We had some great participation last week for the OEChallenge #OpenAppyHour and we enjoyed reading your comments and insights.
By the numbers
There were 53 participants representing 8 countries!
Our website saw close to 800 visitors over the course of the week, with participants posting 92 comments in response to the challenges.
On Twitter, the hashtag #OpenAppyHour had 22,991 impressions (how many times a tweet with that hashtag was viewed by someone) and 487 engagements (how many times a person liked, retweeted, responded or clicked on a link in a tweet with that hashtag).
A few last tasks
Before we dive into the summary of each of the challenges, we have three more tasks for you:
- Please don’t forget to take our post-challenge survey.
- Here is some info if you want to run your own challenge. And if you’re part of a BC post-secondary, you can easily clone our site through the Open ETC.
- Subscribe to the BCcampus Newsletter to learn more about other upcoming Open Education offerings!
Challenge Summaries
Here is a summary from each of the challenges you participated in:
In Challenge #1, we introduced you to an open textbook collection and some of you were able to find one that suited your needs or one you were already using. It was great to see some participants weigh in that they too were using books that had been shared!
For many of us, finding an open textbook to use in our teaching is a sufficient accomplishment, but the purpose of Challenge #2 was to demonstrate how open textbooks can be easily modified by simply copying and pasting into a tool that we all know how to use – Word. The purpose of this challenge was to demonstrate and reflect on when and why you might want to do that, and there were some great responses to this challenge.
For Challenge #3, we introduced you to Creative Commons (CC) licenses and the different types of CC licenses that exist to allow creators to communicate how they want their work to be used. We asked you to explore the CC Chooser tool and play with the various license options (allowing users to distribute, remix, adapt or build on a work). Many of you enjoyed using this tool for its ease of use and how it generates the line of attribution which is then ready to be copied or embedded in your work. Who knew it would be that easy!
For Challenge # 4, we asked you to try out Google Advanced Search to find Creative Commons licensed images and to share your image and the search term you used. Many of you searched for images to convey teaching and learning concepts. Some of you also introduced us to other photo collections that you use and potential barriers to watch for.
Challenge #5 was a quick and easy way to generate an attribution for work you want to share. It’s one thing to want to share your work, but it’s a whole other thing to actually make that visible. The Open Washington attribution builder certainly makes that a lot easier.
Challenge #6 had you exploring open activities. There were three very different kinds of examples that you explored some of you appreciated the co-creation of assessment questions example and the history of BC canneries example. There are of course many more examples of open pedagogy and open activities and as with all things open, you can start with an idea from someone else and build on it or change it to suit your context.
Challenge #7 included introduction to Hypothes.is, a tool which allows easily for annotated discussion of web-based documents in the open. As many of you found a tool like Hypothes.is really opens up the possibilities for creating interesting student activities and collaborations.
As searching for OERs is one of the biggest barriers for instructors and can be very time consuming to find quality content, we wanted the next challenge to introduce you to Mason OER Metafinder for Challenge #8. Some participants shared how quick and easy it was to find relevant content using the tool.
Challenge # 9 had you jump into a SPLOT to reflect on what challenges you found most useful. The purpose of using a SPLOT was to show you how students can anonymously and easily contribute to an open website and to share some examples of how they’ve been used with students. Thanks to those who contributed to our OECollection SPLOT!
Last, but not least, Challenge #10 was all about making sure you could leave the Challenge series with a path for continuing your professional development using already created resources and to find people and groups in your institution to connect with. We hope that you are leaving this series a little bit more knowledgeable about open education and are more familiar with terms such as OER, open pedagogy, and open technology.
Thanks for joining us and all the best in your open endeavours!
Carolee, Clint, Josie, Krista and Melanie