Best Practices in Designing Courses with Open Educational Resources

Olena Zhadko, Susan Ko

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429638817
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Best Practices in Designing Courses with Open Educational Resources is a practical guide that assists faculty and institutions looking to adopt and implement open educational resources (OER) and to foster meaningful, effective learning experiences through the course design process. Chapters loaded with tips, case examples, and guidance from practitioners advise readers through each step necessary for sustainable OER initiatives, from preliminary planning and course redesign through teaching, learning, and faculty development.

Written by two authors with direct experience in training higher education professionals to use OER, this is a comprehensive resource for faculty, instructional designers, course developers, librarians, information technologists, and administrators hoping to rethink and refresh their curricula by moving beyond traditional textbooks. An authors' website expands the book with resources, templates, and examples of implementation models, including faculty development workshop OER materials that can be adopted by readers.

Part I

Overview

Chapter 1

Introduction to OER

What’s It All About?

Many of us have been teaching with open educational resources (OER) without even realizing it, while others have been intentional about OER use to support student learning. In fact, OER have been used to support learners for many years in higher education. Educators have traditionally pooled resources and shared course materials they have authored, well before the advent of the internet. Recently, with the increase in college tuition, OER have gained attention among higher education institutions as a possible solution to improve student retention and increase affordability by eliminating expensive textbooks or other commercially produced materials. The OER movement has not only resulted in millions of dollars saved by students but also in the improvement, redesign, and renewal of learning materials by faculty. Just as online education made us revisit instructional strategies, delivery methods, learning outcomes, and assessment measures, OER now serve as a catalyst to further innovation in education. In the competitive market in higher education, institutions also want to distinguish themselves as they create a path for student success. Institutions are striving to reduce time to graduation and increase student retention while providing quality learning experiences and preparing students for the job market. Colleges demonstrate their determination to remove barriers to student success by pursuing more affordable and accessible learning opportunities. Many colleges have launched different types of affordability initiatives. In many cases, the successful use of OER has been in the forefront of such initiatives. Additionally, there have been state, federal, or other funds available to institutions to promote and distribute OER.

Some of the benefits of using OER are obvious, like greater access and cost savings for students and possibly for institutions. Other benefits may be less apparent but may have even far more significant ramifications for education. For example, free textbooks and materials benefit students because they are more likely to be accessed. Also, OER can quickly disseminate the most current knowledge, whether in text or media. Furthermore, OER may allow materials to be remixed, shaped, and adapted by faculty to better fit course needs. Additionally, with OER, students have immediate access to course materials from the very beginning of the course. Finally, courses listed with the “zero-textbook cost” designation can empower students to make informed decisions about their course selection, potentially decreasing the time to degree attainment.

Defining Open

It is essential to define key terms and get familiar with the subtle or not so subtle differences. As defined by the Hewlett Foundation website, OER are “high-quality teaching, learning, and research materials that are free for people everywhere to use and repurpose” ( n.d., para. 1).

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI, 2018 a, b, c) offers definitions of three related aspects of “open” initiatives—open educational content (OER), open educational practices, and open educational policies:

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or that have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation, and redistribution by others. OER include textbooks, curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, video, audio, simulations, assessments, and any other content used in education. OER provide ubiquitous access to high-quality, effective learning materials that can be easily tailored and freely adapted, revised, expanded, translated, and shared with educators and learners around the world. OER support the practice of open education, an umbrella term for the mix of open content, practices, policies, and communities that, properly leveraged, can provide broad access to effective learning opportunities for everyone

(ELI, OER Content, para. 1)

Open educational practices (OEP) are seen as a means for students and faculty to develop new approaches to co-creating knowledge, assessing student outcomes, and designing programs… . While educators often initially embrace open educational content as a way to maximize access to curricular materials and significantly reduce their costs, many instructors leverage OER to reconceptualize and improve pedagogy and advance authentic, participatory, engaged learning.

(ELI, OER Practices, para. 1)

Open education policies are formal regulations regarding support, funding, adoption, and use of open educational content and/or open education practices. Such policies can take many forms, including legislation from national, provincial, or state governments; institutional policies and guidelines; funder mandates; and declarations from influential bodies such as UNESCO.

(ELI, OER Policies, para. 1)

These key terms will help you navigate the world of OER and equip you with the necessary vocabulary. However, while you might be an avid OER adopter and/or creator, you don’t necessarily have to become an OER policy maker—you can still benefit with open education policies in place, ensuring fewer barriers and more support systems to guarantee success. The fact that you engage in open educational practices does not necessarily mean that you only publish in open access journals, either.

The Cost of Free and/or Open

Another important definition to keep in mind is the difference between free and open when considering open educational resources. Learning materials found online and freely accessible do not necessarily equate to open. The licensing conditions will define the exact conditions for how materials can be used, and the fine print will specify the exact use cases and will help guide your OER adoption process.

OER are free (to students), but not all free materials are OER. Some people consider all content in the public domain as OER, even though it was not originally designed to be OER and has no explicit licensing setting forth the conditions of use. For example, Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice is in the public domain, but it is doubtful that Austen had intended it to be offered as OER.

While not all learning materials you will need for your class might be OER, you can leverage your library resources (for example, periodicals, ebooks, or other subscriptions) and other online content to provide essential course materials that are still free for students. We call these types of materials “free but not OER.”

The term “zero-textbook cost,” often used in conjunction with discussions about OER, means that students do not need to pay for learning materials.

But as noted by Young, “OER is not free, since it costs money to develop the materials, takes time for professors to evaluate and adopt them, and typically involves other campus-support services as well” (2018, para. 1). One study estimated the cost of building an OER course at an average of $11,700 (Griffiths et al., 2018). There have been several methodologies to estimate OER savings. For example, the OER Adoption Impact Calculator (https://impact.lumenlearning.com/) allows you to estimate the potential impact of OER in comparison with commercial texts (Wiley, 2018). There have been further studies that discuss sustainability models, support services, and additional costs to institutions to maintain and advance adoption and/or creation of OER course materials.

OER Initiatives

In an attempt to lower cost barriers to degree attainment, schools have moved beyond pilots of OER use to replacing expensive texts with OER and to developing full programs that are textbook free, called Z-degrees. These are essentially full degree programs that make course materials available to students at no cost. More and more institutions, especially on the community college level, are exploring this option in an attempt to address affordability of higher education.

There have been national initiatives to support colleges in offering Z-degrees. Nearly half of all states have considered OER legislation in past years, and it has increasingly become a go-to strategy for legislators seeking to make college education more affordable and effective. States can catalyze and support action at institutions by providing resources, incentives, and policy frameworks. Some of the more widely known system or consortia OER initiatives include the Community College Consortium for OER and Affordable Learning Georgia. With over half of all states having considered OER legislation in recent years, the OER State Policy Playbook (https://sparcopen.org/our-work/oer-state-policy-playbook/) was developed to offer guidance and policy recommendations.

Some schools have had to move away from a commitment to 100% OER because of the difficulties in replacing all content. However, they maintain a similar goal by continuing to advocate for more affordable learning materials.

Benefits of OER for Students

In many of the promotional materials and arguments for OER, cost is given as one of the main reasons behind the OER movement, use, and adoption. A 2018 study reports that students could be saving anywhere from $66 to $121 per course (Colvard, Watson, & Park) when OER are used instead of traditional commercial textbooks. This reflects the reality of higher education today, in which only a small percentage of college students are able to afford costly learning materials. According to many reports and observations in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (Blumenstyk, 2017; McMurtrie, 2019) and the 2018 Babson Survey Research Group Report (Seaman & Seaman, 2018), a substantial number of college students have not even purchased a textbook for a particular course because they found it too expensive. Additionally, one in five college students has skipped or deferred a class due to the price of the required learning resources (Cengage Learning, 2016). These figures do not even take into consideration students who share, illegally copy, or hoard copies in the library reserve room. Bret Maney, Assistant Professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York (CUNY), shared his concerns about the high costs of textbooks,

I’ve always found textbook costs to be hideously exploitative of students, who are usually strapped for cash as it is. I always make an effort to choose course texts in my English classes judiciously. I search for low-cost editions, have adopted the next-to-last version of an anthology, which can usually be purchased as a used copy at a steep discount, and scan texts at the start of the semester when permissible under copyright law. So my interest in OER is a natural extension of these preexisting concerns about the costs of higher education that go beyond tuition.

But the benefits of OER go beyond student savings. According to Colvard, Watson, and Park (2018), OER don’t just save money for our students and remove barriers to degree attainment but also have the potential to improve end-of-course grades and reduce withdrawals, demonstrating that decreasing the cost does not need to come at the price of decreasing quality.

While many OER advocates speak to the need to lower the cost and enable access from the first day of class to learning materials, studies that examine the OER impact on student learning also report increased student engagement with OER in comparison with traditional textbooks, and consequently improved learning outcomes (Petrides, Jimes, Middleton-Detzner, Walling, & Weiss, 2011; Feldstein et al., 2012; Pitt, Ebrahimi, McAndrew, & Coughlan, 2013; Gil, Candelas, Jara, Garcia, & Torres, 2013; Hilton, Gaudet, Clark, Robinson, & Wiley, 2013; Lindshield & Adhikari, 2013; Bliss, Robinson, Hilton, & Wiley, 2013; Allen & Seaman, 2014; Hilton, 2016; Grewe & Davis, 2017). In Chapters 5 and 7, we will discuss the benefits of OER for students in more detail.

Bertrade Ngo-Ngijol Banoum, Chair, Department of Africana Studies/Director, Women’s Studies Program at Lehman College, CUNY, highlighted some of the unexpected benefits of OER,

I teach courses in African Studies and Women’s Studies which are interdisciplinary. Consequently, I have always found it difficult, if not impossible, to identify textbooks that cover all essential themes of any one of my courses. This shortcoming has meant asking students to purchase many textbooks and/or handing out plenty of supplemental materials. Open Educational Resources sounded like the perfect solution to this problem and I decided to invest my time and newly acquired skills to develop OER content for all my courses.

A pleasant surprise was the wealth of high quality open educational resources that are available online, waiting to be discovered and used. With a prescribed textbook, I would not have found those texts. When I used to prescribe a textbook for a course, it was often easier to conveniently just use it. With a shift to OER, there has been greater ability for my students and me to solicit sources and resources for classes together, making teaching and learning more participatory.

Shifting from textbooks to OER has allowed me and the students to draw on historical and contemporary bases of knowledge in an interdisciplinary, intersectional and transnational way. With a textbook, the epistemological vantage may be limited and limiting. For example, lessons on Chicana feminism, Mujerista feminism, African feminism, or Indigenous feminisms, often require a search outside of the textbook for supplemental readings, as the textbook just does not have anything germane to add to the conversation. In this way, OER has allowed for more syllabus versatility, flexibility, fluidity, and accessibility. I am creating a syllabus and finding relevant sources and resources to fulfill the course learning outcomes. I am no longer teaching to the textbook.

Miriam Deutch, Associate Professor at the Brooklyn College Library, CUNY, bolsters this view:

Curation of course materials allows faculty to customize their course materials. Moreover, curation of course materials allows faculty to choose diverse course materials that support inclusive teaching—increasing awareness of diversity, including ethnicity, gender identity, race, (dis)abilities, equity, and religious values. It can also include multimedia that addresses a variety of learning approaches.

Online and Course Design

OER have allowed faculty to share learning materials easily. A unique feature of OER is that they start as digital, which makes them much easier to share, though the final product does not have to be digital. This book assumes that OER are offered online as opposed to hard copy versions, even though students may have an option to print out or purchase hard copy versions of OER that otherwise live online. OER textbooks can be printed as well as any other text, and usually it is for a fraction of the price of the equivalent publisher’s version. As the result of the OER’s digital nature, online educators are frequently well prepared to become early adopters of OER, unless they are fully invested wi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Part I Overview
• Part II Course Design
• Part III Teaching and Learning
• Part IV Scaling Up
• Index