SUNY Purchase

Keith Landa

CC0

There were a number of prompts that I could have used for this refection; I chose a couple of related ones to talk about my experiences with OER as a teacher over the past couple of years.

2. Describe how you already use open materials in your class, sharing your content if possible.

I’ve been using 3 or 4 Open Texts for my introductory Geology course, for the past couple of years.  What I’ve done to date would primarily be considered at the Adoption phase.  I am directing students to different chapters or sections of the texts that relate to the specific topics we are covering in class, but I’m not yet formally remixing and revising the source materials.  I have space in Candela (and also at PressBooks) to be able to do so, but haven’t found the time yet.

The sources that I’ve been using are all CC-BY or CC-SA-BY licensed.  I’ve copied the list from our Moodle course below:

Our principal text for the course will be Physical Geology by Steven Earle.  Go to the textbook site at the BCCampus OpenEd project to download the text in your preferred format.  (I’ve downloaded the most recent PDF version, downsampled it to reduce file size, and uploaded it below.)

The Earth and Space Science text from the Mesa Public Schools (uploaded below) provides another perspective over much of the same material, different illustrations for the topics in the Physical Geology text, alternative ways of describing the content.  You may want to compare treatments at times with what is presented in the Earle text.

We will at times make use of An Introduction to Geology from Salt Lake Community College and Geology 101 – Introduction to Physical Geology from Wenatchee Valley College.

Laboratory Manual for Introductory Geology by Deline, Harris, and Defend; and Minerals and Rocks (uploaded below) will be used for our lab activities in the course.

3. What you would do with OER or open pedagogy if you had unlimited time and resources?

I’ve also begun to experiment with Open Pedagogy, although that part needs some work.  Our principle text has been the Physical Geology text by Steven Earle from the BCCampus OpenEd project.  It’s an excellent text, targeted at an appropriate level for my introductory course, but most of the examples of geology are taken from British Columbia and western Canada more generally.  I tried an assignment last year to have students take each take one of the chapters and rewrite with examples more relevant to our region.  Students really struggled with the idea that they could take the content and reuse/revise/remix it.  Fears about plagiarism are too engrained, I think.  So I was planning to rework the assignment would focus on writing short pieces (or developing videos, etc) that explain specific concepts or highlight specific regional examples.  I was very interested in the Environmental Science Bites text from Ohio State that was highlighted in the course.