Our applicants is here now at the app. Yeah, they're on zoom. They're on this virtual on zoom. Oh, okay. Okay. So they're start and we have a member of the public here. Let's go ahead and start. Call the meeting. Okay. Um, board member board. Board member Carney is absent. Board member fennel. Here. Board member Klein is absent. Board member marzlin. Here. Vice chair Gary. Here. Here. Let the record reflect that all board members are present with the exception of board member carney and board member Klein. I can welcome everybody to tonight is a special business meeting. And so it'll be a little bit of an abbreviated agenda as we're just going to be dealing with one item on the agenda tonight. So item to board business. I'm just going to go ahead and open and close for business. We won't deal with any business tonight. I'll move on to item 2.1 statement of purpose. I will read that principal duties of the board include undertaking and updating historic inventories or surveys recommending designation of landmarks and preservation districts reviewing proposed alterations to historic buildings and promoting public wellness of preservation issues. If you are in a historic district or would like more information regarding historic districts, please see the processing review procedures for owners of historic districts or historic properties. So item number three statement of abstention by board members. Basically, if you have a reason why you need to recuse yourself from this item that we're going to be looking at this would be the time to speak up. Not saying anyone will close right into right into our scheduled item tonight. This will be public caring for landmark alterations for a new single family dwelling at 912 McDonald Avenue file number LMA 22-016. The background construction construct new one story 1873 square foot three bedroom home with attached garage a pump well house or a well house and covered outdoor area. The project is exempt from California environmental quality act. And I will add for the board members that this is a new building. So it's not a historic structure that's being remodeled it's it's new building on on new ground. And we have the presentation being made to us tonight by Christiana. Good evening members of the board and chair amuse here today I'll be going over the mail residents and they're up here for the major landmark alteration which is PRJ 22-027. This is at 912 McDonald Avenue. Here's some of the project descriptions so this is going to be a new one story on an undeveloped lot in the McDonald Avenue preservation district. To me 1873 square foot single family dwelling with three bedrooms and two and a half baths is going to be a detached to car garage the welcome house and then a outdoor cover area. This site is not a contributor to the district as it is undeveloped. For the project history this was submitted last year on October 10.  And then we did a notice of public hearing on December 3 this year and then today is the public hearing for this item. This location the general plan by new designation is those density residential and the zoning is in a plan development which is PD 005 dash H or mainly single family homes. So this is the first round I'm going to show you can see all of the landscaping that is going to be proposed and then what the design of the house is and we'll go into some detailing. Here's the materials and colors. You can see some of what they're going for with paint and the wood style and some of the roof shingling. Here is the site plan. You'll see McDonald Avenue is actually on the left and then that alleyway is behind on the right. There's going to be a walkway going around and then you'll see the outdoor patio area and the car to car garage that leads to the alley. As well as the well pump house in the back. Here is the house floor plan showing all of the bedrooms and the dining area. And I'll be showing some of the elevations. Oh sorry. Here's the backyard floor plan. So this is where the garage the outdoor covered area is located. Now here's the front elevation. And you can see the design matching some of the similarities in the McDonald Avenue district and some more elevations on different locations. And this is also showing for the accessory structures as well as the way it fronts the alleyway. They also provided the landscape plan. One thing I want to know is that the front trees were changed as per some comments from the cultural heritage board there previously. Going to do create murals in the front on the street frontage and now it's going to be income is as requested. Here's a composite rendering of how it looks like as it would be built within the street. The project they also had to complete a historic standards report. This report reviewed the environmental quality, California environmental quality act the secretary of interior standards of rehabilitation. Those standards covered basically everything that needs to be reviewed for historic buildings and historic construction. They also were viewed under the National Park Service guidance as well as the center as a design guidelines for historic properties. They also have the processing procedures for owners of historic properties. And then there's additional history of the district and the site and then architectural compatibility of the primary and accessory structures with the district. And also wanted to point out like the setbacks were also looked at as they would follow the other houses in the neighborhood. The findings of this report is stating that they would follow within the character of the district. And so many of the design quality that they have are things that you would see surrounding in the neighborhood and as the district as a whole. These are some of the require these are the required findings for a major landmark alteration permit. We have eight standards. Just looking at the general plan and the zoning code and how it is compatible with different landmark structures in the neighborhood and maybe ones that look like contribute that are contributors. And then consistency and compatibility with some other textures and materials. They were viewed under California environmental quality act and the qualified for a streamlining measure pursuant to one California, sorry, sequence section 15183. A general plan consistency analysis was conducted for this plan, and it was concluded that it was consistent with the general plan 2035. It was further concluded that none of the findings under the appendix guideline G require any additional environmental review with 15183. There are no mitigation required to be on implementation of the general plan policies. There are no unresolved issues as a result of staff review. I did want to indicate some of the issues that did come up during the project. We needed to receive the historic standards report and a cultural resources study. We received those and they all are in compliance. After the concept cultural review, we had some updates to the landscape plans and then the, they changed some of the windows to be one cloud per the historic report, and then we also have to get the consistency analysis. And then we received the consistency. Yeah, the general plan consistency analysis. Okay, thank you. I received two public comments. After this presentation was created. They were both positive and support of the project one of them was just a little bit concerned about how close they might be to the alleyway but I was able to assure him that it was following all of our requirements and that is following some of the other browsers that are on alleyways as well so there was no direct issue and then the other ones were the neighbors to the south that are happy to have a house built on this location. The planning and economic development department that the zoning, I'm sorry, I don't want to zoning administrator cultural heritage board approval major landmark alteration permit to allow the construction of a new single family home and accessory structures that 912 McDonald Avenue. And for any questions, my name is Christian Candelaria and I'm a city planner for the planning and development department and my information is listed. And that should be the end of my presentation. I think what we'll do tonight is I'll next move to if the applicant would like to, you know, zoom in or say anything. Then I'm going to open up public comment. And then after public comment. I'll bring it back to the board for just questions and clarification from the board to staff and the applicant. And then after we get done with questions, then we'll go around the board and get our comments and then move towards our final action. So that's kind of a statement. So let's go to the applicant if they would like to say anything or make presentation. Yes, good evening. Oops, I just see my name on the screen. Good evening. I wish I could be there with you. I didn't want to infect anyone with my cold. And I'm, I'm really appreciate that you're having this special meeting just to review the plans for the house. I'm so excited to move back. Hopefully. Susan, can I interrupt you just, can you just introduce yourself and share who you are real quick. Thank you. Sorry about that. My name is Susan Merrill. I am the applicant who would like to build a house in the neighborhood where I was born and raised and where my family's had a presence since 1917. And I just thank you for having this special meeting tonight. I really appreciate that. I'm so excited to be able to move back to the neighborhood, I hope. So thank you very much. Thank you, Susan. Jeff, we can see that you're unmuted. If you wish to make a comment about the project. Sure. Yeah, this is Jeff. We were the architectural firm that had the privilege of preparing these drawings for Susan. She jumped the gun and just got started with her enthusiasm. So I'll leave it there. And we're also excited to present this house and have Susan be able to build it and go back to this neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. So with that, let's go ahead and open up public comment. I have a comment. Please. Yes, my name is Doug Bosco. And I live at 1020 McDonald Avenue, which is the next block north of this proposal proposed home. And I probably know this lot better than anyone because of the kindness of the Merrill's who allowed us to use this lot as a community garden for in my case over 20 years. And our name, many neighbors use that lot. I actually could have sold it many times because every time I was in the garden, people say, is this lot for sale? I didn't own it, of course. My wife and I want to 100% support. Susan Merrill in this project. That family is wonderful. They already have been a major part of our neighborhood as Commissioner Garrett can testify to. And I think they will be very happy in this home. And they've made a lot of us very happy in the past. So I'm just here to 100% support the Merrill's in this project. Thank you very much for your constant Moscow. Seeing no other members of the public who would like to speak. My name is Steve Fuanas. I'm actually the landscape architect on the project. And just from getting to know Susan and previous work with Farrell favor. I think they put together a really great project and I'm in full support and just want to be here to say that. Thank you very much. Okay, I'll close public comment. Okay, come back to the board. Do board members have questions or clarifications? They would like to ask either staff or the applicant or you can even ask if Susan still on. We could probably ask her as well. Okay. Vice chair Garrett. I'm sorry. I always have questions. But first Susan, if you're still there, it's really exciting to have this lot be built upon by your, especially by you. And by the family. I remember looking at plans. I don't know, 20 years ago, they that by your dad had done for this lot. And unfortunately, he didn't want to work with us.  Yeah, I'm really happy that you're doing this. My question is to, I guess, to you, Christian. The gable window in the attic. How is that going to be treated. It's a window to an unfinished space. And so my question is, it's not going to, it's going to have clear glass. Can it, can we ask that have the same or are appropriate window. Covering on the inside that similar to whatever's going to be on on the rest of the inside of the house. So it doesn't look odd. I think staff might be able to comment on that window a little better. Yes, so we would, the proposed method is to install the window, the window itself would match all the detailing of the other windows. And behind that window would be a black painted piece of wood so that you would not see into the, to the attic space. Okay. Can I add a comment to, so what I thought actually to use a shade, because as we all know, McDonald's Avenue is very busy at Halloween and so I thought it would be fun to do something in that window like I don't know a silhouette of a witch or something at Halloween. But for the most part, I would use, I would have a shade so that there's no glare or nothing can be seen out but for holidays. I thought it would be make it festive to do. Great idea Susan, I think the end result here is we would block it out so that it's not viewable into any of the internal components of the home, whether a shade or some other method, but that's a great idea Susan. Okay, I think that's my question for now. I may have more later. I have a question for staff. When we talk about it having a well house. Is that a decorative or it's an actual there's an actual working well that's been allowed in city. Yeah. They could explain a little more but I think they wanted to use a little bit for landscaping purposes. Everybody on the street has a well. And that has had a well for, I don't know how long, there's always been a well back where they were closing it. So it'll be a working well. Yeah, okay. They kept a lot of our wells that we're working in, in the Burbank Gardens neighborhood. They kept them. Yeah. A lot of them were not allowed to be continued so that was just I didn't know whether it was a decorative building or whether we're calling it a well house. It's going to be a well charming and yeah, okay. Wonderful. No questions clarification. Okay, we're just going to we're going to move then on to comments and I'm just going to kind of do a roll call with comments. And I'm going to start with Vice Chair Garrett. So this is your opportunity now to basically. I will remind people you can talk about what you like about the project, as well as what you don't like about the project. It's always nice to hear both. I'm appreciative of the project. I very much appreciate the landscape having changed to be more appropriate for that for the street. Thank you. I don't know what your name is down there, but thank you. And thank you for the ginkgo trees. They're spectacular as you may have noticed on the street at this time I'm here. Basically, I only have a couple issues with the house itself. I didn't realize a concept that you are considering. And I guess Jeff and answer this. Is that okay to have an answer a question that I have? Sure. Or Jeff or Susan if you're still there. I have an issue with the Hardy board siding. It would be the only house in the entire McDonald district with Hardy board siding. And the newer houses, some of which are only probably eight years old, maybe 10, have all got lap siding. So I would I would like to see lap siding. It's more appropriate for that kind of architecture in this particular neighborhood. I appreciate the change to the woodclad windows and the only other issue with the woodclad windows are the Moyans. The Moyans are sandwiched between two panes of glass and I would like to see and I know they're available with the exterior grid. So it looks more like a true divided light. There are no others in the neighborhood that are true divided lights. So that's one issue. The other issue is with the light fixture. I would like to see a more traditional this is traditional architecture that's been presented to us and I would like to see a light fixture that's in that same historic, you know, like a lantern or something not a multifaceted glass fixture. But other than that, I think the project is great. And I hope we can get it moving as quickly as possible. Could you explain that window? What exactly you were talking about? Yes, so it's a that the windows are, they have the panes of glass, which you can see on the plans. And instead of being wood there, they have a plastic grid that goes between two sheets of glass. So it just doesn't look like a real traditional divided light, but they do make those same windows. Well, they make them with true divided lights. But the other way to go is with the grid on the outside and on the inside, but not sandwiched in the middle. And that looks more like a true divided light. So that's what I would be asking for. Chair Muser, if we're beginning deliberation, I believe you need a motion on the floor to start deliberating. Okay. So someone can make a motion. Do we need that or for making comments? Yeah, I think, I think. Okay, I guess. Yeah, we should. We should call. What, what we need right now then is from one of the board members to make a motion to approve resolution. Our file number LMA 22 dash. 202 301. Yeah, 016. This one does the old one. So file number would be PRJ 22 dash 027. You might have the child number, which is LMA 22 dash 016. Sorry, it's a little confusing. Okay. I wonder about this resolution number. What is it under? Maybe you could, would you be interested in making a resolution? Oh, and here's the file number. Okay. Yeah, I, I move. Well, I make, I make a motion that way. I don't know how you say that because we're going to be adjusting. Well, so you would, you would propose an emotion and then you could suggest a friendly amendment to the resolution to include the items that you listed, and then we would need a second. But I don't, I have to read through all this stuff. It was the reading of the text. Yes, just the, the caps. Yeah. First part, then wait the reading of the text. I move that we accept the resolution of the cultural heritage board of the city of Santa Rosa, perving landmark alteration permit for the Merrill residents located at 912 McDonald Avenue McDonald in the McDonald Avenue preservation district. Assessors parcel number 180670 033 file number PRJ 22 dash 027. So we have, and I weigh the most I weigh the reading of the text. Okay, so we have a motion on the floor made by Vice Chair Garrett and a second by Board Member Fennel. So now we can open discussion and so some of the things that you brought up, you can, you can offer those up as friendly amendments to the resolution. So I guess that would come under D. So I am offering and hit this process and I'm, I'm offering an amendment. Does there need to be a motion for those friendly men? This would be a separate motion. So you so we have a motion on the table. Now you're amending the motion to add. Oh, okay. So I move to mend the emotion that motion. For approval under section D. So, I think you just say specifically what what you specifically see true lap sighting in place of party board. And I don't know how exterior or millions for the windows, rather than the grid between the two panes of glass, and and a more appropriate light fixture than the contemporary one that doesn't feel appropriately with that style of architecture. And then if Ms. Fennel agrees she can second the friendly amendment. Second that applicant. It's up to the chair if you want to hear the applicants. Yeah, I wouldn't mind if Susan wouldn't mind weighing on the friendly amendments that were made. Thank you. I understand the, the, the desire to have everything as historic as possible. I'm, I guess I don't understand enough about lap sighting except the house I grew up in on Spring Street had it and it was a pain to maintain course that was also really old, really old lap sighting. So with respect to the window, the grids. Am I correct in understanding that you want it outside and not inside. Not, not between the two pains. Right. There can be a false million on the inside and a false million on the outside. Okay. Well, it looks like it's a real divided glass from both the inside and the outside. I completely understand that too with the French doors we had where I grew up and having it like that. So it from my perspective, it's, it's all right to do that. It's, it's just more maintenance with that kind of thing. And what was the third, the light fixture, not a problem to change that. Thank you. And I like your idea of the window sharing. There is a quick clarification on the sighting please. Because these terms can be used interchangeably. When you say not hardy but lap sighting. Is it you do not want a cementitious fiber. Sighting you want it to be real wood, or the plants call for lap sighting so it isn't it is drawn as lap sighting. I just like to ascertain what specifically you would like to see.   And then they make all kinds of now, they make a lot of historically correct that's me. That's hard. That's hardy board. Yeah. It'll look like wood planks solid, lapped. So it'll look like natural wood. But it'll have those funny lines. No. And I have a process question just to get us deeper into the weeds. The sighting doesn't bother me. It isn't a deal breaker material or the material any way that I mean what they have specified this being a not a if it was a historic home that we're remodeling would be a big deal to me. it's not going to be a contributor in the neighborhood. So to me, as long as it has a flavor that fits in the neighborhood, and I think it does. Yeah. I don't have a problem with that. So- Is it a concrete? Is it a concrete? It's a very stable material that- In boards, right? It's in long boards. At least so. Yeah. You can correct me if I'm wrong. I haven't seen it before. Yeah. I just haven't seen it. So I thought it was that I would- So with the initial motion and the amended motion with a second, when we come to the final motion, I don't want to be voting restricting what kind of citing they can put on. I'm fine with what's been allocated in the existing plans. So I think you can propose an alternative motion or vice-chair could- Well, could we see a, is there a picture of this material on the internet that we could see? Like, I think that if we could put the picture of the- Those laps. That's what lap is. Yeah. Put it on the material board. If you could, you know what I mean. The board is just getting out of the material, which is a very stable material. That's one job. It looks like wood. It's printed. It's got a little bit of a change to it. OK, I'm fine with that. I am not fine with those pieces of plywood that they're protected. That's not that. It even has wood grain texture to it. Maybe. When it's painted, it'll look like wood. Yeah, so could- Well, yeah, that could take us into the weeds even more.  I mean, I don't mean to. I don't. It's far resistant. If you can specify that they beat individual boards and not. Yeah, so, yeah, if they're individual boards. It's horizontal lap siding is what it is. And they're smooth rather than rough. Yeah. OK, yeah. And that's my tool. Would Vice Chair Garrett then need to amend her motion? Yes, if she's agreeable, yeah. I will amend my motion. Could we also get some more direction on the light fixture? Yeah, there are plenty of light fixtures that are just simple, clean. Thank you. I'll say it. If it's possible. Maybe. A craftsman. A craftsman or an or their English style ones.  A tulip later. Is it like a tulip? Later. Yeah, I mean, there are plenty. There's one on. There's a brand new house on the corner and 16th and St. Alina. It's the newest house in the neighborhood. It's probably eight or 10 years old. And it has those clean.  OK, that are metal and glass. So this is the light here that they proposed. So it's too contemporary. Is that your thought? For the architecture, I think, yeah. I think the house is very contemporary. I mean, the lines. Well, they're the same houses in the neighborhood that are 120 years old. There's not a lot of detail. I mean, it's all. Yeah, it's clean. Christian can share the spec. Can we leave some of these things as friendly amendments, as recommendations for them, the applicant, to then deal with? But it's just when this comes back to Christian to review at the building permit stage, I want him to feel confident that he can make a good decision on whether the light fixture meets your plan. Susan, are you still there? Yes, I am. So, Susan, do you feel comfortable that you could pick out a craftsman bungalow style light fixture rather than the more contemporary one that we have up on the screen now? Yes, actually, of the three we were looking at, one of them is more of a lantern type, so not a problem. OK, thank you. You're welcome. And then I'm fine with. I agree with you with the. And I believe the Anderson windows actually come with the millions on the outside, so which is so that that should be. So if you're willing to. Well, I think we have more. We have one person discuss and we're yeah. Well, first, I want to get back to I want to get back to her amendment, get that fixed, and then we'll bring in his other amendments. I will. OK, so can I amend my amendment? OK. To I will just say that the left siding. Be smooth. Yeah, I'm not going there either. You know, the rough ones are weird. I want. I'd like them to just pick whatever saying that they have. OK, that they have to say it's it's a new home. And as long as their boards and the. It is a new home, but I could have seen a contemporary home. Well, they allow it. They allow contemporary homes to be built in historic neighborhoods. That's one of the that was one of the. Yeah, and this is the secretary of the interiors allows a contemporary home to be built new. I know, our neighborhood. Yeah, OK. But you'll have to make your amendment. Yeah, I you know, and part of it to me was they came for concept review and we gave them concept review. They came back. They they achieved everything that we asked in concept. Or we did ask that they bring. Samples of the materials. I did. Yeah, this is where we're pretty far down the road for picking up material samples as far as in this particular case. Again, if this was a historic structure, I'd be right there with you, but it's not. It's a new building and the secretary, the interior allows for contemporary homes to be built on locks and historic neighborhoods have to approve it as long as it's. Yeah, we don't have to. You know, as a board, I mean, they can they can say, yes, you can allow that, but we don't have to, as a board, be pushed to to accept something. Right. Well, let's let's go here from some other board members. So. Board member more. Yeah, I have just a question. I'm looking at the composite rendering. So often we're right. Is that part of the property? Or a greenery right there? Or is that first one? That's about a 10 foot seven. Oh, OK. It's just hard to tell. Which portion is Larry? So this area here. Oh, on the far right, the light green. Yeah, I just. Is that that's part of the property? I'm just assuming. Let me go to a plan set real quick. And your question regarding that. I was just so that's just landscaping or. Yeah, that's part of the lot. Yeah, I'm putting the landscape and back on the screen. You'll see a lot of it is is the landscaping. They're at that southerly property line. There's a proposed native shrub hedge. I'm sorry. There's a row of hedges native shrubs at that property between the homes. Yeah, that clear. So that would be the tree money. Yeah, yeah. OK, there's an existing wood fence and then we would plant a bunch of shrubs along that for both privacy and for aesthetics and habitat. And butterflies. Question. You found a board member, Carney. Just commenting here. Yeah, I think it's a wonderful project. I think it looks really nice having grown up in the middle neighborhood. It's wonderful to see a home going in on that on that property. I take no issue with it. I find every aspect to be to be really nice. I do agree with Vice-Chair Garrett about the light fixture. If that's something that could be changed, it'd be great. But other than that, I. I mean, and it's not even a make or break for me. I think it's I think it's a great project. I think they really respected the neighborhood and the overall way the home fits inside the neighborhood. So yeah, that's I think it's great. I think Portman Carney and Portman Ramirez. I agree with Patrick. I think that the neighborhood is going to certainly benefit from this new home. And it's it's it is lovely. I drove by there today. It's a little more contemporary than I expected it to be. Um, but I went back and I read some more about I'm new on the committee. So about what what what is allowed and it's historic and contemporary styles are acceptable. And I think it's very contemporary. And I look at the house on either side, it does look very different. I'm not certain if some. Different sort of sighting along the top would make a difference like next door, there's scallops, you know. So I don't know if that would confuse the whole issue. But just it's very contemporary. It's lovely. It really is. I'm certain it will be a nice addition to the neighborhood. Board member fell. I also really like the project and it was it's nice to see that it came back. One of the things because I was there for the first meeting when they brought it and that didn't bother me then that bothers me now is the same. Um, material on that chimney as the house itself and that the district is, you don't see the same hardy backing board going up chimneys in. The McDonald neighborhood, there there is some kind of I'd love to see it mixed up with a little bit of stone or. I know that we don't like to see brick. Some something that's I just I think that part of it is so. I understand that it's a more modern house in that in that district and stuff. But I just it looks like a little bit too tracked home from for me just having that in it for some reason, I don't remember being bothered by it when I saw the plans initially, but seeing that it's the same material from the house going all the way up and then taking that all the way up on the chimney, it throws me there at least four other houses on the screen. I know and I've seen them and I just I think I I prefer them more. What are the material would you I would love to see, you know, a stone or brick. I would just something to break up that to break it up. I don't have a problem. Yeah, that's a first. That's right. I mean, it's that kind of house. It's a newer kind of. Yeah, but it is contemporary. It's like exactly how it has like five. But in the architectural limits, the other homes that are that size on the same team that there are brick one, there are homes with brick. And I think as a board, too, we can basically give Susan and you know, our our desires, but that at at a point, we'll have to decide whether that's going to, you know, keep you from approving. No, that's not keeping. I'm just asking if they would consider not that to me just makes it almost look like a home in a development that there are, you know, five different four plans and you choose which one you want. So that's it's a custom home. And that's the only thing that keeps it looking for like a custom home for me. I'd like to compliment the historical review. I thought it was very complete, very well done. I'd also like to compliment the staff report. I thought it was very well done. I appreciate the fact that they kept the garage in the back off the alley because none of the other houses have driveways down the side. I think the the heights and the size is proportional to the lot. It is interesting and probably what makes it stand out so much is you have a Victorian sitting next to it. Totally different architecture and craftsman is anti-fascist. Anti-Victorian, if you go look at the history of craftsman architecture, it is everything that a Victorian is not. So so it it's very much contrasting and it should be. I think the design is complimentary to other similar neighborhood structures. And I do believe that it does have, you know, a new home look, but that is that is allowable in historic neighborhoods. It's it's not ever going to be a contributor. It's not trying to be a contributor.  So I support by Chair Garrett on her windows. I think that's a good motion. And I also support her on her life fixtures. I'm fine with letting the site and be designed as the architect has designed the site. So so unless anybody else has any other comments, we'll move back to by Chair Garrett, just in case she would like to amend her friendly amendments and then we'll go to vote. I thought I already did that. But we didn't start it. You started, but we didn't get a second. We didn't and we have to go back to board with her panel for a second. Well, let her do it first. Yeah, no, I don't want to fly. It's a big one. He's huge. Full fed. Somebody asked a snack. Maybe it's a drone. OK, I will. Can I stick you? I would still like to see it be not rough wood or fake wood. Any any comments from other board members on that? I have harder board in my house. I mean, I don't have a historical house, but it's the look. I know I'm fine with a hardy board when I'm now that I know that that's not a sheet. But textured hardy board. Yeah, textured. Yes. On the outside. Yes. So when it's painted, it looks like wood. It's just, you know, no one would be the wiser. OK, OK, thank you. So I would like to amend my amendment. I'm fine with the siding. However, I would like to see the windows have the millions. And that's all windows. All the windows, yeah. Is this a consider or a shall? So shall would be they would have to do or inconsiderate as it's up to them to them to. I think it should be done. It warrants it in this neighborhood for sure. I mean, this would be the only house in in the district. No, there's one other in the district that has millions on the outside. Otherwise, they're all two divided lights. Or their metal windows or their, I mean, you know, that the old, whatever, the leg one, whatever, supposedly leg windows. OK, yeah. Just so I know what you're talking about. You're talking about the black part in this rendering or the black part? The black part where the small pains are mimicking. And then the light. I would suggest that they choose a light fixture that's appropriate for the architect. And second. Sure, I was second. So we have a motion and then we have a second motion. And they with seconds. So.  Board Member Boren. I. Board Member Carney. I. Board Member Fennell. I. Board Member Marceline. I. Vice Chair Garrett. I. Chair Meiser. I. So that motion passes with six eyes and board member Klein being absent. OK, thank you very much. With that, not seeing any other board. We'll call the meeting adjourned. Thank you all very much for being here. Thank you, Susan.


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The American Medical Association started warning people about excess sugar consumption over 75 years ago, based in part on our understanding that sugar supplies nothing in nutrition but calories, and the vitamins provided by other foods are sapped by sugar to liberate those calories. Hence, added sugars aren't just empty calories, but like negative nutrition. The more added sugars one consumes, the more nutritionally depleted one may become. Given the totality of scientific evidence, the FDA decided to make processed food manufacturers declare added sugars on the Nutrition Facts label. The National Yogurt Association was livid opposing the added sugars' declaration, since they needed added sugars to increase their product's palatability. The Junk Food Association questioned the science, whereas the ice cream folks seemed to imply consumers would be too stupid to use it, so better leave it all. The world's biggest cereal company, Kellogg, took a similar tactic posing it so as not to confuse the consumer. And should the FDA proceed with such labeling against their objections, added sugars should at most be communicated in a footnote. See, their goal is to provide consumers with useful information so they can make informed choices. This from a company that describes their fruit loops is packed with delicious fruity taste, fruity aroma, bright colors made with whole grains, and lightly sweetened, a good source of fiber. Lightly sweetened fruit loops has more sugar than a crispy cream donut. Fruit loops is more than 40% sugar by weight. The tobacco industry used similar terms like light, low, mild to make their products appear healthier before they were recently barred from doing so. Now sugar interests are fighting similar battles over whether their healthy, natural, lightly sweetened terminology is similarly deceptive. But just look at all those vitamins and minerals they added. That was one of the ways the cereal companies responded to calls for banning sugary cereals. General Mills defended the likes of frankenberry, Trix, and Lucky Charms for being fortified with essential vitamins. Sir Grape Fellow, I learned, was a grape flavored cereal complete with sweet, great star-bit marshmallows. But don't worry, it was a vitamin charged. Sugary breakfast cereals, said Dr. Gene Mayer from Harvard, are not a complete food even fortified with 8 or 10 vitamins. I think your point is well taken, replied Senator McGovern. These products may be mislabeled, perhaps more correctly called candy vitamins than cereals. Plastering nutrient claims on the box can create nutritional facade, acting to distract attention away from unsavory quality, such as excess sugar content. The majority of parents have been found to misinterpret the meaning of claims commonly used on children's cereals, raising significant public health concerns. Ironically, cereal boxes bearing low calorie claims were found to have more calories on average than without such a claim. So it's like the cereal doth protest too much. Even candy bar companies are getting in on the action, bragging about their protein content, because it has some peanuts or something. But it's also a candy bar with 50 grams of sugar, just like fruit loops, could be considered breakfast candy, as the same serving would have 40. Given research suggesting consumers believe that front-of-package claims perceive them to be government endorsed and use them to ignore the nutrition facts panel on the back, there's been a call from nutrition professionals to consider an outlight ban on all front-of-package claims. The industry's short-lived smart choices label was met with disbelief when it was found adorning qualifying cereals like fruit loops, cookie crisp. The processed food industry spent more than a billion dollars lobbying against the adoption of more informative labeling. A traffic light approach reeling against the suggestion that any food might be too high in anything.


All right. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Una Daley from the open coursework consortium, the community college consortium there. And I want to welcome you all to our second webinar of the fall series on OER and open textbook adoption and sustainability. And we have some amazing speakers this afternoon from California State University system, the Florida virtual campus, and from BC campus up in British Columbia. And just a little housekeeping before we get started. For those of you who might be on the phone, if you are using the phone to listen to this, please make sure to turn off the speakers and mic on your computer so we don't get an echo. Also, over on the left-hand side of your screen, you should see a long list of participants. And I'm excited to see that we have almost 30 people today. And probably I'll have a few more join us as we continue. If you want to participate in the Q&A prior to the end of our session, we're going to hold most of the questions until the end, please do go and type those into the chat window. And we'll answer them as we can. Otherwise, we'll pick that up at the end. And if you are having any tech support issues during the session, please feel free to use that number at the bottom of the screen. And they will be able to help you. They're a great crew. They're at the California Community College at Palomar College. All right. So if you haven't had a chance to introduce yourself, please go ahead and do that in the chat window again. And once again, I'm Una Daly, the Community College Outreach Director at the Open Coursework Consortium. And now I want to give you a chance to hear a few words from our presenters today, talking about the work that they do real briefly before we get into the main part of our session. So first of all, I want to introduce Jerry Hanley, who is the Senior Academic Director of Technology at the California State University Chancellor's Office. And he's also the Executive Director of Merlot. Jerry, tell us a little bit about your job. Thank you, Una. And I always, like many of you out there, we have multiple hats that we wear. And I always say my day job in the Cal State system. I support all our digital library services, supporting learning management services, our accessible technology initiative. And a major initiative that I'll talk about today is about our affordable learning solutions initiative that is trying to reduce the cost of materials for our students. And then my night job as the Executive Director of Merlot is great to be in a place where we try to build friendships of people in teaching and learning around the world to support the open education movement in which the open coursework consortium is just a wonderful leader. And really thank you, Una, for inviting me here. Well, thank you, Jerry. We're really thrilled to have you. Next, I'd like to introduce Robin Donaldson. She's the Assistant Director of Instructional Resources and Support at Florida Virtual Campus. And she's also the Director of the Orange Grove Repository. Yes, that's correct. Welcome to the webinar, everyone. Yes, I managed the Orange Grove Repository. And one of the large pieces of my role is to manage OER projects in the state of Florida and conduct research on digital instructional materials and OER for the state. And then I also work on distance learning projects such as our state college course catalog rewrite. And then I work with our distance learning member council, which includes members from all of our public colleges and universities. Yes, that's correct. Florida Virtual Campus, what we do is we provide support to all of our colleges and universities in their delivery of distance learning library services as well as student services. Great. Thank you, Robin. I'd like to introduce the youngest member of our team here, Clint LaLonde, who is the Manager of Curriculum and Applied Research at BC Campus, which is the post-secondary, which is the technical services, student services organization for all of post-secondary in British Columbia. Hey, who would I say? I've got some slides. I want to talk a little bit a little later on about what BC Campus is, but thank you very much. I am the Manager of Curriculum Services and Applied Research at BC Campus. I've only been at BC Campus since the spring, so that does make me the newbie in this group, I guess, and you can tell by my picture I am the youngest. But I've been working in distributed education and with educational technology in the province since 1994. Before BC Campus, I was the Manager of Learning Technologies at Royal Roads University here in Victoria, BC. And here at BC Campus, I managed a learning object repository called Solar, and lately I've been spending quite a bit of time working on the Open Textbook initiative. Mostly around the technology pieces to support Open Textbook, but also doing outreach and faculty support. And I'm very happy to be here to talk about the BC Open Textbook project. Well, thank you, Clint. As you can see, these three presenters have carved some time out of their very busy days to share their expertise with you, and we're just very pleased to have them. All right. So here's our agenda. I'm going to give you a brief introduction to CCCOER, and then we'll be on to our presentations. So for those of you who might be new to the Community College Consortium for OER at the Open Coursework Consortium, we promote the adoption of OER to enhance teaching and learning. And our strategies around that are supporting professional development for faculty, staff, and in fact, students are welcome to participate in these as well. And so these webinars and other workshops that we do both online and face-to-face are part of that process. We're all about expanding access to education, which is why when we talk about OER development, accessibility is a huge piece of that, as Jerry mentioned earlier. And although we work with four-year colleges and universities, our mission is around supporting community colleges. We're very open to collaborations with everyone, though. And I just wanted to give you a picture. I do this every month to show you we are in 15 states and provinces, British Columbia being our first province, and we have over 200 colleges that participate with us. So on to our topic for today. Today is really an opportunity for you to learn from some of the leaders who've been championing OER within their state systems for a long time, in at least one case for over a decade now. And they've learned to ride out some economic and academic storms. And a few of the big issues that they're going to touch on today are why is OER and funding tied together? How do you get buy-in from stakeholders in your state and academic systems as you're trying to bring OER pilots on board? And why is collaboration so important? Not only across departments, but across districts, state, and even country boundaries. And another point is why is emerging technology sometimes an enhancer for OER and open-ed, and why can it sometimes be a distraction? And finally, OER is all about learning and supporting our students and learners throughout the world. And I know that they're going to touch upon how OER and their projects are supporting that. And now I want to turn it over to Jerry Hanley, Senior Director of Academic Technology at CSU. Great. Well, thank you, Luna. And in that last slide that we're talking about the many issues there are many, many challenges. And the CSU, we've tried to struggle with some of them. And my goal here is to share with you some of the things we're doing. All these resources really are open for you as well. And I'm happy to help as much as I can here. So the start-off around the CSU's strategy here. First, just a quick overview of the California State University system. For those of you who may not know, 23 campuses, 427,000 students, we got a lot of them. And of course our 23 campuses work in peace and harmony together in wonderful ways. But the challenge, and I was being sarcastic there, but the challenge when we really look at the students within our system, a third of our students get enough financial aid to cover their tuition and their books and supplies. So the issue of the affordability of educational content becomes very important for a major constituents of our students. Because if they can't afford a college, they don't go, they don't succeed, and they don't really contribute to society through their education in the ways that we want. And on top of this, the institution itself in the last three years with the Great Recession, we've lost about 30% of our state funding. Tuition has doubled. And again, if we're trying to really succeed in our mission of providing access to an excellent education, we have to find ways to reduce the cost. And when we look at the content that our students are purchasing, well, this is an area, this is where open education resources can become a huge benefit. If as kind of the focus is on is how do you shift the adoption strategies and how do you sustain their use? So our affordable learning solutions strategy is driven by three critical principles. One is about choice. If you're looking for changing adoption patterns, you have to give people choice that really is attractive for them, that really will benefit their teaching as well as their students' learning. And the affordability element is important and finally to ensure that all students, including those with disabilities, have an ability to have access to this new content that really can be affordable and high quality. Now when we looked at the Cal State system, the complexity that we have and all the issues, we have this relatively simple model that we have to address many elements for this adoption and sustaining of the use of open education resources and affordable learning resources as well. So at the bottom, I'm going to be using these themes throughout the presentation that we have here. So at the bottom, leveraging your content providers. So what content that faculty use are from publishers, libraries, they offer their own stuff and open education resources. So how do you bring all those things together to make it easy for people to find what they're looking for that's affordable? The next level is creating these capabilities to create convenient access. This is really an important element for people to discover things easily. How do you make their lives better? Our theme is always how do we give you a gift and not a burden when we're looking at this adoption process? The next layer, developing the demand. That really says I want people to want this. So how do they know about it? Why would they ask for open education resources? So what's your communication plan? The training and professional development is essential for this adoption and sustaining process. And finally at the top, what are the policies? What is the leadership? The business models that create an enabling ecosystem to make sure that when you have the demand, you have an organization that can supply this open education resources and value the adoption. So when we look at the bottom layer, leveraging the content providers, really you can find a million free online instructional materials out there. And in Merlot, and I'll talk a little bit more about that later, we have over 2,500 online textbooks. But also thinking about your library resources, custom materials, and publisher content. And I'll talk about how the CSU is working in all these different content suppliers for reducing those costs. And here the issue of creating the convenience. CSU affordable learning solutions.org, this is open for everyone. And what we try to do is create that one stop shop for people who might just looking for pieces of course materials. What's free online courses, open textbooks. I'm just revealing the tabs at the bottom of this website here. And really enabling people to discover these things and become aware of them so then they can consider making those new choices. And again, all the resources, it's open for everyone to use on that website. And one particular tool that we put together is when looking at adoption, we built this little tool we called the OER Finder. And you can put in the ISBN number of your textbook. And after you hit the search key, the tool will identify what that textbook is and will identify what are related open textbooks in that subject area. Again, to make it easy for a faculty member to find the alternatives that are out there. And again, this OER Finder, it's a widget. It's available on this website. You can download the code and incorporate it into your own tools. The next thing that you can see on this website on the tab, deploying your ALS. I work in the Chancellor's Office, which is a system office. And with our 23 campuses, you have to really infuse this initiative within the local campus and culture. And so on this website, you can see how each campus has taken this affordable learning solution strategy and then made it their own. So Cal State, Dominguez Hills, and on this campus, 85% of our students have some amount of financial aid. And so the affordability of their educational content is essential. And what we've worked with these folks in within a year period, we've had over savings of almost half a million dollars by faculty changing their choice of their content. And this is called the Faculty Showcase. The URL is down there. And you can actually go through what faculty have done. And from changing from a textbook to using lower resources or using an open textbook or using a low cost digital textbook or using a library textbook, e-book that's available for free. All these ways can really reduce the cost for our students. Now the CSU's Affordable Learning Solutions Strategy is where we're also leveraging this whole strategy for other state systems. Members of the Merleau Consortium and the University System of Georgia has been a Merleau member. And they said, Jerry, we really like this. Can you create our Affordable Learning Solutions Initiative in Georgia, provide you that support? We said, sure, great. And so here's the website, Affordable Learning Georgia. And so they're able to reuse, repurpose, customize, remix their stuff related to Georgia, but leverage all the stuff that the CSU has done as well. And I think this is going to be a very useful strategy. We have other systems and campuses of higher education who are looking at adopting this approach so they can do it quickly, efficiently, and build a community of people who are all focused on affordable learning solutions. Now one of the areas, again, of the content is about the open education resources. And as I said, my day job and the CSU, I push the Affordable Learning Solutions. And my night job as the Executive Director of Merleau, I have to figure out how am I going to provide a wide range of open education materials that can be adopted and included into an initiative like Affordable Learning. I just want to highlight, just show you a few of the Merleau has been newly redesigned to make it much more easier for people to use. So I'm just going to pop through a few of these screen captures. So Merleau, not only can you find stuff, you can personalize it with your own bookshelves. We have communities. You can create things. And you can add and contribute to the Merleau community and digital library. So if I click on the Search My Materials, we have over 42,000 materials. We have 115,000 members throughout the world. And I think an important element is bringing together the people and the content who are using open education resources is very helpful. And the next slide here is just to give you a sample. If I'm looking for materials on the left-hand side, you can see a variety of the categories. Merleau has editorial boards that peer review the materials. You can have user ratings. And one area there, you can see on the right-hand side, there's a little box, something that says personal collections. So people create their own little Merleau bookshelves. And then you can begin to see how many people are adopting these books. Next slide here, we have a tool called Search Other Libraries. So you can search Merleau, but we have Orange Grove in there. We have the OCW Search tool as well. So again, the idea of how do we make it convenient for someone to find the open education resources that are distributed through a variety of wonderful organizations that are here to help you. Once we have the Discovering Materials, we also have community of people who do the adoption. And we have a variety of academic disciplines and partner communities. I just encourage you to explore a variety of these organizations, areas that are showing specific uses of Merleau services. And here's the Create Your Own Materials. We have social networking here too as well. And you can contribute materials. The Merleau.org is really focused a lot on the faculty side of things. We've also built Merleau X to be very focused on students. How do I just find, where do I find the free stuff? Professor Hanley, where do I get this? So we have Merleau X. And so you can see I'm looking for something in business. So in two clicks, you get into the materials in the business catalog within Merleau. The Merleau X also and Merleau 2 has translators. So if you're around the world, you need these sites in different languages. This one's in Thai, for example. Now part of creating that convenience that we have in Merleau is how do you integrate it into learning management systems. And so if you're a Moodle user, Moodle is built into Moodle 2.x. You can just enable that capability so you can do the search within Moodle. And we have a Blackboard building block as well. Free for you to use, adopt and integrate into Blackboard. Now I'm going to highlight one area around this rent digital. There's open education resources, but publishers are producing lower cost digital e-textbooks. And we've negotiated with the various publishers to find these at 60% off new print price. And the key aspect of developing the demand is getting into marketing. Higher education typically doesn't do that very well. But this is samples of brochures. And we have kiosks. We have shelf tags. We have a whole variety of things. Communication out to students. All about how that these new alternatives are available and you have a choice. And then the old saying, if you build it, they will come. Assumes that people know how to play with these digital text books. And we found out a lot of times the idea sounds great, but students and faculty don't understand the capabilities, the search capabilities, the highlighting capabilities, the note taking capabilities. So the importance of integrating that professional development program is essential if you want these things to work well. And just to give you an example of this student savings, almost $3.5 million. We saved our students with this rent digital program. And finally, I'll just highlight some things here around when you're looking at the ecosystems that you have. There are many political drivers that can drive someone to looking at alternatives and looking at what's important for your institution to drive them. There's affordability, graduation, accessibility. These are important things. And in California, we're working on creating a consortium across our higher education community colleges, CSU and UC, to build these shared digital library of open text books. So that's a quick fly by for a variety of the topics we're doing in California. I hope that was useful and I'll pass it on to the next speaker here. And thank you for that opportunity to talk about us. Thank you, Jerry. And there was a couple of questions there in the chat window if you want to address those or we can bring them back at the end as well. Great. I'll start on that right now. Lovely. Thank you. All right. Great presentation from Jerry. And now another great presentation from Robin Donaldson, the assistant director of instructional resources and support at the Florida virtual campus. Robin. Okay. Thank you. There we go. I'm going to give you a brief overview of the Orange Square repository and then some of the research we've done in OER and open text books. And what those findings have meant to the state and how it's impacting what our individual institutions are doing. The Orange Grove began in 2004. It was legislatively mandated and supported repository. It was a large investment of funds at the very onset. And it was to address the issue we were having, which many of you encounter now, which is how can the state support the sharing of resources across our institutions and give them a means for also locating resources and other repositories and libraries. So with the Orange Grove, our faculty members are able to contribute the resources, use the resources. And then that includes open textbooks and open courses. And they can assign specific copyrights. We have a WYSIWYG built in there for Creative Commons. And then they can assign specific copyrights. Our institutions are also able to have their own collections. And those collections, they can have resources open to the public. Just the state of Florida for resources that we do statewide licensing for. And then they can also limit resources to their institution collection. So a faculty member might choose to share a resource either with the public or just with their fellow faculty members at their institution. We also have a collection such as, it's called the Orange Grove collection. Harvested one, which brings in resources from different repositories. And then we have the open courseware. So the other piece here, just like with Merlot, you're able to integrate the repository with your LMS. You could either search for resources while you're in your course, or you could actually be on the Orange Grove website and push a resource into a course if you've got the integration built in. So we've got different legislation occurring that's on the books right now. And one of them addresses the textbook affordability at our institutions where they are required to address open access textbooks as far as the extent to which they could be used in a course. It's encouraging faculty and institutions to review open textbooks and adopt or write them. However, there's nothing mandated in there and there's no funding associated with that. There's also the legislation for Florida Virtual Campus where we are actually required to promote and provide recommendations for institutions on using OER and open textbooks. And then work with our institutions to develop standards for reviewing and approval of open textbooks. Right now, during this fiscal year, there's an online task force that has been set up by the state. And coming out of that will be some recommendations on OER and the statewide repository. So we're looking forward to finding out exactly what those recommendations will be. So that's a key piece. Not only do you need the support from your institutions, but that statewide support from your government I think has been a critical piece. You need leadership, faculty, students, and then statewide approval and support of OER. So we had an open textbook project that ran from 2009 and ended in the fall of 2013. And what we had here was the very last year we revised our model which was for the success of open textbooks on your institutions. It reviewed different ways in which you could approach this. So it's sustainable. Then we also have done two times and we'll be doing it again in our spring. The first one is we have a statewide survey that we administer to our faculty at all our colleges and universities. And it's to get feedback on their perceptions and use of OER and open textbooks. The student one, remember, I wear multiple hats here. So part of this is not just OER, but it's also what is the impact and perceptions of digital textbooks, print textbooks, the impact of the high cost of books on their academic as well as success as well as the ability to continue their career in college. And then we also created an online short primer which covered an intro to Creative Commons and a video on how to create an OER product and then how to license it. Our feedback we got from our faculty was that they were interested in OER. However, they were very confused on how to combine the Creative Commons license if they had multiple resources that they wanted to use as well as their own content. So this two part video addressed that issue. And then we created an interactive OER license generator to help them with that too. And that's freely available online. And some of these survey findings, they were showing that while the students were not, you'll see here on the left, they really were not that aware of open textbooks and open course wear. The high cost of textbooks was impacting them academically and whether or not they were purchasing their books. In fact, 63% had said that at some point in their career they had not bought the textbooks. And 23% had said that they had done this frequently, not bought the textbooks because of the cost. Sharing a textbook, as you know, if you've ever tried to do this or you know any students who have done it, sharing a textbook with a classmate or a classmate would be your success in the course because you basically have a battle over who has the book and especially right before a test that could be problematic. And it was causing them to take fewer courses or dropping courses or to some extent withdraw from the courses. And they were spending $300 to $500 a semester on their textbooks. And so this gave us the support for why there was a large need for more OER products, open textbooks, and open courses. And we saw that this past year where one of our institutions was awarded a three-year grant from the state to develop developmental education mooks. And those resources will be provided in our repository. So there has been some positive impact from that. For the faculty, one of the large pieces that came out of this was that the reward and recognition was critical for a university faculty member. That if they were being expected to write any or share any open textbook, that they needed some sort of reward and recognition for that because of promotion and tenure. That was a very justifiable concern. And while they had heard of open textbooks, eight percent of them, they were not as inclined to write an open textbook. And as you can imagine, trying to tackle a full book can be definitely challenging. And what came out of this was not only was their use in reported writing of open textbooks and their use of OER, it showed us that there was a large interest in breaking out the OER into smaller units, your learning objects. So that they could combine them, modify them, and if they were going to tackle creating them, that it was something that they could more easily take on without a huge investment of their time. This quality and currency issue, you'll see that's part of the, I think, an influence on the legislation where we need to work with our institution in developing guidelines on the approval of and review of open textbooks. The key issues to our faculty were how they, of course, met the course objectives, but how current are they, how accurate are they, and how consistent are they. So quality was a key issue for our institutions. And that was a key issue for our faculty. And so by currency, I'm sorry, that wasn't meant by monetary, that is how recent is the publication and the information. Is this information that's 10 years old or is it very current? Is it within the last year to two years? Yes, those are actual links on the page there for you. And as Eunice said, the contact information for me, that will be provided later. I'll be happy to give any of you links to the resources. And if you're interested in taking part in the surveys, we will be opening it up to any state and any college or university that's interested in taking part in either one of these surveys. So I'll send them to you, the links that are broken. So during the time of the grant, we partnered with the University Press of Florida. And in that partnership, the goal was to develop and market and inform our institutions about open textbooks. And that had a huge positive impact on our institutions. We were able to do lots of webinars, go to campuses, inform the faculty about open textbooks and OER. There were some publications of textbooks. University of Florida published three calculus textbooks. These books by University Press of Florida are called Orange Grove Texts. And these that I have listed here, American Government, the Research-Oriented First-Year Experience, Essential Physiques, and then theatrical world. Those are the most recent ones. So what we're doing right now, we continue to support and promote OER and open textbooks as well as open courses. And our biggest issue right now is working with our institutions on those who are developing MOOCs content or open courses. How can we bring that content into the repository in a manner that's best for the institutions that would like to download the content and modify it? That is one of the things that they mentioned at various meetings is they want to be able to modify it to better meet the needs of their specific students. So we, of course, use the social networks. That's been helpful. We continue our collaborations with the institutions. We provide them PowerPoints when they want it, webinars when they want it. And then within the repository, one of the key pieces is the fact that they can have their own collection. And they can modify the contribution wizard. We have the common course number. If they want to add specific metadata to it, such as learning objectives, we can add that to them. And so Broward and then one of our other colleges, Florida State College of Jacksonville, I apologize, I put that abbreviation in there. I should spell it out for you. Both are working on developing courses using OER. Or if no OER, then at least they're trying to minimize the use of the commercial textbooks. We are also working on statewide licensing, the possibility of statewide licensing of digital textbooks from our publishers. And then as I mentioned previously, the task force on post-secondary online education, that one will be having a report coming out of it which will be addressing various issues dealing with distance learning. And I think that those will be OER in our state and how we can best support it and encourage our faculty and students to utilize it. And I'll save my questions until the end. So Una, I'll pass the baton so our next speaker can move forward. So thank you very much Robin for sharing that today. And now we're onto our last speaker here and we're headed back to the west coast and up north to British Columbia. So Clint LaLonde is the manager of curriculum services and applied research. And he's going to talk to us about the open textbook project up there and all the open projects that BC campus, which is his institution, has been involved in over the years. Clint? Great, thank you. And just before I get to talking about the project, I just want to take a minute to tell you a little bit about BC campus because some of you might not be familiar with our organization or the work that we do. We're a publicly funded service organization funded by the BC Ministry of Advanced Education. We work on a number of collaborative projects across the post-secondary system here in British Columbia. We have three main streams of activities. We do student services and data exchange, collaborative programs and shared services. And there's the stream that I work in, which is curriculum services and applied research. And within that curriculum services stream, we have two main functions within the system. One is to support instructors who want to integrate technology into their teaching practice. And we do that with a number of initiatives like our RETUG and our SCOPE communities. And the second is to support and promote the use of open educational resources and higher education here in British Columbia. And we've been involved with open educational resources since 2003, primarily through the administration of a grant program funded by the province called the Online Program Development Fund. And that fund has funded over 150 collaborative projects across the province since 2003, creating open educational resources to be used across the system. And we host those in our learning object repository solar and made available not only to the BC system but also to the rest of the world. So the open textbook project is really an extension of the work we've been doing with OPDF over the past few years. It began with an announcement from our Minister of Advanced Education at OpenEd in 2012 that was hosted in Vancouver last year. And the goal of our project is to make open textbooks available for students in the top 41st and 2nd year subject areas here in British Columbia. And the reason we're doing this is because we have a problem. We'll actually have two problems. And I'm sure this next set of slides is going to be familiar to most of you here. First, textbooks are expensive for students. Research from the student public interest research group has shown that students spend around $1,200 per year on textbooks. Textbook prices have risen at four times the rate of inflation in recent years. And most troubling of all, 70% of students have not purchased the textbook for a course because of the price. And we see this as a barrier to student success. And while a lot of the emphasis in the media here in the province has been on open textbooks as being a good deal for students, we actually see free as much more than that. And referring back to some of the research that Robin's group did, research from our colleagues at the Florida Virtual Campus suggests, there's a direct relationship between textbook costs and student success. And students are often making choices between what courses they can take based not on their learning goals, but on the economics of textbook costs. And many are also trying to go through courses without all the resources that they need because of those costs. So high textbooks, high textbook costs are a barrier to student success. The second problem is that textbooks are closed resources, meaning they're copyright resources from publishers. And faculty don't have a lot of legal flexibility to customize or contextualize those resources. And as you know, one of the key components to open educational resources is that the faculty or end-user should have the ability to legally adapt those resources. And commercial resources don't often let us easily do that. So the main reason we're doing this project is to address that cost barrier for students to give faculty some more control over their learning resources. And to move this idea of open forward in a really real and meaningful way here in British Columbia. Projects like this really act as a doorway to have deeper conversations with our faculty and our other constituents about open education and the different ways that open is increasingly being used in education these days. So onto our project that we set up this website, open.bccampus.ca. This is kind of the central clearinghouse for the project. So if you want some more information about the project, you can check out this site. The open textbook project here in BC is being rolled out in three phases. And I'll dig into these in just the next few minutes here. The first phase happened over the spring and summer this year. The adaptation phase has just kicked off now. And the third phase is going to be the creation of new open textbooks in the new year. And I should say that we are not looking at creating 40 new textbooks. When we started this project, we had some really high level objectives that have driven the project from the start. And the first thing is we didn't want to recreate resources that were already available and matched our subject areas. We know there's great open textbook projects already out there. And we really wanted to leverage those resources and emphasize the remixability of OER with our faculty. We also know that students want choice with their resources. So we're making these resources available in many different technical formats. I saw in the chat someone was talking about print on demand a little bit earlier. And we have just actually signed an agreement with Simon Fraser University to provide print on demand options. An option for students who are using open textbooks. We also wanted to create a small curated collection that matched the subject areas. Because we know that instructors and faculty sometimes find the world of OER resources overwhelming. So we wanted to create a small curated collection that really matched those subject areas to make it easier to find and evaluate resources. And on that evaluation point, we also knew that having peer reviews of resources was important. So we wanted to make sure that we had some British Columbia based reviews of existing resources. And the final thing is anything new that we create from this project is going to be released with a CC by license to allow it to be reused by other projects. So our goals for phase one this spring started with identifying what those subject areas are that we're talking about. We've been given a number by the Ministry 40. What are they? We also wanted to find at least 10 open textbooks that aligned with those areas to get our faculty engaged. And we wanted to get some reviews on those open textbooks. We also needed to engage in some system outreach, which we did in a number of ways, including we sponsored some adoption workshops across the province. We did some face-to-face and in-person workshops. And we've also been doing a number of presentations to provincial articulation committees. And we also wanted to find an early adopter who could really help us tell that story of adoption to other instructors and other faculty throughout the province. So our top 40 subject area data was based on course registrations across the province. We pulled that from our central data warehouse to compile a list of subject areas. And here's what happened with the rest of phase one. We wanted 10 textbooks, but we actually ended up with 15 textbooks after we did our first scan of what was out there. We also had some suggestions from instructors within the province as to other textbooks that we hadn't considered. So we paid faculty a $250 honorarium to provide reviews for the textbooks. We put together an evaluation rubric put together by my colleague Mary Burgess for the reviews. And in the end, we actually had 44 instructors from 20 institutions across the province providing reviews on the existing open textbooks that we had gathered from the commons. And we posted those reviews alongside each textbook in our collection. So we've also released all the reviews with a Creative Commons license so that other repositories and other referritories can use those reviews to help drive adoption with their local constituents. A lot of books that we have in our collection are books that are already widely available. And we thought that this is one way that we can help others drive adoption of open textbooks. We also found an early adopter in Dr. Takashi Seto, who's a physics instructor at Kwantlin University in Vancouver. And this fall, Dr. Seto is using the OpenStax Physics textbook with his class. And he has, by just adopting that open textbook, has saved his students over $11,000 this fall. And I think it's important to point out that this is one adoption at one institution for one term, and it has saved students $11,000. We're working with 25 institutions across the province. And if we can find one adoption at each institution that can save this kind of money for students, we think we can save students about a quarter of a million dollars each term in textbook costs just with one adoption at every one of the institutions. And thus, it seems like a very doable goal. And it would not take the system very long to recoup the $1 million investment that's been made to this project this year. Phase two of the project has just begun. We released a second call for proposals looking for faculty to adapt the existing open textbooks. And we're doing that in two ways, which I'm going to speak to in just a moment. We've also added 13 more textbooks to the collection. We now have a collection of 28 textbooks. And we're looking for reviews for those new textbooks in this second phase. We continue to do outreach. And this time, this phase, we're really focusing on libraries and bookstores. And we want to bring them into the project as well at the institutions. And we're also looking at technologies for remakes. The first technology that we have is a print-on-demand service that we'll be launching in just a few weeks with Simon Fraser University. But we're continuing to evaluate some remixed technologies. We're looking at a tool called PressBooks, which is a plug-in for the WordPress platform. And we're also looking at the Connections platform. And actually, TAC, the physics instructor I talked about just a few moments ago, they're exploring that tool to modify the OpenStack's physics textbook that he is using. So the two types of adaptations that we're looking for are broken down into these two categories, new and existing. For new, we're asking faculty in the province to bring us an existing open textbook that we might not have discovered or something that they might know of and they want to modify. And we're specifically looking for books in the subject areas, which we haven't found books for yet. So if you happen to know of any open textbooks in these areas, you can pass on those reads. I'd appreciate that. The second type of adaptation that we're looking for is adaptations of the existing textbooks to take a textbook that we had in phase one, which has already been reviewed, and modify it based on the feedback that we received from those reviews about those textbooks. And here you can see a couple of examples of the modification calls that we've put out and the amounts that we're going to pay to subject matter experts to take on those modifications. So that's phase two, and we're just underway, we're just collecting that information now. And the third phase is the phase three of the project, which is the creation phase, which will begin in the new year. And this is when we're going to look at gaps in our collection. Where are there not existing textbooks in the commons? What do we need to create from scratch? And our goal is to try to reduce the number of textbooks that we need to create from scratch because we feel that there's a lot of very good material out there in the commons already that can be remixed, and we want to focus on that material and the remixability piece of open educational resources. And the other thing that we want to do is we want to be able to create at least one exemplar textbook, e-textbook, something that can really show off what a digitally native textbook can be.  But we want to try to break out of the boundaries of some of the limitations inherent in print-based textbooks and see if we can create something that really takes advantage of the digital affordances of digital textbooks. So there's my presentation. Thank you very much. Happy to take any questions, and I'll pass it back to you. Thank you very much, Clint. I'm going to start off by saying, boy, these three presenters not only had amazing information, they were on time to the minute, which allows us just about five minutes for questions. So go ahead and start typing those questions in. I just want to let you know a few things before we move to questions. Our next webinar will be on the 13th of November at noon-specific time, 3 p.m. Eastern, which is the same as today, at your campus and beyond. And we have some great speakers for that as well from Creative Commons and a number of our colleges will be speaking as well. So hope you can make that. And at this time, we are open for questions. You can either type those in the window, in the chat window, I'm sorry, or you can use the talk button. Or if you're on the phone, you can simply speak up and ask those questions. And I see some things going on in the chat window. All right. So Carrie has asked, how many people or staff are involved in each of the major projects? And I'm not sure if Carrie is talking about each state project. I guess we're going to assume that. Jerry, would you like to share? Sure. This is definitely a Wizard of Oz production. There aren't very many people behind the curtain pulling the strings on this stuff. In the CSU, I'm actually just hiring a full-time affordable learning solutions director after running this for three years. And I've used, I probably have a number of part-time consultants for working with my bookstores. And I try to make friends on campus as much as possible. And push money out to them where they can assign a librarian, a faculty development center, a director of academic technology to take local leadership in doing these things. So you don't need a huge staff. Within Merlot, I have two programmers and a technology manager. And then I have two part-time people, one person running the peer review process. I've been both Clint and Robin pointed out the importance of quality assurance. So we have that. And then someone working with our partners there. So it's a pretty slim organization. Yes, it sounds like it for all the work that you do. And Clint, I see you shared in the chat window that there's five people involved at the system office around the OER efforts. And Robin, I'm not sure if you had a chance to answer. Robin, the question was, if you can hear us, because I know Robin lost her phone connection a moment ago. The question was, how many folks are involved in OpenEd at your system-wide office? So at the Florida virtual campus. There is very few. Me. Okay. I do the OER. And then we have staff who provide the support on the technology side for the Orange Grove repository. That's why I'm very excited about the online task force and any recommendations that come out of the task force report. But one of the other areas that we are working on is the librarians at our institutions are very interested in OER. And I encourage everyone to engage with their librarians. They have a wealth of knowledge. And they also serve as copyright expertise. But in our office, it's just myself for OER. Thank you, Robin. So the slimmest staff of all and doing amazing work. And I think what we're seeing to some extent, Carrie, is that as green technology was once something outside of existing corporations, many organizations are bringing open into their existing staff and organizations. And it's becoming part of the mainstream job. Not in all cases, but it is moving more in that direction. So let's see. We had a comment or a question, I think, from Jim. Jim Heeter earlier. And he asked about the different OER organizations getting together and building a database of adoption. And would any of our speakers like to address that? How about I'll just jump in quickly. The California legislators have put a law in effect to create the California open source digital library. And very much on Clint's point of let's not reinvent the wheel, especially when we're talking about OER. And I think with that funding, if we get it to implement this, I think building those partnerships across these organizations that allow us to leverage each other's efforts much more efficiently and effectively, I think will be very important to do. So I see that coming up forward. And I think there are a few ways that we can do this through federated search. But ultimately, it's going to be for the adoption side is how is an institution really supporting the adoption through its policies, through its faculty development, and looking at the learning outcomes. Again, that's an institutional outcome that we have to share and work with too as well. Thank you, Jerry. We are having some more discussions here in the chat window. Kathy has asked Robin about the Florida legislature getting behind the OER movement. Yeah. Robin, do you want to? Sure. I'll speak to that. Originally for the repository, there was state funding for its development. And then the buyout of the license, which is very key. The legislature has continued to be supported. They do understand the needs of OER. I think one of the bigger changes recently is that there's more understanding at the institution leadership level and faculty level and students on the importance of OER and MOOCs. And then, of course, the economy. And for funding to occur in our state, and I assume in many others, it also has to be driven by our faculty and our institutions. They truly need to see the need. So to get your funding and support, you have to have faculty buy-in because you're doing a service for the students and for faculty, bottom line. If the faculty and students don't want to use it, it doesn't matter what you have. Really good point, Robin. Clint, do you want to address the funding situation in British Columbia? Well, I wasn't privy to how the decision came about to release the funding. But I think it's based on, I mean, open is in the air right now in education. You don't even have to be paying attention to the movement and all of the other open talk that's been happening. And something caught the ear of the people in government who have been supporting open education and resources in this problem, like I said, with OPDF funding since 2003. So I think the timing just happened to be right that the funding was released and targeted. I also happen to think not to be too crass on it, but we were coming into an election year for our government. And I think they were perhaps looking for something to help with their platform. So I think we might have benefited from that happening. And the timing, like I said, just happened to be right for the legislators to go, let's target this funding for this particular purpose. I mean, the justification for it, when you look at the numbers for it and how much students are spending, it's not a hard sell to make the case to legislators that it's costing students a lot of money and it's impacting their learning by not having access to all of these resources. All right. Well, thank you for that, Clint, as well. Timing is important in many parts of life, including education. So we're going to stay online for a few more minutes. And so please keep typing in those questions or speak up if you're on the phone or on a microphone. But I really want to thank our presenters today for the amazing job they did.  And we'll be here for a few more minutes if we can answer any other questions. This webinar is being recorded and should be available to you within a week. We will Twitter that out, but it's also will be on our website. Hi, my name is Chris Bergeron from Link Systems, and I have a question if that's okay. Yeah, go ahead, Chris. Fantastic. Thank you. I just wanted to say, first of all, thanks for the presentation. All three speakers were fantastic. And I have just a general question about the open textbook community and the acceptance of ancillary material. So, you know, linking an algorithmic question test bank to an open textbook or linking online tutoring to an open textbook just from the market standpoint whether or not that's generally acceptable and whether or not attaching a price point to that is acceptable because I understand that open in the textbook arena means that the access for the student is free. But I know that, for example, if you want the print version, that might have a cost associated with it. So, I'm just curious about those ancillary materials and the supplemental academic support. Okay. Thank you, Chris. Would one of my speakers like to address that? I'm happy to start. And Robin and Clint jump into here is one is if you notice the CSU initiative isn't called open textbooks or free textbooks. It's called affordable learning solutions. And the reason for that is that there are multiple services that have to be brought to bear to help the learning of the student occur and including test banks, tutoring, adaptive technologies, social networking tools, all these things that can help the student learn. I think we want to put, you know, wrap them in kind of a bundle to make it convenient for people to have access and then provide the professional development so they learn how to use it. So, and it's also, again, I didn't say free, it's affordable. And I think, you know, like Clint's slide where it says $1,200 a year. I mean, we're seeing some, you know, that level of expenditure. I mean, cutting just that in half can really make education affordable for those students. So I think any way that we can reduce the total cost and increase the student's success is a good thing. All right. Thanks very much, Jerry. Anyone else like to, Robin or Clint, would you like to add to that? This is Robin. And I'm really sorry, somebody knocked on my door, right? When you asked that question, so I missed it. Could you go, Robin, the question, please? Certainly. The question from Chris at Link Systems was, is the open textbook community open to the use of, I'm assuming you meant low-cost ancillary materials, Chris, but you didn't say that specifically, the addition of affordable ancillary materials such as test banks, technology to support student learning? Definitely. I think that it is truly low-cost and no-cost. However, creating an open textbook, there are huge costs associated with that. Now, in the repository during the, during our grant, we did work with WebAssign to develop low-cost interactive quizzing and support for the students similar to my NAPLAP. That's not free, but it's low-cost. And so that's, you know, definitely there. And another part of, at least for our repository, is realizing that it's not everything is going to be free, but you can work at statewide licensing or licensing with different vendors to get low-cost for them. And so, low-cost, you have to work with the commercial. Yeah, and that's Clint here. I'll just echo what's been said by my colleagues here that, you know, the differentiation for us is that those core materials that are needed for students to succeed are free. And anything that we create out of this project that we create ourselves, or our faculty create, or our partners create, will be free resources. That said, partnering with low-cost ancillary materials that are not core to the experience, is not something that's out of the realm for our project. All right. Well, thank you, Clint. So once again, thank you to our wonderful presenters. We really appreciate your time today. And so glad that all of you were able to join us and participate in this discussion. Hope to see you back here on November 13th. And have a great afternoon. Thank you. And thank you, everybody. Thank you.