{"id":57276,"date":"2020-11-23T10:17:20","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T16:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=57276"},"modified":"2020-11-23T10:17:21","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T16:17:21","slug":"nickerson-selected-as-a-sparc-open-education-leadership-fellow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=57276","title":{"rendered":"Nickerson selected as a SPARC Open Education Leadership Fellow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By UNIVERSITY RELATIONS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fort Hays State University\u2019s Claire Nickerson has been selected as a fellow in the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) Open Education Leadership Program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nickerson, Learning Initiatives and Open\nEducational Resources Librarian at Forsyth Library, is one of only 21 fellows\nselected from a competitive applicant pool for the program\u2019s 2020-2021 cohort.\nThis intensive professional development program is designed to empower academic\nprofessionals with the knowledge, skills and community connections to lead\nsuccessful open education initiatives that benefit students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SPARC is an international organization\nof professionals around the globe who focus on policies and practices that\nsupport open education, open access to research, and open data sharing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe SPARC fellowship is a significant\nand well-deserved honor reflective of Ms. Nickerson\u2019s professional knowledge\nand expertise,\u201d said Deborah Ludwig, library dean.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The leadership program spans two\nsemesters, beginning with an intensive online course in the fall to build open\neducation subject matter mastery. In the spring, Nickerson will work with a\nmentor to implement a capstone project that will help advance open education at\nFort Hays State and contribute to the broader open education field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am very excited about the program,\u201d\nNickerson said. \u201cIt provides the opportunity to become a stronger advocate for\nopen education both at Fort Hays State and in Kansas, and I am enjoying being\nimmersed in a community of other professionals passionate about OER (Open\nEducational Resources).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nickerson is currently the chair of the\nFHSU OER Committee and is also serving on the statewide OER Steering Committee\nmade up of representatives across Kansas public institutions. The group\nconvenes once a month to discuss statewide initiatives, including collaborative\nevents, grant applications, system participation in regional and national OER\norganizations, OER platforms and best practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delivering an affordable and accessible\neducation has long been a focus of FHSU. The campus OER committee, in\nconjunction with Forsyth Library, hosted a mini-conference in fall 2018 and in\nspring 2019 to support faculty interested in creating, adapting or adding\nsupplementary materials to an open textbook. Another mini-conference is being\nplanned for spring 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to supporting faculty with\nadvanced professional development opportunities, the Open Textbook Grant\nProgram provides funding opportunities for faculty to create openly licensed\nsupplementary materials, revise existing open textbooks or write new open\ntextbooks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, the Z-Course program\nlaunched a grant this year, designed to support the conversion of courses that\ncurrently use paid course materials into Z-courses (courses that use zero-cost\ncourse materials). The program also provides an opportunity to recognize\ndepartments that have embraced zero-cost course materials in their curriculum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe COVID-19 crisis has brought deeper\nscrutiny to many of the inequities that already exist within higher education,\nand open education is a key enabling strategy to help level the playing field,\u201d\nsaid Nicole Allen, director of Open Education for SPARC.\n\nFor more information about Open Educational\nResources at FHSU, visit www.fhsu.edu\/oer<\/a>.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By UNIVERSITY RELATIONS Fort Hays State University\u2019s Claire Nickerson has been selected as a fellow in the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) Open… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11722],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-releases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Forsyth20SPARC20Nickerson20Image20NEWS.jpg?fit=1600%2C2400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57278,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57276\/revisions\/57278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}