[Music]
[Anita Walz] Good afternoon, my name is Anita Walz. I'm thrilled to have all of you here for
the keynote for the Open Education Symposium at Virginia Tech, so welcome.
Iwant to invite someone that I've been working with for the past year
who is a really important member of the university community. She is a student,
she is the chair of the, or director of, the Academic Affairs Committee for the
Student Government Association, and I've asked her to share a few words about
what student government is doing, what they're learning about their own
experience with teaching, with learning materials, and then we will
invite our keynote to come and speak with us. So come on up and and I'd like
you just to introduce yourself and say a few words.
[Avalon Roche] Hi, I'm Avalon Roche. I'm the director
of academic affairs for the Student Government Association on campus.
We represent the undergraduate community here at Virginia Tech, and one of the
initiatives I've been really trying to push this year has been open education.
Student government's done some work on it in the past but we have never really
had a formal role in it and we haven't passed a resolution on the topic yet.
So today I'm just gonna share a little bit about what we've been doing. So we've had
two events so far this year, we've dubbed them "textbook town halls" and essentially
they are panel discussions between students, faculty, and Anita on open education and
the concerns that students have on course materials and access to them.
Students and faculty discussed the higher education costs that are not
always included and kind of the sticker price of education, things that are often
outside of scholarships than other resources that students use to pay for
their education. We're also working on an SGA resolution.
Once passed it'll have the full support of the undergraduate
community behind it and will make its way through the university governance
system, through various commissions and committees, and hopefully the strategies
and suggestions that we've made will be implemented. So we're asking for a review
of current university policies in regards to course materials as well as
open education resources. It supports the use of open textbooks, particularly in
freshman and introductory courses, and asks faculty to consider the cost of
materials when preparing their syllabus and designing their courses.
As a result of the two town halls we've had and also just two conversations I've had
in passing with students on this topic there are few key concerns particularly
centered around again textbook costs. Access codes are one issue that really
stands out to students. They don't get any return on them. At least with a
textbook you can potentially sell it back at the end of the semester.
And so there are students who will actually complete an entire semester's worth
of work within the few weeks that the online material is available for free.
So they'll sign up do the trial period complete all of their semester work in
that time period so that they don't actually have to pay for the access code.
There's also been a discussion about how knowing ahead of time what the cost will
be for each semester helps to strategize and plan their education, not
necessarily not taking classes that have higher courses, but just being prepared
for those. They can save money as needed or plan them first semester when they
know that they'll have some extra income. Additionally, freshman year courses have
some of the higher costs, and freshmen tend to be the least knowledgeable about
what resources are available beyond just buying textbooks.
And so currently we're, for this week we're working on a social media campaign.
We're using the hashtag #TextbookBroke. We're asking students to share their
textbook costs and concerns on the platforms and then we're also
tabling on the second floor between 11:00 and 1:00 each day taking pictures
of students with their textbook costs, asking them why they would support open
education and providing them with information on the resources available here.
So these are our social media handles, if you would like to follow
student government and the posts will begin tonight and continue through Friday.
Our next event is going to be on April 12th from 7 to 8 p.m.
We're hoping to continue the conversation on textbook costs there. Thank you. [Applause]
[Anita Walz] I would like to invite our keynote presenter to join us.
Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani is from the Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, where he serves as the
special advisor to the provost. He is also a faculty member in the field of psychology.
He is an extraordinary advocate for open education, both for
open educational resources and for open pedagogy.
I've known Rajiv for the past two years through the Open Textbook Network and
through the Open Education conference and I'm really excited for what he is
bringing to us about open pedagogy. It's sort of a second step beyond open
educational resources that really has to do with teaching and learning and things
that faculty can do in their classes, what students can do in their courses,
to achieve a more equitable access to teaching and learning, both to resources
and to teaching and learning processes. So I'd like to welcome him and thank you
very much for being here. Please welcome Rajiv.
[Rajiv Jhangiani] Thank you, so while I'm coming up here oh it is up there, never mind
and it sounds like you can hear me okay so thank you. There's a few reasons why it's a little
treat to be here but I have to say I confess it's not all of you that's my
number one reason it's Anita it's too often the case I think that the people
who really have the expertise within an institution
their voices are readily discounted and it's always an external voice that's
listened to more but I really hope that those of you who I because I know we've
got much people from other institutions those of you who do work at Virginia
Tech I hope you appreciate the wealth of knowledge and expertise and the just
unbelievable leadership that Anita has shown the open education community
overall not just at Virginia Tech so I think you're very very lucky to have her
let me just say that. so the treat to be here in her backyard
as well so just a show of hands because I see a lot of familiar faces probably
this morning so there's also a lot of new people how many of you have just
come in for the afternoon or we're not here in the morning I guess and off
those of you were here how many of you are not from Virginia Tech specifically?
So most are still from Virginia Tech awesome so obviously I'm new to most
of you but I thought if you wouldn't mind I'd like it indulge me a little bit
I'm gonna tell you a little bit more about myself and why exactly this what
matters so much to me so as you can probably tell from my accent I didn't
grow up in North America I grew up in a small town in India of about 25 million
people called Bombay really interesting place to grow up and to be honest I'm
quite a bit of privilege simply just many of you will know as a funny thing
you don't actually realize you have it until you lose it at least in part and
that's exactly what happened so I was growing up my family suffered a series
of financial setbacks my father passed away we lost our home and you know
coming from a point where the future was completely certain
it became desperately uncertain within a span of about a year and a half and so
my grandmother's my maternal grandparents took me in it at this point
so it was because of that I had a home and it was a few years later when I
wanted to move abroad to study to seek a higher education it was my maternal
grandparents who sponsored that so they made it possible for me to move to
Canada at that point as an international student I'm also gonna pause and say at
this point if you work with international students you may be aware
that there's all sorts of these restrictions even in Canada in the
United States so I was unable to work just get a regular job I did with
restrictions on what kinds of employment I could seek so it took me about eight
months before he was able to seek and actually secure employment on campus so
during that time of course it was still my grandparents paid my tuition and I
want to just appreciate for a moment how motivated I was to do well because I
knew that every single semester I made the Dean's List those letters of
commendation would make their way back to India to my grandparents and so
anyway it was about eight months later as I said I got my first job I started
be able to be in my own tuition and shortly after that that my grandparents
came to visit and I remember this time really fondly it was the summer in
Vancouver which is just a very seductive time to be in Vancouver but I remember
this summer in particular because they spent three weeks with me and at the end
of that time they went on to the states in fact where my grandfather's brother
still lives in Massachusetts but then my grandmother decided to cut short they
trip it was supposed to be here for a couple of weeks she wanted to go home at
the end of about a week or so we flew back come back to India seven days after
they landed my grandmother passed and ten days after that my grandfather
passed away I think by itself this is not that unusual because they've been
married for more than 50 years so this is this happens you don't think that
relationships that last that long but I think what is special for me because
this is really sort of a bittersweet story for me is I think few people get a
chance to experience that kind of closure especially with someone who
matters that much to them so that's why this story matters to me but I'm also
acutely aware that if it were not for my grandparents investment in my future I
would not have moved to Canada I would not have become a Canadian citizen I
would not have become a university professor and I definitely wouldn't be
at Virginia Tech today and so this is where I'm coming from and the reason why
I'm sort of foregrounding where I'm coming from it is a bit hinting at it in
the title of my talk and for those of you following online I will be tweeting
out the link to my slides so you don't have to worry about access to those but
I'm calling my talk today open educational practices equity achievement
and innovation and the message that runs through that for me is a message that
very much concerns social justice and I'm saying this explicitly because last
summer there was a conference that we hosted at my university in Vancouver
called digital pedagogy lab and that's the conference that often takes place in
Virginia in fact but during that conference the closing keynote was given
by Jesse Stommel who leads the Digital Pedagogy Lab along with Sean Michael Morris
and he said this he said increasingly he thinks the work of education is activism
and not teaching and it struck me when he said this because one of the things
that reminded me off was the writings of the incomparable bell hooks awhile
before that wrote about her commitment to engage pedagogy being an expression
of political activism so I thought we all have politics right especially if
you claim not to be political that is very much
a function of political privilege right there so I wanted to foreground my
politics with this so let me say this I believe very strongly that higher
education is a vehicle for economic and social mobility and when I say this is
not a theoretical construct for me this is my lived experience but the more I
examine the structure of higher education the more I confess I see how
it reinforces and replicates existing power structures and this is what
concerns me not too many people are lucky enough to have a grandfather like
mine so so I want to remind us also of this article 26 of
the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights points to the importance
of equal access to higher education but I think as soon as we hear this as soon
as we make this our minds immediately will go to the third world to places
like where I grew up maybe the way there is not enough seats
for a number of students or maybe insufficient infrastructure but this
applies to the human as well United States in 2018 consider this study
commissioned by the Department of Education your Department of Education
so that just the first decade of this century 2.4 million students could not
attend or complete college because of cost there's a lot more students who can
complete for other reasons aside because this is just the subgroup that you can
attribute to cost and I want you to understand he said kids who did all the
right things in took the right classes in high school they cheat all right
grades it was just cost let's shut the door for
them and if you if you are if you work in higher education even follow in
higher education even as a student for some time you know this is no surprise
why here's one big reason across the United States of course there's been a
gradual decline in state appropriations for higher education this is the case
all across the country but if you want to snapshot of Virginia brace yourself
the lines crossed sometime so at this point with declining state
appropriations there's been an increasing amount of burden being placed
on students so in the form of tuition so in fact of the last two years there's
been even more of a dramatic increase in terms of the burden being placed on
students so let's do a little reality check
which again I pull this up two days ago this is your latest cost of attendance
for a single year of attendance at Virginia Tech yes and I'm going to
remind ourselves of what the minimum wage is in the state so back of napkin
calculation because I know there's always people who think well when I'm at
the school I was working on the same things haven't really changed yeah no
they have how many hours would it take a student working minimum wage to pay for
one year based on that cost of attendance that's my question
what does that mean per week yeah 70 hours a week is what it costs working
full-time of it's way more than full-time there are literally not enough
hours in the day that's what I'm trying to say if you're trying to pay your way
to earn your way through through pinkness it's not a solution so think of
it this way plan a is a welding which is not a great
time for most people plan B is work your way through school and as you can see
that's not actually possible at all Plan C for the students to run lots of this
I'm sure what disturbs you yeah for money right there's a little
choice so yes and I hope you've seen the movie by now I hope I'm not giving away
any spoilers or anything but but just like in the movie they're all around us
and we're basically other way two-thirds of students undergraduate students in
this country require a student loan just to get into the classroom but let's take
it further after the Virginia in particular they are very close to the
average student that low in the country which is close to thirty thousand
dollars on average at the moment you can see majority of graduates from Virginia
based on the latest data from Tigers carrying dead of some kind whether it's
private inyanga and of course it's not just that
the financial implications of this kind of debt that I'm worried about
as a psychologist of obviously I'm worried about the mental health
implications of this kind of strain but other things the delaying of life
milestones for example what's the impact on career choice that's one example and
then of course you can actually look at the impact of the loans themselves and
the interest rates so it's quite a serious issue and this is not isolated
to the United States either I should say my alma mater the University British
Columbia it's a wonderful School in Vancouver and a few years ago they had a
marketing campaign the womanís celebrate their graduates around complication so
they put these posters on the ground all around campus
they gave graduate students markers he said Dylan your most memorable
experience don't think that's what they were going for but as you can imagine
that's the picture that went by oh so this is a shared issue now there are
many things that need unpacking people to understand the affordability or lack
thereof of higher education today and I think so Sarah Ulrich rob is a scholar
who's at Temple University now well there's a really extraordinary job of
laying there the reality of students today in particular I think she does a
really good job of emphasizing the reality of food insecurity among
undergraduate students across this country so if you're interested in
really more I recommend that you that you get Sarah's book called paying the
price another resource I'll point you to is that is a national survey of students
that again documents how prevalent food insecurity is a majority of students in
fact experience some degree of food insecurity across this country so this
is another report I will highlight if you want to do it is a bit more but I'm
not going to belabor this is too long too much longer I will say though that
in in the context of all of these things affordability of higher ed to
transport cost of living these are things that all impact the numbers
you're seen but they have things that we have no control over
so as individual faculty one of one of the reasons why I want to talk to it
with your faculty about resources in particular and a lot about the push for
open textbooks the reason why I think emphasizing this is important is twofold
one is the issue of control there's nobody else who has control over this
right faculty are the only people who get to make this choice thank goodness
and we have a best position to make these choices for our students I would
never see otherwise at the same time it's extraordinary the patient no other
consumer good that between 1977 and 2015 Rosen cost as much as textbooks did not
even health care very consistent commitment between three and four times
the base of inflation and if you're a faculty member over here I'm sure your
experience is no different from mine when we get unsolicited brown paper
packages from commercial publishers every once in a while showcasing their
latest where's the latest editions and of course we're familiar with the
practice of new editions with only cosmetic updates they don't get money
from the used textbook market so there's certainly an incentive to put out
meaningless new editions but this is horrifying we live in the era of the
full hundred dollar textbook here's one example and not isolated so
let me throw up another example and although I'm picking on one particular
publisher today I can easily pick on any I think there's only one
oh sorry is that bad check check check how we doing
I should probably talk if you wanna check and I coming through just barely
just barely you really got it okay a little close all right very clean so I'm
just saying that this is one particular publish on pointing to but when it
really should be any publisher when it comes to these kinds of costs and I
really think there's only one appropriate collections or for all the
textbook and I think this is it I love that reaction so of course you
know commercial publishers will nowadays often point to the graph that's been
updated that shows that these numbers actually started plateau in terms of the
cost of books but it will seem that that includes if a number of other things
then clues things like for example you know occasional books now print books
includes who we are it includes a number of other things so it's a bit misleading
and this is precisely why student groups across not just your country but even
mine have launched this tech this textbook broke social media campaign so
you see that hashtag if you really want to see students they taking photographs
of receipts as they walk out of campus tours across the continent showcasing
how much they're spending on textbooks for a single semester in some cases you
can see these white boards where they being asked to check out how much
they've spent all the way from from zero to over a thousand you can see some
people writing too much at the top my personal favorite how much did you spend
all the way at the bottom my firstborn young now because these are the best
data we have when it comes to student textbook behaviour comes from the state
of the state of Florida this is a survey that's been done a few times most
recently in 2016 before that in 2012 this survey has a sample
of more than 22,000 students so that the margin for error is very very tiny the
the sample is drawn from every single degree granting institution in the state
and it's shown us in increasing terms how students are not buying one of the
at least one of the required course textbooks because of cost that's how
that sentence ends in the survey because of costs nearly half of them taking
fewer courses are not registering for a specific section or a specific cost
because a textbook costs and again learning a poor grade I think the real
calculus at the undergraduate degree is this how much of my dream is coming from
the online platform quizzing platform is it 10% if so I'll take the hit on my
grade if it's 35% I can't think that course I'll have to drop it take another
course that's what's happening and so one of the places this is happening you
may actually know about this there's an especially dark corner of the internet
it's called ratemyprofessor.com the mechanics that students have been using
on this side for quite some time one of the times is requires a textbook another
one of the tax is actually uses the required textbook it's an ugly ugly I
didn't make this up this actually exists of this cricketer the profile for master
unit objective is brilliant very helpful not very clear but yes but that's when
they buy books this is a lovely comment from a student at the University of
Minnesota who was asked to buy a book in this case was an $85 interaction of
French textbook they decided that's too much money for me they decided to go
online and it's on the board not just the people to previous edition but to
older editions they spent $8 and this was their rationale and again if you're
a French scholar maybe we'll take issue with this but how can you argue with
this and I feel disability about so many disciplines you look at elements of
anatomy and physiology is not like with growing new organs according to new
textbook addition cycles right I don't the psychology instructor I don't need a
new description of classical conditioning every two years I really
don't I promise you that bizarre so there's that but we don't buy all books
they can increasing numbers illegally downloading ebooks as well I simply
search for the book title and add PDF and you find what you need to find very
often using illegal torrent sites as well so what I mean this this is a
message from the student who is illegally scanned and uploaded one of
the commercial textbooks this one from Pearson and this is in Pennsylvania
nessing penn state you are gouging your students we'd be willing to pay a fair
price for this book but that we far south of the $200 you charged at the
bookstore fix this lower the tuition a bit and maybe students like me one spent
several days scanning your materials and putting it online also clean the
bathrooms on the first element women I love that it's like a catch-all for the
computer well I think we have to recognize that
if students are feeling that this is a better way to go this is a preferable
option they're choosing to risk prosecution in order to gain access to
what we we are saying is required we have to ask ourselves what the system is
provoking and then of course as faculty we can make things better or we can make
things worse this is one of the ways in which we make it was yes there's nothing
more frustrating for a student than spending the two hundred dollars and
then finding out six weeks into the semester that you only needed two
chapters right and this is an important issue see this but we have a principal
agent problem whether people who choose the resources who assign the resources
are not the ones who have to suffer the consequences of that choice and so
something close to thirty five percent of faculty actually completely unaware
of what the cost is of the resources that they have mended this is an issue
this is a problem right now of course I will also talk about access codes and
this is the new frontier textbook affordability especially when
these are associated with a new edition of the book that takes out the older
vision and even when you have these conversations as I'm sure many of you do
textbook publisher representatives come to compliment what they saw coming to my
office they realize there's no point but you know when they used to come to my
office I used to invite the members I want to have this conversation with you
and if they speak to you like they speak to me
they would say things like well that's why we have a soft cover option you see
finder option ebooks that's why we have these ebooks to make it more affordable
for students so I'm going to just say I think ebooks are really a wolf in
sheep's clothing for several reasons one is students can often spend more money
when they not buy the release an e-book for 180 days or one semester or whatever
it is because they can't resell it on a test point you made as well but beyond
that they lose access so the student whose studies anatomy and physiology
wants to go on to medical school might want to keep that book as a reference
too bad forget my flop learning that's done right so they could spend more they
lose access they don't actually own it they feel they can't resell it at
leasing it and then of course we should talk about accessibility so digital
rights management restrictions on copying and pasting restrictions on
printing so we all have offices or services for students with disabilities
that go through this one of us will go reformat and commercial most to make it
accessible for them right it's ridiculous we are subsidizing the work
of the commercial textbook industry this is not something universities I
think should be spending public dollars in order to do to make a commercial
resource accessible to everyone in the classroom
I mean it's bizarre and so this is why every time we adopt open textbooks at my
institution and I should back up by saying - traditions the leading
institutional a doctor or open textbooks in the province of British Columbia the
reason why we do this so much one of the things is we get this gasp of relief
from that office because they not bound by digital rights management because
they're not even bound by transform all rights reserved copyright
what they do to reform a can easily easily be shared with other institutions
preventing duplication for example so I think it is important to ask ourselves
that if all students can access the required materials we have to ask
ourselves who higher education is being reserved for and so this is why I talk
so much about open educational resources I know many of you already use them
there are some creators in the room people worked on adaptation projects for
example but people often still misunderstand what we are are we are not
defined by being free we are not defined by being digital we are not defined by
being online we are defined by the permissions and these are what we call
5r emissions so the five RS reuse revise remix retain redistribute the most
important obviously reuse so that students and faculty have free
unfettered reuse so it's not just that you can deploy in your classroom but you
have those extra additional permissions so even if you consider as a faculty
member revise and remix to me that's really the
excitement because we don't have to this was a point that was made so eloquently
in the panel earlier today you don't have to say don't read chapter 5 take it
out if there's something missing write it in my field is still grappling with
the replicability crisis the thing is I want to add and change so called
canonical findings that are being questioned are not gonna wait three
years to have that reflective I can make that change midstream midway
through the semester but I can go further right I can read my assignments
through the book I think future research from labs in my department I can even
find a service level I can change the names of the people used in examples in
the book to reflect the diversity in my classroom there's a whole range of
things I can do and I have to say I think it's horrifying but it's faculty
normative practice for us is that we take we paint our courses to map on to
the table of contents of a textbook I have to say I have let me do it but this
to me is a new layer of academic freedom to be able actually modified
instructional materials to serve our pedagogical roles this is more freedom
not less right and of course the retain and redistribute I mentioned earlier the
power of the student being able to retain these resources forever and share
them legally not through in authority sites but with a family with informal
learners absolutely why not and so open educational resources are commercially
licensed through what are called Creative Commons licenses and I wanna
pause over here because these are licenses that I'm sure all of you in
those of you that it'll be new to open education have seen these are little
codes that you see on on different websites that you've already played in
but I wanted to decode them because they do look a bit like hieroglyphics so
these occupies space that's a little bit between things that I highly in the
public domain and things that are all rights reserved copyright it
misconception number one people who applied a Commons licensing to their
work are giving up copyright no you're not you still have the copyright the
difference is you are choosing in advance how you're comfortable with
other people using your work and that's where those simple is come in so you can
say hey I want to be used this in any way you like but you have to give me
credit which means by that's attribution that's the only cause you could choose
to put it or you can say give me credit but you know what I don't want you to
take my materials my work and sell it on Amazon
5,000 pounds of all so I'm going to add the non-commercial clothes in those
cases maybe or I'm going to say yes yeah that mean you can use this in any way
you like you can translate it into French if you like right but then you're
going to share your derivative version with the rest of the world with the
comments so it's not just you is gonna benefit everyone will benefit from your
adaptations and then of course you have the one right at the end which is
technically not even an open educational resource license no derivatives so you
can use this but you can't make any changes and in some rare cases that is
important do you think about creative artists who say I don't want you to
change my poetry or photographer I don't want you to so it'll be a bit any
differently than how I presented it or maybe you have a text book about legal
statutes again that makes good sense over there there are reasons for all of
these things but once you know how to decode those four things you know all
about Creative Commons licensing effectively so I'm not just talking
about textbooks talking about images the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands is one of
several large museums that are openly licensed their master works this is
Vincent van Gogh's self-portrait this is all we are openly licensed right and I'm
highlighting this because if you've ever taken of course an art history you know
those books are among the most expensive precisely visitor Commission's involved
but these works are in the public domain so now you can download it like a three
gigabyte size file of this image legally you can print it the size of this wall
you will just be paying the cost of printing images like this up or we are
videos of oer you see those hieroglyphics in there in the in the
video screen so they say attribution non-commercial no derivatives
there's a recent one you can download TED Talks equally right you don't have
to install some sketchy plugin in your Chrome browser in case of the link goes
dead you can download it legally this is OVR
yes if you use interactive simulations and you teach STEM disciplines hopefully
hopefully you know about the university a borderless Phet simulations
interactive simulations fully openly licensed absolutely brilliant this is a
we are right if you teach English literature tens of thousands of classics
have been digitized again Project Gutenberg or we are public domain stuff
now and a composer here it is to say that if you do teach English literature
let's impeach the collected works of Shakespeare when you ask your students
to spend $100 on a new anthology that's come out they're spending $100 for the
preface because everything else in the book is in the public domain this is the
power of the mill Sheldonian question do I need this for the question we ask
ourselves is which book do I need and then of course textbooks one of the
easiest places to find textbooks is in fact the open textbook Network there's
over 400 open textbooks right now in this repository and you will see faculty
reviews transparent where they means institutional affiliations what do you
think about the books there are some books in there which don't have fabulous
reviews and that's important because we want people to know if this deficiencies
or you think those deficiencies it's important to say so this is not a
movement that's about getting people to adopt resources that they don't want to
adopt but this is helpful in reviewing books tell me what you think the
deficiencies are there are funders waiting in the wings upon those projects
but your expertise is valuable and not an unbiased observer over here this is
one of the textbooks I've worked on so this is an interesting case though I'm
going to show you how this worked this is a book that existed a u.s. edition of
research methods in psychology and you talk about research method but one of
the book existed it was a US Edition and some of you may know research laws
governing how you interact with human participants differ from country to
country so we had modified it to make it relevant
the Canadian context we also wanted to update it to reflect the reproducibility
issue in psychology talk about open science practices so my colleague ijj
and i modified it we have the Canadian edition and then more recently Dana
Layton from Texas A&M University worked on the book follow me even more updates
and in fact repatriated it so you have the second American edition and then
Kari Cutler from Washington State University earlier to see are built on
Dana's edits and released the third American edition and then Matthew Crump
from Brooklyn College will turn all of that and update it even more and now we
have even the next US Edition this is just rolling alone so one of the things
I love about this is you can never foresee some of the use cases of
something that you want any license and this has been a real delight because I
know when I go back to teach this course next I'm going to draw on all of the
things they've done I don't have to take everything but I get something control
they cook on their collective expertise and improve the experience of my
students and there's even others there's another guy David woods at UBC Okanagan
who's in fact about a stupid lab guide that can be paired with this book now
there's other projects developing and similarly resources like powerpoints
question banks you name it this is what your movement is doing now so definitely
textbooks and when it comes to textbooks one of the nice things about it is it's
not just a good idea it doesn't just serve social justice it
doesn't give you just more pedagogical flexibility in terms of the content
turns out it's actually empirically supported as a practice there are about
17 peer-reviewed studies at this point I was going to say 16 but a study of
mine was accepted last week it's a 70 and what's interesting is typically is a
different they've been conducted in different contexts that some different
disciplines different types of institutions some are one institution
some community colleges but the remarkable consistently consistency
across this literature in general students perform no differently when
they are saying commercial all the textbooks and in the cases for they do
perform differently remarkably the students assigned open resources
outperform those assigned the commercial resources that's really interesting
that's something that they came to but if you're interested in research you can
simply visit this website the open air croup is a place that just collects all
of the existing open research so you can actually read the studies yourself
studies like this one this is one of the larger ones Lee envisioned his
colleagues this is in Utah this is a huge study almost 17,000 students at 10
different institutions and if you're interested in the survey if you have a
statistical mind you'll be happy to know Lee is propensity score matching so they
didn't just assign students to be in sections with open books and commercial
books they actually measured about 10 different covariance and they made sure
that the students in the to comparison rooms were equivalent at the start of
the semester essentially and same findings in it as usually fine lower
withdrawal rates what we are using students more likely to pass the course
with a c-minus or better that's the cost performance issue and then the
enrollment issue which is also fun students who do actually channel there's
cost savings in to completing their degree sooner there's a remarkable
benefit you can actually start to look at the net tuition benefit to the
institution from supporting who we are at option one of the rubrics that you
just want to apply over here comes from an early pioneer in the open ed movement
whose name is David Wiley this is his rubric and he writes in a
student successful dollar is an interesting
this so on the on the y-axis you're seeing that cost a student and although
it says zero to two hundred I think we should probably update that to maybe
four hundred at the top right this way but you get the idea that's the one of
money students are spending actually spent on the x-axis that percentage of
students completing the course with a C or better and I've grayed out sad and
glad because they sort of boring right because if a student let's say chooses
not to buy the book so they spent mean let's say nothing and they do badly or
two fully well they're sad but no one's surprised because that's what gives you
won't happen or if they buy the book and they do well we're we're glad but that's
what we assume would happen but consider the case of a math students at Mercy
College in New York when they had a commercial textbook for math along with
a very popular quizzing platform called MyMathLab some of you will recognize
that and it cost students about one hundred and ninety dollars but forty
eight percent of the students were completing the course for the C or
better which means they can now use it as a prerequisite to go on thank but
then they switch to an open textbook and they switch to an open quizzing platform
in fact which is called my open math and it did cost students to access the
platform there was only five bucks so we went from one hundred ninety bucks
to five bucks and all of a sudden 62% of the students were walking at that rate
passing the course for the C or better and that's the difference between men
and right now the research matters there's a faculty member this is really
the reason why I got drawn in these were anonymous comments from the first
semester I began adopting open textbooks on my course evaluations you can see
some students talking about the cost savings how they like is accessible the
convenience of having all of the digital formats that they want but I loved that
comment in the middle right those are the students that matter the most to me
those are the students who will really benefit the most and so there's an
interesting parallel we know from research like the Florida textbook
survey as we've replicated in British Columbia
can't show you the majority of students are not buying some of their required
textbooks that the burden of high textbook costs is currently being
disproportionately borne by students already marginalized by students of
color by first-generation students by those who will is to include for example
and so one of the things I love about this movement is that these marginalized
students are disproportionately benefiting from this movement which
again demeaning planters and this is not an outlier comment in fact what a few
days ago when I was looking at a press release about this very event I got a
comment from one of your very own colleagues the instructor at Virginia
Tech a PhD student this is what Sarah wrote as an undergraduate student I
chose a major that I could afford to study while I was very interested in the
sciences any of those courses the related material were much more
expensive I could not afford the textbook and other related materials as
I work with students of yours I always wonder who else might be making choices
based on affordability those are the students I worry about you see this
everywhere and then you see the Virginia Tech I want to celebrate a couple of
Eros though I don't have speed it's not here then you should know Stephen
Stephen has made a remarkable contribution this is one of the open
textbooks that's been developed here at Virginia Tech in fact so off those 400
plus books we now have fundamentals of business produced at Virginia Tech and
of course Stephen was supported by a big team of course including Anita walls but
get a sense of this this is just a Virginia Tech right
the estimated cost savings but $160,000 per euro that's a remarkable impact and
that's just here because as you can see just above that worldwide 78,000
downloads of the book in the short time it's been available this is
extraordinary right I have to say as well there's no better service you can
do discipline and this simultaneously no
quicker way to be a row of white girl and author their publishing than access
there's a number of benefits over here but just think about the benefits to
students here at Virginia Tech another one I will highlight this has just been
finished at students about beta phase right now for testing but we also have
another steam these elusive Stevens Virginia Tech right now so this is just
being tested right now another of the textbook for the course on
electromagnetic fields wonderful right there are three thousand institutions
this is all that's necessary you certainly don't need to produce
everything but this is already a magnificent contribution I will also say
that I think this further you can go right I want to highlight again my alma
mater I talked about it in the context of that marketing campaign that went
sideways but they've done some wonderful things and so it gives a suggestion for
you as well at learn because at UBC it's the students who really advocated
effectively to raise awareness about the existence we are because there are no
red marking representatives knocking on off the stores
nobody promising to sponsor research conferences and meetings and exchange
for a textbook adoption when it comes to open stuff let's the students they raise
awareness these things exist then they were compactly saying well you know they
maybe there's some work I need to do in order to adopt the book maybe I want
to make a couple of tweaks here and there need to find the time and if it's
not going to be recognized let's say in terms of grandeur it comes off a release
of my time it needs to count to win something and
so about two years ago nativist a British Columbia which is the big r1
institution in my province modified their tenure and promotion policies and
the creation and adaptation of we are now chants under the educational
leadership statement category I think it is so I think that's something you
should do I think it is important really important not to leave the creation of
oh we are two people who can afford to do it off the side of their desk not the
people who can afford to do it without any compensation I think the word needs
to be compensated and one of the many reasons I think it needs to be
compensated is that if we leave it to those who are sufficiently privileged to
produce oh we are named ideology that's associated with that privilege becomes
over-represented in your er so I think we need to think about that quickly on
every side and talking about equity this is not just about equitable access to
knowledge it's also about equitable access to knowledge creation so I'm
gonna pivot now and broaden it like it's the open education movement earlier
today we've been talking a lot about open pedagogy about open educational
practices not just the resources and that's the one little widening of the
movement but before I get into it I want you to just look at this image so this
comes from a French textbook or a French book from 100 years ago that when they
were forecasting that classroom of the future although technically is the
classroom of the year 2000 so the classroom of the recent past I think is
really interesting because the ideology that's embedded in that illustration is
quite clear who is permitted to be the professor who are permitted to be the
students not a time of gender diversity in here but also the pedagogy what is
the instructor duties of feeding and received
boundary of the poems into some sort of electronic English system it's imagining
the delivery information into students minds
there's no note-taking there's no clear interaction this is no active learning
right oh and of course there's your graduate student teaching assistant yes
that's the actual label and let's be very clear it's unbelievable I think
it's easy to laugh at an image like this right at the same time I have to say if
we look at what we do critically I think it's actually not terribly far from this
the majority of classes where there is no active learning the majority of
classes where they is very much content delivery as opposed to something else
like skill development majority of classes would be rely on things like
publisher supplied question banks we don't write the questions we don't write
the content it's very bizarre so this is where I think openness really helps as
well so but the image that you just saw also the minds of white powder fairway
described as the banking model of Education and thread is a great source
of her to read I especially recommend his book on called the pedagogy of the
oppressed invites that it has in this model the banking model turns their
students into containers to be filled by the teacher the more completely she
kills the receptacles of that the better a teacher she is the moment we the
receptacles permit themselves to be filled the better students they are
education must becomes the act of depositing in which students are the
depositories and the teachers the depositor in the banking concept of
Education knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves
knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing just in that
last paragraph I think you can unpack a whole lot but this is powerful to me to
think about this in the context of the previous illustration and what open
pedagogy permits consider one element of this
let's talk about learning outcomes just for a second
many of us have encountered learning outcomes may be the first time when the
institution was going through or your program was not going through some sort
of presentation some sort of standardization move and as someone who
works very closely with my teaching and learning center I have to say that I see
benefits to learning outcomes and backwards course design and aligning
activities and assessments and all of that
yes but part of me also things it's weird but I can tell students before I
ever meet them before before the semester begins before I know who's in
my classroom but the journey is going to look like it is clearly they're not
gonna shape the journey that's weird to me I got this I also think about the
back end of the semester right think about the tool we use the learning
management system what do you use over here Candice excellent ken this is
interesting here's what we want assess I'm trying not to say too much so the
learning management system this is if you don't know Audrey Watters unis don't
know Audrey Watters she is one of the most extraordinary thinkers her depth of
knowledge history of educational technologies absolutely unparalleled but
she likes that the LMS is ultimately a piece of administrative software first
of all there's that more the management in there that gives it away the software
that purports to address questions for teaching learning but that really works
to manage and administer in term often circumscribing methodological
possibilities the point of video is that surely learning is not something that's
best achieved through management well let's talk about the others and your
canvas because it's not a blank canvas is it you can't of course you build your
infrastructure you build your architecture the another semester you
are having those courses you think I like you
reuse of that architecture teach this course it's also archived the
ghost ring maybe I'll restore it for the next semester I've seen how it's good
but what's the one thing we wipe any trace of Student Activity so not only
have you told us out of the semester you appreciate this journey my friends now
I'm confirming everything you did completely useless I think this is
bizarre and then of course we have these delicious policies ablest ridiculous
insulting policies like this when you make policy like this it says a lot
about insecurities of your own I think it also says a lot how little you know
about ableism how you're forcing students who require a laptop in order
to deal with a disability even though taking in class you're forcing them to
help themselves in the classroom by requiring or requesting an accommodation
we really have to think about how much we are controlling our students the
environment we talk a lot about learner-centered environment
student-centered learning driven they're not driving the curriculum is driving
instructors are driving it budgeted budgetary requirements are driving it
I'm not seeing a lot of student driving and then of course we can talk about
assignments and I had this picture up here because of course traditional
assignments are largely disposable you think about the traditional assignment
and they have some good characteristics but let's say a research essay a lab
report an oral presentation these are very traditional things but a student
will spend hours working on let's say the surrogacy I mean one person's going
to see their work that's you that's it then we wonder why they don't see me
anymore but then you won't spend you know hours marking their work providing
a really high-quality formative feedback right you think about how can i phrase
this in a way that they would react poorly to not even they use a red pen
when I write this comment though what ten percent of a student's are a toccata
a PSA and ten percent of those students actually making the comments as opposed
it moving on you put that all together the
hours that students spend working for one person and the hours that you spend
working for almost no one traditional assignments are sucking energy out of
the world so instead of course let's see what we can do if you do want to employ
deploy backwards course design look at the same learning outcomes that you will
achieve through your traditional assignments but see what else you could
do if we harness the energy the potential even the creativity of
students by having them produce resources for the comments I always
sense a tremor went through the crowd when I talk about Wikipedia because in
academia this is like the eleventh commandment
right thou shalt not cite Wikipedia many courses explicitly prohibit students
from doing that and if you have concerns about Wikipedia I have to say you're not
completely a normal video genderly 12:24 or January 21st 2012 I
love this point so yes and this is true I'm gonna back up sorry this is true in
psychology as well so in psychology is about 9,000 articles might be spent in
Wikipedia okay two-thirds of those articles have been peer reviewed by
Wikipedia standards which are probably thought you are my standards and Tencent
those articles are considered good articles by Wikipedia not necessarily by
me yes so if you're concerned you're not wrong
that's not what I'm saying the point is this to me not me no there were
comedians the first port of call for our students to be on the go that would be
this first port of call to the public and a friendly evening honest are we
willing to admit how often we keep it as the first port of call or us who is in a
better position in the world to improve this public
is credibly what public resource that's called as the higher education working
with students and so the wiki Education Foundation has been supporting these
kinds of projects for many noticed the remarkable work that they've been doing
including by Tamina's arm and his students medical students at University
in California nothing about it these are students who are going to grow up there
they will get their degree they will become general practitioners they will
have to explain in a very short span of time to remain audience complex medical
concepts terminology wonderful weather practice and articles in Wikipedia and
this exists for a variety of disciplines they have guides onboarding guides for
faculty one boarding guidance for students they have a campus Wikipedia
Ambassador Program they have rubrics case studies it's
ridiculous I think that a recording is quite a long on this you couldn't ask
for well a lot of people have done this right a lot of students have
participated of long new articles have been created and the overwhelming
majority of faculty who've done this say they will do it again there's a lot of
support for this right it's also humbling by the way to think an article
and then a student mind it is a Wikipedia is gonna be read by thousands
the average peer review article that you and I published can be read by ten
people if that so that's humbling and if you're worried that students under the
afraid of performing this kind of a big scholarship not so much my favorite part
all right write informative videos knowing that the information they
presented is valuable to someone it's that sense of authentic pedagogy there
are students who feel great about taking summarizing research that's hidden
behind paywalls and essentially liberating that to the public
and on and on and on so this is very doable if you don't like Wikipedia or
forgetting we're still about will vocabulary look at libro texts this is a
wiki once again this is housed at University
of California at Davis it started in chemistry who used to be
called Kemp wiki and it is the most visited chemistry website in the world
it's been built by students the work of CUNY students they know the synthetic
improved by senior students there were overseen vetted by graduate students
there were overseen by the International Board of faculty this is not anyone
committed this is a tightly controlled version of leukemia and this is the
reason why it's used as a customized textbook by dozens of institutions many
that you will recognize so this is open pedagogy all consider this case very
famous example this was an open textbook that existed in business project
management and then cohort of graduate students at Brigham Young University in
Utah they were taking your graduate students in and start from design the
assignment over the herb was taking up the case examples from business write
case examples for instructional design they did a lot more they having
interactive features filled with videos and questions and they published a book
as project management for instructional designers this is open pedagogy but it's
not just graduate students undergraduate students at Plymouth State University
New Hampshire early American literature so once again all the readings are the
public domain but the instructor Robin DeRosa worked with them to choose the
readings give them that agency so they chose the readings that were they were
that would go into the open anthology at the end of the day or go for them
student said the Ohio State University I was obligated to say the Ohio State
University so there's more than one but these are suits in environmental science
and successive cohorts keep doing this keep improving it but they write
bite-sized chunks the editors of this volume or the faculty in that program
this is a popular resource undergraduate students can write an open textbook
undergraduate students can curate the meetings that curate the readings that
going to open anthology undergraduate students can go further these are
students and silent facing in Vancouver well again instead of
giving the yet another oral presentation they were challenged instead to create
two to three minute instructional videos prevent both of you in this case of
Giannini's principles of persuasion these students submitted their video to
an international student video competition they won first prize
six thousand US dollars keep in mind in fact Google's that's like forty five
thousand Canadian or something but more importantly than that their video is now
being used by instructors in Hawaii in Turkey in Toronto to teach the science
of persuasion and that's the power that's really exciting okay go beyond
the monetary prize in recognition or students at Kent State if you're
standing social science think a problem that's affecting your community right
channel your value acknowledge right and of enemies is a short five to seven
hundred words if the right innovators evidence-based that's engaging that's
brief that's accessible not easy to publish but imagine you have a publisher
that's submitted for publication at the very least and many students will
publish it but this is another way of keeping that knowledge away of serving
the community combines these elements of experiential and some cases
service-learning with the idea of open pedagogy and one last example I'll give
you which is not directly around curating writing or editing or improving
or we are when sometimes ancillary resources
this is principles of social psychology another textbook I've worked on so I
could use this in my class but I have many colleagues who will tell me that
quit the books great no problem but you don't have a question back yet so that's
a deal-breaker because I'm you question man and I'm not going to be the
the philosophy behind that pedagogy I can respect that there are too many
adjuncts in this world were told about courses two weeks before the semester
begins there are too many faculty who are forced to meet essentially a
mercenary style when they're teaching at two or three institutions at the same
time in order to chose just just make a living so I'm never going to criticize
faculty who reliable things like question banks but it did occur to me in
a certain point why in heaven's name when I'm asking my students to answer
questions when they can write that thought about how do you think my
students have to understand the concept to be able to write three plausible
distractors for a multiple-choice question
don't about reading my classes are by training by your standards I'm sure 35
students is the cap in at my university for classrooms it's lovely but what we
did through the whole semester they started by I even gave them some
questions and we swapped out one of the distractors so their job was to write
one distractor for a couple of questions and they peer-reviewed as well both
double-blind couple weeks later they were writing two distractors for a
multiple-choice question then three then the whole thing is stamped right also
and all of the distractors and pure reviewing it as they went right one
semester my small class of 35 students wrote 1,400 questions and the next
semester the the next or improved upon that as well and I'm not saying this is
like a ready-made test I'm ready to go yet but give me one more cohort of
students and we'll give you the test back that's probably the accessible that
will support the open textbook right the point is that are interesting and fun
ways to work where they're serving people learning principally but
secondarily we're producing resources that are deeply valuable to manufactory
and if these synergies working with innovative pedagogy to really serve
people who just want lately as a space I love the matter so
if you're interested in this or if they are highlighted this study is a good
place to get started but got into making open textbooks with students even though
it's not all about making all the textbooks one Idol in pedagogy viewer
how do you have this conversations with students about open licensing for
example very very useful place to begin
so altogether and this goes back to David David Wiley in a blog post he
wrote when he was describing traditional assignments he described it as a bit
like having an aircraft when you have a traditional assignment it's a bit like
kind of an aircraft in choosing to driving down the highway which you would
do clearly it's capable of that it's a really really we would maintain your
name craft and you're gonna get better design I'm capable of so much more and
that's that's the point if you think about assignments email message as a
sort of a vehicle which can transport students in terms of let's say skill
development from where they are at the beginning of the semester to where we
hope they will go they are capable of a whole lot more
bless you and so I wanted to challenge you to think about where you could take
this do you know your university motto so think about this what if we decided
to align some of our program structure pick one of the United Nations
sustainable development goals for example design open pedagogy projects
that allow you to support that what can we do what we keep Belov and when I
think about this again this reminds me of another hero of mine Aaron Schwartz
some of you will know about Aaron Schwartz
and so you know what was called the guerilla open access manifesto and I
think it's very relevant to this discussion of how we can really channel
open pedagogy to serve the world you know that information is power but like
all power that also want to keep it for themselves
the world's entire scientific for heritage published over centuries in
books journals increasingly being digitized locked up by a handful of
private companies by the way it's not just them because when we finally get
that acceptance notice from a journal we can't wait we trip over ourselves in our
highly designed alive intellectual property but those were access to these
resources students librarians scientists in other words you and me we've been
given a privilege we get the feet of this banquet of knowledge while the rest
of the world is locked out but we need not indeed morally we cannot keep this
privilege for ourselves we have a duty to share it with the world
and so whether the students improving Wikipedia whether the students writing
op-eds whether it's building or your and celebrity resources and how all of these
projects really make educational more equitable more democratic I think these
are questions we have to look at so obviously I believe in this work I
believe in the open education movement at the same time I've highlighted at
least one area in terms of supporting adequately supporting faculty who are
interested in doing this work as areas where we have some pitfalls that's not
only one one of the ones that I'm very concerned about is that when we talk
about access we too often forget about accessibility and I talked about it
earlier in the context of books that are not designed well enough it's really
painful to take even an open textbook that was not written well in terms of
accessibility requirements and retrofitted it's much easier when you
embrace the principles of Universal Design for Learning at the front end
right but I would say with this it's again not just about how can we serve
some of our students who are being alienated in some systematic way this is
much more about how can we all benefit from
in a more inclusive approach classic example for me is when you're at a
conference bigger room right speaker finishes and there's a roving microphone
running around and there's something you will stand up at the back of the room
saying okay I don't need a mic the microphone is not for you
it's the people in the room who are hard of hearing who need to use the mic
that's the thinking right it's hard for us to think outside of our head but
that's the point we all benefit when we start thinking like that another thing
to leave it there that should do is the issue of what Chris D'Elia describes as
digital redlining some of you will be aware of a red line in itself incredibly
in this case racist policies look at places like Detroit but it was
incredibly easy to get housing loans if you lived on this side of Detroit well
once you cross the Sultan Street which of course was very much a reflection of
ethnic boundaries it was almost impossible Digital redlining speaks to
the issue of access in terms of technologies we cannot assume that
digital is the savior we cannot assume that all of us students have access to
the technologies or the bandwidth or to think of it in the Train to access the
platforms that we are requiring them to use at home most of our students are
working many of them have families many of them have obligations so digital
redlining is asking about how the digital divide
has been created and what the consequences of that divine really are
and that's why it's incredibly important that you support print for example we
are not just available digital format print is incredibly important and
students overwhelming it still prefer print if they can afford it if they can
afford it and that's the beauty of taking a hundred dollar book what
wouldn't be a hundred dollar book when it's openly licensed you're paying just
the cost of printing and then you're selling it for what 15 bucks students in
my research ethics class the 400 page book they spent almost 13 1 3 dollars
together professionally bound softcover copy of that book and when you said that
that price almost all the students get it so you have to think about digital
redlining you also have to think about privacy
because the opposite of open is not private
well here we had a wonderful discussion about working with students to the whole
public scholarship but remember that with openness it's not just about access
it's also very much about agency so giving your choice giving students
choice whether do they want to perform up a scholarship or not maybe they want
to work with the LMS until it satisfies their own quality threshold maybe they
want to perform it but anonymously right or if they do perform public scholarship
they do produce resources what kind of commons license do they
want to assign to fair intellectual property it's not how a choice it is
there's any call here for Middlebury College writes about data as well the
kinds of platforms that we met lead our students to use and she writes that
there is no such thing as the harmless collection of data or the benevolent
collection of data and much of what we collect could have been used in ways
that we don't want it to be use the harm to imperil our students think about
students right now the digital footprints that we as educators have
been mandated they leave on the open web open them up to surveillance to
identification in some cases to deportation that is us as on us and this
disproportionately affects our most vulnerable students low-income students
students of color LGBTQ plus students students or immigrants they data are
most at risk to surveillance discrimination and many of our
vulnerable students are less likely to have experience with digital literacy
skills these are critical issues I think for us
so and the last one like accessibility redlining privacy and then open washing
you may be familiar with the term green washing from the environmentalism
movement with this lots of I'm staying at the in at the University and I'm sure
if I look closely in the bathroom somewhere there be a sign saying we love
the environment and you know we're not it so much that we love for you not to
ask us to wash your sheets although their towels and things like that and I
think we don't know that this is rubbish and I'm sure somebody in their
environment the point is they're gonna save money if they don't have to run
with all of that equipment to do that laundry and I get that but when you
continue proprietary practices while using terminology that say makes you
sound open that's open washing and we're seeing this more and more as each of the
commercial publishers and waded into the open water now I'm not gonna say that
they're not capable of doing work that is actually open but I've seen for
example brochures from Pearson that say digital delivery wonderful and all of
the studies they cited at the bottom of who we are at EDC studies that's open
washing I've seen companies take the open textbooks that open stacks has
published including the one that Steve Cramer worked on over here put it behind
the paywall required registration of require students to pay for a changing
Nathaniel and each our students a fee for it you've added nothing you can add
in value that's one thing but it could not make your sink we're getting in this
wonderful open textbook well that's available outside of your
platform that's open washing as well so this is another phonetic wave to look
for as commercial players enter this space we're looking for examples of
actual contribution and not so much washing so overall I've highlighted a
couple of things but I will say when you think about openness I think we need to
think about the deeper values of what it means absolutely in concern with access
but we are also concerned with agency agency OD I mentioned for faculty you
now have the power to modify resources to serve their pedagogical goals more
agency more agency for students who must be given the choice the chance if they
say look I love this idea of open pedagogy but you know I would rather do
a more traditional thing that's great they should have that choice
so if you have a faculty member even who knows census I'd look a little bit a
little bit textbooks in my area there's nothing that's a good fit for me right
now and that's think that's great because
you looked a little bit informed choice support the agency but think about the
other things it supports the collaboration and what the example of
the research methods book I highlighted that was just one example among many
right the collaboration the transparency there's a lot of things that we can do
with this work in my final slide this was the image that was sort of looking
behind and I want to close with the same image but forced everyone asked if
anyone in the loop can actually identify the mountain that's there that's
pictured there it's not the famous very good Steve gets it Table Mountain Cape
Town South Africa and this is one of the slides one of the only images on my
slides for which there is no attribution because I did this image but also I
didn't want to tell you what the image was
the image is what it is but I took this image I took this photograph about two
years ago when I was visiting South Africa for the first time and while
you're seeing Table Mountain and below it downtown Cape Town obviously I'm not
stepping in Cape Town when I took this photo I'm standing at the edge of Robben
Island and I wanted to mention this because Robben Island was initially a
leper colony before it was converted to a maximum-security prison for political
prisoners this is where among many many many others Nelson Mandela spent 18
years of his 27 year prison sentence on Robben Island he imagined with the
injustice is right in front of you it's not hidden it's right in front of you
and one of the reasons I always tell people if you have a chance to visit
Robben Island today he must because he's right now God knows how much longer all
of the two guns at the prison so when I was there we got to really have
conversations about ask them questions about how did you maintain hope or small
acts of daily resistance they engaged in for example and this for me was already
this visit was a really transformational educational experience really because
the more I think about it the more I believe that education at its finest at
its finest is democratizing it is liberating it is decolonized
it is accessible and it is open
thank you for listening hopefully we have some time thank you and I should
say the slides are not yet on that SlideShare but give me a couple of hours
but in love with you if anyone had questions or even comments not all at
once can we trade out mics you did not sound it's not great online why am i
solving this problem already take you know a thousand engineering students and
put them on a real problem like what should we do about the electrical grid
what if we had done that in 1980 we'd be a lot farther ahead right now so thank
you oh thank you yeah I mean I think I think there's an
element of this which is interesting because even though some of the
practices and some little bit licensing is new to most faculty members I think
what we're always trying to do is come up with a way to engage our students and
sort of authentic learning experience for them so I think the only thing that
separates you know instructors whether it's in the 1980s or whether it's in
2018 who could do that kind of a project it's not the motivation I think it's
just awareness and then exposure and then some help to do it but I appreciate
you saying that I'm sure that I'm helping people
practicing open pedagogy by the same breath long before we use the term open
pedagogy as well but I appreciate you saying that
thank you right in front of you I think yeah thank you first of all thank you
for that presentation is amazing okay and can you talk a little bit more about
sort of traditional textbook publishers and what they're doing to sort of open
wash their materials because when I talk to other faculty members they're like
you know here's the stage they sort of talk about oh we are don't really know
what they're doing oh they know what they doing um okay
where you go you're hoping that up so it's been interesting and there will be
different perspectives in the room but they are not all the same of course and
but I've seen a real shift in how they've responded to the open movement
initially the first thing I saw some years ago was they saw the threat they
saw it as a threat to primp sales for examples and they started to discredit a
are they started sowing seeds of doubt about you know well if it's available
for free how good could it be now of course that's a really really sad way to
frame things because what is available for free is not produced for free
authors are paid there are editors involved I mean you can ask an either
about the effort that went into the production of the fundamentals of
business book for example so that was their first thing was sort of
misinformation then you know look at groups like cengage where about a year
and a half ago they published their own research report which forecasted that
the use of who we are as primary required courseware would be with triple
within three or within five years sorry so they saw the writing on the wall now
at the same time they've been pivoting their business model away from print
sales to digital services leasing services essentially and so
there's a part of them that likes the open movement now because they see it as
helping transition be more people to digital but they also now gonna step
further would they say we've got our lovely digital platform so they're
striving trying to persuade all sorts of institutions to adopt what they very
cleverly called inclusive access models this is kind of like calling something
the Patriot Act right it's an attempt to define something by naming it
effectively and I'm fully aware of where I am as I say this but when you label
something something yeah you're trying to sort of get the meaning of the thing
associated with the name that's what's going on over here
because in inclusive access is not to be inclusive at all it strips away agency
of faculty to choose materials from outside of that specific platform it
strips away student agency from the ability to opt out very easily pretty
much up to sign in blood that you've bought a print copy of the book for
example and of course the loss of retention is only digital I get why that
models attractive when you've got no printing distribution costs for example
in your guaranteed revenue from every single student because it's an
institutional licensing deal I get that so but now they've gone to well you can
access our platform and access the oer in our platform yeah but we can access
the we are outside of your platform too so that's been the more recent thing
what we're continuing to see now is what we would describe as open wrapping and
we're gonna see a lot more of that well yeah we are and they're essentially
wrapping services around the existing we are and open stacks was an only example
of with their Anatomy book or biology book there were commercial companies
that said great books free fine but we're gonna build some online quizzing
we're gonna build some other stuff that students will pay for but the book is
free now for some people that's attractive and as long as the open
wrapping adds actual value and doesn't just take freely available tapwater put
it in a plastic container and sell it to me for five bucks I don't have a huge
problem with that actually I do have a fun with open washing but it's been
interesting to see but I will say you have to be you have to be wary of this
there are people who in the open movement work very closely with
commercial players I have no problem with that I'm happy to
see actual value being added because if adding those services allows more people
to come into the open movement because they want those resources great
I'm all for academic freedom all for heterogeneity over here absolutely I
just don't want deceptive practices and I'm worried that as you see you know
this was one of the more recent players cengagenow is an interesting example of
one of the new platforms like this this kinda reminds me a bit at the moment of
Seinfeld remember the episode which focused on the phrase serenity now
remember what happened at the end of that phrase it was serenity now insanity
later and so a moment for the moment anyway this is kind of me so pretty much
so I'm happy to hold their feet to the fire I'm happy to be one of a large
community that is looking very closely at their practices but as long as
they're not deceptive as long as they're actually adding value I absolutely
welcome them into the space but yeah it's it's been a real evolution long
answer to that question sorry about that question over here with me thank you
thank you that was just what institutions do to help support this
campaign right so beyond like I get right and and the faculty need to
recruit other faculty knowing that but what can institutions do I mean
institutions have tremendous thanks I think there's a number of things I mean
you don't even know example of UBC looking at tenure promotion policies
would be one right so if something is actually important to you strategically
you need to put not resources or he some some policies in place not just your
words but grant programs is an easy way to start this actual work that's
involved in creating adapting these resources to make sure we're supporting
those I think number one is raising awareness so I think faculty still have
this disconnect between knowing how much the books cost understanding how much
impact it's actually having on their own students and of course there's all sorts
of problems that fall along the along the way so for example students unfairly
so there's all sorts of players and they say stakeholders who have misconceptions
or are misunderstood but I think institutions could do more to raise
awareness number one and we actually provide these resources for those who
want to do this I think you can easily also add a layer which is institutional
research so once you support people who are willing to be early adopters who are
willing to take a grant do the work adopt it do the research look at the net
benefit to your institution assuming it's gonna be looking I mean I'm
assuming it's gonna look like any one of the 17 studies so far because of pure
access so I think you could look at resources tangibly you could look at
policies ultimately I think most institutions that I see where there's
really successful open projects the institutional home has been in the
library librarians are the champions of openness whether it's open access or
open education I think they need to be supported one thing I hate seeing is
support for open work whether it's supporting faculty doing open projects
or just advocacy work on campus or help faculty find what they need is all of
this stuff being done off the side of people's desks I want to see a
designation of at least one person who has the title Oh er librarian it needs
to be in people's job description is it in your job description awesome but now
I believe search piece and the awareness piece and the actual support but
ultimately I would look at your own strategic planning documents because I'm
going to bet if you look at Virginia Tech's mission statement if you look at
your academic plan you could highlight sections and sections that have language
that support open education because if you're talking about making a education
more accessible or inclusive if you're talking about making education more
engaging and authentic if you're talking about you know making education more
equitable all of these things Student Success are supported by open air so
it's a matter of advocates looking at that language point into the existing
commitments of the institution making an empirically supported case whether
through research or otherwise for for producing or supporting this project
through actual tangible resources and policy but I think it is important that
this not be done in a way that is forced openness is about access as much as it
is about agency so I would never ever ever want to see that an open initiative
is being mandated that's just that's a misunderstanding of the principles of
openness right there so I think if open is introduced as an option in a way that
highlights it and supports it if you want to play the space this sport but if
you don't totally fine it's your choice you need to make that call that's the
way to do it so I think that needs to be handled right and eventually you could
go for them so as of the 1st of February my institutions created a full time
administrative position that's my role to support open aid initiatives at my
institution five years ago there were no such thing as an OE our librarian for
example these exists you just need to support it
and once the early adopters demonstrate proof of concept they will really be no
turning back because right now we're still doing what psychologists would
call injunctive norms which is you know this is what you ought to do but
increasingly you're going to see that supported with descriptive norms which
is what people are actually doing and it's when you align those two things
you've got people at your institution you can point to who are already
championing this along with the resources to support it
that's how you start building a culture of open essentially but thanks for
asking Steve questions one thing that
commercial publishers are doing is offering quote low cost but options okay
and so as faculty it moves us to look at the details for example after I wrote my
open Stax book I contacted a friend of mine thought that would be very open to
adopting it and he's at Penn State and he said gee I'm really sorry I you know
I'd love to adopt your book but Pearson came to us and they offered us 15% off
that four hundred dollar price tag for a five-year commitment for every faculty
member in our department okay so that's you know yeah they won't get you they
will give you as little discount as they can get away with on our campus our
bookstore is very excited about these two inclusive access books okay and
they're both just under $100 which admittedly is cheaper than 400 but
they're not as cheap as the open Stax introduction to the psychology book
mr. psychology books you know so yeah but those faculty adopters are feeling
good about themselves or doing better for their students and there's nothing
wrong with that I'm just saying be be aware of what actually what you're doing
thanks thanks for easing awareness of that and this kind of goes back to
questions being asked earlier about as well about pedagogy in Mena or saying
miss faculty who practice open medical treatment without the language faculty
who would if they knew more about it I think a lot of these it's almost ironic
there are many fact that you make choices for students for example at my
institution we had two practices that I'm not especially proud of one was we
thought we're gonna send this a book that way we will get a bid from the
different publishers and we'll be able to fix the price for all sections of all
instructors for the next three years you it was coming out of a concern it also
came because we have to have some introduction into psychology so we
thought if a student you know goes to the next one we don't have to buy
another book to the second half of course what we need to take it again so
it's coming from a good place but at the same time you know if the if the
department for example there are departments that received dollar value
kickbacks from publishers for every book that students purchase over the adoption
cycle so there's a lot of that going on so I think yeah I think one of the nice
commercial benefits of this movement is faculty who now realize that textbook
affordability is to see this issue and even if they find no open alternative
yet because it will come is they're taking a tougher negotiation stance with
commercial publishers on the pricing something they wouldn't think to do and
one example I'll give you in one afternoon to emails a faculty member was
able to reduce the price of a book for cognitive psychology from one of the big
publishers from about $200 to about 120 in just two emails saying no that's not
good enough no that's not good enough so that's the the
students complain about that I think you're quite right if they look at what
the business model is and this I admit is one of the reasons why I am skeptical
and why I wait to see if their actions are reflected here or so if they were
that affected in their actions when they talk about being race in openness
because at the moment I'm still seeing too much of these kinds of practices
ultimately of course it need is something that continues because I think
if your primary responsibility is to shareholders and not the students this
is what we're going to keep seeing I hope it changes but let's see thanks a
lot thanks for highlighting that particular practice
oh and also behind
thank you so much
yeah thank you so in Canada education is governed by the provinces not by the
federal government so each province or territory has complete autonomy when it
comes to education so for example in the province of British Columbia the
Ministry of advanced education is what all the institutions report to and the
Ministry of advanced education is the group that is the body that launched the
open textbook project in fact so open textbooks can come from philanthropic
organizations like the Gates and unit foundations which is funded projects
like the open Stax project which Steve has worked on but ABC most development
textbooks have been funded by the government giving money to BC campus
which manages the Magnificent project the same thing has happened more
recently in Ontario is well the Ministry of advanced sale or whether they call it
in that province is funded he goes on to develop some infrastructure around this
so in Canada that's how it's working is province by province at the moment but
of course necessary pretty much sitting across the country in collaboration so
even for example in the repository there are other countries where there's one
sort of national initiatives so there are more that are coming even whether
it's places like Bangladesh for example or
places like the UK where there's a open textbook initiative that's up going it's
across all other institutions it's not just one you've seen this one wall but
also a national open a lot of open access policies which are I don't know
if they're going to be done in education in time soon but at the moment there's a
focused on publicly funded research or to be available to the public and so
like your department Nemo has to be licensed so that's the which we're
seeing national support right now is I think more in terms of policy but in
Canada its funding actual funding for developing we are from the ministries so
we're I think closing in on the next chapter of the Mickey Mouse curve here
in the u.s. copyright it's a thank you letter put by the way is there a role
for we are and the open education movement in trying to deal with
traditional copyright itself well this is where I won't know what the photo I
need a little bit on this but then Mickey Mouse is is a sore spot for sure
so but maybe maybe it's just to be to be fair it feels like an inside
conversation unless we actually reveal what we're talking about so the idea
that every time that Mickey Mouse as a character is meant to enter the public
domain essentially the lobbying forces are
strong enough that they extend how long copyright goes so every time Mickey
Mouse comes close to being in the public domain
suddenly copyright extends longer after the author's death than it did before
yeah Anaheim is not my favorite place what I've heard is that I've heard this
that sort of the owners of be very very early as Mickey Mouse are not going to
push for the non entry of that Mickey Mouse
the current Mickey Mouse as we know it is still protected I don't know for how
many years but they're here
hopefully which means that other things that were published
and this I should say this this varies by country at this kind of legislation
so you're talking about US policy in Canadian let there's a little bit
different and but yes
so I spare wrapping up let me just say this quickly for those of you it really
interested in in open pedagogy and those of you watching online if you are here
in the Virginia this ends tomorrow workshop on pedagogy actual hands-on
workshop to redesign assignments that look what we can do so these time as you
can and there's a lot of other sessions and panels on the rest of the schedule
so please do consider coming for that but I won't say that I'm obviously gonna
be here today and tomorrow and love to interact with as many of you as I can or
follow up with me online on Twitter otherwise but again thank you very much
for inviting me to be here