Collaborative Efforts on OER Show Promise

Open educational resources are attractive for both students and faculty because, in large part, they are free or very inexpensive.  However, finding and sorting through all the available OER for high-quality materials is a daunting proposition for most faculty members, making recent collaborative efforts between institutions a solution with considerable potential.

“Helping faculty find appropriate resources is a major issue,” said Geoff Cain, director of distance education for the College of the Redwoods, Eureka, CA, in a recent article in Campus Technology. Cain is a member of the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, a joint effort to help faculty identify and evaluate appropriate resources.

Another effort, Project Kaleidoscope, brought together faculty teams from eight institutions across the U.S. to design 10 general education courses that use OER materials and share common learning assessments.

The Kaleidoscope courses were used for the first time in the fall of 2011 with promising results. According to a report in Campus Technology, there was a 3.5% improvement in student success (completion with a C or better) in the courses, while students participating in the Kaleidoscope classes saw a 97% reduction in textbook costs.

“It’s so frustrating to community college teachers when their students show up the first week without textbooks because they are waiting for a paycheck or for financial aid,” said M.L. Bettino, former dean of academic affairs at Cerritos College and primary investigator for the Kaleidoscope program. “Now they can get their hands on these materials early and really be prepared on day one.”

OpenStax Helps Steamline Open Ed

It seems there’s news of another open education resource (OER) initiative every other day. All show promise at providing students with quality material at little or no cost. Now, Rice University has launched its OpenStaxCollege program to make the process easier for students and faculty.

“We realized that if the open ed movement was ever going to go mainstream, it needed to cross this chasm, and it needed to evolve in a way that isn’t just focused on sharing,” said Richard Baraniuk, the Rice professor who founded the open education initiative Connexion, in Campus Technology. “There needs to be a focus on creating quality, turnkey, adoptable solutions.”

The answer to Baraniuk is free materials written by professional content developers, that go through peer and classroom review, and include ancillary items such as PowerPoint presentations, tests, and homework keys. Faculty using the materials are urged to report errors they can be constantly updated and can customize the information to suit their needs.

“The problem is that there’s not enough open ed recourses in people’s hands yet,” he said. “We first need to get books into people’s hands; then we can get faculty on board with customizing their books. Ultimately, we’ll be moving from a world of better access and cheaper materials to a world of vastly improved learning outcomes.”

Merging Content Approaches Can Lower Textbook Costs

College stores know all too well that students complain about the prices of textbooks. They’ve been doing it for years, but the noise has gotten much louder over the last decade—so loud that state and national legislators keep churning out laws and regulations in an effort to provide solutions.

Advances in technology have only increased the amount of criticism because most assumed that digital would automatically reduce costs. It hasn’t turned out that way because those assumptions never considered the price of content, according to Caroline Vanderlip, CEO of SharedBook Inc., in this Inside Higher Education essay. The prices have students staying away from digital format, when the cost is nearly the same as the printed version and rental is available as an option.

Some see potential in open educational resources to lower costs, but there’s work to be done in developing a system that delivers both the “free and open” OER content and commercially produced materials to students.

Vanderlip says merging traditional and free content has the best chance to make a quick impact on textbook pricing. Such merging would allow students to purchase only the material an instructor deems necessary, which would lower costs regardless of the format.
 

OER Search Engine- Gooru

If there is a recognized problem out there you can bet that someone is working on a solution.  Often people dismiss new technologies or solutions because of their initial shortcomings compared to traditional products.  However, over time those solutions can build market share and momentum as various problems or challenges get addressed.

This seems to be case for the OER movement.  For example, initially there was no way to gauge how good OER materials were, and variability in quality was a challenge.  To address this challenge we see innovations like the Connexions peer review model, or the OER Evaluation Tool  released by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) last November.  As these and related innovations take hold, a key challenge to OER viability decreases.

Another barier to OER adoption is that the search and discovery process for OER materials is timing consuming and confusing.  Initiatives like MERLOT have attempted to address this problem in the past.  Now, there is another solution for this problem. Search engine Gooru has organized OER resources into easy-to-locate categories and collections to helps educators and students more easily find materials online, according to this article in eClassroom News.   

“Anyone can now easily search for resources, collections, or quizzes; study individual resources or entire collections; practice with an adaptive assessment system; interact with peers or teachers; and save and customize their favorite learning materials,” the article states. 

The story says that more than 5,000 invited students and teachers currently use the resource, and all schools, students, and teachers will have access to it beginning in June.

Right now, these tools are mostly used in K-12 education and have not gained a lot of momentum on college campuses, at least not yet.  It is only a matter of time, however, before these and other innovations reduce barriers to OER adoption in higher education. 

For the OER movement, as a piece of advice, remember that value is not determined by price alone.  There are barriers to OER adoption, and just making more content available for free does not effectively address some of the underlying fundamental challenges to the adoption of this approach.  Perhaps more emphasis should be placed on the long-term sustainability of OER approaches, improving quality, ensuring accessibility compliance, and other barriers to adoption.  If those problems can be solved effectively, then it might make more sense to continue expanding content offerings.  The OER movement weakens its own effectiveness by failing to resolve key barriers to adoption.

For stores, expect that developments like Gooru, Connexions, and others will change the presence and "adoptibility" of OER content for course use.  While OER may not be having a significant effect on adoption now, it is important to track the evolution of these tools, become familiar with OER terminology and resources, and engage with the OER community where we can.

Open Education Week: March 5-10-2012

March 5-10 is Open Education Week where people around the world will participate in local events to increase awareness and understanding about the open education movement and open educational resources.  Advocates for open education can be involved in the following ways:

1.       Provide a pre-recorded informational virtual tour of your project, work, or organization.

2.       Offer a webinar.

3.       Pre-record a presentation on open education concepts.

4.       Create or share text-based, downloadable information.

5.       Sponsor or host a local event during the week of March 5-10.

For more information on what is happening around the world and in your local communities please go to http://www.openeducationweek.org/

New Start-Up Publishing Company

Booktype is a new device-agnostic open source publishing company that allows anyone to publish a book by themselves or with others through the web.  Booktype’s tool allows easy attributions, remix and reuse content, translate, use of preset book formats, and sets ISBN numbers for new books.

To read their press release and watch their video click here.

Booktype’s entry into the publishing world is yet another sign that change is happening in this industry and an opportunity area where campus stores need to pay close attention.  With Amazon, Apple, and more recently, Inkling, all offering new publishing tools for authors this is a clear signal that the way and how content is being created and delivered is transforming the publishing industry.  Stores ought to consider how they fit into this new model if faculty wants to adopt content developed in this way.  Some of these models could make it easier to produce and manage OER content as well.

This new trend creates opportunities for stores to engage and educate faculty and students.  Stores, working with these and other vendors can provide publishing services for the faculty on campus in order to better establish its relevancy on campus.  NACS Media Solutions will be announcing a partnership in this area at CAMEX to help stores begin building community-based publishing services.

Rice Offers OER Textbooks

Rice University announced it will partner with OpenStax College to deliver a free online book for its students.  The textbook is peer-reviewed and designed to compete with major publishers’ offerings.  Using Rice’s Connexions platform, OpenStax will make available free course materials for five common introductory classes.  According to the article, the materials are open to classes anywhere and it could save students $90 million in the next five years if the books capture 10 percent of the national market.   OpenStax is funded by grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the 20 Million Minds Foundation and the Maxfield Foundation.

According to the post, students and professors will be able to download PDF versions on their computers or access the information on a mobile device. Paper editions will be sold for the cost of printing and as an example, a 600-page, full-color sociology book is expected to sell for $30 for those who want a print version -- those wanting digital will pay nothing.  Leading introductory sociology texts routinely cost between $60 and $120 new.

The free textbooks can also be altered by faculty allowing the flexibility to add local content or modify content so it aligns with a faculty member's syllabus.  Another benefit is that the books can be updated constantly, and don’t require a new edition to expand a chapter or correct a typo.

Again, as most of us already know, free is not free.  Here’s a great piece that captures this point by looking at different OER initiatives and the cost associated with it.  Below are some examples.  Would it be more cost effective if the money spent on OER was used to just subsidize books for students, or something more sustainable such as improving supply chain efficiency?

• Carnegie Mellon OLI:  More than $6.5 million 
• MIT Open Courseware:  More than $7 million with an annual operating expense of $3.5 million.  MIT requests donations on its website.
• Yale University’s Open Yale Courses are recorded lectures as taught, and are available in video and audio formats from the Open Yale Courses website. For each course the university Yale has spent $30,000 to $40,000 for each course it puts online.   Yale has approximately 36 courses and has plans to add more. Yale requests donations on its website.
• Kahn Academy: $16.5 million with a $3 million annual operating budget

 

 

Tough Questions on OER

Here is an interesting OER article that examines a recent U-Mass initiative that offers UMass instructors a $1,000 stipend for producing instructional materials that are free to UMass students.   The author asks whether models such as the U-Mass initiative produce quality products and whether it can be sustained over time because of funding issues.  What is needed, according to the article, is a sustainable business model for OER that does not transfer costs from one source to another, or reduce the quality of the material for students.

The article does not think a higher education institution can produce quality material because the institutions “do not have the systems, incentives, processes, and skill sets and so forth of publishers.”  Basically, you can’t compare a $1,000 book to a $150,000- $1million dollar book.   Further, the author does not expect faculty to do work for little or no pay forever and if we have to rely on the schools we will only see increase in tuition to compensate for OER initiatives.  Also, relying on philanthropists is never a guarantee and the ability to produce curriculum would be dependent on attracting donors.

The OER movement does have some good examples out there -- Connexions comes to mind as one of those models moving in the right direction.  However, there seem to be more poor examples than good ones -- and beyond quality, there are accessibility issues to consider as well.  In addition, if the future of course materials is digital, interactive, linked to student learning outcomes, etc., then is paying faculty to reproduce traditional print textbooks without the editing, vetting, and other elements that go into creating many of today's course materials really going to have the expected impact?  Cheap textbooks -- but at what educational cost?   Are there better ways to spend our innnovation dollars that reduce course material costs while maintaining or even improving student learning outcomes?  That is the solution we should be looking for rather than reinventing stone wheels. 

OER Guide Suggest POD Capabilities in Higher Ed

The "Guideline for Open Educational Resources Higher Education" is now available (ISBN 978-1-894975-42-1).  The document was co-produced by Commonwealth of Learning located in British Columbia and UNESCO, two very influential organizations in the OER movement.  We recommend reading the entire guide but if your time is limited read Appendix 1, “Useful knowledge, competences and skills for effective use of OER in higher education.”   Below are some of the suggested items from the guide.  The last item may make economic sense as to why stores should prepare for OER on campus.

·         There should be clarity about the economic benefits of OER, in terms of marketing institutions and programmes, the cost-effectiveness of materials production, and policies, contracts and grants;

·         Be competent to determine requirements for copyright clearance and privacy to release materials under open licenses;

·         Be able to Reflect copyright and disclaimer statements accurately in materials of different kinds and multiple media;

·         Be able to identify relevant content areas for programmes, courses and modules;

·         Be able to negotiate with external individuals and/or organisations to issue or re-issue resources under open licenses;

·         Understand whether it is permissible to modify the content when customizing materials and , if so, to what extent in can be done and how it should be handled;

·         Understand that if work has been adapted for a specific purpose, how this should be indicated in the customized content;

·         Reinforcing the need to credit the original author/source of the content that is being accessed for use through open licensing; and

·         Implementing the necessary processes for producing print-on-demand texts.

Washington State Program Creates Free Course Materials

The Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) recently announced the launch of the Open Course Library.   According to the press release, the Open Course Library is a compilation of educational course materials for 42 of the state’s highest-enrolled college courses. They hope to reach 81 classes by 2013.   Materials will cost $30 or less per student and are available free online for use by any of the 34 public community and technical colleges, four year institutions and anyone else worldwide.

For faculty, the use of the Open Course Library is optional and many are moving towards adoption according to the SBCTC. 

Blackboard Allows Sharing of Content

The Chronicle reports that Blackboard will add a “Share” button that will allow faculty to share course materials free and open to nonregistered students.  This is a big win for the Open Education Movement and for schools since they will  not be charged extra for additional viewing.  Blackboard’s “Share” initiative is partnering with Creative Commons where faculty will have the option to attach a Creative Commons license to the content.  Cable Green, director of global learning for Creative Commons, says his “goal is to have this kind of option in every commercial learning-management system and also open-source ones,” according to the article.

OER infographic and accuracy of OER data

The Atlantic recently published a piece which included an interesting infographic that compared Open Source Textbooks to other textbook options. As with much of the media on open source textbooks these days, there is a fair amount of incorrect data being bandied about, which leads to some false conclusions about the benefits. Such items make for good teachable moments, though.

If you scroll past the infographic, you will find among the comments one from our government relation's director, Rich Hershman. Rich and I are both proponents of the open source movement, and together crafted a policy position for our Association's board. That position, in support of the OER/open textbook movement was adopted nearly three years ago and remains in effect. That aside, there is room for constructive criticism of the open textbook movement and a number of the claims used relative to the movement. I think Rich's comments do a great job of capturing some of these perspectives.

Here are Rich's comments from the posting:

While this is an interesting graphic, I would question some of the facts it displays. The National Association of College Stores has been tracking the cost of textbooks and other course materials for years, and our data and that of others in some aspects are quite different.:

1.) According to actual student surveys, the average full time student spends between $600-$700 annually on course materials , not $900. This $600 to $700 includes purchasing new books, used books, rental, and ebooks. It does not factor in financial aid, tax credits, nor if students sell their textbooks back, all of which would further reduce the net costs -in some cases significantly. Student spending on college textbooks has actually been declining in recent years, according to at least two recent national surveys of students.

2.) The $184 average cost estimate of open source textbooks does not factor in the total costs of the content , since the open source textbook community now advocates for and and in some cases receives federal, state, and institutional subsidies (beyond student fees) in order to develop, update, maintain, and support such textbooks. Therefore, some of the costs of open source textbooks would be hidden from students, though they likely would pay for some of these costs indirectly. Also depending on how a fee would be established, if it was a mandatory school-wide fee as some have advocated, students from low-cost content subjects, like literature, would be forced to subsidize students taking higher cost science and math courses.

3.) Switching to open source textbooks would cost states and localities in states like California, Florida, Texas, Ohio, and Illinois hundreds of millions in lost sales tax revenue. This would likely be offset with further cuts to education funding, and result in higher tuition and fees. It would also reduce income tax and eliminate thousands of jobs and employment opportunities for students and recent graduates.

4.) The average price of new course materials, including textbooks, at colleges and universities in 2009-2010 was $62, not $171. Implying that the average cost of all new textbooks actually used in schools is $171 greatly misrepresents the potential savings as you look beyond single title examples and attempt to jump to claims of aggregate savings.

Open source textbooks are a valuable and an important development in the marketplace for courses materials. There are many reasons why institutions should support the development and experimentation of open source textbooks for academic reasons separate from the perceived cost-savings arguments. There are opportunities to make course materials more affordable through the adoption and use of open textbooks. However, the case for open source textbooks from an affordability perspective should be made with a complete understanding of all the direct and indirect costs and benefits to students. This info-graphic, cool as it, seems to fall short of this test.

It would be great to see the infographic updated with correct information, as such graphics can be useful tools for communicating complex data. OER can have a positive effect on education. However, if we fail to measure the effects accurately, we may come to false conclusions and reap some unintended consequences.

As one example, most college stores are independent non-profit businesses today, and even if they are part of one of the contract management chains, they return revenue or provide other services to the academic institution in most cases. Most revenue from course materials goes to support financial aid or student services. While improving textbook affordability via open source textbooks, educational affordabilty can also be affected, and we are hearing more anecdotal examples of this happening on campuses.

I believe that part of Rich's point is that in addition to the inaccuracies in the infographic, there is a larger set of economic implications here connected to textbooks and textbok affordability. The OER movement needs better and more accurate data on "total cost of ownership" at the student, institutional, governmental, and national levels. This would enable us to better support OER initiatives and find models that are true wins for students. A deeper conversation and investigation of the true costs associated with OER should occur -- otherwise we risk taking a positive innovation and turning it into a shell game with educational affordability at stake.

Short of this type of investigation, why not just take the billions of dollars going into developing open access textbooks and give it to the current textbook publishers to make their content free for the students with greatest need? Or use it to subsidize the top 20 percent of titles from publishers, or the top X percent of most widely used textbooks, making the current high quality products free to students rather spending money to reinvent an industry that already exists? Sure, this would have unintended consequences as well, but we might start with a higher bar and have an immediate affordabilty impact across the widest possible range of students.

My comment here is meant to be somewhat flippant or extreme -- the point being that we cannot throw money at OER and just expect that it will produce high quality, affordable results. There are reasons to support OER and the OER movement beyond affordability. The movement would be well served to make more of those arguments, and fact-check some of their current assumptions related to affordability.