Kickoff event for the Minitex Network for Open & Affordable Practices (MNOP) program is open for registration

The Minitex Network for Open & Affordable Practices (MNOP) is a new Minitex program supporting librarians and other academic support staff in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota working to increase adoption of open educational resources and library affordable content strategies. MNOP will officially launch on November 14 with an online kickoff event from 12:30-2:30. We will describe the program in more detail, do some real-time polling to learn more about current open education and course materials support in the region, and welcome guest speaker Abbey Elder from 1:00-2:00. Registering for the event is a multi-step process and can be done here. On the final registration screen you will receive Zoom information for the meeting. For registration, a MyMinitex account is required, and can be created here.

Guest Speaker Bio: Abbey Elder is the Open Access & Scholarly Communication Librarian at Iowa State University, the Iowa Statewide Open Education Coordinator, and a nationally recognized author and open education advocate. Abbey has authored The OER Starter Kit, The OER Starter Kit for Program Managers, and numerous journal articles and conference presentations in the field.

Event agenda:

• 12:30: Welcome, live-polling activity, and discussion
• 12:50: Break
• 1:00: Guest Speaker Abbey Elder
• 2:00: Break
• 2:10: MNOP program description and next steps
• 2:30: Questions

Program goals include:

• facilitating a mutual support network across Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota
• including librarians, instructional designers, technologists, and other academic support staff
• providing opportunities for active learning, trainings, and projects - both in smaller groups and individually - to develop skills that are difficult to obtain before they are needed on the job
• breaking support down into component practices and subpractices, and using them as buckets for shared activity and content, as well as jumping off points for learning and exploration
• serving as a coordinating layer for already existing efforts across the states
• aiming for efficiency, by sharing and parlaying knowledge and investments of time, money, and effort across the network instead of repeating similar work at each location

Website: The program website at https://mnop.org was soft launched before official kickoff to make it available to share during conference season. Feel free to visit the site, but keep in mind some areas of the site will only be completed in the period leading up to the kickoff event.

Registration: Register for the event here