Text of my presentation at Southern States Communication Conference on Open Educational Resources

On April 8 I spoke at SSCA on the subject of Open Educational Resources.  Here is the text of my remarks.

The University System of Georgia has taken the Open educational resource movement seriously over the last five years and has proactively addressed the issue of spiraling textbook costs.

 First, it set a goal that its ecore program, by which students could earn a general studies associates’ degree completely online, would use only open resource (free) textbooks by this past fall.

 Secondly, the USG developed a system of grants to encourage faculty, either individually or in groups, to adopt open resources.  These grants may have the faculty adopting an already published open resource, such as from OpenStax.  (is everyone familiar with that?), developing their own digital, open resource and therefore free version of the old course package idea, (that is a compilation of available resources, whether straight text for reading or interactive), or creating their own textbook more or less from scratch.

To this point there have been 11 rounds of these grants.  The grants come in $5,000, $10,000, and $30,000 levels.  The USG has awarded 175 of these grants representing all 26 institutions in the USG.  The benefit to the students, at least financially, has been remarkable, $25.2 million saved with 167,979 students affected.  Georgia is the leading user of OERs, according to the Affordable Learning Georgia website as of Feb. 2018,

  
 So, how does that come to my story.  In Spring 2015 Kris Barton, the then-department chair, asked me to help him develop a textbook and apply for a grant because the COMM 1110 (basic course) textbook from the publisher was getting too expensive.  I agreed to help him with it, not knowing what I was getting into in the long run.  We were awarded the $30,000.  Ideally, this was split into 5,000 each for Kris and me, $1000 for the other departmental faculty who would have certain responsibilities, and about $15,000 for other expenses such as printing copies for the pilot in summer of 2016 and retreats to work on the book.

Although there were a couple of available OERs that under the Creative Commons license (something every college professor should know about) would have allowed us to adapt their chapters and use them, we did not find them to be that good for our students’ purposes.  So, we (I) ended up either writing new or significantly rewriting 11 of the 15 chapters of the final books, and Kris oversaw the grant and wrote 4 chapters. 

The pilot semester was summer 2016, but in May 2016 Kris tragically and suddenly passed away in his sleep at 39.  I became the sole grantee and life got complicated.  I spent a lot of time on the book that summer to get it ready for the pilot and fall 2016 for the full implementation of the grant. 

I have the printed version of the book here.  Our students can get a black and white printed version from Auxiliary Services for less than $20.00, and some do, but most read the digital version on a laptop or tablet, although my surveys indicate some read it on their phones, which for a person of my age is unbelievable. After the first years of implementation, 2016-7, I realized the book needed significant revision, so that’s what I did last summer.  Amy, my co- presenter, added an appendix.   Here is the current version.  It was my and Kris’ vision for it to look as much like a real textbook as possible, given our resources. I used Microsoft Publisher to do so.  Unfortunately, Publisher starts to crash at a certain number of pages, so this one is digitally in two volumes.  Students download it from the libguides or learning management system.  

The two downsides are that we were supposed to create videos and ancillaries for the text.  That didn’t happen after Kris’ death, not to the extent it should have.  We could not get students to agree to be filmed!  And the test bank issue sort of fell by the roadside, I am sorry to admit. 

Another colleague and I applied for a smaller grant (5,000) in January and were awarded it to upgrade the book to a mobile platform, change to InDesign rather than Publisher, and fix the ancillary problem.  In the fall this work will be done.  I plan to write an appendix on online speaking and one on use of APA, and perhaps get a professor to write one on humor and storytelling.  I also plan to divest it of most of the references to our institution.

I am happy to report that the textbook is being used at several other institutions across the planet and has been downloaded over 10,000 times as of this morning, 1900 of those in countries other than the U.S.  I feel like we have done a great service to the world, including the military and the developing world, in providing this textbook free of charge.

This brings me, however, to the downsides of this whole part of my life.  Sustainability.  In the past we depended on the publishers to update, revise, keep the books current.  That is what we paid for.  I sometimes feel that I will be tied to this book for years, something I like and don’t like because it has to be updated.  Our library cataloging system totally changed last year—we had to totally rewrite the research chapter.  In my first edition, Trump was a candidate and not the president, etc.  This summer I’m doing it again.  Hopefully each year the updates will get fewer, but I don’t see them going away.

Second downside is that, in retrospect, Kris mandated the faculty to use the book without any real discussion.  I was working in Academic Affairs at the time and not teaching full-time, but now I don’t think that mandate was a good idea.  I am now the department chair and I have told the faculty who teach COMM 1110—which is taken by about 1200 students per year at Dalton State, and required of every graduate—that they can use a different OER if they find one they prefer.  However, we have to use an OER now to be consistent, since students will not respond well to some teachers using a free textbook and others using a $120 text.  We would all have to decide to go back to Lucas or use another publisher’s book, and that would be a big decision at this point. 

Third downside is related, in that I have done surveys about the book’s use and the students’ attitudes.  Generally their attitudes are positive (and not just because it’s free) but they aren’t reading the whole book, either because it isn’t assigned or they just choose not to. My students, of course, have to read all of it.  The idea that students will read the book because it’s free doesn’t hold up.  They read what they are held accountable to.  I also think most students do better with printed material and don’t read as well with digital, no matter what they say.

The fourth downside is that outside of grants, there is no money in OERs and their status in helping with Promotion and tenure is nebulous right now in many institutions. 

So that is my experience with our OER, and Amy Mendes, my colleague at DSC, is now going to make a few comments on using the book as a new faculty member but mostly talk about the project she was in at Berry College in Rome, GA, to create a textbook.

  

Closing thoughts:  state of OER movement, concerns and promises:

I’m going to close this up with some thoughts on the OER movement.  I am called the Campus Champion for OER on Dalton State’s campus, so I’ve done some research on the quality as well as the quantity of OERs.

As of 2016, only 34% of higher ed faculty knew anything (awareness) about OERs.  This statistic was corroborated by Open Stax in Jan. 2016.  That has probably improved somewhat, but the reality is that most faculty have bigger fish to fry than making sure their students’ textbooks are free.  I myself use an OER in another class but not in all of them, because they don’t exist or aren’t any good for my purposes.

The big question is whether the learning outcomes are as good or better with OERs as with publisher’s textbooks.  The preponderance of evidence and research to this point is that they are at least as good, and occasionally a little better.  There are probably contributing reasons to this:

1.     students are able to get the books, so more likely to read them.

2.     Students have a better attitude with a free book (toward experience and the professor)

3.     A professor who would use the OER probably is more concerned, in some cases, with student learning outcomes.  

4.     The OER might be more suited to the actual students in the class (this seems to be the case in STEM)

5.     OERs are also online interactive labs and exercises, not just straight texts.

6.     Publishers are now getting into the OER business.  They are offering writers of OER textbooks the opportunity to create smart books and interactive learning platforms (adaptive learning) with their OER books. 

OERs are probably more than a fad. It is, in my opinion, an overall good response to the rising costs of rising higher ed costs at least in core classes and for low-income students. 

Note on April 11.  I noticed this got a number of hits. If you are interested in looking at my book, leave a comment and I'll send you the information and links.  

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