DigEco 2018

OER implementation is highly contextual. From an institution's culture of teaching and learning to faculty access to funded professional development, OER advocates must engage in strategic processes to ensure that OER can take root across programs, departments, and colleges. Yet a one-size-fits-all solution is not an effective method for generating local practices; Global access necessitates diverse local practices responsive to the unique barriers that institutions of higher education face in their given region. In this talk, the presenters will explore the development of processes and practices to drive the adoption of OER in online courses at one institution and discuss methods for adapting these processes to fit a wider range of institutional challenges. The aim is to help attendees decipher realistic methods for lowering the barriers to OER adoption. The processes and practices to be explored include: how to build OER into the course development process, how to pitch OER to faculty, and methods for delivering OER materials to faculty in ways that make adoption as easy as possible.

The goals of this session include the following learning outcomes for attendees: - Understand effective practices for lowering OER adoption barriers including strategic implementation processes that support large-scale adoption; - Understand how institutions can be strategic about adding OER into the course development process; - Identify practical strategies for engaging with faculty at their given institutions; - Formulate methods for OER adoption responsive to the local practices of teaching and learning.  Attendees will leave the workshop with outlines of OER implementation processes and materials used to guide faculty OER adoption.

Open educational resources not only save students from outrageous textbook costs, but they also allow instructors to mix-and-match content for a more personalized, engaging learning experience. In this presentation I will review copyright and how it relates to creative commons licensing and the potential legal pitfalls to avoid when remixing and attributing works with different license types.

The session would help attendees be more confident in using Open content and better understand open licenses and copyright law.

In this Panel Discussion: Taking the form of the student’s point of view, the future of education will heavily rely on OER. So, how can we increase the adoption and use of OER within our educational institutions? The answer may lie within the students who attend these institutions. With this being said, how can we garner student support and build self-advocacy for OER with these learners? The answer seems so simple; no student wants and some simply cannot afford to pay the high costs of textbooks. Yet, affordability is only one thing to build support structures on, another would be to have students self-advocating for it siting quality, accuracy, currency and relativity. Student awareness and self-advocacy will be the main focus of the panel. The panel will be facilitated by an Instructional Designer and include the Student Body President, Vice President, and the current/previous Secretary of Academic Affairs from Boise State University. The audience will be able to engage with not only an expert on the topic of OER, but also student leaders who are advocating for use of OER and looking to share an exchange of ideas to boost OER adoption no matter campus size, location, or even instruction focus. The panel will discuss how OER can be more accurate, up-to-date, and relative -- allowing the students to be engaged in a more precise exchange of information within a given course. They will also highlight how adding OER awareness to the class registration process is expected to increase the number of courses offering OER versus traditional course materials.  

Outcomes: -Attendees will be able to compare what is happening at their institution with that of Boise State and its Associated Students Body Government with regards to OER. -Attendees will see how student awareness of OER at Boise state is being be built and see the plans for maintaining awareness year to year. -Attendees will be able to address specific challenges around OER  through the perspective of student. -Attendees will learn what ASBSU is currently doing and planning to do with regard to further OER at Boise State University. -Attendees will gain a greater understanding of the student leaders role in moving OER forward, working with faculty and administration.

Teaching and learning with Wikipedia has a big impact on important student learning outcomes. Come learn about the exciting work that Wiki Education is doing to help faculty and students throughout the country improve Wikipedia and deepen learning. 

Boise State recently welcomed Pressbooks into our portfolio of supported learning technologies. A Wordpress-based publishing platform, Pressbooks opens up powerful opportunities for reclaiming course content and sharing it openly in a variety of digital formats. This lightning talk offers an overview of the platform and introduces our strategies for letting learning experiences shape the tool's use (not the other way around). 

Open pedagogy is often forwarded as a solution to the failures of traditional education to be inclusive of students from non-Western cultures and other student populations that have been systemically silenced in and excluded from the academy. Yet substantial research gaps exist regarding OER-enabled pedagogy, including how it connects and conflicts with traditional models of academic integrity and how it may function in practice for historically oppressed student populations. After a brief review of foundational theories, attendees will work in groups to create an inventory of values and practices associated with traditional and open pedagogies and academic expectations, followed by discussion focused on how these impact students from different cultures in a globalized learning context. They will be encouraged to reflect on how they might begin to address these complexities with students in a way that centers marginalized students, particularly those less familiar with Western academic culture. Finally, attendees will have an opportunity to work collaboratively on crafting language that can help students understand these complex negotiations of giving credit and intellectual property, all while learning in an educational system not designed for openness.  

The goals of the session include the following learning outcomes:  Explore the possibilities and potential of OER and academic integrity working together to support student learning, as well as the tensions and complications that exist between OER and academic integrity; Consider the implications related to power, privilege, and equity that OER and academic integrity have in a globalized learning context; Engage with several foundational strategies for clarifying ethical expectations in the classroom and supporting students in their ongoing process of understanding scholarly writing. Attendees will leave with several resources, including: Academic integrity syllabus statement template for courses using OER-enabled pedagogy; A starter pack of resources for open educators to begin exploring academic integrity and culturally inclusive education.  

Did you know that Google For Education offers training and certification options for educators?  The foundation of these certifications consists of Educator Level 1 and Level 2. These prerequisites not only allow you to go on to apply for Google Certified Trainer and Google Certified Innovator, but also give you a great foundation of skills that will make you a better teacher and a GSuite guru! Come to this workshop and Google Certified facilitators will guide you through activities and get on the fast track to becoming certified in Google For Education programs!

Learn efficient avenues for pursuing Google For Education Certifications Participate in hands-on activities with relevant GSuite Edu tools Tap into a PLN/PLC of like minded Google Educators

Are you ready for students in you class to reach higher levels of achievement?  Would you like your students to develop greater confidence in themselves and their ability to learn?  If so, mastery teaching might be the choice for you.  With technology it is easy to personalize learning and ensure that every student knows content and skills.  In this session educators will learn how to set the stage for mastery by finding and curating resources using PBS LearningMedia. Tips and tricks will be shared to help you create personalized learning experiences that can be integrated with ease into your learning environment and at the same time develop students’ 21st century skills and ability to collaborate globally.

Attendees will be able to find various resources that fit their content.  They will also come away with tips, tricks, and artifacts to create personalized learning experiences for their students.

Idaho STEM Action Center was created three years ago to support Idaho educators. This is an chance to learn more about our opportunities and determine if you are eligible to receive funding and professional development support.


Attendees will learn how to access $4M in funding which is appropriated to the Idaho STEM Action Center.

Acadly is a user friendly, intuitive program that allows for active students engagement before, during and after class.  Klaxoon was designed to make meetings more productive and interesting but it can also be used to make classroom sessions more effective and interactive. Together they provide an interesting, easy to use, combo with which you can create a complete, interactive learning experience that extends well beyond the actual class meeting time.  In this session, we will demonstrate the basics of both programs in an interactive session that will show participants how to combine the two programs to extend learning outside of the classroom. We will show the basic features of both programs and show how easy and intuitive it is for both instructors and students to use them. In addition, three graduate students, Kayla Kinkead, Malcolm Moody and Elizabeth Allen, will provide a student perspective on how this worked from their perspective.

After the session, participants will have a basic understanding of how the tools work and how they can be combined to create an interactive learning experience. They will have experienced the tools from a student perspective and will know how to set up any kind of learning activity using both tools.  We will show how to provide study materials before class, set up interactive activities during class and follow up with a summary of the experience and materials for further study.  We will show how to do brainstorms with electronic post it notes, do instant word clouds, quizzes and opinion polls.
If you plan to attend our session, we have set up the interactive platform that we will be using at https://app.klaxoon.com/join/XPSRJK.  If you plan to attend and want a first hand experience of the software, send us an e-mail (jvos@uidaho.edu) and we will enroll you in the Acadly Course that we are developing for this session.

Machine Learning is a type of artificial intelligence that allows computers to continually identify patterns in data even when the data patterns change over time.
What if you could machine learning to identify patterns in student behavior and predict if a student was going to fail a course?

This presentation outlines Idaho Digital Learning's work on trying to answer that question and covers the processes used, the outcomes of the data, the learnings related to what data is important to the classroom.

The session will conclude with an evaluation of Cloud-based Machine learning options and how Cloud-based machine has changed the way Idaho Digital Learning approaches future projects.

Virtual Office Hours (VOH) are an alternative to traditional office hours. The virtual environment can provide students and instructors with more flexibility in meeting times and locations, content delivery, and types of interaction. A VOH can also provide a low-stakes platform for discussions, allowing students to better articulate their thought processes. Successful virtual sessions are dependent on thoughtful design. Questions which encourage deeper thinking, problem-solving, and critical analysis are essential student engagement and to the success of a virtual session.  VOH can make it easier for some students to get the help they need. Here are some of the known benefits of offering virtual sessions: •    Students can participate from any location •    Flexibility to target high demand hours–evening “homework” hours •    Opens a new or additional channel for communication •    May remove invisible barriers (shyness, intimidation) •    Multiple students can attend simultaneously •    Session can be recorded and archived for the benefit of other students •    Classmates can compare questions and help instruct each other •    Reduces time spent responding to individual questions via email •    Provides opportunities to implement active learning strategies •    Session can be adapted to student needs (muddiest point) •    Can be used for co-teaching, including TA’s or run by TA’s •    Review sessions before exams 

In this presentation, we will demonstrate how interactive 360-degree images can be used to create virtual tours of global spaces, both nationally and internationally. Creating these tours allows students to virtually visit environments that they are learning about in their courses. We will discuss best practices for creating virtual tours and explore how Boise State is utilizing the technology for future endeavors. Examples of virtual tours will be showcased for participants to explore.


Attendees will learn best practices and technologies for creating virtual reality spaces for students.

This free repository will soon host over 450 free classroom-ready activities for language instructors across Idaho to use in their classrooms. Learn more about Boise State World Languages' exciting new project for open educational resources (OER) and find out how you can get involved! 

The Pathways Language Teaching Repository (LTR) is an open (i.e., freely accessible) site, where language instructors can access: 1) classroom-ready teaching materials aligned to Idaho State Standards and ACTFL performance measures (i.e., four skills, three modes); and 2) Digitally-tagged classroom observations of Master K-16 teachers who implement classroom-ready teaching materials successfully. This LTR offers a transferable model for rural states struggling to provide a unified community of practice and standards-based curriculum for language teachers. 

In this interactive presentation, I'll share how and why my teaching strategy has changed over time to incorporate interactive videos in online courses. We'll discuss ideas for increasing interaction regardless of your platform, although I'll also share the suite of tools I use to develop and manage content.


I'll provide a link to a couple of videos that include embedded quiz questions for take-away examples, and share some free and paid resources that will enable student interaction with videos.

This highly interactive session will introduce participants to maker competencies, a way of thinking about learning that is emerging from the University of Texas at Arlington, Boise State, and elsewhere. Leslie Madsen, an associate professor of history and director of instructional design and educational assessment (the IDEA Shop) at Boise State will share her experience implementing maker competencies into a recent course. She will then lead participants through activities they can apply to their own courses or informal learning environments. Participants can expect to leave the workshop with a clearer understanding of how they can implement maker competencies alongside more traditional learning outcomes.

Participants will: - Create a list of maker competencies relevant to their educational contexts. - Identify maker competencies that complement their traditional learning outcomes. - Begin to design an activity or assignment that integrates maker competencies with course content.

We will be covering five essential Workplace Readiness skills:

#1. Lifelong Learning
#2. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
#3. Diversity Awareness
#4. Speaking and Listening
#5. Self Representation