Victoria: For me, students journals are important for two reasons: experience and learning. This goes for the writers as well as the people behind the journal. It allows students to explore and share research is a non-threatening environment, which is so important for their growth and development in academia. In addition, it also provides them with a bit of exposure.

Katherine: I love working with student journals; they provide so many different opportunities. As an author you learn how to work with feedback. You get a taste for publication in a low-stakes environment and get a final product that looks impressive on a resume. It allows you to grow as a researcher and experience one of the processes that professionals in our field must go through as part of their careers. As a reviewer it will also improve your writing, reading, and ability to give constructive feedback.

Katherine: I have had the chance to work with three student journals at three different universities. My role has changed from an author to a reviewer and copyeditor, and more recently, an editor in chief for COMPASS. Each role brings different challenges but it has been incredible to see what I have learned with each experience and even more impressive to see how I have used this experience in my own academic and professional endeavours. I can genuinely say that over the last six years I have become a better writer because of my involvement with student journals. I have also become a better reader. Depending on your role with a journal you are looking for different things: grammar, style, referencing, formatting, etc. Each role requires you to read or review a paper differently, which changes how you approach reading for research. Now that I am an editor in chief I have experienced how to manage a team and work with the process through a new electronic forum which has been a lot of fun.

Victoria: The most important thing I learned is just how much work actually goes into putting together a journal. It seemed like a very straightforward process, but there were more steps involved than I initially assumed. It taught me the importance of time management.

What advice would you give to students who are interested in starting or volunteering for a student journal?

Victoria: Make sure you commit and you have the time to do it. As interesting and exciting as it is to start such an endeavour, you must realize nothing will happen if you don't put in the work. It will take time to review a paper, send it back to the author(s), review it again, copy-edit, etc. COMPASS started a year ago, but only now are we able to put out our first issue. Teamwork matters!

Katherine: If you have the time and are interested in becoming a better writer, editor, and reader of different works – just do it! The UofA’s campus is an incredible environment to help you get involved and succeed with your initiatives. There are lots of different student journals on campus that are always looking for people to help them. If there isn’t one that relates to your research, consider starting your own. That is what happened with COMPASS. We reached out to our department’s library liaison and he soon put us in contact with Sonya Betz, Digital Initiatives Projects Librarian. Not only that, but by contacting other student journals we were able to see what did or did not work for them. The Journal community is very supportive and a great resource.

Anything else you want to say about journal publishing?

Katherine: Work with people that you enjoy. People who have similar work ethics, goals, and understandings. My Co-Editor has been a huge help during stressful times throughout our project. Being on the same page about what we wanted to accomplish, how, and recognizing that this was a “for fun” volunteer initiative went a long way for our continued success together.

Victoria: Enjoy what you do. Everything will be a lot easier if you treat it as a fun side-project, not a job. As a student you'll always have a million things going on, so you need to make sure this isn't just another "chore".
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In addition to COMPASS, the UofA Libraries supports several actively publishing student journals through its open access journal publishing service, including:

• Spectrum
• Past Imperfect
• Invoke
• Constellations
• Alberta Academic Review
• Multilingual Discourses

For more information about the Libraries’ free open access journal hosting service, please contact Sonya Betz, Digital Initiatives Projects Librarian (sonya.betz@ualberta.ca).

OER (open educational resources) are teaching and learning materials that allow free use and reuse, without charge. OER often have a Creative Commons license that states specifically how the material may be used, reused, adapted, and shared.

OER can unlock freedom and creativity in the classroom. Instructors are exploring the use of OER to reduce textbook costs, customize activities and assignments, increase engagement with learning materials, and even co-create resources with students. Adapting and sharing OER also builds community among educators and scaffolds collaborative practice.

Using OER in place of a textbook or other proprietary learning material opens the door for student agency in how they consume this material (for example, students may re-format the content in a way that is more palatable to their learning preference), and the opportunity for instructors to facilitate activities such as non-disposable assignments.

The true power of open comes not from a resource being free of cost but rather from the freedoms to reuse, retain, redistribute, revise, and remix content. These freedoms empower both students and faculty while widening access and supporting the democratization of education. (Jhangiani).

Using OER allows educators to customize content to increase relevancy and ensure inclusivity. By sharing educational material “in the open” with open licensing, the impact reaches beyond students at the University of Alberta by increasing accessibility and availability to informal and lifelong learners.
David Wiley’s 5Rs are frequently cited as defining traits of OER.

Wiley states: “Open educational resources are defined as “any copyrightable work that is licensed in a manner that provides users with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities”.

Open Licensing your educational content is one way instructors can get started with OER. AASUA members retain the copyright in the course materials they create and assign an OER-compatible licence. The copyright status on your work does not change when a standard open licence is assigned, such as Creative Commons.

1. Choose a licence
2. Mark the work with the CC icon
3. Link icon to licence deed (e.g. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
4. Include a statement.

Example: 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Revising and remixing content is the key to OER. By revising and remixing educational materials, instructors can customize and tailor their instructional materials to meet their students’ needs. By requiring students to revise and remix this content as assignments, instructors can create unique learning experiences, encourage discussion, debate, and uncover new perspectives.

Finding OER

Three common methods to discover OER is through the Creative Commons, BCcampus, or OER Commons websites. However, these are just three of many other ways.

The chart below can be helpful in determining what and how a selected OER may be used. For example, if you select a resource which carries a CC-BY-SA license, you may engage in all 5Rs but you must revise and remix the resource only with content which is also of the same license (CC-BY-SA).

Credit: Image “Wiley’s 5Rs and Creative Commons Licensing” by Krysta McNutt, CC-BY 4.0 (to view the full version, click here)

Taking the First Step

If you’re interested in exploring OER further, whether it is to adapt existing work, adopt it into your course, or create new content, the Libraries and CTL are here to help!

Your Subject Librarian can be a great starting point. You may also want to check out the CTL Open Education page and consider booking a consultation, read more on the open education movement on the UA Libraries Open Education libguide, or join the UofA OE Interest Group.

Upcoming Workshops

• Speedy Intro to Open Education (webinar) October 27, 2017, 9:00am - 10:00am
• Finding, Creating, and Using OER (CTL) November 7, 2017, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

Further Information

McNutt, K., Wakaruk, A. (2017), “Speedy Intro to Open Education”, Centre for Teaching and Learning, University of Alberta, October 24, 2017, https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1uwU_vRxUXMAdS3nqtVAm4Ffg-gqjMdM98Oc_F0iCiDs/view

Wiley, David. “Defining the "Open" in Open Content and Open Educational Resources.” Iterating toward open, https://opencontent.org/definition/