– Just to give you a little bit more information about who I am and a little bit more about my background, I’m actually a psychology professor at Lorain County Community College. We’re actually located in Ohio, just outside of Cleveland. And a couple of things this year, besides teaching my psychology classes, I’ve also started working as the faculty chair for our teaching and learning center. So I work with a lot of our faculty around different areas. I do co-chair our campus-wide AI task force that we have. And then, this past year, I served as an AI OER fellow through the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, where we actually created an OER Commons AI hub. And so if you were to just search “OER Commons AI OER Hub,” there’s also a handout that I have that Dasha will again put in the chat that you can go to. And I’ve got the link in there for that so that you can go ahead and see. It’s a lot of resources. We actually had faculty from four-year institutions, two-year institutions, K through 12 teachers, some instructional designers, librarians, just a wide variety of people that we did some work in.

So I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about open educational resources, about what they are and definitions and things like that, because there are resources out there for people to be able to find a little bit more. I know OneHE actually has a resource that Niya Bond has put together where she talks a little bit about what are open educational resources. But just for people who may not be familiar with them, I wanted to put together these first two slides just to talk a little bit about the most common definition, is the one that comes from OER Commons where we’re talking about teaching, learning, and research resources that are in any type of public domain. And then they’re usually released under certain types of license. We’ll talk a little bit about some of the different types of license that are out there. And what this allows you to be able to do is to be able to use this information for your students, use it for your classes. In some of the license, it actually allows you to be able to repurpose the material. So it allows you to be able to adapt it for different types of things. And really, OERs can come in a wide variety of sources. It can be textbooks; it can be full courses, course materials, videos. We actually use- One of the classes that I teach is a behavioral statistics class, and we use an open-source stats program. So as opposed to having students have to pay a licensing fee on a regular yearly basis in order to be able to have access to a program to be able to calculate out their stats, there is an OER stats program out there that we use as part of it. A lot of the slides that you’re going to see here today are actually infographics that I created using AI.

One of the things I wanted to do was sort of model what types of things that you can do using artificial intelligence to be able to create some of these graphics. I used a combination of Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini, and then also I have a paid version of ChatGPT that I use as part of what we look at. And so this just gives you a little bit better idea about some of the different licensing levels that you get with OERs. So there’s typically six sort of Creative Commons license that are out there. And again, they focus on different areas. And I’m not going to spend too much time on this. This was actually adapted from the Teachers Institute. It actually puts together sort of a guide and they talk a little bit about the six types of Creative Commons license that are out there. It’s one of the links that I have on the handout for you, so that way you can go in and be able to look at it a little bit more. And you can see in some cases some of these things can be used to be able to adapt or remix. Some of the things be able to use for commercial use. The bottom two down there that have sort of the ND aspect to them, usually those aren’t considered like fully open OERs because they don’t allow you to be able to revise and remix some of the information that’s in there. But this might be something that you could use as sort of an open source for your students to be able to look at and be able to focus on. I do, again, most of our psychology classes here use some type of OER materials for our students. We actually moved to that a couple of years ago. And one of the things that we found was that by having OERs into our LMS system, so we use Canvas as our LMS system, having those OERs available and ready to go on day one has significantly increased the grades for our students, especially on test one because a common practice used to be is a student would wait until second or third week of the class to determine whether they were really going to need to buy the textbook. And sometimes, by the time they did that, it was already too late. They had already had some problems with some of the things that were being covered. Where now with a lot of our OER materials, we have that already, you know, pre-programmed into the LMS, ready to go on day one so that when the students start the class, they now have access to these materials and have access to a lot of that information that is out there.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about- Because this actually happened over the course of the last year here, AAC&U, which is the American Association of Colleges and Universities, back in the mid-2000s actually created a set of what they called high-impact practices. These were things that within higher education, when these practices were employed, they found that students ended up learning and being much more successful in their classes and those types of things. So they started off initially with 10. A couple of years later, they had added a 11th. The 11th one was ePortfolio, so students who had to create some type of ePortfolio for the end of the class that they would then have as sort of a capstone-type project for their class. Earlier this year, AAC&U now has included OERs as their newest high-impact practice. So this is their 12th high-impact practice that they’re looking at. And in order to become a high-impact practice, there has to be a lot of research behind the validity of these different types of practices. And so one of the things that the AAC&U did was an OER study where they studied almost 700,000 students from a variety of different types of colleges and universities and also looking at a variety of different types of aspects out there.

And the big thing that OERs always used to be valuable for our students was that it helped save them money because now you don’t have to go out and pay the high prices of being able to get a textbook. But what this research found, and the reason that they have included this as a high-impact practice now, is that they found that students stayed in the course longer for classes that actually used OER, that the grades ended up becoming significantly higher in classes that actually used OER. They found that students persisted in their programs longer over the course of a time for classes that used that. And they also found that when they talked to a lot of the faculty and professors and things like that, that faculty and professors actually changed the way in which they taught the classes when they had an OER as part of that. And so again, that’s one of the links in the handout that you’ll get a chance to go and actually read this research for yourself and you can take a look at it for yourself. But it really goes along with, I think, the areas that I wanted to be able to talk about today in terms of adopting an OER, how AI can help us go about being able to adopt an OER, how we can actually adapt some of the materials to be able to make this more meaningful for the students. And then finally, the ability for faculty that if there is not something that is actually out there that suits the needs of your students, but invite you to possibly go out and actually create an OER for yourself. And I think AI can be a helpful sort of coworker in that with a faculty member.

I think, you know, one of the keys is we really want to be able to focus on the fact that faculty are still the ones that are in charge, faculty are still the ones that are making the decisions about what the students are going to be looking at, but AI can really help with that process. One of the big reasons a lot of faculty choose not to use OERs for part of their material is because of the time it takes to go through the material and being able to adapt the material and those types of things, and that’s one area that AI really can help with that process. So if we think about sort of this workflow idea of going from curating something to being able to create, or being able to find some of the different types of OER materials that are out there, being able to adapt them and then create different types of materials. So those first three are going to be the three areas that we’re really looking at. But then there also has to be that point of evaluating some of these things. One problem we sometimes run into with OERs is that if it was something that was put out, let’s say, years ago, maybe it hasn’t been updated, in which case if your field is constantly adapting and changing and new research is coming out, that’s one of the big issues. And so that ability, that’s still where the professor, that’s still where the faculty member has to be sort of involved with that ability of being able to evaluate out, and then ultimately being able to share this out, not just with our students, but then hopefully being able to put it out into the OER world in order to be able to focus on those things.

I don’t want to leave this up too long, but there are several different tools that are out there. Again, this isn’t really a talk about AI, but some of the tools that are out there, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, I know I’ve got on there, NotebookLM. They’ve actually recently changed that. It’s now Google Notebook, or Gemini Notebook, is the now official title that they have as part of that. So there are a variety of different types of tools that are out there that faculty can use as part of that. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to go through then these three processes, the curation, the adaptation, and then the creation aspect through the rest of it. So one of the things that we can use AI for in terms of the curation process is to help us be able to find. So as opposed to just a simple Google search or as opposed to just a simple Google Scholar search or something like that where we’re going out and trying to be able to find some of these sources, certain AI tools can really help be able to look at this. And so the three areas we would really want to be able to look at when we ask AI, when we prompt AI to be able to help us with that is, number one, tell it what we need. What’s the topic? What’s the course? What might be some of the learning outcomes that our students have? What type of format do we want it in? So maybe we’re looking for videos. Maybe we’re looking for class activities. Maybe we’re looking for certain types of software or textbooks in order to be able to do that. Being able to set sort of the guardrails for the AI, so what types of things? “Only look for open-licensed materials.” And so that will then restrict, within reason.

Obviously, AI still makes some mistakes about things, but it really then starts narrowing down its search by being able to look at those types of things. And then in what format do we want this back? Do we want it in sort of a comparison table that we’re able to look at? And a lot of times as part of my prompt, I will say, “Spend a little bit of time looking at things like OpenStax, OER Commons, MERLOT, Open Textbook Library, some of these places where there’s already been a lot of curation of many of these materials that are out there.” This is an example. I actually did this just the other day. I was looking for some information on classical conditioning in psychology. And what I did was I went to Gemini and I told Gemini, “Act as an OER librarian or an instructional designer, and what I want you to do is find all the open sources that are out there.” I gave it the specific license that I was specifically looking for, and I asked it to put it into a table for me. So this was the table. I just copied and paste the table right out of the response that I was able to get back. Now, I still have to go in and actually go through and evaluate these process thing and process each one of these, but at least this has saved me the hassle of having to go out and find these materials myself. And so the AI tool then can really help with that process. In terms of being able to adapt things, and again, I understand this is sort of a busy slide and there’s a lot of different graphics and things that are on here, but AI can really help in terms of being able to adapt things. So one of the reasons that we would want to be able to adapt the materials that we have is to make it more relatable to our students. And so I know one of the areas that I have really sort of interacted with OERs with my students is creating case studies, case studies that really emphasize my students’ background.

So it forces me- Remember that first slide or one of those first slides? We talked a little bit about how it has changed sort of the teaching practices. One of the things for me, it has forced me to have to get to know my students a little bit more and their experiences and their background so that I can incorporate some of those experiences into the case studies that I actually create for my class. And I’m taking the OER materials and using AI as a way of being able to create case studies. So now I might have three sections of introduction to psychology. I can create a separate case study for each section that really meets the needs of the students that I have in each of those individual sections. That would’ve taken me hours if I would’ve had to come up with a separate one each time. And probably the default would’ve been just creating a generic case study that may or may not have hit home with students. But in this particular case, it really helps being able to look at that. And so the AI will allow us to be able to analyze it. It will be able to adapt with some of these things. It helps us be able to verify whether these are valid sources in order to be able to look at. And I think the area that AI really can be beneficial is in the step five there in terms of that ability of being able to share materials, because one of the big drawbacks with OERs is the lack of ancillary materials. If I have a textbook, usually the textbook comes with PowerPoint presentations, class activities, possible case studies, text bank, question banks for quizzes and tests and those types of things. AI can be very valuable with this. With an OER material, I could take something like an OpenStax textbook and I could take that material, put it into an AI prompt and ask it to create a class activity for me for students, or I can have it adapt to something, some type of class activity that I can use for, let’s say, my online students, because obviously with the online students, we want to be able to engage with them as well.

So having that process being able to look at that process. Another area that we can get into is then the ability of being able to create some of these. So one, I think, experience that we have with a lot of faculty, especially faculty who have had years of experience and have done a lot of work with different types of things, is they are probably in a very good position of being able to create their own OERs. And so just based on their lecture notes that they have created over the years or some of the stories or examples that they have used over the years, they now can help with the process of actually being able to create their own OERs. And so by taking that sort of professional experience, taking that information, using AI as sort of a design partner now, AI can help sort of create some of these things. So I actually teach, besides teaching here at Lorain County Community College, I also teach at a small university down in Kentucky called Brescia University, partially because my background in psychology is sports psychology and they were looking for somebody to develop a series of sports psychology classes for their undergraduate psychology majors. And so I teach the classes, but there were really no textbooks in some of the classes that we actually created. And so with OER, with some outside materials, with my own expertise, I sort of created weekly chapters that I wrote. So I did a lot of the writing, but then I had AI help me with sort of evaluating the writing process, you know, giving me some feedback on some of that information. It helped me be able to create graphics such as this.

So as opposed to students having to read through just a lot of dense texts that I can break it up with visuals like this. And so having some of the different AI tools be able to help with that. You’ll see number four there within this process here is also if you are going to be using any AI to be able to create any of that, there really needs to be some type of transparency or disclosure statement so that people understand that AI was used in the process of creating some of this. I know that when I do that for my students, I will always let them know that, you know, This section I was helped organized with, you know, ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini or whatever it happens to be. Or if I have an infographic such as this infographic here, I might say, you know, “ChatGPT created this infographic for me,” so that they have it. And so that now gives a faculty member the opportunity to be able to take their expertise and put it into something that can be reusable within some type of OER format. So again, it could be readings, it could be case studies, it could be instructor-guide-type things. And then now share it not only for your students, but being able to share it then for the wider OER community and being able to look at that.

So if we were to look at then, you know, sort of the summary of the different roles that a faculty member would play and then the role that AI would play with each one of these, in terms of the curation process, AI might play the role of being an OER librarian, where me, as a faculty member, I am the overall curator. I’m the one that has the final decision as to what I might be actually looking at. In terms of adapting the information, the AI might serve as the instructional designer and then suggest some ways in which I can actually create the material, yet I am the executive director. I am the one that sort of oversees exactly what is going to go out there and how I’m going to adapt it because I’m the one that knows my students. I’m the one that is going to try to adapt it to the stuff that the students are looking at. And when it comes to then the ability of being able to create materials, again, the AI role can sort of serve as the editor of the- So a lot of the grammar and writing style to be able to help with some of those types of things. But again, my role as the faculty member is I am the content expert. I am the one that sort of makes that determination. And so again, my experience has been that when I use OERs, I use AI as sort of a co-creator with me or, you know, you know, a person, a entity that will help me be able to get my vision of what I want my students to be able to see in terms of the OERs across for the students. So that’s all the stuff that I have. I wanted to leave some time for people to be able to ask questions or there may have been some things that came in as we was going through. I also wanted to- I realized, so I just put my email into the chat. So if you want follow-up questions or anything like that, that’s something that you can follow up with. Dasha, how are we with time and everything?

– Great. Good time.

– Okay.

– [Vince] We still got some time for questions. Thank you so much, Vince. It was a lot to consider in such a short space of time, but very useful, I think, and especially because you’ve demonstrated how you’ve used it and kind of gave us some considerations for how others can implement similar if they wish. And I also loved how you kind of centered your expertise within that and how, you know, sometimes using AI tools doesn’t free up time, but it sounds like with, you know, using it for creating OER resources, that kind of could free up some time where you can, like, as you said, you can use that time to get to know your students.

– Yeah. Well, and I think the other thing is, you know, a lot of times when we teach AI literacy skills to our students, you know, one of the things that we tell them is, you know, “It’ll get you partway there,” but we always have to keep the human sort of in the loop of being able to evaluate that stuff. And that’s the big thing is we don’t necessarily want to be able to say, “Okay, you know, I’m going to let the AI tool take care of all of my work when it comes to OERs.” I’m still sort of the person in charge. But like you said, it does help with being able to save some time, being able to look at that, so.

– Yeah. Great. So we’ve got some questions in the Q&A, and there was a question in the chat. So we’ll just start with the one from the chat. And I think you might have answered this, but let’s just clarify. “How do you write long descriptions for your infographic?” And I think someone responded to this comment by offering a link to an accessibility sort of alternative text generator, but I think the question is asking how you sort of write the infographics.

– Yeah, so a lot of times it’s my information. So I’ve got sort of a vision of what I want to have as part of the infographics. So it’s- And what I’ll do is a lot of times I’ll just go in and I’ll say, “I need an infographic, but I need it to have this information, this information, these types of things.” You bring up a good point, or whoever it was that responded in the chat brings up a very good point that I didn’t really hit on in here, but that is a very important point. When I do create my infographics, I always then, once it creates it, I say, “Can you create me the alt text for the infographic so that there is that accessibility piece for my students?” And so that’s always- Accessibility, I think, is really important in terms of- And AI can be very valuable in that regards in terms of being able- Again, you’ll still have to edit it a little bit, but at least it’ll get you a part of the way there, and then you use that alt text for the images.

– Yeah, I think Heather’s just added to the Q&A in terms of the colour contrast and whether it meets accessibility criteria. I think that’s something that you can also prompt AI to say, “Can you please sort of adjust it-

– Right. Yeah.

– In line with this criteria and kind of make it less busy?” Well, I hope we’ve answered that question, so we’ll move on to the next two. So the next question is from Mike, and it says, “What is the OER stats program that you use, Vince?”

– So the stats program I use, and I’m not 100% sure what it stands for, but it’s JASP. So JASP, if you’ve just looked that up, it’s a stats program that is out there. It’s an open-source program. I don’t think it originates in the United States. I actually think it’s a program that’s out of- I’m trying to think of where it might be out of, but my students have really loved it. I love it as an alternative. I actually started using it during COVID because obviously we didn’t have the stats- Since the students weren’t coming into class, they didn’t have the laptops that the college provided for them that had the stats program on it. And my students love it. I’ve talked to some students who have told me that- Some students who have told me that they’ve gone on to graduate school and they say they still use the stats program because it’s a free open-source program for people to be able to look at, so-

– Great.

– Yeah, I see the link is in the chat there. Yeah, that’s perfect.

– Great, thank you. And another question: “Are you licensed in your presentation using Creative Commons license? And if so, which ones?”

– So I don’t do a lot of my presentations that way. I mean, this is available, so obviously, you know, I made it available today in terms of the slides and the handouts. You know, feel free to be able to adapt those materials in whatever way, you know, sort of suits your purpose for that. I know one of the key things in terms of the OER is that a lot of times it allows you to be able to adapt the material, but then keep the original attribution to it. So in that particular case, the way you would do that is that if you took some of my slides and maybe used it as a presentation for your faculty members at your institution, you would say- But then in the bottom you would say, you know, “The original source was, you know, Vince Granito’s presentation through OneHE,” as part of that, so-

– Great.

– I didn’t get into a lot of the specifics about the different types of licensing, only because that could be a whole nother presentation all within itself, so-

– It does. And I think Creative Commons is one of the links that you shared on your handout.

– Yes, yes.

– Obviously the link to the handout again. And that has good information about what do different licenses do and just generally useful and very accessible website as well. Brilliant. Thank you so much. We are right on time, which is great. Thank you so much for your time, Vince, and for everyone’s time for being here, sharing your energy, listening, taking notes. So really appreciate it. Thank you so much, everyone, and a special thanks to Vince.

– Thanks for everyone being here today.