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0:00 Olivia: CAMPPFire Stories is a documentation of the work of members of the Collective to Advance Multimodal Participatory Publishing, or CAMPP, at the end of a three year incubation period at the University of Colorado Boulder. CAMPP’s mission promotes faculty and student curation, cultivation, co-creation, and publication of knowledge. Under this umbrella, members developed and published various projects that meet academic standards and are open and accessible to the community at large. These audio recordings contain first hand accounts from CAMPP and community members about their projects and their experiences throughout this period of development.

0:39 Catherine: On this episode, we will hear from Amanda McAndrew and Sara Myers on The impact that open educational resources and the work of CAMPP can have and has had on students and communities. Amanda McAndrew is the faculty services portfolio manager for ASSETT, Arts and Sciences Support of Education through Technology. Her approach to teaching and learning is firmly grounded in critical digital pedagogy, open education, and learner-centered theories and practices. She considers herself a teacher first and then a technologist. As an instructional designer and technologist at a large university, she has learned the importance of developing interdisciplinary faculty learning communities. Providing the right tools and building comfortable environments, both face-to-face and online, creates strong social learning opportunities and connections that allow true innovative thinking to happen. Sara Myers is a former ASSETT Graduate Assistant and Teaching, Learning, and Technology Initiatives Coordinator. She received an MA in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is now the Digital Learning Manager for History Colorado.

1:56 Catherine: Okay so thank you Amanda and Sarah for coming. What we're doing is documenting CAMPP members and people who know CAMPP members and have been affected by them, and how their journey has been over the past three years. So first question: how did you decide to work together, and how did CAMPP begin for you?

2:14 Sara: Yeah, so I was Amanda's graduate assistant for two years at Boulder and so just by virtue of having that position was kind of rolled into CAMPP, and helping coordinate times and managing and just kind of communicating across the board and you know doing a bunch of various tasks, so just the graduate assistant helper on the project. And so I mean that kind of answers how it began for me just as a student coordinating and talking to these various professors and I was pretty lucky, I was able to be at the very beginning kind of and be part of those communications. So that's kind of where I was, yeah.

3:01 Catherine: When you set off, what were you expecting?

3:05 Sara: I guess I'm not sure what I was expecting since I had been able to look at a lot of the narrative over what CAMPP was supposed to be and what it wanted to look like, so going in blind off of that that's kind of you know, looking at open educational resources and how we could publish and be online and make those resources accessible and have student impact was kind of what I knew about CAMPP going in. So yeah I was just expecting what was in the narrative so I don't think it's too far off of what CAMPP progressed to at least when I was there, so yeah.

3: 40 Amanda: Yeah I think I could add a little here if that's okay if I jump in. I think as per usual we as humans tend to downplay our role and I just want to say Sara was much more than just a helper. She came into CAMPP yes right at the beginning and when I interviewed Sara for the graduate assistant position which we had and had had previously and so it was an ongoing position, but CAMPP was a new project that this position would be working on, and when I interviewed her I knew right away that I just got a really good sense for what what she believed in and that she believed in the mission of CAMPP, the things that she talked about in that interview were really in line with CAMPP and a couple of other projects that ASSETT was working on and so I just really knew that with having that mindset and her skill set that she would bring a lot to the program. She had talked about, one of the big things she talked about was creating access for individuals to knowledge and to- Sara's background is more in like art museums and so forth and so she was really interested in creating access to these educational materials and artifacts and so forth and I just thought that really fits with what we're trying to do with CAMPP and wanted to bring her in. So I just wanted to share that and say you did a lot more than just being a helper, Sara.

5:26 Sara: Well thank you, I always, I don't know how much I'm appreciated so it's nice to hear that I had an impact.

5:33 Amanda: Yeah for sure.

5:35 Sara: So yeah, thank you.

5:37 Catherine: What kind of experience did you gain from being a part of this project?

5:41 Sara: For me it was basically the setup to my now career, and so just kind of learning a lot of project management and communication across a dispersed field, so the different professors and their schedules and finding those commonalities where their projects overlap it's kind of a lot what I do now so like really transferable life skills for me, and also I work largely with digital open source educational materials in primary sources. So for me personally like I said it set me up perfectly for the position I have now and really helped ground my personal life feelings. Like Amanda said, I have really strong feelings towards eliminating barriers to resources and education specifically, and so just working with the various professors, faculty members, all that just strengthened that and made me realize like this is possible and it's really important. It just kind of strengthened all my convictions and gave me really practical life skills which got me a great job, so as a student I advocate for it.

6:56 Amanda: Yeah I could just add to that a little bit too that I think the role did give Sara some good experience, but she had a lot going for her already. One of the things that I remember when Sara first interviewed, she said she didn't have a lot of experience in technical skills but that she really enjoyed working with technology and that then that she was a fast learner, and so I thought okay great that that will work with what we need, but that was a little bit of an understatement. She is a super fast learner, anything that we needed help with she could you know just sit down and figure out how to do it. I was always amazed that she would come back with a solution for something in Wordpress or for a mecca or any of those tools that we were using in CAMPP, and with our Buffscreate project she just had an amazing work ethic and ability to just sit down and figure out how to do stuff. And so I think that is what is really taking Sara a long way.

8:09 Sara: Oh well, thank you.

8:11 Catherine: Sara I have a question for you that you've pretty much answered, but how has your time with CAMPP impacted your personal journey?

8:18 Sara: So for me, like Amanda said I have a background in museums and classics and so you don't necessarily think that translates to the digital world, and before CAMPP my career goal was to work like in person doing classical education. And then just working in ASSETT and CAMPP specifically made me really realize the need for access specifically to these resources, and so now I work at History Colorado as a digital learning manager and I manage national resources and make it possible for classrooms across the country to get access to primary sources for free. And so it really like, I know that had I not worked with CAMPP I probably wouldn't have been interested in doing that. I knew I wanted to do digital education but just like the importance of breaking down barriers, and making it accessible, and doing a quality good job about it is what I took away from CAMPP, so yeah.

9:26 Catherine: And then for both of you again, where will the journey take you next?

9:32 Amanda: I can start with that one, I think that for me in the role that I do with my job you know CAMPP was a program, a three year program, that we started up and so I feel like we planted the seed. We really, you know, helped faculty think about what were some of the opportunities that they could start creating for their students to give life to their students' work and their creations. And so while we've made a lot of progress and good ground in that area, I still want to keep doing more. I want to find new ways to keep encouraging faculty to think about that concept, how can they help students’ work live beyond the four walls of a classroom and give more meaning to it. Because it is more visible and does good in the world that we're not just writing papers that land in the trash can so you know, the destination is the same, we've made good progress along that destination, but I want to keep working towards more. And it's kind of funny, it made me think about, it's March and so I'm a big basketball fan and it's March Madness and I hear all of these players keep saying “we're not done yet” and I'm like, that's kind of how I feel, you know. I'm happy, I think we've done a lot but I'm not done yet, there's still more work to do, so I just think that kind of applies to what we're doing here in CAMPP.

11:19 Sara: Yeah definitely, and at least for me my end spot's a little different because I'm no longer working with CAMPP, which is sad, but as someone who was involved really heavily and now outside of that I see CAMPP as like ground zero for exponential growth and interest in open education and making those, like you said, student’s projects thrive outside of the classroom. Because like I know for me in my position now I take what I learned from CAMPP and like disseminate it to more people and I know that the different professors, faculty members, are basically preaching this thought, this idea, to their students and the value of this, of CAMPP and what it stands for to others. And it's just gonna keep growing, and so like I said I know I'm not as heavily invested now but I see the value of having participated and the impact you can have just to those numerous people by extension that have had contact with CAMPP.

12:17 Amanda: Yeah I could add just a little bit that made me think too like CAMPP really turned out to be a community, and so even though this community will come to an end I think that each member, as Sara said, will go out and talk to others about it. They'll be involved in other communities, they'll share what they learned and that some of the projects that we've done will serve as examples for what others can do and how they can see themselves creating these same types of projects or participating in the same types of communities. So that's one thing that I still hope to do more of, is share out what some of these projects and just a little bit more dissemination around what we've been doing.

13:10 Catherine: Yeah so this interview is a little shorter than the rest of them, so we're probably going to wrap up here in a second. Do either of you have any final thoughts that you want to share?

13:21 Sara: It's nothing new other than having graduated and moved on and I've been kind of removed from this project for, I don't want to say like nine months maybe, it hasn't been too long but it's starting to feel like it's further and further in my past, just how valuable I see CAMPP to be to those participating and then those that have even had like the smallest touch with it. It's just a really valuable experience, the connections and individuals I was able to meet by working in this project has really influenced my trajectory. And so I just, I guess I just really believe in what CAMPP stands for and have seen some really awesome projects and things come from it.

14:04 Amanda: Yeah I totally agree, and I know Sara talked a little bit about the job she's doing now and how the CAMPP experience prepared her, but I wonder, Sara could you maybe could you talk a little bit more about the connection between CAMPP and what you're doing now? And yeah.

14:26 Sara: Yeah for sure. So like I said I'm the digital learning manager at History Colorado Downtown Denver. And I was brought on specifically to manage a federal grant, so even just you know CAMPP having kind of been funded like that, it's just there is some overlap even just an initial like “what is this how does it, like how do we manage it.” But what I really do is this federal grant is for a website called Museums for Digital Learning which is a nationwide platform to house primary sources from the various museums and institutions from across the country, and so it takes primary sources in the shape of objects, text, video, and embeds them into like ready made lesson plans and activities for teachers to then implement in the classroom. And all of this is free both for museums to join and add to and for teachers to access and download, so it really is this idea of publishing like quality materials outside of a pay wall, outside of like museum physical barriers, and just making it as accessible to as wide of an audience as possible. And we are not limited to any like specific type of museum, libraries can join, universities can join, and we kind of just build out from there. Invite museums to join and then they create their, what we call, resource kits which then go into the classrooms and it's all just ready made backed up by national standards. So I've just been doing a lot of outreach dissemination, kind of marketing for that and helping that project thrive, so that's kind of what I do. And then on top of that I do various other digital work at History Colorado specifically geared towards the Colorado K-12 audience, so making resources accessible to educators, all free and just there for their use.

16:31 Amanda: Awesome, thank you. I know you told me a lot of that before but it just really helped me again see the connections between CAMPP and what you're doing now. I think the only thing I was going to add is that you know I just really learned a lot from Sara too, she probably doesn't know it but she really helped me get through the pandemic. We did a lot of one on one meetings because I guess we maybe worked for what, like three or four months before the pandemic hit, Sara is that about right?

17:03 Sara: Yeah it was, we had a semester and then it all dispersed.

17:07 Amanda: Yeah so you know we didn't have a ton of time together before the pandemic hit, and so yeah we just kind of went through that together and I always looked forward to our one on one meetings and they were just really helpful. And I just think we learned a lot from one another.

17:24 Sara: Yeah definitely.

17:25 Amanda: I really appreciate all your work on the project Sara.

17:28 Sara: Yeah we definitely had to learn to navigate the remote work situation together and pivot a lot of a lot of small things but I think it all ended up working out.

17:40 Amanda: Exactly, yep.

17:41 Sara: Yeah.

17:43 Catherine: All right well, thank you Amanda, thank you Sara, both for coming and being on this podcast, and I'm going to stop the recording.