Navigating by the NOERth Star: Getting Started with Open Educational Resources (OER)

Editor's Notes

• #2: Welcome
• #3: Slide 2: Introductions
• #4: Slide 3 Mary Ann : Although faculty at CCS had some exposure to Open Educational Resources, or OER, starting in 2010 with the inception of Washington state’s Open Course Library project, where our state board invited faculty to develop open course curriculum for high enrollment gateway classes, the idea was not especially well received. Content from early vendors like Flatworld was considered subpar and, in some quarters, there were deep suspicions about administrative intent and concern about academic freedom. However, by 2012, it was apparent that textbook costs were becoming a burden to students, especially in light of massive tuition increases in Washington’s public higher education and unemployment rates that still topped 8.8% in Community Colleges of Spokane’s service region. As one of our state newspapers reported, “The cost to attend community college is about the same as what people paid a decade ago to attend the University of Washington.” And students were coming to the libraries, hoping we could loan them textbooks they couldn’t afford to purchase. What we know from research is that many barriers exist that keep students from achieving their educational goals. Lowering the cost of textbooks is one way we believe we can remove some financial barriers. Believing that adoption of OER could help, the library directors then working at both colleges put together a grant proposal to fund a modest OER project, to fund faculty stipends to integrate OER into 20 courses across CCS. As we will share today, CCS has been on the OER journey for many years and When starting the OER journey, it is important to know where you are going so you know when you’ve arrived. While we exceeded our original goal, integrating OER into 38 courses, we have set our eyes on new destinations—like OER degrees that require us to keep moving forward on this initiative. Given our colleges’ cultures and curriculum, this is a work in progress where individual faculty are being encouraged to “give OER a try”
• #5: Slide 4 Mary Ann: In today’s presentation we are going to talk about the elements that support our OER work Student Cost Savings—why this work is important What we know from research is that many barriers exist that keep students from achieving their educational goals. Lowering the cost of textbooks is one way we believe we can remove some financial barriers. Florida study in 2016 found that 45.5% of all college students avoided specific courses due to the associated textbook costs and just over 50% of AA-degree seeking students did not purchase a required textbook for at least one class. Student Success—at the heart of everything we do The Florida survey also found that 19.8% all students (AA – Doctoral students) said they had FAILED a course because they could not afford to purchase a required text. OER Champions—who support the work According to Rogers diffusion theory in a social system like higher education, adopting innovations like OER depends heavily on the innovation-decisions of the other members of the system. Finding some key opinion leaders among faculty in particular is a key element in moving forward with OERs Faculty Interest Supporting faculty interest / curiosity about OER is needed to get to the tipping point where OER are accepted choice when adopting curricular content But first, we want to start by talking about what we mean by Open Educational Resources
• #6: Slide 5: Heather Rules – You will be shown a resource. You must decide if it is open or not. Open means that it is freely accessible to all.
• #7: First Question – This article was accessed via the library’s databases. Is it open or not?
• #8: Second Question – Are TedTalks an open resource?
• #9: Third Question – What about the economics textbooks from OpenStax? Are they open or not?
• #10: First--Define the terms--Just what are we talking about? Heather Start talking about open educational resources and you will quickly discover that people have different ideas of what that may mean.
• #11: HEATHER: The strictest definition requires a generous open license – the 5 Rs.  Given our goal, we have a generous definition for OER. Goes beyond the use of pure OER that are licensed for reuse.   Includes library resources.    Since our OER goal at SFCC is too limit expenses for students, we encourage instructors to also use a looser definition of OER that includes….
• #12: HEATHER: Since our OER goal at SFCC is too limit expenses for students, we encourage instructors to also use a looser definition of OER that includes… Gives faculty flexibility in their approach to quality resources that save students money
• #13: Roshan There are many reasons for considering the switch to OER but the one that is usually found high up on most people’s list is the potential cost savings for students. Textbook prices have gone up a lot during the last several years. According to the BLS the rate of inflation between 2006 to 2016 was around 20% while the rate of inflation for college textbooks during the same time period was almost 90%. https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2016/college-tuition-and-fees-increase-63-percent-since-january-2006.htm Marc Perry, https://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-the-astronomical-rise-in-college-textbook-prices-vs-consumer-prices-and-recreational-books/
• #14: ROSHAN This chart shows the average cost of buying new (not used) textbooks for the ten highest enrolled classes at SFCC from this quarter. The prices range from $44 for an English class to $178 for a Biology class with the average being around $113. You may notice that there are no data for two classes--Health and PE—and there is an interesting story there. While most faculty may not know how much students pay for their course texts, as a parent, one of our faculty colleagues had an eye opening experience. After paying $500+ for his daughter to take one college course, he was determined to write a textbook for a popular CCS Health and Wellness course. All faculty at CCS now use that online text, saving students the cost of buying a basic Health text. At 11 sections in spring, 2017, that is a big savings for our students. Plus, the content is perfectly aligned with the CCS Curriculum.
• #15: Slide 18: Heather Just how much are students saving? The library ran an informal marble survey during Open Education Week in March 2016. *Note – some of the students reporting $0 in textbook costs are part of a program that covers their textbook costs. Matresse experience – her favorite Intro to Psych text was over $200, she opted for a cheaper text $75 – 95, we worked together to find OER that would cost student $0. She tends to teach anywhere from 40-160 students/quarter. The Jar poll results   Study results Faculty reported varies savings resulting from the adoption of OER in their classes, depending on the textbook alternative they might have chosen. One instructor was able to pinpoint saving more precisely, though. The instructor Reported that the original new textbook cost $180 and with a total enrollment of 46 students, they collectively saved $8280 during the year. Overall, faculty reported that they replace textbooks costing from $30 to over $400 with free course content.
• #16: Slide 15: OER champions are critical to success and can support faculty experimentation with innovations like OER We encourage experimentation / exploration with new course content--allow for “failure” and success Supporting faculty adoption with “opportunity” A variety of grant opportunities helped us identify the early adopters / champions and support them in their work. At CCS, we have had a number of funding champions that allowed us to support faculty exploration of OER including Welty LOEL Lumen’s grant funded projects More importantly, we had administrative support from presidents, Vice presidents, and the Provost to engage in the work. We also have had support / nudges from our state legislature in the form of a new bill that is currently waiting for the governor’s signature. The bill recognizes the work completed for the Open Course Library, a project that introduced OER to the state system of community colleges and its intent is to “incentivize faculty to use resources available on the Open Course Library by informing students of a textbook/s cost when they register for class. The Bill requires community colleges to implement new registration that informs students about the cost of course content during registration. Interestingly, the legislature requires colleges to report to our state board “which courses provided textbooks and course materials costs to students during registration, and what percent of total classes this equaled.
• #17: Slide 16: Mary Ann: Survey responses shared—will fill in more detail. Last fall, I conducted a survey, asking faculty who had received some kind of grant funding to adopt OER about their experiences with the adoption and use of OER. Of the 32 invited to participate in the survey, 25 (78% response rate) submitted responses. 76% stated that they would be extremely likely or somewhat likely to recommend OER to a colleague. Although 14 had reservations about the OER due to concerns about the quality of resources. When asked “how does the quality of your OER course content compare to commercial textbooks you have used in the past? 16% said OER is of higher quality and 44% said it is about the same quality. 40% said the OER content is of lower quality. Faculty also said some of their students needed / wanted printed textbooks and that not all digital OER course content is easy to print. Time: Faculty reported wide variations in the amount of time they spent looking for suitable OER. 40% reported they spent 40 + hours searching and another 40% spent from 16 – less than 24 hours on the task. Financial Support-- “things take time to locate, process and fit in to courses. Without financial incentives, it is difficult to suggest that faculty change what they are doing and create OER materials that they will approve of. Without institutional support, this is not a project that will deserve attention.”
• #18: Roshan Anecdotes: (Roshan’s experience with Gates grant)
• #19: Roshan But are they learning anything?  Student Success Hilton III, J. (2016). Open educational resources and college textbook choices: A review of research on efficacy and perceptions. Educational Technology Research and Development, 1(18). Hilton (2016) conducted a Lit Review of studies that examined the influence of OER on student learning outcomes or the perceptions of students and instructors of OER. 9 studies on Learning Outcomes 9 on student/instructor perceptions Some other studies: Fischer, Hilton, Robinson and Wiley. 2015. A multi-institutional study of the impact of open textbook adoption on the learning outcomes of post-secondary students. Journal of Computing in Higher Education.   Allen, I. E., & Seaman, J. (2014). Opening the curriculum: Open educational resources in US higher education, 2014. Pearson: Babson Survey Research Group. SFCC Economics: Compared course grades for over 250 students and found no statistical significant difference About the same?  (Roshan example, Welty study findings, national data)
• #20: Heather Supporting faculty adoption: Heather: Library and Instructional Designers (The Work flow); sharing resources with colleagues (CMST example) We have noticed a growth in interest from faculty…
• #21: Supporting faculty adoption: Heather: Library and Instructional Designers (The Work flow); sharing resources with colleagues (CMST example) OER @ SFCC (LOEL 2016 infographic) – 2015 had 5 applicants; 2016 had 15 applicants; 2017 had 14 applicants No Cost/Low Cost Offerings @ SFCC as of Win17 – at least 86 courses have offered no cost/low cost at some point
• #22: Heather: At SFCC, -- statistics - ~85 courses in the AA Transfer degree have had no cost/low cost classes taught over the past 3-5 years MAG : As mentioned earlier, state legislators are looking for ways to help as well—and luckily, as of winter 2017, CCS has implemented a process to help students determine the cost of textbooks in individual course sections. Looking for no-cost textbook courses is easy if you know how to use the filters—and it looks like OER-based sections fill better than full cost sections—a selling point at a time when overall enrollments are down at CCS. Still we aren’t sure if everyone is accurately coding their class sections. Using the filter to search for spring quarter OER classes, we found 78 individual sections. Not a lot considering we offered over 2200 credit sections across the district, but still progress especially as some faculty may not be updating section information to reflect their course costs. While over 52 of the sections were offered by the Health and Physical Education, we offered 26 OER sections, ranging from a Survey of Anthropology, to Film Studies, French, Japanese, and Introduction to Philosophy. While a good start, we know we haven’t fully arrived at our destination. When this information shared with SFCC administrators, they all believed that the practice of identifying OER course sections is lagging adoption so we will be monitoring this data. Looking for no-cost textbook courses is easy if you know how to use the filters—and it looks like OER-based sections fill better than full cost sections—a selling point at a time when overall enrollments are down at CCS. Still we aren’t sure if everyone is accurately coding their class sections. Using the filter to search for spring quarter OER classes, we found 78 individual sections. Not a lot considering we offered over 2200 credit sections across the district. While over 52 of the sections were offered by the Health and Physical Education, we offered 26 OER sections, ranging from a Survey of Anthropology, to Film Studies, French, Japanese, and Introduction to Philosophy. While a good start, we know we haven’t fully arrived at our destination.
• #23: NOTE: add talking points to slide? Roshan: Adoption isn’t always easy--- TIME: Hard work to find, adopt, create the content your students need POLICIES: Department policies may make it difficult to adopt especially for courses in sequences that traditionally use one textbook Departments may require all faculty to use a standard text Etc. MARKETING: students, faculty and admin FINANCES: sustaining OER – incentives for faculty
• #24: Slide 23: Mary Ann: In the words of one of our faculty OER partners, we think this quote summarizes our OER approach. Like many journeys, getting started is sometimes the hardest part of the trip.
• #25: Heather: Want to get started—Help is available Join the Movement—get involved