Episode 69: Michelle Turnbull and Paul Ricciardi on OE Award for Modern Humanities === [00:00:00] Michelle Turnbull: We really try and focus on the intersection of the humanities, right? So if you're, looking at a piece of art just from the 1920s, we want the students to understand the historical context behind it and the artist's biography, right? We're looking at the music and how it relates to the art and how it relates to the history. [00:00:22] Paul Ricciardi: It's been interesting because most of our faculty members are high school teachers, and so they come from that culture. Textbooks have a very different sort of connotation, right? It's like it becomes the roadmap. Our OER, I like to call it a ‘Reader’-- what's nice about it is that it is structured and organized in a way in which we, in terms of our curriculum guide, suggest that they organize the course. [00:00:52] Alan Levine: All right. Well, here we are again. Thank you for joining us to record a brand new episode of OE Global Voices podcast. We're having a conversation, with winners of the, 2023 Award for Excellence. This is a podcast that we do to bring you people and projects from the open education community. We do these on a regular schedule. And it's just so exciting to welcome, Paul Riccardi and Michelle Turnbull who are here to, enlighten us and tell us all about their, award winning, OER on Modern Humanities, which, won the 2023 award for excellence in Remix Adaptation reuse. Michelle, can you let us know, Well, I know cause we were talking about, I like to hear where people are located and like, maybe what you see out your window. Just tell us a little bit about the work that you do. [00:01:40] Paul Ricciardi: Sure. Well, thank you, Alan. We're so excited to be here and talk to you today. Thank you so much for the invitation. I am currently in, Edgewater, New Jersey. So right on the water, we have a view of Manhattan. So yeah, happy to be here. So, this podcast people can hear, but I just want everyone to know if you can see behind Michelle Turnbull is a fabulous painting, that her husband did. And every time I meet with her, I just, I'm gobsmacked. So I needed to say that. So I, am not on campus today and my campus Kingsborough Community College is way out in Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn on the ocean. But today I'm in my, apartment in the East village in New York City. [00:02:20] Alan Levine: That's excellent. We have great visuals for both of you. Of course, I get to see you in our studio here. Can you tell us a little bit about work you do at Kingsborough and share about Kingsborough Community College. [00:02:30] Michelle Turnbull: Well, I looked this up yesterday because I was curious about some of the statistics, you know, cause Kingsborough is such an interesting community college, like Paul mentioned, in South Brooklyn. It has, about 11, 000 students, but they're from 113 different countries. I mean, that's Brooklyn really, right? It's like a perfect snapshot of what Brooklyn is, but it's a great place. [00:02:52] Paul Ricciardi: It is a great place. It's the southernmost tip of Brooklyn. It's a beautiful campus, part of the City University of New York. So it's, part of a much larger family of public city colleges and the bureaus of Manhattan. All total, there are over 300, 000 students, throughout all of the colleges. Michelle and I have this unique relationship because, we work as faculty, but, we started this OER, as what are called course coordinators for this College Now program. Part of our work is bringing college level classes to high schools in Brooklyn and Staten Island. [00:03:27] Michelle Turnbull: When I taught in Brooklyn, I taught in James Madison High School in South Brooklyn for 14 years, so I was actually a teacher in this College Now program. I was teaching this Kingsborough Humanities College course to my high school students, which is how I got involved in this College Now world. [00:03:46] Alan Levine: Right. And so, Michelle, I know you teach, Literature and English we talked about earlier and Paul in Theater. How did you get to be collaborators? [00:03:53] Michelle Turnbull: When I left teaching high school to move to New Jersey, the old coordinator at Kingsborough who had observed me many times as a teacher in this College Now program, she had to step down for other reasons. So I got this opportunity to be the coordinator of this College Now program at Kingsborough, which was great because she was such a great mentor. And, the pandemic happened, but it was always two coordinators. And then Paul took over for the other coordinator. So we were both new together. Yeah. Kind of figuring out what to do in these new coordinator roles. [00:04:28] Paul Ricciardi: My background is in theater. I teach acting classes. And, the way it works at Kingsborough is they have faculty nominated to coordinate these courses for College Now. It's a Humanities course. So, you know, Theater, great. Michelle and I met doing this and then we went right into the pandemic. most of our professional relationship and our friendship was on Zoom. [00:04:52] Michelle Turnbull: We hadn't met in person for years, actually. [00:04:56] Paul Ricciardi: And I think it was like, when we went to Edmonton, we were like, "it's you". It's been really interesting [00:05:02] Alan Levine: I understand it gives high school students like a college experience. Is that paraphrasing it correctly? [00:05:08] Paul Ricciardi: Yeah. I mean, it gives them literally college credit. Kingsborough Community College and other CUNY campuses in the boroughs partners with high schools in Brooklyn and Staten Island. The courses are taught by the high school teachers. So that means a high school teacher applies the way any adjunct faculty member might. For our humanities course, a qualified faculty member would be someone who has, ideally sort of a double link to the humanities. They might have a degree in English lit and theater arts or theyight be a visual artist and a historian. And these teachers teach these college classes before school. So they're getting up early and offering the class seven to eight AM, three days a week or after school. It's a unique setup and these students are getting college credit, actual college credit that is in all of these courses, at least within the CUNY system, are, we have what are called articulation agreements. So the courses transfer right over. Did I explain that okay, Michelle? [00:06:12] Michelle Turnbull: Yeah, I think that's great. Like the fact that they graduate high school with a Kingsborough transcript, right, giving them, especially for the humanities course, which is a three credit course, right? It counts as like any elective. And then they get used to this college experience, right? They're using the college textbooks. It's like a different world for them, it's taught much differently also than their regular high school courses. [00:06:34] Alan Levine: And what a fabulous concept And of course, we know that learning, at the college level is different from high school. What a great way to help students bridge that transition. Do a lot of them end up taking more classes at Kingsborough? [00:06:46] Michelle Turnbull: I think that's why Kingsborough does the program, right? There's all these studies that show the students that go through their College Now program are more likely to register for Kingsborough Community College after they graduate. [00:07:00] Paul Ricciardi: They're prepared for an environment. Michelle was saying before that these classes are run very differently than many of these other students high school classes. For example, the humanities class, Michelle and I do a lot of observing of the faculty. It's very seminar style. So the students are sitting in small groups. They're presented with a concept. They're collaborating together and reporting out. There's a lot of public speaking And presentations. And so it's, it is not a lecture class at all. [00:07:30] Paul Ricciardi: For coming from a theater background, it's all about collaboration. I love going into these classrooms and, seeing students working together and, you know, creating a presentation on pop art or, absurdist theater or whatever. [00:07:42] Alan Levine: And so let's talk about the modern humanities. That was the course that was taught. So obviously there was a need but what made you say, like, we need to do , an open textbook for this. [00:07:52] Paul Ricciardi: COVID. Michelle, do you want to take this one? [00:07:54] Michelle Turnbull: We had this very beautiful but very expensive textbook that suddenly no one had access to, the teachers and the students. So Paul and I at first we met with the textbook publishers to see can we get an ebook version. And they're so expensive. You know, in the College Now program, because it's this free program for high school students, was the first they cut. So our bosses were like, there's no money for textbooks. So Paul and I were like, we'll just make it ourselves. And that's how we, you know, got into the OER world. We can't find the book for this course, because it's a very specific course, right? It's modern humanities. So it's 1900 to present day. Right? So that doesn't exist. So we just got together and made it happen. [00:08:40] Paul Ricciardi: We had no idea what we were doing. Let's just be clear about that. I, mean, I coordinate two College Now courses and it's like an introduction to theater course. We've been using an OER for that. But so my only relationship to OER was that, Oh, this other human being created this OER and now we're using it. I mean, I really knew nothing about open, but I knew that this book existed. And so I was like, Michelle, let's go find one. And we couldn't, that was kind of the beginning of our odyssey. CUNY and Kingsborough have really great support systems for OER-- [00:09:14] Michelle Turnbull: They have OER librarians. Like it's a whole world. [00:09:17] Paul Ricciardi: In a very weird, like, I don't know, then six degrees of separation ness, my sister teaches at Plymouth State University. And her closest friend is Robin DeRosa. [00:09:29] Michelle Turnbull: She's like a OER celebrity. [00:09:32] Alan Levine: Woo. We love Robin. [00:09:33] Paul Ricciardi: My sister Angela was like, why don't you just do an OER like Robin? And I was like, what? [00:09:36] Alan Levine: We'll talk about the OER, but can you give us , a sense of, who and what you cover in modern humanities?, Okay. [00:09:46] Michelle Turnbull: We really try and focus on the intersection of the humanities, right? So if you're, looking at a piece of art just from the 1920s, we want the students to understand the historical context behind it and, the artist's biography, right? And we're looking at the music and how it relates to the art and how it relates to the history. So we tried to cover everything, music, art, history, philosophy, psychology, theater, everything from 1900 on, which as you can imagine, the art was a real problem, right? Cause in the OER world and art piece doesn't become public domain until 70 years after the artist's death. Especially when we're looking at pop art and art from the sixties and seventies, that's not open, that's not public domain. So that was a real challenge. Actually, Paul, I meant to tell you this randomly. Van Gogh, Starry Night, just became public domain. We have to put it in the textbook. [00:10:39] Paul Ricciardi: Yeah. [00:10:41] Michelle Turnbull: So, it was a real challenge because our, the time period is too modern. [00:10:45] Paul Ricciardi: Yeah. It's been interesting because most of our faculty members are high school teachers, and so they come from that culture. Textbooks have a very different sort of connotation, right? It's like it becomes the roadmap. Our OER, I like to call it a "Reader", and what's nice about it is that it is structured and organized in a way in which we, in terms of our curriculum guide, suggest that they organize the course. But there's a lot of information there. And then the idea is that, okay, so here's some information about what was going on during World War One. Here is the visual art that, that was happening. Here's the music. And so the conversation, it's not about the students becoming experts in art deco or, in arts and crafts furniture, it's understanding how the humanities and our culture and current affairs, talk to each other or impact each other. That's the sort of intersection we're making. And so when we get a new faculty member, they look at the OER and they're like, "Oh my gosh, I have to cover all of this." no, but it's a resource here. So you can draw upon it when you're talking about, Stonewall in 1969 or the AIDS Quilt or whatever. [00:11:58] Michelle Turnbull: And that's what's so great about the courses. You can have 30 teachers of the course and everyone's teaching [00:12:03] Paul Ricciardi: Oh my gosh. Yeah, the best part. [00:12:05] Alan Levine: So they customize it. [00:12:07] Alan Levine: So very interesting as you're describing earlier, you're constantly being able to add things on the early years as they come into the public domain. And then, I think I saw punk rock in there, but you're going to be adding things in the current, right? So you could be always adding to this, right? [00:12:24] Paul Ricciardi: That's the point. [00:12:26] Michelle Turnbull: That's the beauty of OER [00:12:27] Paul Ricciardi: And you know, the open world has exploded, so there's so much. Like, in our theater section, we actually, contacted the editors and authors of the theater OER that we use at Kingsborough, And, they gave us more stuff, to use in our theater sections. In many cases, I don't want to say it was "easy." In fact, in some ways it was overwhelming because there was so much available. [00:12:55] Alan Levine: You alluded to some of the problem of getting access or using materials like that weren't in public domain. So what were some things that you had to do to find those resources? [00:13:05] Michelle Turnbull: It's like a scavenger hunt, right? [00:13:07] Paul Ricciardi: It was. [00:13:09] Michelle Turnbull: You know, and then like triple checking the attributions and all these things, and it's something so simple. If a piece in a museum is not open, what if someone takes a picture of that piece in the museum? Is that open, right? It's all these layers that we, you know, we've had to kind of look through and overcome and learn about. It's like a whole learning process because Paul and I didn't know anything really. [00:13:33] Paul Ricciardi: Part of what's been great is that, for example, in the visual art, no, we can't just lift, some sort of Rauschenberg or whatever. But when the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, they have a lot of resources that are open. And so they might have a link to a video where a curator is giving an artist talk. So we are able to tap into those resources. Plays are very tricky. But American Theater Magazine publishes a play per month. And so in some cases we can introduce at least part of a play through a link to American Theater Magazine or something like that. So we did have to get creative. Um, we're going to talk about Manifold later, I think, but in our OER, Sean and I collaborated and partnered with humanities faculty members and put in all of these resources. As a student's reading, they can click. a link. If they're reading about, absurdist theater, they can click on a link that'll take them to a theater company that just produced the, 75th anniversary production of Waiting for Godot or whatever. I just made that up, but-- [00:14:35] Michelle Turnbull: And I think that's how we did it, right? Anything that we found that wasn't open, we included as a resource, which is great. [00:14:41] Alan Levine: I really caught something there, that it's not always having to reproduce the exact artifact but the idea of someone talking about it or placing the historical context that's a really successful strategy. [00:14:53] Paul Ricciardi: Totally. [00:14:54] Michelle Turnbull: Absolutely. [00:14:54] Alan Levine: In some cases, people think of, adaptation or remixing of OER it's like, "Oh, the textbook is there" and they customize it and do some great things. You did it from the ground floor. You had to put it all together. So, commendable and obviously a good reason why you got this recognition. [00:15:10] Paul Ricciardi: It was fun. [00:15:12] Michelle Turnbull: It was, really fun. We love it. [00:15:14] Paul Ricciardi: Michelle and I work steering the ship. And then we were always collaborating. Over time we were able to get grants from Kingsborough to pay faculty members. So most of the material in our Reader was harvested by faculty members who are teaching the course and who were looking for things that their students would respond to. [00:15:35] Michelle Turnbull: That's the important thing, right? If the faculty have a hand in creating it then they're more likely to want to use it in their classrooms, right? And they have some kind of investment it and what the students can do with it. [00:15:48] Alan Levine: Well, we mentioned manifold, let's talk about the publishing tool. We're a big fan of Manifold won one of the awards too a few years ago, and we had a great conversation with the developers. But it's wonderful to see now someone who's using it. So, what is Manifold, but what's really great about Manifold? What do you love about it? [00:16:05] Michelle Turnbull: We just did a presentation on this for the Community College Consortium on Open Education. They did this webinar on different open ed platforms. And we just presented on the benefits of Manifold, which are many. [00:16:20] Paul Ricciardi: First of all it's very user friendly. If five is just like technology genius and a one is a technology nincompoop, I'm like a maybe 2. 75. And so it was really, accessible for me. What's nice is that, when you're introducing a new resource to a faculty member, who's already so busy, it's like, "oh gosh, one more thing to learn." And it's been very, accessible. So there's that. One of our favorite things that we can do in Manifold is that you can create a reading group. Let's just say that, you know, Michelle and I are each teaching four sections of Humanities. or we're teaching one in the Spring and one in the Fall, you can create a reading group just for that group of students and then start annotating. passages. I can assign a student, all right, look at, chapter one, pages five ten and then in there start talking to the students and ask them to respond to particular questions. Then they respond and they can talk to each other. I love that part. [00:17:15] Michelle Turnbull: Another thing I like about it is the accessibility. We have a lot of students with disabilities and e-readers. Paul and I spent so much time in Word. Manifold. As a publishing platform, if you use the styles in Word, It works really well with any e-reader. It will do the headings and the subheadings and the alt text on pictures and the captions. So It's really, really good if you have an e-reader, which is a huge benefit to our students. And the resource collections, we're convincing you, right? [00:17:48] Alan Levine: Also, it looks beautiful. It doesn't feel as bookishas other platforms. It feels more like a thing that lives on the web. Annotation is one of my favorite features. and I love hearing how, how it's used. Does that get a lot of use in the College Now program? [00:18:05] Paul Ricciardi: It is now. It wasn't at first. So it's bumped up this semester and it's great. When we were in the height of COVID, discussion boards, whether in a Google Classroom or Blackboard or Brightspace, became essential to us creating connection and continuing the conversation. Then when we came back to a face to face learning environment, I I am, as a teacher, and I know my colleagues are, just that discussion board has become a mainstay. My acting students aren't journaling anymore. They're talking to each other, you know, on a discussion board. And so this is a way to keep the conversation going. And what a great way to, to sort of assign homework, [00:18:40] Michelle Turnbull: Yeah, the students can interact with the text more, right? They're not just reading it, they're interacting with it, which makes a huge difference. [00:18:47] Paul Ricciardi: And each other, [00:18:48] Michelle Turnbull: And each other, yeah. [00:18:49] Alan Levine: Do you have any examples of stories you heard or things that came from the students or teachers that that just kind of made you say, "wow." [00:18:57] Paul Ricciardi: I'm kind of jumping ahead cause I know you're going to ask us what's next, but, the "wow" is that we've always wanted to add a section in the OER where we would showcase student work. And I just observed a class yesterday, and what is coming out of these classes is extraordinary. And now the students, because they're using the OER, they're like, "when can we put our stuff in here?" So we're getting more requests for that. And so I think one of the things that is next is that we're going to showcase student work in its own chapter. [00:19:29] Michelle Turnbull: And this way people can see what, what can be done with it, right? What can this Reader be used to do. [00:19:35] Alan Levine: There's someone up at Plymouth State smiling at you right now. In Edmonton someone came up to you and I think you were introducing them to Manifold. Did you ever make that connection? [00:19:44] Paul Ricciardi: I can't remember who that was. Do you, MIchelle?? [00:19:46] Michelle Turnbull: Well, we've been in touch with many people that we met in Edmonton. They've been helping us with this survey that we put out a call for help for, this project that Paul and I are working on. So I mean, you just left there feeling so invigorated, [00:20:00] Paul Ricciardi: Michelle and I are writing an article based on our experience creating this. One of the things we learned when we were at the conference in Edmonton was that, every presentation we went to, people were saying that the best OER is the one that's creating collaboration. So we were like, great, that's what we did. We're writing a " you can do it too" slash celebration of , collaboration in the open, article right now. Part of what we're doing is, Michelle said, is we've reached out to a bunch of people we met. up in Edmonton at the conference last Fall and getting quotes from them for our story. [00:20:32] Alan Levine: Great. When's this going to come out? Can I ask? [00:20:35] Paul Ricciardi: Oh God. [00:20:36] Michelle Turnbull: Oh, hopefully. We have a deadline. [00:20:39] Paul Ricciardi: The Fall we think. We keep installing deadlines. so, we, we think we've, we've got a proposal for a presentation to present our article, [00:20:48] Alan Levine: Do you know where it's going to be published? [00:20:50] Paul Ricciardi: [Laughs] But having a deadline helps. So we're thinking the Fall. [00:20:53] Alan Levine: I would definitely be eager to read that. Are there new things happening? Obviously this is very important, but anything else either related to Modern Humanities or beyond that's really got your interest going now? [00:21:04] Paul Ricciardi: I have to say, Michelle and I started working together in 2019. COVID happened and this OER was so exciting. We actually come from similar backgrounds, but two teachers from different backgrounds together. And Michelle has since moved on and is teaching at a campus in New Jersey now, but we continue to collaborate. And I think we'll continue to collaborate. And I could imagine, you know, other things beyond, working on this article right now. But something interesting that's happened for me is community colleges across America, the largest major is liberal arts. Because of my involvement in this Humanities Course and the OER, I was appointed one of the heads of our liberal arts program at Kingsborough now, which has been really cool. And the reason, I think they decided I'd be a good idea was because, with several other colleagues is the work that Michelle and I have done. [00:21:55] Michelle Turnbull: I think now that I'm in New Jersey, the hope is to use this , text that we created in more than one community college, you know? There's no reason why it should only be taught in Kingsborough. You know, we're hoping to use it and watch it grow. [00:22:08] Alan Levine: I just love hearing your enthusiasm and your joy in doing this. Now it's my duty to say we've got nominations open now so can you make a pitch for people to encourage them to make a nomination and give the chance to surface the work as yours did? [00:22:22] Paul Ricciardi: Absolutely. And we have such a large OER community at CUNY and at Kingsborough. Michelle and I are on the other side of creating this OER But, the work, it's really vibrant. We have a coordinator, on our campus. We have people in CUNY Central that support us as well. There's definitely more there. And then being nominated, It was such an honor for the two of us and a surprise. [00:22:46] Michelle Turnbull: It was such a surprise. We had no idea, you know? So we were very fortunate and happy and surprised by the nomination. [00:22:54] Alan Levine: Well, thank you so much for coming to share your story with us. Really looking forward to seeing your article come out. I think this is an important piece. And, I'm glad that you're able to present this at the CCC OER webinar. Why did I miss that? I had it on my schedule and now I'm really sorry. Thank you so much, Paul and Michelle. It's just such a pleasure to talk to you and be able to share this work. And I hope other people will be looking at Modern Humanities. I just want to thank anybody listening to this episode of OE Global Voices. We do this from Open Education Global and each episode, I like to pick a different musical track. I use the Free Music Archive cause it's all Creative Commons license and it's independent artists. I found a track today called "Culture" by an artist named Max Synergy and it's licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial. You'll find this episode at our site, voices dot oeglobal dot org. And if you're interested, we do some follow up conversations with Michelle and Paul. Maybe after you take a look at Modern Humanities and join the conversations in OEG Connect community. And, if you're out there and You have an idea for someone or something we should feature on the show, please let me know.