content, and build a collaborative environment where “smart mobs” of teachers and students will expand and enrich the online teaching and learning experience.

Thank you so much for your time Deanna, in closing are there any fun facts about BSN that you’d like to share?

I think this is the most important number—BSN is providing the technology and curriculum for about 262,000 this semester.

Learn more about BSN’s implementation of their own learning object repository by registering for the upcoming webinar:

Empowering Schools to Teach and Learn Online using Open Educational Resources and SoftChalk CONNECT

As blendedschools.net (BSN) creates their learning initiatives it is committed to providing their teachers, students and parents with quality sharable learning objects. BSN is the first to use an independent branded version of SoftChalk CONNECT to enhance their blended learning initiative. BSNCloud will host Open Educational Resources (OERs) built by BlendedSchools.net. The resources will be available worldwide and teachers will be able to directly embed these resources in their learning environment or link to the resource to expand and enrich instruction. During the session BSN will discuss next steps with this tool and how it they plan to use it to encourage and support blended learning initiatives across the country.

Wednesday, November 16 3:00pm ET Register Now