Open@VT

As part of Open Access Week, the University Libraries and the Graduate School offered a travel scholarship to OpenCon 2018, a conference for early career researchers on open access, open data, and open educational resources. From a pool of many strong essay applications, we chose Diana M. Franco Duran, a Ph.D. candidate in Civil Engineering in the Construction Engineering and Management program. Diana attended the conference in Toronto, Canada on November 2-4, and sent the report below. Be sure to check out the OpenCon 2018 highlights.

Diana M. Franco Duran writes:

Diana M. Franco Duran

OpenCon is a community with a culture of openness that seeks everyone who can participate. It promotes an open, safe, and diverse space in which ideas are respected. This year, OpenCon focused the discussion on two main topics: 1) community as the foundation for culture change, and 2) diversity, equity, and inclusion in open research and education. The conference’s goal was to motivate the attendees to change the culture towards a more open research and educational system with diversity, inclusion, and equity.

Open research and open education are about more than sharing the work. Open research and open education are about people. There is no way to make research and education open if we do not know the community. The community must be engaged into the discussion, so we can discover how openness can help them do what they want to do. Openness as a problem solution must work in the context of the community.

During the workshops, two of the topics for discussion were 1) how to motivate students to incorporate open access in research related activities, and 2) how to reward open research and education in higher education institutions.  It is important to communicate open access, open data, and open education to students as well as faculty, and to develop program policies/ strategies to incorporate any form of open access as an objective in the research of graduate students.

Do-a-thon at OpenCon 2018

From my point of view, open access, open data, and open research have become significant in higher education in the last few years. However, open education has not reached that status yet. There is still the misconception that open education is only sharing educational resources. Open education is the collaborative development of educational resources to provide everyone access to high-quality resources and experiences. As a younger generation, we live surrounded by technology and unlimited resources provided by the internet. Therefore, we have all the tools to make the academic environment relevant to others by giving them access to education and knowledge.

At OpenCon, the voices and stories of all attendees are heard. I personally connected to the story of one of the panelists, Adbullah Alghurabi, a master’s student in Canada, who developed educational resources for his community in Yemen. He translated scholarship opportunities into Arabic to help students find these opportunities. He also provided students with educational materials they needed to prepare for the TOEFL and IELTS exams that did not require internet access, since students in Yemen often lack an internet connection. Undoubtedly, these stories connect to others.

Thanks to this opportunity, I am now part of the team organizing the OpenCon Latin America 2019 which will be held in Colombia. We want to focus on open education and how it is related to open access and open data, highlighting the Latin American context.

Organizing team for OpenCon Latin America 2019

I am thankful that I had the opportunity to attend OpenCon 2018 and represent Virginia Tech. This is a space where I had the chance to get to know people from all over the world but also I had the opportunity to know how open data, open research, and open education are helping the community. Through the workshops, story circles, open reflections, do-a-thons, and unconferences, OpenCon offers a space to work together and shape ideas to contribute the community by considering openness as an inclusive solution.

COVER DESIGN: ROBERT BROWDER; COVER IMAGE: (C) MICHELLE YOST. TOTAL INTERNAL REFLECTION (CROPPED BY ROBERT BROWDER) IS LICENSED CC BY-SA 2.0

The University Libraries at Virginia Tech is pleased to announce publication of Electromagnetics, Volume 1 by Steven W. Ellingson.

Electromagnetics, Volume 1 is a 225-page peer-reviewed, openly licensed textbook intended for use in a one-semester, first course in undergraduate engineering electromagnetics. This course is typically taken by electrical engineering students in the third year of a bachelor of science degree program. The open textbook is currently being used in Virginia Tech’s ECE 3105 Electromagnetic Fields course. 

The book and its accompanying ancillary materials  (problem sets, solution manual, and LaTeX source files) are open educational resources: freely available and openly licensed (CC BY SA 4.0). Freely downloadable versions are available at https://doi.org/10.21061/electromagnetics-vol-1. A softcover print version is available via Amazon.

Features of the book: The book is designed to resolve pressing instructional, technical and financial barriers faced by students and to provide instructors with flexibility in rearranging the text for preferred instructional sequences. By following best practices for open and digital textbook production, this book offers the following benefits: 

• Field tested content: Students were directly involved in field testing and in contributing figures. The text was used in multiple sections by different instructors. Students and instructors provided feedback and suggestions for improvement; 
• Features that enhance understanding: These include examples, highlighted concept boxes, discussion of notation (1.7) to reduce ambiguity, appendices on constitutive parameters of common materials, mathematical formulas, and physical constants, and end-of-chapter links to external reference information;
• Supplementary learning materials: The book is accompanied by problem sets and worked solutions;
• Reusable figures: All figures are openly licensed and may be redistributed with attribution. Many are available in .svg format in Wikimedia Commons;
• Quality and clarity: The book is peer-reviewed and has undergone field testing, technical review, and professional copy editing;
• User and contributor community: Readers are invited to submit feedback. Instructors reviewing, piloting, adopting, or adapting the text are invited to register their interest and sign up to receive updates, find others using the book, and share openly licensed ancillary resources they’ve developed;
• Legal and no-cost access: Anyone with internet access can freely and legally access the text. This reduces financial pressure on students. Existing commercial texts in this field can retail new for as high as $200, or $100 for a one-semester rental;
• Accessibility: Screen-reader friendly navigation structure, an index, and detailed, hyperlinked table of contents make it easier for readers to navigate within the text. All readers, and especially those with sight disabilities, benefit from alternative text “alt text” available for each figure;
• Upfront permission to customize the text and figures: Adaptation and redistribution with attribution is allowed because of the book’s open license (CC BY SA); And,
• Technical methods for customization: Users may create their own version of the text by modifying the LaTeX source. This gives flexibility to instructors who prefer to sequence course topics in a different order. Openly licensed LaTeX source files are available so that instructors and other authors may easily remix, reorder, or change the text in other ways. 

Page 120 from Electromagnetics, Vol 1

Electromagnetics, Volume 1 is part of the Open Electromagnetics Project led by Steven W. Ellingson at Virginia Tech. The goal of the project is to create no-cost openly-licensed content for courses in undergraduate engineering electromagnetics. The project is motivated by two things: lowering learning material costs for students and giving instructors the freedom to adopt, modify, and improve their educational resources.

Electromagnetics Volume 2, which covers the second semester (ECE 3106) course is expected in January 2020.

Publication of this book was made possible in part by the University Libraries at Virginia  Tech’s Open Education Faculty Initiative Grant program and by collaboration with VT Publishing, the scholarly publishing hub of Virginia Tech.

About the author: Steven W. Ellingson (ellingson@vt.edu) is Associate Professor of Engineering at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia in the United States. He received PhD and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Ohio State University and a BS in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Clarkson University. He was employed by the US Army, Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Raytheon, and the Ohio State University ElectroScience Laboratory before joining the faculty of Virginia Tech, where he teaches courses in electromagnetics, radio frequency systems, wireless communications, and signal processing. His research includes topics in wireless communications, radio science, and radio frequency instrumentation. Ellingson serves as a consultant to industry and government and is the author of Radio Systems Engineering (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

A January 2018 blog post regarding the “beta,” field tested version of this book is available here.

Express your interest and subscribe to updates.

Virginia Tech is one of nine founding members of the Open Textbook Network Publishing Cooperative, a pilot program focused on publishing new, openly licensed textbooks. The program was launched by the Open Textbook Network (OTN) and aims to increase open textbook publishing experience in higher education institutions by training a designated project manager at each institution and creating a network of institutions.

The Cooperative is a three-year pilot that will establish publishing workflow and processes to expand the development of open textbook publishing in higher education. As a member, Virginia Tech’s project managers, Corinne Guimont (Digital Publishing Specialist) and Anita Walz (Open Education, Copyright and Scholarly Communications Librarian), will gain expertise in project management and technical skills. After the training is complete, a minimum of three open textbooks will be published using the model and tools gained through the cooperative.

“We at Virginia Tech are excited to join the Co-Op because of the opportunity for learning and professional development within a cohort of other institutions,” said Anita Walz. “We will have access to additional technical expertise, workflows, and tools, so that we can create and share more open textbooks with the world.”

Virginia Tech’s involvement in the Publishing Cooperative builds upon previous open textbooks published in the library, including Fundamentals of Business by Stephen J. Skripak and newly released Beta Version of Electromagnetics by Steven W. Ellingson. These books along with other open educational resources adopted by faculty at Virginia Tech have saved 3,111 students $786,398 in course material costs.

At the completion of the three-year pilot, the Publishing Cooperative as a whole will publish at least two dozen new, freely available, textbooks with Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licenses.

If you are a VT faculty member interested in publishing an open textbook or other educational resources, please visit http://guides.lib.vt.edu/oer/grants.

Founding members of the OTN Publishing Cooperative include: Miami University, Penn State University, Portland State University, Southern Utah University, University of Cincinnati, University of Connecticut, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Virginia Tech, and West Hills Community College District (CA).

About the Open Textbook Network: The Open Textbook Network (OTN) is a community working to improve education through open education, with members representing over 600 higher education institutions. OTN institutions have saved students more than $8.5 million by implementing open education programs, and empowered faculty with the flexibility to customize course content to meet students’ learning needs.

VT Publishing and the University Libraries of Virginia Tech are pleased to announce publication of a second, new open textbook: Electromagnetics Volume 1 (Beta). (You can read about the first open textbook in an earlier blog post.) The textbook is in “beta” for a Virginia Tech course in Spring 2018 and will be revised and re-released with LaTeX source code, problem sets, and solutions in Summer 2018.

Electromagnetics Volume 1 (Beta) by Steven W. Ellingson is a 224 page, freely available, peer-reviewed, full color, print and digital open educational resource. It is intended to serve as a primary textbook for a one-semester first course in undergraduate engineering electromagnetics within the third year of a bachelor of science degree program.

Cover design: Robert Browder; Cover image: (c) Michelle Yost. Total Internal Reflection (cropped by Robert Browder) is licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

The book is the work of Steven W. Ellingson, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, in collaboration with the Scholarly Communication office of Virginia Tech’s University Libraries and VT Publishing. As collaborators with Ellingson, the University Libraries provided grant funding, overall project management, guidance on open licensing, attribution, student works, formats and styles, managed development and production processes, coordinated peer review, reviewed manuscripts (editorial and technical), provided technical specifications, and navigated print and distribution solutions.

A no cost downloadable version of Electromagnetics Volume 1 (Beta) is available here. A full color softcover printed version (ISBN: 978-0-9979201-2-3) is available at the cost of production and shipping from Amazon.com.

The LaTeX authored text includes extensive use of mathematical equations, figures, adapted, and custom-created and openly licensed diagrams, worked and narrative examples. This book employs the “transmission lines first” approach, one of three approaches to teaching electromagnetics. However, other teaching approaches may find the work relevant, since its release under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license legally allows addition, adaptation (with required attribution), and redistribution of content. The resulting work is of significant value in opening new possibilities for teaching and learning: Electromagnetics Volume 1 (Beta) by Ellingson is the first known openly licensed textbook for electromagnetics.

Electromagnetics Volume 1 (Beta) will be field tested in Virginia Tech’s ECE3106 Electromagnetic Fields course in Spring 2018, and then revised and re-released in Summer 2018 as a text adoptable for courses beyond Virginia Tech. LaTeX source files, problem sets, and solutions will be released contemporaneously in Summer 2018. The editor and author of this book encourage feedback from individuals, classes, and faculty viewing this book. Feedback and suggestions may be contributed using the online annotation tool Hypothes.is, via a feedback form, or by emailing publishing@vt.edu. A Volume 2 and combined Volumes 1 & 2 are planned.

The intent of creating a remixable book for both internal use and free public release exemplifies trends within the Open Education movement and in higher education in general. These trends mirror aspects of the open source software movement and include public sharing under open licenses which allow contributions and adaptation (such as Creative Commons licenses), rewarding, valuing, and incorporating new ideas pertaining to teaching and learning, building collaborative faculty networks across multiple institutions, giving credit where due, and involving students as active contributors to course goals and/or the work of curricula and course design. Free public access is a start, but the possibilities for faculty, students, and others to create, openly license and share, freely adopt, adapt with attribution, and build open source systems for adaptation and sharing expand meaningful possibilities far beyond free access. These freedoms bode well for expansion of purposeful and engaging teaching and learning, the ability to leverage academic freedoms for broad, positive impacts on the common good, thoughtful conversations about ethics, incentives, voice, and access in the academy, and the advancement of innovative pedagogical practices and publicly available scholarly research which are already beginning to bear fruit.

I hope that many other faculty and institutions will take advantage of opportunities to create, adopt, adapt, and share openly licensed materials to fit their needs, the distinctive teaching and learning challenges and opportunities in their disciplines, the needs of their students, and beyond.

This textbook is part of the Open Electromagnetics Project led by Steven W. Ellingson at Virginia Tech. The goal of the project is to create no-cost openly-licensed content for courses in undergraduate engineering electromagnetics. The project is motivated by two things: lowering learning material costs for students and giving faculty the freedom to adopt, modify, and improve their educational resources.

Publication of this book was made possible in part by the Virginia Tech University Libraries’ Open Education Faculty Initiative Grant program which is led by Anita Walz, Scholarly Communication office, at the University Libraries, Virginia Tech. The goal of the grants program is to to encourage the use, creation, and adaptation of openly licensed information resources to support student learning. The author also thanks VT Publishing colleagues for their many contributions.

For more information on the origins of Creative Commons licenses, watch the short video “Get Creative: Being the Origins and Adventures of the Creative Commons Licensing Project” or visit the Creative Commons website.

About the author of Electromagnetics Volume 1 Beta: Steven W. Ellingson is an Associate Professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. He received PhD and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from The Ohio State University and a BS in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Clarkson University. He was employed by the US Army, Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Raytheon, and The Ohio State University ElectroScience Laboratory before joining the faculty of Virginia Tech, where he teaches courses in electromagnetics, radio frequency systems, wireless communications, and signal processing. His research includes topics in wireless communications, radio science, and radio frequency instrumentation. Professor Ellingson serves as a consultant to industry and government and is the author of Radio Systems Engineering (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

As part of Open Access Week, the University Libraries and the Graduate School offered a travel scholarship to OpenCon 2017, a conference for early career researchers on open access, open data, and open educational resources. From a pool of many strong essay applications, we chose Alexis Villacis, a Ph.D. student in Agricultural and Applied Economics. Alexis attended the conference in Berlin, Germany on November 11-13, and sent the report below. Be sure to check out the OpenCon 2017 highlights.

Alexis (left) at an OpenCon workshop

Alexis Villacis writes:

The progress of science and access to education varies widely geographically, and sometimes are very limited due to economic, cultural and social circumstances. Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data are key to support those who are left behind and bring empowerment to the next generation. OpenCon brings together the worldwide champions who are working towards the advancement of the Open Movement. Students, early career academic professionals, and senior researchers all come together under one roof to share their initiatives. Participants hear their inspiring stories, from Canada to Nepal, of sparking change during a three-day conference; a conference I am grateful to have had the opportunity to be part of, as a representative of Virginia Tech.

Over these three days, participants showcased how Open is being advanced around the world. The discussion centered on how often higher education models (knowledge access, research questions, and research funding, among many others) marginalize underrepresented scholars and students. It was thought-provoking and sometimes shocking to hear how our western ways of knowing have colonized access to information and how this has impacted the progress of R&D in other parts of the world.

Sharing with participants from other countries and hearing the challenges they face every day made me contrast our everyday realities and the privilege we have at VT. A privilege we take for granted in our everyday lives, where access to all types of tools, research, and content is one click away through our computers. We, as an institution of higher education, promote and share access to knowledge and new technologies throughout Virginia and beyond. The impact of these transfers is what keeps our society thriving every day, but where would we be if this access were restricted to us? Perhaps, VT as a Land Grant Institution would not exist at all, the state of Virginia would not be what it is today and neither many other parts of the US.

As I walked through the halls of the Max Planck Society, where the conference was held, I kept wondering: is this not what we are doing today? What changes are we withholding from the rest of the world by limiting access to data, knowledge, and education? The essence of this and the significance of Open Access clearly goes beyond journals and data, and it is also about social justice, equity, and the democratization of knowledge. We Hokies can make a difference in Open Access. More importantly, we are the key players called to work towards its advancement.