Curriki
has been providing
open educational resources for since two thousand six,
it started out as a
project out of Sun Microsystems founded by Scott McNealey and Kim Jones,
and
it very quickly got turned into a not for profit.
Since the beginning,
Curriki as an organization realized that
the definition
of open education
and the ability
to define digital assets and the best way to use them would be a continuous
challenge. And
when we survey all of the learning assets that are
labeled as OER, open educational resources,
we found out that
a lot of them are not truly digital. They're not truly interactive.
And there was no product in the open source space
that would allow a subject matter expert a teacher
professor to create
really high quality content with a very low technical barrier
and at an affordable price and our idea of that affordable
price should be very close to zero.
A lot of us consume passive video.
We watch a YouTube clip or we watch something on Vimeo or or
sitting in front of our TV at the end of the night,
very passively absorbing
content. Well,
we'd like to have students more active in the content. Right?
We want to be able to have knowledge checks built within
the the video. So, you know,
get two minutes into the video and we ask them some retention
questions. Right?
Make sure that they're not just sort of sleeping through the
through the video, that they're actively engaging with it.
And then doing something sort of immediately after this idea of you know,
watching five minutes of video and then doing something with
that content afterwards,
and then watching some more video and doing content,
doing work with content immediately after,
building that kind of cycle helps with the retention of
materials. So, Curriki is allowing us to do that.
We know,
we have limited time with our students and we felt like we
had less time with our students when they were not on campus
that they were only through these video streams.
So when we put a fit faculty member in front of students
live through a synchronous session,
we want the faculty to focus on the most complicated aspects of
the course. Right?
Not all contents equal from the day one to the last day of
the term. So being able to create video, reusable assets
that they could utilize in their course was important.
And now as we slide past, you know,
we start thinking about what post pandemics gonna look like.
We want faculty to be able to reuse those assets. Right?
We don't want them to think that everything they had
created over the last year and a half is now useless.
Right?
How do we incorporate some of that over the next eighteen
months to two years until we sort
of hadn't go through another content update cycle as the
faculty members usually usually do.
So it absolutely was part of our professional development
plan. To help faculty think about
how to create video, how to utilize video,
how to utilize their synchronous sessions,
and then how to reuse it post pandemic.
We're getting ready to launch a new initiative
Here at Baylor,
I think this conversation's taking place on every institution
of higher across campus is a affordability initiative how do
we make the educational experience more affordable for
us? So we're starting an OER initiative where we where we're
going to award faculty fellowships, paid fellowships
beginning next summer to faculty to start converting
their course courses from
paid, published materials to OER,
and not all OER content is equal. Some OER
has interactive media and assets that are associated with
them. Others do not. So those pieces that our faculty
choose from the OER marketplaces
that does not have a media interactive piece.
We we plan on using Curriki as is the platform to help us
build some of that interactive
content to supplement the pieces we find in the OER marketplaces.
So that's one
that's one instance.
And I have one I have one more I can quickly share.
Our online PT program is a hybrid program. Our our PT, our
physical therapy students come on campus for
for practicums on a on a regular basis.
But most of content is delivered asynchronously live
all over the country.
And as they take in instructional videos or how to
videos in preparation for practicum.
It's really important for for for the faculty in that program
to know when students arrive for practicum,
that they are ready for practicum.
And we're using it much like I expressed earlier to help
create an active experience for our students as well as make
sure that they're understanding the content. Right?
The knowledge checks are being passed back into the the Canvas Gradebook,
so we're able to to know how students are absorbing and how
they're doing with that that information.
From my perspective as the director of learning design and
charged with helping faculty be more innovative on campus.
We wanna be able to bring tools to them quickly. Right?
We wanna be able to
bring a variety of tools that could help impact
the student outcomes of our of our students.
And when we think about sort of the traditional model of let's license
an application. We're paying based on an FTE model. Usually,
that's an up down upside down cost curve for us, right?
We're paying a lot early for a minimal amount of usage,
because at university mind size or any larger,
you don't get a hundred percent adoption in year one, two,
or maybe even year three.
So as you're growing that,
you want to be able to have an application and a platform that it sits on.
That can help us be cost effective in the early stages
of this, as well as grow with us over time.
And you know,
there's never enough, I imagine,
many in the audience that are probably an IT recognize this
that there's not always There's never enough IT folks to
support all of the innovation that's trying to happen on
campus. So we have to throttle it a little back on campus,
but the ability to stand up things quickly
and and work with companies that are agile and responsive
as we roll things out as a as a benefit to us.
And and Linode was brought to us through Curriki.
We were trying to find a way to bring Curriki on board quickly.
And and Linode helped us, helped us do that.