OER Sessions

at the Hilton Hawaiian Village

with Dr. Delmar Larsen in Room South Pacific 4

LibreTexts is an easy-to-use online platform for the construction, customization, and dissemination of open educational resources (OER) to reduce the burdens of unreasonable textbook costs to our students and society. With LibreTexts, students, faculty, and outside experts work together to build freely available open education resources that supplant conventional paper-based textbooks. LibreTexts currently encompass twelve widely used college-level disciplines from chemistry to humanities with over 68,500 pages.

Bring a device to this hands-on session where you will explore the LibreVerse ecosystem which has textbooks, homework, and annotation tools.

The University of Hawai’i is already a LibreNet consortium partner. Learn what that partnership means for you.

Finally, learn about the LibreTexts OER Remixer 2.0, a service for remixing various OERs to create your own customized OER.

Participants are asked to bring their own device to this session.

Delmar is the Founder and Director of the LibreTexts project consisting of twelve independently operating and interconnected libraries that focus on augmenting post-secondary education in specific fields in both STEM fields, social sciences, and humanities. Supported by a U.S. National Science Foundation ($1 million grants), the LibreTexts project is being built by over 1000 active developers (students, instructors and outside experts) across multiple campuses and nations.

Delmar Larsen is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and the Biophysics Graduate Group in the University of California, Davis. Delmar received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (Chemistry) and did postdoctoral stints at the Free University Amsterdam (Biophysics) and the University of Southern California (Chemistry). In 2005, Delmar moved to the UC Davis as an Assistant Professor, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2012, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2019.

with Amanda Coolidge in Room South Pacific 4

Nigerian poet and artist, Akwaeke Emezi writes “Understand this if you understand nothing, it is a powerful thing to be seen”. Student success is dependant on creating equitable environment for our students. This means creating content where students see themselves and their own origin stories in the curriculum. Imagine if every student, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and more, could see themselves in the curriculum being used. This interactive workshop will examine ways in which participants can use and create open educational resources that are equitable for our students- which means that they are both inclusive and diverse. Participants will work together to identify ways in which content can be localized to include the voices of the indigenous peoples, how to search for and find imagery that reflects the diverse landscape of the classroom, and better understand how open educational resources can ensure that all community college students have access to high-quality, inclusive content.

with Amanda Coolidge in Room South Pacific 4

Article 26 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights states that “higher education shall be equally accessible to all.” Yet, many of the learning environments do not allow for equally accessible opportunities for our students. In this presentation, participants will start their journey on the road to creating accessible learning environments. To do this, participants will look to open educational practices as a means for creating accessible learning environments. Open Educational Practices (OEP) can be defined as “collaborative practices that include the creation, use, and reuse of OER, as well as pedagogical practices employing participatory technologies and social networks for interaction, peer-learning, knowledge creation, and empowerment of learners”. Participants will explore the intersection of OEP and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Together, they will co create assignments and activities, using OEP to address the principles of UDL - multiple means of representation, expression and engagement.

Amanda Coolidge is the Associate Director of Open Education at BCcampus. She leads the BC Open Textbook Project as well as the Open Education initiatives in the province of British Columbia, Canada. The BCcampus Open Education team produces Open Educational Resources (OER) – textbooks, toolkits, and other learning materials – in collaboration with the B.C. post-secondary system. Amanda has a background in Educational Technology and Instructional Design. Prior to working in the British Columbia Post-Secondary Sector, Amanda was the Senior Educational Technologist on the TESSA (Teacher Education in Sub Saharan Africa) project, based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Funding provided by Office of UH Vice President of Community Colleges, Erika Lacro.

Website: http://oer.hawaii.edu