This session presents the UT Arlington History Department’s journey in developing a workshop-based practicum course which utilizes multiple OERs (one created by departmental faculty) and leverages the LMS and other educational technology. Three years ago, the department revised the curriculum for the BA, completely reimagining the existing Historical Methods course. Methods is taken the first semester a student declares the major or transfers to the program. UTA also requires all students to take a career prep/student success course their first semester at the university; our revised Methods course also fulfills this requirement. Because of the re-envisioning of Historical Methods as a hands-on practicum introducing students to the discipline and profession of history, we were left without a good choice of textbooks. Since the goal of the History department is to utilize OER in all multi-section courses, faculty instructors of Methods determined that the best way forward was creating our own OER to meet the unique needs of this course. We began the process planning an all-encompassing OER. Along the developmental path, we ended up narrowing the focus to cover only the historical profession and its ethics, the fields of history and its allied disciplines, career opportunities, historical sources/research, historical analytical thinking, basic analytical skills, and historical artifacts (written, digital, oral). We then sought out other OERs to fill the gaps (style guide, technical skills, teamwork, and student success). In addition, we decided to leverage the LMS, pushing some content directly to Canvas and embedding the departmental OER within Canvas. Our final course design utilizes a departmental OER with embedded activities (fully customized to our pedagogy and learning outcomes) which integrates seamlessly with the LMS, other OER content, and classroom workshop activities. The functionality of our design allows for instructor choice and flexibility in individual sections while providing a consistency of instruction across sections.
Learning Outcomes: *Planning a Departmental OER *Advantages/Pitfalls of Multiple Authors OER *Embedding Interactive Practice Elements into OER *Utilizing Multiple OERs in one course *Integrating OER into the LMS *Integrating OER into Classroom Workshops *Flexibility of OER for Faculty Individualization at Section Level *Use of OER to Provide Consistency across Sections *Centrality of Departmental OER in Hybrid Modality in Response to Covid
At the intersection of OER, Experiential Learning, and EdTech. I am an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Arlington, where I teach courses in the history of science and technology and Iberian history and I also conduct research... Read More →
