Once a month, the OER Campus Committee will share information about OER to raise awareness, promote, encourage, and support using OER at Leeward CC.
We are launching our first post, today, in the spirit of International Open Access Week (October 23 -29, 2017) to inform the campus about what OER is, why it matters, and what Leeward CC is doing.
What is OER?
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 re-purposing by others” (Hewlett Foundation). In other words:
OER is free to use; no strings attached
No permission is needed since the creator already grants it through a Creative Commons (CC) license
You can retain OER indefinitely
You can choose to modify OER to meet your teaching needs per rights granted by the license
Why does OER matter?
Saves students money
25% of total college costs for Leeward students is for textbooks and supplies
Half of community college students rely on financial aid to pay textbook costs
65% of these students use financial aid to pay for all textbook costs
Grants access to more choices of materials
Materials are publicly available for students to access before and after taking a course
Flexibility to customize or mashup several OER to create custom resources for your students
What is happening at Leeward CC?
Leeward CC supports “Textbook Cost: $0” and using OER. We have an OER Campus Committee, workshops, fellowship program, and more to support using OER at Leeward CC. See the infographic below for information and statistics for “Textbook Cost: $0.”
Our numbers continue to increase regarding “Textbook Cost: $0” courses, students enrolled, subjects, and instructors.
Fall 15
Spr 16
Fall 16
Spr 17
Fall 17
“Textbook Cost: $0” CRN (sections) (% of all CRNs)
55
148
217 (19%)
279 (23%)
289 (27%)
Students enrolled in “Textbook Cost: $0” classes
—
2643
4194
5121
5371
“Textbook Cost: $0” different subjects
12
63
69
111
91
“Textbook Cost: $0” instructors
16
49
71
91
92
How can you get involved?
Be a part of this initiative to “Go Open, Go Free at Leeward CC” and use “Textbook Cost: $0” and/or OER materials in your classes. Contact the Library or EMC to get started. Also, visit our OER website for more information.
On behalf of the Leeward CC OER Committee, we thank you for participating in Open Access Week events last week and reading our blog posts. We hope you found them informative and useful in learning more about Open Educational Resources (OER) and how it can benefit instructors and students. Here’s a summary of everything we shared last week.
Students from Speech Instructor, Michele Mahi’s COM 210H class, candidly share in this video why they appreciate using Open Educational Resources (OERs) in her class.
I first became aware of Open Access (OA) my first week working here at Leeward CC. My office mate at the time was Jayne P. Bopp, instructor in Sociology. Over the course of that first week sharing an office…
I started using OERs in 2014 when a publisher’s representative informed me that my textbook would be undergoing yet another round of “updating” and thus my students could no longer purchase used copies.
Susan Wood, Professor CC of English, was the first at Leeward CC and in the UHCC system to create an open, online course for English 100: Composition I, which provides students with zero textbook cost, and allows anyone to re-use and re-mix her materials under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. With assistance from the Leeward CC Library, Susan found and used Open Educational Resources (OER) and her own content for the content modules. I was fortunate to work with Susan in planning and developing the content modules, putting the content in a weekly modules format using Google Sites, and publishing it as a template site for other Leeward CC ENG 100 instructors (or anyone) to re-use and re-mix under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. Susan also created a companion Laulima course site for instructors to copy to use with the weekly modules site and we created an Instructor’s Guide to help instructors put the course together.
The following is a guest post from Susan Wood.
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I was fortunate to be granted a sabbatical for Spring 2015. Part of the project that I proposed in my sabbatical application was to create an online ENG 100 course using Google Apps for Education that would be available for lecturers (or anyone) to use if they were assigned to teach an online ENG 100. After that project was approved, I was approached by both Kay Caldwell and Leanne Riseley and asked to consider creating the course using Open Educational Resources (OER). I knew very little about OER but have always used textbook cost as a major factor when choosing a textbook, so I decided it would be a worthwhile addition to the project. I did not realize at that point what an adventure I would have in the world of OER.
My first exposure to OER was a video on the Leeward CC Open Educational Resources Guide. In the video, which has since been replaced by Jayne Bopp’s wonderful video, an instructor in social sciences effusively talked about how she decided textbooks were too expensive for her students, so she found a fantastic OER textbook, pasted the link to the textbook into her course website, and proceeded to teach her course from this free resource. She made it sound so easy… all I needed to do was find the perfect OER textbook for ENG 100 and I would be on my way!
However, after weeks of searching and reading, I realized that there was no perfect ENG 100 textbook. I did find some OER ENG 100 textbooks, but some were really long and cumbersome, some were poorly written (ironic, I know), some didn’t cover the range of material we cover in ENG 100, and some were incomplete. It was then I realized I would have to create the course using a re-mix of content from several of the textbooks.
My next step was to pick the best of the content from the textbooks I found. I bookmarked the three textbooks that had material that I thought would best fit in a Leeward CC ENG 100 course, and then I set to work. I wrote an outline of the course and then proceeded to search through the OER textbooks and pull materials that I then revised as needed to fit the course objectives.
Collecting course content was a mostly enjoyable process because I got to explore what others teach in first-year writing courses. It was also professionally invigorating to read through so many different approaches to teaching first-year writing. At times, though, collecting content was frustrating when I could not find what I needed– so I had to create some content myself. Luckily, I had Rachael Inake to help me with the technical aspects of creating Google Slides, YouTube videos, and PowToons, and I was able to use these tools and more to create content. All in all, the experience of choosing, re-mixing, and creating OER was a very positive one.
The ENG 100 course is now finished and I am very pleased with how it turned out. I am excited to use the course for the first time this summer and will use it again in the Fall. I am also really excited that my students don’t have to buy a textbook. In past semesters, some students would go for weeks or even the entire semester without a textbook because they could not afford all of the textbooks for all of their courses. I am thrilled that I can now offer a course that does not burden students with the cost of a textbook. OER makes that possible.
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Below are a few screenshots of the ENG 100 OER course materials.
Susan’s materials available for accessing, copying, re-mixing, and re-using, under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license:
ENG 100 Laulima course site (Contact the EMC for access to the site.)
Please contact the Educational Media Center (EMC) if you’d like to set up an ENG 100 OER course site using Susan’s OER materials or if you’re interested in using OER materials or creating an OER course.
We can’t wait to hear how things turn out for Susan and her students next semester!