Heather Crozier, presenter
Student debt is a compelling issue and many institutions are investigating solutions to ease the financial burdens of their students. Increasing the use of open educational resources benefits students by reducing course costs. Adopting OER in the classroom allows faculty more freedom in choosing instructional tools. Faculty also benefit from open access publishing by increasing their exposure. However, on the campus of a small, private institution, attendance at workshops to spread awareness and increase the use of these materials was minimal. Faculty had the perception that free resources could not be the same quality as traditional resources. In order to dispel this myth, the Electronic Resources Librarian and Educational Technology Manager collaborated to create custom one hour sessions for individual departments, leveraging library/faculty liaison relationships and the expertise of the office of educational technology. In the session, faculty learn more about open access publishing options, the value of open educational resources, the quality of many open educational resources, and where to find these resources. The session uses the course management system to both disseminate the information shared in the session and create a forum for departments to share resources with each other. Through the CMS, faculty gain access to vetted resources. All attendants have editing privileges within the site after the workshop, allowing them to curate course-specific lists for sharing and future reference. Pilot sessions have been well received and wider implementation is planned for the next academic year.
Promoting Open Access and Open Educational Resources to Faculty
1. Promoting Open Access and Open
Educational Resources to Faculty
Heather Crozier, MLS
Electronic Resources Librarian
Ohio Northern University
NASIG 2017
2. Open Educational Resources
Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and
research resources that reside in the public domain or have
been released under an intellectual property license that
permits their free use and repurposing by others.
-William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. "Open Educational Resources." Accessed May 19, 2017.
http://www.hewlett.org/strategy/open-educational-resources/.
3. Discuss
• What do you know about OER use on
your campus?
• What are your conceptions about OER?
“Discussion” by Open.Michigan is licensed under CC BY 2.0
4. Ohio Northern University
• 2,800 FTE
• Approximately 300 faculty
• The Ohio Northern Promise
• “The Ohio Northern
Promise ensures that higher education,
historically a key enabler of social
mobility, remains accessible and
affordable for bright young students and
their families...”
5. Textbook Costs
• Quadruple the rate of
inflation since 2006
100
110
120
130
140
150
160
170
180
190
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
Consumer price indexes for tuition and school-
related items, January 2006 – January 2016
All items (includes data not on this chart) College tuition and fees
Housing at school, excluding board College Textbooks
Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2016. College
Tuition and Fees Increase 63 Percent Since
January 2006,The Economics Daily. Accessed
May 19, 2017.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2016/college-
tuition-and-fees-increase-63-percent-since-
january-2006.htm
6. Textbook Costs
Davidson, Robin L. and E Shen. 2016. "2016 Florida StudentTextbook and Course Materials Survey." FloridaVirtualCampus.Accessed
June 2, 2017. https://florida.theorangegrove.org/og/items/3a65c507-2510-42d7-814c-ffdefd394b6c/1/
In your academic career, has the cost of required textbooks caused you to:
Not purchase the required textbook
Take fewer courses
Not register for a specific course
Earn a poor grade because I could not afford
to buy the text book
Drop a course
Fail a course because I could not afford to buy
the text book
Other
Withdraw from a course
7. Textbook Spending
$667 $655 $662 $638
$563
$1,192 $1,237 $1,246 $1,248 $1,265$1,259
$1,315 $1,341 $1,371 $1,417
$0
$200
$400
$600
$800
$1,000
$1,200
$1,400
$1,600
2009-2010 2011-2012 2012-2013 2013-2014 2014-2015
Average annual spending on books and supplies
NACS NCES, 4-year NCES, 2-year
Hill, Phil. 2016. "StudentsAre Spending Less onTextbooks, butThat's Not All Good." TheChronicle of Higher Education.Accessed June 7, 2017.
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Students-Are-Spending-Less-on/235340.
National Center for Education Statistics. 2015. AverageTotalCost of Attendance for First-Time, Full-Time Undergraduate Students in Degree-Granting
Postsecondary Institutions, by Control and Level of Institution, LivingArrangement, and Component of StudentCosts: SelectedYears, 2009-10 through 2014-
15: U.S. Department of Education.Accessed June 7, 2017. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_330.40.asp
8. Textbook Spending
• Possible explanations for students spending less
• Rentals
• Sharing with peers
• Course reserves
• Not buying
• First-year and first-generation students still pay more
• Community college students are more impacted by high prices
• Also more likely to use financial aid to pay for books
Senack, Ethan and Robert Donoghue. 2016. Covering the Cost: United States Public Interest Research Group. Accessed June 7, 2017.
http://www.uspirg.org/reports/usp/covering-cost
9. Adventures in Textbook Shopping
• Introductory business
• NEW: $150
• Open equivalent available: Exploring Business; Fundamentals of Business
• Introduction to biology
• NEW: $215 (print); $129 (digital)
• Digital rental: $54
• Open equivalent available: Biology; Concepts of Biology
• Lab manual (NEW): $150
• Open equivalent available: Biology 101-103 manual
• Introduction to public speaking
• NEW: $138
• USED with access code: $102
• Open equivalent available: Exploring Public Speaking; Stand up, Speak out:The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking
• Freshman composition
• NEW: $52
• Used or digital rental: $25
• Open equivalent available: AboutWriting: A Guide;Writing In College: From Competence to Excellence
10. Open Textbooks
• Cost savings for students
• Opportunity to customize text
• Many integrate interactive components
• Texts may be printed and sold for minimal cost
• Studies show similar/better student learning
Hilton, John, I. II. 2016. "Open Educational Resources and CollegeTextbook Choices: A Review of Research on
Efficacy and Perceptions." EducationalTechnology Research and Development 64 (4): 573-590.
11. Open Educational Resources
• More than open textbooks
• Adaptable
• Free
• Many high quality
• Librarians can help with
location and selection
Lesson plans
Interactive modules
Lectures
Videos
Complete courses
12. Discuss
• So why don’t faculty
use these amazing,
money-saving
resources?
"Money DownThe Drain 2" (CC BY 2.0) by ccPixs.com
13. Babson Survey
Allen, I. Elaine and Jeff Seaman. 2016. Opening theTextbook:Open Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2015-16. Babson Survey Research Group.
Accessed May 19, 2017. https://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/openingthetextbook2016.pdf
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
Too difficult to change or edit
Lack of support from my institution
Too difficult to integrate into technology I use
Not current, up-to-date
Not knowing if I have permission to use or change
Not high-quality
Not used by other faculty I know
No comprehensive catalog of resources
Too hard to find what I need
Not enough resources for my subject
Barriers to Adopting Open Educational Resources
15. ONU Survey
• I use some "free" downloadable
resources for one of my classes, but
did not know, specifically about
"OER" before this survey.
• Haven't investigated; I don't like
the open access movement though
for theses and dissertations
• I didn't really know this was a thing
I should be looking for!
• Too lazy to figure out hwat [sic] is
involved
• Too much material to cover, too
little time.
• I am staff, not faculty
• Variations on lack of awareness (9)
• Variations on “I don't know enough
about it” (3)
16. Collaborating with Educational Technology
• Open AccessWeek 2016
• OER Workshop
• Poor attendance
• Opportunity to collaborate
• Discussed targeted workshops
• Would include information on
Open Access publishing
17. Implementation
• Outreach to Nursing Department
• Receptive to new ideas
• Faculty experience with Open Access
• Good material available
• Decision to use Course Management System
• Faculty ownership
• EducationalTechnology sets up CMS
• Librarian researches OA/OER in discipline to customize
presentation
18. Implementation
• One hour session
• Discussion of EdTech manager’s
experience with publishing
• Information on Open Access publishing
• Why to consider
• Resources to help evaluate journals
• OER
• What are they
• How they meet student needs
• Access to Moodle course Dr. Joseph Blankson, EducationalTechnology
Manager
21. What worked
• Personal contact
• Customized resources
What didn’t
• Still too many resources!
• Underestimated the amount of
questions on OA publishing
• As yet, no additions made by faculty
to course
22. Going Forward
• Provide more careful selection of resources
• More involvement with library liaisons
• Negotiate more time for workshops
• Library promotion of Open Access publishing in general
• Potential Open Access Week lunch and learn or panel
• Topic for library liaison meeting
• Outreach to departments that indicated interest on survey
23. Final Thoughts
• What are some ways that you plan to use this information at your library?
• What are some resources that you already use that you would like to share?
“sharing” by frankieleon is licensed under CC BY 2.0
24. Resources
About OER:
• SPARC OER: https://sparcopen.org/open-education/
• ARL SPEC Kit 351: Affordable Course Content and Open Educational Resources (July 2016):
http://publications.arl.org/Affordable-Course-Content-Open-Educational-Resources-SPEC-Kit-351/
• Open Education Group: http://openedgroup.org/
• University of Regina LibGuide: http://uregina.libguides.com/oer
Finding OER:
• OER Commons: https://www.oercommons.org/
• Skills Commons: https://www.skillscommons.org/
25. Resources
• OpenTextbook Network: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/
• Resources to find OpenTextbooks (Kansas State University): https://www.lib.k-state.edu/open-
textbooks-resources
• Open/AlternativeTextbook initiative: https://www.lib.k-state.edu/open-textbook
• Open Syllabus Project: http://opensyllabusproject.org/
• MERLOT: https://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm
• Other ideas from the discussion:
• Grants to encourage faculty adoption/creation of OER
• Faculty will come to hear other faculty- encourage faculty who use OER to speak about experiences
• Faculty/admin may be more open to OER when the drive comes from students who want to save money
Florida Virtual Campus’s Office of Distance Learning and Student Services conducted surveys in 2010, 2012, and 2016 asking students at public colleges and universities in Florida about textbook and course material costs. Here are the 2016 responses to one question about how students have responded to the high cost of a required textbook. The number of never responses have been omitted from this graph for clarity, but it was an option on the survey. Clearly, the most alarming response is that students will not purchase a required textbook because of cost. Over one-quarter of the 22,000 students surveyed responded that they frequently chose not to buy a textbook based on its cost. What is noteworthy though, is that while renting textbooks is mentioned throughout the survey, it is not included as a possible response to this question. Students who responded “other” may include those who rented the text, accessed a reserve copy in the library, borrowed from a classmate, or any number of other options that would still have provided them access to the content. The other responses are also significant to student retention and success. The next two most frequent responses are taking fewer classes or not registering for a class because of the cost of the textbook, meaning that it may take them longer to graduate.
These stats sound very alarming, right? 88% inflation, ⅔ of students opting not to buy books and potentially failing courses? So, if textbook costs are increasing and a significant number of students are choosing not to buy textbooks, how much are students actually spending on textbooks and course materials? [It’s important to keep in mind that the consumer price index measures price, not the amount students spend.]
I set out to find some information on how much students actually spend on textbooks and fell into a wormhole. It’s an area where there is a need for some reliable research. I found two numbers that were used frequently. The first was the $600 a year number, which was the number the Ohio governor used in his textbook cost reduction proposal. At the time I remember thinking that this was a very low number. It turns out that this number comes from the National Association of College Stores, and it’s been used in a wide variety of articles, including on NPR and in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Unfortunately, this was released in a proprietary report sold at the low, low price of $395, so I was unable to look at the survey in detail. However, NACS claims that student spending has decreased 16% over the last five years. For 2014-2015 they state that students spent $563 on average for required course materials. National Center for Education Statistics tells a different story. Using IPEDS data, they show a steady increase in student course material costs. Their data shows that students at 2-year institutions $1,417 annually for the same year. 4-year students spent a little less, $1,265. So who do we believe? The campus retail trade association or IPEDS data?
There are some possible explanations for the NACS low number. Renting textbooks is an increasingly popular option, so that could explain why there has been a decrease over the last 5 years. Students may share with peers or take advantage of course reserves. And, of course, they may just choose not to buy the textbook. However, even if NACS is right and student spending is decreasing, first-generation and first-year students are still paying more for course materials than other students, and community college students are still more affected by textbook prices than their 4-year counterparts. They are also more likely to use financial aid to pay for textbooks.
However, while open textbooks are a major reason to promote OER, it’s important to recognize that OER consists of more teaching and learning tools than just textbooks.
OER are not just cost-saving measures. They provide an opportunity to enhance learning through supplemental materials beyond purchased access codes from the publisher. Faculty can use these resources to supplement a course text by providing different perspectives or appealing to more learning styles.
Included information on Open Access Publishing because we wanted to encourage our faculty to be aware of it and pursue it when appropriate.