How do we move beyond lecturing about motivation to actually fostering it? This session explores the journey of the Calvin Project, an initiative designed to transform educational psychology through the marriage of Project-Based Learning (PBL) and Open Educational Resources (OER).
We will trace the project’s evolution from a pilot experiment into a sustainable, student-directed experience. Attendees will see how shifting from traditional textbooks and lectures to OER and PBL empowered students to build their own understanding of motivation by engaging in an authentic problem space that requires translating abstract theories into actional strategies, while publishing their work in accessible, interactive formats. By analyzing the Calvin Project’s framework, we will illustrate how to build a PBL structure that provides intentional scaffolding while preserving student ownership and discovery As we share our experience with the Calvin Project, we’ll demonstrate how OER and PBL work hand in hand to meet the changing needs of our students.
Whether you are looking to refresh a single unit or overhaul a full course, this session provides a roadmap for creating learning experiences that draw students in and transform the way they see the world around them.
Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Northern Colorado
I love to explore how creativity, curiosity, and play interact throughout the process of learning. As a middle school teacher, I dove into design thinking and project-based learning to make my classroom a place to foster and support innovation in my students. Now, as a PhD student... Read More →
Specialized catheters are critical life-saving tools that allow clinicians to monitor heart performance and blood flow. While clinicians are not often called upon to utilize pulmonary artery catheters (Swan-Ganz catheter) or hemodialysis catheters, they must be able to deploy them both with speed and precision when needed. A Swan-Ganz catheter is utilized when the heart’s left side pressure needs to be measured from its right side. A hemodialysis catheter allows for dialysis to filter a patient’s blood when other methods cannot be used or when dialysis is only needed temporarily. Simulators can help clinicians prepare for life-or-death circumstances where every second counts and there is little to no tolerance for mistakes.
Pulmonary artery catheter simulators do exist but are difficult to acquire and can range from $1,732 to $14,990 in price. Simulators for hemodialysis do not currently exist.
In keeping with this year’s themes of adaptation and resilience, UC Health nurses and CU Anschutz researchers have collaborated to create innovative simulators which are built/3D printed from open access resources and will be posted on the CU Anschutz OER Anatomy Hub under Creative Commons licenses. These simulators will be used in UC Health to train clinicians on proper procedures for using these catheters. Other organizations will be able to 3D print and build them using a provided material list with step-by-step instructions. Attendees will gain understanding of the Swan-Ganz catheter and hemodialysis simulators, where to find their assembly files and instructions, and how they can implement them in their respective departments.
The intersection of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Generative AI has transformed the Humanities classroom, especially online, into a what author David Epstein calls a "wicked domain"—an unstable environment where the rules for success are constantly shifting. While OER provides tremendous opportunities to move away from static textbooks toward curated, open resources, the rise of "agentic browsers" like Comet and Google Lens has made digital assessments in Canvas increasingly vulnerable to cheating. I urge faculty and librarians to join me in exploring how to leverage OER to teach essential interpretive skills while guiding students through the ethical and strategic challenges of an AI-saturated world.
The core problem is that while AI excels at pattern recognition and synthesizing academic-sounding text from OER resources, it lacks judgment—the uniquely human capacity to arbitrate among competing values and account for the human dynamics found in original sources. Drawing on Epstein’s concept of Range, this presentation argues that the most durable advantage for 21st-century students is becoming a generalist with judgment who can navigate ambiguity in this AI environment rather than simply recall information. I will demonstrate models for using AI as a "co-researcher" in Humanities classes to locate OER sources, while simultaneously training students to evaluate those outputs against curated, high-integrity human sources.
By emphasizing the human-in-the-loop, instructors can ensure that OER remains a tool for deep critical thinking, preparing graduates to be adaptable problem-solvers who own their decisions in an unpredictable workforce.
