How We Got to Open
Educational Resources (OER)
In fall 2013, a
discussion about OER started during a meeting of the Educational Technology
Innovation Group, a collection of faculty, staff and administration that meets
once or twice a semester to discuss, support, problem-solve, and share some of
the great things that our faculty are doing here at NSCC. From this initial
discussion, Christine Goodchild (Coordinator
of Public Services, NSCC Library), Andrea
Milligan (Director of Instructional Technology and Design), Larry Davis (Department of History),
and I began brainstorming what could be done to support the OER movement here
at NSCC. After all, we were blown away by the staggering numbers we had seen
surrounding the cost of textbooks for community college students ($120 per
course on average; amounting to about $2,500 at the end of two years).
With
the support of Karen Pangallo (Director,
NSCC Library) and Michael Badolato (Dean,
Academic and Faculty Support), our team explored how we could help faculty
navigate OER content. Soon, Torrey Dukes
(Reference Librarian, Lynn) and Dava
Davanis (Coordinator Public Services, Lynn Library) joined us and we
developed a LibGuide to OER. This resource
continues to grow and morph, providing some great repositories of content that
faculty can use for their courses in lieu of textbooks, assignments, video
content, and other learning objects.
While
finishing up the first phase of the LibGuide, we heard about the Vision Project
Innovation Grant call for proposals. We decided that, while the LibGuide is
essential for helping faculty find OER materials, we needed to do something
more palpable to help support faculty as they moved into incorporating OER. We
submitted a proposal and eventually received a grant to help fund a Faculty
Technology Summer Institute on OER. The Institute was a great success with some
forty faculty and staff attending the Keynote Address by Nicole Allen from the
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC).
Thirty
two faculty attended the rest of the Summer Institute and nine faculty applied
for a mini-grant from our Innovation Grant to replace a textbook with open and
affordable content for their courses.
This fall, we had an additional five faculty apply for Technology Across
the Curriculum Grants to also adopt, adapt, or build content for their courses
and save students significant costs. One
faculty member has already launched a course with OER materials, while many of
our faculty are preparing to launch their first course this fall.
Collaborating with
OER
In
looking at the OER movement, we realized the best strategy to pursue would be
an affordability strategy. This means that when we work with faculty, we do not
solely focus on OER repositories to find content, but we also rely upon the
great material from the various library subscriptions. We also consider if it
is possible for the student purchase to be significantly reduced somehow by
mixing OER content, library resources, and a significantly cheaper book
purchase than previously considered (e.g. going from $150 to $15).
The
collaborative process has been rewarding for faculty and staff. Each faculty member has been paired with an
instructional designer and a librarian. The three meet regularly to find,
develop and implement content for the course in a variety of ways. Some faculty
have been using the substantial resources provided by the library such as their
article databases, Films-On-Demand, or their great collection of digital books
in ebrary. Other faculty are delving head first into completely OER content and
finding free textbooks or other instructional content that they can plug into
their courses for each relevant topic covered in the course. And some faculty
are creating open content and contributing to the further availability of open
educational resources.
Faculty
are quite energized about using OER in their courses. They are finding that
using OER can change how they approach their content and students’ learning. Several have offered the following thoughts
about their experience:
Irene Fernandez
“I’m
excited that I can contribute to making knowledge accessible to
students. They benefit from my OER project every semester.”
Nathan Chio
“I'm
very excited about implementing OER into my African American History
course. With the wealth of historical documents pertaining to African
American history freely available online and in the public domain, I believe
that I'll not only be able to save my students a significant amount of money
but also will actually be able to offer them a better, more intellectually
enriching history course.”
Anne Sears
“Working
with the OTI (Open Textbook Initiative) team this year helped me think through
the issues, understand fair use rules and locate rich teaching
materials. I’ve put together a set of foundation readings and videos and
will be able to expand case study readings and videos each semester. My
students will appreciate current examples connected to specific lesson plans available
in Blackboard.”
Recent Developments
These
are some other developments with the OER movement at NSCC in the last few
months.
In
fall 2014, Michael Badolato and Karen Pangallo launched the OER Working
Group as a means of sustaining the Open Educational Resources movement at North
Shore Community College. While the Open
Textbook Initiative focuses on helping faculty locate, assess, and implement
OER into their courses, the OER Working Group will work on larger institutional
issues regarding OER such as working with the bookstore to find printing
solutions and offering tablets or with the Registrar to get special
designations for OER courses.
Professor Larry Davis was granted a
sabbatical so that he could focus on working on several OER projects (mentioned
elsewhere in this publication).
Irene Fernandez and I are working on
her OER textbook that she made for her sabbatical project to turn it into a
physical book that can be sold in the bookstore as an alternative for students
who want a physical text.
In the spring, our team served on a panel with UMASS Amherst and the Connecticut
Distance Learning Consortium at UMASS Boston’s OpenEd Forum, an all-day forum
dedicated to exploring and supporting OER movements in New England. We had an
opportunity to discuss some of the great OER projects and our excitement about
implementing OER at North Shore Community College.
