2025 Colorado OER Conference: Full Schedule

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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

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

10:45am 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

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

11:20am 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

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

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

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

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