Profiles

Daniel Chard

Department of History

Daniel Chard incorporates OER and OEP into his classroom to encourage and challenge his students to gather their very own primary source research. Dan utilizes local resources such as the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, and the Whatcom Museum, along with local historic sites or monuments.

Shirin Deylami and Vicki Hsueh

Department of Political Science

As awardees of the 2019 Washington State OER Grant, Shirin Deylami and Vicki Hsueh seek to create a completely free digital textbook for their course, PLSC 261: Introduction to Political Theory. One of the reasons they are targeting creating an OER textbook for this course specifically is because it will impact students across Western’s campus who take the class as a GUR requirement.

Amanda Eurich

Department of History

Reacting to the Past is a role-playing pedagogy that maintains a vast catalogue of games in development that are available online at http://reacting.barnard.edu. Game manuals in development are free-of-charge to students; instructors also have access to the BLORG which provides pedagogical materials to assist with set-up and game play.

This quarter students in History 321 explored the politics of peace-making and debates over religious toleration in the sixteenth-century civil wars in France by testing a role-playing game that I co-wrote with a colleague at Quinnipiac University. All materials for the game were posted on Canvas for easy access. RTTP also has published game materials, but many games still in development are available at no cost to instructors and students.

Deborah Hanuscin

Department of Elementary Education

Deborah Hanuscin incorporates collections of articles from professional literature rather than using a traditional textbook to make her class more accessible and affordable for students. Using OER allows students to access the different chunks of information that they need throughout the quarter from different and contemporary academic thinkers, giving students more than one perspective and expanding their worldviews.

Qiang Hao

Department of Computer Science

As an awardee of the 2019 Washington State OER Grant, Qiang Hao focuses on a set of student-centered open educational resources that are tailored to his course and will be usable by all other faculty members teaching the same course. His goal is to create OER that cover the entirety of topics taught in the course, are interactive (allowing students to learn at individual paces), and are reusable for students and other faculty.

Paul James

Department of Anthropology

Paul James implements a range of Open Educational Practices in his course, Introduction of Cultural Anthropology. Paul uses Open Educational Practices to have students collectively author a wikibook textbook and a wikibook guide for effective student organizations. The guide serves as a current and living resource for some WWU Associated Students Clubs and organizations. Paul participated in the Faculty Development Summer Grant, alternative text track, in 2017, focusing on replacing his textbook and moving towards using open educational resources.

Jason Kanov and Meg Warren

Department of Management

As awardees of the 2019 Washington State OER Grant, Jason Kanov and Meg Warren emphasize the use of open educational resources in their curriculum development. They are working collaboratively to entirely replace their former textbook with open educational resources to help make the class more affordable to students and improve course content. Between their course offerings, approximately 600 Western students in a typical year will be impacted through their use of open educational resources.

Andy Klein

Department of Engineering and Design

Andy Klein applies an Open Educational Practices philosophy to his courses EE 360 and EE 460. Having been frustrated with the traditional electrical engineering textbooks that were heavy in theory but lacking in practical application, Andy co-authored and published the free textbook Software Receiver Design: How to Build Your Own Communication System in Five

Easy Steps through Cambridge University Press. It is currently hosted through OpenSTAX and is the required text for both of the classes he teaches.

Kathy Kuba

Department of Anthropology

After doing the Faculty Development Summer Grant, alternative text track,  in 2017, Kathy Kuba replaced one of the two textbooks in her course with a free, online textbook. Kathy now uses Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology which was compiled and edited by a team of working anthropologists representing the Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges, (an arm of the American Anthropological Association). While it took much longer than expected to transform her course with the new materials, the new text links to many current resources, extending and enhance the experience of learning the material. Kathy says providing free or low cost materials is important to her as her students face the skyrocketing cost of higher education. As she teaches her class as an online course, it made more sense for the textbook to match the medium of instruction.

Leah Lippman

Institute for Global Engagement

After doing the Faculty Development Summer Grant, alternative text track, in 2018, Leah Lippman redesigned her Introduction to Global Studies course with the goal of making the course more affordable to students and updating course goals, objectives, assignments, and assessments. Leah eliminated the costly textbook making it a low-cost course for students and selected OER materials that are reflective of current issues, topics, perspectives, scholarship, and diverse voices.

Jenny Oleen and Rebecca Marrall

Western Libraries

In 2016, librarians Jenny Oleen and Rebecca Marrall edited and released a free open access textbook called The Research Process: Strategies for Undergraduate Students. They invite students, faculty, and service professionals to use the textbook to better teach and learn the research process.

Roxane Ronca

Department of Mathematics and Department of Science Mathematics and Technology Education

Roxane Ronca created and continues to develop a workbook for her Introductory Algebra class. She noticed that many students in beginning math classes have misunderstandings not covered in college-level texts so she wrote her own resource for the class. Roxane has found that through writing this text to address common misconceptions, she has a higher number of students who are passing the class.

Danielle Smith

Center for Community Learning

Danielle Smith works in the Center for Community Learning to develop, strengthen, and promote community engagement pathways for first-year students. As an instructor in the First-year Interest Group program, she teaches seminar courses to help students negotiate the academic and personal opportunities and challenges of their first year. Danielle worked to create a low-cost class experience for students where there were no required textbooks, most material was accessible online at no cost, and students had creative freedom to complete their assignments in ways that best honored their learning styles. As an engaged learning practitioner, Danielle provides guidance and coaching to students to learn their rights, responsibilities, and resources for a successful transition through their first year in college and beyond.

Todd Smith

Department of Music

As an awardee of the 2019 Washington State OER Grant, Todd Smith is committed to inclusivity and accessibility for all students through the use of open educational resources. By eliminating his current textbook and developing a comprehensive electronic text for students to access within our learning management system, the new and improved “text” would include audio and visual examples of relevant artists embedded within the text itself. By creating his own textbook, he is able to provide a more accessible and current text that allows students to easily hear or see the concept being covered in the textbook.

Peggy Watt

Department of Journalism

Through the Faculty Development Summer Grant, alternative text track, in 2017, Peggy Watt revamped her Mass Media Law course, a course required for all journalism majors and minors, to replace the often-expensive law textbooks with online materials. Course materials include current news coverage, articles in journalism trade publications and academic journals, court publications, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the ACLU, and many other free and open access materials available online.

Jane Weston

Department of Management

Jane Weston participated in the Faculty Development Summer Grant, alternative text track, in 2018, in order to use an OER framework with her Teamwork Basics course. Jane emphasizes the Open philosophy not just within the courses she teaches but also across her department.