Hi everybody. So first I would like to thank the organizers for allowing me to talk. So yeah, let's get right to it. So today I'm going to talk about a fairly old theorem that was proven in the 60s. So basically a TI and bot proved a theorem that allows you to compute equivariant indices of a manifold in terms of fixed points of a certain compactly group action. And my aim is to extend this to the infinite dimensional manifold of base loops of SU2. So what is the base loop group? Let G be a connected compactly group. So the base loops we generated by omega G are all smooth loops based on the identity. So it's going to start at the identity element of G and at the same point. So this is an infinite dimensional group. You can multiply point-wise. And there are two natural groups acting on this. So first we have the maximal torus inside G and this acts by point-wise conjugation. And we also have a circle group acting by rotation. However, we have to maintain the base point. So instead we have sort of a base rotation. So once you rotate you have to multiply it back to make sure the base is still at the identity. And these two actions will commute with each other. So you can see the paper of Tia Presley for more details. I'll give the references at the end. So in fact, what's interesting about omega G or the base loop groups is that it is in fact a symplastic manifold. And the T cross S1 action that we described earlier is actually Hamiltonian with respect to the symplastic structure. And the corresponding moment map is given by two components going into the algebra of T cross S1. So on the S1 component we have the energy function. So like some of you might be familiar with this, this basically measures the energy of a loop. So it's basically omega prime T squared. But because it's base you have to pull back to the origin. And the other one involves projecting the loops down to the the algebra of the maximal torus. So this component is called the momentum map. The moment map has an energy component and a momentum component. And in a Tia and Presley's paper, they cite this moment map and they prove a general generalization of the Gullman-Sternberg theorem, which says that moment maps of finite dimensional symplastic manifolds are convex polytopes. Because this is infinite dimensional, you basically get a paraboloid. You get a convex body that's not a finite polytop, but it just keeps going on to infinity. And I would like to take a brief detour here to talk about finite viral groups. So if you're familiar with finite dimensional groups, you may recall that the viral group associated to type A minus 1 is isomorphic to the symmetric group of N elements, Sn. And there is an affine version of this for infinite dimensional regroups. So we're going to denote the affine valve group by W bar. And it is isomorphic to the semi-direct product, W semi-direct product Q, where Q denotes the current lattice of S, U, N. Okay, so if you're in case you're not familiar with this, that's okay. What's important to remember is that there are certain generators for this. So for the finite valve group, you have N minus 1 generators, S1, S2 all the way to S, M minus 1. The only difference is that for the affine version, you have just one extra generator called S0. And as a small example, the simplest example is SU2. So that has a valve group just equal to S2, which is the group with two elements. It has code lattice isomorphic to Z. Oh, sorry, should be S1. So that's just the trigger group. So the affine valve group for the affine S02 is the semi-direct product, which is isomorphic to Z as a group. It has two generators, S1 and S0. And there's no relation between them. So except S0 squared equals 1 and S1 squared equals 1. So these two, you can think of them as reflections with no relations between them. So now getting to the meat of this whole thing, this was the theorem proven by Atiyah and Bart. So to phrase it in a simple way, assume that M is a manifold with the Hamiltonian G action and that the fixed point set M superscript G is finite. Then suppose you have any G-equivariant vector bundle V on M. You have the following equality. So on the left-hand side, you have the order characteristic. So this is the double complex, double cohomology associated to this vector bundle. So each cohomology group serves as a representation of the group G. Therefore, you can take the trace. And when you take alternating traces, you get a certain virtual representation because you have these minor signs. So that's what the left-hand side means. The right-hand side, he hears the beauty of it. Like a priori, this thing on the left-hand side is very hard to compute. But Atiyah and Bart showed that they were able to prove this in terms of data just around the fixed point. So just to explain this, because P is a fixed point and V is a G-equivariant vector bundle, that induces an action of G on B restricted to P. So you can take its trace. And also, there's an induced representation of G on the cotangent bundle of M at P. And this representation has certain eigenvalues. So what you do is you take the identity map minus this induced representation and you find its eigenvalues. You multiply them together. And Atiyah and Bart basically is saying that it's enough to compute this fairly simple thing on the right-hand side. And you have inequality. So that works for finite-dimensional manifolds. So our goal is to extend this to the base loops, which is infinite-dimensional. And to start with, we will write this in a slightly different way. So instead of having the denominator be the product of some eigenvalues, we're going to write R sub w. So this stands for a rational function, which depends on w. And I write R w because if you remember the T cross S1 action, it was proven that the fixed points of this action are indexed by the fellow group. So if we think back to the paraboloid I mentioned earlier, the fixed points are basically the vertices of that paraboloid. So basically, for every fixed point, which is every element in the fellow group, we get a certain rational function. So in the finite-dimensional case, this rational function would just be given by the product of all eigenvalues of identity minus this induced representation. So yeah, as you can see here, this denominator. And in this case, the character of the tangent cone around that point is exactly equal to this product here. And this all works for smooth manifolds. But as we'll see, our situation isn't so simple. So the first difficulty is that this is infinite-dimensional, so the theorem doesn't directly apply. However, we can take a filtration. So we have x0 and x1, but so on and so on, where their union is equal to omega g. And each one of these is the finite-dimensional space. And these spaces are called Schubert varieties. So this might be familiar to you if you know something about Schubert varieties. This is basically an infinite-dimensional vision. So which brings us to the second difficulty. The second difficulty is that Schubert varieties are generally singular. And in the case of omega su2, only the simplest one, the two-dimensional one, is actually smooth. Everything else is singular. So again, this Atiyah Baugh theorem doesn't directly apply. But we are saved by the fact that each Schubert variety has a well-known desingularization. And topologically, they can be thought of as twisted products of spheres. And so they're built on top of each other by twisting a certain projectivized line bundle. So the four-dimensional versions of this are basically Herzberg services. The two-dimensional version is just a sphere. And then you keep adding on, like, more twisted line bundles. And these are known as thought Samuelson manifolds. So because these are smooth, this is where we will apply the Atiyah Baugh formula. Okay, so another quick detour. I'm sorry about this typo. I'm going to talk about pre-quantum line bundles. So a pre-quantum line bundle over a simplistic manifold is a permission line bundle with connection such that the curvature of the connection is cohomologous to omega. So usually, like, there's a normalization here. I think it's over times i over 2 pi. But for us, we're going to ignore that because it doesn't matter much for the purposes of our calculation. And suppose we have a movement map psi, then we can define this quantum operator given by the fundamental measure field and this movement map. So the point is that if M is scalar, then we can use the scalar polarization to get a representation of G on the space of holomorphic sections. And that's what we'll do for omega G. So for omega G, we can do this with the positive energy representations of omega G with highest weight lambda. So these are irreducible representations which correspond to certain line bundles. We call these L of lambda. So we have this proposition by Shrawan Kumar who says that line bundles on omega G are parameterized by integers. So therefore, the prevaric group is isomorphic to the integers. So they're basically multiples of the zero with fundamental weight of this alpha and the algebra. So once we're given these line bundles, and we have this filtration by Schubert varieties, we can of course restrict these bundles to each Schubert variety XW. And since we have this desingularization, maybe I can draw some. So we have a desingularization from the Boss-Danlison manifolds to the Schubert varieties. We can pull back any line bundle on the Schubert varieties to get another line bundle, a prevaric line bundle. And so in that way, we can consider the holomorphic sections of this line bundle here and use the Atiyah-Bach theorem on this line bundle. And so our results will mostly focus on the case where G equals SU2. And for this group, omega of SU2, you can consider the reduced alpha and alpha group. And this is isomorphic to Z. And we have an ascending chain. So this is given by, I remember, the two generators S0 and S1, S0, S1, S0, S0, S10. And you just keep adding alternating generators to the front. So we have this infinite ascending chain. And this chain corresponds to a filtration of Schubert varieties. So you will have X sub S0, X sub S1, S0, and so on. And each one of them will have a complex dimension, the length of this word. We'll denote the length n elements of this chain by Wn. And in this way, remember what I said earlier about fixed points, in the case of omega SU2, they're indexed by the integers. Oh, sorry. So this is the Schubert variety filtration. And for any reduced word, by reduced, I mean there are no sub words that are equal to this. And we can define this sort of weird looking quantity as W given by e to the, I guess, prefixes of this word applied to the simple root a ij. So don't worry if it looks complicated. This is just sort of bookkeeping notation to write a nice theorem at the end. And we're going to denote SWn by Sn for simplicity. And I remember the rational functions from earlier. So these are these rational functions. For each Wn, there is a rational function. And we're going to call that Rn for simplicity. And for each Wn, there's a Schubert variety where we'll call that Xn for simplicity. Okay, so here we have our theorem. So the rational functions in the localization formula for omega g are given by, so in the denominator, we have this product over all positive roots of the Fnv algebra SL2. And on top, we have an alternating, sorry, we have a signed quality involving this Sn. And we have this extra term with e to the w applied to alpha 1. Oh, sorry. This should really be Wm. So the word with length n applied to this simple root here. And so how do we prove this? So remember, the Schubert varieties themselves are singular. So we must prove the formula for Bach-Samuelson varieties or manifolds using the Atiyah-Bach formula. And it's important to note that it suffices to do this on the Bach-Samuelson manifolds because the space of holomorphic sections of this, the pullback of this line bundle is isomorphic to restricting the line bundle to Schubert varieties. So even though the Schubert varieties are singular, we can still carry out the computation on their desingularizations. And we get the exact same thing as representations of T cross s1. And to prove, so this is what we get for each individual Schubert variety. So again, this is derived by doing it on the Bach-Samuelson manifolds first. Because strictly speaking, the Atiyah-Bach theorem does not apply to Schubert varieties. And we get this, I guess, more messy looking formula. And what's important to note here is that on the top, in addition to this quantity Sm and this extra term here, we have a sum over what we call restricted partitions. So we define this restricted partition P sub A B C to be the number of integer partitions of C into at most A parts, all of which are at most B. So this is a very restrictive version instead of the normal integer partitions. But yes, this formula will involve these restricted partitions. So the idea is that if you have one of the line bundles I mentioned earlier, and you want to compute the order characteristic, so you would use these as the rational functions. And in the simple case of Schubert manifolds, the denominator would just be a product of eigenvalues. And the numerator would just be one. But in this case, because the Schubert varieties are singular, you get something a bit more complicated. And one remark I will make is that so the order characteristics of these Schubert varieties are isomorphic to what are called D my zero modules. So these are final dimensional sub modules of the of the entire irreducible representation. So in the past, in the literature, there was a formula to compute the characters of these D my zero modules. But they were none of them were explicit or effective. So basically, you had to define these divided difference operators. So those are sort of like a discrete version of differential operators. And you apply them iteratively to the highest weight. And that does give you the the character of the module. But in our approach, we have these rational functions, you can multiply by explicitly. So in this way, we can get a very effective formula for the same thing. Instead of having to iteratively apply these divide difference operators. And just as in the finite dimensional case, you might recall that there's a cost on multiplicity formula for calculating multiplicities of any given representation. So we have something similar here. First, let's define capital sub beta mu to be the number of solutions to the equation. And sub alpha times alpha equals mu, where alpha is any positive that not equal to beta. And all these coefficients have to be non negative. So basically, this is a, I guess, fancy version of an integer partition, except we're excluding certain certain integers from being used. And of course, this is not just one dimensional, this is more like in in ZN, how many vectors, how many ways are there of adding vectors to get a certain value. And by reading off the rational functions derived in the previous sections. So if we recall, we have these rational functions. We can treat these as geometric series.  Once we do that, we obtain the following cost on multiplicity formula for omega s u two. So our proposition is that for K positive and lambda equals K times the zero with fundamental weight, then the multiplicity of the weight alpha in the irreducible representation, our lambda is given by this following sum here. So this is nothing fancy. We just did this by reading off this one right here. And a priori, this is an infinite sum. But in fact, for each alpha, this will always be finite because if you look inside this bracket here, so only finally, many of these are actually positive weights. So therefore, only finally, many of these will actually have non zero partitions. And and so no matter what happens, the right hand side will always be a finite sum. That's why this multiplicity actually makes sense. So I should say that so in principle, the same methods can be used to compute for the case of g equals s u n, not just s u two, in which case, so let me go back here. So we expect that the formula will be almost exactly the same, except that in this bracket, we would have more terms at the end. So one for each alpha and so on. So this is our conjecture for g equals s u n.


So we're here at the opt-in vent. So who are you? I'm opt-in vent. I'm the CEO of opt-in vent You're the founder one of the co-founders and that's the other co-founder that has some gentlemen over there He's the CTO of the CEO. So what are you showing here? You have these are the aura glasses AR smart glasses So what's going on here? So these are the most powerful and complete smart glasses available today in the whole world in the whole world They have the Flip view feature so you can you have two positions for the display one is the augmented reality Position and one is the glance position We have a forward-facing five megapixel camera with autofocus. We have a dual-core processor With four gigabytes of memory like the oh my poor right yes, correct. We have a very large track pad We have a nine-axis position sensor. So gyro compass accelerometer. We have Wi-Fi Bluetooth and GPS connectivity We have an ambient light sensor proximity sensor Microphone sound its own battery and it runs apps as a standalone device so Opt-in vent have you launched any palatinate or are you launching soon? We're going to be launching So this is a developer platform This is the first order and they don't this will be launching in May And this is the the first product that we have we have made he changed based on our patented Display technology. Can you try to wear it? I? Don't know if whites my color, but is it possible to use what's called a prescription Prescription glasses it's possible to put a prescription clip, but you cannot just put these over your prescription glasses right now All right, so what's the price? the pre-order price is 700 euros For the hardware platform plus SDK plus support so can we try to take it off and Let me try to film the screen that is okay No, so but it does work in there. There's a what's what's the you can't it's just your camera That's that's not going to be compatible. How does it work with the prison? That's it's a retinal projector So it's basically projects Light onto your retina. Yes, it's a it's a projector. It's a projection technology So it's not what's it called. It's not in the same way as the Google glass or it is it is similar But we're using a completely different technology which allows us to have a display that's three times larger than Google glass in terms of surface area Twice as bright and much more energy efficient And it's made by molded plastic elements so it can scale very very nicely and These plastic elements don't interfere too much with your vision. No, it's completely completely see-through And here again We have an advantage versus Google glass because it's it's a true see-through system allowing allowing for augmented reality Whereas Google glass has a small Display that's up in your right-hand corner, which is great as a secondary or let's say companion display However, you can't do augmented reality with it because the see-through is not that great So what's your software? What's going on here? Is Android? Android 4.0 point two point two four point two point two and what's the UI and what's So there's yeah, there's a mouse like a trackpad here. We have the possibility of voice We have the possibility of gesture recognition again. We don't develop all those layers But we enable that by bringing together this very complete platform The UI currently is just a stock and boys. And are you based where? we're based in France and Ren and in the Silicon Valley in the USA and You it's gonna be huge, right? We hope so. Are you doing Kickstarter or something that or we are thinking about doing a crowdfunding campaign yet


We blasted out to maybe about 20, 30 students. And in the first two weeks, we didn't get a response, and we kind of got nervous. And then all of a sudden, whammo. They all came up, and they really want to talk to you. One young lady here had the longest, strangest trip journey here that involved interactions with a physician's assistant and a nurse in an emergency room. And they asked her a question, why she came to Niagara Falls. And she said, I said I came to Niagara Falls to talk about textbook affordability. And she responded.  So, without further ado, I'd like to welcome to you to OpenEd 2018, the closing day. I want to thank everybody for making a trip to New York to come see us. We were really happy to host.  So I did say to them, I said listen, you're talking to the people who have drank in the Kool-Aid, made the Kool-Aid, poured glasses of the Kool-Aid, and have, are the people who walk you to your classroom on the first day, show you where that building is that you can't find, maybe even throw a few bucks in your pocket if you're needed a little bump. These are the people that go to bat for students every day. So they're very happy to be here to talk to you. And I'm just going to roll into it right now with the first question, because there's a lot of them and only a few minutes really to spare. So, Evan, I'm going to tee the first one up with you. What year are you in right now in your studies and, you know, how much have you spent on textbooks this semester? Hi, everybody. My name is Evan Rufano. I go to the SUNY Old Westbury. I'm a senior in politics, economics, law major, two term. Thank you. Two term academic affairs director with the Student Assembly and advisor board with OER. This semester about $365 and total $3,000. So now we remember why we're all here. Carson, are you ready?  This is a course where we'll be using OER. What was your initial reaction to that? Sure, so hello everybody. My name is Carson Rowe. I go to SUNY ESF. I'm the vice president of the Undergraduate Student Association. So my first reaction when I walked into my course and saw that we were not going to be using a traditional textbook using open educational resources, I was a little taken back. It was one of my first experiences with OER. So I wasn't totally sure what to expect, but I was one really excited that it wasn't about to have to buy a $150 textbook out of pocket. So really just that excitement of being able to, you know, buy a little bit more food that week. Jay, I'm going to throw that same question at you. Hi guys, my name is Jay. I'm a student at Monroe Community College. I'm studying environmental engineering. And what was the question again? How much have I spent on textbooks? Let's see here. I came back to school as an adult. I probably spent over $2,500 on textbooks since I came back. Before learning about OER. So it's been a huge savings for me and I'm a single dad. So it means a lot for our family. Jay, this is a, you know, a personal question. You have a daughter? I do, yeah. She's five? Yeah, she just started kindergarten. So I'm really, really proud and happy. And she's not buying textbooks currently, correct? Thank you. So a lot of the conversations we've had this week have been about, you know, OER being really like a catalyst for innovation in the classroom. OER kind of leads to different ways that we can maybe improve teaching and learning inside the classroom. So, you know, one of the questions I have and I think I'll start with my pal Shaday who I spent a few hours with last night in the emergency room. So I know what your answer is so that's why I'm asking you. Yeah. Just can you talk about how using OER in the classroom was different than using just traditional textbook material or course materials? Hello everyone. My name is Shaday Kamacho. I am a student at Tompkins Coordinated Community College majoring in Childhood Education. And I am the president for my student government. I'd like to say that it was a little bit of a trap of getting here. I'm excited to be here and say that my experience in classes that pertain to OER were, I think, absolutely amazing. I think the most interesting part about it is that every time I have a class that is an OER class, there is much more interaction between the professors and the students. And instead of being an intimidating setting, it's always been more of a welcoming setting in the community in the classroom. I feel like that has enhanced my learning and made everybody else comfortable enough to learn more than what I have learned in a classroom that was based off of a textbook. I'd also like to say that I'm not that well at math. I know Sophia knows. I've always struggled with math. It's not my stronger area. But I did take a class in our school. It's offered. It's called Quantitative Literacy, Math 98. And it is an OER class with an OLI system of online resources. And I'd say I excelled in that class. It was the best math class that I have taken. Pretty challenging because it was much more different than the other OER courses. But it was so much more interesting. And all the resources that were given to us were new. But it helped us learn so much more rather than going off based off of a textbook. Because I'm pretty sure you guys know that most math classes are based off of work sheets and textbooks. So in that math class, I got an A plus. That was the first time in my life. Jean Marie, I'm going to ask you that same question because I know we were talking about the way you use OER in SUNY Geneseo. And you've used it inside the classroom. But you've also used it in other scenarios. And so if you could kind of talk about that a little because I think people would get jazzed. Hi, I'm Jean Marie Ryan. I'm a senior history major at Geneseo. And we've been using OER as part of this course, INTD 188. It's this companion course to the freshman writing seminar. And while the freshman writing seminar teaches writing, the 188 teaches the more mechanical end of writing. So it works really well as a companion. And it works well alongside this course. Because as you're learning the more complicated ends of college level essay writing in INTD 105, you're also getting the mechanics and the basics of how to write a conclusion, where you want to use certain types of punctuation. So it works really good as a supplement. And I think one thing, I worked on this course over the summer developing quiz questions for it. And I think one thing about it that's very different from a traditional textbook and much better than a traditional textbook is the way it can be personalized. So the sections of this course and the questions we wrote are personalized to Geneseo and Geneseo students. We included references to like buildings on Main Street that all the students are going to know about and classes the students are going to know about. So it feels like something that's tailored to these students rather than just a stuffy and personal textbook. So Catherine, I'm going to kind of now have her pass the mic to you because you worked at that same tutoring center, correct? Yes, I do. Okay. And they're both SUNY Geneseo students. So Geneseo, the deck is stacked, if you haven't figured it out, the deck is stacked. So Jean-Marie kind of talked a lot about individualized and personalized learning and she talked a lot about having kind of like taking ownership of the curriculum.  Yes, I am. All right. And so when the students come to the tutoring center and they come to you for help, kind of describe maybe the way the OER plays out in that situation. Okay, yeah, just to introduce myself really quickly, my name is Catherine Kasha. I'm a senior at SUNY Geneseo. I'm an English literature major with a double minor in philosophy and linguistics. So the way that OER is utilized in the Writing and Learning Center, I am a tutor, as Marc did already mention. And it's very, very convenient, especially when students come into the tutoring center for help in a lot of their essays. The INTD-188 is great. It is something I can just pull up right on my laptop if I ever need to explain something to my students that I can't really explain in my own words. I am more than happy to just pull up INTD-188 and all of the modules are right there. There are plethora of examples on there. So if I don't have the words myself, I showed them an example of whatever it is that the student has a question about. And after that, it is just another way that I can help the student write their essay a little bit better. And the fact that I am using INTD-188 as a tutor in the Writing and Learning Center shows that student that we still use that course, even after that I have completed that class. It is still something you can use and utilize after that class has been completed. So it was just a wonderful tool to use for your writing in all of your four years in college and not just in that one class. Thank you. Deidra, you and I are both Erie Community College students. Well, I am a graduate. You are just about there. You graduate in May of 2019. Nice. So go cats. In, you know, first off, how old are your children? First of all, my name is Deidra Slaughter. I attend Erie Community College. I'll be graduating May of 2019. I have a son that's 29 and a daughter that's 19. Where do they go to school or where have they gone to school? My son went to Central State and my daughter attends Buffalo State right now. So there's three of you in college at the same time? Yes, it is. Get ready because we're going to do some math. I'm broke. Yeah. So, yeah, right. You don't need to do math on that. So overall, how much do you think the three of you combined spend on course materials during the semester? Probably about $1,200.  Yes. All right. Now, are they currently using open educational resources at their school? No, they're not. So what advice would you give to those institutions or what direction would you give to those institutions that want, phrase it this way, if you had an opportunity to go talk to their college presidents, you had an opportunity to go talk to their senior leadership, you had a chance to go talk to their student government, what would you stress with them is the most important thing about bringing open educational resources to their campus? I had a conversation with my daughter about the cost of books and everything, and she was talking to a couple of her friends, and some of them were planning on dropping out because they couldn't afford the books. And so with the open edge, they actually would save them a lot of money and would be able to further their education. So by using OER, they saved money and then they invested it back in their own learning. Yes. I think that's a pretty darn good message. Thank you. I don't know. How many people were at Ryan Hirsch's session yesterday at Corning Community College? One of his students is here. You know, I failed to bring an image of this OER they used because the SUNY OER services helped them to get a printed version of the OER. What's that? So Alexis said she's going to tweet it. So Sarah, you being a student at Corning Community College, you took public speaking with Ryan Hirsch, what was your involvement in the production of that OER? Hi, my name is Sarah Bogdan. I did graduate this year as you said from SUNY Corning and I took a public speaking class which used OER which was drastically different from all of my experiences with other classrooms because I, for this class, was given an opportunity to do an honors project, as I mentioned in my presentation in which I edited the materials that we were using in the class. So we were looking at the textbook as something that was flexible that we were able to change to match the needs of everyone who was taking the class. So the students in general in the class were involved a little bit in contributing with ideas of what we could talk about in the class and what could be added in the textbook. And I looked at it on a much deeper level of going through the book page by page and seeing what's in here that's relevant to students and what's missing that could be added in that could help everyone who's taking the class. So pulling in a lot of other content from other open sources and stuff like that, which again was just very different because I was used to seeing textbooks in traditional courses as something that were very rigid, of course, and very fixed and something that was immutable and that you kind of had to work around when you were using them in your class. And so this was different because we were looking at the text as something that we were making work for what we were doing in the class and so we were constantly improving it and I was improving it in the project that I did to make it more relevant for the course. So I'm going to, we have two Michaels up here so I'm going to start with Michael O. Michael was, he joined us for dinner last night and we were talking about, you know, Westchester Community College or previous school, right? Kind of like your experience taking particular courses with OER. So if you could just kind of talk about your experience taking those difficult courses with OER and, you know, your school right now and what their usage of OER is. Hello, my name is Michael Ozerook. I am a student at SUNY Maritime College studying mechanical engineering. My experience with OER has been very good. It was two semesters of a community college, I'm sorry, Westchester Community College graduated from there this summer and I took differential equations and calculus too at Westchester and that was, both of those were with OER textbooks. They were both great experiences. OER has all the fundamentals. I've never had a problem with the textbooks. They have always been a full deliver of what you need out of a textbook. I've never had a problem with them. So I'm going to go to the next Michael. This is your first semester taking courses with OER, correct? It is. All right.  Of course. Well good morning everybody. Thank you so much for having us all this morning. My name is Michael West. I'm a senior at Binghamton University studying history and political science. I'm also the director of academic affairs for the SUNY Student Assembly. This is the first semester that I'm taking a course where all of my textbooks are online and knowing going in, especially as a senior having paid collectively somewhere around the same 3,000, 4,000 ballpark that Evan had talked about previously, that's a huge weight off my shoulders. I mean Carson had made a point about, great, I get to buy more food. That's especially true for students who live off campus, who don't have the same meal plan regulations for students like Jay, who are learning how to go back to school who are non-traditional students.  And at the end of the four years, depending on what institution you go to, that could equal a semester's worth of tuition. And that will make all the difference. And for me, knowing that that was an opportunity, I was over the moon. So now this is going to get really chaotic for a moment because I'm going to ask everybody to respond to this one. So the assumption a lot of people have in this room and outside this room is that the reason students don't buy textbooks are because of the cost. And I shouldn't say that. The reason they don't take certain classes is because of the cost. And that sometimes they decide not to buy the textbooks because of what the price of those textbooks are. Could you kind of describe all of you to a certain extent, and then I'll stop because there's a follow-up. What is your decision making as you go through the process of whether you're going to buy something or not, you know, a textbook or a software? What's the decision making process you go through in determining if you buy it or not? Yeah, we'll start.  I'd like to start, and I'd like to say that I'm going to be as honest as I can be. When a teacher requires a textbook, I'm usually not the person to just have the textbook prior to the class because I've had experience where the class was, it said that it needed a textbook, and then when I got to the classroom, the professor didn't ask for the textbook. So now I wait to save my money. And honestly, what I do is that I find my way around it. I look online to see if there are any PDF versions or anything that I can legally download into my iPad, or I can go to... If you're fortunate enough, I'm fortunate enough that Compton School of Community College has a library with a lot of books, and I just go to the library and make copies of whatever chapter I'm going to use and then I bring it right back. I don't usually go... I mean, I'm not worried about the price, but it's not the first thing that I do. The first thing that I do is how can I get away and around from this price? That's what I do. So, yeah, I've... Sorry, Mark, what was the question again? So, like, when you go through the decision-making process, whether you're going to buy the materials or a course or not, you know, what are the... What's the process you go through? How do you determine if you're going to actually buy materials or not? Yeah, so I've always been fortunate because my parents support me with textbooks, costs through tuition and tuition as well. So, me not taking a class because of the textbook cost has never been an issue, but that being said, I'm sure I have... My parents have wasted lots of money on textbooks that did not need to actually be purchased. Like she said, there are lots of PDFs out there online and, you know, openly licensed resources you can use as an alternative to textbooks. So, the material is definitely out there. So, to follow up with all of that, I usually try to wait for other students to ask them, is this textbook really necessary to get an A? If that answers yes, the first thing I'll do is try to find the previous version. So, either going on Amazon and looking for a past edition because when you're looking for those past editions, you're looking at saving... I mean, it can be hundreds of dollars just there. But, of course, if the option is there to go open access and get a relatively cheaper, almost free educational resource, that's the first choice right there. Hey, Evan, I'm going to stop the train for a second. All right? Michael, can you pick up on that? And then we might have to shut off the cameras for one of the follow-up questions I have. Awesome. Yeah, so this is a good question. This is something for those of you in the audience. Mark has been asking us privately to think about in preparation for this. Personally, when it comes to the decision-making process, it's time commitment. I've been known to email well past midnight. Some members of this organization have been fortunate enough, I would say, to get one AM email. It's like students never really sleep. We don't have a clock. We don't leave the office at 5 p.m. and get there by 9 a.m. We're part-time jobs. We're taking online and in-person courses. Sometimes we got to drive to work because we missed the bus. Sometimes we got to walk, and that's through any type of weather. There are other sacrifices that we have to make in order to upgrade our professional resumes and our professional status, but that means not doing the reading at night for class. That means not being able to buy that textbook because you need that money for that extra tank of gas. All of these things together is you have to prioritize. If you don't prioritize and you don't budget and realize that not everything is absolutely essential, then as students, you cannot succeed. It's not a choice of can you or will you succeed. It's that you cannot succeed if you try to do everything. So for students, you have to learn to make that priority and that choice, and you have to know, is this necessary to get an A? And is this necessary for me to do the best that I possibly can? And in those scenarios, sometimes it's helpful to ask previous students. Sometimes it's helpful to consult online forums and say, hey, have you done this before? What is your best advice? And previous students can help you navigate those choices. And I'm fairly confident in saying that a lot of us have tried to make the best choices that we can. Sometimes we're right, sometimes we're wrong. But if you don't prioritize, then it's going to be very difficult to succeed. So I'll let you pick up on that. Okay. Yeah, I agree with what you were saying about prioritizing. I agree with that. And I also can relate a lot with what Carson was saying about just describing what it's like when you're trying to decide whether or not to take course materials because I usually pull a lot of students as well. I think there's a lot of conversations between classmates saying, you know, oh, you took this class. How much should you actually use the textbook? Should I really bother investing in buying this material? Because, you know, a lot of the times it'll say, like, this is a required text for the class and you end up reading one chapter and that's it and then you regret spending the money on that book. So that's usually what it looks like for me when I'm trying to find out where my priorities are and which course materials for which classes I should invest in getting. And I usually do go and get the book because I like to be prepared for my classes, but I don't think I've ever spent the money on getting a brand new version of the book, which is kind of like similar to what was said earlier because I usually try to find where I can rent the textbook or else get used battered old copies or old editions of the book. So that's usually what it looks like for me. Jim, I'm going to ask you to answer the next one. And then we're going to put some questions out to the audience. There's mics in the back, so if you've got questions, get ready. If you think about, you know, in your decision making and selecting classes, what are the top three things you look for when you go to select a class? Well, my first two semesters, the first thing, the first thing I looked for was just, is this part of my major? Is this a gen ed? Because I was trying as hard as I could to get out a semester early because of tuition costs. That didn't work out. And then I think my second priority is probably professors I've heard are good. And then third priority is probably textbook costs. I have dropped a course because just the textbook was so expensive and it wasn't a course required for my major. It would have been interesting to stay in, but I didn't feel like spending so much on the textbook. And for the past two semesters, I'd been splitting the textbook costs with a friend in the class and we would just swap the textbook back and forth. But then he dropped and I was not going to pay the entire textbook myself. Fourth, I think probably my interest level in the subject material is also tied for third. The textbook, the cost is a big thing I look at and how many textbooks there are. Because I'm a history major, so most of my books aren't the big $100 textbooks that haven't actually been updated since 1990. But you end up with a lot of smaller books and so those costs add up. I rent as much as I can, but it does add up. Katherine, what's your decision-making process look like? I feel bad for saying this, but I'm going to say exactly what Jean Marie just said. We are both SUNY Geneseo students. We both kind of look at the decision-making kind of similarly when I'm actually graduating a semester early. Sorry, Jean Marie. I'm graduating this December and the reason for that being is because I like to get things out of the way, like my genets in my first two semesters as a freshman. Yet again, first thing I looked at as a freshman was the class and if it goes along with my degree works and if I can just get out of those fast enough, that'll be great. I actually pay for my own textbooks. My beautiful parents are wonderful and they help me with my tuition costs and everything else, but for textbooks, I'm on my own. So I'm fortunate enough to have a job. However, my job pays for food and textbooks. That's about it. Gas somewhere in there. So second would definitely be textbook costs. However, I am an English major, so most of my books are one cent on Amazon, so that's really not that big of a deal for me. You know, like Shakespeare plays. I love them, but I am fortunate enough to have wonderful professors who will let us know ahead of time if we need those books or not, so it's easier for me to just not buy the books ahead of time because the professor will let me know. And my third would definitely be interest level of the class and the professors as well. Whether or not they are rated well on rate my professor or not. And if that class is at 8.30 in the morning, we're not, so that's definitely up there. They have yet to have an 8.30 class, and I'm graduating, so I'm very excited. But textbooks are up there as well. Would you say that the professor teaching the class is more important than the course materials? I mean, if you were going to select a course based on a professor and you found out the textbook or the course materials are going to cost 250 bucks, but you heard the professor was like, really cool like me. Now, would you say, forget it, I'm going to take McBride's class because the 250 bucks was well worth the entry fee or even 100 bucks? If that class, so if that class is important for my major, if it is an English class, if it is a 400 English, it's difficult to find a lot of English classes in Geneseo that are taught in the semester that I need them to be taught in. So if it's a 400 level, 300 that I need and it's taught by a wonderful professor, however the course materials are $250, I will take that class. I'll just spend $250. But other than that, I definitely believe that the professor in my personal opinion is more important than the cost of the course materials just because if I love the professor, I will want to spend that money and it will be worth it for me at the end because English is definitely what I want to get into, so I'll probably use those books later in life as well than just in that class. Deidre, you have a bit of a different life experience than a lot of other people on the panel, so I'm wondering, you know, what is your decision-making process look like when you decided to take classes? Well, seeing that I have two other people in college, what was more important for me is my daughter. She wants to be a doctor. So me spending more money on books that she needs will be more usable for my family. Actually, I took math last semester and math always been my work subject and the professor I had was excellent and I go around telling everybody, if you take statistics, take it with David, he's excellent and I love him to death. Did you ever take a class where you didn't have the materials and do you think it negatively impact the way you performed inside the class if you did not have them? I took a course last semester and I didn't have all the things that I needed and I didn't do as well as I did with the other classes that I had the books or the material online to succeed in those classes. And Jay, I'll ask you a similar question.  Yeah, actually that has happened to me. One semester I didn't get my full financial aid because I switched my major and one of the courses wasn't considered part of my major so I did end up going to the library and taking pictures of the book but it took so much time out of my schedule that I did lose. Just running around to the library taking pictures of the textbook once a week did affect my grades for sure. And just by a show of hands, how many of you have taken out student loans to pay for course materials? Do you know what the interest rate on those loans are? Four and a half. I was just curious. Evan, I'm going to close with you and then we're going to set some people out there ask some questions that they may have. If there was one thing that these people out here, one thing that they could do to help spread the word of the importance of open educational resources, the importance of textbook affordability, the importance of just affordability in general for students, what would be that one bit of advice you would give them? What could they do? I think it would be actually two things I would offer as advice. The first is that we talk about shared governance quite often but we don't really do it on our campuses. We'll say that we really appreciate bringing all the stakeholders together, tackling one issue, finding solutions but we won't do it. At SUNY Old Westbury we have students on over 25 campus committees which I think is a really great thing and we've made great strides this year. But also continuing what you all are doing here. The people here today are what gives us hope. Yeah, by all means. And anybody if you want to respond to that, feel free. Thank you. To expand a little bit, Evan said about the necessity for shared governance. The one thing that I would recommend is to talk to students. If we're the first students that you're hearing about, sharing our stories and sharing what it's like to have these experiences with OER, I would highly encourage you to talk to some other students as well because I'm one about their students. No, I can guarantee you their students on every campus you've ever been to or every campus you've ever worked with who can tell you just as crazy, if not crazy, your stories about when they were in school. They're really powerful and if you want to spread and start a grassroots conversation on campuses and across the system, talking to students is absolutely the best way to start forward with that. I really agree with what my colleagues were saying, but I'd like to also add that, just adding on to more of the shared governance and I think that one of the most effective ways of spreading something out is it goes from mouth to mouth and everybody starts sharing the same thing. So I think that, yes, it is very important for you to speak to students that are not aware of this because I've taken many classes that were OER that I didn't even know were OER. Well, wow, this professor's nice, but it was really an OER class. So I'd like to say that speaking with them but also trying to speak to the other faculty or other people that you work with and the colleges would be very helpful because, of course, I feel like some people are just a little ignorant and won't give closer attention to what the students are asking for, but if someone that is at sort of their level of understanding approaches them and introduces this to them, then they could have a positive impact and that would get spreaded mouth to mouth and work by work throughout the college campus and possibly other colleges. I just want to add that I completely agree and I've had classes with professors who have warned us about the textbook costs and told us to buy the oldest edition we possibly can because it'll be cheaper. So I feel like there's definitely a basis there. If those professors were more informed about OER, there's definitely a basis there to start developing OER more and then instead of them advising us to buy really cheap textbooks, we would have the resource. How many hours of sleep did you get last night? I'd say two hours. Two hours, yes. The emergency room was lovely last night. All right, are there any questions or is Mike's back here? I have a library and so I'm the person that students come to sometimes looking for textbooks or solutions to some of these problems and sometimes they ask me about a textbook that has an access code and that the reserve copy of the library really doesn't help that much because it's still packed by access code. Sometimes I tell them, because the doctor's director asks them tell them if there are things available to make this much more affordable and I often wonder if that's something that you've ever done. Is that a reasonable thing to ask students to do or are you curious? Hi, thank you. I actually was telling my professor I was not going to be in class on Thursday because I was going to OER conference and he was like, oh, OER. We'll give him the recording. He canceled class anyway, so I'm okay with it. But we were talking about how do you convince faculty that are a little abrasive to the idea of OER and it just started to get me thinking it's kind of hard to start that discussion. It's hard to just take them away from what they've been doing for a couple of years or 10 years or whatever amount of years you're doing. But then I started with, let's look at your syllabus. Are you using any open license resources and you just don't know about it?  I think that's how you bridge that gap, that divider between the faculty that are, maybe I'll call them on the edge of going to OER and then the ones that have accepted OER. I'd like to add that I think it is a great suggestion that you tell the students to speak to their professors and see what they can do when it comes to access codes because I don't think it's the first thing you think. I think the first thing that we think of is going to a librarian asking them for some help. You guys are also limited. So maybe that's why I'm saying that OER is so important because I don't think it's so much just the textbook affordability. I feel like it's so much more interaction inside the classroom and that makes it comfortable for everyone else. I think right off the bat, professors are intimidating, especially the great ones like some from my school that are right here. Intimidating but great professors. So if we have the opportunity to speak to them, I'm pretty sure they're going to understand a one-on-one conversation rather than, and especially if it is when you need help, I think they're going to be willing to help no matter what their opinion is going to be based on the class. Maybe they'll just try to help that one person, but it could start by you and then helping everyone else. So I think it's a great suggestion. So another question? Hi. You're one of the students that you have to go static over your time in the school. So my question to you is, what would you want to be on your first day of university or college to know about textbooks and how can you help people understand them? So on my campus, I'm an orientation leader, so I'm one of the first faces that the new first years get to see. And one of the first pieces of advice I give to them is don't buy your textbooks right away. Don't go over to the bookstore and buy them right away. Wait a second. See it what the syllabus says. Talk to the professor and see if you're actually going to need that textbook in full. A lot of the first year classes that students in my college take, they say this textbook is required, but really, really you only need it to take the online homework assignments associated with that textbook, not the actual textbook, or it only gets opened once or twice. So I always tell them to wait and I say that if you absolutely have to buy it, do everything in your power to look for an older edition, buy it used or rent it. Thank you. If you don't mind, I'm going to take that one and expand upon it a little bit. Not necessarily just so much of a device is how do I obtain textbooks or advice to freshmen or advice to first year students. Some of the conversations that I've been having around this topic is that students that are most benefited by OER services are underclassmen or students who are just beginning their career. And in a lot of ways, they're the ones who don't exactly have the resources or connections in order to make these changes. So for a lot of students like us who are academic careers, we can talk about this because we've been doing it for so long. We've developed these systems, as you said. So one of the best pieces of advice that I would give to starting out students is to talk to your professor and hound them. There's a lot of courses that are used, like some great examples of buying literature books that you're going to use for the rest of your life, but knowing that Frankenstein is on OER at SUNY, knowing that Chem111 textbook is available for SUNY and making that push for those 400 student lecture hall courses because those are the students who need it the most and those are the students who don't know how to advocate for it. So something that I would do is definitely sit them down and say, put pressure on your professor, put pressure on other students to talk to your professor and change it for the years to come because those faculty members won't hear it because those students won't know how to advocate for it. And if we don't look backwards in order to help students look forward, then we're losing years of progress. So we're out of time and I screwed up because I didn't see the crowd. I know Lenore. I'm sorry. I didn't see the crowd forming and there was nobody there so we just kept going and then all of a sudden I looked out and there was 50 people standing there and they were the mic. So they are going to be around after. We're going to go to the maid of the mist. Possibly? Yeah. And so you can all come with us. We'll put on our ponchos. You can ask questions. Hashtag, why not? I want to thank the students of SUNY for reminding us that colleges were not built to employ all of us but to educate all of us. All right. Do you want me to introduce MJ? Or do you want to do it? You got it. Okay. Well listen, my friend MJ is coming up pretty soon so if you leave, you're going to miss out. Thank you very much.