Episode 62: Looking Back and into the Future of CCCOER with Una Daly and Heather Blicher
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[00:00:00] Una Daly: Change happens faster at community colleges than at our other higher ed institutions. And so often we can introduce innovative programs that would take a bit longer even though community colleges do it with less resources. 

[00:00:21] Health Blicher: And to me, CCCOER supports the storytellers. We amplify the voices of the practitioners, and we will continue to adapt to the changing OER space based on the input and the needs of our members and whatever is, is happening in our world 

[00:00:45] Alan Levine: Indeed those are the voices that we're gonna be featuring in this latest episode of OEG Voices. 

This is the podcast we produce here at Open Education Global, and we bring you the voices of open education practitioners from around the world.

I'm your host, Alan Levine, and here we're gonna mark today the arc of the story of the Community College Consortium of OER or CCCOER now in its 16th year of being a vibrant network for community college open educators. 

I really had this idea of maybe doing a Back to the Future theme, but I couldn't get the DeLorean.

We'd like to reflect a little bit on the history with CCCOER Director Una Daly who just marked her 12th year here. And we're also want to peer into the future for the next phase of CCCOER. 

We're here some to honor Una 'cause she's actually retiring at the end of the year in the leadership role she's held since 2011. And transitioning to incoming CCCOER director, who's with us, Heather Blicher. 

Let's say hello everybody, and let us know, how things are looking where you are right now. We'll start with you Una. 'cause you're our person of honor here. Hi 

[00:01:53] Una Daly: Well, thank you Alan, and I'm afternoon. Gorgeous. Here in, , the San Francisco Bay area, and I haven't really stepped foot outside the door. Um, there's so many little [laughter] details that we're all working on together. But after this podcast, I'm, I'm gonna be stepping out that door.

[00:02:18] Alan Levine: That sounds like the "rewirement" you've been talking about and, and so glad you can make the time for this among everything that's going on. And also glad to have here Heather Blicher who's gonna be stepping into this role soon. Heather's been kind of like absorbing everything she can.

And it's just this unique opportunity to be coming on board while Una's present to sort of funnel all that knowledge into you. So how are things on your side of the country, Heather?

[00:02:41] Health Blicher: So I'm in Richmond, Virginia, and it's around 60 degrees, so I have the windows open and the door open, and lots of fresh air coming in.

[00:02:50] Alan Levine: Great. So good you could be here.

And always a pleasure to have my often co-host Marcela Morales, interim co-director of OE Global. 

[00:02:58] Marcela Morales: Hello everyone. So it's a pleasure to be here with you today I guess that we are all sharing wonderful weather. It's beautiful down here in Texas. just a little bit chilly, a little sun, wonderful weather. Also hoping to step out as soon as the podcast is done and maybe meet Una walking around somewhere.

[00:03:17] Alan Levine: It'd be great to go take a walk for a while and have this conversation but here, we on screen. We do want to start at the beginning of CCCOER,. 

What's the importance now for, open education and community colleges?

[00:03:28] Health Blicher: So, having been a student at a community college and later focusing my work with them, I can say that just as the name suggests, community colleges are for the communities they serve. They provide accessible and affordable education that can be a gateway to traditional four year institutions. They can also provide vocational pathways and certifications for in-demand fields that require specialized training, often teaming up with local companies to fill gaps in a skilled workforce. They offer flexible schedules to accommodate students with jobs and family responsibilities. And, because of all of these elements, community colleges can meet the needs of a diverse student body, all ages, income levels, and backgrounds.

[00:04:14] Una Daly: Well, well said Heather. And I guess the only thing I would add is that, there's an open enrollment policy at community colleges. So community colleges are a higher education opportunity for everyone in this country. And also Canada has the same, a very similar, kind of system. 

And, the founder of CCCOER the visionary behind this was Dr. Martha Kanter , who was our, under Secretary of Education in the first Obama administration. She was the chancellor of the Foothill De Anza Community College District in California where it was originally launched. 

She always said that community colleges serve the top 100% of students. And I just love that, 

[00:04:54] Alan Levine: Lisa Young used that quote too when I was having a conversation with her at the conference. , it really comes home true. And like Heather, my whole career started at the Maricopa system. Our vice chancellor Alfredo de los Santos used to always say, "Community is our middle name", you know, and that says alot to what Heather said. 

And, thoughts from you, Marcela, how community colleges might be seen, in the global context.

[00:05:15] Marcela Morales: Yeah. So I do have to say that when I started with OE Global was when I was introduced to the concept of community colleges. So the term I was more famiiar with, but I love the element of community in the community colleges because as it has been mentioned, is the colleges for the community. 

And I think that through these 12 years that I've been familiar with them, it's so evident that it's a community effort. You can see throughout not only the work that they do, but also how they do the work, like in a very collaborative community kind of way.

I just absolutely love that... 

[00:05:53] Una Daly: I might add one more thing, 'cause I always do. Change happens faster at community colleges than at our other higher ed institutions. And so often we can introduce innovative programs that would take a bit longer even though community colleges do it with less resources. I think more innovative thinking goes on often because, we're sort of the first ones to get hit, you know, when there's, whenever there's a downturn. Community colleges are flexible and innovative and I think they're not often recognized for that role, but they really are and can be.

[00:06:28] Alan Levine: Yeah, they're too busy doing all that work, you know.

You hinted a little bit about the start of CCCOER with the origin at Foothills De Anza Can you tell us a little bit about those early days and how you became part of this? 

[00:06:40] Una Daly: Yeah, well, I definitely stand on the shoulders of giants. I was not at the college in 2007. I came a year later and actually I was not working directly on open for a while. But I was in the same department, so I was watching them for a couple of years before I actually joined the program. 

\About the end of 2009, I would attend and say, oh, this stuff is so cool. But I was working on something else at that time. 

Some of the names that people might remember Barbara Illowsky was a big part of this program as she was our faculty who was writing that first open textbook that, OpenStax, I think it was their first Introduction to Statistics back in 2007, 8 9. 

Judy Baker was actually leading it, leading all the administration piece of it . And we had folks from all over the country, actually. But there was specifically about five or six states that were already thinking about open education. And what it came out of originally was how can we use public resources?

Even though the licensing had been defined, it still wasn't widely accepted, Creative Commons licensing. I know the original policies at some of the colleges was about "how can we get faculty to use public domain resources in their classroom?" And of course our Federal government, most of the materials they produce are released under a public domain. I think there's five states that actually have the same thing for their state documents. But not all states do. So there's some wonderful resources that come out of that as well.

[00:08:12] Alan Levine: What were things like in those early days? What was keeping you busy?

[00:08:18] Una Daly: Well, we were building, what were we building? We were building a repository of open textbooks. We were getting peer reviews, so we worked with faculty and administrators actually on doing peer reviews. We had a training network.

It was very small. We were doing some really innovative practices. And the first major project that I worked on was accessibility. So we were looking at the open textbooks. In those early days, most of them were being written by faculty in their spare time. These were the early days, and so people were producing PDFs that weren't accessible. Websites that weren't accessible. I mean, they were passionate about this. They wanted to do the right thing, and yet they didn't have the training at that time to do it. 

So that first accessibility review was not very positive, but it was a baseline. And things, of course, have improved over 15 years. 

[00:09:11] Alan Levine: In the last couple years, open textbooks have become such a force and important movement. And so it was a credit that it started that early before many people in higher ed were thinking about that. 

So, where did that vision come from? I can make some guesses.

[00:09:26] Una Daly: Martha had the vision to go to a private foundation and get that started. I do attribute a lot to Judy Baker, who was the dean of online learning at one of the colleges, and she really envisioned this as a consortium. She really looked at, you know, what do we need back then?

As we transitioned to OE Global and we changed our focus more on the advocacy side and less on a set of peer reviews and accessibility reviews. We talked to the open textbook library people and they said, oh, we're thinking about doing this open textbook library. And then I'm sure they called it that at that time and we said that's really great well, you know, you can harvest our stuff. But in those early days, there wasn't especially repositories of open textbooks. I mean, certainly OER Commons was there and Merlot was there as well. Everybody was kind of trying to do their and we kind of decided at a point that it was gonna move outside of the college and would move to OE Global. 

We would go into a different stage, which was really more about the advocacy, the professional development, and building that community of practice.

[00:10:26] Alan Levine: And some of this was happening in 2011 . You became part of, well then it was the OER Consortium. Interestingly, the beginning of that organization was built on, like the focus on open courses. And how have things evolved from, sort of those, those, let's say do the math of how many years ago, 12 years ago into what we're doing now? 

[00:10:44] Una Daly: I think that's a question for Marcela. 

[00:10:47] Marcela Morales: That's a really long question I would say. 

So you're right we started as the OCW Consortium and really focused on courses and I think that we have all seen this timeline of how it evolved into these OCWs that were just programmed content. Then go through the MOOCS and then different types of OERs trying to find ways of how we could use the OER and then the practices and then the pedagogy. 

So it has been built on many layers of what it was and what we have today. You can see in many different places that they have found a different solution to their needs. 

So what I'm trying to say is that we don't have a single answer to your question. Because if you ask the CCCOER community, they might have a different answer than if we ask the OE LATAM community. 

What I really wanted ask Una is, because the CCCOER community has been so successful, if you have a secret for that success. 

Because I do remember very clearly meeting you at the OE Global 12 Conference and you being part of being hired as the director of CCCOER. I remember that we had within OCWC back then, just a few members of community colleges. And we were trying to do that transition of focusing on the content and getting into the communities, the advocacy element of openness. 

I don't know where time went, but I'm amazed that 12 years went by and the growth of the community. I'm wondering if you know what the secret was that you used these 12 years, that we can say the community colleges community is stronger than ever. 

We saw many communities come and go through these 12 years. So what do you think is the secret for the community colleges being so strong and thriving 12 years later? 

[00:12:48] Una Daly: You know, it's all about relationship building it's what our members do and how we can lift them up. But there have been other infrastructure things that have come along too, which have been really helpful. 

So there's been funding that's come along. About 2010-11 our federal government in the US really propped up the open education space with the original TAACCCT grants. I think it was $2 billion, That changed things dramatically. Prior to that there were believers in open ed, but it just, it didn't get the same spread.

It didn't get the same exposure. 

I can remember attending conferences with, my colleagues, of course James Glapa-Grossklag. We would have, you know, half a dozen people coming to some of our presentations. After the TAACCCT grants, a few years in, we would get a lot more people interested because then they were starting to do the work. 

Funding is a key piece of that. , It's not only the money, but it's the recognition that you're being seen either at the federal or the state level. And I think the states who've been able to secure funding for this work have seen a lot of success at their community colleges. 

We worked with so many great folks over the years. You know, I think back 2012 BCCampus, their open textbook project was just taking off. And I remember them asking me advice and I was like, well, okay, gimme whatever I can. I know you guys are gonna do great. They're an amazing role model as well in this space. What they've done and the resources that they share just so widely.

[00:14:26] Marcela Morales: I had always seen this sharing, as you were saying, like the community is so closely knit that you can see that they have a network, that , community colleges on the east side of the country are somehow able to connect with the west side. It gives that sense of family . 

[00:14:52] Una Daly: Heather, what are your thoughts on that? Since you're on the eastern coast.

[00:14:59] Health Blicher: When I started getting involved in the open space, it was in 2014. And that was before we had, you know, OER certificate programs and a multitude of the online resources that exist now. 

So I remember my supervisor encouraging me to reach out to the CCCOER list serve and to watch the webinars. And the only other spot that I remember being pointed to was BCCampus. We didn't have everything that is out there now. 

I was the only librarian at my community college that was involved in OER. In order to get questions answered and to move ahead and, really, really get things going, I had to reach out to other places to seek support and to learn about OER and just get my foundation.

I think that was really what connected all the dots for me. It was really great because my connections were from all over. It wasn't just the particular state that I was in.

[00:16:00] Alan Levine: Can you, maybe Una wanna share some of the big milestones along the way for CCCOER? Obviously there are probably some of the big projects that have come in. But also I'm curious to know, how do you like develop those or how do you stay in tune with things?

And, thinking Heather probably wants to know this too. What are the things you look over what we're doing now to what CCCOER should be moving into obviously leading up to things now, like OFAR and the RLOE program, that was just a couple years ago.

There was an arc that those came about. Where do you start? Where do you get your inklings from? And then what do you do with them?

[00:16:37] Una Daly: Some of it is going to conferences , and meeting other people. And then it is sort of like your trusted colleagues including our executive council. So I've had the opportunity to work closely with quite a few people now over the years. CCCOER has an executive council of about 10 or 12 people. And we keep growing 'cause our committees are starting to grow, They're part of the executive council, but not the formal part. And they come up with wonderful ideas and each year there's an opportunity for some people to move off the council and new people to move on, and that really helps with some of the ideas. 

I also have to say, we've had a wonderful funder. CCCOER was funded by the Hewlett Foundation back in 2007 and through the transition into OE Global. They've been wonderful thought partners as well. And I would say one of our big growth opportunities was in early 2016 when we began working with Achieving the Dream on the OER degree program, a program for community colleges in the US to develop full pathways over the next three years. And that was a wonderful opportunity to learn together. 

This was relatively new. Virginia had done some of this work in the past, of course, uh, Heather was involved in that work, that early pioneering work in Virginia on OER degrees. But this was one to really push it out widely. That was a major opportunity for us at CCCOER and then we went on to additional work as well. 

I did forget about my wonderful fellowship in England at the Open University in 2013. That was a wonderful opportunity and for also I think for Open University, OpenLearn. Rob Farrow I worked directly with him publishing about OER at the community college and really taking a research perspective on it. Those were a couple of early, early milestones.

[00:18:33] Alan Levine: I was just thinking, from participating in, both our conference and the Open Education Conference this month, I was really struck by how many new people there are in the field. So there are people just coming into open education, not just coming in, but they're starting to become the next wave of leaders.

Do you see some of that, and how do you think CCCOER is cultivating that?

[00:18:55] Una Daly: You know, I'm a little stumped on that one. I'm gonna I'm gonna turn that over to Heather and I, I'm gonna think about it a little bit. 

[00:19:00] Alan Levine: Fair enough. I threw in a question that wasn't on the list because it just popped into my head. 

[00:19:05] Una Daly: I feel like I need a little bit more background on who the new folks are. . 

[00:19:09] Alan Levine: Well, it just feels like the field is getting larger and expanding. When you started, when I started it was like usually one person on a campus or a librarian and now there's many more people involved, which is fantastic. It also means there's a lot going on.

There's a lot of good energy and things happening. What's the impact of the field becoming more participatory?

[00:19:30] Health Blicher: I have to say that in some situations, I think it's still like that one person on campus that is trying to hold the torch and keep everybody moving towards this goal. Without administrative support from the institution, it's hard to get anywhere. 

I know a lot of different people that are still in those positions where they have their main job, but then they do OER in their "spare time", -- their spare time in quotation marks because, you know, there is no spare time, but you find the time to get it done. 

Seeing the successes of the different programs, I think that spurs other institutions on to say, okay, we wanna try this, we want to do more for our students. And of course, with everything happening with enrollments lessening, at all levels of higher ed institutions. I think open education can play a big part in working towards making that a better situation.

[00:20:28] Una Daly: Absolutely. We're sort of seeing some changes. Back in the day, usually the online and the library was running open education. To some extent that's still true, but I see a lot more faculty leaders. We see a lot more people in workforce who are getting involved in Open too, and I think that's a pretty key area, because a lot of our students who come to build their workforce skills, really need the benefit of open educational resources and open practices. 

So I think it's really broadened who gets involved, but once again, it varies from college to college, and I love Heather that you brought up the enrollment issue. So how can Open help us with the gap in enrollment right now that a lot of colleges are suffering from and that ends up cutting their funding. 

Can Open be a marketing tool for one thing? And data collection is much bigger deal than it used to be. And it's really important, to collect data on how students are doing with open educational resources and in classrooms where faculty are paying attention to open educational practices. I think that there's some really promising results out there that can be shared when you're talking to funders or to your administration. So there are different strategies today than, let's say a decade ago. And I think that's all for the good.

[00:21:49] Alan Levine: Indeed. To talk about the relationship with OE Global, obviously part of it, and we just saw some of the big relationships blossom. NorQuest College as a community college hosting the conference. With your experience Una, what do you suggest to create more opportunities for the global education community and the community college communities to have more overlap .

[00:22:10] Una Daly: I know Heather's working on that! Once again, I think we talked a little earlier about lack of funding at community colleges. Often community colleges don't have the funding for a lot of travel globally. So that can be a barrier for sharing the work and collaborating with others.

In the case of the work I did with Open University, they funded me to come over, so that was pretty wonderful. And so I got to spend a few weeks with them right there in Milton Keynes. 

There are some interesting opportunities for community colleges to recruit students from overseas. I will be honest with you that that is a part of the revenue stream that many community colleges rely on. So that may be an opportunity that we haven't tapped into. 

And often they even have a whole program, even a center for international students on their campus. And I think open education could play a role in that.

[00:23:04] Alan Levine: And we saw at the conference that MIT Open Courseware's working with community colleges, helped develop community college open courseware, and that that's a huge step as well. People will just see that as more open courseware, not that it's different or special.

[00:23:17] Una Daly: I actually had the opportunity to talk with them when they were in the early thinking stages of that, and they're actually working with community colleges to get feedback on their courses. To bring a more diverse lens to what MIT has been developing to date and make those materials more inclusive and diverse. That's another thing that community colleges are quite good at. 

[00:23:38] Alan Levine: We have Heather who is with us in this time to learn from you. And I certainly had no doubts that there's been lots of conversations, but what are some key things that Heather should know from you. Or what's gonna be in this box that you give to her? 

[00:23:52] Una Daly: Well, Heather and I've had the pleasure to know each other, what did we decide, Heather? About seven years or so, or six or seven years? Yeah. Since about 2017, I've learned things from Heather, for goodness sakes, a lot [laughter]

I'm just sharing my thoughts. Heather's gonna be amazing.

She's gonna lead in her own way. I think there is a nice infrastructure at CCCOER around the council and some of the processes that we've all developed together including, you know, our monthly webinars, our peer support. Those are kind of Heather's to continue to work with and evolve as the membership and she sees fit.

[00:24:29] Alan Levine: And how are you feeling about this time, Heather? 

[00:24:32] Health Blicher: I'm feeling great. My career path hasn't been a straight line, and I never thought that I would end up in this position. And I'm really grateful and happy to be here. I think about how I started out in OER and how, along the way I had emails with Una off and on, and she would invite me to write a blog post or be on a panel at a particular conference.

And, that made such a big difference to somebody like me who was doing OER on the side, like I said before, you know, in my spare time. And it just had such a positive impact on me and I'm hoping that I can figure out how to do that for other people in the same position. And also figure out, find my own way to be creative and get more people involved.

[00:25:21] Alan Levine: I have to say, Heather, I liked at the conference, we sat together on the bus coming back from the pre-conference workshop. I didn't know but you knew, and, It was a great opportunity to get to know you as Heather before you're Heather, Director of CCCOER. We're very optimistic about what's gonna happen here.

[00:25:37] Health Blicher: That was a great pre-conference.

[00:25:39] Alan Levine: Oh, I know we could talk about that. But let's talk about crystal ball, not forecasting, but thinking about what's on the horizon for CCCOER or Open Education. I mean, we're seeing a lot of external things happening, but also internally. And so where do you see CCCOER when we do a podcast maybe 12 years from now?

[00:26:00] Health Blicher: When I hear you ask that question, it makes me think of a young adult book. I used to be a teen librarian before I got into community colleges, and this book is called The Last Cuentista. 

Basically, you know, go with me on this... the earth has been destroyed by a comet and only a few hundred people and their children are selected to go to this new planet to carry on the human race. And hundreds of years later, this main character wakes up to the new planet and she realizes that she's the only person who remembers the earth. So it's now her responsibility to carry on the stories of our past to build this better future.

And to me, CCCOER supports the storytellers. We amplify the voices of the practitioners, and we will continue to adapt to the changing OER space based on the input and the needs of our members and whatever is, is happening in our world. I definitely see that we have this, this way of adapting, but I also suspect we will, you know, push further into the global space. And even though right now we're focused on North America by default because of how we define community colleges, I think that we're going to push beyond that.

[00:27:23] Alan Levine: I will go along with that and anybody else here on the future?

[00:27:28] Una Daly: I love that the idea of the storytelling, and I know that the Member Mixer coming up here in, actually in a couple of days, we'll focus on storytelling. I think that's wonderful. And I do think we've allowed so many people to tell their story and we've all been richer for it. I mean, who better than the practitioners out there? And of course their leadership too. We do occasionally let the leadership in. 

[00:27:50] Alan Levine: I just have to say what a great story it's been to know you through this work, Una, and to, to be witness to everything that's happened with CCCOER. I'm sure everybody's asking you about what you're gonna do. I'm not gonna ask you 'cause you get to decide that.

We will just periodically hope we hear from you and I'm sure we'll see you back at some events and we'll hear from you. 

With all our hearts, we really wanna thank you for being part of this organization, 

[00:28:15] Marcela Morales: Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:28:16] Una Daly: Thank you Alan and Marcela, and Alan in particular when you came in just a few years ago. Now, I'm sorry, I don't remember the exact number of, it. Seems like you've been here forever, but it's really only been about four years, right?

You came right in and, "how can I help?" And I remember we launched all that work in the summer of, gosh, was that, I think it was 2021. That was so much fun, the Open Pedagogy Adventure.

I think that was the first year of the book club, maybe it was the second year.

[00:28:44] Alan Levine: Yeah. Yeah. You went with some of my crazy ideas, so thank you.

[00:28:48] Una Daly: I do have to attribute the book club to Quill West who whom came up the idea, but everyone got behind that.

[00:28:55] Alan Levine: It says alot that the book club is continuing. 

[00:28:57] Una Daly: I know, they had their they third year. An amazing, amazing experience.

[00:29:02] Marcela Morales: And I just want to chime in with what you were saying, what a pleasure it has been working with Una. I think that just your transition Una has been reason for giving a lot of thought about this last plus decade that we have been together with your organization.

What I'm taking from this conversation and seeing you overlapping with Heather is just how much care you have put into making sure that you pass the responsibility of the CCCOER director to Heather. And then seeing Heather receiving that responsibility with the same amount of care. It's just wonderful to know that we're able to have that community be part of OE Global. And I also second what Alan is saying. I'm sure that we're gonna be seeing you around.

We're not letting you go so easily. And we are opening the doors wide open for Heather, we're so happy to have you, Heather..

[00:29:55] Health Blicher: Thank you, I appreciate that.

[00:29:57] Una Daly: I just wanted to say thank you to Marcela really quickly because Marcela was the staff member besides our executive director at the time who interviewed me. And she was so welcoming, back in 2011. So I just knew it was gonna be a great place to work after I had met her. So thank you, Marcela.

[00:30:15] Marcela Morales: It's been a pleasure. Where did 12 years go, Una? Oh my God. [laugher] Well, they say that time flies when you're having a good time. So probably that was it.

[00:30:26] Una Daly: And when we learning so much. I have to say 

[00:30:29] Marcela Morales: Yeah. 

[00:30:29] Una Daly: Such a journey of learning.

[00:30:31] Alan Levine: For the storytelling, thank you for spending some time to talk about the arc of the story of CCCOER . 

Thank you for listening people to OEG Voices. Along with our unique guest, each episode's gonna feature a different musical track that we choose from the Free Music Archive. And for today's show, we selected a track called, now the title won't give it away, " Infographics", but it's got a really kind of a future , upbeat sound. 

It's by Serge Quadrado and it's licensed under Attribution, Non-Commercial license. And you'll find this episode at voices.oeglobal.org. And we hope you engage in follow up conversations with us in our OEG Connect community. 

If you're listening and you wanna share your open education work or maybe suggest a future guest, just let us know. I think you know where to find us. 

With that, we're gonna tune off here. . And also this is the first time using a little bit of a new recording studio set up called SquadCast.

I'll write a little bit about that in the post. So you're here for a historic moment, Una. 

[00:31:29] Una Daly: Okay [laughter] ​