6 McKenzie Braun-Shirley – Student Outreach Through Zines
Smart Goal
Generate further understanding and support of OER among PCC students through the use of an informative OER zine in English and Spanish, to be shared during the Spring 2025 semester via printed copies available on campuses and through PCC social media channels, d2l, school email, or wherever deemed appropriate. Reaching out to students on campus, and virtually, aiming for a comprehensive campaign that will allow us to reach students where they are, expanding our reach.
Specific Steps I Can Take
- Creation of physical zine
- Creation of virtual zine
- Creation of OER content related to the zine to be shared online
- Host zoom meeting for PCC students interested in zines and OER, styled as a crafting hour
- Reach out to relevant PCC staff regarding distribution of zines
Potential Collaborators and Resources
- Coworker, Gorety, to help with translating zine into Spanish
- PCC libraries, reach out to Saudra specifically
- Use existing OER to help with content of zine
- PCC social media managers
Potential Barriers
- Access to PCC social media, etc
- Lack of student engagement
- Translation of physical zine into online format, should be high quality and have the same look across physical and virtual spaces
Questions/Issues I Need to Resolve
- What PCC virtual channels could be used to share the virtual zine?
- Ensuring zine meets requirements that would allow it to be shared through more official PCC channels
Desired Outcome(s)
- Engagement with PCC students on the topic of OER
- Increased understanding of OER among PCC students
- Increased use of OER materials by PCC students and staff
- Shareable and reusable OER zine content
- English and Spanish OER zines, virtual and physical
Implementation
Set Up:
I started thinking about zines early on in my internship because I see them as closely related to OER in their principals and perspective. Much like OER, zines are all about sharing with others in a cost effective, and sustainable way, one which is counterintuitive to the traditional print media approach. This connection made me feel strongly about the idea of making a zine on the topic of OER as a way of informing students on what OER is and why they should care.
In the past when I’ve made zines, I have a concept of what I want to achieve in my head, and then I put music on, get old magazines out, and just start cutting and pasting away. For this zine, I wanted to be able to get feedback from our little OER internship team before doing anything final. In order to do that, I made a rough draft of the zine on my iPad using Goodnotes. I knew which elements of OER I wanted to highlight in my zine, namely the idea that you can remix and reuse, and that using OER gives students more autonomy over their education. Though, I found myself staring at my blank screen trying to think of a way to make the concept more interesting. Over the past few months I had read through lots of different resources on OER and I didn’t want mine to become just another in the string. I looked back over notes I had made, and read over a comment I had made on Beyoncé, where I explained that the process of remixing in OER reminded me of sampling in music, something Beyoncé has become infamous for using in her music. I decided to run with the idea, using Beyoncé, whom I love, as my way of hooking readers and making OER feel more accessible. I created a rough draft of the zine, using Beyoncé as a guiding light throughout.
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