Webinars & Workshops

Winter 2023

Teaching Mathematics with OER

Dr Frankland shares his experience using Open Educational Resources (OER) in mathematics courses, both undergraduate and graduate. He discuss some benefits and drawbacks, as well as some ideas to find appropriate OER. The video of the presentation is available below.

 

Creating STEM Problems in WeBWorK

WeBWorK is an open-source online homework system for STEM courses.  It is now supported by the University of Regina. (See here for documentation.)  While WeBWorK comes with many existing problems, particularly in mathematics, instructors often want to make slight changes to problems or create their own.  This talk will give an introduction to how to modify or create problems in WeBWorK at the University of Regina.  I will look at the basic structure of a WeBWorK problem, how to edit them in WeBWorK, and the various WeBWorK libraries (written in Perl) that allow for easy problem creation of different types. Newer features of WeBWorK and problem templates that utilize them will be shown so one can quickly get started making sophisticated STEM problems with this software. Dr. Robert Petry facilitated this session whose video is available below.

 

Using Interactive H5P Activities in Moodle

Did you know you can embed interactive formative assessments in Moodle? Did you know there’s a huge variety to choose from, and you can even adapt them or make your own? In this session you’ll learn where to find H5P activities you can use, how to add them to your Moodle course, and how to make basic modifications. The following is a link to a resource by Dr. Karla Panchuk https://opentextbc.ca/physicalgeologyh5p. The video of the presentation is available below.

Developing OER: Best Practices

The rapid pivot to online learning at the start of the pandemic created challenges for lab courses where hands-on learning is critical to student success. As instructors in the Department of Geology at URegina, we developed a new lab manual for our second year physical geology course (GEOL 201) to help address this issue for Winter 2021. We adapted parts of an earlier OER lab manual and merged these with existing and new resources (including a lab kit) we developed that are specific to our teaching approach. After developing and using our original manual in Winter 2021 we test-drove the manual on three additional cohorts of students and refined the resource prior to the (anticipated) release of our first edition in March 2023. One key feature that sets our lab manual apart from the earlier OER projects at other institutions is our final project exercise. Here, students integrate the knowledge gained through their first 9 labs to prepare a cumulative project simulating a field mapping project and demonstrating their new skills. Based on feedback from the first cohort of students using the manual in Winter 2021, we developed an additional exemplar project to assist students with the process of integrating their results and our expectations for the final project. We shared parts of this exemplar with students in the Fall 2022 offering of the course, with unexpected results. Students still struggled with the project; while the exemplar was somewhat helpful it did not provide the boost to students’ comprehension we had anticipated. Through our reflections on this revelation and students’ comments and suggestions, we are working to improve our approach to identify roadblocks and address the threshold concepts introduced to students in this course to improve the exemplar and our students’ experience moving forward.

For those interested, you can download the presentation[PDF] as well.

Fall 2022

Using WeBWorK with URcourses

Dr. Robert Petry was the presenter for this session. WeBWorK is a mature open-source online homework system for STEM courses. Its goal is to provide this community with as robust, flexible and mathematically capable online homework system as possible. As it was developed originally by mathematicians, it currently has a large library of freely available problems that can be used for assessment in that field. Problems in other domains also exists and can be created by instructors themselves using the sophisticated tools that WeBWorK provides. The University of Regina now supports WeBWorK. This talk will demonstrate how WeBWorK can be used for assessment and the ways it is currently integrated within UR Courses. The session will also discuss how to back up your material. It will assume no prior knowledge of the software. The video of the presentation is shown below.

 

From Open Educational Resources to Open Educational Practices

Dr. Danielle Dubien was the presenter for this session.  Developing course content and activities can be a challenge. But it’s easier when you have openly licensed materials to legally copy in the form of Open Educational Resources (OER). This webinar will introduce you to OER and how to use them. It will also introduce you to Open Educational Practices, which are about processes for active learning that can be collaborative. If you want to explore ways of fostering a trusting and innovative community of online learners, then join this webinar. The video of the presentation is available below.

 

Winter 2022 Workshops

 Discussion panel on Teaching with OER/OA

The OER Program facilitated a panel discussion on Teaching using open access (OA) /open educational resources (OER). There were two panelists: Dr. Karla McManus and Laura Ambrose. They both shared how they incorporate OA/OER into their teaching practice.

The recording is available below.

 

The following are the presentation handouts from the two panelists:

  1. Dr. Karla McManus Art History presentation [PDF]
  2. Laura Ambrose Biology presentation [PPT] and handout [PDF]

 

Open Pedagogy discussion: Decolonization and Justice

The OER Program facilitated a panel discussion on a Department of Justice Studies Open Pedagogy project. In Winter 2021, Dr. Muhammad Asadullah and his undergraduate students in JS-419, co-created the OER, Decolonization and Justice: An Introductory Overview. This resource was published in January 2022 and made available through the University of Regina Pressbooks instance to the global community. In this panel discussion, a teaching circle approach was used as Dr. Asadullah and 5 of his students shared their experiences working on this project. The recording of the event is provided below.

Discussion panel on Universal Design for Learning as an Inclusive Teaching Strategy

The OER Program and CTL facilitated a panel discussion on Universal Design for Learning (UDL)as it relates to inclusion at the University of Regina.The panelist were:

  1. Dr. Alec Couros
  2. Dr. Jenn de Lugt
  3. Dr. Scott Thompson

The session was the beginning of a conversations about UDL as a strategy for inclusive course design and teaching. It fits in with the focus on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) at the University of Regina. In addition, UDL is one of the themes from the CTL Strategic Plan.

 

The presentation handouts from each of the panelists can be downloaded below.

  1. Dr. Alec Couros presentation [PDF]
  2. Dr. Jenn de Lugt Power Point [PPTX]
  3. Dr. Scott Thompson presentation [PDF]

Finding and Evaluating Open Educational Resources (OER)

The OER Publishing Program and the Dr. John Archer Library facilitated this session. Cara Bradley, the Research and Scholarship Librarian was the presenter. The recording of the session is available below.

Winter 2021 Workshops

Tools for Creating OER Part I

The OER Program facilitated a session on open-source tools for creating open educational resources. The session was presented by Dr. Robert Petry from Campion College, University of Regina, who has been using open-source tools to create open educational resources for many years. His session surveyed the following plain text open source tools for OER development:

  • Advantage of a plain text format (as opposed to Wysiwyg) for writing a textbook.
  • Separating content from presentation: The power of LaTeX but its limitations with regard to web-based books.
  • Pandoc for format conversion and Pandoc Markdown as a simple readable source for PDF, web, and other document outputs.
  • PreTeXt – an XML markup language for creating web and print textbooks.
  • Future directions: Creating a PreTeXT markdown language.

The recording for the Zoom session is shown below.

 

The presentation file can be downloaded from the link: Open textbook presentation[PDF].

OER Showcase of Projects I

The OER Publishing Program hosted a session showcasing current and completed open educational resource projects. Presenters from across the University community gave brief glimpses into their projects. The following were the scheduled presenters with their projects:

  1. Canada Speeches from the Throne, Professor Raymond Blake, Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies, Faculty of Arts, Department of History
  2. Geosciences Virtual Field Trip, Monica Cliveti, Department of Geology
  3. Instructor Guide, Gilbert Niyoyita, CCE Flexible Learning
  4. OER by Discipline Resource Guide: University of Regina, Arlysse Quiring, Dr. John Archer Library

The session recording is shown below.

 

The presentation files are available from the links below.

  1. Monica Cliveti GeoScience Virtual Field Trip presentation [PDF]
  2. Gilbert Niyoyita Instructor Guide presentation[PPTX]
  3. Arlysse Quiring Archer Library Pressbooks presentation[PPTX]

Creative Commons Licensing

As part of Open Education Week (March 1 – 5), the OER Publishing Program and the Dr. John Archer Library facilitating this workshop. The presenters were Christina Winter and Brad Doerksen from the Dr. John Archer Library. The topics included:

  1. Understanding Creative Commons licenses when creating and sharing your own learning resources
  2. Finding and using existing resources that have been published with a CC license
  3. Implications and considerations when including existing CC licensed resources in a resource you are creating.

The link to the session recording is shown below.

 

The presentation file is available at the link CC Licenses presentation [PDF]. To complement this session, CARL-ABRC has created short self-directed bilingual instructional modules on Copyright Open Educational Resource for University Instructors and Staff [HTML].

Adding interactivity with H5P

The OER Program facilitated a session on adding interactivity to open educational resources created in Pressbooks. The presenter of this session was Michelle vanGinneken, an Instructional Designer in the Flexible Learning Division. The session covered the topics:

  1. What is an H5P
  2. Content options
  3. Pressbook integration
  4. Uses
  5. U of R examples
  6. Considerations

The link to the session recording is shown below.

 

The presentation file H5P Presentation [PPT] is available and can be downloaded.