perfect so thank you so much for joining us today this presentation is one of several presentations that are being offered as part of open education week we invite you to attend the other presentation to this week and you can see the link in our liary news blog with link to the other presentations in the chat as well this presentation is being recorded and will be posted on to the ISU libraryies YouTube channel for future viewing following a 20 minute presentation we will have a question and ans
wer period where you can unmute yourself and ask a question or if you'd like to post a question in the chat I can read your questions during The Question Answer portion of the presentation our presenter can respond to those questions at that time as well so with with us today we have Dr John Curry Dr Curry is a professor and chair of the organizational learning and performance department at Idaho State University he's also recently been named editor-in chief of tech Trends one of the top journal
s in his field of instructional design and technology in addition he is the co-editor of the book The Greatest lecture I was never taught Leadership Lessons and mentoring moments in the lives of every everyday Educators and while he has won multiple awards for both his teaching and research Dr Curry has devoted his career to Professional Service at the department college and university levels he has served on numerous committees in many different roles here at Idaho State University he has serve
d on the University LMS committee Oar committee the teaching Innovation Grant committee a policy working group and multiple subcommittees within his Professional Organization a that is the association for educational Communications and Technology he served on the board of directors for two terms the executive committee and in the division leadership for both the division of emerging learning Technologies and technologically techn technology integrated learning division within that organization h
e has also fulfilled numerous committee assignments and served on the leadership development committee for over a decade in addition he was the conference planner for both the 2019 and 2022 a International conven itions and he is again serving as a conference planner for the up upcoming 2025 International Convention each year in recognition of Dr Curry's career of service to his field and the organization the a division of emerging learning Technologies gives out the Don Curry distinguished serv
ice award he has also been the recipient of presidential Service Awards from four different a a presidents in 2023 Dr Curry was recognized with the a distinguished service a award for Extraordinary contributions to the ECT the educational Communications and Technology field this award is the highest given by a and honors contribut contributions and accomplishments impacting the field of educational Communications and technology and related fields the award recognizes exemplars from Innovation cr
eative development outsanding leadership scholar works and professional practice at career Milestones or during a lifetime of treatment including activity in a as well as other organizations and communities however if asked he will tell you his greatest professional achievement is the contributions his students make to the field of Education technology so thank you so much for being with us today Dr Curry and we look forward to your presentation thank you um gosh that just sounds ridiculous hear
ing it back you know I I hear all of that and I still I'm just a kid from Oklahoma you know I grew up in Mustang Oklahoma and if You' had told me someday that anybody would care about what I had to say it would I would have not believed you um so uh I appreciate the opportunity to present here at opened week um and really what I'm just going to talk about is an experience my experience that I had in one of my classes um trying to develop an oar text um uh initially when I when I applied for the
stipend um it my plan was to do it in one particular class but my schedule kind of fell through and I ended up not teaching that class um and but I had another class that initially was going to be an a master's level introduction to instructional design course um uh but then I ended up not teaching that so I was teaching a doctoral level learning theories course and so I did the project in that course um just my background kind of an oar um I have been a proponent of of open resources in my clas
ses for well over a decade probably 15 years or so um uh and you know I kicked it the the idea around there beforehand whether or not I should do it David Wy is a good friend of mine and so we'd had multiple conversations over the years and uh finally for me it boiled down to um uh something that David said to me once and he said how can you charge people for knowledge and I was just kind of like oh I don't have an argument for that um and so that's what led me to ditch all textbooks and decide
that I was going to make the effort um to write the content that I needed um or find the content that I could use rather than ask my students who pay for a textbook that I would you know maybe use half the chapters or three fours of the chapters but I mean any of us who've ever had to pick a textbook there's never all the chapters you know um and so that that has kind of been just my um um standard operating procedure for the last like I said I don't know 10 15 years that's probably more like 15
years um I just think that it's if I can spend a little bit extra time on my part on behalf of my students to save them some money um then I'm going to do that I remember I remember going to college again as I said kid from Litt toown Mustang Oklahoma showing up fall of 1987 I'm dating myself now fall of 1987 showing up to um BYU as a freshman I didn't you know I'd just gone to high school and uh even though my grandfather was a university Professor I didn't know how college classes were ran um
I didn't know I mean my teachers had always given me my books I didn't know you go went and bought books I had norly idea what that was I remember walking with my roommate and we had to go up to the BYU Bookstore and buy our textbooks and uh I I you know it was like a whole floor of the bookstore was all just textbooks and I you know number one figure out how to navigate that but then waiting in the line and then I remember writing that check to pay for my books and thinking I don't want any of
these books these are terrible um uh and it being such a you know there was sticker shock but just then you know just this like am I really going to read all of this stuff I mean it was not good now I it probably I probably would have done better that semester um had I actually gone to class I'm just going to throw that out there um I was not the world's best student as a freshman um uh but that experience stuck with me and then um uh I was an English major on top of that and so when I got back
from my LDS mission um and as an English major being handed Stacks and stacks of textbooks or not handed buying Stacks and stacks of textbooks big thick anthologies of literature that again we read 20 things out of but I had to pay $150 to read you know seven poems and three essays um it was really I just thought gosh this is a dadgum racket and then going to grad school my Master's Degree I got the English degree my Master's Degree was in uh the theor and practice of writing and again just a w
hole bunch more books that I didn't read um and I I started as an undergrad keeping my English texts because I thought I was going to be an English Professor that's what I thought I was going into and so I I was building up my library um most of which I still have those books but then I switched Fields after my Master's Degree for my doctorate and to instructional design and all a sudden I needed all new books and they're not cheap and so those experiences as a student stuck with me um and it's
always made me really conscious of my responsibility to my students and you know money was tight for me I was young married then I was young married with kids um and so that was a big deal to me you know if I had to pay for this book we better use it Dad gam um so all this to say I've tried a lot of different things in my courses I've written a lot of content some of it good some of it not good I've tried to find open materials some of which is good some of which is not um but as I've gotten to
this point in my career um I I work mainly with doctoral students um and one of my focuses FY I don't know what it is one one of the things I focus on how's that one of the things I focus on is trying to help them be part of the academic conversation um my major Professor taught us that it doesn't matter if you're right or you're wrong but participate and so one of the ways I do this is I really try to work with them to publish before they get out to present um and so I'm always looking for ways
to do that with them so all of this is to say um we've been going through some some programmatic changes in instructional design and technology and as part of that we needed some new courses and um as part part of that process it came time to teach this first course this new one this learning theories course I've taught learning theory before and I had all of my old learning theory texts on the Shelf um three different ones I have on my shelf um two of which are out of print you know you can't
even get them anymore and so I started thinking about what's the best way that I can cover this content with my students but also give them an experience Beyond just sitting here and this week we're going to talk about PJ and next week we'll talk about Bruner and then we'll get to you know uh information processing and you know all you know that's just boring no I hated sitting through that as a student so it's even worse when you have to teach it um so I always look for innovative ways to appro
ach content so so I had written I had applied for the stien to to to do a text an introductory instructional design text for the Master's level course and like I said I wasn't teaching it so I decided to take that time that I'd already dedicated and committed by nature of taking the the stipan that I'd committed to and and use it in this course and and so um some of it worked well and some of it didn't so um the way I had designed the course was to basically go through um each of these theories
but to have each of my students again these are graduate students most of them doctoral students and have each of them write a chapter of the text that is fantastic idea and it didn't work at all I'm just going to be honest with you because I I wasn't prepared for what my students needs would be um so uh what I mean by that is is is I had my students I I planned out the chapters I planned out everything that I wanted to cover I worked with them to select um content that they uh even if they didn
't know it they felt like they were going to be comfortable covering I had them teach that week right um and then they were a draft of the chapter was due at the middle of the semester the Final Chapter at the end of the semester um what I didn't anticipate and it was good they did a good job with the developing their online modules I have a pretty solid template for my courses they all just followed my template they all got good content um that part of of the the idea worked really well what di
dn't work well what I hadn't anticipated was the wide range and I know these students I I you know in a grad small grad program you you get to know your students really well um the the wide range of writing ability at that level I was not prepared for and I've taught writing at The Graduate level for 20 years but for some reason this class it was crazy how different they were some of the stuff that I got was really solid really well put together really well um uh the flow made sense um and other
s it was it was honestly like they had never written anything of this type anything academic in their lives so that was that was my one first challenge some of them were able to just jump in and start writing right away weren't afraid of it and others even though they were given their topic just didn't even know where to begin even though that they had come up with great content for a week they had no earthly idea how to put a chapter together I mean they read chapters but to put them in in fron
t they just had no earthly idea so I was not prepared for that and then we were dealt a little bit of a uh uh maybe a a blow to our egos and impostor syndrome um when we went to that a conference this last year and um we were meeting my students and I were meeting with Rick West who's a professor at BYU in our field and who has a lot of texts on edtech books Royce Kim's platform and Rick was meeting with my students and talking about publishing and he just happened to mention and my students use
his texts you know um whenever we can and he just happened to mention oh so and so another big author in the field so and so and I are putting together our next project is a learning theories text and I kind of looked at my students and they were all like oh no oh no we're not going to put this out if they're putting something out then the impostor syndrome said set in huge even for me even for me I was like oh man do I want to do this knowing the disparity in the writing that I'm getting do I
want to do this in subject not so much me because I don't care but I I wanted this experience to be really positive for them and so I talked to most of them and I said you know what do you think we should to do with this you know how do you feel about this and it was pretty unanimous please don't put that out there knowing that they're going to come with another book behind um and I could understand that and so we talked about it at length because I had most of this class was there at the confer
ence with me and ultimately it decided not to not to not to publish it out um now given all of that last I think a lot of that was process I didn't I had a better process I think it would have been better and I think they would have felt more confident and uh last week I was at the teaching for learning conference and uh was in a presentation and I was actually sitting in a group with Royce kimmons and um we were in a a presentation where the the group from BYU Idaho was showing their process fo
r putting together Oar texts and they put out about 20 Oar textbooks a year at BYU Idaho and so we sat through their process and participated in the process and literally in the hour that we were in that presentation they had just gotten a project like a week or two before and in an hour in that presentation sh them showing us their process we put together like nine chapters of of of a book a draft nine chapter draft following their process and so had I known then with my students what I know no
w from that conference I think it would have been a much better experience and in a nutshell they have a template that they follow but then they went out they just had us do us they assigned us all chapters and then they had us go search for existing Oar materials and then for the draft then they had a place for the content for the chapter and they just everything that was licensed to be able to do it we just copied and paste all the text and threw it in and so all of a sudden there's a draft th
at you now start going and cleaning up if ID have had that when I worked with my students I think we would have had a completely different experience so that's my next project I teach this next fall um I'm teaching a a program evaluation course um and we're GNA do we're gonna we're gonna do we're going to do a book and we're going to follow that process um and I and I'm interested to see one if they're more confident what they put together two if it helps with the disparity in writing and um thr
ee how I feel about it just in the sense of all right we've got all this content let's go ahead and let's throw it up on Ed techbooks because I they don't have a book on it so let's go throw it up on it Tech books and see what happens so that's my experience how do I do amazing you like I had all these questions and you answered all of them during this presentation I was like what's the biggest hurdle you talked about that what's your stuff going forward right what can be done um so it's really
interesting I I do have a followup question if um unless laa does to as well about we've got like five so you go first okay um my followup question is how do you think or does the proliferation of like chat gbt and AI influence or have a you know an effect on o your you know Oar textbook or the proliferation of all these things and does it impact you so here's here's my very unpopular opinion about generative AI uh this past fall was the first time that I put a generative AI statement in my syll
abus and I said I don't care if you use it um because you're responsible for whether or not it's right right um I don't and depending on the assignment I don't even care if it's cited I use it all the time I mean uh I use it to help write letters of recommendation when I had to write my own annual review for this year I threw in the prompt that I had to answer I threw in the sections from my vaita and I said write me a summary and so I use it and so I'm I'm kind of uh on stuff like that I tend t
o be an early adopter I could care less if they use it to to help come up with a a draft um because it ultimately it has to be right um I'm not afraid of of ai ai my my daughter I've got a daughter who's a freshman in high school made made the comment to me yesterday something about this new AI stuff and I'm like what are you talking about this new AI this is AI is not new back in the when I was in grad school Microsoft Word you remember that dumb little paper clip clippy I mean that's all Ai an
d when it gives you the misspell and that's so it doesn't freak me out so Iris to get to your question it doesn't bother me right it just it just doesn't because as a writing teacher I look at it as a draft it's kind of like that movie Finding Forester when Shan connory gives the kid the essay he wrote and said use this as a start and then go from there um so yeah it doesn't bother me it doesn't bother me uh it helps me write faster and so yeah I don't care if my students use it there you go Lau
ra what do you got for me oh I was gonna say I I in my class I'm teaching um generative AI The Good Bad and the Ugly so we're talking about ethical uses of AI in class all the time and how to site it and so that they're not afraid of it but the number one thing is communicating with their professors at all times because some good articles for you really because Tech Trends my January issue I was actually the guest editor that's before I became the editor and chief we have one article on ethics a
nd AI yeah one by Ted Frick called are we dupes I'll send you some links I'm I'm working on an article right now so I would love that because I I attend weekly seminars on this and I talk about it with my class all the time and I love it okay um question oh and by the way I use AI to create my outlines all the time um okay uh when I was considering because I'm I I am teaching my three credit course this summer all um Open Access materials including APA uh because APA has done a wonderful job on
their website of giving us um everything with reference examples that you can point to and I've been able to create it in a way that um I I I encourage them to buy the APA manual because most of the students that take this class are pre- nursing Majors but um some of the students are taking it are high school students and so there's that disparity of and I don't see them in person this is all a secret this and they have eight weeks so I can't I can't can't afford for them as me as an instructor
and for them as students to even go half a week without the text so I've opted they don't have to buy anything we're going to do it all online and I've thought about I mean and there's a book I really really like and I found some other Oar texts but I've thought about creating um an oar textbook kind of from scratch but bringing in other materials but starting it as a module base like I have a module for this and I have a module for this and then comining you know compiling them but creating the
m as modules so that I can put them into my LMS um what did you use my this is a two-part question what did you use to draft your Oar on and did you just did you just use a Google doc or did you you know where you could have the interactive um um so so I just had them I didn't care if they did it in Google Docs or in word I just had them do it in the word processor first and turn it into me that way so I could give them commentary and stuff on it then they just turned in a Word document at the e
nd okay because I Rely a lot on videos and a lot of auditory I'm trying to hit all the different types of learning and then um when you because I have yet to play around with press books is it possible to draft in press books oh yeah and then you know before you publish so you can play around with the modules and and super easy super easy yeah and and and do you have experience with the platform that was discussed yesterday from the speaker from BYU Tech books yeah yes which do you prefer uh the
y at the base level at the creation level they're fairly similar where they differ greatly um is the back end and the in ususer experience so on the back end what's really cool is like uh I've got um a I've got I wrote one of the chapters that's on press books and it's kind of about this foundational theorist in our field and so a lot of people use that in their classes right because it's the chapter written on it um but I can go in as as the author of that chapter I've got analytics where I can
go in and see accesses I can see you know specific ratings on it so I can really get a lot I mean I don't know how many articles I've published or book chapters I've published off the top of my head but that's the only one I can go tell you exactly how many people have been there so I like that I like that I also like the fact that I can go in and edit it still if something else comes up where I get a better example okay so it's damic and then it's up it's updated for everybody yeah um but on t
he enduser experience the advantage that the Press book not excuse me the Ed techbooks platform has um like Royce was saying is it's optimized so they can get it in so many different formats you know if we get it if you do press books it's not going to be set up to be able to be used on the phone you know it's not set up that way to to download it and print it the same ways all those different options at techbooks is set up that way Royce is designed it that way okay but press books isn't so it'
s it's a more robust system but not everybody needs that robust of a system if you want it it's there and they and like he said they've got books on all sorts of topics that are not just head Tech books right but the interesting thing I think about it is the fact that the way it's set up and you know and he talked about this yesterday is you know all three of us are on the Oar committee you know uh it would be interesting to see if ISU would want their own instance for open textbooks yes and we
could just start doing our own and have all of that optimization there and um um and I think that would show a commitment yeah just wanting to do it and that was one of the things that I took away having heard that speech from from Roy twice in the last week I was just like why aren't we doing something why aren't we doing that and but it's probably because we have press books you know but I think it's more robust but we can have more than one right yep because you can just link to the other one
yeah you can say in the interest of of time though I know you have keep me out of a meeting it's okay let's keep going well thank you so much uh for being here it was really interesting very engaging and I learned a lot so I'm excited to see what this goes thank you I look forward to those emails I love I'll get I'll get you some I I will and I've got a bunch in my editor queue right now that are all on AI so I know there's a bunch coming out in our awesome okay thank you so much everybody than
k you'all appreciate you
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