Cascadia Open Education Summit

1. Identify Barriers to an OER approach in Vocational Intercollegiate Collaboration
2. Compare and contrast best practices in collaborative scenarios
3. Reconstruct strategies for effective collaborative practices in OER

What we plan to cover in this session is to first be introduced to my research findings regarding collaborative practice from among several provincial vocational trades institutes. Second, to engage in some small group round table or chair activities where participants will have the opportunity to collectively share their professional collaborative experiences (good and bad) for the purpose of discovering some key strategies for better OER collaboration. Third, to come back together as a group to report out on some possible strategies for trades education to investigate for future OER projects.
Trades training is at an important crossroad in terms of pedagogy, program development, and content delivery. There is a growing opportunity for trades training to not only embrace OER as an option for content delivery, but there is also the opportunity for vocational education to become pioneers in the OER movement.
This session is designed to collectively tap into the varied, broad, and deep experiences of those participating and use appreciative inquiry methods to discover paths towards successful OER applications and future iterations. The participants in this session will have an opportunity to influence the trajectory of future OER in trades training.
There will be a twitter feed set up during the session where participants can interact with the content and process as well as developing an archive of questions and ideas for the future. There will also be a quick real-time poll using (possibly through Kahoot) at the beginning of the session.

1. Attendees will learn the current landscape of open and proprietary platforms for adaptive ancillary content.
2. Attendees will learn why the development of an open platform for ancillary content is vital to the future of OER in higher education.
3. Attendees will learn how they can support the development of an open platform for ancillary content.

This will be a panel presentation where members of this group will talk about what they’ve done so far and next steps. Open Oregon has hired a consultant to conduct an environmental scan of existing open and commercial platforms, assess what faculty need from an open platform, investigate the technical requirements of an open platform, and identify funding opportunities for an open platform. The final report will not be complete before the conference, but we should have a good deal of preliminary data. We want this to be an interactive discussion, a way to highlight the urgency of the project, and an opportunity to get more people involved.

1.Share in-progress experiences and observations of a project to revise an existing open access text for better program and course fit
2.Share innovations associated with such a project
3.Brainstorm how and why similar projects might be undertaken

In 2018, we received a grant from Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) and began a project to collaboratively modify an existing BCCampus Open Access textbook to improve its fit for sociology courses at KPU. Although already widely assigned in the department, the open text in question had drawbacks that present barriers to wider adoption by faculty. We proposed to abridge the text to 1) enhance its accessibility through its ease of use for both instructors and students 2) reflect the insight of a student advisory council and 3) eliminate and/or amalgamate several chapters in order to create a text that can easily be adapted to the three-month schedule typical of 1st year sociology courses. In this roundtable, we reflect on design, innovations, challenges, and dilemmas of this project. This roundtable will expose attendees to an ongoing project to revise an existing text, give participants ideas for how they might go about engaging in a similar project, and offer participants the chance to discuss their concerns and goals for engaging in similar project. Recognizing that the revision of open access resources is a new practice in academia, an interactive component will ask participants to brainstorm possible challenges and dilemmas they may face if undertaking a similar project in their field and faculty. Participants will then to team with other participants to think of existing institutional or other resources that can meet demands of those challenges or of what may need to be innovated to overcome them.