OEG Voices 85: Landscape of Open in Saskatchewan === Intro Music and Highlighted Quotes --- [00:00:02] Heather Ross: And I think that having our three together is gonna help us see a lot more of what's going on within our institutions that we weren't seeing before. But also reminds me that, hey, you know that if we see some great books because, Pressbooks is The Thing in Canada for Open. It's super easy to add books to it. You just clone a book and bring it over and there it is. [00:00:31] Kelly Burke: So I think that's the beauty of OE, is to be able to not only to take those little bits and pieces from what other people have done, but to create something that is just theirs from scratch. So I think that excites a lot of people too. [00:00:47] Shuana Niessen: These are really good ways for people to engage students and have them work in authentic ways and be more likely to want to have integrity with what they produce, because it's published, it's out there for the public. There's more accountability. Welcome to the OE Global Voices Studio --- [00:01:06] Alan Levine: Here we are in the OE Global Voices Studio. It's June 16th, 2025, and I'm here to record an episode of this podcast that we produce here at Open Education Global. Each episode we share with you conversation style, people, practices, and ideas from Open educators around the world. [00:01:23] And I'm your host, editor, and button clicker Alan Levine. Exploring Open Education in Saskatchewan --- [00:01:30] Alan Levine: And today around the world, we're going to where I live, in Saskatchewan. I started a series, well I only did one before, to look at open education in a geographical region. So a couple years ago I talked to some colleagues that I knew from where I lived before in Arizona. And the news that we're gonna hear about today of what Saskatchewan is doing, to me made an idea to, to share, how a region is coming together around open education. [00:01:53] Of course Saskatchewan, on the license plate, it's the Land of Living Skies. And I think the people here know, like what our skies mean. It's such a sort of a great metaphor for Open. And so we're gonna hear about two universities and Sask Polytech coming together to collaborate on Open Education. [00:02:14] We're gonna learn about what they're doing and some of the people behind it. [00:02:17] And I'm gonna try to shut up. So I just wanna welcome Shauna, Kelly and Heather. And, first of all, of course we have to do some introductions. And say hello. Let us know of course, your title and I always ask where you are. And you'll give me a map location, but I also like, because it's a podcast, to describe your physical, settings. Meet the Guests: Kelly Burke --- [00:02:42] Alan Levine: I'm gonna ask Kelly first. 'cause Kelly came on and he already told me the answer, and it is my first time getting to meet Kelly. [00:02:48] So welcome to the show, Kelly. [00:02:49] Kelly Burke: Thank you so much, Al. Yeah. So my name is Kelly Burke. I am the Service Innovation and Information Management Librarian at Sask Polytech. I'm headquartered at the Saskatoon campus. So we have four main campuses in, in, in, four cities. And I primarily deal with all the digital products that, that Sask Polytech subscribes to, employees in their in their day-to-day work with the library providing services. And yeah, so I, I, work from home three days a week. I go into the office two days a week and, and, get to enjoy a little bit of that balance between working at home and working in the office. [00:03:37] And, yeah, that's my, life in a nutshell when it comes to work. [00:03:43] Alan Levine: That's great and we'll certainly hear more about that. Meet the Guests: Shauna Niessen --- [00:03:45] Alan Levine: I'm gonna flip it to, I guess my neighbor, Shauna Neeson, who's over in Regina, just a bit that way over my shoulder. Welcome to the show, Shauna. [00:03:54] Shuana Niessen: Thank you, Alan. I'm Shauna Niessen. I work as the Open Education and Publishing Program Manager at the University of Regina. Our program is housed in the Center for Teaching and Learning. I know that, that's the case for some programs. A lot of programs are housed in libraries, but not this one. [00:04:10] I'm sitting in the North American continent in the nation of Canada, province of Saskatchewan, city of Regina, at the University of Regina, which is located in Treaty Four, the traditional lands of the Nêhiyawak, Anihšināpēk, Dakota, Lakota, and Dakota First Nations, and Homeland of the Métis/Michif Nation Nation. I'm gonna talk about the location a little bit, if that's okay. [00:04:34] The geological area is a landlocked flatlands with surprising areas within two hours, such as the Buttes, which are glacial hills, formed by those melting and thrusting and folding the land. And then we have the Qu'Appelle Valley very close by and also glacial, and we have desert like places, with sand dunes, also glacial. [00:04:58] We have a very interesting province. I didn't grow up here, but I'm certainly learning about it as I, I have lived here for quite a few years. So you've mentioned the amazing skies, but I wanted to mention the land. [00:05:14] Alan Levine: That's fantastic and you're speaking my language 'cause I studied Geology. And, I've lost my expertise, but I, too, so appreciate the land. And, I really like the work you've done in University of Regina over the last couple years of, making Open happen both locally and bringing in international experts is really inspiring. [00:05:34] Hats off to, what you're doing. And now I'm gonna flip over. Meet the Guests: Heather Ross --- [00:05:37] Alan Levine: I made you go last, Heather. Because Heather and I go-- we, know each other so long we, didn't know when it happened, but welcome Heather. [00:05:46] Heather Ross: Thanks. I know that we have known each other at least since 2005, so at least 20 years because I got the name for my blog to name it after my dogs, because you had called yours Cog Dog. [00:06:01] My name is Heather Ross and I'm an educational development specialist at the Gwenna Moss Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Saskatchewan, which is in Saskatoon. [00:06:12] Before I worked here, I actually worked at what is now Sask Poly and worked with Kelly many ages ago. So we go back a ways too. I lead most of the Open work, OER and Open Pedagogy work and funding for, such projects. but it's only a piece of my job. It's not all Open. I deal advising faculty on all aspects of course design and development. [00:06:42] In Saskatoon, Kelly, you didn't talk it up enough. We have the fabulous South Saskatchewan River that runs right through the middle of the city. Coming up just next month is probably one of the, if not the biggest event that happens in Saskatoon, and it's the Saskatchewan Jazz Festival, which is always great to to take in. [00:07:08] For those who aren't from anywhere near here, you hear about our winters and they're pretty awful, but our summers are gorgeous. [00:07:21] Alan Levine: I know it is. I'm just inside and I was looking-- every day it's like new flowers coming up and, it's a beautiful landscape. I just love being here. Personal Educational Journeys --- [00:07:30] Alan Levine: Let's also just a little more, about yourself. So I'm just always curious, where did you spend your childhood years and what did you think of school as a kid? [00:07:40] What, was your educational experience like, Kelly? [00:07:43] Kelly Burke: I was born and raised in Saskatoon. I have gone abroad, here and there, but I ended up back here, right out of library school and got my first job as a librarian at Sask Polytech. So I've been here for 16 years now. [00:07:59] And yeah, growing up in, in Saskatoon and my school experience in Saskatoon, I would imagine was fairly typical, a lot of stand and deliver type of, education. Getting talked at a lot, textbooks in the room and so you'd go and over to the shelf and you'd grab the beat up old textbook that it was probably 10 years old and had been used by hundreds of other students before you. [00:08:32] And, yeah, I thought it was a great experience. I went to Victoria School in Saskatoon, which one was one of the first schools in Saskatoon. So it had, some-- a legacy attached to it. And it was a great, school to go to. It became a bilingual school and now I think it's a purely French immersion school. [00:08:53] So it's gone through some changes. Yeah, I had a great experience and then I went to high school, was another experience. I went to Nutana Collegiate Institute, and it was, again, one of the first high schools in Saskatoon. And up on the hill, they used to refer to it as, a little bit of a, had some, elitist kind of overtones to it for all intents and purposes, for lack of a better way to phrase it. [00:09:22] But, It's since changed the way, they format things. And so I am at the age where we didn't have computers. We didn't have the digital technology that the kids nowadays have. I remember taking a typing course in high school, and that was like the pinnacle of technology there. Although there were computers starting to come into the school, and growing up, my best friend had an Apple IIc and that's where I got my hands on the digital technology. Or if people remember the Vic 20, I had one of those at home and played Jupiter's Landing a lot. So that dates me quite well right there. Yeah. [00:10:05] Alan Levine: Yeah, that's great. And. And I bet you had inspiring teachers, like that's education. That's what it's all about. [00:10:12] Kelly Burke: For sure. Yeah. [00:10:13] Alan Levine: Yeah. All right. Shauna, you mentioned being from somewhere else. Now we get to find out where you're from. [00:10:19] Shuana Niessen: Yes, I grew up in a Northern Albertan community on a farm outside of the town of Beaver Lodge. It's in Treaty Eight. In fact, one of the keynote speakers at OEGlobal 2023 Darrion Letendre, went to the same high school as me. [00:10:34] Alan Levine: Wow. [00:10:35] Shuana Niessen: It is a beautiful area of the world. It's weird because you go north from Edmonton up, five hours and it's all forest, and then suddenly it opens up to prairie and it's all farming. [00:10:46] But on the horizon is the Rocky Mountains and the foothills. And so entertainment for us in the winter was snowmobiling on the trap lines in the forest and in the foothills and, staying in a trapper's cabin. And in the summer it was like beyond farming, it was swimming in the rivers. And yeah, a lot of hiking in the foothills and picking blueberries. It was a beautiful area of the world. [00:11:12] So I enjoyed the entertainment more than I did school. I'm gonna say it right up front. I'm neurodiverse, and so I think I didn't understand what school was about until I hit post-secondary, and then I went, whoa, oh. There's stuff to learn. That's what we're supposed to be doing here. So just for an example, we had standardized testing and I thought it was a game to make design of the dots. [00:11:41] Alan Levine: Why not? [00:11:42] Shuana Niessen: Must have hit the right answer once in a while 'cause I got through school. [00:11:46] My name is spelled funny. It's U-A-N-A, spelled like that, so all my scribblers had red circles. "You're spelling your name wrong". And yeah, like it wasn't my best friend at the school. So in the Eighties, I came to Regina and, started my first post-secondary degree and I was in the academic probation list 'cause what I was doing was sitting down the night before a final exam trying to memorize my notes word for word, and then, oh, there's two exams the next day? I'm only gonna be able to memorize 50% of each of these. And I just realized I didn't have what I needed . I was really discouraged and overwhelmed and tired. [00:12:32] And so I was sitting there and I was like looking at the headings. It was a History course. So imagine the number of notes I had taken. I was looking at the headings and I went, oh, that's what this course was about. And then I went, oh, I actually don't need to memorize. I know what he said. I know what was said in this portion and, so suddenly studying was easier. I just needed to understand what the heck we were learning about. What was it that was about? [00:12:59] So I needed the big picture. And once I got that, I went from academic probation to the dean's list 'cause it was just like night and day and I suddenly loved learning. And so since then I have been a student and have often wished that I could just do that for a living. So, yeah, love learning. [00:13:21] Alan Levine: That's a beautiful story and wow, that you knew Darrion. [00:13:25] Shuana Niessen: Yeah, I didn't know him. He's like way younger. [00:13:29] Alan Levine: He is an amazing soul. [00:13:30] Shuana Niessen: He is. Yeah. [00:13:31] Alan Levine: And now, Heather, like we have a commonality that we come from somewhere else. [00:13:37] Heather Ross: We do. I was born and raised in a suburb of Los Angeles, about a half hour from the beach. And school is bad. I'm glad you had such a great experience, Kelly. But, I, I remember in grade, in grade one my parents got called in that I was cheating by copying off of a kid next to me. [00:14:05] And it turned out that I just needed glasses because I couldn't see the board. And in grade three, I was diagnosed with a learning disability, then told that you're never gonna be particularly good in Math or this. So I just took that to heart and never really put any effort into Math. [00:14:22] And everything I know now and everything I've learned, I didn't have a learning disability. I didn't learn with people just talking to me. And kids were mean. Kids were really mean. So it was a small community. My dad was on the board of education in elementary school. My mom was one of the playground supervisors. [00:14:43] So if she got some kid in trouble, usually I ended up seeing that kid later at some point. We lived next door to the elementary school principal. That was the kind of Elementary experience. High school, I didn't really care about school. I did enough to not fail and not get in trouble. [00:15:07] And then something that we have in places in the US that is really missing, particularly in Saskatchewan, I think, community colleges where you could do your first two years of university before you transferred to the four year and finished. So you could take care of all those classes that maybe you didn't take in high school because they had not told you what you really needed to, you hadn't decided what you wanted to do. You could make up all of that. [00:15:37] So I spent four years at a two year school. Four years? Five years. Five years at a two year school, taking everything. Could change my major and all that. And at the time it was $50 to be a full-time student for a semester. Yeah, I stayed there and it was a commuter and but I took lots of different things. And then I transferred to a four year and ended up studying Journalism, taking this variety of courses and having so many different experiences that way really helped me with being a journalist. [00:16:17] But I didn't do particularly well in my grades there because I was on the campus newspaper and that's where it was exciting and, so forth. So I graduated from there and two months later I met my now wife and moved to Canada, in the middle of winter. And there was a heat wave in Los Angeles at the time, and it was in Fahrenheit plus 80 and it was minus 40 here. [00:16:42] So I, I called home and I said, it's 120 degrees colder. [00:16:47] Kelly Burke: So you got a warm welcome right. [00:16:49] Heather Ross: Yeah, that year it snowed in June. It was really a bad one. And then we went to Toronto for my wife to go back to school. And while I was there, I did a one year bachelor's degree in Education at OISE UT. A bizarre experience for me because I got all high grades and that had never happened for me. [00:17:19] But it was a different experience. You don't just get talked to. And then we moved back to Saskatchewan, when we were both done with school and I tried to get a teaching position and I didn't. I didn't grow up here, I didn't do my practicum here. There was very little chance this was gonna happen. [00:17:43] I was told I needed a year of teaching in Saskatchewan and 14 credit units in Education within, I think five years to retain a teaching certificate. And when I asked what courses I was missing, I was told, "Oh, you're not missing anything. We just require that you take a certain number here." And because I couldn't get any teaching work, I did a Master's instead. And I haven't been back in the K to 12 classrooms since then. But it was unthinkable that I would ever do graduate work when I was going to school in the States. It was just, why, what was I thinking? Why would I even consider that? [00:18:29] But I got to have deep conversations with people and so forth. And that made a huge difference for me. As I said before, I worked with Kelly for about, I guess about six years I was at Sask Poly and I've been here for 13. And when people outside of academia ask me what I do, I've gotten to the point where I just say, I do what I can to make the learning experience for students suck less. Open Education at Sask Polytech --- [00:18:58] Alan Levine: It comes through in all your stories, I, I could go on forever asking these questions, but let's talk about Open Education-- and if possible, can you each, and you can choose who goes on, i'm gonna stop calling on people-- but give us an idea what the landscape and what's like some of your successes or current, like things that are top of your plate and what's the state of Open Education at each of your institutions. [00:19:24] Kelly Burke: I'll start just to keep the order going. So the Open Education has gotten off to a bit of a slow start i'd like to say. Maybe that's not fair, but that's the way I perceive it at Sask Polytech mainly because getting the word out and getting buy-in from faculty is not always easy. [00:19:48] Like two, three years ago, a very few people understood what it was and wanted to really get involved. So it's been a process of awareness, building that awareness and then building that capacity. So we got Pressbooks probably about that time, about two, three years, maybe a little bit longer. I've kinda lost track to be honest. [00:20:08] And so it's getting people involved in it and providing the opportunities has been the main goal right now. And so we're at the point where I think most faculty know what it is and are actually really excited because they understand the possibility of Open Education and the ability to control those resources and create something that is really suited to their needs in the classroom. [00:20:38] And just the nature of Open Education and being able to be a part of the larger community. And I think that really does take a lot of the burden off in a certain manner. And, so we're at the point now where we don't have quite as big a collection as maybe the U of R or the U of S, but it's starting to build momentum. [00:20:59] People are really wanting to get involved. And so I get a lot of emails like, "sign me up, I want an account. I want to start building. I wanna start creating." And so now we're playing a little bit of catch up with policy and trying to make sure that people are aware of what it entails. [00:21:15] I wouldn't say it's onerous but there's a lot of considerations that faculty members have to keep in mind when they're entering this domain of Open Education. It's just an ongoing process of awareness, education, support through grants and through networking. [00:21:35] Like I think this, like what we've done with SaskOER is gonna really catapult a lot of development in Sask Polytech. So I think that's where we're at this stage of things. And I see it growing. I see it growing a lot and the curve is gonna be pretty steep, I think, in the next 1, 2, 3 years. [00:21:56] Yeah. [00:21:57] Shuana Niessen: I've seen a lot of interest coming outta Sask Polytech with the OER and talked to many people too. Interestingly enough, I get contacted sometimes as they face some problems and they're collaborating together with our faculty. Yeah, I've seen a lot of interest there. [00:22:17] Kelly Burke: Yeah, so Nursing is a big program at Sask Polytech. And we have a collaborative program with the U of R and so there's a lot of tie in that way. And Nursing they're one of the programs they've bought in big time to, OE and OERs. And so yeah, I think we're gonna just see a lot more of that. [00:22:34] And they seem to be the early adopters of OE and I think it really suits them and their needs. So yeah, I think you're gonna get a lot more calls Shuana. Sorry. [00:22:44] Shuana Niessen: That's okay. [00:22:46] Alan Levine: Do you see some like more inroads for, remix and existing OER to make them more locally relevant? 'Cause the idea of creating one from scratch is probably daunting. [00:23:01] Kelly Burke: I think there's a good balance of people are doing that. They're cloning and they're adapting and adopting but there is a lot of from scratch products being created because they see what's out there and it's not exactly what they want. [00:23:15] So I think that's the beauty of OE, is to be able to not only to take those little bits and pieces from what other people have done, but to create something that is just theirs from scratch. So I think that excites a lot of people too. Yeah. [00:23:29] Alan Levine: Great. Open Education at the University of Regina --- [00:23:30] Alan Levine: And Shauna, what's the pulse at U of R right now? [00:23:34] Shuana Niessen: I've only been taking the pulse for a couple years, so fairly new. And all I can give you is this like very short time period of observations. And one of the reasons I was moving into the big conversation with everyone about where Open Education is, 'cause I needed the information. [00:23:58] That was one reason. But also because, we have this group of people who are making OER, using OER, and it's a very small group of people, and then that's where it stops. Like there, there isn't a far reaching-- like you can talk to sporadic people in the hallway. If you were gonna do a little survey and you'd find that OER, what's that? [00:24:22] It seems like it's really hard to get the word out and get the excitement generated, especially when you're talking about learning objects and copyright. 'Cause those aren't very interesting. So for me, the struggle has been how do I make what we're doing relate to what you're doing. And make it essential to what you're doing. [00:24:45] And my emphasis has been like at the Bootcamp, designing for justice. Engaging Professors in Social Justice --- [00:24:51] Shuana Niessen: We have a lot of professors who are interested in social justice and this is like a huge part of that. And if I could just get them to see it, then They would realize that this is what they need to be doing and getting involved with. [00:25:07] But also I'm starting to realize that less emphasis on the learning objects and more on what does this license free people to do in their classrooms. These open practices that are student centered, that really liven up. And, we're talking a lot about academic integrity and authentic assessment and so these are the avenues. [00:25:33] These are really good ways for people to engage students and have them work in authentic ways and be more likely to want to have integrity with what they produce, because it's published, it's out there for the public. There's more accountability. Challenges and Adaptations in Open Textbook Creation --- [00:25:50] Shuana Niessen: Yeah, I'd say it's been a struggle. It's a struggle because as well, it does take time. And so you were asking about adaptations. Even the adaptations take time. We have a Statistics textbook that's being created right now. It's been a long process so far. All of the illustrations come out of the First Nations University professor, out of his research about water on a First Nation. And so his students are going to be really engaged because, what's statistics unless it's relevant to the issues in your life? [00:26:24] This has been a long process even getting a mixed or not just a mix, but an adaptation, suitable for publication. Yeah, it's a lot of work and we're asking people to do that off the side of their desk and you really have to care about your students to do that. [00:26:41] Alan Levine: I just have to say I just love the mathematics textbooks that are in Cree. Like what a great example. [00:26:47] Shuana Niessen: This is the same professor! [00:26:49] Alan Levine: That's fantastic. [00:26:51] Heather Ross: So I guess I'm like the old hat at this. [00:26:54] Alan Levine: Don't say "old" Heather. [00:26:56] Heather Ross: I'm really young. [00:26:58] Shuana Niessen: "Mature!" [00:27:00] Heather Ross: Yeah, I've been, here at the Gwenna Moss Center, we have a site in the library building. But we also have a site that's down the road, because two units merged. The one I work in, I've been here the longest. [00:27:13] And so somebody started calling me the matriarch and I'm like, oh my God, there's people older than me here. Celebrating Open Textbook Adoption --- [00:27:20] Heather Ross: Just this year we celebrated 10 years since the first adoption of an open textbook in a large course. [00:27:29] It was about 300 students that first year and this year we're at 13,000. They're not all unique because our first year engineering program, for example, went almost entirely open when they redid their curriculum. So those students are counted more than once. [00:27:47] The exciting things are the SaskOER network that we're gonna talk about, I'm sure. We're seeing a lot more open pedagogy activities that are happening, which are great because they benefit not only the students, but community. The conversations have changed about why Open, and it, always frustrated me that Open wasn't considered a strategy or priority at the institution. [00:28:14] But I've come to accept and promote that it's the way all of those things can be done because you're not gonna be able to Indigenize the curriculum with commercial textbooks. That's changed the conversation, but also everything going on in the US has really changed the conversation. [00:28:31] I was just talking to some professors last week about using these textbooks from a publisher that's out of the US even though these are Canadian versions, but you're using the homework system that goes along with it. That's probably in the US and that data, your student data, isn't gonna be particularly safe if it's sitting in the US. [00:28:54] And I think we're gonna start seeing textbooks censored that come outta the US. Healthcare, in particular, History, anything related to climate change, that's all gonna be, I think, censored coming outta the US soon because of what's happening with what universities and K to 12 systems are being told they have to teach. [00:29:18] So that's another reason that we should be talking to people about the benefits of Open. We started with cost savings, which is what the government cares about. They give us money. They wanna be able to say, this is how much money they're saving students through this funding. But we're talking about not only pedagogy, but social justice and equity and so many things that we don't have those conversations around commercial textbooks. [00:29:49] We can't because they're not gonna respond the way we need them to. [00:29:53] Alan Levine: And now it's time. Introducing SaskOER --- [00:30:00] Alan Levine: Let's talk about SaskOER, which is a reason to bring this together. , I have had a chance to work with BCCampus and I've worked with eCampusOntario, and they're like the big heavyweights on the east and west, and you never hear much about what's going on in the middle. [00:30:10] But there is a lot going on. and that's why it's very exciting to see this collaboration going on. Can we get like the story and first say what SaskOER is. We can just talk about what it means for all three institutions? [00:30:24] Heather Ross: I go first this time. Okay. Okay. [00:30:28] Alan Levine: We are expecting that. [00:30:29] Heather Ross: Yeah. The Evolution of Pressbooks Hosting --- [00:30:31] Heather Ross: At USask we started with Pressbooks almost a decade ago and it started with a server in the unit. We merged with the distance education unit. They had a server in a closet where we ran Pressbooks off of. And then our IT department wasn't fond of that in terms of security. [00:30:50] So we started getting hosting with Pressbooks. And then later The U of R did that and Sask Polytech did that. It was seemed ridiculous that we had three different ones in the province and we didn't really know what everybody was working on. We started some conversations about, "hey, how do we get this to be one but still protect the identities of the individual institutions?" [00:31:16] And I think that's what SaskOER, has done. It's a single instance of Pressbooks being hosted by Pressbooks in Montreal where all of our open textbooks are, you can still go in and search by an institution or you could search or browse the entire catalog. But it's not just a site because we've come together as a consortium to make decisions about the site, but also to talk about Open in the province. Collaboration and Future Visions for SaskOER --- [00:31:44] Heather Ross: And having the site where it's not individual institutions is also opening the door to regional colleges getting involved with Open, and my hope is eventually K to 12 as well getting involved with Open. And now we have this provincial repository that we can all be making use of. And I know there's BCCampus and there's the eCampusOntario and Campus Manitoba and whatever the Atlantic provinces are doing. [00:32:11] But we've been given the money, and I think each of us have done different things with it, that we couldn't do if all the grants were run out of a single body. And I prefer this because I think we can cause more trouble this way, like more of that "good trouble" where, yeah, you know what? I think this would be an excellent use of some open funding. [00:32:38] It's not a textbook, but it's gonna help spread Open into these departments. And we can make those decisions and we can make them much quicker than we could if we were just applying for grants to a bigger group. But I think this consortium , there's a government representative on, but it's really the voices of and not administrators-- it's the voices of those of us who work every day with instructors around Open. So we're seeing the realities of what's going on. So I think this is a good way of doing it. [00:33:15] Alan Levine: Absolutely. And, the voices that are here, right? [00:33:18] Heather Ross: Yes, these are the voices and others from our institutions. [00:33:23] Kelly Burke: I'd agree with Heather. It's feels a little more grass roots, even though you have a Ministry official kind of heading the meetings and driving the agenda, so to speak. But during the process of bringing all this together, I always felt like the three institutions had a lot of pull and a lot of say in everything that was going on. [00:33:46] And I never felt we were being overpowered by the Ministry. I think they're really respectful of what Heather was just mentioning. We're three distinct institutions, but bringing this all together, I think definitely, expands the portfolio of OE, not maybe exponentially, but it does, I think, bring a lot of visibility to it in a way that each of us on our own wouldn't be able to provide. [00:34:15] I see future challenges. I actually see having too much going on, perhaps. I think it'll get to a point where there's gonna be a lot of people wanting to get their fingers into OE and developing OE And so I think that'll be a good, problem. But that's the hope, right? [00:34:34] To have a lot of people involved with it, that it'll, transfer into the classroom and be more of a natural, kind of organic way of implementing and inserting OE into classrooms. There's a lot of instructors that are already using OE in their courses through Brightspace, which is, our learning-- our, help me out, Heather. [00:34:58] Heather Ross: Learning Management System. [00:34:59] Kelly Burke: The LMS! I had the acronym, but I couldn't think of the words. And, so there's a lot of that integration going on, and they are using it, and I think that's just gonna become like a normal thing, a normal part of the curriculum development, a normal part of the instructor's workflow. [00:35:17] And yeah, I think it's like having the Ministry headed is a nice way to I guess bring us all together and, institutions never say no to money, right? [00:35:30] Shuana Niessen: So from the U Regina side, that aspect of inter-institutional collaboration I think is what the hope for us is. With some of the collaborations with Nursing, the issues that the instances of Pressbooks, we had different settings and it was hard for them to work together, but now we have one instance and one set of settings, and so it's just easier, smoother flowing for those collaborations to exist. [00:36:02] And, 'cause I've come into this the last hour, so I can't really say much to the history of how it came to be, but to me it feels like the government is, as a result, more invested in this endeavor. And so funding may become more regular, we would hope, and that would be a very good thing for all of us. [00:36:24] Alan Levine: Obviously the government wants to see impact and cost savings on students. But the way you're talking, it seems like there's a potential to show them a lot more in terms of what this collaboration can provide. [00:36:36] Heather Ross: Yeah. And another thing is Kelly brought up that they're on Brightspace, and it's actually that the three of us are on three different LMSs. But Pressbooks integrates with all of them. Which is great 'cause we have students going through Canvas that'll get into Pressbooks so that they don't have to have separate login accounts, to do open pedagogy projects. [00:37:03] Shuana Niessen: Interesting. [00:37:04] Alan Levine: I would imagine a fair amount of work of bringing everything together from a technical side. and now it's getting people oriented and doing more work in there. Do you have any like visions or ideas about what you might see like in, in a year or two from now, or what you might hope for? Regional Colleges and Open Educational Resources --- [00:37:22] Heather Ross: I'd like to see some regional colleges have interest. I think that would be a really important thing. I was actually just looking through the Pressbooks from Alberta 'cause they seem to have one set up and they have so many books that I had no idea, 'cause I don't see them in other repositories. [00:37:41] And I think that having our three together is gonna help us see a lot more of what's going on within our institutions that we weren't seeing before. But also reminds me that, hey, you know that if we see some great books and others because Pressbooks is the thing in Canada for Open. it's super easy to add books to it. [00:38:05] You just clone a book and bring it over and there it is. So yeah, having everybody on the same platform for Open is great. [00:38:17] Alan Levine: Can you give the audience a sense who the regional colleges are and what kind of institutions we're talking about? [00:38:23] Heather Ross: The U of R's in Regina for their main campus. And the U of S is in Saskatoon for their main campus. And Sask Poly is in Saskatoon, Regina, Prince Albert and Moose Jaw. They have four campuses. We have some satellite campuses as well, and I believe the U of R probably does. [00:38:43] Are you still partnered with First Nations university? [00:38:45] Shuana Niessen: Yes. [00:38:46] Heather Ross: But the regional colleges are in the smaller centers. I know a lot of Usask courses are offered through the regional colleges. It's makes it possible for students to not have to leave their communities to at least get started in their post-secondary education or complete, depending on what they're looking to do. [00:39:08] Where Sask Poly is, those are the four main cities, the four largest. And the regional colleges are everywhere else. Because we're a big province and we have a lot of smaller communities, and so having the regional colleges makes it easier for students to stay at home, especially in the smaller communities. If they're helping out on a farm, that makes it possible for them, or they're used to really small schools, and this is a chance to start post-secondary, at least before they have to go to bigger classes. If you can take first year English without there being 300 students in your class and you're only used to 20 students, that's a big deal. [00:39:57] Shuana Niessen: And without leaving your support system as well. [00:40:00] Heather Ross: You don't leave your support system, you don't have to worry about paying rent in the cities. So there's a lot of benefits to it, but we do work with the regional colleges a lot to offer courses through them. [00:40:16] Kelly Burke: I think there's a lot of potential too for the regional colleges. Logistically supporting a regional college with access to resources can be like, if you have to send textbooks or through interlibrary loans, you're sending physical items. There's a little bit of work and a lot of money actually probably involved in that. [00:40:37] So maybe getting away from-- and as a librarian I should never say this-- physical books and items might help mitigate those issues just logistically supporting those regional colleges when you have to send physical items there. So more Open Educational Resources will, I think, help them actually maybe feel more integrated with those bigger centers. [00:41:03] And I could see that happening a lot. So being a little more inclusive with, what like to say, the smaller centers, I think that's definitely a lot of potential there too, which I think can only help the cause with Open Education. [00:41:19] Heather Ross: And it's not fair that the students at the larger institutions are saving all this money on their materials and the students at the regional colleges might not be, they might be spending a lot more on books. [00:41:33] Kelly Burke: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. [00:41:35] Shuana Niessen: And there's the aspect of up in the north, the internet stability. And so with a Pressbook you can read it as HTML, that's pretty easy with low connectivity instead of having to download a PDF-- more accessible. [00:41:51] Heather Ross: If you don't have a good connection at home, you can print an open textbook. [00:41:55] Shuana Niessen: That's and just use the print version of it. [00:41:59] Yeah. [00:42:00] Alan Levine: Yeah, that tends to get overlooked quite a bit, but it's definitely something that works. Showcasing Open Pedagogy Projects --- [00:42:05] Alan Levine: We heard some mention of open pedagogy. Can you just give us a sample of specific ones that you're proud of or you think make a good case for what open pedagogy means? [00:42:17] Like what subject areas and what are the students doing in these projects? [00:42:23] Heather Ross: So for us, we've had brochures created from our Nutrition students for local communities. But the resources that if they want the files, they can modify them for their local needs. [00:42:38] We've had several books that were either created by or adapted by graduate students in our College of Education with one professor in particular, but she's done this four times, three times with books. This most recent time they created, online games around digital literacy and AI. Websites have been created by students in our Women and gender Studies course. [00:43:06] There are students in Vet Med who are creating resources to be used in the north. They can be used by community members for how to help children understand how they should behave around wild dogs in the North. And so safety materials and stuff, those are the types of things that are going on. [00:43:31] And it's great to see it spreading, like OER, spreading to so many different colleges on campus. [00:43:39] Alan Levine: I like seeing that you're like rolling through this index. 'cause there's a lot. [00:43:43] Heather Ross: There is, yeah. [00:43:44] Kelly Burke: At Sask Polytech like I'm probably not the best person to speak to this particular question, but I'd imagine there's a lot going on. There's a colleague of mine who mainly deals with the faculty hands-on helping them with, these types of projects and dealing with grants and whatnot. [00:44:02] If there isn't, and I'm sure there is, it's not far away for us to be in the same boat as the U of S and the U of R in, terms of open pedagogy, projects and what they're publishing in that vein. So yeah. [00:44:18] Alan Levine: You'll be influenced. [00:44:20] Kelly Burke: Yeah. Yeah. [00:44:21] Alan Levine: What about U of R? [00:44:23] Shuana Niessen: We have a couple of edited books with Raymond Blake's history courses edited by a combination of grad and undergrad students, which has proven to be quite interesting. We have a project by Jay Wallace Skelton with a course to create resources that are made in Saskatchewan to support 2SLGBTQIA+ students 'cause I believe those have been taken down from the provincial. [00:44:52] We had a Sask assessment website that was created by students interviewing Saskatchewan teachers to find out how they apply assessment in their courses. [00:45:05] We're adjudicating one right now. I can't mention it. It's pretty exciting. So we do have some more coming and-- oh, we had a Wikipedia one done, editing Wikipedia. It was a very good learning experience according to the professor. [00:45:21] Alan Levine: That's great. And anything else the world should know about SaskOER?, Why should they go check the SaskOER site out? [00:45:28] Heather Ross: We've quite a big catalog. I think we're doing some great stuff. And I think that we're often overlooked, so go check it out because there's great work being done by instructors and students. [00:45:41] Kelly Burke: As I was saying before Saskatchewan people are a little understated, but we're very proud of the province and the work we're doing. So I think that's something to tell a little bit-- this is a big step for I think all the institutions in OE. So we should be proud of that work, I think. [00:45:57] Yeah. [00:45:58] Shuana Niessen: I think it's early days as we've just got this Pressbooks catalog together and published. [00:46:04] We're gonna continue to meet and I think there will be things that grow out of those meetings because that's what happens when you collaborate. [00:46:13] Heather Ross: Shauna, I just shared a resource for you in the chat. And I'd like to get the link back to if possible for the one on two-Spirit, LGBTQ + students, because we've both had open Pedigogy projects around this. [00:46:29] Shuana Niessen: Oh, good. Okay. see. This is what we're supposed to [00:46:33] Alan Levine: Exactly. [00:46:34] Shuana Niessen: through this collaboration, [00:46:36] Kelly Burke: Collaboration in real time. Yeah. [00:46:37] Shuana Niessen: Yeah. [00:46:39] Alan Levine: As I was saying that, this is just fantastic. I really appreciate your coming together. I'll drop just a seed because, I have to, but, we we run this awards program through our organization and a lot of people think oh, you gotta be like a big, giant project to, to win an Open education Award" and you don't. I think there's so much going on at your institutions and you've already shared. [00:47:03] And, I think the SaskOER collaboration is worthy of a nomination this year. So I'll apply my gentle arm twisting because, I'm more interested in people sharing the work that they're doing, not just in the interest of winning the award, but just to make sure more people can know about it. [00:47:23] So you'll hear from me. [00:47:27] I like to close with a different, question. Personal Reflections and Closing Remarks --- [00:47:35] Alan Levine: Going back to how we started, can each one you say what's something that's really important that gives you a fulfillment and joy outside of all this OER work you do? What do you do outside of work to sustain yourself and keep your spirits high? [00:47:46] And I'll start with Kelly 'cause that's where we started. [00:47:49] Kelly Burke: So I just spent a weekend with some friends up at a cabin at Emma Lake, which is just north of Prince Albert. And while I didn't mention in my opening statements, the geological environment in which we live, it's a beautiful place. It's my happy place. [00:48:07] It's where I go to recharge and, just get away and enjoy the quiet Lakeland. Yeah, that, that's what I do. I like going up there and my parents have owned this cabin since 1965. I just recently took it off their hands, and so it's now my job to keep the legacy going and I'll be spending a lot more time up there, I think. [00:48:29] Yeah. [00:48:30] Alan Levine: That's beautiful. You always hear in Saskatchewan, people say, oh yeah, we got a cabin, and we, go up there. And, Shuana what do you like to do? What keeps your spirits high outside of work? [00:48:43] Shuana Niessen: I definitely enjoy hiking, but not in tick season, so that limits me. So once the ticks are dead, and before the ticks are alive, I spent a lot of time in like just the trails here. We have a lot of trails and the rest of the time, because eight to nine months of the year, we have snow, I'm a reader. I love reading and right now, Kristin Hannah is one of my favorite authors. [00:49:10] I don't know if you've read any of her, but she likes to, it's a historical fiction she writes. And she finds women heroes of the past to develop her fiction around, [00:49:22] Alan Levine: All right, Heather? [00:49:24] Heather Ross: Kelly, you mentioned going to the lake and when I first moved to Saskatchewan, I kept hearing everybody was going to the lake. And I finally asked my wife, how big is this lake? And then she explained to me, it's actually a lot of lakes. That's just how we say it. [00:49:37] For me, currently I'm revising, a novel that I've finished the first draft of just a few weeks ago. I have a podcast of my own and otherwise I really enjoy spending time with my family. We have a teenage daughter who's a talented saxophone player. And so going to see her play is exciting. [00:50:07] Alan Levine: I just appreciate you being willing to share this. 'Cause we learn things from each other in knowing what we do. [00:50:13] And, again, it's just such a great exciting opportunity for Saskatchewan and we'll be looking to see what else comes out of this and we'll be watching it closely. [00:50:22] And, thank you, Kelly, Shuana, and, Heather for being here. And thank you the folks who are listening to this episode, this podcast we do at Open Education Global. Each episode I select a different musical track, from the Free Music archive 'cause that's all Creative Commons licensed music by independent musicians. [00:50:43] And I found a track called "Prairie Mountain" by Ryan Anderson, and it's licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-commercial license. And all three of you can hear the music when I publish this episode that'll be on our site, voices.global.org. And then we always try to have some follow up conversations in our community space. [00:51:03] And so anybody listening and would be interested being on the show or want to tell me, "Alan, you really should talk to ____". And, that goes to all you people. I really wanna hear recommendations for who would be interesting to bring on the show. So just let us know. [00:51:18] And I just thank my neighbors and friends so much and people who love Saskatchewan. [00:51:24] Heather Ross: Thank you. [00:51:25] Shuana Niessen: Thanks, Alan.