Welcome and Introductions - Webinar One Discussion One
by Joanna Schimizzi 1 year agoWelcome to the Accessibility in OER Spring 2023 cohort for Institutions of Higher Education.
Please click "Reply" directly below (to reply to my original prompt) and share the following three things:
- What is your name, institution and role at your institution?
- What is your personal/professional connection to accessibility?
- What about "open educational resources" most excites you?
Hello, everyone!
My name is Krista Rinehart, and I am the Director of Faculty Development and Curriculum Specialist at York Technical College. In this role, I work with a great team in the Institute for Teaching Excellence that focuses on course accessibility, including accessibility reviews, workshops, and related professional development sessions as well as work with faculty and staff directly on making materials accessible. Our team strives to make courses and the online environment inclusive and eliminate barriers for learners. I view OER as an additional route to making courses and their required materials accessible, including making college more affordable and allowing instructors more freedom and flexibility with course design and textbook usage and integration into the online environment. I look foward to learning more about OER in this group!
Krista!! So great to see you here -- looks like we'll need to expand our collaboration to include OER in addition to distance learning and faculty development! :)
Hi, Alicia! It's great to see you here, as well! I look forward to working with you again! :)
Hello All,
My name is Robert Bowers, and I work at Bucks County Community College. My title is Accessibility Software Test Analyst/Adaptive Technology Specialist. At BCCC a few of my responsibilities are to monitor student need for adaptive technology (AT). Research and recommend AT solutions case-by-case for students and their specific learning needs. Coordinate training for students in using AT, including suggesting where and how the AT will be supported, noting that the population of users involves diverse needs and individualized assessments of ability. Provide one-on-one training to students in using AT and evaluate the use. Create training plans and write user documentation, user guides, and instructor guides. I look forward to learning more about OER and how we can provided OER resources to our student body.
Robert,
I'm impressed by the fact part of your professional responsibilities include reseraching and recommending AT solutions for student's specific learning needs.
Thanks! Being able to provide access to students is very uplifting.
Hi Everyone!
I am Debbe and work at bucks community college as a the Assitant Director of the Accessiblity Office. I have a son with disabilities who attended college. I think that OER is exciting for students because the matterials are afforable and that the materials become more accessable if correctly formatted.
Hello!
My name is Sarah Teichman. I am a librarian at Hudson County Community College. I am part of the OER/Zero-Cost Textbook steering committee at this institution. Additionally, issues of accessibility are important to me; I am pursuing a graduate certificate in Accessible Online Education, and I collaborate with a program that places young people with disabilities in internships as part of my job. As such, this program represents an overlap of my interests and responsibilities. OER excite me largely because they can represent an avenue toward greater accessibility, but also for the increased flexibility and relevance that they offer. I also love the promise of connectivity and agency they hold, to look at OER from an librarian's information literacy-focused perspective.
Hello! My name is Christina Lunsmann, and I am the Director of Accessibility Services at University of Maryland Global Campus. I work directly with students with disabilities daily by providing educational accommodations based on their disabilities.In my teaching/faculty roles, I have had a commitment to OER for a long time, since I believe education should be available to all students regardless of their financial situation. I am most excited about OER's ability to provide knowledge access to all people.
Hi everyone,
My name is Michelle Meeker, and I am the Program Director and Chair of the Dental Sciences Department at Horry Georgetown Technical College.I teach dental assisting and dental hygiene students clinically and didactically. One driving force for me is to support the academic journey for all students and bring new, innovative methods to their learning process. We have a great team of faculty and staff working to achieve this goal! My personal connection to accessibility is simply reflecting on the many different types of learning styles I've encountered with students.There certainly isn't a one size fits all approach.I'm excited to learn more about catering our resources to the needs and abilities of our students. I look forward to working with you all!
Hi Everyone,
My name is Michael Whelpley and I am the Associate Director of Open Educational Resources at Hudson County Community College in NJ. As the leader of my institution's OER efforts, it is my responsibility to make sure that classes being converted to OER also meet accessibility concerns and to use this opportunity to improve accessibility across our institution. What has always excited me about OER is the ability to remove a potential barrier to student success and create equity in education.
My name is Ginelle Baskin, and I am the Student Success and Open Education Librarian at Walker Library at Middle Tennessee State University. In this role, I oversee our campus OER program, and I provide support for instructors to create, adapt, and adopt OER for their courses. I do not have much training or expertise in regards to accessibility, so I'm hoping to learn best practices that will help me as I work with faculty creating and remixing OER. The thing that most excites me about OER is the equity issue. It levels the playing field by providing day one access to all students in a course/program and helps students succeed.
Nice to meet you!
I am Jackie Burger, Associate Professor, Learning Resources Department of Bucks County Community College. In my role, I provide instructional technology instruction and support to faculty and information literacy and reference instruction to students. I also teach three courses at Bucks, and I am working with a team on developing an OE COLL-101 textbook. As an instructional technology support provider I guide faculty in their use of instructional technology tools to support universal design of their courses spaces. I am excited about creating an open education resource for our students because an open resource provides the opportunity to customize the content to create a more engaging, relatable resource for our students.
Hello all. My name is Lisa Moniz and I am a Multimedia Specialist (instructional designer) working in Academic Services at Horry Georgetown Technical College in the Myrtle Beach area of South Carolina. I am new in this role, having been with the college for nine months. Before this, I was a K-12 school librarian for 26 years. Accessibility is important in course design, and it is increasingly challenging as teaching and learning have moved online. I have worked with hundreds of students who experience learning differences and my own son struggles with learning issues as well (ADHD, LD in Reading and Written Expression, fine motor skill problems). As a lifelong educator, I am interested in removing barriers to education for students and helping them to succeed. OERs serve many purposes to that end. They are free, available immediately and can be customized and adapted in endless ways! I'm looking forward to learning more with this cohort!
Hi! I'm Rachel Peterson,and I'm a librarian at Greenville Technical College. Along with the normal library things, I also facilitate Information Literacy workshops, online citation workshops, and provide supports to faculty and students in whatever ways they need, and in short: information accessiblity is my acutal job (whether it's 'how do I find my student id' to 'where do I start in this research project'). So, I am very excited to learn more about OER research and creation, publication, and implementation to affect successful academic outcomes for students, as well as just the creativity that OER will allow for faculty in tailoring their courses. (Not to mention, anything to make higher ed more economical, equitable, and accessible is a thing that should be championed! Those textbooks aren't getting any cheaper!)
It's great to meet everyone, and I look forward to working and learing with you in our cohort!
Hello everyone!!
My name is Tanya Thomas, I am the Research & Instructional Technology Librarian in the Thurgood Marshall Law Library at the University of Maryland School of Law. My role in the law school/library is to facilitate the use of educational technology among faculty, staff, and students through training and technical support.
Part of my responsibility is the management of content posted in our LMS (Blackboard) and to that end we recently began using Ally and have been offering training sessions for our faculty and staff about creating accessible content. I am hoping to learn techniques for helping shift mindsets and get buy in to proactive universal design for all as opposed to reactive remediation of documents based on individual student requests.
On the OER side of things, I used to be an adjunct at the University of Maryland Global Campus, where all our course materials were OER. I would like to see a similar adoption of OER in my current institution, as it can be an important tool in helping more students—and particularly low-income and underrepresented students—afford college, engage actively in their learning, persist in/complete their studies. I am familiar with H20 and would love to get a few of our faculty to consider using it to create either a casebook or supplemental readings. I am hoping to learn about additional tools that may be well suited for legal education.
Hello! My name is Debbie Carney, and I am the Accessibility Advocate to faculty at Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania. I provide information to faculty about making course materials accessible, and I review courses for accessibility. I offer support to faculty developing OER courses, and in this role, I have become familiar with many OER sources. I believe OERS offer a unique opportunity to reach students with diverse backgrounds and learning styles. I look forward to working with everyone, and to learning more about OERs and Accessibility.
Hi, my name is Bree Kirsch. I'm the University Librarian at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City, Iowa. I've had the pleasure of leading a Universal Design for Learning initiative at Briar Cliff and have led a UDL Academy for faculty over the past two summers where I've introduced accessibility, along with the UDL framework. OER excites me in that it can decrease barriers for students to access course materials due to high costs of traditional textbooks.
Hello everyone. I'm Heather Dodge, Librarian and Berkeley City College, in Berkeley California. I am also helping to guide our ZTC and OER programs at BCC and have been helping to spearhead these efforts, along with a great time, at Peralta Community College District. I'm professionally invested in accessibility so that I can help support other faculty to find, adopt, and adapt OER for their courses using the highest accessibility standards possible. I'm most excited about OER because I've seen students struggling with the textbook cost barriers that publisher textbooks impose and I want faculty to find less expensive alternatives. Nice to meet everyone.
Hi all! I'm Hope Fitzgerald, Asst. Director of A&S Learning Design and Technology (LDT) at the University of Virginia. LDT has been working to develop a more access- and inclusion-centered orientation to all our work. We're still in early days, and I'm excited to dig in and learn more about accessibility as it relates to our support of faculty OER and Open Pedagogy. I'm excited about the potential for OER to create space for more accessible, representative, and inclusive student authorship and learning. Looking forward to this work!
Hello!
I am YiPing Wang, a librarian at Laney College. I am the Open Educational Resources Committee co-chair and OERI Liaison and directing OER Cohort at my college. It is important to make sure accessibility is covered in the cohort and this is an opportunity to learn best practices that help me while working with faculty creating/adapting OER. The thing most excites me is inclusion.
I am Kim Godwin with Middle Tennessee State University. I am presently an Instructional Designer with MTSU Online, but am transitioning to full-time faculty in the College of Education beginning this fall. As an advocate for OER and in my role in MTSU Online, I am responsible for overseeing that courses developed meet and exceed accessibility standards. Through this I provide trainings and workshops for faculty on accessibility and inclusion with specific focuses on UDL principles and diversity of assessment type and active learning. I have been teaching exclusively with OER for more than a decade and have published a few Pressbooks, OER is my passion. It creates opportunities to remove barriers for students and provides faculty with more freedom in their teaching. I am excited to be in this group to learn new approaches and continue growing and supporting efforts on our campus and for students everywhere.
Hi everyone! My name is Christy Leigh, and I am the Assistant Director of the Accessibility Resource Center at Cabrini University. I am responsible for coordinating and providing equitable opportunities and accessibility services to students with disabilities. I work with an amazing team that provides comprehensive support to our students so that students feel welcomed, valued and respected. I am excited to learn new ways in which my office can better support and remove any potential barriers of our students while still meeting the individual needs of the student. We all learn differently and in our own way! I look forward to learning more about OER and working with everyone.
Hello! My name is Wendy Brame, and I am an associate professor of sociology at Briar Cliff University. I have become more interested in accessibility over the past two years while participating in a university UDL effort. I began using OER materials in my classes to reduce the cost of education to my students. In particular I love being able to blend multiple resources in my classes with no increase in cost.
Greetings to everyone from Bel Air, Maryland. My name is Arthur Wynn. Everyone calls me Art. I am an adjunct instructor at Harford Community College and Cecil College. I am eager to learn about new accessibility tools to augment the learning process for my students.
Greetings, everyone!
My name is Alicia Ramberg, and I serve as the Director of Academic Services at Horry-Georgetown Technical College. I oversee faculty training and support, instructional design, and distance learning; I also assist with new faculty onboarding/orientation and general faculty development as well.
I have somehow become our accessibilty "expert" as well since we don't have a specific department responsible for it, but I am mostly self-taught, gaining most of my knowledge from conferences, other presentations, and of course, the internet/YouTube! I have done internal trainings on accommodations vs. accessibility and can assist faculty/staff in making their documents accessible, but I hope to expand my knowledge of accessibility and do a "deeper dive" into the various aspects of it throughout this program and moving forward.
When it comes to OERs, I am most excited about not only saving students money, but also ensuring students have access to course materials on the first day. As a former full-time faculty member (who still teaches as an adjunct), it was/is always frustrating to have students who cannot afford their materials at the start of the semester... the frustration is not with them but with the fact I know they are already "behind" and most of these students are already "behind" in other ways, so a lack of materials just sets them up for failure. (Also, textbooks are insanely overpriced, but that is another story entirely!). Students should have access to an affordable education, and OERs are a huge part of that goal.
Hello All,
Hope all is well. My name is Tony Wohlers. I am the Dean of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Harford Community College. I am looking forward to working with my colleagues and all of you. I have been involved in the discussion of OERs and how to advance it for several years. There are many opportunities for our students within the context of OERs.
Hi! My name is Nadine Martinkus and I am the Accessibility Specialist at Harford Community College. I have worked in the diability field for the past 12 years and am passionate about accessibility. I am a first generation college student so OERs excite me because students will have access to the same materials as everyone else with money being a factor. I also work with assistive technology and converting textbooks into accessible, alternate format so I would love to support OERs that are created with accessibility already in mind.
Hi everyone, I'm Jenny Yap and I'm a librarian at Berkeley City College. I've been working on OER efforts at my college since 2016. I'm looking forward to learning more about accessibility--I recently went through the POCR review process and learned a lot--and I hope to be an advisor at my campus on OER and accessibility. OER excites me because our library has textbook loans and I see how textbook costs affect students. So I'm excited that OER makes college more accessible for students.
My name is Julie Engel. I am a faculty member in our First-year Seminar discipline at San Antonio College. My colleages and I have been working to create OER resources/textbooks for all of our courses. We are excited about creating materials that are specifically designed to the outcomes of our courses and our students. We do know that we need to learn more about how to make all our resources more accessible to all learners.
Julie is part of the Alamo Colleges District Group.
Hello,
I am Kari, and I am an instructional design technologist at Harford Community College in Bel Air, MD. I work with faculty on using the tech in classrooms as well as using tech to teach. With accessibility, technology sometimes is good, but sometimes not in terms that every student can use what faculty have chosen to use to enhance the course with. I have been using OER materials with teaching online mathematics courses for University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC). I look forward to learning more about OER and accessbility.
Hello!
My name is Claire Renaud. I am the Manager of Quality Frameworks at the University of Maryland Global Campus. Having had the pleasure to lead teams of folks with various abilities, I often wonder why accessibility isn't always front of mind. I am excited for the possibilities that OERs can afford when it comes to increasing accessibility to all our students, thus improving the quality of the learning experience.
My name is Anderson (he/they), and I am a librarian at Texas A&M University - Commerce.
As an academic librarian, my job is to connect students, faculty, and staff with the resources that they need. In order for those resources to be useful, they must first be usable. Accessibility is a large part of that.
I really want students to be able to save money. No one should have to skip out on buying books for a class because they were too expensive, and OER is one way of alleviating that cost burden.
Hello Anderson. I saw you in OER Core Elements. Good to see a familar name.
Hi there, Susan! It's good to see you again, too!
Hi everyone! My name is Shannon Tucker and I'm the Assistant Dean of Instructional Design and Technology at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy (we are on the University of Maryland Baltimore campus). I serve as our school's representative on our campus Web Accessibility committee and am responsible for accessibility for educational technology, web development, AV services, and academic technologies. I'm also a member of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals.
Recently, we have adopted OERs in our pre-matriculation programs to reduce content access barriers to students prior to enrollment. In an environment where many students do not purchase textbooks due to financial barriers, OERs are an important tool to ensure equitable material access.
Good Morning All:
Russell Burchill, Assistant Professor @ Harford Community College.
Throughout my teaching career since 2001, I have taught some form of computer tech and it naturally leads itself to the need for accessibility and greater gains for the students interested in these subjects (Comp Sci, Cyber, General usage). I also served as Project Manager for Anne Arundel Community College Cyber Pathways Across Md. TAACCCT grant (https://www.skillscommons.org/handle/taaccct/1418) developing an online OER CompTIA A+ curriculum in conjunction with CMU OLI.
Having developed and implemented OER through OLI and a variety of other resources, I appreciate the concepts of UDL and building these frameworks within my courses and discipline.
Hi all! My name is Tess Gillis and I'm from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and serve as the Senior Academic Development Specialist. I work closely with our students to help remove barriers to their learning and success. I'm excited to learn more about OER and how we can perhaps weave more accessibility into our curriculum.
Good morning!
I am Sam Zaza, an assistant professor at the Information Systems and Analytics Department at Middle Tennessee State University. I was on the faculty advisory board for the OER grant. I beleive OER will attract students to chose majors and not worrying about the cost of books/materials needed. OER contribute to equity!
Hello,
My name is Carolyn Eberly from Coppin State University in Baltimore Maryland. I am an instructor in the Health Information Management program. I am eager to learn more about accessiblity and how it can benefit our students. I am looking forward to seeing how many varied resources we can add to courses without cost being a prohibitive to having varied sources of information.
Carolyn
Hello! My name is Denice Barkey and I'm a Reference & Instruction Librarian at Harford Community College. My current role at our institution is to provide reference services and information instruction; in addition, I also manage our textbook reserves as well as numerous other library duties. As the librarian responsible for purchasing textbooks, I am familiar with the significant cost of textbooks and how that cost impacts students. The current OER librarian at our institution is moving on to a new position and I'm stepping in to gain a stronger understanding of OER creation and accessibility.
Hi everyone,
Looking forward to learning together :)
Hello everyone!
I'm excited about this learning opportunity with all of you. My name is Shinta Hernandez, and I'm the Dean of the Virtual Campus at Montgomery College in Maryland. I oversee our online/remote education, Digital Learning Center, and OER efforts. I work in our E-learning, Innovation, and Teaching Excellence (ELITE) office. In all of my efforts, I strive to provide leadership support to faculty and staff in increasing and improving accessibility for our students. This is done through outreach and professional development, including faculty fellowships. I perceive OER to be the route to innovation, transformation, inclusion, social justice, and equity. What especially excites me is when students advocate for OER and become our natural champions of the work.
I look forward to the work ahead!
Shinta Hernandez
Greetings,
I am Dr. Ebuwei, an assistant professor at Coppin State University in the Health Infomation Management Department. My professional connection to accessibility stems from attending educational training at my institution and understanding the relevance and need of making course materials accessible to all my students. On a personal level, knowing that students will be ready to access the course materials on the first day of class creates an all-inclusive environment for students.
What excites me is the feedback I get from the course evaluations that I have added OER. The student's feedback and being readily available to students on the first day of the course.
I love that Dr. Ebuwei. The student feedback/experience is really what matters!
Hello everyone,
I'm Leah Allen, a biology faculty member as well as Anatomy and Physiology Course Coordinator and Assistant Coordinator of PT Biology Faculty at Montgomery College. In my role as Anatomy and Physiology Course Coordinator, I have worked on a team to create free anatomy and physiology lab handouts for our on campus and distance learning students. This follows an OER model to help make college more affordable for our students, but we would eventually like to make them freely available online to anyone that finds them helpful. We are always looking for ways to improve our course resources and are excited for this opportunity to increase accessibility in our courses.
I look forward to learning with you all,
Leah
Love it!
I'm Susan Puccio from Palo Alto College in San Antonio, TX. My roles include OER and reference/instruction librarian. In another life, I taught special education at the elementary level. I am most excited about OER since it is open education for any one who has the technology to access.This has the potential to really create lifelong learning.
Good day,
1. What is your name, institution and role at your institution?
May name is Dr. Teresa Bussell. I am an Instructional Designer with Texas A&M University-Commerce.
2. What is your personal/professional connection to accessibility?
As an ID, I do assist faculty in course design, including helping them create accessible content in their courses.
3. What about "open educational resources" most excites you?
I am excited to learn about creating quality learning materials, but I also am excited about learning how to evaluate the content in OER, using the evaluation tool.
Hello everyone.
My name is Tina Underwood and I serve as the Academic Support and Disabilities Coordinator at Granite State College a college within the University System of New Hampshire. In my role, I oversee the online tutoring efforts provided by both a small group of graduate students from Granite State College as well as a third-party service to assist with student academic needs 24 hours a day.
I also work closely with our Academic Affairs leadership and our Instructional Design departments to ensure accessibility of course content to students of all learning styles and needs.
I collect, review and approve accommodations plans for students with disabilities and serve a number of committees for the college. I look forward to working with you all to ensure that OER materials are accessible formats for students who may use a magnifier or read aloud program.
Best,
Tina
Hello all! My name is Jessica Boulware and I am the Program Coordinator for Health Sciences at York Technical College. I teach Anatomy and Physiology as well as general biology courses.
I am interested in equity and inclusion in all aspects of education, and accessibility is an important piece of that puzzle. I recently switched one of my courses to an OER textbook, and I am excited to learn about other resources that I can use to bolster that course. I am also excited to learn about resources I can bring to our PLC for Anatomy and Physiology and use to help our adjuncts improve accessibility and student engagement in their courses.
Hi, I am Vinayak Mathur, Assistant Professor of Biology at Cabrini University. As a Science educator it is important to me to make my curriculum accessible to all types of learners and provide student's with the confidence to excel in the field. The open educational resources remove the cost barriers that a lot of students face to access the course material and provide flexibility for the instructor to pick and choose the material based on topics being covered.
Hi!
My name is Moriah Allen, and I am the Department Chair for English and Foreign Languages at York Technical College. Each year our department takes on new goals, and accessibility has been a focus for a number of years. We've focused on improving course materials and applying best practices to the design of our course shells. Accessible design makes a difference for all students, and I love seeing that work manifest in positive outcomes, and OER can be part of that vision.
All of that is awesome! It sounds like your team is doing really important groundwork that will pay off in the long term.
I'm Lilian Feitosa from the University of Virginia, I am an associate professor of Portuguese.
I would like my classes to be more accessible to all students.
OER excites me because it opens so many possibilities to use free resources, to create them as well and also contribute to other people's teaching and learning.
I feel like languages are one of those specialized areas where it can be harder to find OER. Glad you are exploring creating resources for a more niche topic!
I am Alex Micich, associate professor of biology at Montgomery College in Maryland. I am interested in broadening accessibility to as many populations as possible. I have taught studnts from many area of the world, and hope to continue in the future. Open educational resources are vital for the potential of accessibility to be fully realized. IF everything is open to all populations, it makes the educational process more fulfilling by bringing that many more people nto the educational forum.
Hello all,
My name is Kate Neff, and I am a senior lecturer of Spanish at the University of Virginia and director of the Spanish language program (elementary and intermediate levels). We currently have a team of instructors working on creating OER for our courses. Our goal is to make langauge learning materials that are more accessible, affordable, and representative than traditional publisher-produced materials to serve our students. When I think about OER, I am most excited about the flexibility they offer and the enormous range of possibility they bring to curriculum design. I'm looking forward to learning more about how we can ensure our work is as accessible as it can be.
Hello Everyone,
My name is Mahbanou Ghandi, and I'm an anatomy and physiology instructor at Montgomery College. I believe that everyone should have equal access to information and resources. Additionally, I think it's important for educators to ensure that their materials are accessible to all learners, regardless of ability. OER can help to reduce costs for students and provide instructors with a wider range of resources to use in their courses. I look forward to learning more about OER and accessibility!
Hello- my name is Ann Jolly. I am a university supervisor and clinical assistant professor at UNC Charlotte. As a longtime special educator who transitioned into my role at the university a little over a year ago, I have been interested in AT and UDL for years. However, I feel like technology is rapidly changing, and I have a lot to learn more about AI, accessibility features within many instructional materials, and open educational resources. I’m excited to have the committed time and space with a collaborative cohort to further build my knowledge in this area.
Hello Everyone,
I hope you are doing well!
I am Phyllis Medina with the University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC). I am the Program Director for Psychology.
My professional connection to accessibilities is the role it plays in creating an inviting positive learning experience for students within online and hybrid modalities. At UMGC accessibility is a team effort across many departments.
What excites me about open educational resources? The opportunities they open to all learners.
Excited to be here with you. I am looking forward to the conversations in the weeks ahead.
With warmest regards,
Phyllis
Hello everyone!
My name is Adeline Cooney, I work in the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL), Maynooth University, Ireland. I wear many hats but my main responsibility is coordinating and delivering our accredited programmes to staff who teach. In my role I work with staff who in turn teach and assess their students. So, my goal is to model and share good practice, with the aim of inspiring and supporting colleagues to consolidate and apply their learning in their practice. To this end, I want to make our programmes and modules accessible and inclusive. This is work in progress! I equate accessibility with opportunity for all students and I'm looking forward to learning about OERs as I view them as an imporant tool for eliminating barriers.
I, too, do a lot of work with faculty and staff who teach, helping them to develop their courses, etc. I agree with you that is is so important to model what I want them to do in their work, but it does take time to build that out! :) Thanks for sharing this!
My name is Charles Loftin and I teach Anatomy & Physiology at Horry-Georgetown Technical College in Conway, SC.
I have had various students with accommodation needs over the years and have worked with our Disabilities Services group to provide for their needs.
I think OER gives us a way to better provide relevant material and to save the students some money along the way.
Hey Chuck! I'm so happy you are in the cohort with me!
Good morning! My name is Kat Mangione and I am an associate professor of elementary education and the program coordinator for K5 at Middle Tennessee State University. As an elementary educator I see accessibility as one of the most important factors in education. OER resources excite me because my personal definition of accessibility not only includes the traditional special education definition of accessibility, but also includes financial accessibility. And OER checks that box too!
Hi everyone,
My name is Professor Raffi Manjikian and I am an Instructor of Chemistry at Hudson County Community College. I am also the cochair of the President's Adsivory Council for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (PACDEI) and the upcoming vice chair of the All College Council (ACC).
My personal/professional connection to accessibility is providing ways for all my students to be able to access course material. Accessibility also constantly keeps changing and with new developments comes new opportunities to learn more about making my course material cater to all my students.
Open educational resources excites me because it gives students zero cost options to the course materials. I have always said that the students do not need to purchase a textbook for the course. This allows me the opportunity to be creative in how I present material and structure the course for my students.
Hello! My name is Robbie Hampton and I'm lead faculty for special education programs at Lipscomb University. My background is K-12 teaching and principal all with students with significant disabilities. At Lipscomb I'm the director of a new masters program in accessibility and advocacy. I'm excited about increasing the use of OER to support our teacher candidates and utltimately helping to roll it out to the entire university.
Hello Everyone,
I hope all is well. My name is Charnette Singleton and I am the Dean of Learning Resources (Libraries) at Trident Technical College in North Charleston, South Carolina. We currently have a few initiatives / projects being used at our institution regarding affordable learning. My goal is to expand the knowledge and use of Open Educational Resources for our students, faculty and staff and perhaps help develop a more cohesive, stategic plan that various disciplines can follow.
Good morning everyone,
I am Ryan Antonucci, humanities coordinator and history instructor at Trident Technical College in North Charleston, South Carolina. As a graduate student at the University of South Carolina, I took a training course for online teaching that included a few lessons on accessibility when setting up a new class, so I have some familiarity with the subject.
I look forward to incorporating more OER in my classes because the approach offers more subject flexibility. OER allows us to shape courses to fit our and students’ interests better, such as including more ethnic history (my interest) or local topics (students’ interests). The increasing breadth of available OER also allows us to switch out materials frequently, which helps when needing to create new assessments like tests and discussion post questions.
I love the idea of incorporating local topics into OERs. That's not something I'd considered. Thanks for the perspective!
Hello Joanna et al.!
I am Michael Stoner from Trident Technical College. I teach 100-level History courses, and occasionally an Anthropology course too. I am one of many instructors developing OER courses for the HHL Department. I have developed a number of online classes together over the last 13 years for my institution and others. As I see it, OER is the next step in course development that brings an educational opportunity to all across socio/economic levels. With the preponderance of electronic reading devices, I believe OER offers the portability of classroom materials as not seen before. So, to me, OER is the way of the future.
Hello everyone! My name is Rebecca Riggs and I am an Associate Professor of Chemistry and the TBR Facilitator for OER at Cleveland State Community College. My connection to accessibility is to review designated course to ensure they are accessible. What excites me most about OER is the amount of high quality resources that are now available in the sciences. The course materials for science courses are expensive and the use of OER in sciencec courses not only lessens the financial burden on students, but also increases equity and inclusion.
Hi everyone,
My name is Colleen Quinn, and I am the Reference Services Librarian at University of Maryland Global Campus. Accessibility has come closer to the forefront as we are working towards revamping our library website. A lot of our new design and content strategies are formed around increased accessibility and usability for our diverse population of students. I am also working on my capstone project for my 2nd masters in learning desing & technology, where I'll be designing a training for our reference librarians on WCAG and how we can uplift our public FAQ. We also frequently assist our liaison departments with course redesign by searching for OERs, but they often range in quality. I'm very excited to be working with all of you!
Hi everyone!
My name is Callie Martin. I'm an Instructional Designer at Hudson County Community College in Jersey City, New Jersey. As an ID, I partner with teachers to create quality online courses. I act as a guide from the initial course proposal all the way to the course being offered to students. In that time, I help teachers think through and plan the resources they want to use, which is the perfect time to "pitch" OER. A large part of my job is ensuring that all materials are fully accessible. This often includes alot of hands on work to improve the accessibility of these materials, along with guiding teachers through best practices in selecting resources. OER in courses really level the playing field for students. Education becomes much more accessible and inclusive when the cost barriers are removed. I fully disagere with the gatekeeping that is rampant in education, especially higher education. Using OER and creating effective OER initiatives is a great way to fight that.
Hello, all~ I am Dr. Jacque Taylor, Assistant Dean and Professor at Greenville Technical College. In my role as a professor, I work to create an inclusive online learning environment and eliminate barriers for students. The low cost of materials is what excites me most about open educational resources. I often have students who do not purchase textbooks or other course materials and attempt to succeed in classes. The cost of instructional materials has been a barrier for my students.
Hi all, I am Jennifer Morgan and I am the Chair of the Science Department at York Technical College. Our college has been focused on ensuring that our courses are accessible and equitable for all students for several years now, and recently we've been making great strides in my department. Using the ally Accessibility tool, we measure our improvement regularly and are constantly working towards the goal of 100% accessibility in all courses. Regarding OER, we were early adopters on our campus of OpenStax textbooks, and have expanded our used of other OER materials as a result of the Covid pandemic. We have implemented lab simulations from PhET Interactive, ChemCollective, and a variety of other sites to supplement the online education that was at first a necessity and has now become a way of life. As such, our perspective on OER has shifted from a way to improve equity by reducing costs for students to a way of improving online course design to enagage and assess student learning. I'm looking forward to learning some new tools that I can use to grow our initiatives during this series!
Hello everyone,
My name is Lindsay Page, and I am the Director of Campus Accessibility Services at Plymouth State University in Plymouth, New Hampshire. PSU is one of the institutions under the University System of New Hampshire.
Accessibility is my daily role at PSU as I serve just over 700 students with documented disabilities. I also work with our Open Learning and Teaching Collaborative (CoLab) to bring accessibility to the forefront of professional development for faculty, staff, and students.
It is through my work with the CoLab that I have learned about OER. I am most excited to learn more about OER and how it supports all learners as well as making course materials more accessible for all.
Hello nice to meet you all,
Thank you :)
My name is Mary Sides, and I am an Associate Professor of Biology at McLennan Community College in Waco, Texas. I teach non-majors biology (both face-to-face and online). I want to learn more about making my courses and materials more accessible for all my students. What I really like about open educational resources is that they provide a way for me to provide customizable, quality materials to my students for no cost.
Hello!!!
My name is George Swindell. I am with Texas A&M University – Commerce. I am an Instructor and Program Liaison for our online Competency-based programs. As an instructor I am in the works of revising some of our courses and I want to ensure that I am using not just OER, but Accessible OER for our students. I guess in that sense, my professional connection to accessibility would be providing equal access to my students. Personally, I have always worked closely with our Universities’ Student Disability Resource Services Office and have made it a personal commitment of mine to work towards ensuring equal access.
When it comes to OER, the most exciting part is the savings for students. I think the second most exciting factor is the ability to remix. I teach a couple of survey type courses and it is great to be able to merge multiple OER together to meet the needs of our students to master their competencies.
Hello everyone: My name is Micaela Agyare and I am the Instruction Librarian at Foothill College, a community college in Silicon Valley. To support instructors in their efforst to transition to OER, I created an OER resource that provides information on OA and OER, as well as how to find OER resources online or via our Library Management System. In addition, when adding resources to our online collection, we always consider accessibility. I am intersted in learning more about the intersction of OER and accessibility in this group.
Hello!
Hello everyone!
My name is Elizabeth Robertson Hornsby and I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Southeastern Louisiana University. I serve as the Graduate Coordinator for our 100% online, asynchronous Master of Arts in Strategic Communication program. I also chair our Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council and serve as the General Education Coordinator.
Professionally, I work to ensure all of our graduate content is accessible to all learners. In my role as advisory council chair, I meet with our Accessibility Services Director to make sure there is accessibility representation in strategic conversations. Personally, I homeschool two sons who have learning disabilities and developmental disabilities so accessible content is important to their learning success.
The open part of open educational resources excite me the most! I truly take to hear bell hook's statement about the classroom being a radical space of possibility. To me, open educational resources and more specifically the open part is integral to creating spaces of possibility. I am very excited to participate in the series and learn from all who are involved.
Hi, my name is Tracey Stoddard at the University of New Hampshire. I am the course reserves specialist at our main library. My introduction to considering accessibility in my professional duties was making PDFs accessible for electronic reserves. I thought it was great that by making small changes to our processing, our files were more accessible for those who use screen readers (what a pain it must be to have to ask something be made accessible when it should be "born" accessible!) and also more useful for all students (I love search/find function). My first interest in open educational resources was to save students money, improve their education by increasing the chances they "purchase" the book. But the more I learn, the more I get excited about other aspects such as professors being able to tailor and update their text, and use it is a vehicle for open pedagogy.
Hello! I'm Carrie Nielsen, Professor of Biology and Environmental Science at Cabrini University (located in a suburb of Philadelphia). I work regularly with our Accessibility Resource Center to find ways to make my science courses accessible to all different kinds of learners, and I'm excited to learn more about open educational resources that might help me do that better.
Hello, Everyone,
My name is Sarah Northam and I am the Director of Research and Instruction at Velma K. Waters Library on the campus of Texas A&M University-Commerce. I coordinate our library research and instruction services and also serve as a liasion to our faculty and graduate students. I am also the OER lead for the library.
Personnally, I spend a lot of itme thinking about physical accesiblity. My husband use a wheelchair. You don't realize hoe many things are not accessible until you see someone having to struggle with access. Additionally, I have been able to work with many students who need accessble library resources. I try to be proactive about learning about accessibiilty an ensuring that resources I produce are available to everyone.
I love the idea of Open Educational Resources and how they promote equity, but at its heart it is also that we can save our students and guarantee that everyone gets access to the course materials that they need.
Hi there! My name is Yolanda Gonzalez. I'm an Associate Professor of English at McLennan Community College (Waco, TX) and will be starting as the INRW Coordinator at my instution this fall.
As an instructor, the issue of accessibility is always on my mind. I have to make sure all my course materials (textbook, handouts, lectures, etc.) are accessible to all my students, no matter their circumstances.
The potential to "level the playing field" is the most exciting feature of OER, in my opinion. Many students in my service area are economically disadvantaged, and OER has the potential to make their disadvantages a non-issue.
Hello Colleagues
My name is Alba De Leon at Palo Alto College of Alamo Colleges in SA, Tx. I am a Professor of Art teaching Art History courses.
As a Professor my connectoin to accessibilty is very important in teaching and interacting with my students.
In collaboration with Aaron, an adjunct instructor, we have worked over several years to build Art History OER courses availalbe to all students.
Hi there! My name is Sally Baldwin. I am an instructor and a member of the Online Learning Team at Foothill College. I continue to learn more about accessibility, especially as I work to help others with their courses. I also welcome accessiblilty personally as a "unique" learner (as we all are!). I am very excited about providing accessible (both in terms of access and use) resources to more students. I want to learn more so that I can do better in more courses!
My name is Jerry Parker and I am a faculty member at Southeastern Louisiana University (Hammond, La). My research focuses on Multicultural Education so I have always been into issues of accessibility, but it was not until I had a student that I had to specialize content for that I really understood the reason behind doing so. She was a sweet and kind older lady who was very intelligent and dedicated, she was just having eye problems and couldn't read on a computer screen. OER's excite me because they allow me to be creative and truly maximize student success. I teach French & Spanish so our field is based on the now and how people use language. Having the ability to use real resources by native speakers in creative ways is amazing to get my students to see that language classrooms can mirror real life if designed correctly.
My name is Jerry Parker and I am a faculty member at Southeastern Louisiana University (Hammond, La). My research focuses on Multicultural Education so I have always been into issues of accessibility, but it was not until I had a student that I had to specialize content for that I really understood the reason behind doing so. She was a sweet and kind older lady who was very intelligent and dedicated, she was just having eye problems and couldn't read on a computer screen. OER's excite me because they allow me to be creative and truly maximize student success. I teach French & Spanish so our field is based on the now and how people use language. Having the ability to use real resources by native speakers in creative ways is amazing to get my students to see that language classrooms can mirror real life if designed correctly.
Hello, and greetings from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. My name is Bethany Mickel and I am the Instructional Design and OER Librarian.
As an instructional designer, I think a lot about making learning accessible and UDL is the Holy Grail of accessibility. Making learning approachable and possible for everyone is a personal goal and UDL sets the groundwork. Personally, I have found myself relying on a variety of tools such as captions, transcripts, and audio recordings as ways to review content so that I can interact intentionally with it and reflect afterwards. At times, an abundance of links, content in chat, etc. can be a lot to handle; therefore, the ability to return to a webinar recording, for instance, is valuable.
I love everything about OER--I truly do--from the ways that it makes learning accessible, to the cost savings, to the opportunitites for the integration of diversity, equity, and inclusion as a central theme, it is a win-win way to create materials that meet learns' needs.
Hi,
My name is Diana Botnaru from georgia Southern University. I am a professor of Human Anatomy and Physiology. I started teaching online several years ago and accessibility became very important to me as I want to make sure that the materials I create and post are accessible to all students. I participated in creating several OER for my classes and I am most excited about the ability to tailor them to my needs.
Hi all! My name is Mandi Goodsett and I am the Performing Arts & Humanities Librarian, as well as the OER & Copyright Advisor at Cleveland State University. As someone who helps with our OER publishing program and our OER grant program, I spend a lot of time helping faculty create and modify open materials. I know these materials need to be accessible, but I don't have a lot of expertise in accessibility -- that's why I'm excited to be here! The thing about OERs that excites me the most is the opportunity to make learning as meaningful as possible for students by adding flexibility to course material creation and by inviting students to participate in guiding their own learning.
Hi! My name is Shawnee Wakeman. I am a clinical professor at UNC Charlotte. I work extensively with pre-service candidates who are learning about accessbility and the use of UDL to plan for studens with extensive support needs. OER is one way we have been utilizing for dissemination of our research but I need to continue to consider ways to promote my candidate understanding and use of OER for the benefit of their future students.
Hey All
I'm Mike and I am an instructional designer for South College.
I aim to make sure our course material can be accesed failry and it formated in a way that can be used for those with any number of accesibility issues.
I'm eager to learn about the wide rage of OER's
What is your name, institution, and role at your institution?
What is your personal/professional connection to accessibility?
What about "open educational resources" most excites you?
Présentation
1. What is your name, institution and role at your institution?
My name is Spyridon Simotas and I am an Assistant Professor General Faculty at the University of Virginia.
2. What is your personal/professional connection to accessibility?
In 2016 or 2017 I started experimenting with screen readers. I don’t have a disability, but screen readers allowed me stay with my research even while I was doing something else, like taking the bus, or doing house chores. Needless to say that not all the articles that I would have liked to listen to were accessible to screen readers. Around the same time, I found out about Markdown, Pandoc, and What You See is Not What You Get (WYSINWYG) text editors. Since then, I strive to produce format agnostic and accessible documents. I really like the idea of accessible documents and formats because they provide options for interaction and by doing so they increase the chance of engagement.
3. What about "open educational resources" most excites you?
Here is a non-exhaustive list in no particular order:
• The fact that it is open! Open and free are still radical ideas in US system of education.
• The fact the my work becomes visible and maybe of value to someone else.
• The fact that students can participate in the creation of the materials.
• The fact that it is a collaborative and iterative process.
Hello!
My name is Nikki Rech and I am currently one of the Research Services Librarians as well as the OER Librarian. My liaison areas are all STEM based, except when it comes to OER. My professional connection to accessibility is as an educator - trying to ensure all of my students can be successful. As a librarian, I mostly teach one-shots within somebody else's course, so it's important to establish strong partnerships. I've been working with OER for over 6 years now, so there is a lot about them that excites me. More and more I am excited with OER's ability to allow our marganilized groups to be seen within course materials.
Greetings, everyone!
My name is Erich Robinson. I teach Western Civilization, African History, American History at Trident Technical College Thornley campus.
I've had the pleasure of working with Michelle Smith in the Center for Teching Excellence. Which allowed me the opportunity to participate in webinar "Supporting Student Sucess with Open and Affordable Course Materials" and to successfully complete a Faculty Training course "Engaging Your Students" In addition, I was fortunate to particpate in a Norton webinar "Equity Minded Teaching in UI.S. History"
I believe OER will expose me to new avenues of utilizing as well as creating content that is accessible to all students at no cost.
Hi! I'm Mary Murphy Budzilowicz, the Director of the Center for Universal Design for Learning, Technology, and Resources at Cabrini University. I hold dual certification in elementary education and special education here in Pennsylvania. I have both a personal and a professional connection to accessibility. I am the parent of a child born with a rare brain anomaly called agenesis of the corpus callosum and also possible chromosome 22q11.2 syndrome. She was diagnosed shortly after birth, receiving EI services and special education services through secondary and disability support in higher education. (And there were no predictions that she would go to college but she did!). Her schooling experiences brought me to the UDL framework through a resource that CAST produced called Thinking Reader. Thinking Reader provided her with the opportunity to access books that she struggled to decode and to have teacher facilitation throughout the stages of the critical reading process. We began to recognize early on that if she was provided with the appropriate tools such as text to speech and speech to text plus UDL design options to provide choice as to how to best demonstrate her learning...well, it was a pathway that celebrated her many strengths and gave teachers better insights regarding her identity as a learner. The trajectory of her life was changed significantly with the shift from a deficit approach (that old medical model) to a strengths-based approach with full inclusion that recognized the fault was not with her as the learner but in the design of the learning experiences. UDL and its recogntion of accessibility and useability provided that powerful shift and message!
Today, I teach courses on high-incidence disabilities, inclusion, and UDL design and implementation to undergraduate education majors. Course discussions and exploration focus on UDL, accessibility, strategic instruction, and issues related to equity. We also focus on the explicit connections among UDL, social-emotional learning, and culturally responsive practices
To date, I have not created OER materials so I am especially excited to learn how to do so. As someone who has spent considerable time trying to retrofit resources, I see the value in the ability to create from the beginning materials that are accessible and useable, and aligned with the representation principle of UDL. I also see how issues related to the cost of materials, textbooks, etc are a significant barrier for so many of our students here at the university. Being able to create open educational resources that students can easily access and use will play a critical role in creating equitable, inclusive learning spaces in our university community.
What is your name, institution, and role at your institution?
I am Mona Calhoun, the Chairperson and Associate Professor in the Health Information Management Department at Coppin State University—a historically black institution in Baltimore, MD.
What is your personal/professional connection to accessibility?
During my graduate work, I had the opportunity to do an internship in our disability services support office. As I worked with the students, it made me think about the types of accommodations and how those accommodations were determined. We can provide more time, reading devices, recorded lectures, note-takers, etc., but what are we doing to ensure they can engage with classmates and the instructor? I wondered if those accommodations were helping the student to engage in the learning environment. My research taught me more about accessibility, equity and inclusion, and universal design. I am now trying to learn as much as possible to apply that knowledge in my instruction and course design and help my colleagues do the same.
What about "open educational resources" most excites you?
I am most excited about the opportunities it brings to make education more affordable, relevant, and current for every student.
Hello!
My name is Heather Caprette. I work as a Sr. Media Developer/Instructional Designer at Cleveland State University in Northeast Ohio.
Professionally, at CSU, I’ve worked on designing professional development short courses for faculty to teach document accessibility for Word and PowerPoint, as well as using Ally in Blackboard to find and fix accessibility issues with content in an online course. Personally, I have an interest in accessible online design because of my background doing web design and development. When I worked at The Ohio State University, we had a Web Accessibility Center and I started attending training from them back in the early 2000s.
OER excites me because it levels the playing field for students who can’t afford course materials. It gives everyone access from day one of a class. No one has to wait until financial aid or a paycheck, or a loan from a family member comes in to pay for their textbooks and course materials. If the OER is accessible, it includes day one access for students with disabilities also. I like OER that allows for remixing and revising so that it can be customized to an institution and/or a specific course.
Hello,
My name is Shainaz Landge from Georgia Southern University. I am an Associate Professor in Chemistry and BioChemistry. Accessibility in general is also very important becasue it helps studetns to have options and see the creative ways they can have to learn new materials. I have been involved in 5 different OER projects at GSU and it excites me to realize that students will have access to teaching material on first day of classes.
My name is Richard Moniz and I am the Director of Library Services at Horry-Georgetown Technical College and current Chair of the Board of Directors for PASCAL (Partnership Among South Carolina Academic Libraries). I have also been an instructor in the Masters of Library and Information Science program at the University of North Carolin at Greensboro for 16 years. I am heavily involved in the work we do for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the state and institutional level. Accessibility is a huge part of that and its very discouraging to see these things attacked in states like South Carolina, Florida, etc. I think the work we do making things more accessible and making sure students, but also faculty and staff from different backgorunds feel respected, heard, and included is critical. The thing that excites me most about OER is the most basic, saving money for our students. We have long since eliminated fines in our libraries at HGTC and recently implemented a free printing service for our students. I think this makes a difference for students already struggling financially.
Love this. Thanks, Richard!
Hello! My name is Julia Osteen, and I am the Director of Professional Development for Lipscomb University's Center for Teaching and Learning in Nashville, Tennessee. I am also an assistant professor of education. Accessibility is a topic that our institution is paying close attention to. We are determining ways that all of the faculty can be better at providing variability and flexibility in course design regardless of mode. I have dabbled in the past with OER but am excited to get more of a handle on finding and evaluating OER materials. I also want to know more about the process of creating those and ensuring quality.
My name is Emily Scida, and I am an instructional designer at the University of Virginia. In my role, I hope to support faculty in making teaching and learning accessible to all, both online and in and out of the classroom. What excites me about OER is its potential to be a tool for DEIA and social justice.
Hi everyone,
My name is Margaret (Mags) Floood. I an Assistant Professor in Inclusive and Special Eduaction in Initial Teacher Education at Maynooth University, Ireland. Honing in on my current role I am thinking about accessibility from two perspectives. Firstly, am I and how can ensure my own resources are accessible to all my students. Secondly, I'm thinking about modelling good practice that my students can take with them into their taeching careers.
Hello! My name is Kristin Dhabolt, I am the Web Content Manager for the University of New Hampshire Library. I try to apply accessibility standards and universal design principles wherever I can. I have been lucky enough to work with a handful of other folks at my organization who also prioritized accessibility both for our physical spaces and our digital content. I also grew up seeing, through family members and friends, how much of a positive impact it has when everyone is able to do and learn things in a way that meets their needs. I am new to OER but am excited to see how much overlap there is with accessibility and can't wait to learn more.
Hello. My name is MIke Gregory. I am currently the Director of Instructional Design at Cabrini University. As an instructional designer, I have a strong connection to accessibiilty when helping to create content for courses. It's much easier to think of accessibility when designing the content instead of trying to retrofit materials. I also have an adminstrative role at the university, and that allows me to try to educate the faculty on the importance of accessibility.
I have worked with OER in the past, but what excites me most is that OER allows you to pick and choose the most appropriate or relevant content to meet your instructional objectives.
Hi! My name is Amy San Antonio. I work at Texas A&M University-Commerce and I am the Librarian for the DFW Extended University Sites. I help with online research, online course material, and promote library services outside the main campus. Professionally, I want to make sure I am serving ALL students, not just a select few. As everything I provide is online, it is important for me to be on-top of best practices. The best part of OER is the free aspect. This allows student to start at the same place on the first day of classes. Also, I'm excited to learn more about the different "formats" and how they can be implemented and transformed for various classes.
My name is Laurie Latvis. I am an adjunct faculty member at various Universities teaching healthcare related courses. I hold a doctorate in healthcare administration as well as a Master of Arts and a Reigstered Nurse. My role in this cohort is through Siena Height University. My profesional connection is making my courses accessible for all students. I am definitely a beginner at doing so and need to review the directions each time. OER is a very exciting initiative that will be most valuable to everyone - inclusivity is very important to one's life including improvement in mental health.
Laurie
Hello! I am Aerian Tatum, Assistant Professor at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland. As an instructor, I am connected to accessibility. The accessibility and affordability of OERs excite me.
Hi all,
I'm Emilie Zickel, Associate College Lecturer in First-Year Writing at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio.
I am definitely an accessibility learner, not an expert. In my courses, I strive to create a learning environment that is inclusive of all learners/learning styles, but I have a lot to learn. I am also an OER creator who is constantly working to revise and improve my OER - improving its accessibility is a key element of this improvement.
What most excites me about OER - mine in particular - is that students have one of the core texts for my class on day one in class. I am also a grad student, and I feel the pain of having to buy textbooks (often online, for cheaper prices), wait for their delivery, fret about the price, etc etc. So being able to share access to core course materials for free feels like a big win.
Hello everyone! My name is Aaron Smith, and I am an adjunct instructor in Art History at Palo Alto College of the Alamo Colleges in San Antonio, Texas.
As someone very familiar with the many social and cultural barriers within art education and the art institution, I continuously make strides to provide my students with accessible materials and technologies that help highlight and democratize access to art within and outside the classroom.
I have worked in collaboration with Alba De Leon for many years to develop OER that allows students to see themselves represented and participate within the larger art historical conversation. Unlike traditional textbooks, OER allows us to make content adaptations that align to the needs and perspectives of out student population.
Hi All!
My name is Katie Mercer from Georgia Southern University. I am the Distance Learning Coordinator at the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health and a member of the university OER Working Group. I have a close relationship with accessibility as I ensure that all courses at the College follow standards. I also understand clearly the importance of educational equity among diverse learners. OER excites me for many reasons but most notably the creativity of the developer is maximized as the materials do not have to be in the traditional textbook format!
Hi, all!
I'm Greg and, like many of my students, I'm showing up late to the party! (I'll blame it on a double overload for the spring semester and generalized chaos!)
I'm a professor of Business Communications at Horry-Georgetown Technical College, but I also play a role supporting faculty training and OER development for our Distance Learning Institute at the College. I bring a curious perspective to the higher ed experience because I'm in my 26th year at HGTC, including stints at all levels, even a decade as a VP.
My professional connection to accessibility lies mostly in my teaching role, where I seek to consider all dimensions of the student learning spectrum as I create content and share course learning components. I also play a role in gatekeeping and modeling accessibility for the faculty whom I train and mentor. Personally, accessibility is close to me because my youngest son is from Ethiopia and for whom English is a third language. I've seen the challenges he's faced from elementary school into college bridging the access gap in language and cultural context.
The aspect of OER that most excites me is the benefit it provides financially to students breaking down cost barriers. Time and time again I've seen students struggle academically because of the price of textbooks or other resources. OER means enhanced access from the start, which increases success and retention.
Hello Everyone,
My name is Stephanie Tate. I am an assistant College Lecturer in the Nursing Program at Cleveland State University in Cleveland Ohio. My personal connection to accessibility is incorporating it into the classroom for my students. There are several ways that I do this, but I always want to learn more. The thing that excites me most is making education more affordable and therefore more available to more students. Nursing is an expensive degree. With books, uniforms, lab equipment and fees, many students are not able to afford it. OER can help with that.
My name is Anthony Malone and I am an Associate Professor in the Education Department, Maynooth University, Ireland. I teach across a range of programmes on topics such as pedagogy, history of education, educational policy and educational leadership. In my daily work I see the importance of UDL and how it supports iunclusion and equity. These are important values for me. I am very taken with OERs and how they can support my work with my students. I especially like the empahsis in the programme on being proactive and reflective.
My name is Debbie Walker. I am a Faculty Developer at Georgia Southern University. I have collaborated for several years with our library OER champion to promote and support faculty use of OER materials. I am most excited about how the use of OER materials can enhance the pedagogy/learning experience in a course.
Hi colleagues,
My name is Céline Healy and I work at Maynooth University Department of Education, Ireland, as a teacher educator, particularly in initial teacher education but also in professional development through our M.Ed. and doctoral programmes.
On both peronal and professional level accessibility is very important to me as it is underpinned by equity. In my role as a teacher educator I work to take the needs of all my studnets into consideraation and also to model strategies for increasing and supporting accessibility for all.
OERs are of particular interest as they represent ease of access and equity of use for all.
Hi everyone,
My name is Daniel Jung, and I am the Director of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) Director of the COMPASS (Student Success Office) at Briar Cliff University, Sioux City, Iowa. I am uniquely positioned as guidance for both Students and Faculties. I learned and experienced the importance of accessibility to the given course as an instructor and director of the COMPASS. We have many students who are from low socio-economy status. They need help to acquire textbooks and software associated with courses. So, I am excited to learn about OER since we can make students receive course materials quickly and freely!
Happy Wednesday,
My name is Niya Werts, and I'm the Graduate Program Director for the MS Health Science at the University of Maryland at Baltimore. I also teach in the program I direct. My professional connection to accessibility is the MS Health Science is 100% online. This provides both opportunities and challenges for access, particularly for some of our international students. I want to maximize the learning experience for all of our students. From a personal perspective, I used to work at a school with quite a few faculty who were deaf. I learned so much from working with them and seeing their challenges when they did not receive support.
One of the things that excites me about OER is the ability to bring down costs of texts and materials for students.
Hi! My name is Stella Mattioli, and I am a lecturer of Italian at University of Virginia.
When I started teaching I started noticing that students had different needs, and I have been trying to make efforts in order to meet them. There is always something new to learn! Of OER I like the fact that there is nos price for the students to pay to access the material. The cost os textbooks sometimes is exagerated. I also feel like the instructor is more in charge of what material to use and how.
Hi! I'm Misty Parsley from Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN. I am the Executive Director of the Office of Accessibility and Learning Supports. I'm previously the DIrector of Special Education Programs and, with my colleague, have done a lot of UDL presentations. In my new role, I'm looking at accessibility with a wider lens. OER provides opportunites to give access of great materials to more people!
Hello!
My name is Carolyn Holcroft and I'm a faculty member at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, CA. When I started here I was a biology faculty but five years ago I transitioned into my current role as College Professional Development Coordinator. My work with faculty involves training in culturally responsive teaching, authentic assessment, student-centered course design, etc. and principles of Universal Design are central to all of these.
What most excites me about OER is the possibility of bringing learning to EVERYONE who wants it, not just those who have the means to access it. I think OER can help close those persistent demographically-predicatable gaps in success (however measured).
I already learned a ton in the first webinar and am looking forward to learning more with everyone here!
Carolyn
Hi Everyone! My name is Casey Heard and I am an Assistant Professor in the College of Education at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. I currently teach Graduate and Undergraduate teaching licensure courses. With the push for a more online setting since COVID, I have seen the need for more accessibility options for my virtual students. I am hoping to gain quick additions that I can implement immediatly. I also support our Educational Technology initiatives and I'm hoping to add resources for teacher candidates to implement within their classrooms. Several of my current job-embedded students use OER through their districts and I'm excited to learn more about the resources available to the teachers.
Katelyn Hadder, Lipscomb University
I am an assistant professor in the College of Education. I "live" in the special education department, however I support both general education teacher candidates and special education teacher candidates. Prior to working at LU, I was a special education teacher in Metro Nashville Public Schools. Due to the nature of my work, accessibility was something I was thinking about and providing regularly. As a professor, I still strive to provide access that is student-specific, however now I am also talking about the methodology behind accessibility- it is a large part of my instructional course objectives.
I am not as familiar with OER, ironically enough. This is not a space I have delved into previously; I am excited to learn more about what this looks like when we think about supporting students but also as we think about training staff across our campus.
Hello! I am Laura Samuelsen and I am a math instructor at Hudson County Community College. In all of my classes, I try to make resources accessible but I realize I still can do more. OER is exciting because we can incorporate technology and resources and make it available to the student for free. The instructor has the freedom to "design" their course in a way that will benefit students.
Hi, all! My name is Claire Cook and I am an Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Middle Tennessee State Univeristy. I have a committment to recognizing all types of learners in the classroom, and accessibility is a mode to ensure I reach this goal. I have worked with OER extensively, even receiving a small grant from our Univieristy to transform some of our curriculum to OER. We have saved students up to $500 over the course of their time as our student by moving multiple courses to OER. I am most excited that OER is dynamic and can help me achieve my goal of making all learning accessible. Looking forward to a great several weeks of learning more!
Hello! My name is Keri Griffin, and I work at Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan. We are a small liberal arts institution founded in the Catholic Dominican tradition. I am the Academic Coordinator of Online Learning and work with our faculty to develop online courses that serve our students. Our mission is to "respect the dignity of all", and accessibility is a cornerstone of that process. I love the notion that OERs can help provide adaptable resources for faculty and readily available for students right when they begin a course.
Hello everyone! My name is Valarie Jenkins and I am the Systems Librarian at Trident Technical College. I have taken a few classes/workshops on accessibility. Accessibility is important to me make sure that the people we serve have access to information in the way that they need. I also want to learn the many different ways we can assist them. Informing people about OERs is what excites me. Many faculty, staff and students are not familiar with OERs so explaining how they work and where they can find these resources makes me happy.
Hi! My name is Liz Fowler and I'm the User Engagement & Student Success Librarian at the University of New Hampshire. (a member of the Team USNH group).
I've been working to get accessibility (and universal design) built into our practices and procedures. Some of that work has been led by individuals in our organization and in recent years it has been part of the library's Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibilty (IDEA) Program.
I'm newer to OER work, though colleagues in the library, across UNH, and even throughout USNH have been working on initiatives for years. I'm excited about learning more about connections of OER and Accessiblity.
1. Kristen Cook, McLennan Community College, Waco, TX - Coordinator, Library Research & Instruction
2. A colleague of mine has been the champion of accessibility for a number of years. Accessibility is a natural consideration in the library world.
3. Collaboration between professionals across the globe, sharing creativity, innovation, and best practices.
Hello, I am Professor Jeffrey Scott. I am the Assistant Chair of the Criminal Justice Department. I am part of the group from HGTC. I like the flexibility of the OER and the resources that is available to the instructors.
My name is Stacy Ford and I am the Accessible Technology and Universal Design Center Coordinator at Montgomery College. My connection to accessibility is that I review procured ICT, Provide training on accessibility and designing materials that are accessible, monitor accessibility for compliance purposes, and be a subject matter expert for the college. OER's is hopeful for creating inclusive content from access perspective but am excited that the awareness of accessibility in this area is getting more light.
Hello Everyone!
My name is Angela Dunn and I serve as the Dean of Graduate Academics and Digital Education at Siena Heights University (SHU) in Adrian, MI. My connection to accessibility is embedded into my daily work. I develop and teach online courses, work with SHU’s online graduate programs, collaborate with our Online Learning Advisory Committee, support our director of accessibly initiatives, and support campus training for all learning modalities. The teams I work with are committed to creating an accessible environment for students at SHU. While we have committed faculty and staff across campus, we have a lot of work ahead of us and so much learning to do! I use OER’s with my current courses that I teach however, I am excited about the potential of supporting students on a much larger scale – full OER programs!
Angela
My name is Mark Farris, I am a Faculty Development Specialist at Alamo Colleges District. I am very interested in any work that seeks to make educational resources more equitable and attainable to all students. The most exciting thing about open educational resources is the ability they have to make attaining education more affordable.
Hi Y'all,
My name is Laura Gamez, and I'm the Equity Librarian at Foothill College.
My personal connection is I have disabled people in my life, who would have benefited if some of the world had been more accessible to them, and in my prfessional life equity = accessibility and I want to keep trying to make resources/services more accessible to students.
What makes me excited about OER is another way for education to be more accessible for ALL students.
1. My name is Erin Ward and I am the Media Designer at South College
2. We have 2 students with accissibility needs right now and I am working with them and their departments to make their current and upcoming courses accessible.
3. They're free and easy to find.
Hi everyone! I'm Deb Barnhart and I'm the Associate Director of Instructional Design and Technology at South College. My connection to acccessibility is that our team is responsible for accessible course design. What I find most exciting about OER is that it is book agnostic. I find many times there is too much focus on content in a textbook as opposed to concepts within a particular field of study.
I am an adjunct instructor with Palo Alto Collge. On a professional level, I would like to make sure that all the learning materials students use are equally accessible to all. Thats what excites me, it just plain accessibility for al.
1. Paul Crolley, Department Chair at HGTC
2. No personal connection, per se, just looking to learn more
3. The value and flexibility it could offer