Masters Degrees Online

i'm dr. valerie balester, i am theexecutive director of the university writing center. i am an english professor with aspecialization in rhetoric and composition in other words in writing. i was thinking about it before today,i have been on at least 60 and probably 75 defenses, and not all in english: in english, ineducation, in linguistics, and then also in engineering, inarchitecture. we used to have to have somebody fromoutside your home department sitting on each dissertation defense, as what theycall them: a graduate committee reviewer to makesure that the process went smoothly,

so i did that for for many differentareas. i think a many in the sciences andengineering. so i'm very confident about about thestructure of a dissertation defense. i'm wondering what you know about thestructure a dissertation defense, anything that you know at all about itthat you could tell me? what do you think happens in that little room? you go with your committeeinto a little conference room usually, right? sometimes it's open to the public andsometimes --i mean technically it always open to thepublic--

but whether you announce it to thepublic or not is going to determine whether people come or don't come and in my department, in english,it's not customary for the public to ever attend. if it's open to the public there is apoint at which they will even you will be sitting alone withyour committee cell what you're doing here is you have tomuster up i love your confidence now this is aboutconfidence okay it's very important and you have topresent yourself as a scholar in the discipline andauthority on your subject

you have to show them what you have tooffer as a scholar and that's really what it's about.nervousness is probably the biggest problem, but i've seen all of them work throughit. i've never seen anyone fail and have only seen one person ever faila dissertation in all of those defenses. only one person didn't pass,so your odds one out of sixy. your odds are good, you'regoing to pass. so go in there with that impression. theperson who did not pass wasn't prepared and hadn't talked to his committeebeforehand.

so, you are most likely going to pass this. you're going to be expected to clearly and cogently explain your workand explain how your work fits in with your discipline. where's your place in this bigconversation that's going on in your discipline? what have you contributed to the field,because a dissertation is supposed to be an original contribution to knowledge. what have you contributed tothe field? what more needs to be done? that's thekind of thing they're interested in, so it's not really a grilling.

in your head i want you to turn it froma grilling, because i've never seen whenit is a grilling and the word grilling means where they put you on the grill and cook you untilyou're finished. it means where they ask you this, this, and this do you know this, do you know that, where they just ask you lots of questions. it's usually not that, it's usuallyconversation among equals. they're trying to seeif you can function as an equal with them now. it's theirfirst opportunity to say you are now an equal,

please come in and give me someinformation, but as an equal, i expect you to be able to explain yourideas, defend your ideas, tell me where yourideas fit in, because they expect it of each other.they're not asking you to do anything that they don't do with each other andthat's why you shouldn't worry if they suddenlystop talking to you and start talking to each other--that's agood sign actually-- that means that you have stimulatedtheir brain. this is what these people live for, they're academics

and they like that. sometimes they getinto arguments with each other it's okay and your chair should gently bring that back. if your chairdoesn't do it, just let it go, let it happen. if they disagreewith you, they expect you to come back with adefense and that's where the word "defense" comesfrom. you need to know what the rules are. have a talk with your advisor and find out. if you don't knownow, you can talk to other students, but youdefinitely need to talk to your advisor

a good while before the defense and say,"i would like to know what to expect. can you explain to me how defensehappens in our department? what is the usual thing that happens? what do you want from me as yourcandidate?" and then know your committee as well. sometimes when we work on adissertation, we get isolated from our committee. make sure that the committeegets the dissertation in plenty of time-- that's something your advisor can tell you.if you give it to them two weeks before, they'll probably read it the nightbefore and then any objections they have

they didn't have chance to tell youabout, so if you can give it to them like amonth before, even more, you can work that out with youradvisor, but the sooner they get it, the more time they have to respond to itand to let you know before the defense--where are their areas of concern. if you go in then and meet with them, butyou get your-- i think you should get your committeechairs' advice and permission before you go meet with all your members, but when you do that, they even sometimestell you

what question they're going to ask you ormaybe they'll give you a hint about what question, because they'll tell you: "whatconcerns me about your work is this," "what i like about your work is this," "isee this, but did you do that?" and then when they read it again, theirminds are going to go back, and "oh we had a conversation, we talked about this-- that's the question i'm going to ask," because wheni'm a committee member, and i'm sitting there on the hot spot and ihave to ask an intelligent question, i'm gonna go back to what i remembermost about your dissertation.

now the firstthing you should be able to do is answer the question: tell me aboutyour dissertation. this will come in handy on the jobmarket as well. so, in your head write a speech, just a brief speech and you can break itup so that you're basically repeatingthe information in your abstract. this is the question or problem that ledme to research, this is the method i used, the way that idecided to to deal with that--i should have addedmethod in here--

this is what i found and i put the thesisseparate from here. thesis is really, what is myhypothesis? this is the problem and this is what i think is gonna happen,then this is what i found happened. in the humanities we're gonna call it athesis, in sciences we might call it a a hypothesis, but i had a question, here's how i thought it would beanswered and here's how i actually was answered. then this is the significance of mywork: how it can be applied, what it meansfor the profession, how it changes our theories, how it changes our practices, whateverthe significance might be,

and don't forget to bring a copy of thedissertation with you to the meeting, because usually the committee brings their own copy. again, that's a thing you want to checkwithin your own department: will they bring their copies or do i haveto provide copies for everybody? but usually they bring their own copies and they'll say: "on page 55, you said blank, blank, blank.. explain it." then youneed to have page 55, so you need your own copy. try not to wait until the lastminute.

if it's not finished, say here's whati have so far, just put a deadline date and say i don'thave everything finished, but here's what i have so far. that give them the opportunity torespond and you'll know and they are gonna say, "but you don'thave this," and then you're working, so be ready toanswer about it. so you have to practice, just like thelittle girls doing ballet, you need to practice. write down, just so you have it in your head, how you would answer the question: tell meabout your dissertation.

then practice it practice in frontof a mirror, say it out loud. don't memorize it, because you want to be agile. if somebody interrupts you, you want to remember where you are. you don't want to be just rope. you want to be able to say it even in afew different ways, but you want to be able to say. you get so focused on what you're doing, you want to talk about the details and youforget that other people don't even know what what question you're trying toanswer. what brought you into the researchinterests people. what's the problem?

how did you approach the problem? whatdid you think you were going to find? what did you find and what does all thismean? of course you want to dress for successand you want to stay calm and you want to smile. it's important not to be too serious. to show that you can do this and you can do this, remember the successrate is high. in some fields, it's optional to present and in some fields it's always done. first is prepare for technical difficulties.

if i came in here today and this was not working, i have my handout,so i could use that. for yourself, if your slides are reminding you what to say, make notecards or make a copy of yourslideshow, so you see every slide to followalong. be ready for technical difficulties. it could be that you are in a room wherethere's never a failure and the electricity goes out that day,and you have worked a month to get all these people into the same room at thesame time--it's not easy to schedule a defense, because every professor has a differentschedule and

they are all very busy, so you're gonna have it even though the electricity is out. okay? so, be ready. consider handouts, you don't want to giveeverybody lots and lots of handouts just to give out handouts, because you don't want them lookingat the handout, you want them looking at you. you want them looking at your slides, so make sure your handouts are only used to present things that can't go ona slide, that can't fit on the slide, or things that you really want them toremember maybe it's a photograph or an illustration. maybe it's a chart or a graph, maybe it's aquote,

but whatever it is, it should be things youwant them to take away with them, to remember, to be very vivid or thingsthat are hard to put on a slide. find out howlong the presentation usually is.typically they're eight to ten minutes. in many cases you're going to need time for questions, in other cases not, because you're justpresenting to the committee and that's just what they're going to do. they're going tostart with questions as soon it's over. find that out from again from your advisor. ask how much time do i have to do thepresentation,

do i have a public audience, if i do havea public audience, how much time should i givethem for questions? it's usually five minutes for questionsapproximately. so if they say you have ten minutes total,it's five to talk, five for the questions. we have a handout in the writing centercalled "designing effective presentation slides" and it's under oral communications, so i suggest you look at that. you want to be sure you don't put toomany words on the slide. make sure your slides basically cover your main points, but that

people are looking at you as much asthey're looking at the slides. the slides help them if they lose theirplace. the slides emphasize your main points,but they should be listening to you not just reading the slides. i recommend the handout "designingeffective presentation slides." they will tell you how to divide yourpresentation, how to organize. it's the same thing i told you tomemorize, the problem or questions that led to yourresearch, your methods for answering the questionor solving the problem,

your major findings, the implications, significants, or application of yourfindings, and add to that, your next step in yourscholarly career. they'll be interested, if youdon't say, they'll probably ask at least. they might want to know if you've appliedfor any jobs, but when i'm talking about your scholarly career, i'm talking abou your researchpart, what will you research next? will this dissertation lead to articles? will it lead to a book? will it lead toanother grant?

another research program? so, where will this take you from here? the chair will probably say, "okay, we are going to ask you to leavethe room." they're just deciding what procedures will be followed, soeverybody agrees on the procedures. if they're gonna be allowed to interrupteach other with a follow-up question or they have to each wait their turn,that's all they're deciding now. the next they're going to do is have youcome back in and your chair will tell you, "okay this is what we're going to do:we're going to start with dr. balester--" and dr. balester has tosound very smart, give a really good question right

and sometimes in the process in her head,she is still forming the question. so she may ramble on a bit that's whyyou have to listen. listen, really focus, don't bethinking about what i'm going to say next, listen to what they're saying now,because then she's going, "well in chapter three, youdid blah blah blah blah... and in chapter seven you said la la la la etc.. and then there'sa contradiction here, but i kind of think that if we bring in so and so scholar, this might resolve the contradictionand etc.." and she keeps going on and on..

you're like and you wanna know what?what is your question? she might say, "what do you think of that?"so you have to be listening closely. now you don't know what shesaid, so what do you do? ask her to clarify or repeat the questionor you clarify, you say i think i heard you ask ".. ..is that correct?" okay, now what happenswhen you don't know the answer? so you have lots of optionswhen you don't know the answer, but i came up with a few options: "you asked me whether i think that this is

a regular phenomenon, i'm not sure, but i think.." so you don't have to go: "yesit's a regular phenomenon, no it's not a regular phenomenon." you cansay "i'm not sure," but take a stab at the answer, try toanswer and let them see your thought process.that's what they're doing for you, they're letting you see their thoughtprocess when they're going on and on, so you do the same thing. they want to seethat you can think. that's what they're looking for: can youthink? is this a regular phenomena? "i don't know, but that question hasinteresting implication.

for example, if i knew the climatic changes inaugust, then knowing that would help me do this." keepyourself focused on your data you are the expert on your data, onyour project, on your ideas, you are the expert andthey're actually trying to treat you like the expert, they want you to answer like the expert. they respect you, believe me. there'snever any perfect data, so the dats are saying of man if ionly could have done this,

so that's good talk about, be confidenthowever. say: "given the constraints i was working with,this was what i was able to do, but if i could do more, if you know, this is my dream, if i could really havedone this," or "in doing this, i learned a problem withthis kind of data collection. next time i'm gonna do it this way." is it okay to just say, i don't know? it's okay if you really don't know, this maybe a little better, it's better to say i don't know than tofake it.

the thing you don't wanna do is fake it.these are not people that will be fooled. so don't fake it at all. sometimes when they askthe questions and they're coming and you're trying to listen, you need a little time: you can slowthings down. you can slow things down by pausing, take a breath look at your notes, even state, "you think this is aregular phenomenon?" "i need a little time to answer that, can ijust have a minute to gather my thoughts?" they'll always say yes. don't take threeminutes, but

just a few seconds, maybe at that pointlook down so that you're not distracted by them. focus, focus.. okay i can answer thisquestion, boost your confidence and then go for it. another thing is toask them to repeat the question both when you don't understand thequestion and when you need a little time. maybe you did understand it, but youjust want to slow things down. so if you have said something wrong oryou realize that you started answering a newquestion and suddenly, "oh, i should have said that too." how do youhandle that?

well it's a good idea to just admit it: "oh, wait a minute i'm wrong about that aren't i? i realized that just now." just correctyourself. or you can finish answering the questionyou're on and then go: "may i also add somethingelse? i realized that when you asked me this, ianswer, but i could have said something more," and just go ahead and sayit. so you have the opportunity and you havethe right to say "i want to say something more iwant to correct it."

thank you for that question, iwish i had thought about earlier, that is a really good point. at the end, theyfinish asking you questions, they ask you to leave again. don't go toofar, go outside, now you really sweating. remember the odds, you're going to come back in and they're going to say, "congratulations!" "now, we want you torewrite the conclusion however you have passed, okay?" just remember it is very commonthat they wil ask for revisions.

they did for me, in fact one of mycommittee member said: "valerie you know that conclusion justwon't do." that's okay, because i managed to passthe defense part, they knew i knew what i was talking about, but they knew that my writing fell downin the hardest part. the conclusion is usually the hardest partwhere you have to think about the significance and fit it into the are the literature that you've done. so it's very common for that part, orcould be that you have some tables that

are not in the right format, or it could be something else they noticed. someproblem they thought that you just did not quite capture. sometimes yousaid something in the defense, but they want you to put into thedissertation. usually when you come back into the room and they say you passed, butwe want you to make the revisions they expect your chair to keep notes, and he or she will actually make sure youmake the revisions. however, you could also suggest at that point when they saywe're gonna any revisions, you can ask them,

"could you please summarize the majorrevisions you want for me to make so i can make somenotes now." now, whether each committee member is going to have to see those changes or not will also dependon what they decide with your chair. many times they decide that the chairwill be responsible for making sure those revisions are made and they don't have to see it again, butyou know they still have to sign your dissertation. so sometimes they'll sign it there ifyou take your title page in with you they will sign it right there,

and sometimes they won't sign it untilthey see those revisions. so that's another reason, you go see yourchair to find out how it's normally done. at other times, everything is fine, they don't even want anyrevisions and as i said, it's possible they will say you did notpass the defense knowing your material is extremelyimportant. don't go in there without having read yourown work. you think you've read it, because you wrote it, but you haven't read it. even ifyou finish writing it a week before,

give yourself a little time, read itagain. practice and knowledge of your topicwill make you feel really confident and remember positive self-talk,remember who you are. you probably know more about this topicthan anybody, i can guarantee you know more about this topic than anybody, evenmore than your advisor, because that's what a dissertationis: it's going farther than where your advisor can take you, you have to go rest of the way. so hopefully even though yourdavisor is going with you and following behind, you really do knowmore if you stop.

think a lot before you get there,that's why you need the time to prepare it. read your dissertation well. i reallyappreciate that you came today, you can always reach me at the writingcenter as well, it's valerie balester and if you go to "about"the writing center, you'll see the staff directory and myemail. so if i can give you someconfidence, let me know. thank you.

SUNY Learning Network

. speaker: good morning everyone. i'm sorry. good afternoon for those who are central and eastern time. it is still morning here in the pacific. welcome to our first webinar of the winter spring series. we have an amazing line up of speakers here today to tell you about open textbook publishing and adoption. we hope that you can take this information become to your campuses and help your faculty to select high quality materials and help save your students money in the process.

we are clicking a little slow here today. i want to go through briefly for those that might be new in the black board collaborate system that we use here in the california community college system, the chat window and the participants are on your left-hand side of the screen. please feel free to use that chat window throughout the webinar to ask questions and so forth. we will hold the audio part of the questions until the end. we will try and answer the chat questions as they come on. please use it for presenters. if you have issues during the webinar,

feel free to contact the webinar people. i'll repeat the number. 1760, 744, 1150. at this time it's my pleasure to give you a quick introduction to speakers. i'm u n a daily from the open course work. our first speaker -- on slide. tell us about your job there. speaker: hello everyone. my name is c y r i l. i'm the library director.

finest library staff working with great faculty here and across the world. speaker: thank you very much. thank you for being here today to talk about in a few minutes . one thing for those listening in today welcome and please introduce yourself in the chat window and let us know what institution you are with or organization. next up is david h a r r i s. editor in chief. speaker: my day job is busy. i work with the college and content

development team, department team and community to develop open education resources for our projects. speaker: all right. thank you for being with us today david. our third speaker is david -- chief information officer at university of minnesota. he is at a conference in new orleans today. tell us what you do back at the university of minnesota. speaker: good morning and good afternoon everyone. i'm the chief information officer at one of the colleges the college of education. i'm responsible for the i t services there. i spend vast majority of my time working

on technology issues. i'm executive director. that is what i'll talk about today. speaker: thank you for joining us today. i want to invite you to show us where you are on this globe here. the way you can do that is by picking up one of the little tools that are next to the star here and dropping that on your location on the globe. the star is in the little vertical tool bar in the middle. i got a mile face on the west coast. we have east coast folks. lovely. it looks like we have folks from florida and up in northwest. some folks

in canada i'm guessing. any folks in the center. down in texas. we have a pretty good -- it doesn't look like we have global folks today. maybe they will watch the archive. it should be available in about a week. before we get to the speed of the show today, our clicker is slow today. here is our agenda. i'll give you a brief introduction and we'll here from c y r i l first and

david on the open text library in university of minnesota. we'll hold or audio q and a until the end. for those new, our mission is promoting adoption o e r to promote teaching and learning. supporting professional develop ment and they can select high quality materials and expand access to education. our focus remains at the community college although two of our speakers are from the four year colleges and universities. many of our students move only to those. there is a lot of overlap between our goals.

the consortium continues to grow. we have over 240 colleges now that participate. we are in 16 states and. and provinces now. i need to update that slide. finally getting to the content for today, i don't think any of this is a surprise to you. textbook prices have been rising. actually 82 percent since 2002 at two to 3 times the inflation rate. on slide. average student over thousand dollars textbook wise. this is a significant issue for

our students. particularly at the community college that are less able to afford education. research was done in florida a couple of years ago that showed 60 percent of students do not purchase text books at least at some point due to cost. those paying attention to the news there was a recent report that reported 60 percent of students often don't purchase textbook currently due to cost. we know this is a decision we don't want students to have to make. it can impact not only their success in the course. as you can see here 35 percent of students take fewer courses due to textbook costs. it increases time to graduation as well. the folks we have talking

with you today will tell about some alternatives that your faculty or yourself if you are teaching can use in your classroom to help students be able to afford education more easily. now i'd like to turn this over. director of library services. he is going to tell us about the open s u n y textbook project. speaker: thank you all for wanting to listen to this. i think you all see there is a great benefit to reducing the cost of text books and certainly the cost of education. the s u n y open textbook initiative is an effort

to think about saving the cost not only at campuses a cross new york but making an effort globely to make our text books useful across the world. it is library led . on slide. let's start with the problem. you have seen some of it. we look at cost of text books a problem for students. we thought there was a big business in textbooks. on slide. in florida textbook survey surveyed 22 thousand students found students didn't buy text books.

the majority would take that strategy. a lot of times we focus on the idea we are trying to get faculty to adopt open text books. one of the major concerns that faculty are concerned about is their student might not be a dopting their textbook. i would like to add one more graph. on slide. there is a severe problem we have to deal with. how do we do it? libraries are interested in this problem specifically because we want to help learning and we are paying money for the cost of textbooks as well. sometimes we are buying textbooks

and borrowing text books from other libraries which costs money especially because students keep them for the whole semester and we get lots of problems . parents and students are starting to perceive library and higher education as a problem the cost of it. we thought as opportunity to /tkpwrae ate create win win, we have an opportunity by thinking of it as not just textbooks but thinking it of it as the larger picture. these are learning assets way to engage teachers and learners. we think can we have a role as cure ate ors. we think of opportunity to create win win.

our students recognize this problem as well. students put in a proposal to students saying we would like you to address the textbook afford ability problem. they made a resolution that recognized our efforts. students want answers and systems -- on slide are trying to find good answers to their questions. it is not just student who are looking for answers or who want to change things. this is an article about open textbook in academics the publishers have

money based on his content. what gives him control over content is to release it under creative commons license. our own faculty member wrote a book literature -- on slide. he said his profession in english has served a role of not making books as accessible as they need to be. he wrote a wonderful book. he is contributing making it available to everyone because he feels the professor is making a difference to the student and everyone else that wants to read literature. if you haven't taken a

look, take a look at this one. we know there is a problem. how do we do it? in july 2012-libraries granted grant. offered on november 2012, 3,000 dollars for authors to contribute proposal. if selected -- incentive. we also paid for peer reviews. in two weeks we got 38 proposals. they said yes to four. many library pitched in additional funds.

on slide. we have two more up this month. we are looking forward. libraries are managing an editorial work flow. they receive the manuscript proposals and review them and select them and do peer reviews and send it out and scale the information back. participating libraries but other libraries wanted to help. in addition to that we do the text layout. on slide. we hire free lance on occasion. we don't always have the resources to go through all those steps.

what do we accomplish? we are putting all our pope open text in open source software that was developed by the project. u r l here for free e books. go ahead and take a look if you want. we have minnesota textbook catalog. we are offering the authors a print on demand option. we help them put it in amazon. it is added incentive for faculty to offer textbook and make them open available for you online. also print because many people want them in print as well.

what else do we do? we have in every book a peer review. also wrote public review embedded in each book. everyone can read a statement by the peer reviewer about what is the strength of this book and target audience and benefit. this is to help people evaluating open text books. why should i read this or assign it to the class or evaluate this? it is important to really read the peer reviewers statement. 15 books in one and a half years is pretty ambitious but we got a second chance. we got a

60 thousand dollar grant. type of publication and participating -- one thing to mention there are 8 participating libraries but having support from others. we also it is great to collaborate with university press. finished with, initial call for authors. had deadline of january 31. we received 46 propose als. we are going to fund 15 of them. this year we are trying a different selection review process that is a way of thinking about

adoption. it is really important. what we are doing is we have an abstract with some of the details of the textbook that we are sending out to different faculty across the 64 campuses. teaching the same course the textbook is designed for to evaluate it how likely would you select this textbook if published. what are it's strengths? very important features you want to see in this textbook. last question was really interesting. would you be will be to serve as a peer reviewer. important thing we want librarians and teaching faculty to

discuss proposals because it is a way of doing market analysis and communicate what is the nature of open educational resources today and what is interest level on faculty and how do we really -- for the market that are the teaching faculty. compile all the scores so we have some idea of what comprehensive colleges want. in a sense it is a selection review that is distributed across. background noise. this is the overall map. it gives you the impression

-- authors proposal and author writing. you do enhance the authors librarian support and instructional designers input and better to help the author deliver a high quality product. peer review -- two peer reviews per textbook at least. there is author revision and text a pproval. delivering 31 high quality text books. i expect we will be doing more. libraries tend to want to produce and help their faculty

publish these books because they know it makes a big difference. overall long term this is an important point about our program is we are not just to publish open text books. we are looking at how text books are used for learning objects and digital to integrate in the courses. really get the students to look at it and work with them and with faculty. text books are one dimension of the learning environment. we are trying to build a more robust one . this is a lot to take in at the last slide. if there are any questions we'll save them for the end. it is a way of

saying to open textbook initiative is more of an exploration about how do i bridge faculty and students work together to make a rich and affordable learning environment that can be shared globely. thank you very much. speaker: thank you. i think that is a real inspiration to other systems that would like to foster this kind of creativity among their faculty to expand access to education among their students. thank you for sharing that. next up is david h a r r i s editor and chief of open

s t a x college. david is going to tell us about some of their current work that they are developing but also adoption of the open text books they have already released. we are going to be excited to hear about how well they are doing. speaker: thank you so much for having me chat with the audience today. i would like i thought what we would do today is give you an overview of how technology and e o e r are a perfect combination together and talk about what we are doing with open s t a x college and open licensing and we'll talk about adoption.

many many years before the internet age life was simpler. you had a professor and selected text and 30 students. it was a closed system. the internet really changed everything. what we are seeing is formation of knowledge network a community of learning that are beginning to fan the globe. this is having a tremendous i impact on many many industries. you look at the computer industry, the open software movement how innovation has sped up. you look at transformation in music industry and newspaper. wholesale. down the left side you see the textbook industry. that really hasn't changed that much. yet it probably should have integrated

technology. the same cycles exist the same higher prices exist and it is very controlled distribution of content. economics are beginning to drive significant change in the market. let's talk about the licenses for a second. the audience is pretty versed on this. creative commons has various licenses. you can take your content and adapt it and use as is and re distribute it for free to the community. as we move

down, more restrictions are imposed. we look at last one. that means there is no commercial use, no derivative a llowed. all the open you can take the resources and use as little or as much as you want and re distribute them without permission. this also allows friction less re mixing in the connection platform. the connection platform is really the platform to runs open s t a x college. we have over 20 thousand. just for today's discussion, you are free to take these materials and do with them as you wish.

the next point we would like to discuss is really how o e r can enhance academic freedom. the reason we point this out -- will talk about how o e r limits and how it will be mandated. we want to put that to rest. o e r provides /tpabg faculty with more choices in their courses. you have options what traditional publishers will provide you. if you have o e r resources, you are free to edit and adapt them and distribute them. on slide. i'm surprised at the number of

faculty i like the homework system but i don't like the book but i'm locked. with o e r you don't have to be locked in any more. o e r should never be legislated or mandated. it needs to be made at the local level at the faculty level and o e r needs to stand on it's own. faculty and coordinators will determine what is best for that course. another important component is students and digital right management. this is an important issue in the way students interact with content. cost is paramount. we think this is too. digital rights

management when you adopt e book limit your right what you can do. it limits access. with open license students have limited access. they go download our book -- textbook will expire after 180 days. there is unlimited printing. probably the most significant aspect of an open license is it encourages students to share this information and this content in their informal learning network. we know students are on facebook all the time. being able to share that content in those informal learning

groups is important. they do that with traditional content they are violating copyright law. open lives where students live today. what are the goals of open s t a x college. to increase access to high quality open education content and provide students with financial relief. there were some limitations of the o the e r 1.0 model. generally you hear objectives there were inconsistent quality standards. some materials were exceptional and others weren't up to par. we have made it very difficult for faculty to find solutions. if

if you have physics you might hit a thousand pieces of content. that takes a lot of work for faculty to piece together. for profit providers. we need to work with them to improve access and lower costs. there needs to be sustainable reward structure. rewarded for intellectual work and reviewers need to be paid. they put a lot of time into evaluating manuscripts. finally -- this was brought up in the last session. learning not free must be the priority. determine what is the

learning outcome taking place. are these materials helping students learn more effectively. we wanted to meet these challenges. if you go to open s t a x college dot o r g it is easy to /tpaoeupbld the find the materials. imposed rigorous development standards. we realize free is not enough. text are offered by scholars. biology text had hundred reviewers on it. they are professionally illustrated. these books meet quality.

third is scope and sequence. we work closely with the community to make sure text meets scope and sequence of a course. if you are teaching physics or biology you see it will map up to all courses. if you want to adapt it to your specific course, you can do that too. we have the tools to do it. the first six books we published there are already 70 derivatives. there are solution manuals free for students. it would be 100 dollars from publisher. we partner with organizations that provide online homework.

thank you to the foundation support we have been able to build these libraries. we will be up to 25 text books when we are done. thank you to foundations -- on slide who really supported the development of the books. the titles below here -- on slide -- barbara is on today. she is one of the authors. these are available today for students to use. economics will be coming out in two weeks. i did see a question. is open s t a x college really provide course work? no we don't. we aren't a

loop and we don't plan on being one. what happens when you go to the website? it is very simple. student or professor selects discipline they want. there is no password required and no registration required. they can select one of the browsers they like. we offer books in low cost print. very inexpensive. biology book is 28 or 29 dollars. we offer i book version. the vast majority of our user get p d f they can download. they can read it on the web or offer in e books and mobile devices. our goal is clear. access anywhere at any time on any device in any format. you select the text

and then you download your textbook. this is an example of the biology text which is 47 chapters. this will is just example. it gives you sense of quality. what most people tell me after they look at this, they like it is attractive. they like we integrate in teractive elements. in the biology book we have medical institute. what is the difference between this and 300 dollar textbook. i say about 250 dollars. one last thing. it is a great opportunity. this is terrific. how are we doing? are faculty responding and

adopting. overwhelmingly we say yes. if you look on the number on physicianics here, ^ oh ^ -- on slide. save students with physics alone over 2, 600, 000 dollars. we have four year state schools. we are seeing the need across the market. we also think the books provide the right level. a lot of community colleges are concerned

about m a t r i c u l a t i o n. it is just the beginning. if you look at our total, the usage is growing every six months. on slide. this year we estimate the impact on students enrolled in courses -- there are a lot of students using it that aren't enrolled in courses -- will be 58,000. we have 14 e c o system partners. let's talk about that. we know a great book is not enough. people need more advance technology. incidentally all the books are adapted for

learning platform. we have partnerships. on slide. they are providing extra services and product to go with these resources. you can find out more about them on the website. some of these are for sale. if you sign up with w i l y plus price will be approximately 50 dollars. that is saving students over a hundred dollars. some partners also provide support feed back. market will shift from publisher to market that is much more distributed and efficient and good for everyone. diagram -- network

around o e r 2.0. let me briefly wrap up with f a qs. on slide. catch -- none. if you like what we are doing tell a friend. we don't have a sales force. no book is not perfect. our books aren't perfect. they can be adapted simply. we will work with you on that. do we have single sign on? in a way we do. instructors take file and embed them in courses. do you have comp copies? yes we do. we don't like to give them out. if mandatory to get adoption, we will provide

one. how do i get service? go to website. revisions? don't subjects don't need revisions but publishers do. some do and we will provide it. what if i find an error. we are the only publisher that publishes are e r r a t a. can book stores -- yes. in conclusion together we can build a sustain able future. i love

this quote. on slide. where are we? somewhere probably getting toward the fighting stage. thank you for your time. speaker: thank you david. lots of exciting conversation going on in the chat window. we'll get back to some of that at the end here. excellent presentation. onto our last presenter who has some great information for us. this is david -- chief information officer at university of minnesota. he is going to talk about the open text library which is a listing site for high quality open text books. his focus is on getting faculty to adopt. many of us who work with faculty and administrators know that /tpabg you will you will

faculty need a lot of information before they are ready to adopt. speaker: thank you. before i start i want to tell you i see in my introduction i'm in new orleans right now. i'm bringing this up because i'm finding open text books are all over this conference. you have university of texas systems and he was talking about innovations that would change higher education by 2015. talking about open text books. there have been a number of presentations. it is clear this is a movement if you want to call it that that gaining momentum. i agree with david. we are

getting closer to the winning stage. i'd like to talk about the textbook library but in context and the work we have been doing which is answering this one question. for the last two and a half years this has been our focus. college of education -- on the ground job. i'm with faculty every day helping them and supporting them. that combination of asking your question and having access to /tpabg faculty who ask really good questions who have real problems they need to get through and questions and miss understanding. that is at the core of where we are in solving those.

they gave a really great background on issues and licenses. i'm not going to get into that and talk about the barriers we have discovered and tried to overcome with our faculty and other faculty we have talked with. number one, in some ways there isn't an option. not clear. one thing that we spend a lot of time we created some faculty development that works well here. you saw stats earlier about financial situation of students. this is in minnesota. funding higher education. this

is state funding in red versus tuition in the green. the load is being put on the students. you saw a graph earlier student loan debt and credit card debt is in red. national numbers. students are more than ever in a pinch. this is from the florida survey that was mentioned earlier. impact of cost of text books on academic success of students. after we pretended our faculty -- this is how many adoptions we had. 0. we new

text books were out there. why weren't faculty adopting them. they don't understand what open textbooks are or concept of open. oftentimes they confuse it with free text books or electronic text books. of course open text books are can be free. they live in the electronic world but it isn't the same. publishers create electronic books and they are filled with adds. understanding creative commons license and understanding open redefined. we defined the problem for them and now we are saying here is the solution we think is possible for you and your students.

what we developed is program that put together those two pieces. urgency part is making them aware of the issue. the open part is explaining some solution that is possible. after that we still had 0 adoption. there must be a barrier. next we learned quickly that faculty don't know where to find the text books. that is why we developed this open textbook library. we realized they needed to be pulled together in one place. we looked around the internet and pulled them in one place so we are /aed easy to look at and use. the

u r l is there. open dot -- i think we are up between 140 and 150 text books of various content areas. making people aware of this and creating this and had 0 adoptions. what is next? faculty are concerned about quality. what we did was made sure in the catalog we had the opportunity for faculty to read through this. we learned a lot about -- we don't have a lot of reviews in there but the next two years we should pick up hundreds of them. long story but we are excited that will come

soon. we have some in there. most of them thanks to our friends. faculty trust each other with academic resources like this as far as quality. i'm not qualified to judge the quality but they are. on the slide here, quality -- they make the false assumption that something that is free can't be good. saw from other presentations that process is very similar if not better than what some commercial publishers as far as peer review goes. i met the author of the upcoming open s t a x economics book this morning. he basically said how he was impressed how

much -- not clear. our faculty needs to know that. free cannot be good. it is something on the internet. it is open textbook 2.0 that david is talking about. peer reviews and all that we have had no adoptions. i can't blame our faculty. they are busy and being asked to do so many things. what we knew was we needed strategy. they are constantly busy and outreach and research. we asked them to review an open textbook

. we said it was a small amount of money but just enough to get their attention. 1 to 200 dollars to write a short review that we could use to put in the catalog that with be useful to somebody else. you think about the savings. 100 to 200 investment is nothing. that is one textbook. they adopted an open textbook because they took the time to review it. savings are instant. we had nine faculty review text books. 7 of them ended up adopting.

did professional development and explained issues and all these things. what we needed was this engaging strategy. we had nine faculty review. 7 adopted of those nine. they took them back to their departments and convinced three others. ten faculty adopted. i don't have final numbers now. it is about 300 thousand dollars since the fall. people working in the open textbook world know it adds up very fast. what is next? we are trying to -- we learned within one context of our institution and we are reaching

out to other institutions to help them. we got a grant within the last couple of months to go to other institutions and help them create open textbook initiatives. we are looking for institutions where the leadership is ready and don't know what to do and they can benefit from us. we already know as we reach out, there will be other barriers. for instance we hear -- i know david has heard this that what is going to happen in the book store? what is going to happen to that revenue? those questions we need to be able to answer. we need to have some sort of a path forward for the institution. the answer to that

one i gave -- if you have a better one feel free to give it. i stated after you have an internal conversation about their priority it selling books a priority and making a profit? we will continue to learn and hopefully /efrp everyone will benefit from what we learn as we try and reach out and help other institutions. again the u r l for our catalog -- feel free to use it or send to to anyone that wants to use it. we crossed 1 thousand 00 thousand user mark this week. it is being used over 188 countries around the world. you are welcome to it. that is why it is there. thank

you. speaker: thank you very much david for sharing all those different strategies for, encouraging adoption of open text books by faculty. having workeded in the field, they sound excellent. i can see a lot of chat about engagement faculty engagement. thank you for that. we are going to move to questions. because we have such wonderful presenters and we are almost up on the hour. our next set of webinars will occur in march. we will do those with open education week

which is march 10 through 15. open education week is about promoting open education globely. sounds familiar. on tuesday march 11 we will have an o e r and accessibility day that the consortium is participating in. wednesday march 12 is o e r day. if you would like to participate, contact me. we would love to have your participation. at this time we are just on the hour. i think we are going to try and keep the phone and the conference going for another five minutes for questions. we had some excellent questions over the last hour that have come up that i

think we might want to just recap a few things and go ahead and type in as people have additional new questions. there is contact information and myself and please do contact us over e-mail. once again i want to thank our wonderful presenters today. they were amazing. one topic that came up is what is the difference between free and open. i know that david addressed this. i know we have cable green online. cable would you like to address that? are you on mic? speaker: sure. as

most basic level free means no cost meaning you can get access to something without paying money to get access to it. that is great. certainly o e r is free and so is on m o o t. open has an additional requirement. something must be free and you must have the legal rights to exercise what we call the four rs. you must have the legal rights to re use the resource, revise, re distribute. take open s t a x textbook for example. is it free to users? yes. can i revise re mix and distribute

that book? yes i can. it meets both criteria so it is o e r. another example , looking at one. is it free? yes. do you have the legal rights to revise it? no you don't. it is copyright. if you do those things you will be violating u s copyright law and you can be sued. we call that not open although it is free. speaker: thank you for that. really good distinction there. we had a question about open test banks. this is a critical piece of textbook content today. i wonder

david h a r r i s can you talk about test banks and what you are doing about that. speaker: couple of things. we have an open test bank of questions that spans beyond the /kwaud base. we have test items for most of our titles not all. we are working on them. we know it is important. comprehensive test bank developed at university of minnesota. when it comes to test items we are concerned about that they don't get into the wrong hands and they don't fall into students hands.

how can you prevent that if they are openly licensed? speaker: excellent question in and of itself. perhaps we'll leave that one for another time. i think that is a longer one. barbara has a great explanation. in chat. she doesn't worry about it. if a student wants to practice on 2000 plus questions, then fine. speaker: good point. speaker: it is one great answer. there are a lot of different points on that one. before we run out of time, there were questions about licensing. particularly

c y r i l these were directed at you. you shared in the chat window that your faculty decide on license of the textbook they produce. can you elaborate on that a little? speaker: sure. it is more of a -- we have a license that we use to re distribute our open textbook. that is what the authors do. the author retains the copyright so they can put it on print on demand and they make all royalties off of it. that is the model we decided to pilot one and two. it makes the most sense in many ways for the faculty to have an incentive in addition to what we are offering to

produce their work in print as well. it is open. it has a share alike license and a non commercial license because that is a concern of many faculty who author work. they don't want other people to -- their work. we put that in as agreement. it is a good license. others can make derivatives as long as they get attribution to the work. others can't commercial it. thank you. speaker: that is interesting approach. faculty author retains the copyright so they can release it in any manner they would like in addition to.

speaker: exactly. speaker: i think at this point we are going to close out the session. david i didn't give you a chance to recap. would you like a final statement before we close off here? speaker: no, i don't think so. i they we are in good shape. i would offer as part of our grant if there are institutions looking for some help in that where you think the leadership may be ready to do something, be happy to have a conversation. speaker: wonderful. davids e-mail is there in our main window here. i want to thank once again all of you who joined us today for this informative webinar. i want to thank our sent presenters. thank you and see you in march.

Diploma Mills

g'day viewers! my name’s graeme stevenson andi'd like to invite you to come on a journey of creativity and learning and adventurethrough the series colour in your life. there's an artist in every familythroughout â the world. lots of times there's an artistdeep down in side all of us as well. so grab your kids,your brothers, your sisters, your aunties, uncles, and mums and dads and come and see how some of thebest artists in australia do what they do. (music plays)

(graeme) well g'day viewers andwelcome back to color in your life. we're down in werribee todaynear melbourne - a little chilly - wintertime exploration.- (janet) yes. (graeme) and i'm with a delightfullady called janet knight. - welcome to the show janet.- (janet) thank you very much. (graeme) wonderful to be here.janet has an amazing set up. she's also a professional art teacher, apartfrom being a professional artist. and she has the most magnificent studiodown here attached to her home, where she actually does workshops withobviously a lot of the artists in the area.

- (janet) yes.- (graeme) but janet also paints some really beautifulnatural scenes i mean i love landscapes, she has waterfalls, the way she puts them together. she uses a number of differenttypes of techniques to do that. but you've got a backgroundyou've did a diploma - in fine arts from ballarat university- (janet) that's right. - (graeme) in 1984.- (janet) that's right. (graeme) and from there you'vereally had an extensive experience

as far as a teacher and an artist. can you tell me a littleabout that at all? (janet) well before unii worked in advertising, that was for a few years. and thenafter that children came along and... - as they do.- (graeme) as they do. (janet) and you have to sortof squeeze things in. but teaching just sortof followed from that. and then i enjoyed it so muchthat i kept going and kept learning, and...

my studio sort of expanded, andclasses expanded and it's all just flowed on from there. so it'sbeen very, very incredible so. (graeme) yeah you've, she's really madea great success out of what you've done. it's very hard to sort of balance that andjuxtapose the whole thing with artists being right brained and then beingleft brained, but it sounds like you're - right in the middle of that.- (janet) i just try to be organised that's all. i wouldn't say i was very mathematical, but i'm a very organised person so yeah i just try to keep the ballrolling, keep everything

running smoothly. and it works andeveryone has a great time here and you know, i love to paint.yeah so i've got a good life. (graeme) yeah and she's won numerousawards as well. i mean there are a number if you look around the studio, and there's even a little shop in there whereshe sells stuff as well which is just great. but you can see all the awards janet has actuallywon over the years which is pretty amazing. but we're going to do twolandscape pieces today. and then show you guys the techniques, and she does i mean wonderful reflection,tremendous atmosphere

in these pieces. it's sort of like that naturethat you put into it. you make these up as well. they'resort of like a montage of ideas, but the fact is they're just so pure inthe sense of what natures all about, and i think you're going to help us - see into that today.- (janet) i hope so, graeme. (graeme) that would be great.okay let's go and have a look then... (graeme) okay well i can see you've gotsome glad wrap over your palette there, and you've actually had these in the freezer.

- (janet) i have.- (graeme) and the reason the glad wrap is there? (janet) well it depends on how long you'reworking on the painting for graeme. because working on this style of painting,i generally 2 or 3 weeks maybe on theone particular painting on and off. - (graeme) sure.- (janet) so what i would do is i would wrap it in cling wrap,keeps all the oxygen out away from the paint. and then iwould pop it in the freezer, and the freezer just keeps it in abit off a suspended animation. - it doesn’t actually freeze- (graeme) sure.

(janet) the pigment;it keeps it quite loose. and i can take it straight fromthe freezer, take my cling wrap off, - and away i go.- (graeme) ready to go. another great tip froma brilliant artist. - alright we'll whip that one off then.- (janet) yes. (graeme) and you're goingto start to put some colors down. (janet) i do put a lot of though intothe painting before i actually start. - sometimes it drives me crazy- (graeme) yes. (janet) because i'll sithere for an hour,

just studying my photo, and i won'thave actually have started yet. - (graeme) which is a point but it really is.- (janet) yeah, - but it's all worth it in the end.- (graeme) sure. (janet) it's worth it in the end. if you’ve had a very stressful day sometimesi can't even start a painting, because i need that time,i need that time to study my photograph before i actually leap into it. because there'sno use in rushing it because you want the results at the end.

and if you do rush into a painting you'renot going to get those exquisite, beautiful little colors coming through,a beautiful result at the end. so it's very important to take your time and thinkabout it a lot before you start. (graeme) okay you've got a mixturethere, your medium which is? (janet) yes it's just a lot of turpentineand a little bit linseed. yes. i like to keep the medium nice and fluid;i don't like the thicker mediums. can you see that i'm picking upboth colors at once. - (graeme) and then sort if just letting it- (janet) and putting them on,

- and putting them on,- (graeme) yeah, (janet) i can throw in a bitmore of our red gold. this is australian red goldby the way everybody. (graeme) so one thing i've noticing whenyou're actually doing this – is you're doing this. (janet) it's almost likea cross hatching. (graeme) yeah with your wrist. we're asmost people would be going like that. - (janet) no, no.- (graeme) so what you're doing is creating the atmosphere just simplyby cross hatching as well.

(janet) that's right, that's right, you're creating a little bitof blending in the painting, yeah. (graeme) there's a beautifulpiece of the bridge in giverny. (janet) - oh yes. yes.(graeme) - so you actually went to (graeme) - monet's place?(janet) - yes, i did. (graeme) it's a bit of apilgrimage to that one isn't it? (janet) oh it was just an amazing,it was an amazing day for me. to be standing in monet's gardenwas just amazing. my daughter was commenting thati was getting a little bit too excited

because it was just a garden to her, and it wasn't just a gardento me cause you know: - it's monet. it's monet.(graeme) - it's so iconic. (janet) - just amazing.(graeme) - even monet said his best achievement was actually not his art but his garden. (janet) - well there you go.(graeme) - he always made that statement (graeme) - he said no my best work is my garden.(janet) - and i can relate because i'm a gardner as well so yeah, i love my garden.

(graeme) we just saw yourbeautiful garden out the back; - a glorious home as well.(janet) - thank you. (graeme) you've obviously spenta lot of time and you're - an avid gardner.(janet) - yes, yes i really enjoy my garden. yeah. (graeme) you sort of seethe juxtapose between monet and night. it's just fabulous. (graeme) - works well.(janet) - well i'm trying.

(graeme) all great pieces of workare going to have a source of light. (graeme) - where is your source of light?(janet) - light's very important in this style of painting. the painting the light especiallyin a photograph like this, where we've got a little trackcoming through the bush here. there's a lot of light comingdown because there's - probably a few cleared trees here.(graeme) - sure. (janet) a little bit more lightcoming down in this area. but what i do for the painting isi exaggerate the light. it needs to be

interesting for the viewer,interesting for the buyer. especially them – i want them to lookat my paintings and go: wow. look at that; look at that.look at the depth in there. and this is what i'm trying to achieveevery time i pick up a brush. and i've had dozens of comments frompeople saying just how relaxing they look. (graeme) - sure.(janet) - yeah. (graeme) - that's the idea of it, hanging paintings.(janet) - well it is. it is you know, and that comes backto me, and just what i was feeling at the time when i'm painting it yeah.

(graeme) and i was alsonoticing that you use the lucas quick drying oils as well. but you've gota combination you've got art spectrum and lucas combined. i mean lucasdoesn’t make this australian... - red gold do they?(janet) - no, no there's a lot of overseas companies that don't make the aussie colorsand sometimes you really need to look at purchasing colors that you know,suit you're surroundings you know. so i basically i don'tstick to one brand. i like to try different brands outjust to get the results that i want. so as i'm heading towardsthe side of my painting

you can see that i'm usinga little bit more white. so as i slowly moreover to this.(graeme) - source of light. (janet) that's right, so our source oflight is going to be a little bit whiter than our naples which is the yellow one. (graeme) this pattern that you'recreating just by small strokes, is this wonderful ambiance inthe background starting to build. we're as if you're a beginner andyou just start to slap it down, it's not going to work for you.you just have to take your time doing it. (janet) and when i'm finished thisas well, when i get to the other side,

i actually come back with a softer brushthan this one, and i will actually brush the lightest, lightest stroke over the top of this and that isto soften all those strokes. we don't want it to be too apparent, but i will just soften them alloff so that we get that beautiful out of focus effect.and that's what we want. (graeme) in creating this typeof atmosphere in the back you're really trying to bringthe viewer into the picture. (janet) that's right. i'm not forcingthe viewer to sort of look into the centre.

but usually when you keep the darkercolors on the exterior of your painting, it draws your eye into the centreso there's a real focal point into the centre of the painting. i get some great remarksfrom people just saying oh what have you done with that photo?like you've just made it so special. (graeme) and it's really justfor a guide for you, isn't it? (janet) it's a guide. it's justa little bit of reference that i can turn intosomething special yeah. people just love it, so i'll takesomething that's dull and boring

- and make it exciting(graeme) - spruce it up. (janet) to look at you know. sometimesi don't even like to bring out the original photo because it looks nothinglike the painting. (graeme) and if you look at monet's work i think he's probably oneof the better examples is that there's no great lightand no great dark, these pictures sort of just hoverin the middle of the spectrum. (graeme) - nothing goes the other way.(janet) - and i think monet did suggest too that his paintings areall made up of light;

that was the main thing in his paintings. it was the light andthis is why he painted with early morning light,and then he painted with afternoon light, or whenthe sun was just toppling down. and a best friend of mineshe'll get up at 3 in the morning and go to these exotic places - just to getthe sunrise, because the colors are different at sunrise. the colors aredifferent through the bush. and she just picks up all thesebeautiful colors in her photographs, and then she comes home and paints them.

(graeme) yeah it's really the sense asthe sun comes through the atmosphere, if it's directly aboveit doesn’t have as far to go. obviously in the australian bushyou have eucalyptus oil and dust and everything that's there.hence the mountains are blue. (janet) - that's right.(graeme) - because of the eucalyptus oil in the air. (janet) we've got some amazing colors in our landscape, justsome amazing colors. it's just exciting and we just needto nurture that, and paint that, and show the world howbeautiful our country is.

(graeme) okay, so for the next sessionhere, we've got all the colors down, we really need to soften if off more. andyou're going to use another brush to do that. (janet) that's right. what we're tryingto do is create an out of focus look, just very soft bush look. a little bit like your out of focusphotography – that sort of thing, is kinda what i'm trying to get at. alright so what i'll do is, i'll put thatlittle brush down that i was just using, and i'll pick up this one.i'll also pick up my nice little -(graeme to keep it clean.(janet) - keep it clean cloth.

and all i do is i drag my brush nice and feather like over the top. it takes a little bit, it takesa little while to do. you've got to be careful that youdon't loose a few of your highlights just. (graeme) - so it's really light(janet) - very, very light. (graeme) you're still really using thatcross hatch method but just so slightly. (janet) very, very soft. very, very soft. (graeme) alright well asyou can see janet's just

using that really fine brush, very drytool, it's a dry brush technique, just to finish this off. but you cansee the wonderful atmosphere that's being created inthe background there. so obviously one of the techniqueswe are doing today - but that looks sensational my dear.(janet) - thank you very much graeme. you can see that i'veleft this area open because we do have a little trackthat runs through the bush here. so i've left this area open so we can play with it later on.we can put trees over the top,

we can just create our wonderful little painting just how we want it too be. (graeme) great atmosphere. alrightwe're going to do some reflections now, so let's move onto the next one... (graeme) okay well as you cansee we've put the next piece up: a lovely long painting. and you're going to be teaching us howto do reflections on the water this time. (janet) - that's right.(graeme) - alright lets make a start on that. (janet) okay well before i start i actuallylook at what's going on in the painting.

i have some light penetrating down here,this is actually almost like a bit of a wall going on here, because we dohave a waterfall to put in. when i think of a reflection in wateri'm thinking of a mirror. i always think of a mirror first,because what does a mirror do? it reflects all those other colors thatare around and that's what we see. so i think i look at reflections as a mirror of all thoseother colors that are happening. okay i'll just start by picking upa few of the colors, and we're coming up toa few little rocks here.

but we won't necessarilypaint them in yet. i leave those for after; i try to create little areasof color in the water. so when i do blend them together at the end, they workreally nicely together. (graeme) i suppose as you weresaying before, is that sometimes you've just go to sit and study your subjectmatter before you even make a move sometimes. (janet) - that's right.that's right.(graeme) - just watch the water. (janet) and i'm still usingmy two favourite colors:

my ultramarine andmy australian red gold. (graeme) it's amazing the varietythat you actually get with those, - just two colors.(janet) - yeah. it's a bit hard to see what'sgoing on at the moment because all we haveis light areas of color. (graeme) you're not referencing the photosat the moment, so this is all coming from - the imagination area.(janet) - that's right. (graeme) - yeah.(janet) - definitely. that's why a lot of thought process has toreally go in to it before you actually start.

because in your head you knowhow you want it to finish up. you know how you want itto look when it's finished. it's just getting that on the canvas. (graeme) watching janet workthere's a sense of patience that's involved in doing this;there's a deliberate stroke. okay well we've finished thereflection, or that particular area. and you're going to put someof the logs and rocks in for us. (janet) - that's right. that's right yep.(graeme) - okay. excellent. (janet) let's go. i've made a colorhere; it's a bit of a mix

between browns and greensand those type of colors to represent that piece of timber here. so what i'm going to to do is justtry and replicate that again in the water. so once i've finished puttingin a few little marks, i don't have to put everything in,just a few little marks in here. once i've finished doing that, then wedo drag it with the brush again. so we soften the wholething at the end anyway. so it's not a really strong image,it's just a very, very soft one.

sometimes i need to enhancethe moss a little bit in the water, just so it stands out against the dark. some of the grasses are also inthe water, as we play around with little things touching the water. well that's probably going to explainhow our reflection are done so. (graeme) excellent. alright sowe've got another piece that's almost finished, and this onesreally going to be about putting the final touches in to really snap the painting. so we'll take thisone away and get on to the next one.

(janet) wonderful. (graeme) okay well as you can seewe've got our third piece up and janet is going to take us through thefiner details of finishing off one of her pieces. so where do we go from here? (janet) okay well this one isalmost finished. it's just got a few little tickles to do. so what i'll do now is i'm workingwith a little rigger brush here. (graeme) you've still really got the samepalette there haven't you? (janet) same palette, same colors,on all 3 paintings today.

(graeme) so you're just puttingin the backbone of the planet? (janet) just putting inthe backbone, just the shape. (graeme) and the thing about them, evengoing through with what janet's doing today, is that she is a really proficientteacher in all of the mediums. it's not just a matterof oils, she teaches watercolors, pastels, acrylics. you actually work with nursinghomes as well don't you? (janet) i do. yes i do art therapy.yeah art therapy. (graeme) just teaching art therapywhich i think is just wonderful.

it's such a great way to bringthe better part of people out. (janet) oh absolutely. we just have a ball together. talking about art therapy, i actually sawone of your programs graeme where, i think the lady's name was tracy. and i was a little bit inspired bywhat she had done on her paintings, like her preliminary, her preliminary. setting up the canvas, throwingon a whole lot of colors, working with cling wrap,or glad wrap and then

producing these amazing little - color masterpieces.(graeme) - yeah. (janet) and so i took that idea to the nursing home, and we didthat the following week and the residence were just in aware about what we were going to do,and how we were going to do it. and as soon as they were ready, it was all hands on deck. and they played with the canvas and justhad the most amazing time.

and i got my camera outand took lots of photos and yeah, they were all, so many smiles and it was just a fantastic afternoon. so i want to thank you for you know, havingthat on your program because it was, we just had a wonderful day together. (graeme) it's funny you say that,but janet's doing exactly the same and that's inspiring people to get the best out of themselves. andthen to explore themselves, that's what right brained creativitycan do. if you're

in a bit of a slump and you're not sure how the world'sworking for you, this is a great way to (janet) - absolutely.(graeme) - reach, - to reach inside and found out who you are.(janet) - absolutely, and you know, the same with music as well.music and art - and art therapy, they all go together.(graeme) - yeah, yeah. (janet) be careful not to create too manysoldiers standing in a row with these bubbles, it all has to look very natural. and once the painting is finished,or you think it's almost finished,

i generally will let it sit for a coupleof days. and then i will study it, even before i sign it. so i will just keeplooking at the painting, can i improve it? what elsecan i add to it to create interest? (graeme) it talks to you in theend anyway doesn’t it? (janet) it does. it does, and i thinkthat it's just that little bit of time and patience and energythat you put into the last minute details is very important. (graeme) alright, well anotherfascinating day; thank you so much

- for having us in your studio.(janet) - you're very welcome. (graeme) one wonderful,wonderful day and the australian bush and australian natureis amazing and you portray it so well. and some of these scenes just literallyyou can see yourself melting into nature. that's a very special quality that you haveto be able to create things like that. so thank you so much for being onthe show and obviously showing all the people out there what you do.now remember, as i said before, is that janet is a highlyskilled teacher. she's been doing this for a long time.

has a lot of really successful students,successful workshops, works with a whole bunchof different groups as well, which changes other people'slives which is just wonderful. so if you would like to talkto janet about her originals, which i think are just fantasticby under any circumstances, or her workshops, you can go to... (janet) www.janetknight.com.au (graeme) and obviouslythat's a - k n i g h t, on the bottom of the screenright now as you can see.

but we're going to head north again, it's beengreat been great being down in melbourne. as i said, any of thepeople down in melbourne, come and see this lady. you'll havean unbelievably great time with her. we have great people comingon board these days, lots of amazing artists, i mean the talentis just incredible. and as you said, there's so many things you've beenable to take out of this to pass on - as a legacy.(janet) - yeah, absolutely. (graeme) - to other people.(janet) - absolutely, yeah. it's been really fun. (graeme) yeah and we justlove doing it we really do.

but yeah, facebook page – go in and sign up on facebook with us. we've got 1000's of peoplein there these days. and also our website, you can seejanet's work in there as well at colourinyourlife.com.au to all our sponsors always,thank you so much. but as always, until we meet again: make sure youput some color in your life. i'll see you next time guys. bye now.