Poster with a young woman smiling at a laptop. Finally a reality! Open educational resources will be the twelfth high impact practice.
Exciting news, #OER friends! At this year's @aacu.org #AACUCLASS2026 Conference, it was announced that Open Educational Resources will be the twelfth #HighImpactPractice! "A robust research report on OER and Student Success" will be coming out later this spring, as will the official announcement.
In other news, happy National #Library Workers Day! If you've ever gotten access to an article, news story, book, or other resource thanks to a library, thank a librarian today!
I particularly liked this line from @johannneem.bsky.social "A central point of college is to offer a foundation broad enough to open up several personal and professional paths that can develop over time. 'This is not meant to be finishing school. It’s meant to give you the tools to live with.'"
I posted recently about how the electives I took in high school and college helped shape me into a more well-rounded person. It's great to see the tensions in how people approach electives outlined in this new article: www.chronicle.com/article/are-...
Introduction to woodworking machines cover image and description (copied in the linked post) with an arrow pointing to the link to the book.
I'm happy to share a new publication from the ISU Digital Press! Introduction to Woodworking Machines by Peter Scheidt is an #OER written to introduce basic woodworking machine safety and techniques to beginner woodworkers using an instructional woodshop.
doi.org/10.31274/isu...
Thanks for attending our presentation, Jojo! You really captured Bryan here. He should replace his official headshot with your sketch, and I will tell him so
The recording should be out on the Kennesaw State repository following the conference for those who missed it! (I totally understand if you did, the world is making it hard to be present today)
digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/ato/2026ato/
Thanks to all who came out to our All Things Open 2026 presentation this afternoon, "Jumping Into the Deep End: Lessons Learned from Editing a Book about Open Movements!" I had a great time getting to share our experience editing an #OpenAccess book about open stuff.
TL;DR: support interactive assignments so educators can help students engage in deeper learning. Let students take electives and support them in branching out. And pay teachers a living wage!
Thanks for sitting through my reflective mid-day social media posting. 😅
I don't hunt, but I understand why deer season works the way it does. I don't do landscaping, but I know to check the expected root spread of a tree and leave twice the crown space between it and your house. I'm not a computer scientist, but I love logic gate puzzles. That's thanks to good teachers.
And it's notable that these courses were Not in my major. They were extras, filling time or credit hours I needed to graduate. Today, some might say they were a waste of time. But without them, I would be a less well-rounded person and I'd likely have less empathy for the work of my peers.
All these examples stick with me not just because they used "best practices," but because they came from teachers who really cared about what they were teaching and wanted to instill in us the same care and understanding of their topic that they had.
I know that #education professionals, be they instructional designers, teachers, or administrators all (probably) understand that connection, application, and context helps students learn. But these things don't just come from nowhere.
In college, I had a lot of great teachers in my major, but the experiences that I fall back on are, again, ones that came from random electives. It's Mathematical Reasoning and Formal Logic, two courses where really engaged teachers worked with us to solve problems through the use of puzzles.
Landscape Architecture was taught by the same teacher (small school) and it sticks with me years later because of a single assignment where we designed a themed garden. We picked the plants: ground cover, features, etc & mocked up a sketch of the space. I made a "goth garden" and it was Great.
In Wildlife Mgmt, we learned about hunting regulations & how they differ state to state. We discussed the different terms for male/female animals, and how wildlife interact with human environments. This was taught by a teacher who cared deeply about the topic, and he made it relevant for all of us.
My absolute favorite courses in high school were both random electives: Wildlife Management and Landscape Architecture. These weren't choices I made because I loved the topics, but alternatives to courses I *didn't* want to take. Still, the way they were taught continues to stick with me.
Every once in a while I reflect on my best educational experiences, and it still surprises me (somehow, I don't know why, it makes sense after all) that the experiences I remember most fondly are the ones where the learning was gamified, personalized, or contextualized for me.
A thread:
Surviving Research Publication book announcement. Includes the description in the post and the book's cover, which features abstract colorful bar charts and data points, and a hand reaching up to them.
Surviving Research Publication: A Guide for New Scholars by Lily Compton, Megan O'Donnell, and Kristin Terrill (doi.org/10.31274/isu...) is an essential guide for graduate students and early career researchers, from the basics of a literature review through research ethics and the use of technology.
Preparing to Publish book announcement. Includes the description in the post, as well as the book's cover, which features a researcher in a lab and sitting down to write.
Preparing to Publish, 2nd Edition by Elena Cotos, Sarah Huffman, and Kimberly Becker (doi.org/10.31274/isu...) provides grad student writers with helpful information, strategies, & tips on navigating writing in their fields to understand, dissect, and ultimately construct their own research article.
Are you looking for new resources to help teach about the research and publication process? Check out these new #OER publications from the Iowa State University Digital Press, lead by authors at the
www.iastatedigitalpress.com
Less than 6 months after publishing, our 🪱 Introduction to Soil Science Second Edition 📙 textbook has hit...
3k downloads ⬇️
7k readers 📚
15k views 👀
🎉
#Soil #SoilScience #OpenAccess #OER
🙏 Thank you Amber Anderson and @openaccesselder.bsky.social
Check it out here 👇
doi.org/10.31274/isu...
I was very excited to see that the Resolution in support of #OER proposed by our campus committee has been featured at the top of the Faculty Senate meeting overview written up in our university newsletter this week!
www.inside.iastate.edu/article/2026...
I got to write this month's Resource Highlight blog post for @iowaoer.bsky.social, and decided to make it a feature of some fun #OER available for the electives and mid/high-level courses that don't get enough love!
Check out the few I picked out to feature this month: iowaoer.com/2026/01/13/j...
It's hopefully a good sign that more people are reflecting on meaningful learning now, though I wish it hadn't taken this much of a push to get back around to it!
Being in the office the week of New Year's feels a bit like being in a haunted house. It's eerily silent but every once in a while you hear laughter in the distance, or glimpse a figure out of the corner of your eye (typically when one of the other 10 people here gets up to refill their coffee)
"[M]y portfolio stands out because of the gamble I took on Wikipedia. I also know that by every metric available, that gamble has paid off, for me and, far more critically, for my students." Read why and how Dr. Sancinito included the Wikipedia assignment in her tenure narrative: wp.me/p4LBez-uU0
If you are intimidated by all the comprehensive guides going over everything to know about accessibility, this is a great entry point to one piece of the conversation: updating headings! This is an easy way to make a website more accessible and it's good to see it written about conceisely!
Congratulations to our peers at Open Oregon Educational Resources for the launch of their open curriculum projects, a suite of peer-reviewed open textbooks with linked course packs and print options available. This is a great example for others in the #OER space!
openoregon.org/open-curricu...
Thanks @cogdog.bsky.social for sharing this excellent article from earlier this year, further cementing my belief that Tel Amiel's work on platformization should be required reading for those in the #EdTech space! This article co-authored by Almeida, Damiati, & Amiel: doi.org/10.5007/2175...