The State of OER
Open VA launches its first webinar on April 15th from 11:00a.m. – 12:00p.m. to highlight the open educational resource (OER) material faculty are creating and/or teaching around the state. This webinar will feature Dr. Greg Hartman from Virginia Military Institute on his authorship of APEX Calculus, which is CC-licensed, Dr. Jane Robertson from Virginia Tech who teaches with an open statistics platform, and Dr. Ioulia Rytikova from George Mason University who teaches Information Systems Technology (IST) with OER material. Each faculty member will give a 15 minute presentation on their experience in creating a course with OER, their experience teaching it, and student feedback. There will be a short question and answer session afterwards. The information to log into the webinar is below:
Meeting Number: 641 193 930
Meeting Password: 1OERwebinar
Join by phone
1-877-668-4493 Call-in toll-free number (US/Canada)
1-650-479-3208 Call-in toll number (US/Canada)
Access code: 641 193 930
The presentations by the three speakers for today’s OpenVA webinar were very informative and diverse. Jane Robertson, at VA Tech, covered some OER basics and highlighted her use of open content derived from Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative in her statistics courses. Ioulia Rytikova, at George Mason U, explained how OER has transformed her teaching to incorporate personal learning instruction for undergrads in information technology. Greg Hartman, at VMI, described his experience with writing an open textbook used by undergrads in calculus. All were excited about the greater control over teaching and learning they drew from working with open materials and how this practice has led to increased student success.
If you were unable to attend, I encourage you to watch the recording when it’s available.
A huge thanks to Diane Ryan at Tidewater CC for hosting and moderating this session!