DATE: Friday, March 11, 2022

TIME: 2:00-3:30 pm (60-min event + 30 mins for anyone who wants to stay and chat)

COST: Free

WHERE: Online //Scroll down to register

ENCOURAGED AUDIENCE: 

• Faculty and students who are working on or have worked on an open textbook project
• Faculty interested in applying for an open textbook grant or who want to know more about OER and open textbook projects
• Librarians and students are also welcome. 

DESCRIPTION

Concordia University provides funding to support the cost-saving and pedagogical benefits of open textbooks for students. Our open textbook grants offer faculty funding to hire students who help with various aspects of open textbook projects, from research to work within Pressbooks. For more about OER at Concordia, including our adopt, customize, and create grants, see our OER Guide. 

For this event, grant recipients reveal the behind-the-scenes of their course-specific open textbook projects. Create-grant recipient Christina Sanza (Digital Journalism Instructor) working with Ora Bar (student) on the JOUR 443 The Digital Magazine Open Textbook offers insights on their work in progress. Meanwhile, one of Concordia's first create-grant recipients, Dr. Brian Vermeire, offers reflections on his completed co-authored OER project Computational Fluid Dynamics: An Open-Source Approach. Presentations will be followed by time for questions amongst grant recipients and attendees. 

COLLEGIAL OBJECTIVES

• Demystify open textbooks
• Gain insights on the work involved behind the scenes
• Learn from colleagues
• Foster the growth of OER at Concordia University through communities of practice

LEADERS INFORMATION

This event will be hosted by Scholarly Publishing Librarian Dr. Rachel Harris, and will feature presentations by:

Cristina Sanza is a Digital Journalism Instructor in the Department of Journalism at Concordia University. There, she serves as the Associate Editor of its digital magazine, The City, and as a writing coach. Cristina is currently coordinating the creation of the department's Open Educational Resource textbook, which aims to support its undergraduate capstone course where students create multimedia stories for The City. Cristina is a Concordia alumna who has worked in the field of journalism and communications for nearly 10 years. Outside of her work in academia, she enjoys playing music, lifting heavy things and developing high-protein recipes.

Ora Bar is a third-year journalism student at Concordia University. For nearly two years, she has served as a researcher and production assistant for the Department of Journalism's Open Educational Resource Textbook. She has been enjoying developing interactive activities and interviewing journalists regularly for the project. Ora is interested in photography and documentary filmmaking and likes to travel and eat passionfruit.

Dr. Brian Vermeire is an Associate Professor and head of the Computational Aerodynamics Lab at Concordia. He has contributed to several open source projects including the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solver PyFR (pyfr.org), the aerodynamics and design package Py2Fly (https://gitlab.com/bvermeir/Py2Fly), amongst several others. Through the Open Educational Resources (OER) program Dr. Vermeire and co-authors Mr. Carlos Pereira and Dr. Hamidreza Karbasian have written the book Computational Fluid Dynamics: An Open-Source Approach. During this talk, Dr. Vermeire will discuss how open-source tools from collaborative software development were adapted for this OER project.