2025 Colorado OER Conference: Full Schedule

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8:00am MDT

Registration, Breakfast & Networking

Friday May 30, 2025 8:00am - 9:00am MDT

Collect your name tag, select swag, grab breakfast, and meet your fellow open education colleagues from across Colorado!

Friday May 30, 2025 8:00am - 9:00am MDT
UNC Campus Commons 1051 22nd St, Greeley, CO 80639

General conference activity

9:00am MDT

Opening Remarks

Friday May 30, 2025 9:00am - 9:20am MDT

UNC Campus Commons

Speakers

Chealsye Bowley

Director of Open Education and Learning Innovation, Colorado Department of Higher Education

Got questions about OER in Colorado? Email: OER@dhe.state.co.us

Katie Brown

Associate Professor, Colorado State University Pueblo

Provost Kirsten Fleming

Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, University of Northern Colorado

Friday May 30, 2025 9:00am - 9:20am MDT
UNC Campus Commons 1051 22nd St, Greeley, CO 80639

General conference activity

9:20am MDT

OER Keynotes

Friday May 30, 2025 9:20am - 10:00am MDT

UNC Campus Commons

Four Colorado OER community members (a faculty, librarian, administrator and student) will share their open education hot takes to inspire and challenge the audience.

Speakers

Alegría Ribadeneira

DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR AND CHAIR, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND WORLD LANGUAGES, Colorado State University Pueblo

Mitch Cota

Reference and OER Librarian, Arapahoe Community College

I am very interested in how different Community College's are maintaining OER materials and programs to ensure sustainability.

Nicholas Swails

Dean of Academic Affairs and Online Learning, Colorado Northwestern Community College

Friday May 30, 2025 9:20am - 10:00am MDT
UNC Campus Commons 1051 22nd St, Greeley, CO 80639

General conference activity

10:00am MDT

10 minute break

Friday May 30, 2025 10:00am - 10:10am MDT

UNC Campus Commons

Friday May 30, 2025 10:00am - 10:10am MDT
UNC Campus Commons 1051 22nd St, Greeley, CO 80639

Break

10:10am MDT

Creating a Z-degree for undergraduate nursing students: A collaborative project between Fort Lewis College and the University of Colorado College of Nursing

Friday May 30, 2025 10:10am - 10:40am MDT

Multipurpose Room - 1st Floor

Fort Lewis College (FLC) and the University of Colorado (CU) Anschutz Medical Campus College of Nursing have established a collaborative program offering a four-year Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree. This partnership enables FLC students to complete their nursing education entirely on the FLC campus. Nursing education is notorious for high textbook costs, so FLC and CU have partnered to develop a Z-degree for undergraduate nursing students. This presentation will outline the process and strategies we implemented in our first year and how that helped us determine what was needed for future years. We will highlight key steps towards going from a program with textbook costs in every class to a Z-degree pathway. Additionally, we will discuss the challenges encountered and lessons learned from our first year of implementation.

Speakers

Tyler Dunn

Director, Reed Library, Fort Lewis College

Teresa Connolly PhD, RN, ACNS-BC

Assistant Professor, CU Anschutz Medical Campus College of Nursing

Friday May 30, 2025 10:10am - 10:40am MDT
Multipurpose Room - 1st Floor

Presentation, Collaboration

Audience Beginner, Intermediate
Subject STEM, Collaboration

10:10am MDT

From Classroom to Cosmos: Collaborating to Build an Engaging Orbital Mechanics OER

Friday May 30, 2025 10:10am - 10:40am MDT

Room 2300 - 2nd Floor

When faculty expertise meets student creativity, innovation takes off! Dr. Lynnane George, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UCCS launched an open educational resource (OER) project in 2018 to develop free learning materials for her Space Mechanics class. Over five years, it grew into An Introduction to Orbital Mechanics, an engaging, interactive textbook published on Pressbooks.Dr. George curated content, wrote detailed explanations, and ensured academic rigor while keeping it accessible. Students played a vital role, conducting research, developing example problems, and creating visual aids. To enhance clarity, the team collaborated with Technical Communication and Information Design (TCID) students under Professor Baye Herald, making the textbook more engaging and student-friendly.Now, Dr. George and TCID student Evangela Dudeck will share their journey in an interactive workshop, revealing challenges, breakthroughs, and lessons learned in creating this dynamic OER textbook. Don’t miss this inside look at reshaping education through collaboration! 🚀

Speakers

Lynnane George

Associate Professor of Teaching, University of Colorado Colorado Springs/Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Informal Science Eduction

Evangelina Dudeck

Student, University of Colorado Colorado Springs/Technical Communication and Information Design

Friday May 30, 2025 10:10am - 10:40am MDT
Room 2300 - 2nd Floor

Presentation, Student engagement

Audience Beginner, Intermediate
Subject STEM, Student engagement

10:10am MDT

OER Career Readiness Toolkit

Friday May 30, 2025 10:10am - 10:40am MDT

Room 2201 - 2nd Floor

This workshop introduces how UNC developed an OER Career Readiness Curriculum Toolkit collaboratively with our Center for Career Readiness, Center for the Enhancement of Teaching, and two Deans.This toolkit became a central focus for the newly created Career Readiness Faculty Fellows (CRFF) program, an initiative designed to equip faculty with tools and strategies to integrate National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) career competencies—such as communication, critical thinking, and teamwork—into their courses.At this workshop, the CRFF leadership team will outline toolkit creation, the faculty fellows program, and the initial outcomes of our research. The program fosters interdisciplinary collaboration, allowing faculty to share ideas, challenges, and best practices in embedding career readiness into curricula. As we have now completed the first cohort of participants, we will share how the program offers a replicable model for other institutions looking to strengthen career readiness.

Speakers

Chris Marston

Associate Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Labor Economist, University of Northern Colorado

Molly Jameson

Director, Center for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning, University of Northern Colorado

Colleen Sonnentag

Dean of Student Development, University of Northern Colorado

Friday May 30, 2025 10:10am - 10:40am MDT
Room 2201 - 2nd Floor

Presentation, Beginner

Audience Beginner
Subject Beginner

10:10am MDT

Remarkable Organs: The Development of Open-Access Dry-Erase 3D Printed Models for Anatomy Education

Friday May 30, 2025 10:10am - 10:40am MDT

Room 2204 - 2nd Floor

Hands-on 3D models are one of the most important tools in the anatomy educator’s toolbox; however, the cost of commercial models or donor organs can be prohibitive for many institutions. The recent explosion of 3D printing technology, combined with surface scanning and digital 3D modeling, can reduce the cost of anatomical models and increase access to resources. Moreover, recent meta-analyses have highlighted the value of 3D printing in anatomy education. Despite these benefits, anatomists face barriers to 3D printing, such as finding or building digital models, choosing a printer, or lacking time to integrate them into courses. The goal of this study was to create a low-cost streamlined workflow for the development of open access 3D printable organ models, along with user-friendly “lab kits” to facilitate the implementation of these tools for interactive hands-on learning.

Speakers

Jamie Cronin

Friday May 30, 2025 10:10am - 10:40am MDT
Room 2204 - 2nd Floor

Presentation, STEM

Audience Intermediate
Subject STEM

10:10am MDT

What do I do now?!? Refocusing big project plans to balance a small award

Friday May 30, 2025 10:10am - 10:40am MDT

Room 2200 - 2nd Floor

Learn about the process engaged for a CDHE-OER grant, when a proposal is awarded significantly less funding than needed for the original proposal, such as:

Changing Grant Scope
Refocusing Proposed Projects
Realigning Work with Awards

This presentation will share how a proposal for a large OER project to produce a multi-course text was refocused. Explore the process of making significant changes to realign the scope of work with a $10,000 award, instead of the $25,000 proposed to accomplish the full scope of the original project. The steps taken, useful resources, and project revision will be discussed.

Speakers

Anne O. Davidson

Assistant Professor of Teacher Education, University of Northern Colorado

Friday May 30, 2025 10:10am - 10:40am MDT
Room 2200 - 2nd Floor

Presentation, Sustainability

Audience Intermediate
Subject Sustainability

10:40am MDT

Break

Friday May 30, 2025 10:40am - 10:45am MDT

UNC Campus Commons

Friday May 30, 2025 10:40am - 10:45am MDT
UNC Campus Commons 1051 22nd St, Greeley, CO 80639

Break

10:45am MDT

CCA’s Culturally Responsive OER Review Initiative

Friday May 30, 2025 10:45am - 11:15am MDT

Room 2200 - 2nd Floor

This presentation focuses of CCA's development and pilot of a process to review OER for cultural relevance. This team began by developing a handbook for culturally responsive OER review, focusing on representation, language, and accessibility of OER materials. After developing the handbook, we piloted the review process with departmental teams -- Philosophy, History, Translation & Interpretation, and Math. We identified OER in use, or under consideration, at CCA and created a process for faculty & instructors to review the materials with the guidance of the handbook.This presentation will cover the development of the handbook and review process, as well as lessons learned and data analyses from the pilot reviews. We will discuss the future of this process, particularly plans for involving students in future iterations. We will leave participants with resources from our process and worksheets for creating an action plan to review OER for cultural relevance at their institution.

Speakers

Allyson Turner

Digital Initiatives & OER Librarian, Community College of Aurora

Heather Lang

Director of Academic Professional Development, Community College of Aurora

Robin Schofield

Executive Director, Teaching & Learning Transformation Hub, Community College of Aurora

Mollee March

Director of Library & Educational Resources Department, Community College of Aurora

Friday May 30, 2025 10:45am - 11:15am MDT
Room 2200 - 2nd Floor

Presentation, Sustainability

Audience Beginner, Intermediate
Subject STEM, Sustainability

10:45am MDT

Disrupting the Status Quo

Friday May 30, 2025 10:45am - 11:15am MDT

Room 2201 - 2nd Floor

What looks great on paper belies the calm duck paddling like mad against currents, rapids, and waterfalls. CNCC's rocky journey to pervasively adopting OER materials in general education. How our "students first" culture, top-down administrative buy-in, assessments, communication and incentives shaped our success. How we pulled through recalcitrant faculty, business operations woes, and crushing work load almost killing it. We hope our story will demonstrate common pitfalls to OER adoption/utilization and how college culture, faculty and their supportive superiors are the keys to success.

Speakers

Nicholas Swails

Dean of Academic Affairs and Online Learning, Colorado Northwestern Community College

Friday May 30, 2025 10:45am - 11:15am MDT
Room 2201 - 2nd Floor

Presentation, Beginner

Audience Beginner
Subject STEM, Beginner

10:45am MDT

Faculty Learning Communities at the University and Departmental Level: Lessons from OER Faculty trainings at MSU Denver

Friday May 30, 2025 10:45am - 11:15am MDT

Multipurpose Room - 1st Floor

This discussion brings together faculty who have created and maintained OER faculty learning communities (FLCs) at MSU Denver, providing faculty-based OER development through community-engaged learning practices. During this conversation, the panelists will share insights on creating and maintaining buy-in with diverse faculty and how six years of FLCs have contributed to the OER culture at MSU Denver. They will also speak about strategies and tactics for sharing OER best practices with colleagues from all levels of instruction. Emily Ragan will highlight creating, leading, and co-facilitating a university-wide OER FLC. Brian Healy will reflect on co-facilitating the university-wide OER FLC and leading a Communication Studies Department OER FLC, and Jonathan Dyhr will discuss the Biology Department OER FLC. We will discuss how our experiences with the OER FLCs were leveraged to develop an online OER training available to faculty at MSU Denver and beyond through MSU Denver Innovative and Lifelong Learning.

Speakers

Emily Ragan

Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Metropolitan State University of Denver

Excited about reimagining effective education. Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and OER Coordinator at Metropolitan State University of Denver

Jonathan Dyhr

Assistant Professor, Metropolitan State University of Denver

I am very interested in developing and implementing open educational resource in the sciences, particularly the life sciences.

Brian Healy

Lecturer of Communication Studies, Metropolitan State University of Denver

Friday May 30, 2025 10:45am - 11:15am MDT
Multipurpose Room - 1st Floor

Presentation, Collaboration

Audience Beginner
Subject STEM, Collaboration

10:45am MDT

Students as OER peer reviewers

Friday May 30, 2025 10:45am - 11:15am MDT

Room 2300 - 2nd Floor

Capstone students with expertise in their field and an interest in open pedagogy are well-suited to serve as peer reviewers for Open Educational Resources (OER) with proper guidance. OER is essential to open pedagogy, promoting accessibility, and the continuous improvement of high quality freely available materials. This talk presents a rubric and training materials to prepare students for reviewing OER, along with an instructor’s guide to support student success. Additionally, feedback from students who have completed this process provides insights into the student experiences and the impact on student professional development. Engaging students in OER peer review is a sustainable and valuable assignment that enhances their academic portfolios.

Speakers

Medora Huseby

Associate Professor, Colorado State University

Friday May 30, 2025 10:45am - 11:15am MDT
Room 2300 - 2nd Floor

Presentation, Student engagement

Audience Intermediate
Subject Student engagement

10:45am MDT

VECTOR Project Update

Friday May 30, 2025 10:45am - 11:15am MDT

Room 2204 - 2nd Floor

The "VECTOR:Engineering a Trajectory of Success" project addresses a critical challenge in engineering education by developing open-source interactive visualizations for Statics, Dynamics, and Mechanics of Materials courses, where students often struggle to connect mathematical principles with spatial concepts. Our consortium of Colorado institutions (CSU-FC, CSU-Pueblo and CSM) is creating multi-dimensional, animated, and interactive computational models that bridge engineering theory with diverse real-world applications, while also producing 2D resources to teach students how to visualize in 3D and communicate in 2D. With guidance from an advisory board of industry partners and educational institutions, we're designing these open educational resources to be inclusive, promote student success across simple to complex concepts, and strengthen the culture of open resources in engineering education. This collaboration aims to fill significant gaps in available engineering materials and support a broader range of learners, including neurodivergent students who face additional challenges with spatial visualization. The project is part of the OpenTextbook federal grant program from the Department of Education and funding is over $2M over three years. In the first phase of the project, we brought together faculty who teach these courses in the region to identify the most important things to be addressed in the project and will be employing students to help with development. We will share out plans and roadmap for the project and show examples of visualizations.

Speakers

Macarena Lange

Colorado State University

Margaret Brown-Sica

Associate Dean for Research & Engagement, Colorado State University Fort Collins

OER, International Issues regarding OER, books, anything.

Friday May 30, 2025 10:45am - 11:15am MDT
Room 2204 - 2nd Floor

Presentation, STEM

Audience Intermediate
Subject STEM

11:15am MDT

Break

Friday May 30, 2025 11:15am - 11:20am MDT

UNC Campus Commons

Friday May 30, 2025 11:15am - 11:20am MDT
UNC Campus Commons 1051 22nd St, Greeley, CO 80639

Break

11:20am MDT

From Lecture Halls to Spaceships: Reimagining OER through Storytelling

Friday May 30, 2025 11:20am - 11:50am MDT

Room 2201 - 2nd Floor

Traditional teaching methods often fall into the repetitive cycle of lecture, discussion, assessment, repeat, leaving both students and instructors disengaged and possibly even bored. Looking toward the future of education, what can we do differently to entice students to stay interested and motivated in their courses? This session explores how story-driven learning and gamification can transform OER-based courses into interactive, engaging experiences for both learners and educators.Using a sci-fi inspired, mission-driven framework, this session will demonstrate how immersive narratives, challenge-based learning, and game mechanics enhance student motivation and participation. By applying these principles, educators can make learning more dynamic, fostering creativity, collaboration, and deep engagement.Attendees will learn how to think outside the box and reimagine their OER course as something more creative and dynamic by integrating gamification elements into their OER courses, shifting from passive learning to active exploration, problem-solving, and role-play scenarios.

Speakers

Carolyn McGary

Assistant Professor, Metropolitan State University of Denver

Jennifer Whitton-Trujillo

Course Developer, Metropolitan State University of Denver

Friday May 30, 2025 11:20am - 11:50am MDT
Room 2201 - 2nd Floor

Presentation, Beginner

Audience Beginner
Subject Beginner

11:20am MDT

Raising the Bar: Explore High-Quality, Faculty-Crafted OER Lab Manuals Created by Aims Community College Science Faculty

Friday May 30, 2025 11:20am - 11:50am MDT

Room 2204 - 2nd Floor

Labs and their accompanying manuals are a fundamental component of most foundational science courses. In contrast to costly and inflexible commercially-produced manuals, OER manuals offer flexible, equitable, student-centered resources that are tailored to courses, learners, instructors, departments, and institutions. This session will showcase the collaborative work of the Aims Community College Science Department to create and adopt seven high-quality illustrated OER lab manuals for Biology, Physics, Geology, Astronomy, and Microbiology. We sought to redefine OER expectations while both significantly reducing costs for students and creating resources that can be modified and adopted by other institutions. We invite you to discover how faculty-created OERs can benefit both students and faculty alike, and to learn best practices for producing your own impactful OERs. This work was funded through a series of grants awarded by the Colorado Department of Higher Education.

Speakers

Emma Murray

Faculty, Aims Community College

DeAnna Laurel

Faculty, Aims Community College

Morgan Bland

Faculty, Aims Community College

Friday May 30, 2025 11:20am - 11:50am MDT
Room 2204 - 2nd Floor

Presentation, STEM

Audience Beginner
Subject STEM

11:20am MDT

Rerouting: OpenOKState Undergraduate Student Outreach

Friday May 30, 2025 11:20am - 11:50am MDT

Room 2300 - 2nd Floor

Students welcome opportunities to engage in and collaborate on initiatives that shape their educational experiences (Bozkurt et al., 2023; Braatz et al., 2023; Snoek-Brown et al., 2021). Established in 2021, the OpenOKState undergraduate outreach team connected with students, built a collaboration with the OSU Student Government Association, and developed a sustainable long-term plan (Lightfoot, Minton & Essmiller, 2024). Organizational changes have led to the modification of the effective and impactful OpenOKState undergraduate outreach program, shifting from library-led outreach to OpenOKState collaborations with student organizations to amplify student voices and strengthen public awareness and support for OER at OSU. In this presentation, the CEHS Student Council President and advisor will highlight the processes behind OpenOKState’s pilot partnership with the CEHS Student Council.

Speakers

Kathy Essmiller

Coordinator, OpenOKState, Oklahoma State University

I have grown two kids, a pack of dogs, and I love to camp in the mountains. Also happy to talk about Open Educational Resources, the arts (I am a former MS/HS band director), educational technology and instructional design, and how amazing it is to get to work in a Library.

Rebekah Cleary

President, OSU College of Education and Human Sciences Student Council, Oklahoma State University

Friday May 30, 2025 11:20am - 11:50am MDT
Room 2300 - 2nd Floor

Presentation, Student engagement

Audience Beginner
Subject Student engagement

11:20am MDT

You’ve got an OER Textbook, now what?: Finding Supplemental Resources to Design for Accessibility, Flexibility, Relevance, and Rigor

Friday May 30, 2025 11:20am - 11:50am MDT

Room 2200 - 2nd Floor

The evolving landscape of blended learning in higher education is increasing driven by technology. Therefore, it is essential that educators are prepared to deliver organized and comprehensive course experiences within their Learning Management Systems (LMSs). Using an LMS, it is possible for one to either create an oasis of resources, or a big mess. In what follows, we will give you the tools to do the former. Participants will leave this session able to: identify gaps in textbook resources and decide what is needed to address them, search comprehensively for open source and/or free resources, and make proper attributions when one uses the intellectual property of others in one's OER course. The state of literature on this topic as well as future directions for open educational technological resources will be discussed.

Speakers

Phil Mayhoffer

Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Northern Colorado

I love to explore how creativity, curiosity, and play interact throughout the process of learning. As a middle school teacher, I dove into design thinking and project-based learning to make my classroom a place to foster and support innovation in my students. Now, as a PhD student... Read More →

Emily Romero

Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Northern Colorado

Friday May 30, 2025 11:20am - 11:50am MDT
Room 2200 - 2nd Floor

Presentation, Sustainability

Subject Sustainability

11:20am MDT

Speed networking

Friday May 30, 2025 11:20am - 11:50am MDT

Multipurpose Room - 1st Floor

Want to meet new colleagues in OER around Colorado? Come speednetwork! Bring your business cards, if you have them. Participants will be split in equal groups and spend 5 minutes getting to know each other.

Friday May 30, 2025 11:20am - 11:50am MDT
Multipurpose Room - 1st Floor

Speednetworking, Collaboration

11:50am MDT

Lunch & Networking

Friday May 30, 2025 11:50am - 1:10pm MDT

UNC Campus Commons

Friday May 30, 2025 11:50am - 1:10pm MDT
UNC Campus Commons 1051 22nd St, Greeley, CO 80639

General conference activity

1:15pm MDT

2025 Colorado OER Awards

Friday May 30, 2025 1:15pm - 1:30pm MDT

UNC Campus Commons

Friday May 30, 2025 1:15pm - 1:30pm MDT
UNC Campus Commons 1051 22nd St, Greeley, CO 80639

1:35pm MDT

Break

Friday May 30, 2025 1:35pm - 1:45pm MDT

UNC Campus Commons

Friday May 30, 2025 1:35pm - 1:45pm MDT
UNC Campus Commons 1051 22nd St, Greeley, CO 80639

Break

1:45pm MDT

Make OER for STEM Accessible using PreTeXt

Friday May 30, 2025 1:45pm - 2:35pm MDT

UNC Campus Commons

All course materials posted online should (and legally must) be accessible. Instructors using OER are likely to create learning materials themselves; all the onus of ensuring accessibility falls to us.This is especially challenging for STEM fields where course materials are heavy with symbolic expressions and graphs. One solution is to use the PreTeXt authoring system, which in addition to producing fully accessible output, can embed interactive demonstrations and assessments to improve engagement of all your students.In this hands-on workshop, participants will develop a workflow for using PreTeXt for the creation and distribution of accessible materials. We will explore how to convert existing materials to PreTeXt, and share resources to learn additional features that PreTeXt offers to engage students. Instructors with all skill-levels of PreTeXt, from novice to expert, will gain understanding of what is required to use PreTeXt for every-day teaching materials.

Speakers

Oscar Levin

Professor, University of Northern Colorado

Friday May 30, 2025 1:45pm - 2:35pm MDT
UNC Campus Commons 1051 22nd St, Greeley, CO 80639

Workshop

Audience Beginner
Subject STEM

1:45pm MDT

Open Educational Resources: A Workshop for Every Stage

Friday May 30, 2025 1:45pm - 2:35pm MDT

UNC Campus Commons

This workshop is designed to support instructors at any stage in the OER process whether exploring pathways towards OER or enhancing existing materials. Each table will have one of our experienced colleagues to answer questions and provide resources to guide you covering the following topics: How to get started with OER with examples of what others have done in various disciplines. How to build on your existing OER materials to make them more accessible, diverse, up to date etc. 

Speakers

Joan Anderssen

Faculty, Arapahoe Community College

Felicia Brown

Instructor, Arapahoe Community College

Natalie Lascala

Content Developer, Arapahoe Community College

Friday May 30, 2025 1:45pm - 2:35pm MDT
UNC Campus Commons 1051 22nd St, Greeley, CO 80639

Workshop

1:45pm MDT

Playful Inquiry: Remixing TTRPGs for OER Scholarship and Teaching

Friday May 30, 2025 1:45pm - 2:35pm MDT

UNC Campus Commons

This hands-on workshop examines how play enriches research methodologies and teaching through open educational resources (OER). Drawing from Roll for Learning: 51 Micro Tabletop Role-Playing Games to Use in the Classroom, an open-access book featuring original games and pedagogical strategies for K12-higher education teaching, participants will explore playful inquiry as a method for deepening engagement and broadening access to knowledge. Through remixing a Creative Commons BY 4.0 "micro" tabletop role-playing game on paper and with an AI tool, attendees will gain practical experience in integrating game-based learning into their own contexts. By embracing play as a serious mode of exploration, this session reimagines OER scholarship and pedagogy as dynamic, interactive, and transformative spaces.

Speakers

Matthew Farber

Associate Professor, University of Northern Colorado

Matthew Farber, Ed.D. is an associate professor of educational technology at the University of Northern Colorado and the co-director of the Gaming SEL Lab. He developed game-based lessons with Tracy Fullerton for her award-winning Walden, a game EDU. He has collaborated with UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP), iThrive Games, and Games for Change. He was a contributing writer for... Read More →

William Merchant

Associate Professor, University of Northern Colorado

Friday May 30, 2025 1:45pm - 2:35pm MDT
UNC Campus Commons 1051 22nd St, Greeley, CO 80639

Workshop

1:45pm MDT

Principles and production of accessible course materials

Friday May 30, 2025 1:45pm - 2:35pm MDT

UNC Campus Commons

A good educator wants to make their instructional materials as accessible as possible for maximum benefit. This has become even more important for higher education instructors in Colorado, who are required to provide digital communications and information technology that are accessible to individuals with disabilities. This can be particularly difficult for educators who are typesetting technical documents that include complex formulas and mathematics because the software tools commonly used for creating these documents do not natively support documents accessible for those with disabilities. In this talk, we will demonstrate an alternative workflow relying on Pandoc to typeset technical documents that are more accessible materials for those with disabilities. We will also discuss additional tools that can help instructors assess how accessible their materials are. We will walk through self-contained examples that will help instructors improve the accessibility of their instructional materials.

Speakers

Joshua French

Associate Professor and Director of Data Science, University of Colorado Denver

Friday May 30, 2025 1:45pm - 2:35pm MDT
UNC Campus Commons 1051 22nd St, Greeley, CO 80639

Workshop

Audience Intermediate

2:35pm MDT

Break

Friday May 30, 2025 2:35pm - 2:45pm MDT

UNC Campus Commons

Friday May 30, 2025 2:35pm - 2:45pm MDT
UNC Campus Commons 1051 22nd St, Greeley, CO 80639

Break

2:45pm MDT

Faculty Designed Survey to Assess Perceptions and Knowledge of Teaching and Adopting OER Learning Materials

Friday May 30, 2025 2:45pm - 3:15pm MDT

Room 2200 - 2nd Floor

What are faculty perceptions of teaching and learning materials? In this session, faculty will discuss the process of designing, co-creating, and administering a faculty survey which was distributed to faculty at ACC. This session will also highlight the results of the survey, drawing insights from ACC’s experience. Would open the floor for reaction and other experiences to be discussed.

Speakers

John Mann

Faculty, Business and Marketing , Arapahoe Community College

Friday May 30, 2025 2:45pm - 3:15pm MDT
Room 2200 - 2nd Floor

Presentation, Sustainability

Audience Intermediate
Subject Sustainability

2:45pm MDT

Lightning Talks

Friday May 30, 2025 2:45pm - 3:15pm MDT

Multipurpose Room - 1st Floor

5 minute lighting talks:

1. Advisors Assemble! Powering Student Success with OER | Melinda Gurule, University of Northern Colorado

2. Cost-Free, Quality-Driven: OER in Anatomical Kinesiology Education | Abbie Ferris, University of Northern Colorado

3. OER Advocacy in the Age of Equitable Access | Yassin Nacer, Utah State Universit

4. Using OER to Build Undergraduate Civic Engagement | Christopher Garris, Metropolitan State University of Denver

Speakers

Christopher Garris

Professor, Metropolitan State University of Denver

Yassin Nacer

Open Education Librarian, Utah State University

Abbie Ferris

Associate Professor, University of Northern Colorado

Melinda Gurule

Success Coach and Academic Advisor, University of Northern Colorado

Chealsye Bowley

Director of Open Education and Learning Innovation, Colorado Department of Higher Education

Got questions about OER in Colorado? Email: OER@dhe.state.co.us

Friday May 30, 2025 2:45pm - 3:15pm MDT
Multipurpose Room - 1st Floor

Presentation

Audience Beginner
Subject STEM, Beginner

2:45pm MDT

OER & Equitable Access: The Importance and Impact of OER Materials within Textbook Affordability Programs

Friday May 30, 2025 2:45pm - 3:15pm MDT

Room 2201 - 2nd Floor

This talk will examine the financial impact of OER, and other low/no cost materials, on textbook affordability programs, such as equitable access.Using data collected from the first 2 years of CU Boulder’s equitable access program, we will dig into the actual number of students using these materials, the cost savings realized by those students, and the financial impact on the program as a whole.We will also discuss the relationship on CU Boulders’s campus between the bookstore, library, faculty and departments to support and advocate for the adoption and use of more OER, low and no cost materials on campus.Finally, we will review future book store initiatives to introduce more OER, low and no cost materials to CU Boulder’s equitable access textbook program and the potential impact of those additions on students and the program as a whole.

Speakers

Matthew Avena

CU Book Store Assistant Director of Academic Resources, University of Colorado, Boulder

Friday May 30, 2025 2:45pm - 3:15pm MDT
Room 2201 - 2nd Floor

Presentation, Beginner

Subject Beginner

2:45pm MDT

PubMed: An Unexpected Resource for OER Images

Friday May 30, 2025 2:45pm - 3:15pm MDT

Room 2204 - 2nd Floor

Images are a great way to enhance the educational value and universal design of Open Educational Resources. However, creating and finding openly licensed images can be labor intensive and sometimes requires searching many specialized repositories. Health sciences images are even more challenging to find. This presentation will share how PubMed, a free and open database for biomedical research, can also be used to find Creative Commons licensed images that can be used in OER materials. On the Anschutz Medical Campus, this method has been used to find images for a nursing pathophysiology book. A health sciences librarian and a nursing faculty will walk attendees through the process of entering search terms and identifying the open access articles that have images.

Speakers

Ellie Svoboda

Education Informationist, Strauss Health Sciences Library at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

Teresa Connolly PhD, RN, ACNS-BC

Assistant Professor, CU Anschutz Medical Campus College of Nursing

Friday May 30, 2025 2:45pm - 3:15pm MDT
Room 2204 - 2nd Floor

Presentation, STEM

Audience Intermediate
Subject STEM

2:45pm MDT

Using Canvas, Student Engagement, and Adaptable Content to Write an Argument Textbook

Friday May 30, 2025 2:45pm - 3:15pm MDT

Room 2300 - 2nd Floor

This presentation will describe the process I am using to craft an OER textbook on argument (as written and spoken discourse). My strategy involves drafting content for Canvas modules followed by extensive editing and expansion over several years. I am also adapting content for one of the chapters from a Project Gutenberg edition of a Platonic dialogue that is no longer under copyright. Its integration into the larger textbook will allow me to make connections that render the text more navigable and engaging. Hyperlinks will be a key component of this part of the text, thus rendering difficult terms, mythological allusions, and other elements less mysterious for students. I will also be drawing heavily on examples students have provided to elucidate key concepts, thus embracing a student-driven approach. The presentation will primarily highlight the challenges I face and the innovations I adopt as I continue this work.

Speakers

John Rief

Associate Professor of Rhetoric & Debate, Metropolitan State University of Denver

Friday May 30, 2025 2:45pm - 3:15pm MDT
Room 2300 - 2nd Floor

Presentation, Student engagement

Audience Intermediate
Subject Student engagement

3:15pm MDT

Break

Friday May 30, 2025 3:15pm - 3:25pm MDT

UNC Campus Commons

Friday May 30, 2025 3:15pm - 3:25pm MDT
UNC Campus Commons 1051 22nd St, Greeley, CO 80639

Break

3:25pm MDT

Aims’ Evolution – From Seed to Sustainability - A Success Story

Friday May 30, 2025 3:25pm - 4:15pm MDT

Multipurpose Room - 1st Floor

Imagine a college degree with zero textbook costs. At Aims Community College, we're making that a reality! Join our team of open education champions as we share how Aims built our program from the ground up. We'll discuss the hurdles we overcame and the innovative strategies we employed, culminating in thelaunch of our Associate of Arts Zero-Cost degree in Fall 2026. Discover how we're making education more accessible and affordable.

Speakers

Cathy Glaser

Adjunct Faculty / Former Librarian, Aims Community College

Doug Strauss

Program Director - Learning Commons, Aims Community College

Jim Hutchinson

Instructional Designer, Aims Community College

Ty Cronkhite

Faculty, Aims Community College

Friday May 30, 2025 3:25pm - 4:15pm MDT
Multipurpose Room - 1st Floor

Panel, Sustainability

Audience Intermediate

3:25pm MDT

Empowering Student Voices: Building Effective OER Advocacy Groups on Campus

Friday May 30, 2025 3:25pm - 4:15pm MDT

UNC Campus Commons

In this session, panelists will provide a brief presentation on student OER advocacy on college campuses, including types of advocacy groups, ways students can promote and sustain OER on campus and to legislators, student roles in advocacy groups, and how to get started with developing OER advocacy groups on campus. Speakers will then provide details about the recently formed Pikes Peak State College advocacy club and discuss takeaways from the first campus OER kickoff on March 21. This will be an open conversation with the audience, where panel members will provide insight and support for developing OER student advocacy groups for college campuses across Colorado.

Speakers