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WS Procs 975 X 65 Knowledge Creation and Information Sharing through Open Education Resources Yunfei Du College of Information, University of North Texas Denton, TX 76210 U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected] Libraries have a long tradition of promoting knowledge creation and information sharing. In order to reduce cost of education, libraries are playing active roles in building open education resources in recent years. Based on literature, this paper proposes a taxonomy of three layers of Open Education Resources: open textbooks, open learning objects, and open courseware. Open textbooks are being adopted by many faculty and students in the U.S., but they are not evenly distributed in all disciplines. It seems humanities, math, and business are more keen on contributing to open text creation, but fewer on medicine and engineering. Open Educational Resources also include ancillary resources related to course content delivery, such as syllabus, homework, instructional videos, and additional reading in modular format. This paper surveyed existing OER resources in the framework of knowledge creation and information sharing. 1. Introductions Colleges have become more and more expensive in the United States. Researchers have addressed the rising cost in higher education since later 20th century, as evidenced in Bowen’s study (1980) on influence of social and institutional factors in higher education. U.S. Census revealed that tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities have grown 19 times faster than the median family income since 1980 (Carnevale, Garcia, and Gulish, 2017). Among the rising cost a significant portion is the textbooks and suppliers, which may cost as much as $1,200 in 2016-2017 for undergraduates according to College Board (2017). To address this problem, non-profit organizations, libraries, and even publishers have been promoting peer-reviewed open access textbooks, curriculum materials and other open educational resources (OER), which are funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and printed. However, there is still no definite answer on how sustainable this model of sponsorship on free and OER materials will be. This paper surveyed existing OER resources in the framework of knowledge creation and information sharing, and suggested a sustainable model of engaging libraries as a community center to support open education resources movement. 2. Literature Review. 2.1. Definition of Open Educational Resources There are multiple definitions of OER. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defined OER as “any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation” (UNESCO, 2016). It emphasizes the importance of copyright on public domain. Another agency, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), defined “5R's of OER”: users are free to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute these educational materials (SPARC, 2016). Based on literature, there seems to be three layers of Open Education Resources: open textbooks, open learning objects, and open courseware. Examples of open textbook portals are Community College Open Textbook Project (CCOTP) (Petrides , Jimes , Middleton-Detzner , Walling, and Weiss, 2011), University of Minnesota’s Open Textbook Library (http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/) and Rice University’s Openstax (Openstax, 2016). OER also includes various learning objects both as text or videos, such as Khan Academy open lessons, as well as various independently created instructional videos on Youtube. Open Courseware has the potential to provide free classes to a large number of students. One of the examples is the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), such as OpenCourseWare program at 1 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Coursera from Stanford University. Open Educational Resources also include ancillary resources related to course content delivery, such as syllabus, homework, instructional videos, and additional reading in modular format. 2.2. The Role of Libraries in Knowledge Creation and Sharing Libraries have a long tradition of promoting knowledge creation and information sharing. In order to reduce cost of education, libraries are playing active roles in building open education resources in recent years. Salem (2017) found academic libraries in Florida, Minnesota and Texas are examples of players or partners on creating digital content in terms of open textbooks. In many cases, open texts are created through a grant support to authors. Projects in academic libraries are often funded by grants or private funding sources. The production process of open textbooks is similar to for-profit publishers, with rigorous peer-reviewing process included. 3. Method This paper reviewed current open access textbooks and compared their disciplines of books that were displayed for students during the month of June 1 – 31, 2017, based on two publications portals, Open Textbook Library and Flat World Knowledge. 4. Results Table 1 listed open access books published at Open Text Library from University of Minnesota. All the books were “funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed” (https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/). According to the publisher, these books went through peer-reviewed process by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to ensure their quality. Table 1. Current Free Textbooks in Open Textbook Library Discipline Number of Books Accounting & Finance 8 Business, Management & Marketing 50 Computer Science & Information Systems 39 Economics 17 Education/information literacy 34 Engineering 6 Humanities & Languages 75 Journalism, Media Studies & Communications 12 Law 49 Mathematics & Statistics 67 Medicine 6 Natural & Physical Sciences 40 Social Sciences 35 Student Success (Literacies) 10 Another portal of open access textbooks is Flat World Knowledge (https://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/), which earned its reputation on business management publications. Flat World Knowledge also allow instructors to customize learning components using sections of existing open textbooks. Table 2 illustrated various disciplines in its collections. Table 2. Current Free Textbooks in Flat World Knowledge Discipline Number of Books Business & Economics 80 Humanities & Social Science 33 Chemistry & Geography 5 Health & wellness 3 Math and statistics 3 From the two open access textbook portals above, one can conclude that there is disciplinary imbalance on free textbooks. Students have more choices on business, education, humanities, and social 2 sciences, a good number of choice on mathematics, computer science, and natural sciences, but fewer choices on most of engineering disciplines. In other words, faculty and students in humanities, math, and business are more keen on contributing to open text creation, but much less interests from faculty in medicine and engineering fields. 5. Discussions Open Education Resource is still a new concepts among educators. Currently, publications from traditional publishers are considered standard acceptable indicator for tenure and promotion for faculty or librarians. It is time for faculty and higher education administrators to reconsider that criteria and weight open access textbooks and other learning resources as a part of scholarly work that emphasizes knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, and knowledge distribution. This will be a more sustainable model for OER creation itself. Allen (2010) suggested the strategies such as increasing faculty reputation and impact by disseminate widely their scholarly work, fostering open access culture, and using OER to increase student retention. Open Educational Resources also include ancillary resources related to course content delivery, such as syllabus, homework, instructional videos, and additional reading in modular format. More research is necessary on the effects of open courseware to reduction of education, since teaching materials are available to learners and instructors free of charge. Further work is also needed to promote the concept of knowledge sharing and open access content creation to more disciplines. References Allen, N. (2010). A cover to cover solution: How open textbooks are the path to textbook affordability. Student PIRGs. Retrieved October 19, 2017, from http://www.studentpirgs.org/sites/student/files/reports/A-Cover-To-Cover-Solution_4.pdf Bowen, H. R. (1980). The costs of higher education: How much do colleges and universities spend per student and how much should they spend? ERIC Education Resources Information Center (ERIC Number ED207368). Retrieved June 30, 2017 from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED207368 Carnevale, A., Garcia, T. I., & Gulish, A. (2017). Career pathways: Five ways to connect college and careers. Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Retrieved June 30, 2017 from https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/LEE-final.pdf College Board (2017). Trends in high education. Retrieved June 30, 2017 from https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/average-estimated- undergraduate-budgets-2016-17 Petrides L., Jimes C. , Middleton-Detzner , C., Walling, J. & Weiss, S. (2011). Open textbook adoption and use: implications for teachers and learners. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 26(1), 39-49 Salem, J. A. (2017). Open pathways to student success: Academic library partnerships for Open Educational Resource and affordable course content creation and adoption. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 43(1), 34-38. SPARC (2016). Open education. Retrieved June 30, 2017 from https://sparcopen.org/open- education/. UNESCO (2016). What are open educational resources (OERs)? Retrieved June 30, 2017 from http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to- knowledge/open-educational-resources/what-are-open-educational-resources-oers 3 .
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