Abbey K. Elder

I created a bilingual checklist that classifies each action by career stage (all, mid-career, senior) and potential career risk (low, medium, high).

Use it to see what you already do or what you want to commit to next. ✅

📄 Download the checklist: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... #OpenAccess #DiamondOA

I will add the recording to my watch later, then! Thanks for the recommendation

Next up at #OpenEd25... I was going to be attending "A Positive Agenda for Open Education as a Public Good" ... but it is Day 3, so I will watch the recording later and send good thoughts to the team from the @opened.bsky.social table

This backs up previous studies that #OER are generally helpful for students, but particularly for those who may not be able to afford their materials. But the amount and complexity of the data here is much more than that. I look forward to the full report coming from the AAC&U team later! #OpenEd25

The team has a lot of data exploring ties between #OER + other factors (institution, course, the student). There is a pattern here: the affect of OER on withdrawal rates is stable across the board, but it helps students in one or more underrepresented groups (e.g. Pell eligible students) more

I'll leave it to the researchers to share their work in their own words, but some highlights:
- Course withdrawal rates saw a significant decrease across courses using #OER, though this was also affected by context, especially by variables in the students' life and needs.

Course, Student and instructor data table. Includes items like course name, year, term, discipline, first year, material cost, student birth year, total credits, full time or part time, SAT score, instructor status, and more.

A lot of data was used to get a more complete picture of the courses, instructors, and students being studied, to help the researchers understand where variables might be affecting what they found. "Pulling this data was an experience," Heather Miceli notes. #OpenEd25

It was also important for the research team to find instructors who were teaching the same courses pre-OER and post-OER, to better compare the outcomes across that data.

Presentation slide with the title Methodology and icons for institutional questionnaires, course and student data, focus groups, and instructor surveys.

To meet all of their research goals, the team had to take multiple approaches, integrating an institutional survey (does your institution have support for #OER?), collecting course data, running focus groups, and surveying instructors. #OpenEd25

As part of this research, the team thoughtfully considered how to limit bias and also get more robust data. For example, they wanted more context about individual courses and instructors' #OER adoptions, to account for ideal adoptions (integrated into LOs) and less ideal scenarios (basic flips)

High impact practices webpage screenshot. List includes capstone courses, collaborative assignments, eportfolios, internships, service learning, and more.

As the presenters share, High Impact Practices have evidence that they deepen learning within course settings and are proven to work for all students. And #OER can likely fall into this as well.

The team working on this research project wanted to establish a generalizable foundation to make evidence-based arguments for #OER use, discern what conditions yield the best results for students, and eventually, integrate #OpenEd into AAC&U's list of High Impact Educational Practices.

Next up at #OpenEd25 Day 3, I am attending "Beyond Affordability: Early Insights from a Multi-Institutional Study on #OER and Student Success" from folks doing research through the AAC&U.

If you're interested in learning more about Karen's work with open pedagogy and open science, please check out her site for the OCTOPUS project (it's quite an acronym!): karencang.net/uncategorize...

As with many of the presentations at #OpenEd25, I am so glad to be learning with and from the speakers here. Karen is always a wonder to hear from and I am lucky to be listening in this room and sharing with you all! But I'm going to cut off my live posts here to engage in Q&A more thoughtfully.

Part of this work is that we need to consider what tools we are encouraging and How we are encouraging their use. How can we create a foundation for the responsible use of AI among students? Build community, trust your students, & motivate them to learn by making your course valuable & engaging.

Karen's talk asks us to consider how we can leverage experimental work (open pedagogy assignments, course innovation) while leveraging the best practices of open science to build media literacy and critical thinking among our students. How do we help students build tools that serve the public good?

Open pedagogy is an educational practice that encourages collaboration and community engagement (much like service learning) and students developing learning objects (not just textbooks! We are sick of textbooks!) and students can learn to be open scholars through this work. #OpenEd25

And since this is #OpenEd25, of course, we're going to connect that work in #OpenScience to #OpenPedagogy. How can we invite students into their learning experience as co-creators of knowledge, and teach them best practices for sharing well and broadly, as outlined by our peers in open science?

One thing we can do better is to reach out to a broader audience, Karen argues. Open science is often marketed to established scientists, but we need a cultural shift in this work, by supporting citizen science and bringing in undergraduates into this important #Open work too.

But this isn't to say that #OpenScience is bad by any means. We just need to be conscientious about the risks and how we can mitigate them, while doing good science.

Open science, Karen notes, has a lot of benefits, so why is open science still not regularly adopted and discussed in science classrooms? Well, opening up your scientific research can exacerbate existing issues, by leaving people vulnerable, sharing "too much," & uplifting the already-famous.

This morning, I am late to my first #OpenEd25 session of Day 3, "Developing a Comprehensive Undergraduate Open Science-Open Pedagogy Program" by Karen Cangialosi. I did catch a great quote, though: "Science supports democracy, and democracy supports science."

No worries! There will be recordings later. None of the presentations I've done have been in-person only (though I've tried to share the live sessions I've attended for others to enjoy)

An #openEd25 side discussion (in a lively chat window) about generative "AI" and accessibility led me to write that Universal Design for Learning is ultimately a better tool for accessibility (at least in education) than genAI.

Feeling pretty sure I'm going to stand by that for years to come.

2025 Open Education Conference: “Thank You for All You Do”: Celebrating... View more about this event at 2025 Open Education Conference

This team has done some excellent work, so I highly recommend checking out their slides and following the work happening at NCSU more closely to learn more: sched.co/270KH
#OpenEd25

Awards of appreciation, signed by the Dean of the libraries at NCSU, is one way that the team has highlighted faculty. They've published featured articles.& they've made a concerted effort to spotlight not just "high-savings" projects, but also innovative projects like those that use VR or OEP

At NCSU, much of faculty work is only seen as "valued" when it can be tied to promotion and tenure expectations. So looking at those guidelines can be valuable as well. For example, helping get data on page views, downloads, or press mentions about the #OER work they have accomplished.

At the same time, you need to assess your capacity and what you can do to recognize people and the work they have done--and the work they have done will be diverse and unique and perhaps difficult to describe!

Each of the "pit stops" on this road or process can come about in many different ways. You need to approach it based on your community, your institution, and your faculty. But connecting with them on an individual level is the important piece here. #OpenEd25