OER & Open Textbooks on the Access Services Horizon November 13, 2014 Access Services Conference.

OER & Open Textbooks

on the Access Services Horizon

November 13, 2014Access Services Conference

Tucker TaylorHead of CirculationUniversity of South Carolina (Columbia)

Jeff GallantAffordable Learning Georgia Visiting Program Officer for OERBoard of Regents of the University System of Georgia

Textbook Costs

Costs to Students• Tuition• Housing• Food/Clothing/Living• Textbooks

• Textbooks are the one cost you can control

Effects on Students• 60% do not purchase• 35% took fewer classes• 31% chose not to register for a class• 14% dropped• 23% regularly go without

• Source- student survey by Florida Virtual Campus, 2012http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/%5Cpdf%5C2012_Florida_Student_Textbook_Survey.pdf

South Carolina• USC Upstate $800-

1,200• Coker $1,000• Winthrop $1,000• USC $1,008• Clemson $1,138• Coastal $1,147• Furman $1,200• Piedmont Tech $1,200• College of Charleston $1,207• Charleston Southern $1,400• Denmark Tech $1,500• Voorhees $1,500• Midlands Tech $1,632

Cost to USC Freshman• Typical Freshman Semester

– English 101 $98– Biology 101 $367 plus an optional $230 textbook– Math 141 $231– Spanish 121 $213

• Criminal Justice $238

USC• $1377 Your first semester of textbooks

• 190 hours of minimum wage work

– Chemistry 111 • $174 plus an optional $476 package

What are Libraries Doing?• Nothing• Lending and ILL-ing textbooks• Reserve textbooks

University of South Carolina• 2008• 100 students or more• 20,000-25,000 per year• 1000+ textbooks

Circulation Statistics

Problems• Meeting the need• Perception• Cost• Lack of e-book availability• Fear of Promotion• Band-aid• Perpetuation of a bad system

Jeff [email protected]

www.affordablelearninggeorgia.org

No, seriously, send me an email!

What is an Open Educational Resource (OER)?First, you must know what we mean by “Open…”

What is an OER?

A resource is open if you can:• Access it at no cost• Share it with no restrictions• Transform it into something

new• Adapt it for your particular

audience

What is “Open?”

A resource is not open if:• There is no way to

access it without cost• Sharing is either

prohibited or inhibited• Transformation and

adaptation are not allowed

What isn’t “Open?”

How do resources become open?

Unless a work is in the public domain by law, resources are made open through open licensing. Open licenses give permission to access, share, and adapt a resource.For OER, we typically use Creative Commons open licenses.

Open Licensing

Image courtesy of foter.com, CC-BY-SA 3.0

Therefore: An Open Educational Resource is any educational resource that is accessible, modifiable, adaptable, and shareable:• Open Textbooks• Open Assessments (tests, quizzes)• Open Courseware• Open Audiovisual Materials

OER Formats

+

The OER “Wild West”

With OER, authority is always shared.

OER Evaluation

Types of OER review methods: • Editorial Review• Double-Blind Peer Review• Faculty Review (Amazon-esque)• Subject Expert Review • No Review

OER Reviews

Affordable Learning Georgia’s OER Evaluation Criteria

1. Clarity, Comprehensibility, and Readability2. Content Accuracy and Technical Accuracy3. Adaptability and Modularity4. Appropriateness of Material5. Accessibility6. Quality of Supplementary Resources

OER Evaluation

What is Affordable Learning Georgia?

Affordable Learning Georgia Is…

Programs to support more affordable learning materials, including campus advocacy,

faculty development, bookstore collaborations, and grants for textbook transformation.

A website designed to be a one-stop service to help University System of Georgia

(USG) faculty and staff identify lower-cost, electronic, free, and open educational

resources (OER), building on the cost-effective subscription resources provided by

GALILEO and the USG libraries. www.affordablelearninggeorgia.org

An initiative of the University System of Georgia and GALILEO, Georgia’s Virtual Library.

www.galileo.usg.edu

ACTIVITIES AND STRATEGIES

Goals and Programs:• OER for Top Fifty Courses• OER for eCore

• USG online core curriculum• Partnerships for scale and

quality (CSU, OpenStax, eCore)• Bookstore program• Symposium on the Future of the

Textbook• Textbook Transformation

Grants

Why Grants?

Why Grants? Adoption, adaptation, and creation take time. Faculty often lack the time to do this alone. Textbook Transformation Grants allow for: • Course releases or extra-workload

compensation for faculty• Assistance from instructional

designers• Support for training session travel

Vector art designed by Freepik: http://www.freepik.com/free-vector/simple-small-icon-vector-material_575034.htm

External Project Impact• Shared evaluations• Sustainability measures• Shared creations and

adaptations• Lessons learned • RPG statistics • Student savings

Why Grants?Vector art designed by Freepik: http://www.freepik.com/free-vector/simple-small-icon-vector-material_575034.htm

Round One Textbook Transformation Grants

Summary of Round One Grants and Grantees• 48 proposals from 19 institutions; 30 awarded• 64 participants• $314,590 awarded • $2,206,138 in potential savings to students

annually• 19 Top 50 courses addressed• Spring 2015: Semester offered to Students

RPG = RetentionProgressionGraduation

New formula funding model in FY16 for USG from General Assembly will take this into account.

Research on OER and RPG measures are new and ongoing, but recent case studies are promising.

Retention, Progression, Graduation

Part of an infographic by Babson Survey Research Group and Pearson, CC-BY 4.0: http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/openingthecurriculum2014infographic.pdf OER: Awareness Wanted

About 66% of instructional faculty surveyed by Babson in 2014 were not aware of OER.

This goes to 80% if you include “somewhat aware.”

Part of an infographic by Babson Survey Research Group and Pearson, CC-BY 4.0: http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/openingthecurriculum2014infographic.pdf Red box added by Jeff Gallant.

OER: Librarians Wanted

Librarians are here to help: • As consultants on

finding/evaluating resources

• As instructors on using these resources

• As designers of openly-accessible LibGuides or other web guides

Library Services

Online library resources are both licensed and zero-cost to students. Permalinks (permanent links) make off-campus access easy, no matter where the link is located, including freely-available LibGuides.

Library Resources

For example: Every USG Institution has an Affordable Learning Georgia Library Coordinator.http://www.affordablelearninggeorgia.org/about/champions_coordinators

USG Library Coordinators

What can Access Services Librarians do about OER and textbook replacement?

OER and Access Services

1) Advocate with your specialized knowledge• Are textbooks and other required course resources

your most-circulated items? How about your reserves?

• Leverage that data to illustrate the cost burden on your students.– Textbook library checkout is a student sacrifice due to

costs – no notes, highlighting, work allowed in the book – Do you get many ILL orders for textbooks? What classes

are the “regulars” for this practice?

OER and Access Services

2) Make OER visible to your patrons• Example: Virginia Tech

OpenStax kiosk

OER and Access Services

3) Be informed• Keep informed on new high-quality OER/open/freely-

accessible/no-cost alternatives, especially for subjects where faculty often order or reserve textbooks in the library.

• Check up on the latest OER news and research – an easy way to do this is following Nicole Allen and/or David Wiley on Twitter

OER and Access Services

4) Inform your peers• Talk to your teaching faculty about OER, and

recommend high-quality alternatives you have seen and evaluated.

• Are you the library expert on copyright? Help others understand open licensing.

• Connect your peers with new programs which assist in implementation (such as ALG, UMN Open Textbook Library, etc.)

OER and Access Services

Thank you!Questions?