Yeah. Hi, good afternoon everyone. Thank you
so much for spending of an hour with us this
afternoon. My name is Anita Walz. I'm the Oopen
education, copyright and scholarly communications librarian here at Virginia
Tech. Um My two collaborators in this event,
our Deu Who and Tiffany Shou, um from technology
enhanced learning and online strategies and the Center for instructional
development and Educational Research. So, um, this
is a joint event that we're putting together to bring
dr Eddie Watson here from University of Georgia. Um
and we hope that you get a chance to meet
some new people around your table. Um, we
will be handing out sign in sheet if you have
not already signed in. Um, it's helpful for
us to know um, that there's interest in these
types of events. So, um, please do
sign in if you have not already. Um Eddie
Watson comes to us from University of Georgia. He
has a long time hokey, he has his undergrad
and PhD. I have four degrees from Virginia.
Okay, I'll let him tell you about this.
So, so welcome home. Um Eddie is the
director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at University
of Georgia. Um He also has spearheaded a program
to um save students um about$2 billion as of
spring 2016 on textbook costs. Um and he is
here to talk with us as um instructional designers,
librarians, um, faculty about how to support those
that we work with on our campus. So give
him a warm welcome and we'll take it away.
Thank you. Um let me see which show of
hands. How many of you were not at the
morning talk? Okay. I'm gonna breeze through some
stuff since it was like two thirds of you were
here at the morning talk, a couple of questions
that I um I was planning on covering questions that
we covered this morning as well. So what are
open head resources and Why is that? We are
growing in popularity. So I probably spent about 15
minutes kind of re going over those um, questions
. But then I've got some new stuff. So
if you were here this morning you can Hit the
Snooze button for maybe 10 minutes and then I'll be
on to some new stuff. The lovely to begin
since we have some new faces here. Maybe you
could chat at your table about why are you here
today? And if you're at the table where you've
already talked to the same folks this morning, feel
free to jump tables. Uh no one will take
any offense at that. You know, Gary got
up and moved, go Gerry just wants to talk
to somebody new. Take a couple of minutes chat
with what brings you here today and then we'll debrief
quick. No, basically here's just versus from my
life that was was adapt to levels. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh huh Yeah. Into 14 and the
line and our library water right, really already decided
to actually I'm not. Um, so I think
they're really fantastic for a period. So I'm starting
times. I'm like kind of the point for 17
years. So develop their forces for, I think
it is access, of course you're tested. But
also, so I can Questions only one or 2
ideas. Big man. Oh my God, you
hear it? Okay. So anyone hear anything new
from this morning? Since there's a lot of folks
that are here from the morning session and you know
what, your table share a new idea, like
why they were here, what they're hoping to get
out of the session? I heard the chatter,
I really did. There was a little chatter here
and there. So what brings you here today?
Yes, I'll just take you up front internally.
I guess I'm interested in how this intersects with research
was him and knows it. There is that sort
of thing. Is that people there were the sciences
and Yes. Okay, well you're in the right
place. I think you hear some interesting new ideas
, probably a different perspective than what you heard from
a couple weeks back. I read their abstract of
what they covered. So I'm trying to take a
little bit of a different, different angle in so
this session can be different from this morning. This
morning was more of a holistic overview of open education
resources. This talk is going to be a little
bit more specific. I guess my thought is the
intended audience would probably be administrators or faculty developers or
instructional designers or librarians. Just those that are kind
of in the role of supporting what faculty do and
faculty adoption of open education resources. So that's what
we're talking about. I'll begin with sort of the
overview again, about 15 minutes of that and then
we'll get into who's using O. E. R
. S and then how do we help faculty use
and even author create open education resources? So that's
, that's where we're headed. So you may recognize
some of these slides for those who are here first
thing. But what are open education resources? Probably
the Hewlett Foundation's definition is the one that I see
cited most often is kind of two core concepts in
there. But really open education resources are teaching learning
or research resources that reside in the public domain or
through a license. They've been given a way for
people to use. However they would like. The
real key part of that license is that it permits
whatever those materials are those teaching learning research materials,
it permits their free use and also they're repurposing.
So not only do you get to download something and
use it however you'd like, you can actually go
in and edit it, Change words, change the
title, change page numbers, all that good stuff
. Um, so you might imagine sort of almost
anything can be an open education resource, whether it's
a full course, like something you might find in
water term moocs, massive, open online courses could
be course materials modules, textbooks or what we've worked
with most predominantly at the university Georgia. But there's
lots of other things that are out there as well
. Software could could be considered an open education resource
if the license indeed allows you to download it,
use it and and repurpose it. So there's been
several initiatives that have kind of kicked off the open
initiative. probably the initial notion came in 1994 with
the notion learning objects where there might be some kind
of compartmentalized tutorial or video or reading with a handout
, that kind of stuff. But sometimes it's kind
of like a little package, that thing, a
learning object. And then the Merlot repository came around
and that's where you can kind of place learning objects
and other learning materials. There was a software,
open source initiative called floss. And then, as
people sort of got their act together about what it
means for something to be free and open. There
was a creative commons project that actually is now a
license, it's a CC license and we'll talk more
about that other projects as well in this first generation
. Um, it had one that received a lot
of press, what's really interesting about the first generation
of projects that there wasn't a real uptake on them
. A lot of people weren't putting high quality materials
in the, into them very early on and then
they weren't really well organized. It's kind of like
looking through professors filing cap, there's some good stuff
in there, but you've got to kind of look
around and then make some choices about what you're gonna
do. So right now, we know online there's
tons of free stuff, lots of stuff that's very
, very, very cheap, very affordable. I'm
sure we probably all used Youtube videos in our facebook
profiles and our core settings. All that good stuff
. But things like Ted talks don't have, they
would be considered an open educational resource because the license
doesn't allow for free redistribution and editing. I mean
, Ted actually kind of controls its content quite restrictive
lee though you can go and look at it and
view it and you can assign it in class,
certainly, but you certainly could go in and edit
one. And so lots of cool free stuff out
there, but not all of them are open education
resources. So the notion of open education resources really
tied to the license. So when you think about
really almost anything that's intellectual property item, it has
two components. There's the copyright, So who owns
it? But then the license says, how can
it be used? And so if the license says
that it's free and it's terrible and you can do
things to which you can change it. You don't
like certain elements, you can go in and delete
them or adding your own content. Those are the
open education resources, those things that are not free
and shareable and valuable typically would be considered open education
resources, kind of splitting a hair here. But
a lot of stuff that's available, sort of freely
available online would necessarily following this oh, we are
domain. So why open educational resources? I think
that there are three great challenges that we're facing in
higher education today and this kind of map to a
conversation that we had in the first session. But
I think that most of us across higher recognized that
completion students getting done in four years ideally. But
we always talk about four and six year graduation rates
and higher education. We also talk about the attainment
gap, so how different ethnicities might be, um
at what rates they're getting degrees from higher end.
We also talked quite a bit about quality of learning
and we also talked quite a bit about college affordability
. So thinking about attainment levels, what does that
really mean? What we see right now that different
ethnicities are getting degrees at different rates. So looking
at those that are 25 and older in the US
. about a third of those over the age of
25 that are white. Americans have degrees, it's
much less at other ethnicities. So this is the
attainment, it's like why why aren't we all kind
of clustered together? Why are there these differences?
So that's something that many of us are really concerned
about. How do we close that gap? How
do we get students to graduate in four years?
How do we keep students in school? How do
we keep them from dropping out? So all of
those issues of just sort of getting through um Our
our first big job another big challenges this notion of
students who are adaptable ready for the real world.
Um They've mastered the outcomes of their undergraduate experience,
how do we make sure that they have good quality
? So a lot of discussions, when you hear
people talk about student success, it's kind of a
euphemism because the student success in some circles really means
for a six year graduation rates. Where I think
what we really talk about student success, we we
are concerned about students getting through on time, but
we're also concerned about um you know what they know
when they leave college, what they're capable of doing
. Um We want them to get jobs that's part
of student success as well, but all those things
kind of tie to quality of learning and as examples
of sort of the need to have students who are
prepared for the real world. This is some data
, It's from a. c. and you from
this year, but I think the research is actually
the heart research group from 2014. But we continue
to see that employers are wanting can sort of handle
unstructured problems, more challenging kinds of problems. That's
what the green is here. The maroon is students
who can work with new information. Not surprisingly as
the, and you see an article on that.
So it's kind of an unstructured world that we want
our students to go into and be successfully. And
that's what are the employers want. So, um
, Yeah, it's a different, different picture than
maybe what we had just 20 or 30 years ago
. So quality short file fall is just as urgent
to me as the attainment shortfall. In fact,
when Obama came president 2000 and nine, he said
it's not enough for every one in America to have
a high school degree. That's no longer what we
aspire to. What we really need are college graduates
with either two or four year degrees. So that's
a real argument for certainly the payment shortfall. But
also he wasn't saying we need to have two and
four year degrees so that everyone has a piece of
paper. It's what you can do what that represents
. It's about the quality of the education to be
able to meet the needs of of our nation and
all nations moving forward. So Challenge three. And
this is the one that speaks most closely to maybe
open education resources initially, is this affordability challenge the
cost of higher education. And I think this is
the one that's that's even up most of the oxygen
in the higher it discussion these days. This notion
that because funding for higher education has diminished at public
institutions, families and students are having to pick up
that cost, so now that's really the dominant public
concern. So, as some data to kind of
support that narrative, these two charts one of the
left that has mostly red, that shows the cut
in state funding per student Between 2008 and 2013 by
State. So you clustered together all kinds of institutions
, whether it's a community college through the are ones
, and on average, the Red Arrow is Georgia
. And with that five year period we saw$3,000
increase per student in state funding. That makes So
in Virginia, it's been a$2,000 decrease. And
then on the right side here, you can see
. So actually, 48 out of 50 states have
cut of public funding for higher education over that five
year period, interestingly, we see the increases intuition
, every state has increased tuition over that five year
period. And you can see Georgia is probably one
of the top 10 Virginia's in the Top 15.
When we look at the Virginia and Georgia stats just
side by side. So over that five year period
Be 3000 less per student uh in state funding,
We increased tuition by about 3000, so we're kind
of breaking even behind in Georgia, looking at Virginia
,$2,000 less in state funding, tuition increases,
About$2,000. So where everyone's kind of playing the
zero sum game, these numbers have been adjusted for
inflation. So we are keeping pace with inflation essentially
. And we're seeing that most states are kind of
playing this game Lose state dollars. It corresponds directly
almost 1-1, almost a 1-1 direct relationship between dollars
lost and the increase in tuition too students. So
not surprisingly, we're seeing a 5 to 1 uh
increase in tuition. 5 to 1 being the inflation
rate for college tuition is five times that of inflation
for everything else in America. And we see the
we've got the number of the year 2000 and talked
about quite a bit as if that's like the magic
number. And of course that's when the great recession
kind of really hit. But when you look at
the hockey stick you know we dip into the upturn
really take place. It was really about 2000 2001
. That's when states began the slow de funding of
public patient. Mhm. So as a result of
that we've seen this increase of student debt. In
fact collectively now in the U. S. There's
more student debt than there is collectively auto loan debt
or credit card debt. Um And this continues to
climb. Of course these two kind of adjusted because
we can make choices during the great recession not to
buy cars and not to buy a new flat screen
tv or whatever else you might put on our credit
card. We could not make choices about, you
know, our kids college tuition was a set fee
that kept going up. So along the same times
, in addition to tuition going up books that went
up dramatically, there are king cost of medical services
. There's just been a dramatic increase in the inflation
of books. And when you look at, at
least at the University of Georgia, when you look
at the per student costs at Georgia, the blue
bar is tuition and then you've got in state fees
which are state froze. Those about Jordan correlation is
not causation of course. But you can see that
there's the frozen feet, You can see the textbooks
are down there about a, so, so at
Georgia, probably textbooks represent maybe a little bit less
than um, 10 of the cost of it is
the cost of going to the University of Georgia.
Probably Virginia Tech has similar this smaller schools. I
think I read an article about the Textbook zero initiative
a year or so ago at Tidewater Community College and
they said it was 1/3 of the cost. So
textbooks can't control textbooks, which you can certainly control
tuition. These are very different mix at different types
of schools. So when I think about the future
of higher education, I think that institutions to approach
those three big challenges need to develop a portfolio of
strategies that will enable them to speak to completion rates
, entertainment gap, the cost of higher education and
the quality of learning. So there's lots of strategies
that are out there and not all of them contribute
to all three. So for us that you've got
high impact practice is from that are promoted largely by
the American Association of Colleges and Universities and large research
basis for using their their 10 practices, incorporate those
practices, their deep, rich pedagogical strategies that take
place over an extended amount of time and mirror a
lot of real world experience. So, um,
so there's a set of strategies that institutions could employ
, um, Georgia Cornell Ellen. Lots of different
types of institutions have adopted experiential learning as a,
as one of their strategy. Yeah, Also improved
advising when you think about completion. That can really
help if we had more advisors who are more integrated
into student lives and then cut them, make the
right decisions and not take courses that maybe they don't
need or take the right course is in the right
sequence. Is all of those things. I think
we would all argue that advising could certainly help that
four year graduation rate. I'm not sure that advising
ties closely to um the quality of learning. I
mean you're taking the right course is maybe it's the
quality of the curriculum of the impacts, but it's
not impacting faculty practice at all in the classroom.
There are other strategies around technologies like adaptive learning and
predictive analytics that you may hurt. May have heard
some things about, but I would argue that VRS
indeed actually impact all three of our greatest challenges and
certainly affordability is the easiest one to see what I'll
talk through this a little bit more dead. So
why O. E. R. S. Well
, there certainly cost. And we see from surveys
on our campus that our students self report that they
have unmet financial needs after all of the loans and
grants that they might get the semester rules for.
They have unmet financial needs. And we know that
financially contributes to attrition and extended graduation rates. If
you have to go from full or part time,
that's certainly keep you in college longer while you work
to make money for the next semester. And we
are seeing female types of institution I guess. But
we all see across institute Kind of the range for
textbooks and other required materials. It's about$900 and
$1,200 for students. And so it's textbooks, but
also if you have to pay the the coach to
gain access to my labs at Pearson or if you
have to buy top hat or some other clicker technology
, all of those things together Come to somewhere around
$1,000 range for most students. So it could be
that by replacing a lot of these materials with open
education have a significant impact on college affordability and malnutrition
rates. So that's one reason to kind of start
thinking about Od ours a little bit more about quality
of learning. So high textbook costs continue to deter
students from purchasing text books in general. So even
the required textbooks, they often won't make those purchases
. And one survey survey, students across lots of
different kinds of institutions heard in 14 65 percent of
students said that they had decided against buying a textbook
because it was too expensive. So two thirds of
students reported that and almost all of them said when
they did that they knew it was going to hurt
their grade. This isn't a good idea, but
it's too expensive. I can't afford it, but
I'm, I'm not gonna buy it because I can't
. Nearly half of all the students in this survey
said that the cost of textbooks impacted which courses they
took. And when they took courses, so you
sign up for classes, it's your second semester and
then you're in. Let's just take some classes that
have expensive textbooks. Psychology taking psychology, you're taking
, pick a science really? Mhm. And you
go, wow this is an extra$700 I hadn't
budgeted for. Haven't planned for since might drop one
of those courses and then adjust their plan to study
as a result of that, which of course contributes
to completion rates and attrition. Um four out of
five students. And that they would do better in
a course if the materials were available for free.
Now. I wonder what that connection is that they're
making their, it's like wait a second. Uh
But it could be that they know that they don't
have to delay the purchase. You know, it
could just be that they're trying to not have to
make the purchase at all. But they're recognizing that
there's, there's some sense of self belief regarding the
value of O. E. R. S.
I have my feet. So thinking about quality of
learning. one thing I think is an argument for
quality of learning whether or not it's whether it's free
or not from a student perspective, is that on
the first day of class, if it's a free
open textbook, every student in the class has the
materials for the course and Eugene left so I can't
take on her, so I'll pick on peter but
Peter and I both got like 1400. Our core
? S 80 went to high school together. Peter
we were Maryland, go crabs or over folks doing
Maryland, But turtles, terrapins. Okay, go
terribly. So we both got 1400. We both
go to college together. We both sign up for
intro biology. I'm having trouble making ends meets.
I need to get a financial aid to get that
text book or get funding for the textbook. You
don't have a problem. You buy a text lucky
dog. You've got six of the first day of
class. I struggle with financial aid. I get
it's funded, then I get the check and then
I think the check to the bank and then I
go to the books from my making me two weeks
to do all of that, especially with the belly
with financial aid. I bet because you had the
materials on day one and I did. I bet
you do better on the first test and I study
hard. Oh no. But there's a really good
argument that basically based on someone's socioeconomic class, you
might be disadvantaged, especially during the first few weeks
in the class. So I would argue that O
ers are an equity minded strategy that O. E
. R. S. R. And access and
equal access to education strategy. So s faculty thought
about this and thought through these ideas. Invariably we
see that textbooks, whether you're looking at o er
or whether you're looking at something produced by Pearson was
engaged, you're always going to find issues with the
books. You know, in fact, most publishers
or many publishers will have sort of like a publication
guy following the publication of the book. Like these
are the areas that we found in. Here's the
data for this book. Um So we had one
factor who started using a free open textbook and she
noted that, you know, an imperfect free textbook
is a lot better than an imperfect, expensive textbook
. So if you've got two options that are covering
the same content, it can work for the course
, Maybe the free option is the best one to
go with. So I would also argue not just
the quality of learning piece about um students all kind
of materials at the same time without equity minded argument
, but I would also say that there's a real
opportunity with open education resources for institutional collaborations to form
. So folks in the library and you're learning technologies
groups and you're teaching and learning centers all working together
, maybe to collaborate with the faculty member to go
to change out the textbook. This real opportunity to
rethink the course a little bit. So let's maybe
articulating learning outcomes for Of course, that's helpful.
We should talk about the association of active learning practices
which we know are much more effective than passive learning
strategies, like simple lecturing class after class, maybe
pursuing flipping the classroom. I also think about structural
design practices that this is another real opportunity and sort
of improving courses is, you know, if someone
switching out of textbook, we talk about learning outcomes
were reordering things, let's make sure that what we
say, we're going to teach the students, we
indeed teach them and then we assess them on what
we said, we were gonna teach that whole alignment
. That whole backwards design approach is really, really
important. So it's news, but if you use
them through the first get there, but who is
already using O ers? Well, the truth is
, there's quality O ERs in many disciplines, many
domains in higher education and, you know, depending
on what you're looking for and what your discipline is
, you may find that they're very easy to locate
just some examples from various domains that we're using the
University of Georgia. So there's an open education resource
published by the University of florida press called theatrical worlds
that are theater department is using at the intro level
. We have some sophomore level education courses that are
using a book that they self authored at the institution
. There's lots of text books in the U.
S. History domain. There's this american job,
multi institutional collaborative with lots of faculty and grad students
, doctoral students writing little bits of this thing and
being sort of organized and now it's kind of turned
into this whole that has a very strong sort of
central narrative. So that's one option. Um The
University Press of North Georgia, which is the is
the University of North Georgia. Uh They wrote history
in the making, they were funded from the university
system of Georgia to author of US. Mhm.
U. S. History textbook. There's also this
open stacks college initiative. They also have a U
. S. History textbooks. There's lots of options
that have been through some level of period. So
let me talk a little bit more about open stacks
college. So currently they have 19 text books that
are available and I've actually got there some cards.
If you're curious what those are and you can see
them located here. But as we move forward,
I'll pass this around. Oh um Opus axis funded
through a number of foundations including Gates, Hewlett and
Arnold. As you look at this selection of books
they're really targeting of disciplines that taught at most institutions
. So you probably probably all institutions whether you're in
a community college or are one, there are physics
courses, they're they're sociology courses. There there is
biology classes, statistics, those things like that.
Their roadmap 25, they've got other books that they're
in the process of developing. I think the remaining
set is largely in the business. But you can
see these Already exists. They are indeed entirely 100
free to students free to faculty. They are thinking
about the license for these and what it enables.
You can actually, if you adopted one of these
textbooks, you can change the text book. If
you don't like chapter 13, you can delete chapter
13, you can add in your own content,
you can type in your own content. Um,
and I'll repay originates. It's kind of like a
sort of a learning management system wrapped around each textbook
. And so if you go in and make a
change, it becomes your textbook. So you're not
making change Through the core textbook in this 19,
but you can make changes to to your version of
the textbook that you can then deep link into with
your students. So this is kind of a low
hanging fruit these days. So certainly you can find
stuff out there. And I would say if you're
here at the university at Virginia Tech almost did it
again, you're here at Virginia Tech, you'd want
to check in with Anita who has been sort of
playing a lot of spending a lot of time sort
of collecting these and knowing where the good resources are
, you can definitely help you. Um, but
if you have faculty interested in offering free open textbooks
, you know, the offering task is it's a
very sort of solo type project, but what if
you were going to actually what can you provide?
And in terms of support, and I would say
one thing that you really want to do, there's
probably two things, but one is to be sure
you understand the technology platform that you're considering using to
deliver your open education resource. So, for instance
, Apple's ibooks author tool, incredible set of tools
. But there's a point where if you start using
some fairly sophisticated like video or uh, simulations or
stuff like that, it will only work if someone
has an ipad or has an Apple product. So
if you started to invite someone off of their own
book and they want to use Apple's tools, find
out what tools, up to what point you can
use this subset of tools that will work for everyone
. So regardless of web browser or what kind of
reader you might have, you want it to be
able to to work. So So be a little
leery of apple and other platforms. Just to make
sure that you don't somehow sort of flip a switch
where now everyone has to buy a$600 iPad to
use your free textbook. So one thing you can
think about also are explore the parameters of your universities
, copyright expectations and this is something that we've been
working through for several months at Georgia. Some institutions
may be resistant to giving away intellectual property, um
, for which they feel they have some level of
an ownership stake. Um, Now, if you
have a grant to write an open textbook and that's
why you received the grant that paves the road for
you. Like if the state paid you for something
or foundation paid you for something, because those are
the terms of the grant as you got into it
. They were signed off on your pretty much good
to go, at least at our institution. That's
what we've been told. Your grant says you're writing
and we are, we are. But if you
decided you wanted to write a textbook for statics and
engineering, uh, track down who is your institution
kind of manages issues of what our folks our office
is located in our, our office of the vice
president for research. And they said any faculty member
wanting to enter into an authoring project that they wanted
to give away the rights the office wanted to evaluate
commercial offer to versus public active. In other words
, they want to make sure this isn't contain a
wealth of opportunity to make some money. So yeah
, we're just kind of getting down this road.
This is the language that we're now providing faculty up
front so that they can put together a crazy and
abstract to give to the intellectual property office so that
they can do their due diligence and so that they
can sign off on the book being given away for
free before it's even written. Yes. So we've
been told by legal that's members want to license.
It's up to their department. So have long conversations
go, yeah, this maybe purpose. Yeah,
yeah. It's a brave new world in every institution
is going to have a different strategy. In fact
, I like this far more with the department and
their faculty get to make a decision rather than an
intellectual property committee. But yeah, so I was
talking earlier about this notion of copyright versus licenses,
We've also been told that the fact that you're going
to author o ers the copyright regardless of what the
licenses the copyright right will resign with the University of
Georgia. In fact, we've been given the state
of what what that looks like. So the copyright
is indeed the University of Georgia's though the license might
be anyone can use it for free. Might indeed
be an o er, but I think sort of
negotiating that out what that second part looks like.
I know what our institutions, yeah. Devils and
those details. So anyone that's thinking about entering writing
, Oh, er, I think this is the
something to let them know about right off the bat
. I mean, as I was talking with the
, with our lawyer, I said, well,
what if someone decided to go off the grid,
they go and they buy their own computer and they
do it at home and they, you know,
And part of the argument was, well, you
know, faculty aren't on a 40 hour a week
job, it's kind of like they're working for the
university. And so even if it's on your own
computer, there might be some questions. Of course
, every institution has a different perspective on this.
And it's certainly evolving at our institution. That would
just say, if you're thinking about writing one,
go ahead and have the conversation with with your I
. P. Folks, it sounds like your library
is already kind of ahead of the game on sort
of like figuring out what those guidelines are on that
. We we went back and forth with a word
file several times now regarding language to give faculty.
So we want to be able to advise faculty from
square one. Look, these are the things that
you need to really think about as you move forward
. So what might a model look like for supporting
faculty adoption of o er and this is the sort
of the yoga cassette? Well, so our idea
was to really kind of go from single faculty member
from single to single faculty member to think that if
we could find faculty who teach high enrollment courses and
also are using an expensive textbooks, Just that formula
of like$200 textbook times, 2000 students that could
have a huge, huge financial impacts like this economies
of scale, right? Where just the number of
students represented by a single faculty member could result in
collective large amount of state. So that's where we
kind of got started. We received a grant from
the university system of Georgia late when halfway through the
summer. And it basically just funded a graduate assistant
that we then partnered with a faculty member in Biology
. The fact that number was selected based on really
three ideas. Are you using an expensive textbook?
Is it you teach a large class where you teach
several sections of a large class. That would even
help the numbers get up there even higher. They
were also looking for someone who had opinion leadership so
that there would be this real sense of like,
okay if this person is doing, I'm not considered
in my class. So the person we selected,
it won awards for teaching and research has just been
made a mix professor on our campus. And That's
that was the first person that we worked with in
2013 2014. So of course we were first working
with with Biology 1103, but due to their opinion
leadership, those who teach the follow up section 1104
also got on board where working with us on this
transition. So these are the courses and the numbers
of students that we were looking at. So it
was a biology concepts of biology textbook Of course with
about 1200 1300 students. And then the follow up
course. Biology 1104 had about 750 students. So
depending on the student's path, they may take the
follow up course or they may just get the three
credits for the concepts of biology. Yeah. So
we were thinking, wow, all sections and no
one ever dropped a glass And all sections together.
We were looking at just over 2000 students and we're
replacing a moderately expensive textbook. It was discovered biology
. But for me it was a little bit of
a trade off, I thought because we had a
few other candidates, but because of that fact remembers
opinion leadership and how well she is respected and lots
of circles on campus. I thought, you know
, let's go with replaced a little bit less expensive
textbook because we're going to gain by having someone who
has that level of opinion, leadership chatting about it
on campus. So that's what we did. We
went with open stacks and again it's uh oh er
so that means you can not only just use it
for free, you can make changes to it and
as things developed, we ended up using both of
the biology books. She liked the way that some
topics were shown in one area and the way that
other topics were described in in the other textbooks.
So we kind of blended the two together. We
used to look for the same course, fortunately,
you know, I guess biology, when you look
at all of the textbooks, kind of the scope
and sequence for intro biology is pretty much the same
across the board. So as we were thinking about
course revision, it wasn't a major overhaul, it
was still intro to biology and the content flow was
similar. So the process wasn't as arduous as it
could have been. So through combining those two books
, this was the interface of the screen capture here
of the book that combine the two textbooks. So
we were able to brand it university of Georgia.
We were able to put her name on the book
. Of course, all of the other copyright elements
are part of this as well. But when a
student goes to open stacks and searches for University of
Georgia biology, they find this or the there's now
probably three or 4 faculty that are teaching using this
, but this makes it very customized for the individual
course for the individual faculty member. So our process
, our support model looked like we had an instructional
designer that basically that's where all of our grant funding
went was just two G. A. Who was
a doctoral student in the College of Education and instructional
design. So an instructional designer and they were essentially
given over to the faculty member and the fact that
we could use them. However they would lie.
The instructional designer did a lot of project management.
Like here's the timeline, this is how we're going
to accomplish things method after the whole first semester because
we stayed about three about three three weeks ahead of
the students. So this process of redesigning, we
were just barely staying ahead and you know for the
fact remember doing it if she was trying to make
that transition by herself that would have been a really
arduous process. But now we have someone who's building
things in the learning management system and ah if you'd
like to see the specific textbook that we've got,
the Bentley slash DJ. Dash concepts of biology,
go to that or just search for it in the
open sacks take you, I think you're right to
it. So our approach also in addition to have
that those elements of course would be the instructional design
elements of the quality notion being improved through instructional design
processes. We also use our learning management system to
build modules that students could then go to for each
week. Of course. You know what the learning
outcomes were, what the readings were, what any
ancillary materials were. So here's a screen capture,
I've got rid of the heading and everything that made
it look pretty has been clipped off so that you
could actually see what's in here. But here you
can see we've got the the learning objectives here,
the readings from on the open stocks textbook. There
are links to videos, there's a pre class self
quiz and there are some slides, there's also some
assessments that are linked on this page. So from
a student perspective, you kind of dropped into this
. Here's everything that you need. All your materials
are in one place. And so building this kind
of stuff throughout the learning management system was part of
what the obstruction designer, the innovative. It's one
thing to think about building this in the LMS and
every element is different. Different certainly. But sometimes
you end up struggling more with format and layout and
things like that. Can you do with your content
? So having someone that knew the learning management systems
, save the professor of a lot of time,
just this one single course. So that's kind of
a structure that the entirety of the course looked like
objectives, readings, ancillary materials and then some quiz
options. So one of the things that we discovered
very quickly that our initial idea was, let's just
see if we can play the numbers game and save
a lot, a lot of students, a lot
of money. But this we discovered that this whole
process of sorcery design launch the fact that member into
this process of rethinking a number of elements of the
course. Well, I've got this now, would
I do it differently this way or do that differently
? And so a lot of people from within my
sinners, so learning technology specialist pedagogy specialists, um
educational research specialists were kind of pulled on for many
consulting things. We sit down. I remember two
or three conversations that I had with Peggy where we
were just talking what if you try this in your
advisor room if you did this differently? I mean
it was a giant one of those classrooms has got
kind of seats, anything like this, but you
know we were talking about using small groups and having
students turn around and talk to those in the row
behind them even though it was it's but it gave
us a lot of opportunity. Think about content ordering
, think about how you might do pedagogy different,
how we might do assessment different differently. I think
you've got the instruction design expertise that we're making sure
that all these great alignment, things that we love
about backward design, structural design were indeed a part
of the course. So it's not just about saving
students money, it's indeed about the quality of learning
improving the course where the transition took place. So
some evaluation data um overall from faculty, the sense
of quality, these are certainly the pros and cons
that they shared. They said that the o er
wasn't perfect but it's a free and perfect textbooks better
than expensive, perfect text. There are things that
aren't parts or at least at this point there were
the open sex has built more of these pieces in
. But you know there were a lot of end
of chapter questions and no text think and not a
cd with a bunch of power point presentations. Well
the faculty noted that most of those materials are really
, really terrible anyways that you get from the publisher
. So they didn't like they were necessarily missing all
that much. Someone knew that that it was really
nice having a dedicated G. A. That one
on one help was very valuable. That was more
helpful than if the CTL had offered a series of
workshops on course redesign or whatever we might have provided
to kind of educate them so that they can do
it themselves. And there's also a note about how
a lot of us build our courses and that if
your course isn't the textbook, you're not just building
the course off of chapter one, chapter two,
chapter three, well that's week one and that's week
two and that's we through the course. If you
build the course that needs to be taught given the
curriculum that you have, then the textbook is more
of a resource that supports the course that you developed
rather than the textbook, almost replacing the course or
being of course. So if you're sort of,
if you're following the latter model, then switching out
textbooks really isn't that difficult for these biology faculty who
taught the course several times and they kind of had
the biology course that they've always liked switching up the
textbooks wasn't necessarily that difficult, it was just articulated
things that maybe they hadn't articulated before, such as
learning outcomes. And we learned from talking with the
students that students would study based off of the learning
outcomes. In fact, our first iteration through that
first fall semester, one thing we discovered was students
were doing really, really well on the test,
on the items that were, that would have mapped
back to the learning outcomes, but previously, because
the factory was doing things in the class that learning
outcomes weren't necessarily articulated for, students were a little
frustrated on the first or second test because we didn't
have outcomes for the class material. It was mostly
just the, the online materials, the textbook materials
. So we quickly fix that and make sure that
we have learning objectives that covered every part of the
class. So the videos, the readings, uh
, in class activities and the lecture pieces, which
that's what good course redesigned looks like. So our
outcomes from this project the first year, It turns
out that we had about 1600 students just over 600
and so it's a little bit less than we had
hoped for. But as a result Of those students
, we estimate that we saved just under$160 for
students. And then thinking about since 2013. Now
with no new investment on our part, because the
faculty continue to use that same free open textbook,
we're almost at a half million dollars in collective savings
Because of one faculty member adopting one open free text
. Now, this was off of the$25,000 investment
, that's all that we put towards this course redesign
. So that's why I wanted 20-1 return on investment
. If we could, I could retire tomorrow,
if I could find another one of these in the
real world that I could do rather than in higher
education. So these things are going to continue to
multiply without us having to do anything, you know
, as long as the faculty continue to use that
free open text. So we've gotten a lot of
press as a result of this and positive pr for
the institutions are local newspaper has covered it and I
was interviewed by CNN about textbooks and our you got
that Virginia tech magazine, the alumni magazine, we've
got the University of Georgia magazine, Nine magazine for
the university. They did a story on us.
The student newspaper is sort of recursive lee doing stories
about open education resources. So there's lots of lots
of positive feelings about this particular project Um, since
2013 and 2014 we've received a total of five sort
of mini grants from the state, but one of
them, one of those five was the next generation
courseware grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and
collectively through this work and other project. Other things
that my centres funded We've impacted were estimated at around
21,000 students. And say as of the spring semester
, assuming people continue to go and do what they're
doing now, We estimate that we will have saved
students approximately two million in text book um fees.
So we're continuing as we're moving forward, we continue
to source target this large enrollment courses using expensive textbooks
. These are among the disciplines that we're working with
. History, Biology, major denominators courses, theater
, psychology, sociology, Anatomy and physiology have adopted
open stacks or other o ers that we've discovered and
shared with faculty and they spend some time. So
this is kind of where we are um any questions
about our process or what we've been doing or about
the larger topic of supporting faculty as they move through
these processes? Or have I spoke with unbelievable clarity
. Mhm. So what's up next? And instead
just for, well the Gates Foundation this semester was
able to hire a postdoc, so someone that's working
full time for two years and we're kind of leveraging
the goals of the Gates Foundation, which is really
around adaptive learning built upon open textbooks. So we've
been going to new faculty and engaging them with the
Gates project. And while Gates wants us to study
these adaptive tools, will faculty have to have adopted
the textbooks first? So we're kind of able to
creatively extend the work that we've already done around,
we are adoption. Um So that's where we are
right now. We're working the disciplines that we're working
with now with the Gates Foundation are sociology, which
that will be live in the spring and majors Biology
. Yeah, that's what the adaptive stuff is going
on. Yeah. Yes. Okay. I understand
. Some of the text books are physical objects that
some of these materials are online. Does that mean
get um Well it's yes to the latter question.
Not there, you can't get a physical textbook.
Most students and most of them are using them as
online text books, e books. So. But
yes, they're available to anywhere to anyone in the
world entirely free. Yes. Mhm. Well,
I think that we find at our exhibition that's really
what you see anyways, is that most faculty write
their own tests and quizzes and everyone's all they like
mine. It comes with the textbook but for the
most part they're offering most. Yeah. Anyway,
as well as we talked about test bank options,
that open stacks. Yeah. Our fact, they
seem to be a little itchy about that. Built
this stuff already. I'd rather just kind of mapped
the reading to my, I know what my horse
rather than changing my course based on the assessments and
want to inherit from open side. There's a c
wisdom in both both paths, you know? But
yeah, man, I know. They're just in
the last couple of weeks fact just uh huh.
And they may build this stuff, but I don't
really want to use that stuff. I've already Building
my own test bank and the already management system now
for 10 years, man, I just want to
make sure that their readings prepare students for what I'm
class that only assess that alignment issues. Yes.
Are you kind of is here, Well, one
thing is that sometimes when I talk about this,
people think, wow you$2 million, Like 30
classes that you've transitioned, it's really like only eight
. The textbooks are so expensive and these are large
intro classes. So There are eight faculty that we
worked with that brought us to those level of savings
. Of course, the fact that he's lots of
10s of thousands of students. So we have,
each semester we've had, I guess we've had a
different G. A. Each academic year, I
think. Yeah, we've had so, you know
, we have we have the good fortune of having
a process when so many who was phenomenal. She
before she graduates, she had written articles with tom
Reeves and other big names in the field. So
she, we've got, we were very fortunate with
our first to, so we had her right of
her processes. So what does this look like?
I got a little manual. And so when the
next G. A. Came in, we kind
of gave him Emmanuel said this is the kind of
stuff that happens and so you want to stop by
and see me once a week and talk about,
you know, just kind of map out. So
we had a little bit of a process that we
we develop because each faction members different and what they
feel that they need is different. Like like our
first biology remember really kind of wanted someone shoulder to
shoulder and then in my class I'd like you I
want you to know what I'm doing so that as
you build this stuff fix things, you'll have a
better sense of other faculty like a psychology for instance
, we have someone who is very much I want
to build it myself. And so the instructional designer
has less of a role I think in that course
. But there's still project management, there's still time
lining stuff of, there's still instructional design processes and
looking at the line issues and things like that.
So, you know, I think that I'm less
worried about variation in mind, uh Jas, I'm
more worried about variations and individual faculty and what they
need and what their work processes are because they're not
all the same and I don't think it's a disciplinary
difference necessarily. I think it's just some people are
have always, you know, you've been the lone
wolf, you receive tenure as a lone wolf,
you continue to work as a lone wolf, you
might have collaborations here and there and so some people
have that mindset and others are very collaborative and are
happy to let someone get under the hood and get
into their course in the LMS and make changes for
them. They're more than happy to have someone else
built pieces within. Just send send so many like
to links and then place these in the appropriate place
in the LMS and go and build it where others
are. Like that makes the itchy. I want
to do it to make sure it looks exactly the
right way. So I think, you know,
construction design processes, it's not rocket science for sure
. Um So I think it's more like seeing the
dynamic of the fact of the member and making sure
that you meet them where they are rather than trying
to contort them towards our processes. Yes. Do
you here our process when we Oh, exactly.
That of course is more like our environment designers as
consultant. We don't really do the work for.
I'm not sure I could. We are a special
effort made a no, no, no, this
is definitely a sort of specialized notion for for this
because we, like, like for our office of
online learning, their faculty who are getting paid to
develop online courses are gonna be teaching. These courses
will benefit from them in the future. There's a
different, there's a different sort of set of expectations
going into that these faculty for these topics. They
weren't planning a course redesign of any sort. You
know, I reach out to them. I think
all of them was me sending an email and then
having a chat over lunch and then talking about and
then pointing them to Peggy, you know, as
an opinion leader, well respected and who can,
who just loves to talk about everyone wants to talk
about their successes. Right? So Peggy is happy
to share what she's done. So that's, that's
really help get people kind of in the boat.
But the promise of extra support. It has been
a unique model specifically for for oh we are.
Because what most mostly most of what we do is
is lots and lots and lots of consulting. You
know, we don't, you know, typically get
under the hood. We do have we do have
a production shop for video and multimedia and stuff like
that and that's a different animal and it's definitely a
learning object focused. But no, for our instructional
design model that we're using currently for for o er
it's kind of we developed it for Oh er yeah
, yeah, That's okay. It's 2:33. Any
last questions? I'm happy to chat more if you
want to come up. I think I have another
talk at 3:00, but thanks for your time.
She can Okay.