Introduction to OPEN:OER, Open Pedagogy,

& Open Access

Robin DeRosa Professor of English & Chair of Interdisciplinary Studies, PSUOER Ambassador Pilot Consultant, UNH

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Open Educational Resources

OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.

Hewlett Foundation: http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education/open-educational-resources

The 5 R’s of OER

• Reuse• Remix• Revise• Retain• Redistribute

Gratis/LibreCC BY Yamashita Yohei flic.kr/p/uG21U

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CCBY Sean McMenemy flic.kr/p/8L2hMU

Save Students Money• Students spend on average $1,200 a year on textbooks

(U.S. Public Interest Research Group, survey of 156 campuses in 33 states)

• That’s equal to more than 12% of PSU in-state tuition!• Since 1978, college textbook costs have increased

812%. To put that in context, it means that textbook prices have increased at 3.2 times the rate of inflation. (Mark J Perry, AEIdeas. http://www.aei.org)

• Used/rentals/ebooks don’t solve the problem. Used textbooks are undermined by new editions, rentals create a system where we remove books from student hands. Many ebooks have expiration dates and print limits.

Effects of Textbook Prices

• 60% of students report not purchasing a required textbook because of cost, and 23% regularly go without books due to cost

• 50% of students report taking fewer courses due to textbook costs

• 14% have dropped a course and 10% have withdrawn from a course due to textbook costs

2012 Survey of 22,000 students, Florida Virtual Campus, comprised of the 12 universities and 28 colleges in the Florida state system.

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When Universities Address Textbook Costs:

Houston Community College• OER --increase in class grade average, increase in

average score on departmental final exam, and a lower course withdrawal rate. (2011, 690 students, http://www.johnhiltoniii.org/)

Mercy College• Pass rates 8.54% higher in OER math sections. (2012,

695 students, http://www.educause.edu/)Tidewater Community College• 90.4% retention rate in all-OER Z-degrees.

Textbook Costs REALLY Matter to Students

• A 2014 survey found that nearly half of students (49%) were actually willing to choose one university over another if free textbooks were provided all four years.

• The survey showed that college students currently worry more about how they will afford required college textbooks than they do about paying the cost of tuition.

http://www.20mm.org/articles/neebo-survey-finds-college-students-worry-textbook-costs-college-tuition-spring-semester/

Image CCBYNC Thomas Hawk https://flic.kr/p/PNrwk

This is not (only) about COST

We could save students money in tons of easy ways:

– Increase all class sizes to 100+;– Increase all teaching loads to 6-6;– Close the library! Close the gym!– Turn off the heat!

Cheaper isn’t the (only) point. Affordability will bring more students to the table and keep them there. But that is only the beginning of how OER can improve the learning process.

Resisting “Students as Consumers”

“Student-centered”

≠“give the customer what s/he wants.”

Photo: CC BY SA Magnus Manske

Open Pedagogy

• Community and collaboration over content.• Connects the university with the wider public.• Treats education as a learner-developed process.• Is skeptical of hoops, products, end-points, experts,

& gatekeeping.

CC BY Tripp flic.kr/p/6K8Kmv

Required TextsLearning OutcomesSchedule of Work

AssignmentsGrading Criteria

Syllabus

Required Texts: what does OER enable?

• Add Components• Revise & Reorder• Customize

Autonomy, Creativity, Critical Thinking

Learning Outcomes

What will your students bring to the class? Where will they take it?

CCBYSA Patti Neumann http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buttress_roots.JPG#/media/File:Buttress_roots.JPG

Image by Daniel Lynds, @daniellynds

TechnoRhizomatic

Schedule of Work

What is the role of content in your community?

CCBY State Library Victoria College flic.kr/p/bibPkt

Schedule of WorkFunction of CONTENT:

for students to learn to identify what matters to them.

The shelf-life of discipline-specific content is short. The shelf-life of learner-centered inquiry is forever.

CC BY Gayle Nicholson flic.kr/p/5wuqSd

CONTENT as Dynamic

“The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is [now] doubling every 18 months…To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.”

~Cathy Gonzalez

www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/1692/decrease-in-knowledge-shelf-life-makes-performance-support-mandatoryCCBY Kevin Dooley flic.kr/p/5ttM97

Assignments

Connected, Not DisposableCCBYSA Martin Abegglin flic.kr/p/7AUF3h

Grading• Training peer graders like we train standardized test

graders (the @Chris_Friend model)

• Open p2p Badges (the BC Campus model)

• Grading by contract and crowdsourcing (the @CathyNDavidson model)

• Grading by guided, frequent self-evaluation (the @Jessifer model)

• Grades that emphasize effort/engagement (the @davecormier model)

“Every study of peer review among students shows that students perform at a higher level, and with more care, when they know they are being evaluated by their peers than when they know only the teacher and the TA will be grading” ~Cathy N. Davidson

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CCBYNCND Andrew Purdam flic.kr/p/3dCSg1

Open Access

• Intellectual Property Scholarly Dialogue• CC Licenses Retain Copyright• Open Access Journals & Peer Review• Green and Gold OA Publishing• Institutional Policies for OA• Access is a Social Justice Issue• The High Cost of Paywalls

Why Do You Do What You Do?

If you write to be read, to encourage critical thinking and to educate, then why wouldn't you disseminate your work as far as possible? Open access is the answer. ~Martin Eve, University of Lincoln

Photo: CC BY SA Ken Lund, https://www.flickr.com/people/75683070@N00

Going Open• OER has to be gratis AND libre.• Saving money is HUGE to students.• OER can empower learners.• Rhizomatic approaches honor student contributions

and enable lifelong learning.• Content isn’t everything.• Assignments should matter to students and should

involve their communities.• Grading should match our pedagogy.• Our courses are communities and communities don’t

have end dates.• Scholarly work should be accessible to the public.CCBYNC Ian-bogdan dumitrescu flic.kr/p/mRKNQ