Supporting OER on Your Campus in the COVID-19 Era

Jeremy Smith, UMass Amherst July 15,2020

By Open Textbook Network. Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. What is OER?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.

https://en.unesco.org/themes/building-knowledge-societies/oer

The New Normal: Using OER to re-open education Covid is hard. Working from home is hard. Switching to and learning how to teach online is hard.

The New Normal: Using OER to re-open education (PDF)

Beneﬁts of OTN Consortial Membership

open.umn.edu/community/hub

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Beneﬁts of OTN Consortial Membership

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. “The Workshop” Strategy

A framework for engaging faculty Open Textbook Library Workshop Review

Makes faculty aware Helps faculty Gets faculty to take that there are open understand what the time to engage textbook options open textbooks are with a textbook so for them to and addresses they can see if it consider. misconceptions and could work for concerns. them.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 4800+ attendees (400+ workshops)

Reviewers

~75% of workshops are given by members Adopters (45%)

Today, we will discuss:

• A problem: affordability & impact on student academic success; • A solution: open textbooks, barriers to adoption & strategies to overcome barriers; • Why & how to support open textbook initiatives.

The Problem: Affordability “…higher education shall be equally accessible to all…”

-UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights Sara Goldrick-Rab:

"..they're working, and borrowing, and sometimes still falling so short that they're going without having their basic needs met."

See also: Paying the Price by Goldrick-Rab.

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/02/08/513902272/the-number-of-hungry-and-homeless-students-rises-along-with-college-costs15 Spotlight: Massachusetts

● 47% of respondents from community colleges and 39% of respondents at universities indicated that they could not afford to eat balanced meals ● 13% of Massachusetts community college students experienced homelessness in the past year, compared to 10% of 4-year college students. ● As of March 2019, 23 of the Mass. public colleges and universities operated food pantries.

Basic Needs Insecurity in Massachusetts Public Colleges and Universities (2018) https://hope4college.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/StillHungryMA-4-1.html Spotlight: UMass Amherst Spotlight: UMass Amherst

The average borrower owes more than $29,200 in student loans (class of 2018)

Massachusetts 4 yr public: $31,882; 57% graduates have debt

https://ticas.org/interactive-map/ Cost of Attendance • Tuition and Fees • Room and Board • Books and Supplies • Personal Expenses • Transportation What can we do? • Tuition and Fees • Room and Board • Books and Supplies • Personal Expenses • Transportation Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics http://www.bls.gov/cpi/ http://www.dailytoreador.com/news/library-student-government-hoping-for-solution-to-expensive-book-prices/article_49064 7b8-36d1-11e8-a857-9325559e8187.html https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/freshman-year/college-textbook-prices-have-risen-812-percent-1978-n399926 What do students say?

Coping with the Cost • Purchase an older edition of the textbook • Delay purchasing the textbook • Never purchase the textbook • Share a textbook • Pirate a textbook from the web. In your academic career, has the cost of

required textbooks caused you to:

64.2% Not purchase the required textbook

42.8% Take fewer courses

40.5% Not register for a speciﬁc course

35.6% Earn a poor grade

22.9% Drop a course

18.1% Withdraw from a course 17.2% Fail a course https://dlss.flvc.org/documents/210036/1314923/2018+Student+Textbook+and+Course+Materials+Survey+Report+--+FINAL+VERSION+--+20190308.pdf/07478d85-89c2-3742-209a-9cc5df8cd7ea

A Solution: Open Textbooks What do we mean by “open”? Open = free + permissions Graphic from http://tlinnovations.populr.me/copyright

Creative Commons Licenses

ATTRIBUTION SHARE ALIKE NON-COMMERCIAL NO DERIVATIVES [BY] [SA] [NC] [ND]

You let others You allow others You let others copy, You let others copy distribute, to distribute distribute, display, copy, distribute, display, and derivative works and perform your display, and perform your only under a work - and derivative perform only copyrighted work license identical works based upon it verbatim copies of and derivative to the license that - but for your work, not works based governs your noncommercial derivative works upon it - with work purposes only based upon it. credit.

• Copy The 5Rs: • Mix 1. Retain • Share 2. Reuse • Keep 3. Revise • Edit 4. Remix • Use 5. Redistribute

5Rs: Wiley, D. (2014, March 5) “The access compromise and the 5th R.” Retrieved from: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221 Why Open? • Facilitates the free exchange of information. • Allows higher education to take ownership of its content. • Empowers faculty. • Sharing is scalable. Why Textbooks? • Hits a major pain point – textbook costs • Faculty understand textbooks • Faculty know how to adopt textbooks • Faculty effort (vs. alternatives) is kept at a minimum - textbooks can provide content for a complete (or nearly complete) course open.umn.edu/opentextbooks 721 Total Books in 2020, growing exponentially fast. Where do the books come from?

• Funded initiatives • Independent authors • Discipline collectives • Library publishing

67% faculty reviewed*

*Reviews manually uploaded every six weeks. Open Textbook Review Criteria • Comprehensiveness • Content Accuracy • Relevance Longevity • Clarity • Consistency • Modularity • Organization Structure Flow • Interface • Grammatical Errors • Cultural Relevance

Where else can I ﬁnd OER? oer.deepwebaccess.com oasis.geneseo.edu

Faculty Perspectives on OER and Open Textbooks They do not know a lot about them.

Faculty are busy: • Prepping for their courses • Responding to students • Grading • Mentoring • Research • Grant writing • Committee Work • The list goes on…

https://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/2019inflectionpoint.pdf Awareness of OER 2014-2019 Barriers to Faculty Adoption

• They don’t understand the urgency of student ﬁnancial stress, and how it impacts students academically • They don’t know what open textbooks are • They don’t know where to ﬁnd open textbooks • They confuse open textbooks with electronic textbooks Educate

• They’re skeptical of the quality of open textbooks • They have limited time to review open textbooks Engage What does and could supporting open textbook adoptions look like at your institution? Low stakes • Share resources – Open Textbook Library, https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/ – OASIS, https://oasis.geneseo.edu/ – Mason Metaﬁnder, https://oer.deepwebaccess.com/oer/desktop/en/search.html – Research, http://openedgroup.org/

• Reach out to faculty planning for the fall

• Learn more about textbooks on your campus – Talk to students – Talk to faculty Medium stakes • Collect & share student survey data • Create student videos • Professional development and cross-campus partnerships • Share more resources (meta-ﬁnders, how-to’s, open pedagogy examples, assessments, etc.) • Faculty review workshops (OTN-like) • Adopter awards, proﬁles, panels, advisory boards High stakes

•Grant programs to encourage adoption, adaptation, creation, scale

•Zero Text Cost Degree Programs

•OER-identiﬁed courses in course catalog When you do talk with faculty… Make friends, build community

"Handshake - Woman" by amtec_photos is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 Respect academic freedom If you run into a tough question… Possible questions: • Can students order a print copy? Remember: • Are ancillary materials • Educate, Don’t Sell available? • Let Faculty Be The • Who writes open textbooks? Judge How do they get paid? • Is the quality the same as other textbooks? • Are you going to try to force us to use a certain textbook? How can I edit a textbook from the open textbook library? https://press.rebus.community/otnmodify/ How do I create an open textbook? https://press.rebus.community/authoropen/ If you want to conduct your own research on OER:

•Based on the COUP Framework Cost Outcomes Use Perceptions •Designed to support all levels of inquiry and research •Includes: –Best Practices –Workﬂows –Decision making guidelines –Documentation http://research.cehd.umn.edu/otn/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/OER-Research-Guidebook.pdf What are your next steps?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Do what you already do.

• Listen. • Have conversations. • Introduce new options. We need YOU

• You are leaders on your campus. • You work with and support faculty on your campus. • You share resources, options, ideas, and tools with faculty. Why? Open education can transform higher education.

“Open education is about increasing student achievement, inspiring passion among faculty, and building better connections between students and the materials that they use to meet their educational goals.”

– Quill West

West & Jensen, 2015 Join the BLC OER COI https://blc.org/communities/open-educational-resources

OTN Questions? Meiyolet Mendez [email protected]

Also, reach out to your campus librarians, instructional designers, and teaching & learning center staff