Teaching and Learning Stories from the Field, a podcast from the Teaching & Learning Centre at Seneca College Episode 1: Adapting an Open Text Transcript Jennifer Peters 0:10
Hello, and welcome to "Teaching and Learning Stories from the Field," a new podcast from the Seneca Teaching & Learning Center. This podcast will feature faculty sharing their stories about novel and unique strategies they're using in their courses, often around technology, but not always. Today, we will hear from Tom Bartsiokas and Tricia Hylton from the School of English and Liberal Studies. They will be telling the story of how they save students upwards of $400,000, all while completely customizing course resources and ensuring day-one access for every one of the 5,000 students in the EAC594 course this past year. So without further ado, here is Tom and Tricia's story.

Hi everyone and welcome to the very first episode of Teaching and Learning Stories from the Field, brought to you by the Teaching & Learning Center at Seneca. I'm one of your hosts, Jenn Peters from the Library and the Teaching & Learning Centre. And we're have Arushi Manners joining us from the Teaching & Learning Centre. So in today's episode, we're going to hear from Tom Bartsiokas and Tricia Hylton, both from the School of English and Liberal Studies. They've worked on a project where they adapted an open communications textbook, and this textbook was originally developed by an Algonquin College professor. It's a completely open text, which means that it can be used for non-commercial, educational purposes anywhere in the world. Tom and Tricia, they replaced a text that was in the EAC594 course that used to cost students $106. In the last year, this open, free text has been available to over 5,000 students, and it saved those students between $250,000 and $400,000. And this is done at calculating between 50 to 75% of those students having bought that text. Also, an additional text at Seneca has been adapted from this text: Anna Cappuccitti, from the Fashion Business program, she adapted Tom and Tricia's book for her fashion students. So it's really an amazing project that allows faculty to customize their course materials. It allows all students day-one access to the text with increased accessibility features, and, as Tricia will discuss, access to interactive, online learning activities. So Tom, he started teaching in 2009 at Seneca, and he teaches a variety of corporate communications and business writing courses. Prior to teaching, he worked as an editor and writer, and communication specialist for a number of organizations including Seneca, and he was also the lead for the new intranet project, the new Seneca intranet that launched last month. And Tricia has been at Seneca for 15 years. And initially she started teaching in the Corporate Communications postgraduate program. Now she's in English and Liberal Studies at Newnham teaching business, technical, and interpersonal communications. So welcome Tom and Tricia.

Tricia Hylton 2:55
Hi Jenn.

Tom Bartsiokas 2:56
Hi Jenn, hi Arushi.

Tricia Hylton 2:58
Hi Arushi as well. Thank you.

Jennifer Peters 3:01
So, Tom, can you tell us what the impetus for this project was?

Tom Bartsiokas 3:06
Yeah, sure. This all started back when eCampusOntario put a call out for proposals to adapt OERs for high-enrollment courses. So I heard about it and became interested. Every semester, I would get asked by, I would get asked the same question for my students and it was always you know, first day of class, once you've gone through the addendum, the course assignments, and you know, you know, it never failed. You know student would ask, "Are you really going to go, Are you really going to use the textbook? Do we need it? I went online I did a Google search and I found found out that cost more than $100, right?" And I'm sure, Trisha you, you came across this as well. And my answer to them was, "of course, you know, absolutely we are going to use the textbook," but, you know, the follow up was, "well, it's pretty expensive," right. So in EAC594, we have predominantly used two to three approved textbooks and, like you mentioned at the top, Jenn, they retail for more than $100. So that got me thinking about OERs. But it wasn't until I attended a conference that were at, and I heard you speak, and it just, it brought it into focus for me, because you shared some amazing data just on the financial burden that we're placing on students when it comes to, again, you know, required textbooks, and that that convinced me that, you know, what we needed to do something and I decided to, you know, to actually submit a proposal to eCampusOntario to, again, you know, adopt and adapt a textbook for 594. So that's how, you know, again, that's how it got all started. The timeframe for me is a little foggy because of the pandemic. So I think it was back in 2017, if I'm not mistaken.

Jennifer Peters 5:00
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the pandemic has kind of thrown all time out of whack for everybody, for sure. So did you get funding from eCampus for this?

Tom Bartsiokas 5:10
So that ... so so we, you know, the Chair was all for us submitting the proposal, which was great. You know, we obviously got support through Seneca library so we submitted the proposal, but unfortunately, our proposal was rejected. Right. But, luckily, we work at a great place. You know, Seneca is amazing. Our Vice President of Academic heard about the proposal and, you know, talked to my Chair at the time about it, that there was nothing stopping us from going ahead with executing what was in there, right. And that's exactly what we did. So, for the initial kind of rollout of the project, you know, based on again that eCampus proposal, my Chair gave me the green light and gave me a two-course release to work on the textbook.

Jennifer Peters 6:04
And did you bring anybody else on at that time to assist?

Tom Bartsiokas 6:08
At that time, so kind of initial phase of the project, only my other colleague Robin Potter was involved, and she took on more of kind of a review role.

Jennifer Peters 6:20
And so Tricia joined much later, I think in the kind of in the next phase.

Tom Bartsiokas 6:24
Correct, yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Peters 6:26
So for the first phase of the project, what were your steps to getting the project started, and you know, published for students?

Tom Bartsiokas 6:33
Yeah, so it all started off with research and planning and again, like you mentioned at the top, you know, the first step was finding an appropriate textbook for our course. Like you said, it's a high-enrollment course, we have thousands of students, you know, in this course every semester at all of our campuses. And so initially, you know, when I, when we first started this project, we came across a textbook called "Business Communication for Success." And it was great. The only problem was, it was really US-focused, right, and that wasn't going to work for us. And then somewhere, in that time, we had that faculty strike. And then, you know, again, you mentioned Jordon Smith, an Algonquin College professor. Jordan, you know, got to this project before we could, and had the same idea, and so what he did is, you know, he put a Canadian spin on "Business Communication for Success" and and rolled out the OER and retitled it "Communication @ Work." And then for us this, this is exactly what we wanted to do so, you know, once once we saw that textbook, it was just - it was a no-brainer for us to really move forward and go all in with the OER. And that's exactly what we did. So once we honed in on that text, you know, you know the research and planning was put together, the next stage of that project was next step of the project was the content development. So making sure that you know it aligned with the learning outcomes in 594, and then we heard from the faculty in terms of them adopting it using it. They made it clear to us that, you know, they wanted to see, you know, they needed a supplementary materials that you would get from traditional textbooks, to be able to, again, you know, execute everything that they would need to within the 14 week course. And that's what we did. So we you know again, aligned the textbook to meet 594, created accompanying lecture slides to go with the content, and then, and then put it together in an accessible form where faculty can have access to it. And then before it was rolled out, it was reviewed by Robin, and then we had, if memory serves me correctly, we had 4 faculty members actually pilot it first in their courses. And then, and then from there, we had a feedback process where they shared, you know, their thoughts, and the students' thoughts, and that's where we got the feedback that it needed to be more interactive, you know, it was missing you know video components and multimedia components, and that's where Trisha came in and and got got the textbook to where we're at today.

Jennifer Peters 9:07
And Trisha, when did you join the project?

Tricia Hylton 9:11
Tom, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was January 2019.

Tom Bartsiokas 9:18
Yeah, that I think that's right, yeah, because in the fall of January - sorry in the fall of 2019 is when we rolled up the pilot, and then we got the feedback and that's when you jumped in, Trisha. That's correct.

Jennifer Peters 9:31
And you were brought on to develop the interactive learning activities, correct?

Tricia Hylton 9:36
I was. That was part of what my job entailed: trying to build in the interactive components into the textbook so that it wasn't just text that students were looking at, that they were also videos integrated into each of the chapters. And also, interactive activities that would test student knowledge or student learning as they went through each of the chapters. In addition, in terms of the textbook, there are some areas in our class, in our EAC594, that we addressed as part of our curriculum that was not part of the textbook already. And so, the other part of what I also did was to include chapters that reflected what we did in EAC594 that were not included in the initial textbook by Jordan.

Jennifer Peters 10:36
And you did a lot of development using the tool H5P, which is integrated into the platform that Tom used to create the book which was PressBooks. How did you find learning and using H5P?

Tricia Hylton 10:49
For the most part ,it was very very direct and intuitive. You could you could figure it out. At Seneca, we use Blackboard, and so if you've developed some tests or quizzes or exercises using Blackboard, it really was not that different a transition to the H5P software. There were some of the application, some of the exercises, that are not really usable. Well, they didn't work, when I tried to use them. So it did limit some of what I was able to do in terms of integrating interactive activities. However, for the most part, I think that what's there is reflective of actually what's in those textbooks that Tom referred to. The type of exercises that I was able to integrate are reflective of the exercises that are in those textbooks. So therefore, for the most part, students are not losing anything. And there are also applications that allowed us to do other things that would not be doable in a normal classroom and/or in Blackboard. So students get additional sorts of exercises that they would otherwise not have access to.

Jennifer Peters 12:10
Can you give us an example of some of the exercises you did? I know, I think you've got interactive video in there, quizzes and things like that. Did you use any of the other, you know, like image hotspots or things like that, available in H5P?

Tricia Hylton 12:24
I did. I did use image hotspots as a way of getting students to click on different areas of documents so that those areas could be explained to them, and/or to be able to recognize different areas of the documents and they would know if they, if they've gotten it right or wrong. I've also used flashcards also as a way of explaining different areas of or different kinds of concepts. There are a number of different things that are there. But, in terms of, most of the exercises are in fact multiple-choice and/or fill-in-the-blanks. And we were able to construct some writing exercises as well. Those are very difficult to actually develop. But there are a few of those as well.

Jennifer Peters 13:20
And these are all self-assessment activities, right; they're not things that can be tracked in Blackboard?

Tricia Hylton 13:26
No, those are all self-assessment activities. However, we can take those activities directly from the textbook and include them as part of our Blackboard courses, if we deem that necessary or if we want to do that. We're able to integrate the H5P exercises into Blackboard directly.

Jennifer Peters 13:48
Okay. And how, how is the student reception been to this, this textbook as a whole - so the, you know, the text and the videos, but also all the interactive activities? Have you gotten any feedback?

Tricia Hylton 13:59
I haven't gotten any direct feedback from students. However, I will say that, just to add on to something that Tom said a little earlier with regards to students always asking, you know, is a textbook necessary at the beginning of class. That's also true for online classes; students will always ask, "are our textbooks necessary?", but unlike the in-class environment or an environment where you see a student once or every so often, when you're in class, even if half the students have a textbook, they're able to share with the other half of the class who don't, right. However, in the online environment, if a student doesn't have the textbook, and you're doing an exercise from a textbook as a way to support the learning that's happening in that particular module, there is no way for them to do it. And so, in terms of the online textbook, it gives every student equal access to that information in the online environment, which I think is aiding their learning significantly.

Jennifer Peters 15:05
I never thought about that situation. That's really interesting, where students do share in class and kind of, you know, I might grab a book and go photocopy a page here and there. Yeah, that's really interesting.

Arushi Manners 15:16
And I'm also wondering here, have you, Tom, or Trisha or any of you, have you considered the role of students, perhaps, bringing them into co-construct parts of the textbook as you move forward?

Tom Bartsiokas 15:27
I did have, when I went through the initial again review/editing process of "Communication @ Work," I did have a former 594 student actually go through the text, and they and they shared their feedback. And again, it was no surprise that you know, it was the multimedia elements that were missing for them. You know, and everything that Trisha ended up adding to the textbook, and then that was reinforced after once, once we rolled it out during the pilot stage. But I think that that's critical and that's essential, given that's who the audience is, right. So, you know, somewhere in that process when people are working on OERs, there has to be student involvement, whether it's right at the beginning, during the development stage, or during the review process, to make sure it aligns with their needs.

Jennifer Peters 16:22
And I know we've also included some alumni and current students in the development of other OERs; we've actually hired them. And so hire them on contract to do either copy editing, graphic design, or creating these interactive activities, and I think it's really valuable to have them work on the textbook for a course that they had taken a semester or a year before, so it's really interesting to see their perspective on it. We'll be back right after this.

Arushi Manners 16:54
Hi, there. We hope you're enjoying listening to "Teaching and Learning Stories from the Field," a podcast by the Teaching & Learning Center at Seneca College. Here we'd like to take a short break and inform you about the goings-on at the Teaching & Learning Center. We would like to introduce you to the Nutshells. Nutshells are short learning modules and a wide range of topics; they're released weekly and take less than 30 minutes to complete. In each Nutshell, you'll be introduced to two to three learning strategies, you'll engage with interactive tasks, and you'll explore further resources to learn more about the topic for that week. The Nutshells are truly a collaborative effort by the Teaching & Learning Center Team, and they show off our different areas of interest and curiosity. As you engage with them throughout the year, we invite you to contribute requests for topics that are of interest to you. So please do visit the nutshells page of the Teaching & Learning Center website to see all of our previous Nutshells, and be sure to bookmark this page so you can come back each week and access a new Nutshell. All right, back to the podcast.

Jennifer Peters 18:01
Have you had any feedback from the other faculty teaching in this program, so teaching this course?

Tom Bartsiokas 18:06
Yeah, we have. So I just I remember during the initial rollout, again, you know, with the faculty that were part of the pilot team, you know, we connected with all of them, and the feedback was positive right off the top. Everyone said it was extremely easy to follow, it was concise and so the information was digestible for students. And the biggest the biggest key was that, you know, the alignment to the actual course. And then, and then when Trisha got involved, again, it was taken to the next level, right, as she mentioned. Not only did she add in the interactive pieces that were missing, but some of the other content pieces that I wasn't able to get to, right. And that's the biggest challenge, right; you're on a deadline, and you have this you know kind of period of time where you're trying to get this rolled out and get it, get it out and get into classrooms. And so you know you're not going to cover everything, so you're always gonna, you know, it's always better to take a long-term approach to this, just like you know again, the textbooks that, you know, we, you know, all of us have traditionally used, right, you know this is just, you know, you know, one to 1.0 version right. You always have to kind of plan ahead and think about, "okay, what's going to be in 2.0, 3.0, etc." right. And as Tricia mentioned before, you know, we focus in on slide docks as a unit within our course, you know, AODA requirements as a human in our course, and that was information that we added in. And that stuff that our faculty flagged, right, saying, "hey, this is fantastic, but we also need, you know, A, B, C," and that's where you know, again, it's realizing that this is you know a living breathing document that you got to continue to add to.

Jennifer Peters 19:46
Yeah, absolutely. And have you had any anyone contact you external from the college? Just like you took an Algonquin text and adapted it, have you had any interest from the outside, folks wanting to adapt it further?

Tom Bartsiokas 19:56
I haven't personally; I don't know if anyone's reached out to Tricia. But I did hear and I can't remember who this came from but that Jordan was excited to hear that, you know, we were using, you know, his source material.

Jennifer Peters 20:10
Yeah, I think it's great when you create something and then someone else uses it, it just, it makes your work go that much further. And I know, looking at the metrics from your book, I was just looking at some of the statistics for it where we've, you know, last, the past year you had 5,000 students using it, you've saved them upwards of $400,000, but the pageviews for your particular book is almost at 89,000. So you've got students going in multiple times to your textbook, but I'm imagining that a lot of those are some of those views at least are coming from external sources that are looking for communications-type material, and are stumbling across your book, and now they're able to use it, too. So not only are you helping your students, but students all over the world. Yeah. So would you would you do it all over again, if you had the choice?

Tom Bartsiokas 21:01
Trisha?

Tricia Hylton 21:03
Yes, I would do it all over again in particular because now I'm very familiar with the software and the process. And I would have a better - one of the things that, you know, initially when I started adding material and finding material to add is, it was, I didn't have a very good filing system, let's say, so I would know where to go back to. Now, all of that is sort of a I've worked out a system so now if I were to have the opportunity to do it again, I'm sure it would be more efficient, and perhaps more creative in terms of how I'm able to put the book together. And I also have, because of the feedback we have from staff, from other faculty and from, although, from students there

hasn't been any direct feedback. I say it that way, but I think if the book wasn't working for them, we would have heard about it, right. We would have heard some teacher, somewhere, in some class, at some time in the semester, would have heard the textbook doesn't work, right? So I think it is working for them. So with that sort of sense of what does work, and perhaps what doesn't work, going forward would be a much simpler process with other types of OERs for other courses. But definitely and also because, again, I think the major focus of providing the OER was to aid students, and it seems as if this, this has done that job and certainly in terms of aiding students or reducing the financial burden for them, that's the major purpose behind the OER and I'm happy and, you know, grateful that Seneca has decided to do that for students.

Tom Bartsiokas 22:54
Yeah, absolutely. You know, again, we work at a great institution that believes in OERs and that's clear with, again, all the opportunities that are available to adapt and adopt OER textbooks within our courses, especially within higher-enrollment courses and so, we just recently got approved to work on another OER for TEC400, which is a technical writing communication course at Seneca. And so we'll be using the same blueprint that we that we applied to "Communication @ Work" for EAC594, and hopefully by the fall, you know, our TEC students will be using an OER as well.

Jennifer Peters 23:40
I can see technical communication being a very popular topic across the province for colleges; I imagine that it's something that's covered in many different areas.

Tom Bartsiokas 23:49
You know, for sure.

Jennifer Peters 23:50
And that was going to be my question again is will you be doing it again? So you're going to be launching on this new project. Robin Potter is involved as well, I believe.

Tom Bartsiokas 23:59
Yeah, that's correct. So Robin, who was part of this project, will be leading this one. And then, you know, at a certain stage, both Tricia and I will be involved as well.

Jennifer Peters 24:09
That's great. And you mentioned the support from our VPA Laurel Schollen. And I think that's really important to note because I attend a lot of OER conferences and I speak on panels, and that's my number one question is I get is how did how did how did you get all these OER's accomplished at Seneca, and I always say well, when you have the support of your Vice President Academic, anything is possible. So it's really important to have the support of the VPA, of your Chair, and then also colleagues that are in, and you know the other areas of the college like library, IT; so we are very lucky at Seneca, for sure.

Tom Bartsiokas 24:46
Well, we are 100%. It's a group effort, right, and, you know, publications like this don't get completed unless you've got a great team in place. And like you said, Jenn, you know our leadership at Seneca is fantastic. As I said at the beginning, right, my proposal wasn't approved by eCampus, right. And so I thought it was done until, again, the Chair called me and said, "You know what, the Vice President of Academics said we should go ahead and do this," right, and that's exactly what happened.

Jennifer Peters 25:18
Yeah, that's amazing. So if, if a faculty came to you and said, "I'm interested in doing this, similar type of project," what would your advice be to them to get started?

Tom Bartsiokas 25:29
Talk to Jennifer Peters. :) I think eCampus is a great resource. And my recommendation would be, you know, start there and look at their catalogue, see what's available, and review, you know, if you found a textbook that you think, you know, would have worked for your course. The first step is to go through it to see, you know, if there is alignment there and what kind of work that you're looking at and your timeframe. And then once you've identified that that source material and kind of mapped out a plan for yourself, you know, sit down and have a conversation you know with your Program Coordinator or your Chair to discuss next steps. And I don't know, Tricia, if you want to add to that.

Tricia Hylton 26:23
I would say do it. Find a way to do it, certainly. I don't know if I have much to add to what you said, Tom. I think you covered it completely. But, again, if you keep students as the focus, then you understand the impetus behind providing these kinds of resources. There are many students who are in financial situations that are not conducive for them to be in post-secondary education, the province has cut back the amount of money that they give to students so that they can pursue their post-secondary education. And if there is a way for colleges, universities, to make education more accessible, which OERs do, then you should, you know, that's something that's something that's admirable to pursue.

Jennifer Peters 27:21
And it's interesting that you mentioned eCampus as they've just released a call for proposals for their virtual learning strategy, and I believe this is definitely in response to the COVID situation with online learning, and they are going to be having hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding available for projects across the province for colleges and universities. So I've been contacted a million times by different people saying we should put in a proposal. So the proposals are due at the beginning of February. So I don't know if you guys have any plans or any ideas, but that's online and you can go and check it out.

Tom Bartsiokas 27:56
Yeah. And then, in terms of other advice, again, you know, there's eCampus, there's BC Open Campus. So I think, before people kind of, you know, look outside of Canada for OER resources, we have amazing resources right here and that was the initial struggle for me back in 2017; a lot of the publications that I was looking at were US-based OERs.

Jennifer Peters 28:18
Yes, that is a common a commonality with a lot of the OERs, but I think that, especially in BC, we're starting to see that more custom content developed for Canada, but it's great to see you guys developing something custom for colleges, because that's not always something that you see. So you really are leaders in that particular area.

Tom Bartsiokas 28:36
I'm extremely proud of it, you know, again, it just speaks to the amazing talented people that we have at Seneca like Tricia, like Robin, like yourselves. And again, all the support that we get to execute on initiatives like this. And, you know, I'm just, I think back to that initial, you know, conference that I attend, Jennifer, and the stats that you provided. And I'm just, again, we've created a quality text and on top of that, like Tricia said, we've been able to save students a lot of money and in light of everything that's been going on around the world, and you know, obviously education, you know, just the cost of it keeps on increasing. I'm just glad that we've been able to provide some savings to students, without, again just diminishing the quality of education that they're getting.

Jennifer Peters 29:33
And I'll bet when COVID hit, everybody teaching your course, using your book, was feeling pretty smug, like, "Ah, we're gonna be good, all of our resources are online."

Tom Bartsiokas 29:43
I'm not gonna lie, it felt really good. And I don't know, Trisha, you can add to that, but it did because we were set up, right. Again, we've been planning this since back since 2017. And again, everything was packaged within the course shell. You know, faculty just, you know, can import the course packages right into their course, and they were off to the races, so you know, everything was set up and it did feel good, I'm not gonna lie.

Tricia Hylton 30:07
Yeah. I was actually thinking that as the final word is that it was very timely. Nobody was expecting what happened with COVID, and no one knew exactly how it would impact education at the onset, but because we were working ahead or working to provide this particular resource, we were uniquely set up to meet the needs of students and I would say, in many ways, provide them with high-quality access to information in a way that would not have been possible if we just continued using using textbooks. So, yeah, I am really happy with the process that we went through in the timeliness, really, of it all.

Jennifer Peters 30:55
Well congratulations on such an amazing project, and I can't wait to see what you guys develop next.

Tricia Hylton 31:00
Thanks, Jenn.

Tom Bartsiokas 31:03
Thanks, Jenn. Thanks, Arushi.

Arushi Manners 31:03
Thank you both so much for your time.

Jennifer Peters 31:10
Thanks to Tom and Tricia for sharing their story of adopting an open textbook for use in a high-enrollment course at Seneca. For more information about their story, including a link to their open text, please visit our website at bit.ly/podcasttlc. Next episode, we'll be hearing about Microsoft Teams and how faculty have used it for large group projects and student orientation. Watch for that in early February. Thanks for joining us and see you next time on "Teaching and Learning Stories from the Field" from the Seneca Teaching & Learning Center.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai