1. Savings are nice,
but learning is nicer.
Libraries linking open textbooks with
instruction, pedagogy and assessment
Marilyn Billings, UMASS Amherst
Sarah Faye Cohen, Open Textbook Network

2. “This presentation will make the case for how
open textbooks and OER can foster
collaboration between instruction
librarians, scholarly communication
librarians, and faculty in order to advance
access to course content, improve student
learning, and continue the crusade for saving
students money on course content.

3. “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

4. A brief reminder of
why we’ve been
focused on savings.

5. $2,000
$3,000
$4,000
$5,000
$6,000
$7,000
$8,000
$9,000
1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012
US Higher Education Funding - $/FTE
State Funding Tuition Revenue
http://www.sheeo.org

6. The average borrower owes more than
$28,950
in student loans (class of 2014).
Institute for College Access and Success
http://projectonstudentdebt.org/files/pub/Student_Debt_and_the_Class_of_2012_NR.
pdf

7. Cost of Attendance
• Tuition and Fees
• Room and Board
• Books and Supplies
• Personal Expenses
• Transportation

8. Cost of Attendance
• Tuition and Fees
• Room and Board
• Books and Supplies
• Personal Expenses
• Transportation

9. 0%
100%
200%
300%
400%
500%
600%
700%
1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010
% Increase
Increase in Textbook Prices
Textbooks CPI
Bureau of Labor Statistics http://www.bls.gov/cpi/

10. The
Academic
Impact:
Purchase an older edition
of the textbook
Delay purchasing the
textbook
Never purchase the
textbook
Share a textbook
Pirate a textbook
“I figured French
hadn’t changed
that much.”
- UMN student

11. 63.6% Not purchase the required textbook
49.2% Take fewer courses
45.1% Not register for a specific course
33.9% Earn a poor grade
26.7% Drop a course
17.0% Fail a course
http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/pdf/2012_Florida_Student_Textbook_Survey.pdf
In your academic career, has
the cost of required textbooks
caused you to:

12. Open textbooks are a
solution.

13. Do they impact
learning?

14. Student Learning

17. Babson Report
• Faculty not aware of OERs
• Faculty appreciate OER
concepts
• Perceived quality of OERs
• Lack of time to find and evaluate
OERs
• Faculty are key decision makers
for OER adoption
http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/openingthecurriculum2014.pdf

18. Libraries have an important role to
play in driving awareness and
pedagogical innovation and support
student learning in this space.

19. Libraries have an important role to
play in driving pedagogical
innovation and supporting student
learning in this space.
Here are four ways we
can do that:

20. Way 1: Integration into current
and new instruction
 ACRL Framework: Threshold Concepts
 Open’s potential to address many of the TCs:
 Format as process
 Authority as Constructed and Contextual
 Information as commodity
 Assessment opportunities:
 Creation and modification with students using open
content would allow libraries to provide direct assessment
/artifacts of student learning and achievement in these
TCs.

21. Way 2: A focus on rights issues
 Instruction focused on:
 What if we started asking students to identify how content
fits on the spectrum of open?
 Fair use of others' content, Creative Commons licenses,
applying CC licenses when creating our own (faculty,
students, librarians) new content.

22. Way 3: Collaborate deeply with
faculty and across all areas in the
library.
 Actualize librarians’ deep interest in
creative and innovative pedagogy.
 Realize the potential of the 5Rs.
 Use OERs in the flipped
classrooms, as well as inquiry
based learning, problem based
learning, active learning.
 The “Outernet”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/littledebbie11/5028737162

23. Way 4: Contributing our unique
skill set to the problem and the
solution
 Improve discovery, access, and distribution of this
“new” OER content.
 A new era and opportunity for libraries to offer our
mind set and skill set—curation, categorization,
metadata, archiving.
 Use our IRs as "homes" for OER content as an
additional way to exploit that relatively new library
service / infrastructure.

24. How does Open fit into what
libraries already do?
 Scholarly Communication
 Institutional Repositories
 Information Literacy Curriculum
 Instruction and Outreach
 Access Services
 Interlibrary Loan
 Reserves
 Collection Development and Collections Management
 Electronic Resources Management
 Cataloging, Indexing, Metadata

25. “Actually” build connections to be
made to:
 ACRL's strategic direction for
libraries:
 expressing the value of
libraries, student learning,
and active participation in
the research and scholarly
environment.
 ACRL Framework
 CritLib movement
 Other open initiatives (OA,
open data, knowledge
commons, etc).
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chuckthephotographer/3614450900

26. More needs to be done.
 How might we further engage our libraries focus in
pedagogy and assessment to advance the use of open
educational content?
 The crowd says….
 OER as knowledge management document collaboration
 Librarians as instructional designers
 Weaving together research and teaching (not mutually
exclusive)
 Hardlinked to globalization strategies
 Bringing OA into the scholarly comm family
 Bringing together IL and digital literacy
 Rethink our role in course materials
 Potential in supporting student inquirities

27. “Administrators and faculty members overwhelmingly
say textbooks and other course materials are too
expensive, and that instructors should seriously
consider costs when assigning readings.”
Key finding :

28. Libraries aren’t strangers to
change
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vblibrary/4993073773/

29. The signs are there….
https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrec/148052094

30. Let’s go.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/thelastminute/2466059398

31. Thank you.
Marilyn Billings:
mbillings@library.umass.edu; @BillingsMarilyn
Sarah Faye Cohen:
sfcohen@umn.edu; @thesheck