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Virtual Collaboration: Exploring New Frontiers
Kristen Borysewicz, Merete Christianson, Jessica D. Gilbert Redman, Laura Trude, Erika Johnson, and Dawn Hackman
Librarians looking for professional development opportunities, especially in states like North Dakota where many serve small populations in rural areas, will benefit from thinking creatively about organizing a conference. Two sections of the North Dakota Library Association (NDLA) used Blackboard Collaborate Ultra as a platform to produce a fully online conference. This virtual “unconference” was interactive and robust, with speakers from across the state, interactive whiteboards, poster rooms, meeting space for special interest groups, and more. In this workshop, we will share what we have learned about Collaborate Ultra, including its strengths and weaknesses. We hope to brainstorm and discuss other potential applications, including classrooms, professional development, online meetings, group work, and supporting distance students and colleagues. Please bring your device and join us in a working session where you will experience Collaborate Ultra first-hand and discover how this tool can facilitate learning and collaboration and impact the work you do.
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Culture Shift: Facilitating Institutional Culture Change to Boost the Adoption, Use, and Sharing of OERs
Stephanie Walker
In 2015, the University of North Dakota (UND) had no institutional program to promote adoption, creation, or utilization of Open Educational Resources (OERs). That September, UND’s new Dean of Library & Information Resources was given a mandate to advocate for OERs. Initial campus climate was resistant; a respected senior faculty member gave a speech in opposition to OERs at the University Senate, claiming OERs infringed on academic freedom. In 2 years, we’ve achieved a major cultural shift. UND has become a state leader in OERs. We are on our 4th round of funding for faculty stipends, workshops, and support for OERs. We’ve established a program of OER workshops, and created a support team of instructional designers, subject librarians, and others to assist faculty. We established the UND OER Working Group, which meets regularly to discuss promotion, support, funding, events, workshops, and policy matters such as the role of OERs in tenure and promotion. We’ve hosted major events featuring national experts; one event drew 100+ attendees from universities, schools, and government. We secured state funding for 2 rounds of support; after we reported saving students nearly $3 million, Student Government voted to provide $75,000 of funding. The Provost matched this with $25,000. We now have stable funding and a strong support structure. We created a grant program providing a $3000 faculty stipend per course. All faculty receiving stipends must take a 4-day workshop series we’ve developed on issues ranging from finding resources to providing support for students with disabilities to dealing with copyright questions and more.
We have changed the culture surrounding OERs at UND entirely. Events are well attended; calls for proposals generate strong responses. Faculty from every academic college have developed OERs or adapted their courses to use OERs. There are pedagogical changes: some faculty are using more interactive materials. Faculty have become our best ambassadors. The outspoken faculty member who opposed OERs is now a regular speaker at our events, and testified before the ND Legislature, extolling the virtues of OERs.
This presentation will trace the evolution of the program and the components leading to our success, including advocacy, outreach, marketing, coalition-building, creating a support program, workshop development, establishment of liaison relationships, seeking broad funding, and more. I believe this program is scalable and adaptable for any library.
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Quality Journal Indicators & Tools in Education
Sara K. Kuhn
Slide presentation from a workshop facilitating the discovery of library-subscribed and open access resources for the purpose of assisting Education faculty in investigating journal quality to create departmental "good quality" journal lists and develop individual publishing strategies.
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A New Frontier: Lessons Learned from NDLA's First Online "Un-Conference"
Kristen Borysewicz, Merete Christianson, Jessica D. Gilbert Redman, Dawn Hackman, Erika Johnson, and Laura Trude
NDLA’s Health Science Information and Academic & Special Libraries Sections held its inaugural fully online “un-conference” using Blackboard Collaborate Ultra. A fully online conference can be a robust, low-cost alternative to a traditional conference that could be an advantage to librarians looking for professional development opportunities in this rural state. In this session, the planners will discuss creating this experience and lessons learned.
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A Scholar's Guide to Poster Power
Sara K. Kuhn
Have you ever presented a poster at a conference? No? Want to try? It's an easily implementable initial entry into conference presenting in a more intimate, low-key and low-threshold environment than it would be to start off with a formal presentation to a huge audience. Sometimes, conference fees are even waived. Regardless, the experience can bring about valuable partnerships. View this poster to learn tricks of the trade for powerful poster presentations. Remember, it's really easy to make a bad poster, but not too difficult to make a great poster, especially if you follow these practical tips.
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Leveraging Cross-Campus Collaborations to Promote Financial Literacy
Holly Gabriel, Dawn Hackman, and Renee Nilsen
Financial literacy is increasingly important for all college students, but none more so than students in professional health or medical programs. Many of them are in uncharted territory, facing new and unique financial decisions and obligations that accompany these costly degrees, such as lengthy unpaid internships and expensive certification processes. Academic librarians are well situated to be able to meet these needs, not by teaching financial literacy themselves, but by connecting the students with subject experts. This has been done at the University of North Dakota through a partnership between campus librarians and UND’s Financial Wellness office. For example, the Harley E. Library of the Health Sciences collaborated with the Financial Wellness Office to provide study-break (“de-stress”) programming that included financial literacy topics. Other opportunities for involvement include leveraging the librarian’s liaison relationships to provide access to the target audience. For example, librarians have facilitated meetings between their liaison departments and the Financial Wellness Program Coordinator to discuss ways in which financial literacy can be integrated into their curricula or offered to their students as an extracurricular service. The Financial Wellness Program Coordinator has also been involved in small group discussions on financial literacy topics, such as the Native Behavioral Health Research Team, coordinated by the team’s embedded librarian. Librarians can advocate for their involvement as a mutually beneficial exchange. The subject experts benefit from access to a challenging audience, i.e. professional degree students, while the librarians contribute to the well-being of their students.
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