Connections Cafe

DESCRIPTION
Whether you’re a presenter or an attendee, please join us for the Connection Cafe – our kick-off to the Affordable Learning Summit! If you’re presenting at the Summit, please come prepared to share a brief (no more than 2 minutes long) summary of your project, idea, or discussion topic! We’ll invite presenters to take the “stage” and share those brief summaries, and then move into an open, virtual space where you’ll be able to freely visit presenters’ tables, ask questions, and have discussions. Other tables will be available for general OER conversations, so start brainstorming and bring us your best OER conversation starters!
PLEASE NOTE!
This session will take place on the REMO platform. System requirements can be found at the bottom of the page linked via the “Join Session” button. If you require techinical support with the REMO platform, please contact spud@mycreative.community


Formalizing your ad-hoc OER Committee

DESCRIPTION
Bring your ideas to this Roundtable discussion. How does an ad-hoc OER committee move forward? How best to bring in new members? Do we have a rotating membership? How best to formalize roles and increase web presence. What assessments are meaningful and can be maintained in the long-run?

PRESENTER(S)
Krista Higham, Millersville University

Affordable Learning Champions from ALPA’s Inaugural Cohort

DESCRIPTION
Be inspired by Affordable Learning Champions from our inaugural cohort! This panel will feature teaching faculty from a variety of subject areas including geology, mathematics, and paralegal studies. They will share details about their current textbook affordability work, which includes adopting open textbooks, creating open lab manuals, incorporating open homework systems into a course, building a helpful browser extension, and more. You will leave this session feeling energized about the ALPA community and motivated to move your own textbook affordability projects forward.

PRESENTER(S)
Janelle Wertzberger, Assistant Dean and Director of Scholarly Communications, Gettysburg College (moderator)
Natalie Flynn, Temple University
Brian Kronenthal, Kutztown University
Jennifer Schneider, Community College of Philadelphia

Collaboration Across Campuses: Building an OER Initiative at the new, integrated Commonwealth University of PA

DESCRIPTION
Developing an OER initiative on campus can be a lonely and isolated experience for any librarian or faculty member, especially if they are the only one tasked with this project. Collaboration across campuses can be one way to lessen this isolation. Librarians Katie Yelinek and Jamey Harris will talk about the benefits and challenges they have experienced as they work to combine OER initiatives on their campuses in the new, integrated Commonwealth University of PA.

PRESENTER(S)
Katie Yelinek, Bloomsburg University of PA
Jamey Harris, Mansfield University of PA

LEADing the Way: Building OER Expertise Among Librarians Across a Multi-Campus University

DESCRIPTION
In this session, we will present OAER LEADS, a train-the-trainer model created at Penn State to help identify and onboard librarians interested in supporting OER at their campuses as they facilitate a new OER adoption program. Because Penn State has many different campuses of diverse sizes, locations, and populations across Pennsylvania, we hope that our model will be a resource that attendees from any institution could adapt to their own context. We will share our experiences and takeaways via a lively guided discussion that will help attendees identify a campus model similar to theirs to learn from.

PRESENTER(S)
Elizabeth Nelson, Penn State University, Lehigh Valley Campus Library
Bryan McGeary, Penn State Greater Allegheny
Christina Riehman-Murphy, Penn State Abington
Emma Beaver, Penn State Fayette
Annie Jansen, Penn State Brandywine
Amy Deuink, Penn State Beaver & Penn State Shenango
Katie Odhner, Penn State Abington
Andrew Dudash, Penn State University Park

KEYNOTE ADDRESS – Opening Doors with Open Pedagogy: Access, Imagination, and Student Engagement

DESCRIPTION
“Open” doesn’t end with access to materials and education, but rather should clear the way for deep, imaginative, and critical student engagement with learning. In this keynote presentation, Sean Michael Morris will explore the critical roots of open pedagogy, and will discuss the ways in which imagination—an intellectual activity that allows us to see things as they might be otherwise—unlocks new avenues for student engagement and success. The classroom is a place of intersecting priorities, assumptions, power dynamics, and possibilities, and an open pedagogy starts first by acknowledging these intersections and the need to create environments where agency, comprehension, and change are active.

PRESENTER(S)
Sean Michael Morris, Course Hero VP

As Vice President, Academics, Sean leads Course Hero’s educator team and initiatives including partnerships with faculty, development of Course Hero’s educator platform and the creation of educator-focused content, events and workshops. Sean brings 20 years of experience in academia to Course Hero and is an expert in student-centered learning and critical digital pedagogy.

Prior to joining Course Hero, Sean was a Senior Instructor in Learning, Design, and Technology at the University of Colorado Denver. He also co-founded Digital Pedagogy Lab, an international professional development gathering for educators committed to issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, critical digital pedagogy, and imagining a new future for education. Sean co-authored An Urgency of Teachers: the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy, and has co-edited and contributed to a number of other written works and examinations. He regularly speaks at industry-leading events on the topics of critical pedagogy, digital community, progressive education, social justice, and the role of imagination in learning and teaching. Sean’s work has been featured on National Public Radio, The Guardian, Times Higher Ed, Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and numerous other publications and podcasts. He received his M.A. in English from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Adapting an Affordable Learning Program to Sustain Quality Open Online Homework

DESCRIPTION
Quality course curriculum involves more than a relevant textbook. Online homework has become a key component of the infrastructure for affordability, especially after the move to online learning during COVID. This workshop showcases the process of adapting a campus affordable learning program to sustain a free, open source online homework platform to support STEM learning.

PRESENTER(S)
Katherine Luce, California State University Maritime Academy
Ariel Setniker, California State University Maritime Academy

Leveraging Bookstore Information to Support OER

DESCRIPTION
Gumberg Library partnered with the campus bookstore to collect data about texts being used by classes in the core curriculum. The partnership led to savings for students. The session will discuss how to partner with the campus bookstore to access requests submitted by faculty, suggest approaches for how to approach faculty members with OER (open educational resources) alternatives, and potential pitfalls in advertising the success of such programs.

PRESENTER(S)
Kristy White, Gumberg Library, Duquesne University
Sara Baron, Gumberg Library, Duquesne University
Rob Behary, Systems Librarian, Duquesne University

The Open and Affordable Showcase: Constructing an Adaptable Campus Event for Professional Development and Community Building

DESCRIPTION
We designed our Open and Affordable Showcase event to celebrate faculty OER work that has not often been well-recognized or compensated, especially in formal evaluation, promotion, or tenure processes. Additionally, the Showcase served as a professional development opportunity by creating space to come together to discuss OER as a community. We will share our initial goals, our timeline and process, and feedback we received, as well as openly-licensed planning and promotion materials for your adaptation and reuse. Interactive components will help you begin creating your own Showcase. Join us to discuss how OER work can be better celebrated throughout Pennsylvania!

PRESENTER(S)
Elizabeth Nelson, Penn State University, Lehigh Valley Campus Library
Jennifer Jarson, Head Librarian, Penn State University, Lehigh Valley

Letters for Change: A Scalable Approach for Student OER Advocacy

DESCRIPTION
A librarian and student team will explain a project conducted in spring 2022. The project led students to advocate for open textbooks by conducting research and writing letters to their professors. The librarian will explain how the library set up this project, while the student will explain the process they went through in writing a letter. We will also explain different ways this scalable project could be presented to students.

PRESENTER(S)
Janelle Wertzberger, Assistant Dean and Director of Scholarly Communications, Gettysburg College
Theodore Szpakowski, Gettysburg College Class of 2025