Chatting with Champions Interview Series – Marcello Pavan

Welcome back for another mini interview with one of the 2019 AMS OER Champions to hear more about their project(s), why Open is important to them, some of the challenges they faced along the way, and what advice they have to offer. These interviews were done via email, and this interview was conducted before the COVID-19 outbreak.

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This week, we hear from Marcello Pavan, Sessional Lecturer in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

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What motivated you do adopt/adapt/create open educational resources in your work?

Our course is taken by students who generally have no intention in pursuing the field or related ones, so it did not seem fair to ask them to buy a physics textbook.

Can you tell us about the open education projects you have been working on?

We use the OpenStax algebra-based college physics textbook. It is embedded in our edX course site.

What benefits have you seen from using open educational resources in the classroom?

In one case we actually edited the text to change terminology to what we thought was more appropriate. Can’t do that with other textbooks.

What was the biggest challenge you faced and how did you overcome it?

Getting the text ported to the edX LMS. [We] got a student to help.

Do you have any advice for other faculty developing OER?

Get help.

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Thank you, Marcello, for taking the time to participate!