Continue to go ahead and continue to introduce yourselves in the chat. Thank you for coming. Today is our webinar is titled measuring impact with open educational course markings. I know we all have an interest in this so I'm glad you're here. Our agenda today is to just a quick overview of what CCC OER and OE Global is. We have a panel of experts to tell us their stories about open course markings for open education. If you stay tuned for a few minutes right afterwards we'll have information about upcoming events and how to stay in the loop. CCC OER is a community of practice and we have webinars each month and a variety of committees to encourage colleges to collaborate on our open ed programs ensuring equitable access and success. We have about 101 members from 35 different states. I would like to introduce our new welcome to our new CCC OER program director and if you'd like to say a couple words Heather thank you. Thank you for the warm welcome. It's wonderful to be here. I'm very happy to be a part of CCC OER and taking the reins from Una Daily. No one can replace Una but I'm very happy to try and to work with all of you in the community moving forward and I'm very excited about this panel of practitioners and administrators on you know talking about such an important topic. Looking forward to working with you all. And Beatriz Canales will introduce our panelists. Thank you all for being here. If you'd like to put questions in the chat I'm sure we'll have some time right at the end to answer any other questions you might have. Thank you Beatriz. Do you want to take it away? Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for attending our December 13th webinar on measuring impact with open education course markings. My name is Beatriz Canales an academic unit assistant from San Antonio College one of the colleges of the Alamo Colleges District and I will be your moderator for this panel. So that we're on the same journey course markings are tags or attributes that offer students ways to customize their search for course characteristics. I would love to introduce you to a unique panel that will speak on their origin story regarding course markings in class schedules. Their origin stories will vary based on a student's experience, based on a journey of a community college district and based on the work of the Idaho Board of Education. Thank you all for coming and let me just introduce our panelists. Ms. Pamela Harrington Morardi is a director of universal access of instructional materials in the office of the vice chancellor for academic success at the at the Alamo Colleges District. Dr. Jonathan Lashley the academic technology program manager for the Idaho State Board of Education and of course Michael Valdez, San Antonio College's student government associate vice president. So we'll start with Michael. How did you begin your journey with OER course markings? Hi everyone. So initially I began my journey in my federal government class. My professor used the one of the OER resources online. It's called OpenStacks. So we had our federal government class that used that material. I remember my professor saying that like students should have access to materials that not to pay for and free. So it was really nice. So throughout the class I got to actually you know look at my textbook by just going on the website and I had the ability to download the textbook onto my computer or if I was like doing work on the school computer I was able to quickly and easy find the textbook because it's it's online. And Pamela? Great. Hi everyone. So I'm in a new role here. I've only been at Alamo Colleges District for about five months now as a staff member and so prior to this I worked at a community college. I taught developmental English and college success courses for 13 years and during that time I was an advocate of OER and so in 2015 I believe it was I was charged with redesigning a course that I taught along with other colleagues and with that particular course I was able to adopt OER for that particular class and I was granted special permission to do so. The other sections that were taught used a commercial textbook and so with that institution the institution did not use OER course markings so I come to this kind of journey with an experience where there were not course markings to an institution now where we use course markings across the entire institution and so I can say that you know in that in my history I've learned how important it is to use course markers for the student's perspective and also for the institution's perspective and so as a community college instructor using OER in my classes I did have a positive experience the first time using them because you know I had students come in in the first week of the term some of them had already purchased the textbook from the bookstore and some had not purchased the textbook and at the time I didn't particularly support the textbook that was being used in the class and I really found that OER broadened what I could teach in the classroom and the students were very happy to be using OER so it was very positive I was able to tell the I think there were probably like 10 students in the class who had bought the textbook go return your textbook you know I had permission from my dean to say go return it you don't need it and then the others who were planning to buy it I could say you don't need to purchase it and there were cheers in the classroom students were really happy about that but I will say going forward in other classes that I taught there and I did hear about experiences where students would come to a class that was using OER having purchased the textbook from outside the college maybe from another student former student or another place where they couldn't return the book and so that was wasted money because the students did not have a way of looking up how courses or which courses were using OER what the materials were so I could tell that for other sections that was maybe a frustrating experience for some students and so I'm very happy to move into an institution now that has been using OER course marking or banner attribute since 2014 and so in the state of Texas there's legislation that requires OER courses to be marked and so this is to you know help students be able to identify courses that don't require the extra cost of instructional materials and across Alamo Colleges District the five colleges are individually accredited but work together as one institution and they all use a single attribute which is A OER and that really enables students to be able to look up classes that use OER in the course schedule but also equips the institution to be able to track which courses are using OER to compare how OER may gain or where they when they may wane or which courses maybe use OER at a particular time period and then shift to something else so I think it's really helpful and it's a contrast to what I've seen before in the previous institution where students were happy or frustrated and that institution still does not track OER courses by the the schedule of classes there's still not a systemic way that the courses are tracked and so I see benefits in it but also and maybe I'll talk about this more with other questions I see some areas to grow as well too so thank you I suppose it's my turn and thanks Pamela I think that kind of being a segue it's almost like the organization of panelists was intentional in answering this question because I have the unenviable task of representing faithfully Idaho's eight public institutions we have courts of union college just in four universities but my story is at the institution level and actually at a community college in Oregon but I think it's also quaint because Idaho's story around course sharing really starts at the institution level as well so for me my first faculty role was in central Oregon I think I saw a Amy jump on so I was there for a few years and we had independent bookstore at the time I was faculty they are the nature of my students in a rural part of Oregon the castle large net is that they certainly had needs as it related to access of materials especially as it related to when financial aid might be released for many of these students and so I worked with our bookstore to pilot just a means of informing students not only what the cost or where students would get materials in the event that there was a cost associated but also descriptively providing more information on if I was using online public domain open resources where they could access those and also what that meant in the nature of my class so I was a writing teacher and anyone who's dabbled in open pedagogy recognizes this relatively constructivist pedagogy and it's also if you studied writing studies you know that it's a long-form way of what we do the co-authorship of knowledge with students is something that has long been an integral part of especially the first year writing classroom and so fast forward to 2017 I moved to Boise, Idaho to work at Boise State I naturally had by that point learned about the open education movement as we now know it we are pedagogy and so on and I was hard to find that I had other colleagues at the institution who were also interested in OER they just weren't necessarily meeting on a regular basis and then Idaho is a very small state we have 56,000 full-time students roughly and what that also means though is that across our eight institutions typically if you're doing work in libraries and active technology like I was if you're teaching specific courses that are common between multiple institutions chances are you're going to connect with one another and so we started forming regular conversations around how can we support one another recognizing that this is still an emerging topic none of us had OER open education our job descriptions how can we raise awareness and importantly how can we also capture the authentic needs of our students because ultimately that was always the goal is how can we recognize that every institution that we might share students that might be pathways between institutions ultimately we need to listen to the student voice first and what they need in terms of the information on hand at time of registration to make important decisions and fortunately at Boise State we already have a governance structure around active technology where we had representation from our student council and what was great is that we would have a representative that would go through these meetings with us throughout the year they'd want to see information provided in the management system maybe top of notifications in the student information system about what the real cost of these course materials are going to be and then they get super energized they get very excited and then like clockwork they would graduate and so one of the first tasks we had was really connecting with these student leaders and empowering them to not only document the initiatives that they care about in course and in course marketing was one of them but then also work with the upcoming generation of candidates to put OER and course marketing as part of their platform that they were running on so that you had continuity in these initiatives of student representation so beyond that Boise State we started meeting and convening as committees other institutions started forming committees as well but what we also learned from talking to faculty and students directly is that OER is a great means to an end but it's not an end in itself and addressing access and affordability issues we had really cunning interest from libraries and innovative ideas around just better utilizing library access that we have we had opportunities to better use public domain resources and ultimately try and form common definitions around cost around openness around the pedagogical implications of that all in service to educating upward eventually because now I'm at the state I've been the state board roughly six years now and the benefit of that is that we still have a robust community of practitioners at all of our institutions who are informing various important things to help scale up this work and the biggest one arguably is our policy 3U which I just posted in for the chat this board policy by its name it's focusing on course material access and affordability but a mainstay in the criteria they're both the optional and what's expected of institutions and developing plans and accordance with the policy is having strategies around course sharing and it's around the information that students and faculty specifically want to share and so or want to share and want to know and so that's not just what is OER or what is the very low-cost price point that's required but also things like what's often referred to as inclusive access but we refer to as automatic billing programs because we don't want to see that rhetoric to them and so that's the quickest and dirtiest story of telling I can get developed happening in Idaho and I would also just encourage and suspect this for my other panelists but if anyone in our limited time today has follow-up questions please reach out I'm happy to share more. It's also important to show everyone the journey is starts and has ebbs and waves so I think it's important to have everybody's background and how they came across the courses that have these attributes to them so my next question is for Pamela how do students know that the course they choose has a free book if the marking has an OER as an identifier? So I'll share my screen a bit to show you from the schedule of classes how the courses here at Alamo colleges are marked and let me make this full screen here so you'll see here that this is just a screenshot of the scheduled classes at Alamo colleges district and so we use banner here this is the class schedule search down toward the bottom of the page is where students will see an attribute field and within that attribute field there is an option to choose Alamo open or open educational resources I know that this is a way that when you select this particular field here and choose a subject you can see all of the sections that are using open educational resources however when I say I think there's some areas to grow here I'm not quite sure that this is always clear to a student that it's kind of buried down here at the end of this list where it says location slash attribute I'm not also not quite sure that the word attribute makes sense to a student and I think this is an area in which we need to kind of figure out how to message to students how to make it clear to prospective students to how to identify OER materials for courses and this also is kind of block and white as well too is because with the state of Texas it's required to mark courses that use exclusively OER and so choosing this attribute would provide students just with the class that doesn't have any commercial materials but I know we do have some courses that maybe use like a small reader like a $10 book and then use OER to replace larger textbook materials that traditionally would cost students you know 100 to 200 dollars that's not clear to students here too about how to identify those low cost courses as well and so I think in this case Alamo has some growth to to to make but when students do go to the sections using this attribute they'll see within the description of the course and depending on the course it's sometimes is in different places too they'll see somewhere where it says the section utilizes OER this may not may not also be quite clear to students I think many students know what OER is but others do not and so it's not quite clear that this is free materials to a student as well and so some areas to grow as well there is some messaging on Alamo's websites and so this is from one of the colleges Northwest Vista that informs students about what OER are what that means and I think we're still kind of working on ways to further inform students we're in kind of a an interesting or I guess what I would call a tricky situation too because with Alamo books plus we're in a partnership with Barnes and Noble College where students receive rental materials for classes that use those commercial products and so students don't pay extra for their instructional materials at Alamo College's district Alamo books plus is supported through student tuition and so with this partnership that I came into in this position OER are included within that agreement and so all student tuition goes to funding Alamo books plus and I hope that going forward we'll be able to enter in with a a different contract to where OER only courses will not have that tuition charged to them however I am not the person who has control over any of that that's just my own personal hope so I think Alamo is doing a good job in trying to inform students but there are ways to grow Alamo also in the state of Texas is required to publicly post course syllabi and so within an instructor syllabus there's often language on OER courses that says see your instructor to access your open educational resource for this class or the OER is posted within the learning management system so within canvas so we don't right now really have a central repository for OER so that's another place that we could grow you know having a place where students could look at the materials in advance right be able to kind of peruse what Alamo is using for OER would be very helpful right now with a class that uses commercial materials students can excuse me preview that material by searching for it online to kind of see what they're getting into but without a repository for OER there's not those options to be able to see what a instructor is using in their class and so I see both pluses and minuses or areas to grow here that would be helpful and so let me uh sorry stop sharing Hi Michael so um in your beginning your origin story and now we're at a point where you recognize um how the attributes um look at your um with regarding your schedule what is some um you know what is the next level for someone as a student in your role as a as a student leader uh so after being involved in the federal government class um kind of got me thinking to see like um when I'm actually registering for classes because before um you would just just pick a class that you didn't like investigate like what kind of material it's it will come kind of materials being offered for the class um so now um I'm looking through and seeing like the different attributes like is it animal books plus or is it open education resources um that are going to be used in the classroom um I've been in the talks with the student government association um because we did um we did learn about OER like a few meetings ago um so it's kind of like on their mind right now um so we're we're thinking of doing a student guide um to tell our students on our campus um that there's different um different course course markings um for the classroom such as open education resources and on here on our campus for um it's a freshman course it's called um learning development so in that course um like the faculty and some students actually helped like create that course book so there's already a little bit of talk about um some of the students there there was like a student advice section and actually our parliamentarian for student government they wrote an advice section so it's it's nice to notice for now that the students are aware of like this type of material and we can use it um as a way to promote it for the future thank you so much michael and um dr lesh yeah thank you I feel like a lot of my comments are just going to be plus one still what I'm seeing coming across the chat because um like for instance as Amy just pointed out students choosing courses they want information they don't necessarily need copyright licensing info and that is something that in serving students getting a sense of what faculty were doing and what was possible within our system and the development of board policy through you um we realized that it was probably more important for us to set common standards than common standardization recognizing that the ecosystem the software ecosystem the policy ecosystem the professional development resources um and just the general awareness on campus varied by campus um not only that but board policy in Idaho though all the four-year institutions uh directly report to our state board of education there's an indirect reporting line with our community colleges because they of course have local boards as well um and so the goal was how can we build a policy that um not only will reach some of these goals that we have for better informing students and building awareness importantly among faculty and among staff of the institutions because there's also a data integrity issue with course marking where we need to know reliably that these courses that say they're assigning OER or very low cost materials are actually consistently assigning these materials if we're going to put forward that information and um I've I've done research I know others have done research as well that sometimes the people who are responsible for inputting that information either to the bookstore or to others on campus um they might not be teaching class they might be administrative systems they might be course schedulers and so how can we build awareness about not only what are the levels of cost that all of our provost worked on agreeing on with their faculty and their faculty leadership but also how can we reach students in ways that are communicative that are multimodal in approach and so it's not just annotating within an SIS and there's multiple different SIS's that are currently being used at our campuses in Idaho but also when does this information get released does it get information get released as part of the course schedule the policy sets forward that needs to be available readily available and transparent by by time of registration for these institutions and importantly by having a standard but not standardization every institution has been able to look at what makes most sense for our students what are the means of communication that we have available to us and how do we best engineer um again an education as a release to OER because I think it's easy to get caught into the abstraction and really want to be protective of the terminology at the same time the number one thing is that we want to make sure that students have access to the required materials that they need to be successful when they need them there's um many conversations happening on the chat you know and the idea of identifying courses and how in which way um that would satisfy how a student views their course selection how an administrator can track the different kinds of open textbooks different open um OERs um down to you know the state reporting of this um I think it's really an interesting conversations that we're having here because it does affect a lot of of um you know individuals who have a um a very particular part in their journey of trying to um you know look at these courses in a in a very concise viewpoint and and also to allow students that that choice of finding the the correct um textbooks so that they can find the courses that um go with that so I I do like the these conversations and I and that just leads me to our um next um question um is um what did you learn once you started um using the OER course markings or for Michael um seeing the the course markings what is your advice or what is your feedback that you um can that you received um what course marking data um affects institutions that quantify the number of faculty using OER or OER practice um open education practices and open textbooks uh Dr. Lashley could you yeah um some of you on the call maybe because there's many of you may be familiar with Jerry Handley and I always like his piece of advice that any initiative like this you want to be a gift and not a burden um and as soon as the conversation moved to the state level in the state of Idaho it's easy for it to become well this is a new reporting obligation this is a new burden this is new exceptional standards that we need to meet because the board is interested in this or because politically advantageous and so that was one of the great luxuries that we had and that we already had an active practitioner community of thoughtful educators or education professionals that really cared about educational access and affordability for our students uh is that we were able to work with them directly in co-authoring policy that was a reflection of existing priorities and practices among our education community and I think the importance there though is that it's not a perfect policy and none of our policy should be these should be living documents um what's been great to see however is as part of our policy because every institution has to have a plan we are now three years into getting a plan and a report from each institution and what we continue to see is movement and importantly what we continue to see is that the movement is positive we're already aligned with so many priorities that the institutions already had for optimizing their systems for better supporting their students for building out professional development and scholarship of teaching and learning opportunities for their faculty and to me that's a reflection of like the community really did drive this and the board's happy with it because the board set a policy that's still appropriate and accurate and so um you know in the case of you can't expect a policy to be perfect and you can't let perfectly be the enemy of a good the good here in terms of right sizing is again making room for every unique institution to make it their own and so you'll see in the the policy that I posted we have criteria that is required um that's just the you know the bare minimum standard on the sort of information and opportunity we'd want to see to support these sorts of initiatives and importantly I should have mentioned this earlier the board also had stakes in this so I'm board staff I coordinate and co-design with faculty across our state opportunities for faculty to build awareness to get recognized for students to find awareness and get recognized I saw that my colleague Lysa Long is on the call and I mean she's an expert in getting students involved with these projects both in and outside of the class and that is I think the most enduring means of us addressing not only the goals and establishing appropriate or exciting goals around open education but us finding sustainability as we're talking about not just cost savings for students and course marketing is being a means of that but course marketing is being being a means of kind of meta education that happens before the class so students also know what to expect maybe pedagogically as they're learning about like oh these courses that are associated with zero for open zero cost pathways or open resources that are initiated by state initiatives that might also mean an opportunity for me to have a more meaningful learning experience because I'm also going to be co-authoring um knowledge and perspective with academics and uh you know personally I I'm I'm biased because that's how I like to structure my classes as an educator but those are also the classes I wanted to do that and so the fact that we have a systemic effort around that is is really massive and I think it's telling too that the community colleges who don't have to subscribe to this policy all willfully chose to because they recognize that their students are also um hopefully in many cases going to move on to our four-year institutions are going to move on to different institutions within our state and because we have these common definitions and because we have these shared programs they're not starting over and relearning you know but it's going to take to be successful if they move on to different institutions either how did you want me to go next I've forgotten yeah okay yes Pamela thank you thank you that was great thank you oh no no problem so yeah I really like what you're you're sharing Jonathan about like the investment that you're getting um I think it seems like a much much bigger like uh like a macro case to me like what I hope happens here with the institutions in Texas um I think there has been a lot of investment within uh Alamo Colleges District to kind of talk about OER and to mark OER but I think there's still some room to grow for us as well here too um and so like I was thinking Jonathan about what you're sharing about not only is it the cost savings for students and like focusing on that for sustainability but also like the ownership of a material and I think that that's something that I'm really thinking about for Alamo Colleges too I mean we're in an interesting situation here with the Alamo Books Plus program and the tuition model contributing to that to where students are not really maybe looking for classes that will save the money as far as instructional materials because it's a standard kind of tuition model paying for all and that kind of changes a little bit maybe the ways that faculty and students and administrators think about OER um and so what I'm really like thinking about as far as what I've been learning and what that means for the institution here um is that uh that there's some work that needs to be done in talking about ownership and talking about what uh kind of content can students help create with faculty and what kind of content is best for our student population and how can we make that um transparent to students as well um I was looking back at some of the questions in the chat too and I think I can kind of address what I'm learning answering those questions as well and so with Alamo Colleges um kind of the people that are responsible for the course marking that's a relationship between the faculty department chair and the course schedulers and so Alamo each year um you know copies over the sections that were taught from the previous year and so it's very important for the department to work together to make sure those courses are marked correctly so if a course is no longer using OER the A OER attribute needs to be removed from that section or if a faculty member is um adopting OER instead of the commercial materials that is placed on the section um and we are in an interesting situation where we have these two um two systems that we can use to compare to each other and so with the uh with the Barnes and Noble um adoption portal faculty chairs update that as section information changes so say for instance a faculty member is removed from a section another one is added in then we can change that uh instructional materials adoption you know if it was a commercial material we can switch it to OER or vice versa and we're able to compare the two systems together and so we're in a process now I mean I'm very I'm very new to this position this really is my my four and a half months of working here now but moving into this new year we're moving into um developing a process to compare the two systems together to ensure that what we're sharing is accurate you know accurate to students and accurately captures what is happening in our courses um we uh the billing relationship with uh our partner is that on census date that is when we are we send over information to Barnes and Noble about the sections that are um included in Alamo books plus and that's complicated by our dual credit program as well because some of those high school program classes that are taught at the high school campus are not included in Alamo books um and so we're not charged for that material um by the Barnes and Noble partnership and so there's a lot of details that have to be figured out in all of these different systems working together but we are able to change the um information about the course up until the census date and that doesn't complicate things for students currently as far as charges for course materials because again they're not paying extra for commercial materials but it would complicate things if we um change our OER section so that they're not part of that tuition so that would again complicate things because then you may have a student who has chosen a class because it uses OER and then if it adopts the commercial materials later then there's that tuition charge that's going to the program so it's very complicated to figure out when you have all these pieces and so I'm learning that that relationship and this program complicates things and I'm also learning that there's really a unified effort behind the um the markings where there are many people involved in the system and anytime you have a system there's always going to be issues that occur right and so finding those issues and correcting them is something that we'll have to do going forward. Thank you Pamela um it is interesting because of what Pamela said I am a course scheduler and um whenever we get a list from um Barnes Noble that said the faculty decided to go uh OER we uh have a list that we automatically have to look at the course schedule and banner um and then we we change it and it goes live so as soon as we get that notice anything we change in banner it goes live for the students so um that's immediate but we do have usually before go um before the schedule goes live versus before before students can register so students can see the schedule before they can register right and so we still have changes all the way up to when they can start registering and even even behind that before even goes live we usually have a you know some couple months to to look at the schedule before that so there is um yeah I I also said that you know question you know like how far in advance you know when faculty get switched you know um so there is a lot of moving parts um I would um love to um end our question and how we started is how we will end it with our student leader um Michael um what is some advice from a student point of view um what um can you think of that can help all of our conversations revolving around um the attributes and um for open textbooks uh I was also looking at the chat and I noticed like a lot of people were talking about rentals like book rentals so that got me thinking um like um kind of now that the semester is ending we're getting emails like oh you need to return your book here's the deadline you have a few more days um so we're getting that to email and then we have to go like right after I guess so that the rentals can be ready for the next um the next um for the spring semester but like um some advice is for students to understand like um there are these two different almo books plus here but um to understand like open education resources um that's going to be available for you like the first day of class and after after the course is over that's your material you get to keep it you know you get to keep it after the class you don't have to return the book uh like um you're currently doing um just want like students to understand you know like times are changing um probably like what the their faculty member like they are probably back in the day they would purchase their book or have to return it um but I want students to understand that times changing them and um making open education resources like looking for that material make it change with them um because like OER resources um they can be like material like I'm here at the Animal Colleges we're thinking of developing um like the courses like to have like the faculty write the book and especially some of the students so um you know like that's like a big game changer you know like having someone that sat in your seat um like develop material for you to read like how how great and awesome is that how localized it is that is true you know um some ways it is beyond cost if you think about the the students investment um in open pedagogy um and which is what Michael when he was talking to me about and I said you're talking about open pedagogy and that um part of the open educational practice uh well I just wanted to say um thank you for our panelists for your time and and that you passed on your knowledge and experience on course markings um this continued work reminds me of the loud quote that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and um thank you so much for um talking to us about your journeys and um I think we may do we have time to address any specific questions? Yes? Yeah I we definitely have at least 10 minutes I think maybe more um I think Laurie Beth just um turned on her videos I think she's gonna ask some questions from the chat. Yeah I think actually uh it sounded like you guys were monitoring the chat at all uh together um and I've seen other people offering answers in the chat that's wonderful um let's see if there's a question um I think you address this a little bit but um maybe you want to speak to it again while we watch for other questions um you know what happens when the student selects a course and then the schedule the faculty schedule assignments change and the course designation needs to change very quickly. Do you have any any thoughts on that? I can I can speak to how we've tried to address that a little bit from uh state support of our institutions and this is also I think the benefit of having multiple institutions working closely together um on a shared initiative or shared task and so our community colleges are currently all in the process of developing zero textbook cost pathways um through entire programs and the benefit of that is the courses even if they change sections even if they change instructors they're still going to be using the same course materials and so having those z-degree designations helping form students of like okay that's not going to change that's not going to be disruptive um also previously I was the the chair of our statewide general education committee in Idaho like many states we have common indexing among our general education courses the envy states that have common indexing across more than just their gen ed but we'll take gen ed um that's a great opportunity to really realize impact in this space because typically gen ed courses are required high impact high enrollments and therefore you know students are really going to feel course material changes especially if you're adopting fully open solutions and the value there is it takes only one industrious faculty member who's teaching math 108 or english 102 to adopt oer to inspire others to adopt oer and if it's being used at one institution that same class taught another institution Idaho is just as capable of adopting those materials and what we found naturally is that different faculty adopt different materials um and so we are increasingly getting more and more of a selection of open or low cost resources to choose from for a variety of these common index courses and so actually looking ahead for the future that is the next project I think for the state is how do we bring in as part of a referratory that's specific to our state those open materials that are actively being used and curate them in a way that people can search and pull from that way again we're further minimizing that sort of variation of that disruption when um when course schedules change that makes sense um we had a question here kimberley would like to know michael what you think uh what would get a student's attention beyond the textbook course materials um as you're searching or registering for classes um um whether I would say um what gets the attention maybe um like seeing like what's in the book um I know like if I saw like one of my friends like or as a contributor to the book you know that would really interest me so um seeing like who developed the book would get my attention because it is important like free textbooks but you have to go like above that and I would say another thing to get your attention is um you know textbooks free but you get to keep the textbook like you know after the course ends so I guess like sense of ownership would get get your attention excellent answer well things I hadn't even thought about um there was uh there was a question in the chat and I'm curious about this myself um how how can we find out how many students or which students are registering for a ZTC course or a course with an open ed how do we find out um who's uh who's searching for what I don't know if um you have any answer thoughts well I know that our institutional research teams have access to the data that we utilize I know our district um they have um a more yeah that's from a college point of view but Pamela is from our district office who has access to all data at all five colleges so that um kind of knowledge and access is vital when you're looking at grant work or you're looking at you know you know how are we going to you know react as a single district um to all um to certain issues and I know that that is um something that um is vital and is important and um in when deciding what can affect all five colleges this you know if we change anything in the attributes it affects all the colleges all the classes that have this attribute and um we we can have up to I believe five or six attributes um to our schedule so we can have various layers of attributes and like Pamela showed you know the the last attribute that a student can see is that oh we are you know that's the last so um in a in a in each class you can have all these different kinds of layers but I don't know Pamela you wanted to speak from a district point of view I haven't personally used it yet but I've attended other presentations on course marking where presenters spoke about being able to see how many times unique searches have been done within banner or with other systems so I think that's a very interesting question to try to determine how many how many times a student a unique unique person and unique uh uh someone visiting the site perspective student I guess you would say is uh searching for that particular attribute uh I don't to my knowledge we don't have that information here at Alamo Colleges yet but I think it may be helpful to be able to tell if students are using that field and if at all possible what they select then based on that search um and so that that's something new to me to think about too and how to how to do that here we are like like be you just explained we are able to tell how many students register for sections that use OER versus others um uh in my role I have not done that yet to compare which courses filled more quickly versus others um in the situation here in which students their tuition is paying for the instructional materials program I'm not quite sure if that's something that's motivating them or if we need to um you know do some more work on the messaging on why someone would select an OER course like Michael has talked about right like the different reasons for choosing OER courses um uh that I just have lots of questions and nothing that we have really done yet to answer your question Laurie I'm sorry okay it's a really good question and I'm seeing a few answers um popping up in the chat as well um one other question um um maybe we have time for one more question now what about printing full books um I think that's a question that's been asked in a number of webinars um what do you do with cost of printing or how do you how do you do that uh my name is not coming to me right now yet but I know that there are some programs at Alamo colleges that work with um a print on demand publisher um and that those costs are included within the Alamo books model um so students do not pay any extra money for the printing of those OER materials so that's been the solution here for courses that uh require printed versions of OER um I know that's not maybe a situation that other institutions that don't have this tuition model so I know it's a it can be a challenge then too that can um you know be placed upon the student to print I know that can be a situation but here at Alamo colleges we do at least have the benefit of being able to print through our partner yeah it it really depends by campus on how they're approaching it in Idaho though you know some have print quotas that have been upped some have been managing those primarily through either the library or the ctl or the um uh accessibility services offices in in coordinating around students needs one tactic that we did take though that's sponsored by the state is that every institution in Idaho has uh an enterprise access to and this is through for students faculty and staff to press books as a platform in any of our professional development um initiatives in the state leverage press books as a means of visual authoring not because we think that textbook is like the ultimate means of knowledge transfer and transmission but um as I mentioned earlier especially with common index gen ed courses what we've found a lot of success with is developing what we consider more modular open textbooks through the press books platform that has content that can be cloned to an institution environments and faculty can add or subtract materials and then what's so nice about that platform is it has a lot of different portability options to either go to a third party for printing uh resolutions or supporting that or to just print on demand on their respective campuses thank you I was wondering if we should probably get to those uh few final slides and if you don't mind sticking around for a minute we do have a survey that we really really appreciate you filling out go ahead Beatrice so um thank you everyone for attending today's webinar some great information has been given and I love the community that we are in that shows that we all have great ideas when we pull together um but this is our last webinar of the year the rest of the webinars are archived along with this one but I wanted to let you know that there will be an announcement soon about the spring webinars in January next slide please okay so um please let us know how we did today please take this short survey the link will be given to you on the the chat soon and we just wanted to make sure that we hear from you and we hear your voice and if there's something that uh you want us to address um as a webinar for next spring please let us know that as well um we thank you I want to thank Pamela and Jonathan Michael for your um sage advice and your um lessons learned and um and let's say thank you thank you everyone


I'm not really in the mood to tell this story, because most of the stories people tell are usually fake and for attention. But I feel for the safety of other users, I should tell it. It was around 8.35 on a Friday. I had just finished my homework, and was eager to do something on Roblox, since I had been bored straight for three days, and had everything important done for the week. I turned on my computer, and began browsing Roblox myth groups, particularly the ones filled with people who want to be noticed by YouTubers. I laughed at the sight of a few with bad grammar. Actually, never mind. It wasn't a few, it was the whole lot of them. Anyway, I had yet the seventh page of it, when I noticed a user named, Rontanian. Unfortunately for me, later I began to wish I had not noticed, for my ignorance would have been troublous. His avatar was white on the arms and head, with a gray shirt and blue pants, mainly the avatar of a 2011 user. His comment was something in what I assumed to be in French, although nothing came up when I tried to translate it. I clicked on his profile, and my computer froze for about 5 seconds on a white screen, with two black dots on the top left. His bio said, G-ducesum, meaning, divided we stand, in Finnish. I supposed he must be a native speaker of several European languages. I checked out his games, he had two, primarily, the place of immortal despair, and, the crimson realm. The first one was just a statue with people, similar to the place of bodies here. The statue was wearing a crown, and was holding a cane while the people saluted him. I noticed the bottom of the map showed the same statue pointing at the people, which were instead corpses, as opposed to their living counterparts. There was a small shack with a picture in it, which I could not see from a distance as it was too blurry for my eyes to make out.  His head was down, and what I assumed to be Smithcult putting his arm to comfort him. This led me to instantly assume that he was a wannabe like everyone else, because Smithcult is just a famous myth that started the whole cult family conspiracy or whatever anybody can call it. But, boy oh boy, was I wrong about him being fake. I left the game so I could play arsenal, one of my favorite games. I was dominating the entire server, with people giving me mean messages claiming I was hacking, when in fact I had irritated their egos. I had been playing the server for about 20 minutes, before my game froze with a buzzing sound, coupled with the looping sounds of the weapons. I almost fell out of my chair at the sound, and quickly turned off my audio, before Roblox crashed with a message containing the words, GDUSISM, but in a font I had never seen before. It was unusual for Roblox to crash, since I had my internet fixed a week ago, and I was on my new high quality 1080 pixel PC. I got back on, and noticed I had a message in my inbox, from Rontanian. The message was in Swedish this time, and was just repeating the word, inequality, over and over again. When I went back to my profile, my avatar was the same as Rontanian's, but with a black head. The sigh of the claimed. My favorites were full of games with random jumbled text, as if someone had slammed their hands onto their keyboards repeatedly in a gesture of intense anger. I still had my 147 friends, but they were all just duplicates of Rontanian, not one spared. I noticed a new game in my recently played games, it was simply called, Home. I joined it hesitantly, and it was a house made in incredible detail, something that would have taken months to create if done alone. I walked around, exploring in both wonder and fear. Every room seemed to become more and more dilapidated, to the point where there was grass and mold on every surface, the air raking of decay and fungal spores. I decided to turn around and go back the way I came, when I saw Rontanian standing to my right, staring at me with another worldly look. His name wasn't on the bar in the top right, and his eyes contained almost a million forming colors overlapping each other, moving around as if he was a celestial god, and not just a Roblox character. As I stood there looking at him, he suddenly approached me with a burst of speed in a very unusual animation, as if he was trying to mimic an octopus, a cat, and a human at the same time, resulting in his limbs chaotically convulsing. When he crashed into my character, various images began popping up on my screen, some of which I recognized from weird YouTube videos, or just plainly strange images on the internet. Others were extremely disturbing, and even terrifying at some points. My computer froze at one last image before it crashed, the tension causing my heart to bounce around inside my body, attempting to escape. It was a picture of a robbing corpse, sitting cross-legged in a room that looked similar to the one I had just seen a few seconds earlier, the shriveled skull grinning indefinitely. The same words of G. Duceesum were above him in a font that looked like the Cyrillic script, but without any detail. I'm surprised I was even able to know what it said at all, let alone remember it. After this, predicament, I was sent to the your PC ran into a problem screen. When it was done, I got back onto the Roblox player and everything was back to normal, for now. My avatar was back to normal and the message had disappeared, along with the games I played. Almost as if the whole thing had played out in my head, like it had never happened at all. My wife I acted up again after that, but it resumed working after I restarted my router, giving me room for a sigh of relief. I haven't experienced anything like this again, and my computer is just fine. But rarely, I swear I can still see Rontanian in the corner of my screen, gazing at me through the screen itself.


It's not funny. He doesn't eat anything white.  You're white. That feels race Rolling audio rolling. We are world unique New York. That's good warm them up. Welcome to good company In a world where one man Keep going You want to get intro yeah, just like that though, maybe Dan does the intro for like I'm a summer block percent facts brought to you live by Jim McD and silent Mike featuring fat Dan AKA Dan store. Hi. Hello AKA Dan store. I don't call him the arm the handsome Kyle Castro Call them the third arm. Why the third arm? I feel like Steven Seagal's about to come creeping out of this corner now Well action film. Yeah Pretty good. It's good stuff. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of topic thunder. We are the boys that Dean's not here, so I didn't want to like throw the Gossip, yeah, because we got Dan and he's obviously not that into it because he's on his phone He's not that that's stoked to Be here with us which hurts Your one letter away from Dean just heads up.  We don't even watch you here. We couldn't get Dean, but we got close Yeah, yeah, just in terms of the spelling not in any other way But do me a favor give this thing a thumbs up subscribe to new episodes a week check out 50% facts If you want a longer podcast Wednesdays and these audio versions also Weekly I'm here with Dan Storneolo owner of CPG and longtime friend the arm I guess Kyle. I have a new name every ever Kyle and the legend Jim McGee 3sp.co And I'm selling Mike your host greetings. There's a couple things I forgot who I was talking to and this happens to me a lot I have a lot of conversations with a lot of different people as we all do now that we own this brick and mortar And things get bashed around and someone told me I think it was you That you don't like peanut butter. Are you who doesn't like peanut butter cookies? Oh me. That's an issue. Are you kidding me? I don't like how rich they are. That's an issue, but what's that? I love peanut. I'll eat peanut butter by the spoon That makes no sense. Yeah, what if you go flour and sugar in there? You got a peanut butter. It's different It's too rich. I can't do it. I don't know it's it's too rich one because there's extra fat in there There's so the peanut butter cookies from I like the texture. I'm a texture eater I'm a texture girl scout cookies the peanut butter guys. Oh, those are different. Those are Reese's pieces, basically They're unbelievable tag along. Yeah, not that except for the names if there's chocolate involved. I'm game So if it's strictly like, okay, so what if it's like a for instance like nutter butters? You don't like nothing. I actually think that are butters are Those are better. Those are better because there's actual you could taste like the texture of the peanut butter I used to do something so fat with nutter butters. Can I explain that's where we're here? I would pour that I mean this is where I think cookie crisp kind of stole my idea General Money I was doing that at like five years old I was pouring cookies in a bowl your soldier boy, and then I was yeah, and then I grabbed chips ahoy and just That's exactly what I was doing. That's what I was doing And then he's like milk vanilla ice cream That's been around I feel like what does that have to do with peanut butter and nutter butter? No, I did those with Chips ahoy, especially and Okay, but there's an obsession with peanut butter across the world There's very few people that like it or just good reason. Yeah, the very few people that dislike it Kyle's weird for not liking the cookies. No, I like the texture of peanut butter.    I don't like I don't like I don't like that You guys give me issues for not liking peanut butter cookie You don't like Nutella the name of this show came about because of Nutella. Yeah, I did Yes, I don't like Nutella.  What about some Nutella on a peanut butter? Yeah, yeah, I like the texture if you were to put peanut butter and smeared on a cookie I'd like it. Oh, like a peanut butter to chocolate chip cookies with peanut butter. Yeah, so I'd love I'd be about that too Are you blushing? Why does that make no sense When you're five going oh cookie That's that's what a tag along is right? It's a wafer a layer of peanut butter, and then it's dipped in chocolate Yeah, yeah, that sounds good. I know it's a lot of peanut butter between now It's tag along the one that has more than one name depending upon where I think I think over the last couple years They switched all the names. Oh, maybe so. I don't know. Um long story short Why is protein considered a health food? Why are sorry? Why is peanut butter considered a health food? Why is peanut butter talked about as a protein in source source? Yeah, well, it's got like I think for a tablespoon It's got like 20 grams of fat or something and like five grams of protein like that's a fat source it's Because people like peanut butter and yeah, I want to give it up the self-justifying. Yeah, it's like oh well It's got you know, it's got protein. That's why I call these energy drinks. Yeah, or a health drinks Oh, it's definitely got more more fat than yeah, then it's got more car. You would want from a protein source It's got more carbs than I it's a decent on a protein for a tablespoon eight grams. Yeah, that's pretty good That's pretty good.  I will not it's not a direct protein source But when I think protein you're looking what I think what protein source I think like Jim thinks I would think ratio to calories and ratio to Fatten carbs. Yeah, I don't I wouldn't say it's like a like a full-on protein source No, but that's how people talk or a health food. Yeah, no, no if you're in a cut.   I hear it a lot It is the biggest so eight grams of protein 16 grams of fat healthy fat.  Oh, which is six.   Oh, probably yeah, Jim This is the health encyclopedia from University. I'm a very serious question medical center. I'm a serious question It's not serious but continue Crunchy or creamy creamy crunchy crunchy all day. I like both it depends on the application I'm texture. If I'm in a sandwich if I'm in a toasted peanut butter sandwich I'm going crunchy. She's good then I'm dipping apples in it smooth used to do that to you I should do I used to do a peanut butter toasted Sand. Yeah, so good.  Yeah, what's up with that? Why don't people eat crust? Yeah, why I don't know.  Is that Danny is the baby? Yeah, I am the baby Yeah, we did tons of peanut butter sandwiches, and I love peanut butter, too, but I don't and I'm a texture guy, too Why do you think I love ice cream like all you whatever, but he doesn't eat ranch or anything like that? Yeah, but no nothing white. You want to talk about some weird shit? We're not going there He doesn't eat anything. I don't like mayo ranch sour cream No, why can you explain why cuz I don't like ranch sour cream mayo and cream cheese And they just happen to be white. I don't know In your own white you're white and it feels racist you're trying to cast me on my own show Yeah, no, I just don't like those things and they happen to be white There's not a lot of things you don't like but a lot of things you don't like Speaking of healthy things and unhealthy things and the the things that people get hung up on I saw a friend of mine Facebook friend real friend talking about how he wanted to lose some weight and whatever whatever and somebody That he knows jumps in and says well, I lost 70 pounds or and I did it by cutting out Yeah, corn syrup. Yeah, such a tired enter and enter x whatever people just say it I just stopped drinking Coca-Cola and I ended up a body, but well I stopped sitting on stools. I lost 50 pounds Now what I stopped retaining stools and I lost 50 pounds That's another story and yeah, yeah, yeah in a short period of time I keep looking over at me high fruit. I'm trying to get you involved my weight You're looking over him you were saying because you switched we already switched topics But I was saying healthy fats in terms of dietary food and you automatically went to healthy fat This is true healthy and fat healthy and fat. Yeah, like body weight. Maybe That's where we're talking about peanut butter fatty I Got that after a couple minutes there so unrelated but but related peanut butter cookies. Okay. Yeah, not so Smear a pound of it on a cookie. I'll eat it. What if you crumple up some peanut butter cookies and some vanilla ice cream Yeah, yeah, then everything's green light then this is all everything is on there's no limits Then simply simply just a it's not that I don't like them. I'm just like I'd rather have a chocolate chip. Oh, yeah No, I'll eat a peanut butter cookie. Okay. Yeah, that's not my go-to either. Yeah You know what my sad go-to is and I don't know if it's sad But I think controversial oatmeal chocolate chip my mama my mom makes a homemade oatmeal chocolate chip that will blow your Crispy or soft in between soft. I think soft. I like soft. It's the best It depends if it's homemade or not that reminds me of chips a hoist soft is better chewy I don't like that. Yeah, I don't like any packaged cookies The they taste like totally chemicals except that they're wonderful because of the because of the chemicals the texture Yeah, and that comes from the chemical. It's so good. I don't like any packaged cookies like that You don't like any package like you don't like Oreos. No.  There's not really that much peanut butter in a peanut butter cookie It's just there for flavor. It's just so it's it's everything else that's thing. Oh, but have you ever been like at a conference where they go?  They're in the health section. Yeah, dude. Do you hear what I just said literally like dripping? I yeah, I love that.   Okay, get off a reddit.


Governor Mark Dayton has reinstated the mineral rights leases for a company that wants to finish the former SR steel taconite mine and processing plant in Nashwalk. The governor says Virginia businessman Tom Clark and Chippewa Capital Partners can now move forward with construction and production. Clark bought SR's assets out of bankruptcy last December. He has now met the conditions the state imposed for getting the leases reinstated, including securing financing. SR broke ground in 2008 but struggled to obtain financing and pay contractors. It went bankrupt in 2016. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


You can check out any time you like was written by Basir Skip Reader. You can find it on the scp wiki in a link in the description. It is under a Creative Commons share like attribution 3.0 license. Hopping between purgatories in our world is a dangerous procedure. Remember your ABCDs. Always be checking death. The Beginner's Guide to Purgatories. Written on a pamphlet somewhere on a floor. Tick tock. Tick tock. The wristwatch keeps ticking as I walk to another normally lit hallway with rows and rows of doors. I open the first door I see and once again the room is empty. It's rare for one of these rooms to be filled. Usually it's just filled with air. Or nothing. Most of the time it's filled with air and nothing. A normal smell of normal smothering the air around me. I swab the normal carpet floor with my finger and once again the normal amount of dust accumulates on my finger. Exploring this purgatory has been nothing but extremely boring. To be fair most purgatories are boring but this one was especially boring. I mean even in boring purgatories the boringness is cancelled out by a thing happening. Like an unknown being approaching you at relativistically slow but sure speeds or meeting a librarian who is somehow lost her way. For the eternity I have spent here everything seems normal. I open a door and this one's full of a stench. A distinctly non-boring thing so far inside where piles and piles of desiccated bodies sitting in an orderly fashion with various pieces of clothing surrounding their bodies. Raining from old robes to futuristic somethings. I quickly close the door and walk away. This was the only door with those bodies I think and I hope I don't see those ever again. Open another door and it's full of bodies again. This time all compressed into one block of desiccated flesh that spans from the center to the edge. The past 10 meats I have eaten leave my stomach and I don't eat for another 10 rooms. I look at my wristwatch. It reads 0300, 3 hours after I shifted into this space. I stare at the wristwatch as a second hand passes by the minute hand. I grab the needle and stab myself. I wince in pain as blood flows and crusts around the wound. When not in danger periodically check whether you are. If you really really really aren't in danger return to our world. You've stayed there for too long. A phrase inscribed in a wall somewhere. A phrase inscribed on a wall somewhere. I play with the barrel of my revolver as I check each door along the hallway. You're not supposed to do that but exploring endless rooms and hallways gets boring too. The normal hum that was always present in the air keeps humming as I open the door. Check inside, swab the floor and get food or water samples if the room has them. I repeat for an infinite amount of rooms and I can't help but wish for something dangerous right around the corner.  I can't help but wonder what god is so cruel that will construct a whole plane like this for its creations and why did this even have to space back in. I don't know what just happened but I continue walking a little faster than before. I open another normal room with normal air and normal floors and I feel dead inside. I measure the size of the room with my pinky and I notice that the room is around 20 pinkies long and 20 pinkies wide. I go to the next room, measure the size of the room and to my utter and bewildering disappointment discover that the room is to 20 by 50 pinkies. I move on. The next door I opened had bodies in it, this time small. I quickly close it and run off to the next door, a water room with another body under the table occupying the room from end to end with a stench of death. Again, I didn't need anything for the next 10 rooms or 20 rooms this time. I've been wondering for so long I've lost track of how many doors I've entered. To stop that, I smear a bit of blood on the next door I come across. I do that for every door now. I look at my wristwatch 0700, second hand passing by the hour hand. I grab a new needle. I stab myself and I stare as the blood flows freely from my finger. My fingers feel numb. The muscles inside my mouth feel foreign. I try to cut it out but I'm reminded of its name tongue tongue tongue. I stop as the blade touches my tongue and then I move on. The department of purgatorial spaces is not responsible for the loss of body parts, bodily autonomy, heart flesh, and any other parts that are physically embedded in yourself as is covered under section S450 clause 5HU4 however, loss of faith, memory, soul, etc. during and or after an exploration of a purgatorial space will be compensated as noted in the foundation health policy. See section 415K for more details. Foundation contract to researchers. Section 4P19 clause BEL1 In this purgatorial space, each room consists of 20 by 50 pinkies. Each room has a normal amount of air. In every three rooms, you get a table at the center containing a glass of water. Sometimes there's a body underneath the table. Sometimes there isn't, I think. This glass of water has a slightly nutty taste and it is enough to keep you hydrated. Every seven rooms you get a room with a table at the center containing a plant of unknown desiccated meat. It's salty and boring although I am thankful that I can still taste salt or at least I think it's salt. There are no bodies around the meat strangely enough. Shifting into purgatorial space always comes with risks. Sometimes it's just an endless hole that you fall into. And you have no choice but to shift right back. One time I shifted into the classic white void type space but the floors were screaming. That's why I have the earplugs. Most of the time, the space itself has a decided peacefulness to it. Where you can easily forget all your troubles with numbness and boredom. I would describe it as being blackout drunk, except without the liver damage. The fluorescent light keeps on humming louder than before I think.  And after an eternity, performing the same motions of checking rooms, swabbing floors, drinking drinks, and eating foods, I momentarily glance at my wrists and I see a spot of red. I force myself to stare at it. It is a wristwatch. My wristwatch. It's 1100. But the background is a deep deep bright blood red. I calmly rush to grab the knife and bowl from my backpack and peacefully start chopping away at the body parts that I cannot feel while serenely and frenziedly reciting a purging spell. I hear a crack as I try to composedly cut through a bone. The bone was placed by my arm inside the bowl with a white circle with an unknown and weird symbol that was drawn by my other stump under the bowl. I unhurriedly recall a short phrase and I close my eyes and pray to God, whatever God created this hellhole that my offering is enough, my mind opens to the same hallways with multiple people in it. The same bodies I've seen throughout my journey. A light shines at the end and I walk forward, opening each door, receiving each morsel of food they offer and every time I eat I remember things. My name, my age, who I work for, what I do. At the end of the hallway, a grand banquet, a table filled with delicious leaves and sweet flowers of all tastes and colors.  I'm one of the people offering myself food and I die again. I'm one of the servants giving myself food and I die again. I am the hallway, feeling the thousands of lives and feet trampling underneath me and I die. I'm one of the flowers, a lotus. I slide down the throat of me on and on and on it goes until I am both one and many, part of everything. One with everything and everyone is one with me. It might be too late, it might be too early. Whatever I am currently feeling right now, I am certainly ascending to Elysium. Myself suddenly plunges into the deepest, coldest parts of the universe. A throbbing, crushing pain smothers me as I feel a deep, deep pressure compress me. I feel pain as my whole being is described in a short word, an infinitesimally small length of time and space as I think what is supposed to be parts of me come out of my being. I remember what they're called, arms, legs, head. I try to break out of these constraints to no avail. All these experiences, all these feelings, all compressed into this insufficient shell of a being. I feel this small shell, this weak mortal shell burst and bleed and break and then be born again On and on it repeats, a never ending symphony of pain and suffering as I am forced to be alone in the universe once more until I reopen my eyes and I'm in front of a door with the foundation logo. I scream, I cry, I beg to be sent back. Thank you very much for watching. If you enjoyed the video, hit the subscribe button, then hit the notification bell next to that so you're notified when I upload new videos, and then head on over to patreon.com forward slash decimerian and pledge at any level like everybody here on the screen already has, including Sinjeriki who was pledged at $100. It's nice to know that I'm not alone here, and I will see you all again on Tuesday.


Mae'r galori yn gweithio bod yn gweld yn gweithio'r sgol, felly yna bod yn ôl yn yr adroddol yn gweithio'r cyd-fyrdd. Yn amser gyda'r ffordd gweithio? Dyn o'r gweithio'r gweithio, a fydd yn diolch. Mae'r Gwyd-degoniant yn roes. Dwi'n cael ei fath o bryd o'r cyffredigol o'r gweithio? A y gallwn ni'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gyshdownu? Efallai efallai ddim yn gwneud o'r adroddol? felly we'n gael. Let's see if I can use the ticker. Yeah. Okay, so I think it's always good to start with a classic crowd pleaser, I'm sure you agree. So, this is the legendary website, I think some of you will be familiar with it, and it's been topping the charts of the worst website ever, I think for well over a decade by now. So, it's got everything, absolutely everything. It's got animations, it's got the paisley background, it's got drop shadows, it's got music, it's got everything. And quite frankly, I would actually say that the UI of this website kind of does rock because it hats off to Ling who's actually built a thriving business on the basis of this website as a slap in the face of all of us design snobs quite frankly. So, I think we'd all agree that this website is however a bit of a mess. But I'd be interested to see what would you say there is, if you had to pinpoint one thing that absolutely doesn't work with this website, what would you say there is? If it was only one thing that you could say. Yeah, white space is one, yeah. Colour. What's he selling? Yeah, exactly. Sorry? Flow. Yeah, flow is another one, yeah. But I think there's one, all absolutely valid remarks, but I think there's one thing that is the main problem that kind of encompasses all of the other problems. So, the main problem with the design of this website is that there is too much going on. It's basically made of lots of details and I don't know what I'm looking at. So, there are also elements that we try and interpret as meaning something or belonging to the same category because they share features like for instance the pink headings. I thought, oh okay, so the pink headings are actually Spanish cars, but actually no they're not because the spider is Italian, it's also pink. So, without going too much into detail with analysing this website, I think we can agree that this user interface is not very easy to use and this is mainly because our brain tends to perceive scenes as a whole first and then interpret the details later. So, when the details are the main feature, which is exactly what happens here, our brain goes into cognitive overload and we don't like it. Also, I think it's fair to say that it would actually be easier to build a user interface that makes sense rather than try and reproduce a kind of weird magic that this website has because not all of us have the same kind of brazen genius that it takes to just build a website like this and get away with it and actually make money out of it. So, as we are mere mortals and not maverick geniuses like Ling, I think that what we would all like to do is create a user interface that leads to a smooth and easy user experience avoiding brain overload. So, paraphrasing the title of a famous book, a UI that rocks is actually a UI that doesn't make your users think and this is where Gestalt Principles come into play. So, can you see what this is straight away? Immediately? Yes, what is it? Actually, I didn't. A Dalmatian doing what? Would you say you can tell what he's doing? Sniffing the ground. I always had a shady forest because of the dotted shadows. At first sight, though, this image may seem like an agglomerate of black blobs. I think I need to learn how to hold this because it makes a difference. So, our eyes soon recognise the emerging shape of a Dalmatian sniffing the ground in a shady forest. So, our eyes and brain perceive the scene as a whole without needing to analyse the details. We can do that but we do it only later. So, we notice the details only after we've identified the outline. So, the Gestalt Theory of Vision is based on the premise that we see the whole before the details, basically. So, the Gestalt Principles describe the various ways in which we economise brain power, basically, and avoid cognitive overload. So, Gestalt is a German word that can be translated as form or shape or sometimes even pattern. There is actually no precise English equivalent. So, it's a Western theory of psychology that was created in the early 19th century in Germany, in Berlin by three psychologists called Max Vertaimer, Kurt Kofger and Wolfgang Kerler. Excuse my German. There were many more than added to it. I mean, this is, by the way, it's just an introduction that's useful to us because this is a huge kind of branch of science and so on. So, and the Gestalt Principles describe how the human eye perceive visual elements and how complex images tend to be reduced to simple shapes. And the story goes that in 1911 Max Vertaimer purchased a toy stroboscope which is, I'm told, a mechanical device that produces images that alternate and create different effects. So, because the theory that they were sort of part of at the time that was called structuralism didn't allow for that. So, they thought we better create a theory that actually does study this type of phenomenon and takes it into account. So, that's how it all started. So, according to Gestalt, when the human eye perceives a scene, it uses underlying principles of organisation so that we can understand what's before us with minimal effort. And that seems to be the sort of overarching thing that we want to make as little effort as possible. And that's the way that we do that is that we see a whole object before its component parts. For instance, when we see a car, we don't see the single bits that make the car. We don't see the wheels or the doors or the windows or the bonnet. We see the car as a whole first. And then only if necessary do we notice the details. So, the leading principle of the theory of Gestalt is that the whole is other than the sum of its parts. So, again, this means that we identify whole meaningful objects immediately and without conscious efforts like we did with a car. We do with cars or we even people. And like we don't do so easily with Ling's website, basically. So, the human eye also perceives a unified shape in a different way to how it perceives the individual parts that form it. So, the interesting thing is that many of the design principles that we follow arise out of Gestalt theory, in fact. When they don't arise out of Western art and Western art theory. I think Western is important to stress, but anyway. But that's a different story, the role that art plays in design. So, some of the Gestalt principles are more relevant to web design than others. And some are more specific, maybe more useful for graphic design rather than the design of web pages. So, we'll have a look at the sort of most important underlying ones. And then we'll have a look at the ones that, in my opinion, really help. And probably a lot of us are already sort of unconsciously or distinctively using already anyway. So, here's the dog again. So, the Gestalt principle at play here is called emergence. And again, the shape of the dog emerges. And emergence occurs when simple shapes arranged together can create a more complex image. The outline of which emerges from the scene before its details. So, thanks to this ability we economize brain power and we avoid cognitive overload. So, basically our brains is constantly bagging us not to make it think too hard. And that's what a lot of Gestalt principles describe. So, basically, let's try and do that with our users is the point. So, the main takeaway for web design from the principle of emergence is that the overall appearance of an element must always take precedence over the details. So, which is what Ling's website obviously doesn't do. So, shapes and contours are more important than lesser details. So, it really doesn't matter how cool, you know, a button looks if the users don't understand that it's a button because they're distracted by the details. So, very simply put, don't be too clever to ornate if it doesn't help your users. Now, here's another, you might have seen this image before. What animal do you see? Duck. Robert. Robert Duck. Okay, I think both camps are equally represented. So, clearly there's two images here. So, when an image can be interpreted in two different ways, our minds will alternate between the two interpretations, but we can't see the two views at once. And this, it's impossible for us to see the two images at once basically. And this principle is called multi-stability. And it occurs when an image can be interpreted in two different ways, but our mind can only see one view at once. And the interesting thing is that it really is out of our conscious control. We can't predict who will see a rabbit first and who will see a duck. And, for instance, I see the duck first and I simply can't help that. And even if now you can see both, because those of you who could see the bunny can now see the duck, but still you can't see them both at the same time. So, multi-stability in general should be avoided in web design unless you, yes, I can see your reaction. So, unless you are being extremely clever and you're able to resolve it successfully and above all meaningfully, unless it has a reason, you should really, really avoid it. So, this is a typical example of a clever design, because obviously this is animated in the real world, it doesn't do anything, doesn't add anything to the experience in any way. And if you move the mouse, actually things happen that don't particularly resolve the multi-stability and actually feel really unsafe because I don't know what's going on. However, it's just, this is a typical, something that I find personally because I come from print. So, it's typical of designers who come from print that you want to do things that look cool and that are exciting, but actually don't really help the user very much. So, this is very creative design but we need, I mean I speak for myself, I've had to learn to curb my excitement and be less clever and less, because this is, if anyone's here has worked in print, they know what's going on here and you know, it's not, I always now ask myself, before I make something look pretty, I ask myself whether it's going to be visible by everyone and whether it's going to help the user. And by the way, this is a fantastic agency and they do really, really creative work. So, it's not a judgement on their work but on this particular sort of piece of thinking. So, the main takeaway for web design from the principle of multi-stability that don't make them think once again. Avoid ambiguity or information overload in your UI. Usability tests are your friend. So, when we're too close to a design, sometimes we don't realise that some of the elements in the UI look too similar for instance. So, don't make a button look like a heading because it's just going to confuse the users or make sure that your colours are meaningful, meaningful used and so on. So, make sure that there cannot be a double interpretation. And if there's no, you know, get things tested and when there's no budget for usability tests, simply just get a fresh pair of eyes on your design. Get a friend or anyone to test your UI and make sure that there are no, there's no possibility of double interpretations. Now, if you look at the object on the top left, I think we can all agree that it's, there's a triangle there. Even though actually the triangle is not drawn, it's only implied. And the same applies to this sort of hand grenade kind of thing. There's a, I can definitely see a sphere there, but it's actually not drawn. Same with a Loch Nessie monster there. And I think that that's a fat snake around the pole, something like that. Anyway, so these are shapes that are only implied and not drawn but still we see them. Even when we have only a partial vision of an object's contour, we are able to come to a conclusion as to its shape. We can complete the shape in our mind. So, this Gestalt principle is called reification. The word reification comes from the Latin rest, which means object or thing. And it's the ability of our visual perception to create complete representation, even on the basis of limited visual information. By the way, if you look at the triangle up there, can anybody see something else apart from the triangle? Exactly. Absolutely. So, I think that here we've also got once again an example of multi-stability at play. So, you see already how Gestalt principles can, you can see two in one. So, it's Pacman as well as the triangle. This is an example of using reification and web design. This is also, there's another Gestalt principle at play here, but we all know that these are circles even though we can't see the whole object. So, the main takeaway for web design from the principle of reification is that your user's mind can feel in the gaps. So, be bold using white space as a design tool. Now, here's a face, a face that looks very different in each image. But I think that most of us know who this is. We can all recognise him because as human beings we've got the ability to recognise objects or faces regardless of the formations and variations in scale, in elastic deformations, colour deformations and other characteristics. So, in the case of a human face, even though the hair colour might change or the length or the facial hair or the inevitable signs of aging, we can still recognise them. This principle is called invariance. And thanks to the principle of invariance, we're basically able to experience the world without having to perpetually reassess a constantly changing scene. So, again, invariance allows us to minimise our cognitive efforts when we interact with the world. And again, invariance helps us to not think. So, a practical example of the use of invariance in web design is CAPTCHA, which is evil, as we all know. It's terrible, but that's where it's used. But as humans, we can read this, or almost, or sometimes not at all, but anyway. So, the main takeaway from the principle of invariance for web design is that, for now, it's the edge that the human brain has overbots basically. On the web, it's typically used in CAPTCHA. For now, it's an edge we have over at UI. So, as we've said, these are some of the sort of fundamental principles of Gesheld. Now, we're going to have a look at the most relevant ones for web design, in my opinion, and that I could fit in half an hour, because there are many and it's a big discipline. So, isolating individual elements from a background is an ability that came in very useful for our ancestors when they had to detect a predator in the field. So, and this is called the principle of figure-ground organisation, which basically is the ability to focus on one part of a scene, filtering out the elements that are not necessary to us. So, in this case, we know that the lion is the most important element in this scene, even though it's quite small, but basically it's survival.  For instance, on this web page, it's immediately clear to me that what I'm required to do here is fill in the form, because the form is white and really stands out against a rather busy background. So, I'm immediately able to identify it and basically I'm made to not think. It's made clear to me that I should do this because it stands out so clearly. So, the main takeaway for web design from the principle of figure-ground organisation is to make sure the most important part of a UI stands out clearly against the background. Now, sometimes when I say all these things, I think, isn't that obvious? But the thing is that it's not. I mean, it should be, but it's not always, especially when you go around the web and look at things like what? You know, you get quite confused. Also, interestingly, and actually, I just went to this super interesting talk about accessibility, and it made me think. So, for instance, when you have black writing against a white background, that's also a figure-ground organisation, basically any time that something stands out. But it made me think again how it's good to have all these tools in our arsenal and use them with a really conscious approach, because it makes you think seriously about, well, maybe I shouldn't use white text. Maybe that's too much stand out. You know, that maybe the background stands out too much. So, it's really important to consider these things. And this particular Gestalt principle is used in photography a lot. So, all the trend of using a very shallow depth of field with the subject in sharp relief and the background blur, you know, plenty of Instagram filters that do that. Now, we're getting into the so-called grouping laws that I think are the ones that we use a lot, whether consciously or unconsciously, when we design our webpages. So, the human eye has the tendency to group together elements based on certain things. In this case, we group together the elements that share certain features, like shape, colour and size. So, we tend to think that all the pink arrows pointing up pertain to the same group, whereas the white arrows pointing down, we put in a different group that probably possibly has even a different meaning or a different function. This principle is called the law of similarity, and occurs because the human eye groups together elements that share similar features. And I think that this is probably something that we apply a law or should, basically. So, for instance, on this page from the agency Studio Diva, all these different shapes of the logos of the clients that it works with are resolved really well because they all share a similar size and the same colour. So, they are unified. We immediately understand that they belong to the same group. So, if they had been left in their original colour, I think it would have reached the link effect because there would have been too much fighting for our attention and it would have been made of too many details. So, the main takeaway for web design from the law of similarity is that UI elements that perform a similar function or belong to the same group should always share one or more visual features. In this slide we see how our brain naturally perceives objects that are close to one another as belonging to the same group. This is called the principle of proximity. The human eye groups together elements that are close to one another in space. Again, this is used very often in our user interfaces, like for instance on this page where we see clearly, we immediately understand that on the top right we have the navigation which the elements are all clearly grouped together and we also see the law of similarity at play here that tells us that all belong to the same group because they share font size, colour and weight. Also, interestingly, we also know that probably there's something going on with the blog page or probably on it because it has a different colour from the other ones. So again, you can use the principles also to differentiate things because we see the law of proximity at play also in the fact that the logo sits all the way back to the other end so that means that it belongs to a different group. Again, the main takeaway for web design from the law of proximity is that make sure that elements that belong to the same group are placed in close proximity. Again, obvious. Now have a look around the web and maybe not so obvious, not all the time. In this case, we'll see how items that share the same clearly delineated regional space belong together. With the law of proximity, we probably would have thought that the dots on the left actually belong to the same group, but I think we tend to group together the ones in the white square before because there's this very, very clear regional demarcation. So this is called the law of common region and it's again very, very useful to use and to use wisely. So we apply it to many areas of our designs, often in the navigation as well. An example is here in this Facebook post where it's used in everywhere. It's used in the top because those bits mean something. It's used in the box itself, in the whole box because it's a white box against a grey background. The learn more button is the use of the law of common region and so on. So the main takeaway for web design again is make your UI easy to use by placing groups of elements within the same clearly defined regional space. Here the cuddly panda of this logo is clearly a panda even though there's some information missing, the shapes are not resolved and this principle is called the principle of closure and again it builds on the principle of reification that we saw earlier and it's when our mind supplies the missing information for incomplete shapes and even though it's used maybe a little bit more in logo design but it's also used in web design a lot for instance. If you see this box from the Guardian newspaper you can see that it's used for instance here in the categories the box is not complete but we clearly perceive the box as a box even though it's got lines missing and actually here there are quite a few more principle of gestalt at play which I would say for instance here you get figure ground organisation you get that also in the red headlines that clearly means something else that's also similarity because you make a difference so it's clearly means something else. So once you start getting familiar with it you start really seeing it at play in many different places. The main takeaway from the law of closure is that minimal designs can really help your UI by avoiding visual overload again let your users feel in the gaps and white space again very very important. The human eye is accustomed to recognising pathways and following them going with the flow as it were following paths even when the lines are not complete because here it's not complete it's dots that actually don't complete the line but we know that that's a line, a flow that we follow. This is called the law of continuation and according to it the eye perceives a path as a continuous flow and this is an example of the law of continuation at play so when we ask a Google to give us information about a walking route this is what we get we know that that is a continuous line that we need to follow even though it's dotted and I really I don't know if you agree with me but to me this is terrible because it's always the dots are on top of the name of the street so I can't read it and then when I'm out in the wild and I'm trying to read like I can't see it I can't believe that it's never occurred to anyone and also the dot that represents you is blue I mean why? I want to be yellow so that's again figure ground organisation if you were using figure ground organisation then you would make me the yellow dot and you would maybe move the blue dots that follow so I can actually read the name of the street which might be useful with that kind of thing so there are many many more Gestalt principles that apply to web design so again this is my what did I say was funny she didn't realise, no right, no mind so yeah so this is basically a basic selection as promised it's an introduction and there's much much more but I think that you can really see how I think that unconsciously we all do it if you do it consciously then I think that this kind of approach can really really really help improve that UI and actually it helps explain to the clients why the logo can't be bigger giving them actual reasons that go beyond design snobbery which is I think very very helpful and also I think that you will know now you will start if you sort of start looking at designs on the web that you see that don't work you'll be able to actually analyse why give a bit more of a reason as to why it doesn't work for you which I think is helpful above all if I had to say there was one main take away from Gestalt Psychology for web design is don't make them think that's it Does anyone have any questions Thank you I really really enjoyed the talk I wondered if there's any kind of further reading you'd recommend for any kind of like more deeper dives into Gestalt and web design Yeah there's a fantastic online learning centre which is called the Interaction Design Foundation IDF and it's absolutely brilliant it's not just for this and for generally for UX and UI is great Thank you for that excellent talk We've heard a lot at this conference about accessibility and you've talked a lot about minimal design and minimal UI and obviously there could be a conflict there between making a site work for people who are hard of seeing or colour blind and minimal design which takes away a lot of elements it seems and can make things more difficult so how do you resolve those difficulties I think it's a really interesting question because I would say that actually it's the opposite accessibility is about making things as simple as possible and that's why for me it has been such a big shift coming from a print background working for doing film posters that you have to be as complex as possible sometimes and coming to the web where it wasn't about that at all in the slightest so if I try and design with accessibility in mind which I try and do more and more and more these days I have to admit that it's not it's about making things simpler so I think that actually taking away will always make the experience easier because you stop thinking about what looks pretty for instance I have an obsession with making my links look cool really it's just something that I can spend a week and on but then I realise do something else, go skating go swimming because it's just put a line under it so I would say that it's the opposite thank you very much brilliant speech, absolutely fantastic and clearly there's a lot that I've not understood I realise a lot of it we do tend to do unconsciously where's your background in this is this from print yourself if you studied it by training I'm actually an art historian so I do know that when I started being a designer many many years ago I was applying a lot of western as like I said western art theory to my designs but actually then because of trying to get the UI better because of trying to understand and make my UX better rather than making pretty things that's when I realise I don't know how it came into my consciousness but I thought I knew about it and I realised that it starts from vision from the human eye from human perception and have you seen the the Mexico Olympics 1968 have you seen the iconography that they did it rings a bell but I can't picture it I was going to ask as well if that was Gestell or not but I'll catch up with you now I need to check any other questions right that was really good thank you round of applause again