Biography
Michelle Reed is Associate Librarian and Director of Open Educational Resources at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). She leads OER initiatives, directs OER publishing, and manages a grant program to advance the use of open resources on campus. She is a former OER Research Fellow with the Open Education Group and continues to investigate accessibility of OER by collaborating with students as a site supervisor for UTA’s Disability Studies Program. She is active in both statewide and national OER efforts, serving on the University of Texas System Affordable Learning Accelerator Task Force, as a presenter for the Open Textbook Network, and as presenter coordinator and curriculum designer for the Association of College & Research Libraries’ OER and Affordability Roadshow. Prior to joining UTA, Michelle supported both information literacy and scholarly communication at the University of Kansas Libraries. She has a background in technical and creative writing and is a graduate of the University of Tennessee’s School of Information Sciences.
Leadership Portfolio
Michelle served as a peer advisor in the first class of fellows to complete the SPARC Open Education Leadership Program during the 2017-18 pilot. As an open advocate in a state impacted by OER legislation, Michelle’s interest centered on opportunities and challenges for implementing Texas Senate Bill 810’s requirement of providing students with searchable information about OER courses. The lessons learned from implementing course designations at UTA form the foundation of Michelle’s capstone project, the Texas Toolkit for OER Course Markings (a living guide).
The toolkit is an openly licensed resource that assists states and institutions with identifying options and overcoming hurdles in the implementation of course markings for OER. It summarizes legislative requirements in Texas, provides examples of course marking solutions, and includes information about stakeholders, barriers, and other important considerations. Additionally, it houses milestone reporting forms that allow stakeholders at colleges and universities to connect with colleagues and gain a better understanding of how markings are implemented at other institutions. Though it specifically targets Texas institutions, the toolkit is useful for anyone interested in or responsible for course marking policies and processes.
Current Work
Following its release in Spring 2018, Michelle’s work on the Texas Toolkit was recruited for a Rebus Community beta project to develop a platform for recruiting collaborators and managing the workflow of open textbook creation. Since then, over 30 contributors have joined the project team to produce a collaboratively authored resource for institutions navigating the uncharted waters of tagging course material as OER or under a “low cost” threshold. The open access book, Marking Open and Affordable Courses: Best Practices and Case Studies, is forthcoming from Mavs Open Press in 2020.
