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Introduction to OER Adoption Workshop:

Access, Affordability, Inclusion, and Academic Success

Presenter:

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Territory Acknowledgment

Good morning, I’m Tanya Grosz, and I’m the Director of Educational Programs for the OEN.

Before we begin, the OEN is housed at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities which is located on traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of Indigenous people. The University resides on Dakota land ceded in the Treaties of 1837 and 1851. We acknowledge this place has a complex and layered history. This land acknowledgment is one of the ways in which we work to educate the campus and community about this land and our relationships with it and each other. We are committed to ongoing efforts to recognize, support, and advocate for American Indian Nations and peoples, and we thank the Dakota people for their persistence through a violent history. Please feel free to acknowledge the indigenous people to whom the land you are situated on belongs in the chat if you feel so inclined.

As mentioned during the Summit kickoff on Monday, each of our Summit session relates back to one of the OEN’s Strategic Planning Action Pathways. This session relates back to the Adoptions Pathway, and please post questions in the Q & A.

As we begin the session, we’d like to share a few important details with you.

This session is being recorded. For that reason, you have been muted. The video, transcripts, and slides will be sent to all attendees and to the OEN Google Group after the Summit has concluded. Videos will also be posted on the Community Hub.
We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all attendees. You can learn more about our Community Norms at z.umn.edu/SummitCommunityNorms. Please join us in creating a safe and constructive space. [drop link in chat:

z.umn.edu/SummitCommunityNorms

The hashtag for the Summit is #OENSummit22. Join us on Twitter at @OpenEd_Network.

Localize (from where are you presenting?)

The land grant acknowledgement map

The why of acknowledging land

The OEN is housed at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities which is located on traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of Indigenous people. The University resides on Dakota land ceded in the Treaties of 1837 and 1851. We acknowledge this place has a complex and layered history, as further demonstrated by the Morrill Act.

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Agenda

What problems are we trying to address?
What are open textbooks?
What can we do?

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Who Are We?

Research universities
Community colleges
4-year universities/colleges
State-wide systems
Consortia

Tribal colleges
HBCUs
Hispanic-serving institutions
Australian
Canadian

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“…higher education shall be equally accessible to all”

I am very pleased to be here and to have a chance to speak with you about issues that I think concern us all. When I think about the value and goals of higher education, I see a vehicle to unleash human potential, to help our students become both knowledgeable & skillful, to become good global and good local citizens. I see a vehicle that has the potential to deliver us from social inequality.

However, I also see that far too often higher education is structured in a way that only serves to reinforce social inequality. Barriers to AFFORDABILITY, ACCESS, and INCLUSION exist. And this is what drives us here at the OEN.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “higher education shall be equally accessible to all.”

Our vision is to be one of the many players in helping the United Nations achieve one of their universal declarations of human rights…that higher education shall be equally accessible to ALL. But unfortunately, we know that equal access to education is hindered by many barriers, the first of which is affordability.

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Student Share of Tuition (MN)

1980

18.4%

2022

51.5%

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Cost of Attendance (2023 - 24)

Tuition and Fees (in state): $16,654

Housing (off campus): $13,028

Books and Supplies: $1,000

Personal Expenses: $2,000

Transportation: $200

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In your academic career, has the cost of required textbooks caused you to:

https://dlss.flvc.org/documents/210036/1314923/2018+Student+Textbook+and+Course+Materials+Survey+Report+--+FINAL+VERSION+--+20190308.pdf/07478d85-89c2-3742-209a-9cc5df8cd7ea

64.2%	Not purchase the required textbook
42.8%	Take fewer courses
40.5%	Not register for a specific course
35.6%	Earn a poor grade
22.9%	Drop a course
18.1%	Withdraw from a course
17.2%	Fail a course

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Sense of Belonging

in the Classroom

“Racially minoritized and first-generation students at four-year institutions are less inclined to feel that same sense of belonging compared to their peers at two-year institutions” (Gopalan and Brady, 2019).

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A Solution:�Open Textbooks

As we consider the issues we’ve discussed, affordability, access, lack of diversity in curriculum and whose knowledge is valued in education, I’d like to introduce open textbooks as a way to address these topics. Before I go into open textbooks, what are they and how they are helpful, I want to be clear that open textbooks are just one of many solutions to the challenges we just went through. We are not proposing open textbook as a one-stop solution, but rather another tool you can put in your resources box to address educational equity.

What are open textbooks?

Open textbooks, one type of Open Educational Resource or OER, are A (not THE) solution because they are licensed to be free forever, and they need to be downloaded only once to be used freely thereafter. Let’s see what the business model looks like for these open textbooks.

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$

Publisher

Textbook

$

Students

Author

College / University

Textbook

$

Students

Author

Foundations

Government

Consortia

$

The model on the left represents how we assume all publishing happens:

A publisher invests in publishing a textbook
Students buy the books
The publisher makes its money back, and a profit
The publisher pays royalties to the author (typically single-digit percentage)

But there’s another model (on the right):

A college or university publishes a textbook - they might put out an RFP to their faculty
Part of the funding is paying faculty up front for their efforts
At times, especially early in the open movement, funding came to the institutions from the outside (from foundations, government, consortia), but they are increasingly deciding to self funding these efforts
This model allows the textbook to be free, and available to be freely shared, copied, etc.

Some points to make:

Note that the publishing process could be exactly the same in the two models, including peer review, copy editing, etc.
So, it’s possible to publish a free textbook while also respecting the effort of the author
This more open model also has the potential of addressing inequities in traditional publishing models (whose stories are told, who gets to tell those stories in which a more diverse audience has the potential to contribute to the content creation process, while also enhancing the diversity of gatekeepers to information.

In a time when there is, for example, growing legislation to ban educators from talking about certain topics (i.e. critical race theory), traditional textbook publishers feel pressure to bend to these bans. This has led to some books published by major publishers to focus only on certain stories or historical narratives, thus diluting the content and adulerating the educational experience students could have.
A more open publishing model invites more players to the process and broadens the gatekeeping process in a more democratic way. Going back to Lambert’s third social justice principle applied to open education, representational justice, this gets at who gets to tell those stories.

The reason this slide is important is that it addresses the assumption that, to get a free textbook, someone must have volunteered to write it, or the publishing process must have been worse, when in fact that’s not the case.

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$

Publisher

Textbook

$

Students

Author

College / University

Textbook

$

Students

Author

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All Rights

Reserved

Some Rights

Reserved

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College / University

Textbook

$

Students

Author

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open = free + permissions

copy	mix
share	keep
edit	use

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Common Questions about Open Textbooks

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open.umn.edu/opentextbooks

Where do I find them?

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Are they any good?

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Is there an academic impact?

Pell eligible students

+10.98%

Non-Pell eligible students

+6.9%

All Students

+8.6%

-2.05%

-4.43%

-2.68%

Δ Grade

Δ DFW

The Impact of Open Educational Resources on Various Student Success Metrics

University of Georgia

Change from non-OER to OER

Colvard, N., Watson, C., Park, H. (2018, July) The Impact of Open Educational Resources on Various Student Success Metrics. Retrieved from http://www.isetl.org/ijtlhe/pdf/IJTLHE3386.pdf

This article reports the results of a large-scale study (21,822 students) regarding the impact of course-level faculty adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER). Those courses that adopted OER saw a significant positive grade increase AND a significant decrease in grades earned of D, F, and withdrawals. Earlier in the presentation, we discussed students’ sense of belonging, racial gaps of enrollment and retention as educational equity issues. We can see here how the use of OERs addresses some of these issues in a profound way by:

Helping us move closer to achieving educational equity in that access to course materials was broadened
Improving the academic experience of students in this study by having a positive impact on grades and enrollment
Helping to keep the most marginalized students in our classrooms. What’s even more compelling from this study is that, Pell-eligible students were even more positively impacted by the adoption of OER and by immediate and forever free access to course materials.

Not having money to buy course materials makes a difference. Having immediate free and forever access to course materials makes a difference.

Δ DFW = Change in grade of D, F, and Withdrawal

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Is Inclusive Access the Same as OER?

Also known as Equitable Access, Auto Access, Day One Access, All Students Acquire, and automatic textbook billing, Inclusive Access is essentially a large-scale text rental program.

	OER	Inclusive Access
Free	✅
Customizable	✅
Perpetual Access	✅

Nine Questions OpenStax would have you ask About Inclusive Access program.

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Are There Ancillaries?

OpenStax Hub�A venue for instructors to share ancillary materials that they have created to pair with OpenStax textbooks.

PHET Interactive Simulations (PHET SIMS)�Free, interactive, research-based science and mathematics simulations that cover topics taught in K-12 and higher education contexts, with primary coverage for Physics, Biology, Mathematics, Chemistry, and Earth Science.

MyOpenMath�Free, open source, online course management system for mathematics and other quantitative fields

LibreTexts�Contains resources for thirteen subject areas, and its content has been adopted for more than 150 courses.�

Adapted from https://libguides.csudh.edu/oer/ancillary

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How else can open textbooks improve student success?

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Content Customization
Contextualization
Inclusion
Opportunities for Innovative Pedagogy

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Content Customization

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Contextualization

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Inclusion: Diversifying & Amplifying Voices

Open education can also empower inclusion by diversifying and amplifying underserved voices. This openly licensed book modified a science book with rich indigenous examples with an overarching theme of a braid because the editors suggest that, “When we braid Indigenous Science with Western Science we acknowledge that both ways of knowing are legitimate forms of knowledge.”

The book provides a window into the vast storehouse of innovations and technologies of the Indigenous peoples who live in Northwestern North America. The editors hope that the Indigenous Science examples, research and curriculum models will inspire deep reflection regarding the under-representation of Aboriginal students in the sciences.

This book centers an Indigenous perspective and is co-authored by an Indigenous scholar.

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Inclusion: Acknowledging and Addressing Disparities

And as this open textbook illustrates, open education can be inclusive by acknowledging and addressing disparities and inequities. This Biological Anthropology open textbook was created by over 41 authors with a range of specialists with diverse backgrounds, experience, genders, ethnicities and perspectives.

The authors were motivated to create a learning resource that supports the goal of social justice in higher education. These author anthropologists felt that we must understand cultural difference from the insider’s perspective, rather than from our own perspective, and refrain from passing judgement on others’ cultural behaviors and worldviews, and the collaboratively created book reflects that belief.

Finally, I’d like to provide an example of open pedagogy as an example of how open textbooks can be used to produce innovative pedagogy.

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Innovative Pedagogy: Open Pedagogy Example

Open pedagogy is a model whereby faculty engage students as co-creators in knowledge and curriculum. This book, An Ecological Approach to Obesity and Eating Disorders, is an example of open pedagogy.

An Ecological Approach to Obesity and Eating Disorders is the work of students of Clemson University’s Public Health Science in collaboration with Clemson Libraries. The students wanted it to be an information guide on various weight-related challenges for the general public. The goals of this project were to meet the course (HLTH 4150 – Obesity and Eating Disorders) learning objective of understanding weight issues and to develop a product for the general public to use as a resource for these health conditions.

Students divided the chapters up based on the five levels of the Ecological Model as this public health issue is just not one person’s individual responsibility. In addition to writing his/her individual chapter, each person also peer-reviewed all chapters and provided feedback which allowed for deeper understanding of weight issues. Editing duties were self-selected and completed during the last revisions of the book. The end of semester feedback from the students was overwhelmingly positive.

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“Open textbooks save money, which matters deeply to our students. But they can also create a new relationship between learners and course content, and if teachers choose to acknowledge and enable this, it can have a profound effect on the whole fabric of the course.” - Robin DeRosa

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What can we do?

Take a look! Consider an open textbook!
Write a review!
Adopt if a book meets the needs of you and your students.
Raise awareness - talk with colleagues in your program and department.

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Writing a Review

Is there is a textbook in the Open Textbook Library that fits your class and/or expertise?

Incentive will be paid for:

attending this workshop and
reviewing a textbook in the Open Textbook Library

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Writing a Review

You will receive an email with a link to the online review form.
Complete a concise review by _____________.
The review will be posted on the Open Textbook Library under an open license.
Incentive will be paid.

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Questions?

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Suggested Citation

Open Education Network. “Access, Affordability,

Inclusion, and Academic Success: Intro to OER Adoption Workshop.” July 2024. Available at https://z.umn.edu/introtooeradoption.

This slide deck is available under a CC BY 4.0 International License.

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https://z.umn.edu/introtooeradoption

Thank you!

By Open Education Network. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Thank you, audience, for joining us today and in the conversation around our strategic planning Action Pathways. As we move forward with building out each pathway, we invite you to share related projects that you may be working on, or ideas that the related Summit sessions sparked for you on the Summit Community Share Document that we will drop in the chat: OER Adoptions Pathway Community Document:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ADm-S5VV2s-3Zba1_H0ASOpWhXU_fIeLFyl_vOqXfhg/edit

We also encourage you to keep the conversation going about today’s session in the OEN Google Group.

Also, we want to remind you that today’s session has been recorded and will be shared with you via email and posted on the Community Hub in the coming weeks. Slides and transcripts will also be linked.