CCCC-IP Caucus and Steve Parks (SWR)

[devo...@msu.edu]

Hello, all! I just had a fantastic conversation with Steve Parks, the incoming Editor of the SWR series with NCTE (https://secure.ncte.org/store/books/series/swr).

Steve has a wonderful editorial vision and mission focused on recognizing the history of the series and also thinking about the contributions the series can make in the future.

I described some of the work of the IP Caucus, and he's really interested in brainstorming with us possible models and opportunities given open-education resource possibilities; open-access opportunities; and new tools and technologies for buying, sharing, and reading "books."

I told him I'd email this crew to see if people would want to chat about models through which the series can continue its excellence, enhance its visibility and distribution, and explore different technological and economic models.

If there's a group of us interested in talking more, let Steve and I know. Steve will be in London for the latter part of May, but we could aim to set up a skype during or, maybe better, after he's back.



Danielle
_________________________________________________

Professor of Professional Writing
University Distinguished Professor

Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures
College of Arts and Letters
Michigan State University

434 Farm Lane #276
East Lansing, Michigan 48824
517/432-2581; 517/353-5250 (fax)
www.msu.edu/~devossda

[Nick Carbone]

If you do OER, what's been missing from OER by and large is stuff on how to teach w/ the OER at hand. So for faculty who are part-time and making a go of it by teaching at multiple campuses, often with high course enrollments, or faculty teaching 5/5 or even 5/6 loads, the time to find OER stuff is limited and then the time to adapt to using them is even harder.

Textbooks, as you know, come with help for that: quiz banks, annotated instructor editions, instructor teaching guides, supplemental Web sites, and other stuff that while on the surface may seem in excess or unnecessary, often make a substantial difference in an instructor's getting up and running.

Finding a way to solve two things: 

One, how to find* good OER that fits a course's approach and needs; and Two,  how to teach with the chosen OER resources would be good projects to take on. 

* finding means more than putting things online. The advantage publishers have on this aspect is people -- sales reps who (the good ones anyway) as consultants who make recommendations; editors who tailor development to what their conversations with faculty tell them are emerging needs and who involve hundreds of faculty in that development. 

Is there a way OER can do those two things? I can see a recommendation engine being developed maybe to offer some of the aspects that reps offer, but is there a way to draft OER that gets beyond a scholarly peer review model -- two or three people read and comment -- to the kind of larger development process that as a process grows a base of users? Crowd sourcing might be the metaphor to borrow for moving into that second approach.

--

---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Intellectual Property Caucus" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to intellectual-propert...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

nick.carbone at gmail dot com
http://ncarbone.blogspot.com

[Jeff Galin]

I'd like to be involved.  Thanks fir initiating the conversation
Cheers,
Jrg

[Nick Carbone]

Stephen,

I can also see that my addition to the list was a bit off topic - I focused on OER for students versus getting stuff into the hands of faculty around scholarship.

That said, back to thoughts on "new tools and technologies for buying, sharing, and reading "books."" from Danielle's original good news about your conversation . . . 

MIT has open source software for annotation -- http://www.annotationstudio.org/.

Meanwhile, bear with me on this, The Washington Post Online has been using Genius (a site originally meant to host rap lyrics but that offers an annotation tool - http://genius.com/web-annotator) to offer annotated commentary of things like the State of the Union (see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/12/what-obama-said-in-his-state-of-the-union-address-and-what-it-meant/)

see also Chris Cilliza's "How Annotation Can Save Journalism"  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/10/07/why-i-believe-annotation-is-the-future-of-journalism/ for a background think on annotation.

So maybe a project that uses Annotation Studio around a chapter or essay from an SWR piece might work as an approach. One could, for example, imagine, a range of professors from around the country who are all teaching the same book or chapter in a graduate course asking their students to annotate something other students are also reading. 

There have been defacto attempts at this -- Kindle has thing where you can get other readers highlights on your book. So the idea isn't new. Scholars  have used blogs and other tools for putting up early thoughts and drafts of things that become books, inviting feedback. Bob Stein via the Institute for the Future of the Book pushed for this kind of thing and helped, I think, create the Comment Press plugin for WordPress.  So it's not new. 

But there are new tools now for seeing if something more sustainable can be attained. I imagine a project like this might also need some way for professors to coordinate assignment schedules and other contextual cues.

On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 2:32 PM, Nick Carbone <nick.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Stephen,

Good idea if it were there -- a single OER place to find and have students use content, in the way Apple has iTunes. But, 1.) Apple could make iTunes known because they can advertise and promote on their very popular devices, and 2.) it's not OER.

But 3.) even now there are more places to get content. It used to be to watch movies online, most people used NetFlix. But now you can stream via iTunes, NetFlix, Amazon, and Hulu to name just the commercial ones most people know of because those entities have advertising budgets and subscription plans they sell.

OER is, literally, all over the place. Just as a sampling of that: Moxley's got his thing at his Website, Charlie Lowe his project in another part of the Web; Colostate's Writing Studion is somewhere else; Merlot does its thing; Connexions from Rice does something different. And that's just a smattering of projects off the top of my head. Add in many many many many more, all with little to no way to get faculty attention except by word of mouth of luck of web search, and it's hard for faculty to know where to go to find stuff. 

And then there's the Chinese menu problem. If you go a single site that aggregates everything, or one smaller site with a lot of stuff, the next issue is wading through stuff to find things to teach from. Unlike SWR which promotes scholarship -- books written for scholars/teachers -- OER content for students is harder to choose. As a scholar, I might look by subject or research area, recognize a writer as someone who knows his or her stuff and choose the book. That's pretty easy and it's how online catalogs and NCTE Press book exhibits at the CCCC convention work. Worst that can happen is a scholar finds the book meh, doesn't finish it, maybe gives it to grad student or colleague who might like it better. 

But choosing stuff for students to read as part of a course is harder. It's really a matter of imagining how one will teach with it at the same time as figuring out if it will really work with students all while not having the time to read the content cover to cover. 

So finding OER to teach from and with for the classroom is really hard for a lot of faculty to do because OER pioneers are folks who already know how to find things online and incorporate them. But the faculty they'd like to see follow very often aren't like the pioneers and need more guidance and support.

On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 12:34 PM, Stephen J Parks <sjp...@syr.edu> wrote:

Nick

Thanks for responding to the listserv email.

I hadn't thought about the difficulty of folks finding OER documents. I was still thinking of it almost as an Apple ITune store, where folks could buy individual chapters for use by students (or I guess the students would buy them). Do you have a textbook company in mind that might be a good model for me to look at?

What Danielle was too nice to write in her email is that a lot of this is still very new to me. I know SWR should be moving in this direction, but I don't necessarily have the knowledge on how. So really, any/all suggestions and bits of advice are truly welcomed.

Steve

---

From: Nick Carbone <nick.c...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 4, 2016 11:06 AM
To: intellectual-p...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Stephen J Parks
Subject: Re: CCCC-IP Caucus and Steve Parks (SWR)

 

[Timothy Amidon]

Nick these are such smart and important questions:

​I​

s there a way OER can do those two things? I can see a recommendation engine being developed maybe to offer some of the aspects that reps offer, but is there a way to draft OER that gets beyond a scholarly peer review model -- two or three people read and comment -- to the kind of larger development process that as a process grows a base of users? Crowd sourcing might be the metaphor to borrow for moving into that second approach.

​I'm wondering, how might we begin to build OER learning objects that offer these types of professional development opportunities? MOOCs? Or, capitalizing on infrastructure within existing open publication forums: a WikiPraxis piece in Kairos, for example, would be a great first step just to get the conversation moving. Kairos does use the peer review model, and while our development process is closed to those who are staff members, I think there's ways that the model might be enacted in a more open fashion. The one area I think there'd still be challenges is security, so I'd have to think that through. That said, I feel like I recall that the Vega platform Cheryl has been working on will support these types of open structures for developmental editing and review, but I could be wrong. 

Best,

tra

Timothy R. Amidon, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Department of English

Colorado State University

Ft. Collins, CO 80523-1773

Assistant Editor 

Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy

http://www.kairos.technorhetoric.net/

Senior Chair

CCCC Intellectual Property Caucus

[Timothy Amidon]

Hi Dànielle, Stephen,

I described some of the work of the IP Caucus, and he's really interested in brainstorming with us possible models and opportunities given open-education resource possibilities; open-access opportunities; and new tools and technologies for buying, sharing, and reading "book

​s".

​This is super exciting. Count me in, too. I wonder how WAC Clearinghouse might support, align, and/or contribute to this work, too. Would you like me to reach out to Mike Palmquist?

Best,

tra

Timothy R. Amidon, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Department of English

Colorado State University

Ft. Collins, CO 80523-1773

Assistant Editor 

Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy

http://www.kairos.technorhetoric.net/

Senior Chair

CCCC Intellectual Property Caucus

--