Sara Rutter

Ka Lā of Honolulu Community College, the student newspaper ran an article in August in support of OER as a solution to student textbook cost woes. The article, Textbook costs frustrate students, but relief could be around the corner, by Jason Mar and Jackie Liu (August 2015) quotes UH OER librarian Carol Hasegawa, “Student support is needed to show administration that this matters so that they’ll put more effort and funding into the program.” See the full article on page 5 at http://issuu.com/mleidemann/docs/ka_la_aug._2015 .

Student advocacy for their own education at UH campuses is the key to improving the student experience and to supporting faculty to change their course materials to more affordable options.

U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Al Franken (D-MN) and Angus King (I-ME) introduced legislation October 8, 2015, the Affordable Textbook Grant, to support the creation of shareable textbooks for higher education. In the House of Representatives, U.S. Representatives Rubén Hinojosa (D-TX) and Jared Polis (D-CO) introduced legislation in the House.  A post  on Senator Durbin’s blog at http://go.hawaii.edu/Hz provides more information about the proposed legislation. 

The book noted by Senator Durbin in the post as an exemplar of open textbooks is Sustainability: a comprehensive foundation by Tom Theis and Jonathan Tomkin of the University of Illinois. The book has been used by more than 60,000 students in MOOCs and in traditionally delivered courses. The legislation proposes competitive grants to support faculty in creating open educational resources.

There are a couple of blog announcements about the forward movement of a open licensing policy for projects funded by the U.S. Department of Education. See the Creative Commons post by Cable Green at http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/46345 and the post by the Association of Research Libraries Open Education Director, Nicole Allen, at http://www.sparc.arl.org/blog/us-education-department-proposes-open-licensing-policy-part-goopen-campaign .  The policy discussion has centered around K-12 education but should also affect grant funding in higher education.  Creative Commons will lead training workshops on licensing material for re-use thus increasing the overall awareness of CC licensing.

An article in the Minneapolis based Star Tribune http://strib.mn/1WcKQH9 provides a description of the Open Textbook Library, which provides peer reviewed textbooks for introductory university courses, hosted and curated by the University of Minnesota Library. One of the big changes in textbook publishing according to a source from the American Association of Publishers is the move to reformat textbook material into computer interactive course management packages that students purchase. This is creating a major challenge to OER initiatives in that it may not be sufficient to replace a print textbook with a free text; OER also needs to address the learning tools that provide students and instructors with immediate feedback in problem solving.

Kathleen Luschek, a technical writer with a great deal of knowledge and experience working with the Public Library of Science journals teamed with Pam Wilson, journals manager for the University of Hawaii Press to talk about Open Access and journal publishing on Wednesday Oct. 21.  Their slides are available together at http://go.hawaii.edu/KH .

Here is the link to Billy Meinke’s slides from his presentation on Creative Commons licensing yesterday for Open Access Week http://slides.com/billymeinke/cc-oaweek-2015#/ 

Here is the link to Sara Rutter’s slides on OER at UH http://www.slideshare.net/SaraRutter1/open-educational-resources-amp-open-access

The session was also video recorded and we will provide the link when available.

The Chronicle of Higher Education picked up an article in the Orange County Register  http://www.ocregister.com/articles/bourget-688288-math-book.html describing the trouble a faculty member ran into when he decided to assign  less expensive ($76 and free) textbooks for a mathematics class that traditionally used a text co-authored by the department chair ($180).  Conflict of interest, tradition, and lack of awareness of the financial impact on students , are all presented in this story.  The faculty member is grieving the reprimand he received.  It is hoped that this will be a win for putting the student first when making textbook choices.

Lane Fischer, John Hilton, Jared Robinson, and David Wiley,  have a recently published and much anticipated paper that reports on the impact of OER on student success in higher education courses.  See the open access article at:

Fischer, Lane, et al. “A Multi-Institutional Study of the Impact of Open Textbook Adoption on the Learning Outcomes of Post-Secondary Students.” Journal of Computing in Higher Education (2015): 1-14. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12528-015-9101-x .

The study compares student success in courses that used no-cost open digital textbooks with student success in courses with traditional textbooks based on three criteria, 1) student completion of courses, 2) grades, and 3) number of classes taken during and after semesters in which OER were used. The results indicate favorable outcomes for  students who had OER assigned.  Students in courses that used OER  performed as well as students in courses with traditional textbooks on comparable exams.

The Open Education Conference registration is open with early bird pricing until Sept 30. This is an international conference that is inspiring in its future thinking and practical idealism. See hhttp://openedconference.org/2015/ for more information. Hope to see you there!

The position as first OER advisor for the U.S. Department of Education will be filled by Andrew Marcinek, a founder of EducatorU  and a blogger on educational matters  at http://andrewmarcinek.com/ . Check out the article in Campus Technology at http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/09/21/department-of-ed-names-first-oer-advisor.aspx

Our previous post on this position from SPARC is here, http://oer.hawaii.edu/u-s-department-of-education-to-hire-open-education-advisor-for-k-12/.

There is an interesting paper posted in the famous Arxiv hosted by Cornell University Library, “Redesigning a junior-level electronics course to support engagement in scientific practices,” by H.J. Lewandowski and Noah Finkelstein of the University of Colorado Boulder.  See http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.03925.

The course syllabus is at http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phys3330/phys3330_sp14/phys3330_syllabus_sp14.pdf and demonstrates a successful course in measurable outcomes of student engagement and retention of the concepts.  The course  does not require a textbook.

This is another example of a course redesigned to be more effective and became more affordable for students because of faculty who wanted to give their students hands-on practice in doing science.

Check out the post at http://www.sparc.arl.org/blog/education-department-hires-first-ever-open-education-advisor about OER getting major support from the U.S. Department of Education.

Open Educational Resources also have an important role to play in higher education.  Open resources used  with a more integrative use of online library resources, the Zero Textbook courses  can transform classes taught at UH.

Doug Ward of the University of Kansas in a commentary in today’s CHE [Sept 8, 2015]  argues that open source or library sources not only save students money  but can offer a better way to teach.  Ward  suggests alternatives to going with a pricey textbook, such as,

“Scour the web and enlist your college’s librarians to find articles and posts that provide the same — or even better — information as in the textbook.” [bolding is mine]

See the article at http://m.chronicle.com/article/Why-You-Ought-to-Think-Twice-/232877/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en