2025 Colorado OER Conference: Full Schedule

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

10:10am 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

10:45am 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

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

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

2:45pm 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

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

3:25pm 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