Adapting OER to Incorporate UDL (Gavilan)
Overview
This template supports faculty and staff as they interrogate their OER and iterate the resource. This template is part of a Canvas course titled Adapting OER to Incorporate UDL.
The initial course is offered by ISKME to California Community College faculty and staff and was created with support from the Michelson Foundatin's Spark Grant Program.
Background on the Resource and Collaborators
Please provide background information on the team members and the resource you have chosen to interrogate and adapt.
- Who is on your team and what are their positions at your Institution?
- Rachel Moller, Chemistry faculty; Erik Medina, Math faculty; Patrick Yuh, Biology faculty
- What resource did your team chose to interrogate?
- OER textbooks in our respective disciplines
- What are your team's goals with interrogating and adapting this resource?
- Individual goals may vary; Patrick will be looking at aspects of UDL in the OpenStax textbook Biology 2e
- What impact do you envision this will have on students?
- Hopefully students will be more engaged with the course content in the OER, be able to learn more effectively with the OER, or have more options for completing assessments in the course
- What impact do you envision this will have on other faculty and staff at your institution?
- This might help educate other campus faculty/staff on the quality and versatility possible with OER
Adaptations to support Open Educational Practices
Please refer to the Characteristics of OER tool. Based on your interrogation of your resource, please share:
- What are you planning to adapt to increase the features of the open licensing on this resource?
- I'm planning to adapt the OpenStax Biology 2e OER textbook. This text is available as a PDF and also as an online Web version. OpenStax makes available to instructors editable .docx files of each chapter, so they can customize the content to their liking. This will greatly facilitate the process of adapting and customizing the OER. Given that OpenStax has already put a lot of effort into fulfilling many characteristics of OER, I can look more into the content itself. As I go about customizing this text, I think it would be useful to look at the backwards design aspect and make sure my changes remain consistent with chapter-level and section-level objectives.
- How long will this take and who will be the main point person working on this?
- It would take a long time to customize the entire textbook! I would likely be the person to spearhead this.
- How will your team keep track of the changes and future impact on students and faculty?
- File redundancy and documenting the changes - always saving a new copy before customizing so the original versions will be there for reference and comparison. The impact on students could be determined by asking for their feedback from time to time. This feedback could then be shared with the department.
Adaptations to support Accessibility
Please refer to the Characteristics of Accessibility tool. Based on your interrogation of your resource, please share:
- What are you planning to adapt to increase the features of Accessibility on this resource?
- OpenStax makes their textbooks available as a PDF and also as an online Web version. It would be worth looking over images, links, and other materials to make sure they have included things like alt text and contextual links.
- How long will this take and who will be the main point person working on this?
- This could take quite a long time to go through the entire textbook. I'm unsure who would be the point person, though as the only instructor for the course I would likely take the lead on this.
- How will your team keep track of the changes and future impact on students and faculty?
- As this work progresses, I can check in with my students and get feedback from them on the accessibility of the textbook. This can be reported out in subsequent department meetings or other venues.
Adaptations to support UDL
Please refer to the Characteristics of UDL tool. Based on your interrogation of your resource, please share:
- What are you planning to adapt to increase the features of UDL on this resource?
- I plan to adapt Chapter 12 of the OpenStax Biology 2e textbook. This chapter deals with genetics and inheritance, and in my experience it is a challenging part of the course. I want to improve on the multiple means of representation aspect of the UDL framework for this part of the textbook.
- DId your team identify any opportunities to co-create with students and what might that look like?
- I think a good way to incorporate student feedback would be to have students (who are taking the course) look over and work with the remixed chapter with additional resources, and see what they think.
- How long will this take and who will be the main point person working on this?
- After the remix is complete and available for students, this would probably involve setting up a meeting with some students to solicit their feedback. I can be the point person to work on this.
- How will your team keep track of the changes and future impact on students and faculty?
- This could be something I do each semester as I teach this course. I can document the student feedback and share out at department meetings.
Sharing your iteration
Please attach or link your iterated resource in this section. To help make your experience visible to others who pursue similar work, please share the following:
- What aspect of this process stretched your thinking about your resource?
- For me, it's just the idea that OERs can be remixed and repackaged at all. I have always provided additional resources outside of the textbook for my students, but this approach seems to be about integrating them into something more seamless and streamlined. Or maybe I'm thinking about this differently!
- What next steps is your team considering?
- I'll have to consult with my team about this! We are each working on our own remix, so I don't know where we plan to go next with them.