Okay. Yeah. So good morning everyone. Thank
you so much for coming. I think we we
are expecting a few more people who have told me
they are going to be coming in late. Um
But I'm delighted that you're here. My name is
Anita Walls. I'm a librarian here at Virginia Tech
. I work with Open education. I worked with
online learning. I worked with economics and mathematics and
um we're here today to hear from dr David Arts
from the University of Minnesota. Who is by training
and instructional designer but is now the C. I
. O. Of the College of Education and Human
Development University of Minnesota. So um come on up
we're really interested to give you all the time.
So yeah. Oh trying to decide whether I should
sit down. There's a small group of friends I
can't breathe. Okay thank you. Okay so while
thanks for coming. So instructional designers, are you
all instructional designers, instructional design students, instructional design
. Can you just kind of, since we have
such a small group I just want to make sure
I know where we're coming from. Can I start
with you? Not formally but um I thought you
yeah I taught an online class this past summer that
I had to. Okay great. Right when you
design instruction for you. Okay great. I'm paul
. I'm the assistant director for international outreach and I'm
interested in this for internationally. Okay. Very good
. I've been designed I'm Heidi Dickens. I've been
designing a professional development for teachers in the K.
12 setting and I'm currently a dark student in the
instructional design and technology program here. Thank you.
Yes Michelle and the also student program. Okay.
I mean I'm all my ankle instructional technology message program
here today. So your your job is instructional design
in the construction. Fine. Okay. Yeah done
. And PhD is in Mr you can just stay
dangerous. What? Beer and working instructional design also
adopted the same program. Just quite as far as
they. Perfect. Excellent Christine. Not introduce yourself
as well. My name is Kristi johnson. I'm
and you learning library from you receive so to travel
here so and we're here mainly two at the invitation
of the libraries here to engage with faculty. Uh
we'll be doing that tomorrow and with librarians and some
staff to just bring about help, advance the conversation
about open educational resources, open textbooks to campus.
So um I'm not presented it. I don't even
know how many universities anymore. Never to a group
of people focused on instructional design. It's always been
faculty are librarians generally. That's it. But this
is kind of exciting for me actually because it is
my background. So in the College of Education human
Development in Minnesota I mean I supervised unit that has
we have for instructional designers that's again my background,
my ph D. S. And learning technologies which
is kind of half instructional design have more general educational
technology educational theory. So and I've asked different universities
this is a group I'd really like to talk to
because I think they have a big role in this
and um and if you're designing instruction more generally for
your own classes or whatever it is, I think
this is something you really might want to be aware
of. Open textbook. So I am gonna,
you know, start by just saying this isn't about
textbooks though. I mean it really isn't about that
, it's about what you do in your work,
right? Which is all about this. I mean
this is something I pulled off I think Wikipedia,
I don't really want to get very technical about what
instructional design is. This is as good as anything
, but this is gets this gets to the court
of it right. I mean, this is what
instructional design is about. You're trying to create some
sort of a learning environment where students will learn,
right? And you're trying to, that's your goal
. And so what I want to make the case
for today is that um, open has a role
in that open content. And I want to explain
why that is if our goal is to really help
students acquire knowledge and skills. Um as instructional designers
, we generally are using plant ecology and best practices
, things that we know about education to advance that
and to get by barriers as students might encounter.
There are barriers that are not being addressed that in
my training as instructional design, we didn't talk about
it all and I'm gonna make that argument and I'd
really like to know what you think about this at
the end. And I'm gonna try to leave plenty
of time. If I ask the instructional designers who
work for me, they're all going to tell me
it's a really great idea because they work for me
. Hopefully you can be more a little more brutally
honest with me, but so so here's the here's
the issue, right? I mean, when you
design, of course, you want to make sure
that it's not just design of instruction, it's also
designed, you're you're structuring the content, you're organizing
the content, you're making sure it's accessible, you're
making sure that against students, have, students can
get to the stuff they need in a way that
makes sense to them and in a way that benefits
them, right? But there's a barrier to this
. So, in the first decade of this century
, there, this is a from a report written
by women for the Department of Ed. Um,
2.4 million people in the first decade that basically graduated
from high school qualified to go to college. So
these are college qualified students. They took all the
right courses and they didn't just find those courses.
And Um, but for some reason or not,
for some reason, excuse me because of cost 2.4
million didn't ever finish college. There were a lot
of students who didn't finish college for other reasons.
This is the number that has been attributed and it's
their most conservative number to not finishing because of cost
. That's not something we really talk about as instructional
designers. Is it cost as a barrier to learning
. And so that's really what I want to talk
about today. So I'll show you some statistics to
try to convince you that things are different for students
than they've ever been. They're different for students than
maybe when you and I or whatever. I'm older
than many of you. But we're an undergrad at
least right. The two lines of funding from education
comes from two big buckets, comes from tuition,
it comes from government, right from the state.
Generally the green, the green line here is state
funding. The red line here is tuition funding and
this is us wide. And so you can see
that when I was an undergrad In my 4th of
six years of being undergrad there in 1988, I
was paying maybe 25 of the cost. My tuition
was paying that much. Now it's getting close to
, students today are paying about 50 of the cost
, here's Virginia's numbers. So it went from about
, they're paying about, I believe it was about
30 of the math there at one point. And
now it's closer to students are paying and Closer to
70 of the cost. Something this is, I
mean it's everywhere Minnesota's numbers look exactly the same as
that's really very similar. This is something I've calculated
for Minnesota. So the University of Minnesota data,
this is the number of hours at a minimum wage
job that a student would have to work to afford
a year of tuition at the University of Minnesota.
So going back to 1960, 200 hours and even
up to the 8280s or so, you know,
300 hours. That's a pretty good full time are
pretty good summer job. 300m away out there that
you can do that in the summer. That's just
tuition by the way, that's not roman bore your
books or anything like that. And today we're closer
to 1700 and if you do the math there,
that's a lot closer to a full time job all
year round. I mean my I have a son
was a junior in Minnesota and he worked at the
Minneapolis ST paul airport last summer and maybe I think
he made about$3,000 in my memory and he worked
more than full time. He worked every hour they
give them and Maybe$3,000, something like that.
That's really not much when you consider what it costs
to go to the University of Minnesota. So anyway
and so I should say that you know if you're
gonna if tuition is going up like this, I
mean they're really only three ways that you're going to
be able to do this. Either have the money
, you need to work for the money or You
borrow the money or steal the money I suppose you
did that too. But you borrow the money so
and so the average student at about 70 of our
students borrow. They have, they have their average
loan right now. It's about$30,000. So and
that's increasing greatly. And this is when I think
that this one and the one that's showing working I
think is real evidence again. That's what I'm trying
to say is it is different than it's ever been
before affordability wise. I can't stress that the red
line here is student debt. The green line here
is credit card debt nationally. You can see you
in the recession hit right the market crash. People
stop our own money. Yeah, but student loans
have gone up and this is only eight years ago
, nine years ago. They$500 billion 1.3,
8 or nine years later and go online at any
point any given week and google student loan, their
student debt or students or whatever. And you'll be
newspaper reports about default rates and about how big of
a problem it is. Some are saying it's the
next housing market going to crash. It's just kind
of kind of crazy. So, so that's,
that's depressing isn't. But that's those are the numbers
. That's, that's the fact. And you know
, most of it is not, most of it
is tuition, Right? I mean, that's really
worried that's the fastest rising biggest piece of this is
tuition. But I'm guessing there really isn't anyone in
this room or when I'm talking to faculty tomorrow.
There's nobody in that room who can do anything about
that. Really. Right. That's not a,
that's within their control. The only thing they can
really control are the books and supplies that they assign
to their students. And it's not an insignificant amount
of money. Books have gone up about four times
the rate of inflation for the last couple decades.
Yeah. And it's not slowing down at all.
This is what the college board says. Students pay
on average, mm undergrads on average in one year
for books and supplies and of course materials and almost
all that is books and for Virginia brilliant. Every
, every university is federally mandated to list like an
estimated cost of attendance so that students know what they're
getting into before they register for, for a program
. So you go on any university website, you
can google, you can look up, you can
search how much and Virginia Tech. It's 11 30
. So really right on the average, that was
a little bit more. And that changes depending on
the program. And if you go to somewhere like
Perdue or Uh, we're going to cal poly what
, where it's more of an engineering hard sciences focus
. It's closer to$2,000 is what they estimated.
So University of soldiers right in there too. I
think we're 1000. It's just a complete estimate.
So, um, hopes have this. Oh yeah
. So, and if, you know, as
instructional designers, we have access to faculty. We
don't necessarily always directly talk to students. And so
if you did, and we set up a camera
on campus, just kind of get their perspective on
us and ask them this question. And so I
just have about a minute video here with just the
student voice, which I think is important here.
So I think they're really valuable. But the cost
is just a little a little too much for students
who are already paying a lot for tuition. Find
a way to big cost more manageable because the wishes
going up, everything is going up. The cost
of living is going up and textbooks are going,
there is definitely a value to them but maybe not
for the cost that we pay for them. I
mean I guess professors are trying to provide students with
books that are reasonable, but there are some textbooks
that are just just wait till pricey. I just
feel like mary the overpriced. Yeah, I get
frustrated and uh you have to buy a book that's
expensive that you don't use textbooks are only used for
so long before you're done with them. So it's
like use it for a couple months and then probably
never touched it again. People weren't just issuing new
additions and just increasing prices rather stick to what you
have as it's kind of expensive and sometimes I feel
like I have to buy the textbook because um it
is required but it does kind of start to like
throw away so much money on something that you only
use for a semester. They should keep the same
textbook for several years because of the material doesn't change
that much. I have purchased them, I don't
use them which is kind of frustrating. I think
it's outrageous actually cost way too much in general.
So any unreasonable voices there, you know that's the
thing that actually gets me about the videos. It's
like no one of the students are saying you know
this is stupid and this is you know textbooks they
get the value of textbooks but they're just saying the
value isn't what we're paying for them to what we're
paying is just like such a burden. And they
bring up all these miss school school like, you
know, they changed versions every, so all this
and we don't use this much. We don't use
it. All of those issues that they raise their
are all costs related issues, aren't they? Like
the textbook costs nothing. There wouldn't be an issue
. Any of those issues with their, they wouldn't
be complaining that um, you know, uh,
we don't use the whole textbook. Why would they
care get the textbook anyway? So you get the
point. Um, I'll say that the other thing
I noticed about a week ago showing this video,
I don't know how many times I just noticed about
a week ago that our bookstore is probably doing really
well even without selling books because pretty doing really well
with the apparel sales. I think because I noticed
that like everyone's wearing a big golden em on.
Um, so okay, so the cost, so
I'm trying to make the point that cost is an
issue cost of textbooks and course materials. So,
so what, so what does that have to do
with design of instruction and the use of course materials
in your class? This is what happens when textbook
prices are too high. This is this is the
strategies that students are forced to make decisions that they're
forced to make about how they interact with the course
materials, which is what we're all about, right
? Students interacting with course materials. So they do
these things purchase older editions, they delay buying it
or they don't buy it at all. And we
have evidence showing that that's absolutely true. And You
know, this is a university of Minnesota student who
said he was asked about$80 French textbook and I
found 12 editions older on Amazon I think eight bucks
. And he had some pretty logical rationale for buying
that, didn't he? But you know that what
he's doing and he knew it too is he's putting
his academic success at some risk, right? Because
when there are readings or problems or whatever it is
to do, he might not have the right,
he may not have what he needs. Right?
So that's a bit of a problem. It may
be a small risk and you know, he knows
it and he's willing to try to figure it out
. But it's a risk all the same delaying purchase
. So this is from a statewide survey in Minnesota
. And I'll show you there's more the surveys and
data are all over on this. I mean they
they're pretty consistent. Financial aid doesn't come in until
you know what three weeks in, maybe after the
drop date. I don't want to pay you until
they know you're in the class were good. So
, um, in Minnesota is about three weeks in
. So if you, they 60 of students so
they had to wait. That means they're going without
the course materials for three weeks. So imagine in
a math class where you've been assigned Stuff for three
weeks and you're having to find a way to get
the content borrowed from a friend or whatever for three
weeks. Yeah. Putting their academic success at some
risk and they have to, because the cost one
other little flip I have, it's even shorter where
we asked this question every over delayed, I usually
wait until I feel like there's a need in the
class to buy the textbook or if I'm falling behind
and I can't find another resource for free online that
would also give you that information and then I'll buy
a textbook. I have delayed purchasing a textbook until
it was completely necessary to have it. Yes,
I have. Unfortunately, it had some troubles because
of it. Text for strong system. Then you
really obviously need in order to, on a class
, you need to have the text book and because
it counts so much, I think a lot of
people have problems getting the required text and therefore they
have struggled classes. They should necessarily struggling. I
know if you notice the first student said, yeah
, I usually wait until I'm falling behind to buy
the textbook. Like exactly, we want our students
to wait until they're falling behind great, you know
. Perfect. So I think that this is um
, become the rule actually not the exception. I
think students, the majority of the time wait as
long unless they're a freshman and they don't know any
better, but the majority of the time they wait
as long as they possibly can to buy a textbook
. I have two sons in college right now and
a third who is a senior. So next year
. Yeah, So we're gonna fix this affordability thing
today. I really appreciate that. But I asked
them, you know, hey, if you buy
your textbooks yet and every single freaking time it's like
, oh no, I'm gonna wait to see if
I really needed, you know, and they're living
as cheaply as they possibly can. They need to
write for me to be able to afford to help
them all three of them the same thing. So
I really honestly think that this has become the approval
that this is what students do because I have to
and then not buying a textbook at all. The
other strategy that they are forced to use. And
so this is I've seen this three and three different
surveys. This number So about 70 of students 60-70
saying a required textbook event that they didn't at some
point in their academic career, didn't buy it required
himself. So you see the point we're trying to
make your how cost can have an academic impact and
if you forget everything else today, if you can
just kind of remember the spirit of the slide,
this is what happens Because of that. Cause this
is a I think about 22,000 students answer this in
Florida. Um those instructional designers having some design of
instruction responsibility for that which faculty are but also instructional
design. People like you are responsible for that.
I guess what I'm assuming is I think it's something
we need to have on our radar is something that
impacts instruction. It impacts the success of our students
, which is what we're all about. Mhm.
Um And if most institutions new these numbers, I
mean really, I don't know about Virginia tech,
I know of Minnesota. There's this concerted effort to
reduce to to increase the four year graduation rate for
instance, right to skip students in and out of
here. And there's always a lot of pressure on
that. Well look, take your courses original specific
course drop. Of course they'll of course all of
those things impact that kind of thing. So even
institutions have kind of some bye in here. So
I'm gonna really, really quickly go through this next
piece. But the question I always get as well
. So what what are we gonna do about it
and how can we know how textbook market works?
Right. We've got publisher, publisher publishes a textbook
, they invest in that cost hundreds of thousands of
dollars to make a textbook, they sell it,
they get money back. That's how the whole market
works, right? So we know they pay An
author a little bit 8-12 maybe as a royalty.
That's that's how it works. How could we possibly
, how can we fix this? What would be
the ideal solution? The ideal? Maybe not realistic
, but ideal protection food be the ideal. Right
. If you think about it, Sections were Afraid
zero all the way down here, right? Credit
cost would not impact any of those things. So
how do you possibly do that when you have this
is how textbooks are made, You need sales,
need money from sales to pay for the creation of
the textbook? Well, there is another there is
another model and that other model is really simple and
it isn't very in fact, it's it's the kind
of model that would solve any problem in the world
. So it's kind of funny in that way.
But basically what you need up front is a funder
, right? I mean, we solve any problem
world, we have a thunder. So but the
reality is they exist and they've been doing it for
years, they've been funding the creation of textbooks.
So the publisher is doing exactly what they were doing
before peer review quality stuff. I mean, it
takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to create these things
. But what if it were paid for up front
by somebody who's intent, who said let's publish this
. But it will give you money publisher to do
it. But the catch is the book has to
be free, forever, forever integrated. Right?
So this would be if they did that they have
money to pay the authors. So it doesn't mean
that authors aren't paid. They just have to hit
you have to have a a thunder, right?
So they exist they have existed for years. Their
universities getting into that that are working with their faculty
to help them create textbooks. Hewlett Foundation, the
Gates Foundation and several other foundations have some millions and
tens of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of
millions of dollars into creating these textbooks. They exist
California passed legislation two years ago saying that they're going
to fund the creation of 50 open textbooks, British
Columbia followed up saying they're going to fund the creation
of 60. So it's a thing, it isn't
a dream like wow phone had a thunder. They're
already here, we'll talk about this last little bit
later. But professional organizations of schools can throw in
a little bit of money apiece, create some resources
and then use them across the consortium. So,
so this model already exists. It's out there and
there are textbooks that are based on this. There's
only one problem that's remaining. And that's if you
know, if I have a book and I tell
you that it's free and you can copy it,
you can, you can pass it around or whatever
. You may copy this free. You can copy
and give your students fashion. You're going to be
a little uncomfortable with that if you tell them that
. Probably because why does have a cost to the
river? Well, there's one, there's one thing
that's exactly right and I'll get back to that one
because he said, he said, um, if
there's no cost and it's probably not worth anything.
Absolutely. Is that in fact, why don't I
address owner and get it all the way, because
that is absolutely what faculty believe and what we all
believe kind of human beings. There is kind of
this like get what you paid for idea, right
? That's why um, well anyway, um,
but at the same time you don't walk into the
library and you don't look around and go, where's
the good stuff? This stuff's all free. It's
free to you. It doesn't mean it's free to
create as well as the librarians. It is millions
and millions of dollars sunk into these things that are
in the light, right? The same thing here
we have to convince faculty that there is a model
where the publisher can do exactly what they did before
peer review and you know, illustrations and all of
that other stuff. It just is free to the
end user is still caught. So that's the argument
. You have to counter what you have to that
argument. But it's the fact that you need to
point out the fact that yeah, but I'm gonna
go back to my question, what why would faculty
? Maybe if if an instructor feels there is a
better textbook for the course, But there's a free
one, right? And their students go, well
, my other instructors use free books and you say
, but this is really the best textbook for this
course. Been there in a position of having to
justify why they didn't go with a free one,
right? They are. And eventually I'm kind of
hoping that that becomes the case that they need to
justify that cost. And it isn't like and maybe
they can and maybe it does make sense. And
I can't judge that only they can really right?
We can't really judge that. They need to be
the ones making decisions about their course materials. Faculty
. But that pressure could happen if you start getting
some adopting free and some saying it would be interesting
to see what happens, but having to justify it
, I think makes some sense. But let's say
, I'll tell you that if I handed this to
one of my faculty members of my back in Minnesota
and said, this is free. Just make copies
of a gift. All your students. Here's an
electronic version. Just email it off or put in
your first management system. They can they feel a
little worried about doing that because of what do you
think printing costs? And I don't know. Yeah
, I'm sorry. That was they be worried from
an illegal perspective. Right. Can I really how
do I how do I know that a public someone
something's published. It is copy written by default,
right? I mean it has a copyright on it
. And I know faculty have told me, no
way am I going to do that? Because if
I have some intellectual property charges, like against me
, that's the end of my career. Could be
the end of my career. I mean, I
work in this intellectual property enterprise. That's the worst
thing I could possibly do. You know? Really
? So, so there's one thing missing, even
if the thunder up front and the punctures are saying
it's free. Even if they're kind of telling you
, it's still like, can I really am not
used to doing this? Am I right? And
normally if you need, if you wanted to do
that, if you want to copy it and all
of that, what would you need to do?
Get it cleared? Right? You have to ask
you have to contact the poker. So no one's
going to, No one's going to contact the publisher
say, Hey, can you make 40 copies this
and hand it to my students for free? Because
You know, can I can I steal your book
? Basically? No one is dumb enough to kind
of make that even that call. Right? So
there's one thing missing. There's an understanding missing.
There's an understanding. We need to the users need
to know what the intent was from the funder and
that they are legally okay. Yeah. With this
in mind. So it gets in the way here
is copyright and copyright is extremely useful tool, right
? I mean, it really absolutely is core to
our intellectual property enterprise, whatever we do. But
in this case, when the intent is to share
in this, in this case, it kind of
gets in the way. Right? So the solution
to that is a creative commons. How many people
have heard of the creative power? Okay. Most
that's Brown. Okay. Non profit made by a
bunch of really smart and local property lawyers. Larry
Lessig was the founder of it. If you know
, he is, um, their whole goal is
to create licenses so that funders like that can tell
people it's okay, trust me, you can do
, you can copy this, you can do things
with it, Right? So instead of all rights
reserved, they're they're they're allowing you as a if
you're offering a textbook, you can you're the copyright
holder, you can give away some of your rights
, right? You can say I want people to
use this and that's what these funders need. They
need a tool like this. So, creative commons
creates licenses and these licenses and this is a creative
common symbol. Not close captioned, but creative commons
. Uh I think the clothes catch on square,
isn't it? I don't know. Anyway. Um
Yeah, so um so if what they if they
if you create a light, creative use a creative
commons license, it tells people up front what they
can do, they don't have to be worried about
their intellectual any kind of intellectual property issues. Um
Plus it also, sorry, this is kind of
small, but besides the copying piece, it allows
you to do these three things as well, It
allows you to retain a copy to reuse it to
revise it to remix it and redistribute it all for
free. That's what the licenses are allowing you to
do. This is David Wiley who's from Brigham Young
, this is a faculty there who kind of said
this is, he defined what open content was through
these these five things. If it's truly open,
you can do all this with So these licenses allow
you to not only give it away but to edited
all that. We'll talk about men these are the
licenses are not gonna spend much time on it at
all, but they're really easy to understand what that
means. I'm gonna go through really fast. All
right. This means if you use something given attribution
to um whoever made it, right? This means
non commercial means. So if you see this simple
, it says you can use this, you can
do all this stuff but don't sell it. Don't
make any money out there, share alike means you
can do all that stuff. But if you mix
it or edit it, make something new with it
, you need to share it with the same license
that I used as the original. This is really
not an open component. License component. This means
no derivatives. So it means you can't edit it
, you can't change it, you can't fix it
. So those are all components. Creative commons,
licensed components and what they do is they put them
together in these six licenses that you may have seen
on things. I mean the internet kind of runs
operatives licenses to be honest, but we don't really
know it. Um, so you know, if
you look at the most simple one is by which
means you can do all that stuff right next to
call it, but you need to attribute the author
, that's the most basic thing that book that I
was holding up has this license so you can copy
it, you can take things out of it,
change it, remove things or whatever you want.
And there's electronic version I have on my eyes that
that might be easier to do that with. But
you can take that to a copy machine to make
photocopies if you want to. So you can see
all of, you know, this one basically if
you see that with this license on me, if
you need to attribute the author, you can't sell
it and you can't change it. So they've made
it super easy for people like us who are not
lawyers to understand what these licenses mean. These symbols
are all backed up with legal to use that.
I wouldn't understand if I read, but you don't
need to. Okay, so um some quick examples
MIT open courseware. If you're familiar with that,
anybody on the internet gives content away a lot of
content to wait and doesn't want people calling them up
. They can use it for this and you can
use it. If the intent is to share it
, they'll use this kind of license on it.
So you see mitt, you're familiar with that of
course, where Mitt about 10, 12 years ago
, the president said, we're going to give all
of our content away, put it on the web
and they have, it's out there mitt. Content
, videos of lectures, of course, materials,
worksheets, whatever silly by, I think as well
. And this is a screen shot from the bottom
of one of those pages. So if you use
this, if you put it, what course management
system is here. So if you put it in
your psyche site, you have to attribute mitt,
you need can't sell it, which shouldn't be a
problem. And you if you make something new out
of it, you need to share with this exact
same license. Ted talks are familiar with, they
used to have a little bit more prominently displayed,
but now you have to kind of see it at
the end of the video. So I captured the
screen at the end of this video. Yeah,
you can put this in your psyche site, this
video, But you have to attribute 10, which
isn't a problem because it's kind of just, you
can't sell the video. This one this non commercial
really isn't much of an issue for you, right
for you or for your instructors that you're working with
, no derivatives. So they don't want you editing
it, cutting it, take care of it,
mixing other things in. I don't know why by
deserves choices and that's what their license they went.
So you know what you can do with it.
You don't have to call them up and ask,
that's what open content is. If, so it's
all about the license. It isn't necessarily about being
electronics, that's what open is. It's what you
can do with it. It's free. Plus all
this other stuff you can do that. And oftentimes
the word open is used differently. So looks familiar
with that term range one of those owes stands for
open, right? That o stands for open.
Uh huh. Um but it's a little different.
Right? So this is actually the use agreement.
Of course, they're out of a provider. If
you read the actual detailed license of what you can
do with the content, they're pretty explicitly telling you
. No, no, no, this isn't the
open you're thinking of, right? This is in
fact, I mean, they go through and explicitly
say, you can't copy, you can't reproduce,
you can't redistribute or pop. I mean, they're
making sure you don't confuse. Their open would really
open. So, so I want to make sure
that, that uh, books are not open and
how we're defining it. You do not happen.
You don't have those usage rights, right? So
that brings us to open textbooks as a solution to
what we were talking about earlier. Open textbooks or
textbooks that have that license like that one on the
chair there that was published by Rice University. They
have a whole arm of that creates, publishes open
textbooks are funded by foundations. Hewlett Foundation Gates Foundation
and a couple of other foundations. There's a display
, where is it? Is it out this door
? This door, This door, there's a display
of these books sitting right outside that door. You
want to look out. They're all creative commons license
and they are just, they're just a few of
what's out there. About three or four years ago
we created a library of Minnesota. If you're interested
, take a look, you have to sign up
for anything. You have to, whatever it's open
there just There are about 170 or so books in
there right now, created by people who intended for
them to be free and shared. And this is
a resource. It was meant for faculty wright as
a mentor for an easy place for faculty to find
these things instead of like trying to search the internet
and filtered through all the other things that the internet
is. Um, it's meant to be a very
simple place. We also started collecting reviews in there
and we have about 120 years old reviews right now
from faculties so that when they do look at the
book things start getting the idea of what they're good
or not. Some quick examples of what they are
in there. There's 25 books from this consortium with
law schools. They have they publish them every year
, new versions every year. And so the funded
the funder part, remember the Thunder? And the
model is showing you is the consortium, The 200
plus. It is not going to take a lot
of money for 200 or some institutions each. They
wouldn't have to contribute a lot since there's 200 of
them to do this. And I mean, intellectual
property changes every year. Law, Right? And
the law changes every year. So they have to
publish something new every year and there's and then they
can all use it free. These are c.
C these are afraid of comments by licensing attribution.
So you're working with law faculty, you know,
they want to use this. All they have to
do is attribute the publisher, this is created.
This is like the book that's sitting on the chair
there. This is Uh two semester physics has gotten
apparently it has almost 10 of the market share now
and which is pretty impressive. There's a lot of
physics courses in this country, introductory physics um As
a two semester of course because it's open, you
can get it in all these different formats. Publishers
would have a problem with this because they don't want
you to copying their stuff so they try to keep
kind of lockdown pdf pub, you can get a
print copy like that, it tends to cost about
$40. Give or take$10. It tends to
cost about 20 of a publisher's textbook would cost you
can read it on the web if you want to
book share. I wasn't it's a format I wasn't
really very familiar with, but it's an accessibility,
it has to do with accessibility disabilities access. So
I believe uh, you can print to like a
braille printer from here and so on. But again
, because it's open, it allows them to do
whatever form that you want. You can have it
, their instructor manuals available. There's power point slides
. You do need to register with them or at
least you need to make sure they won't give you
the structure manual until they're convinced that you are actually
an instructor. Right? So there are examples materials
PowerPoint slides. These are just like published. Both
. Like I said, they are funded differently but
they are funded And so uh, their quality bucks
here, the reviews that we've been getting, this
is what we've been saying about them on a scale
of 1-5. Pretty good. And we're continuing to
collect these reviews. The faculty workshop, we will
run tomorrow. We'll ask them at the end of
worship to write a review. As long Take a
book and write one. Yeah. So coming back
to why we're even talking about this, right?
It's about this, right? And so you can
see the affordability, piece of it, the gates
, all of that. And there are legitimate resources
out there that can be used, but there's more
because it isn't just about the free right, it's
also about the openness of it and what that allows
you to do. And so of I do have
a few examples just to throw out there about how
the openness has actually led to the improvement of instruction
and the improvement, I would say of the,
of the content, both the content and the instruction
. So, um, there is a, um
, I started on this a little 3.5 years ago
or so and the first instructors that adopted in Minnesota
, we're almost three years ago. So I've been
using it for a while. There are three faculty
who adopted open statistics book and this, they did
it together, they did it as kind of a
program and after doing it for ever using it for
a year And they did it, they adapted it
for affordability reasons, right? They wanted their students
to have access to the book on day one and
you know, be able to know barriers. But
they knew about the openness. I mean, they
understood the open license and so after a year of
what they did was they said, you know,
this isn't quite meeting our needs. And they added
a chapter And they also wrote like 1000 multiple choice
questions, which is kind of crazy. But what
we're finding happens is faculties suddenly seem to feel kind
of empowered again, in a way, I mean
, it's like they own this now, right?
They can make it what their students need and what
they need. And that's what we're starting to find
. So that's one example where they said there's this
topic stats, I think they're teaching stats in Excel
or something like that and they said, I know
that's kind of an odd thing, but we do
it. And so we're going to add for whatever
reasons they felt their students, there is a math
faculty member Minnesota who adopted a year ago, um
uh open textbook and then decided he sat at his
desk and recorded some videos on his laptop, Just
simple videos that anybody could do connect kind of aligned
with the curriculum in the textbook. And he added
links into the textbook and said, you know,
if you want to see an example, this,
this kind of problem solved, you know, click
here and it takes a Youtube, Youtube. You
know, I don't know if that's a content improvement
or an instructional improvement both. Um there were three
faculty who came to me who teach him out of
a december, they teach an open, they teach
at the even open personal finance book and they came
and said, you know, I don't think we
can use this book anymore because there's this chapter on
the consumer price index And the data is from 2010
and we really need an updated book. And what
do you think my answer was to do? Yeah
, I do that yourself. What they told me
is completely get it. They said we have time
and that I absolutely respect and honor that. One
of them is going up for a full professorship.
Um One of them was an adjunct and teaches at
like three different university. I mean super bit busy
, you know that, right? And I said
, well okay, I just need, you know
, may remind you could if you wanted to and
okay, you need to make that decision yourself.
And then one of them kind of on our own
said, you know the consumer price index is public
information, right? I mean it's on the web
and I had a graph earlier with the textbook costs
consumer price index seconds. I didn't put that up
. I just pulled it off the web and so
one of them said, you know what, why
are we having them read about consumer price index when
they can actually be going out there and doing some
primary data, like primary research on the data itself
. And so they decided to cut out the chapter
, which is easier. Doesn't take a lot of
effort. Just and instead they replaced it with a
project that was a research project on the data itself
. Now, they could have done that without an
open textbook. Right? I mean it didn't take
a textbook to do that, but their whole mindset
has kind of changed now in a way that I'm
in control of this and I don't have to just
kind of deal with whatever is handed to me by
positive. And that's really I think the innovation is
that it's a way of I think empowering faculty and
helping them convince that that it's in your hands.
Right? Um Mhm. Boy, I'm not going
to talk about this. This is a community college
. I don't wear tight water. Is How far
is it from here? Okay. It's always so
Tidewater created a whole degree. Were you not paying
any technical costs? And these are the results that
they got? They did research on it dropping withdrawal
races. Is statistically significant findings. C or better
the number of C. Of grades that are cr
better improved the institution. Actually made more money just
to your students dropped. So they liked it to
the administration like it. Mhm. And basically it's
all because they have the course materials on the first
day right? There's no barrier to accessing the content
. So I was not that I didn't put in
there that David Wiley didn't know who he is.
You know. Okay so you should know who he
is. Uh google him. Uh He is kind
of the father of open education and I would call
him he's Brigham Young. He resigned actually his tenure
faculty position to start a company basically to advance open
education across country. And he's one who came up
with those retain that those five bars. That about
what open is. He still teaches at Brigham Young
and he's he taught a class last year. You
might, there's two reasons you might be interested in
this. He had a class on project management for
instructional designers, he has the same background instructional design
and educational technology. And um and we've never seen
a textbook for project management for instructional design. No
, I'm guessing no because there is one or there
wasn't one actually because what he did then was he
asked his students the whole course was basically them writing
a textbook on project management for instructional design. They
wrote it as a class and they had real authorship
in this the students did and what he was arguing
was that and and this book is openly licensed,
they can contribute to it. Together, They have
an understanding of what the intellectual property agreement is.
And as future years of this class as he teaches
it, they're going to be able to contribute to
it too and improve it as you go. And
so if you want it, it's actually a PM
project management. The number four id dot org.
So PM number four dot org. It's a project
management textbook for instructional designers. And he has been
saying, you know what, this is eliminated.
His class are what he calls throwaway assignments, right
? Where someone doesn't assignment, he turned it in
, instructor reads it, throw it away and kind
of that agreement that we all have. And this
is how education works. He's saying, no,
they are not real offers. Their names are on
this book, they're contributing to society, they're doing
something productive. And it's all because this open licenses
kind of allowed him to do that, right?
I mean, they all have this understanding, here's
how we're going to share it together. So,
so what can you do as people who design instruction
in one way or another? No, it's available
, I would say, first of all, and
textbooks are an easy place to start because faculty get
textbooks, if you start talking about learning objects and
stuff that kind of glaze over and it seems like
way too much work and like I'm going to sift
through every object in the world to find one that
fits what I want today. But no, but
you know what's available, open content that's available.
And text books are a great place to start with
that. And you can go to, I'll tell
you that the text books are available are pretty much
on our library that opened textbook hyper I mean,
that's that's the whole goal. That is to put
it all in one place. It's easy to know
what's available. Um, textbook publishers have sales forces
that are, you know, that are not as
big as I used to be, but that get
in front of faculty and really help them make decisions
about textbooks, instructional designers. I think people who
work with faculty to design their courses. Um,
I think can be the same thing on the open
side. You just make them aware of this,
especially since it's a pedagogical issue, isn't it?
Like hey, if you really want to help your
students learn, I have, you should know this
. If the content is free, then this is
so anyway, they of course are making precision as
I should. You can at least be the first
making them aware. There's another one that if people
are creating content, you might want to let them
. I'm not I don't want to get into this
too much but there's certainly an opportunity for them to
license what they're doing openly. There are benefits to
that. Mhm. Get us a little beyond this
our time here today. But there are big benefits
to it. The woman who author the open statistics
book I mentioned earlier was an adjunct faculty member at
a community college in California. Which is that title
that I just threw out. There is probably the
bottom of the keep as far as academia goes and
added professor at a community college. She I know
her now and I've seen because I've seen her key
noting at I couldn't tell you how many conferences now
many about statistics education, about open education. Anyway
, she her career is based on the fact that
she gave this stuff away. Right. So anyway
, I talked a lot longer than I wanted to
. Questions do you think that instructional designers have a
role Irs my question, do you think instructional designers
have a role in this or is this beyond the
scope of what you should be doing? Yes sir
. Commonplace. This completely depends on the doctor,
how he decides of course something that you can take
into account. It's like all these new online resources
like mastering physics while the applause. Sure. That's
something that is a lot of causes us to think
it was 50$50. So you're talking about like
you have to buy a code kind of stuff.
Right. Yeah. My sons have dealt with that
same thing. That's the textbook, that's the publishers
new strategy. They're kind of in some ways I
think accepted that the future of content is open and
they worked their way into these services around the content
. Um and um um It all and and having
a code like that cuts out. They used textbook
market completely. My son had this last semester had
to buy, it was like$150 for this code
to, I think it was a math class.
He couldn't go to. His roommate said, hey
, can I use the one you used last semester
? He couldn't go to bookstores, They can buy
a used coat, They don't do that. The
code is good for one semester and that's it.
So that's the publishers are very incentivized to do that
, so. Mhm. Back to my question,
Our instructional, do you see yourself as someone who
feels I want to say responsible and maybe heavy,
But is this an important piece? Is this an
additional thing to instructional design that could, and if
not one of the barriers to that, like would
you be uncomfortable having a conversation with faculty? Mhm
. About contact? I think most of them that
I've worked with, I can definitely see that being
willing to incorporate this may be not as their primary
export, but at least they are interested in providing
the material for the students and so I can only
assume at least using it on a secondary basis and
that may be kind of the gateway to ranging service
along. Right. Yeah, good point. I
think being aware of emerging and uh huh Not just
technologies, the analog and the digital and innovations certainly
we might be in a position where we have more
time and were exposed to it. So to bring
it to the table when we are having conversations I
think appropriate. Yes. Because you are having discussions
with them about their students success. And you're saying
, well, right. I mean, generally anyway
, that's kind of what you're doing as instructional designers
. You sit down and say, well, if
you structure it like this, they might get confused
about that. I might be able to find the
content here or if you structure this instruction correct.
Right. I mean, the whole thing is about
student success, the whole reason you're working with them
is to help tell you, I feel like I'd
be very interested in it, but I also wonder
to what extent are specific, specific. Yeah.
You know, and I think the library, I
think I said has about 170, which isn't a
lot when you think of all the different areas,
so, so Right. That's why I think it's
important that you, you know that we all kind
of just become aware of what's available because you're right
, you're gonna be plenty of faculty where they're going
to look and go, no, nothing for me
. So be it. Yeah. You almost don't
. You want to start the conversation with them if
there isn't something All right, it's that would be
. And there are things beyond textbooks as well.
We've been focusing on that, but that's another awareness
piece. Yeah, that's a good point. Other
comments about this that fits into what you do or
doesn't fit into what you do, what you're studying
course interested in. Okay, So I'm an instructor
. I got it. I don't need it.
It looks good. I teach software. So for
me, I like open source software more open like
this open. I ironic that I've heard the textbook
and it's not, it hurt me when I wrote
it because I knew it wasn't gonna be open.
So I'm interested two sides of this.1. As
a content developer, I wanna get my copyright back
and I want to contribute it because I've seen this
. You know, the book that I, my
students cost 100 bucks, right? And I know
my students don't want to look until they need it
. I know that, but if it was free
, they there's no reason for no barrier they haven't
provided. I don't care. Uh as the reason
I wrote it was because I want to make money
I wrote because I wanted a better text. That's
why did. And as a philosophical side, you
know, anti software development and programming. And you
know, that's just few official office should be that
way to the software. And so it really goes
well with my philosophy about what I want to do
. Um, and so, you know, that's
why I'm here because I looked there wasn't a book
for my course. Unfortunately, I go through our
library on campus. My book is available in my
book, but the book juices is available so my
students can use a free open, not open free
book through the class during text services. Yes.
So like that, maybe something I do next time
to say, don't buy my book, don't buy
the book classes here in the library, I just
look at it online, but it's electronic. Um
You know, I think some of it is,
I did some professional work for with Sky Bar,
my job for this. So being familiar with how
that open philosophy changes things I think is the other
half of that equation. My experience when I was
on the outside of the table was a lot of
older faculty are used to the new models and so
they were like, what's comfortable, we don't want
to change the mystic with what we know. Um
And so I think some of that change as That
change occurs with faculty. My students have two kids
, 13, 12 and 11 year old. They
have no problems up online. My son's math technicals
online. You know, I drive him crazy and
book online. Okay, So I think that is
changing to those kids come through like for them having
on the phone or whatever, whatever health care.
So, I think, I think some of those
things would take. Yeah, Come on, Let's
go that way. Right, interesting. Mhm.
Yeah. I don't know. There is any expert
piece in the room about getting a copyright back as
a contract. I comes back and nowhere is it
anymore, and only have told students this semester.
So I'm hoping when no one buys it, when
no one. Uh It was uh distracted. I
read that because I wanted to know when it came
back to me and they said it goes out of
print and out of print is when no one else
buys it. I only had 12 students out of
300 bucks a semester. So I'm thinking maybe I
and then I can do what I want with.
Yeah, well I'll just make a new version and
change enough that it's no longer the same material.
Right. Right. And that's good. Yeah,
it needs some work. Okay. So the other
thing that I just think about from an external perspective
is a lot of the work that I do out
of the libraries on our campus. And I've been
doing this work for about two years and I don't
just do open things. But I as a library
and I have a variety of perspectives on student affordability
issues is what kind of partnerships can reform across the
university. So you have great resources here and your
libraries and what other sorts of partners can you work
with on campus to promote awareness of open promoted culture
change about how we think about publishing. And um
, you know, from a faculty perspective, it's
something that make a lot of money on a book
. You're probably not going to convince them to publish
it openly versus you know, via a publisher,
but a lot of families don't make money or a
huge amount of money off of they're publishing. So
how can we promote awareness of the option to published
within with an open license, as Dave indicates here
. Um, but other types of partnerships on campus
as well. So I just encourage you to leave
today with that notion in mind that the libraries have
promoted this and asked you here to start a conversation
and think about how you can partner with your libraries
and or other partners on campus to extend the conversation
. And are you thinking about these issues going forward
? 12 o'clock. Yeah. Thank you very much
. Should you have questions? Put my email up
here or if you want to contact me for any
reason? Yeah. Thank you.