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What Does AI�Mean for OER?

Rachael Barlow | CT OER Summit | 3.28.25

https://bit.ly/CTOER25

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My Focus

  • The student perspective
  • What does it mean to “have” a reading?
  • What does it mean to have “read” a reading?
  • What does it mean to have “understood” a reading?

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Reading Wars

  • Emily Hanford on the “reading wars”
  • Phonetics versus whole language

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“Kids are not being taught how to read, because for decades teachers have been sold an idea about reading and how children learn to do it. And that idea is wrong.”

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Source: https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/

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COVID & Reading Endurance

“A lot of what professors have been reporting in the past year or so is that students simply aren’t doing the reading for class … it was a lack of reading endurance, meaning that anything over five pages was just too much for them.”

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“During the pandemic, what we saw was a lot more leniency in the homework given and the grading done … [Students’] expectations of themselves were lowered, how much homework they’re expected to do diminished, how much reading they’re expected to do diminished…”

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Source: https://www.chronicle.com/podcast/college-matters-from-the-chronicle/is-reading-over-for-gen-z-students

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Students do not want to buy the books

  • Students unlikely to buy the books for courses, even when they can afford to do so.
  • Alternatives to purchases: reserves, friends, etc.
  • Questions: how many students are
    • Are not reading because they won’t get the material?
    • Don’t get the material because they won’t read it anyway (or they won’t read it well)?

% of students reporting they had purchased all require materials (textbooks, workbooks, etc.)

N = 484 students across 11 courses (27 sections)

4th week of the semester

What do you consider:

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  • Whether there is a free alternative (68%)
  • How much material costs (54%)
  • What prof said about how often you will use the material (46%)
  • What friends said about how often you will use the material (22%)
  • Whether you believe the course materials will help you learn (20%)

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Generative AI

  • ChatGPT 3.5 emerges in November 2022, followed by many more sophisticated LLMS
  • These LLMs allow users to do many things, including summarizing readings and “talk” to readings (Cliff or Sparknotes, but customized)
  • The use of these tools for reading (versus writing) is much harder to legislate.

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Source: https://notebooklm.google/

Source: https://www.explainpaper.com/

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Positive Spin 👍🏼

  • OER is open and so GenAI can easily digest it
  • Students can use GenAI to
    • Design adaptive low-stake quizzes on the content of OER materials (retrieval practices)
    • Talk to the reading and ask OER questions (dialogic)
    • Explain difficult concepts in OER in terms they can understand (metaphor)
  • GenAI will make OER interactive in ways it never was before
  • Reading might become less intimidating, more fun…

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https://bit.ly/CTOER25

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Negative Spin 👎🏼

  • OER is open and so GenAI can easily digest it

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Negative Spin

  • OER is open and so GenAI can easily digest it

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  • Students can use GenAI to
    • Create summaries so they don’t have to read the OER content at all
    • Avoid struggling through a reading at all (friction issue)

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Thank you

rbarlow02@wesleyan.edu

https://www.wesleyan.edu/cfcd/

Rachael Barlow

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https://bit.ly/CTOER25