Okay, good afternoon, Good afternoon everyone. Thank
you so much for coming to hear about libraries and
open educational resources. How librarians can be involved,
how library folks can be involved. Um My name
is Anita Walz, I am the assessment open Ed
and Online learning environmental library here at Virginia Tech.
Our guest today is Kristin Jensen who is the E
Learning Program Program Development Lead for the learning supported issues
. Big mouthful, very helpful. Um Christy is
um joined by Dave ernst who is sitting in the
back. Um he is uh the C. I
. O. Of the College of Education and Human
Development at the University of Minnesota. He has an
instructional design background and together they have um developed the
open textbook library at the University of Minnesota. They're
going to tell you our Christie is going to tell
you some about how libraries can be involved with open
educational resources, open textbooks. I hope this is
helpful. I will let her um tell you if
she wants questions at the beginning, at the,
in the middle or the end. And part of
the reason we also invited folks from outside of Virginia
Tech is to really encourage development of a community of
practitioners and librarians who are interested in this topic.
So we are very interested here and would love to
connect with others and things exploring also. So Christie
, thank you. Thank you all for being here
today, taking the time to join us and you
have a great resource in Anita. If you're here
and also in the area utilizing her for her expertise
, I'm not sure that like my expertise, you've
been compares to her, but I get to be
the outside voice that can reinforce all the work that
she's doing here. I'm happy. I'm a pretty
casual speaker. I'm generally loud. I don't want
to feel like the one person sitting in the front
row is feeling like they're yelled at, but if
you can't hear in the back, let me know
. But I'm usually known for projecting pretty well.
Um, so please ask your questions as we go
along. Anita gave me a little bit of a
background, not who particular individuals were, but a
sense of who's in the room. If you have
a question, if you could introduce yourself to me
and kind of talk about your role here at this
institution or another institution, I would greatly appreciate that
. Um, in addition to the information that Anita
gave to you about me, I like to do
a little bit more so that folks understand not my
pedigree, but the perspectives that I bring to the
work that I'm doing. So I've been at the
University of Minnesota for 10.5 years, it'll be 11
years on June one. Um, And I've had
four different jobs. This is my fourth job at
the University of Minnesota. So before this I was
the director of our social sciences and Professional programs department
. Um And that encompasses a wide range of topics
anywhere from history, political science, business, um
sociology, a whole range of topics. Um And
we also had responsibility for at that point in time
for our busiest reference service point. Um And then
before I was that I was the head of the
math library, so we did G. I.
S. And paper maps and catalog 50,000 maps that
had been sitting there for 30 years, did all
that kind of work. Um And before that I
was the physics and astronomy librarian. So those are
the four jobs. This is this e learning job
is the one that I've had for the last couple
of years that I've had at Minnesota. Before that
I was up the road a little bit north of
here at Penn State for four years and I was
in the earth and mineral sciences library and I supported
geology and meteorology. And before that I did a
gig at the University of Michigan, I'm kind of
traveling around the big 10 institutions. Um And I
go big 10. Um And I worked in they
had a residency program some years ago and so I
was out on the north campus doing engineering, Architecture
, urban planning and design. And then I also
worked in the map library in the early days of
G. I. S. And um working mostly
with G. I. S. In the map
of the library, not so much with the paper
maps. So I have uh an undergraduate degree in
Philosophy which I guess which is what I attribute my
success and all of these different disciplines to my background
and philosophy and being able to think. Um But
I'm also that background in philosophy also um lends itself
to making a couple of different arguments today. And
um so those arguments are going to be why libraries
are in this space. And then also um the
arguments kind of the I'm gonna tell you the thinking
that I've put into why libraries are here now.
Um Open educational resources have been around for a decade
and a half under that name and maybe even earlier
than that. And so why are libraries really digging
into this space now? And I'll talk about that
at the beginning and then I'll cover a little bit
of the strategy that we're using to talk to faculty
on campus. Dave's gonna do a workshop tomorrow morning
for faculty. And so I would like you to
know what faculty are hearing from us and why.
Um so I welcome your questions comments as we go
along and I work with librarians and staff from across
the organization. And so I also welcome your perspectives
that go beyond what I'm gonna offer to you today
as well so that we can all share and learn
and grow from that. So I hope that you'll
participate. So I don't always start with this.
But today I decided that I thought that it might
be a good idea to talk about open first and
what we mean by open when we're talking about open
textbooks. Um and open educational resources. So David
Wiley, who's kind of the father of that term
. Open educational resources, has what he calls the
five ours. And one of the reasons that I
bring this up is that let's see how many it
was last week, I think we were at Ohio
State. And as part of that conversation with the
folks at Ohio State, there was an interesting perspective
from a library and who said, you know,
people across campus and even within the libraries are using
this term in different ways open. So let's reach
some agreement before we go further about what that means
in this instance. So the Five ours kind of
explain what we're talking about when we're talking about open
educational resources. So, um folks who put an
open license on content give you the right to retain
make own and control copies of that content. So
you can take it, you can keep it um
you can reuse it so you can use the content
in a wide variety of ways. You can modify
it so you can turn it into something else.
You can translate it into another language, you can
combine it with other things or revise it and you
can share copies so you can redistribute it. So
the talk to the retain and the redistribute are kind
of key variables. And then in the middle you
get to do different things with the content. Um
, if you want to. So in thinking about
open, these are the rights that we're thinking about
. Um, anybody who has access to an open
educational resource are able to exercise. Um, so
that kind of frames the conversation related to open and
we'll talk a little bit more about that as we
go along. Um, so from the perspective of
libraries and why libraries are here now, the way
that I've been thinking about the topic lately is that
higher education is part of an ecosystem. So if
you think about the way that, and I'm not
a natural resources person or anybody who's a biologist who
studies ecosystems. But the way that I've heard this
described in the way that I think about this as
it relates to our work is that when there's a
change in one portion of the ecosystem, it often
impacts other pieces of the ecosystem. So if you've
been involved in looking at the chronicle of higher education
, the new york times, the various higher ed
um resources that talk about the ecosystem of higher Ed
over the last several years, you will have continued
to see the issues that I'm gonna bring up here
throughout that literature. So financing for colleges declines as
costs rise as anybody not heard that over the last
several years, um borrower's debt at graduation is a
big chunk of money and there's huge concerns about this
, both in higher ed and government and families.
Um there's also interest in doing things different in the
classroom, so a few years ago, you know
, moocs were everywhere, but that also pushed faculty
to be thinking about flipping the classroom as well,
and then this article talks specifically about the impact of
moocs in higher ed, which is kind of died
down, but I do think it had an impact
on faculty thinking about and feeling pressure to do things
differently in the classroom. And then finally, um
you will have seen information about open access. So
um Senator Durbin and Senator Franken put together some legislation
in order to support um open open access. Um
and just today, in the new york Times Dave
was quoted in an article um that talked about open
educational resources, there's a new report out from the
student pubs group um and so there's a lot of
conversations, so when you see the new york times
talking about this issue on a regular basis, you
know that it's becoming more mainstream. They're talking about
and access open educational resources. Sorry? No,
no, no, I'm sorry. I misspoke.
So, so what was that are involve open access
or was it about? Well, they use the
term open access textbooks just in this headline from The
Chronicle, But open, I mean, open educational
resources have an open license. Um So depending on
whether or not that's not the typical way that that
is used, that talking about just books that are
freely available, stupid open access or they're talking about
books where advice. So when the when folks are
talking about open educational resources, they're talking about things
that have an open license that have those rights,
the five hours that were mentioned. So, given
these pressures in the ecosystem, like if you look
at the literature and how it has changed over time
over the last several years, it's kind of my
conclusion that we each have our own ecosystem. So
how are each, how our individual campuses responding to
those drivers and pressures that are happening both at the
state and the national level means that we are being
influenced to do our work differently. So at the
University of Minnesota a few years ago we had a
new president and it's my understanding that you're in a
similar circumstances. Is that correct, Virginia tech?
Yeah. And I think it was two years ago
that our new provost arrived on campus. So we've
had a new provost in the last several years.
And so the that change in leadership and also these
pressures that they're dealing with at the national level,
um, created a drive for faculty to do things
differently and think about things differently on our campus.
Um And so, and I don't think it's just
happening at our institution, David, I've been out
at many institutions over the last year or so,
and so there is this pressure for faculty to think
about teaching and learning in their classroom in new and
different ways, and we're seeing faculty respond to that
by coming to central resources and also college resources to
get support for doing things differently in the classroom.
How can I make videos? How can I flip
my classroom? Um thinking about pedagogical skills that they
can access and get support for. Um And then
there's also developing awareness of and concern about the increased
cost of higher education for their students, um Issues
related to the current business model related to textbooks and
also the impact of hae textbook costs on back students
academic success. So given all of those variables,
there's a number of studies out there that talk about
faculty and we are today. Um So I pull
together the resources and I can share that list that
bibliography when we're done here. But basically almost all
of those studies say that awareness of open educational resources
amongst faculty is pretty low, Um they're willing to
reuse content and in some cases more at the institutional
level within their institution there, you know, they
have a high willingness to share. They have a
little bit more reticence about sharing outside their institution.
That's about 50 that are willing to consider that.
Um and the Babson survey kind of give us some
nice data to think about. So it's probably hard
to see that the faculty who are aware of open
educational resources is very aware is five and aware is
15%. So maybe about 20 are aware of open
educational resources. I just had a question of two
, you're open access, whatever do they have the
copy left provision where if you're offering this material and
somebody, you know, remixes it, added something
else, are they prohibited from copyrighting that new thing
and saying, you know, like copy left?
They can't so that is an option for So for
somebody who creates something open, that others can revise
. One of the options that they can um,
choose is to make sure that the person who remixes
it or revise is it shares it with a similar
license. So we'll talk a little bit later about
some of the license options, but that, you
know, the person who chooses to put their materials
out, there doesn't have to force anyone else to
do that. But they can choose a license that
says, if you're going to use my content,
you have to share it with others. So that's
a good question. Um, so the babson survey
indicated that there's not a huge percentage of faculty aware
of open educational resources and David Wiley, who created
those five ours had a nice blog post that says
, um, he commented on the fact that a
lot of people were making note of this, But
he said one of the concerns about this is it
provides publishers with the opportunity to basically put out more
information that confuses faculty about open educational resources given,
given this low level of awareness. Um, but
when faculty were asked if they would consider using open
educational resources in the next three years, there was
actually a very large willingness to consider that. So
almost 31 said that they would or that they will
. And another 46 said that they might. So
there's it's kind of like you can see the market
space here where faculty could consider using open educational resources
. And this is when they were given a definition
to help them further understand what open educational resources were
. But the question remains, why do libraries have
a role in supporting the adoption of all we are
, I think, and this part of the babson
survey, which might be hard to see from back
, there is something that I think speaks to that
. So when faculty were asked, what are the
deterrents to adopting open educational resources? You'll see any
number of things here at the top with a very
long bars that relate, I think directly to us
as library staff librarians. So, first of all
, they say there is no comprehensive catalog. And
I'll talk a little bit later about the open textbook
library, which has attempted to pull together open textbooks
specifically. Not all open educational resources as a catalog
of some open materials. They say they're too hard
, it's too hard to find what I need.
What do librarians and library staff do awesome help people
find what they need. Um They say there's not
enough resources for their subject. I've heard many conversations
about how libraries can support publishing going forward. Um
And so publishing of open educational resources might be a
space that we can explore as well. And another
thing underneath it, there is not knowing if I
have permission to use or change the item. So
basically that says to me, they don't necessarily know
what open means. And libraries have been talking about
open issues related to scholarship for more than a decade
, so I think, and we have copyright librarians
and we've had subject librarians who have been developing expertise
and understanding open so that they can work with faculty
in those areas. So I think that's another area
where we can provide support education and raising of awareness
. So and then finally underneath of that there was
not high quality and that's a question that I'll talk
to you about a little bit later as we go
through to. So given kind of all these different
puzzle pieces. So there's this pressure in the higher
education ecosystem. And at my institution we have a
new president, a new provost um given the perceptions
of faculty um low awareness of open educational resources but
the possibility that they will consider using them. Um
a couple of years ago our libraries decided to shift
some resources to focus on this campus priority area.
And so that included myself and another couple of people
. Um and so I just want to tell you
a little bit about how we responded to our local
ecosystem. So we developed some goals that focused on
student affordability. Um but we also wanted to lower
student and faculty frustration as they were thinking about selecting
and accessing course materials. We wanted to streamline the
process for both faculty and for students. Um We
focused on supporting open education um and we wanted to
contribute to the larger campus efforts related to the learning
and by learning. We weren't talking about distance learning
, a lot of places use e learning to to
commentate with distance learning, but that's not necessarily focus
on our campus, and then we continue to provide
guidance around copyright and intellectual property issues. Um Our
themes were really threading support for open throughout all of
the different activities that we are involved in. We're
focused on partnerships outside of the libraries. Um we
really want to create new opportunities, new spaces um
for course content conversations so that any time we can
talk about alternative course content, including open, we
try to put ourselves at the table with these partners
on campus that we're working with and those are the
key decision making point. So if we can get
to the table when faculty are developing a new course
, designing a new course before they decided what their
content is, that's great if they're redesigning of course
and reconsidering their content, we'd like to be able
to be at the table. Um We're also thinking
about broadening are reached by educating our partners. So
we are working with folks and academic technology support services
and what used to be our Center for Teaching and
Learning. And so we're trying to educate those folks
about what we do so that when we're not at
the table, if they see that it's a key
opportunity to talk about content that they bring that issue
up, that we don't actually have to be present
to make that happen. And then we're also thinking
about how we can inspire talk at the state,
the national level about these topics. So I'm just
gonna quickly talk to you about just a couple of
different projects. Some Anita said we have somebody from
the reserves with us today. Okay. Um,
so we have what we're calling our digital course pack
pilot and it's building off of our reserves um,
system that we've had on campus for a long time
. We are integrating our digital course packs into our
course management system, which is model and I believe
you said you have psyche here. Okay. Um
, and within those digital course packs, it's very
similar to our traditional, um, electronic horseback,
but we've been able to do things a little bit
new and differently by working with some campus partners,
including the bookstore. So before we had to,
we never had anything that required a royalty payment.
But by working with our bookstore we have things that
could be open that could be freely available on the
web, that could be library licensed, but also
things that faculty members aren't comfortable claiming fair use on
and that students have to pay a royalty payment for
. So we have, you know, kind of
a streamlined and integrated course pack and then we streamline
it into the environments where students would expect to find
it and, and, and it's kind of just
like pushing a button for faculty members to make it
easy for them to get to this. Um,
so that's the thing in and of itself. But
what interests me from a program development perspective are the
services that we can provide and wrap around this.
So if we have the opportunity to um, market
our services to people who are already using the reserves
to help them think about using a digital course pack
instead. And then if we're having that conversation about
thinking about shifting them from one to the other,
it also gives us a chance to introduce them to
content types that they might not have been um,
interested in or aware of before, including open textbooks
and other open educational resources. So, the thing
in itself is great, but I also think the
services are a great way to move beyond. So
I have a question of how do you handle,
because this is the library putting the material into your
course management system. That's how you work on copyright
. We we discourage our faculty from uploading entire copies
of things into the Learning management system. What is
your thinking about copyright this? Because it's the library
you can do this or So in terms of us
being able to allow them to claim fair use and
things that they put into course reserves, or so
we're not loading it directly, so it's going into
our reserve system. So they're not. Faculty members
are not doing any of the work. We're doing
the work for them. They send us a list
of materials and our our reserve staff go through the
list of materials and they make a determination about whether
or not we have things available um in the libraries
that we can link to, um or if it's
an openly licensed item, you know, then we
just know that we can utilize that resource. We
can identify openly licensed materials and use those. If
it doesn't meet those criteria, we send the faculty
member back information and say this item isn't library license
, It doesn't have an open license, you know
, are you claiming fair use on this item?
And then a faculty member determined. And would you
like any support in understanding fair use? Um,
and so it's going through our regularly learn our reserves
system and it's just getting pulled into the course management
system. So faculty members aren't uploading any content.
We we don't police what faculty are uploading on their
own into the course management system. So there are
faculty on campus who are choosing to put materials up
. We don't go and look and try to supervise
that. But what we do is offer them this
opportunity to use this service that can create a thing
, but also provide them support services around. But
we don't make various decisions for faculty, we only
support them and understanding how they can make various decisions
themselves. Does that make sense? And that's a
university, that's a policy that comes from our general
counsel at the university. Um The other thing in
the background that I've been working on closely is called
are coordinated service model. So this is working with
those partners that I talked about. Academic technology support
services. What used to be our, it's now
called the Center for Educational Innovation. It used to
be part of, it used to be our Center
for Teaching and Learning. And so the goal that
came out of the provost office was that those central
support services um needed to streamline our activities so that
faculty didn't have to figure out where to go to
get support for teaching and learning on campus and we
needed to understand each other's work better and figure out
how to provide support as a team to faculty rather
than as individuals. Um And so we've been working
on that since last summer and I'm very excited that
the libraries have been there because we've been able to
help shape the process that has um come forward in
terms of the pilot that we're working on and we've
been able to give a voice to content issues that
were previously not considered by either of those particular groups
and we're really working on a culture shift in thinking
about how we work together on campus. And so
those new issues being a part of that culture shift
and that education piece that I previously mentioned have been
really important. Um We have claimed content as our
Primacy area, but we also are bringing our services
to the table as appropriate, so instruction um throughout
the curriculum and that sort of thing. Um and
it's really been a trust building activity and um kind
of thinking about how we can be highly collaborative.
My understanding is, if you look at some of
the RL literature, they're really talking about libraries as
collaborators, not just service providers now. Um so
that's one example. And then finally we're rolling out
a partnership for affordable content. So other institutions have
done some incentive programs for faculty to consider alternative content
. Um and we're kind of rolling out our version
of that two years into doing some other work,
but I think it's it's um It's a nice way
to bundle together all of the different things that we've
done so far. And so our call went out
recently and the deadline for expressions of interest is March
30, Dave and I did an open textbook workshop
. They did an open textbook workshop just this week
at the University of Minnesota. Um and so those
faculty and I'll talk a little bit more about what
the open textbook workshop covers. But those faculty who
are choosing to do reviews after the open textbook workshop
will have the opportunity to apply for a partnership for
affordable content grant that would support adoption if they decide
that the open textbook is something that they're interested in
using going forward. Um, but faculty can apply
for other alternative content options as well. And we
hope to have some nice stories, success stories to
showcase after the fact. And then finally, we
have another partnership with Dave and the College of Education
Human Development. A few years ago, Dave attended
a conference and learned about these open educational resources and
the person who gave the presentation afterwards, Dave talked
to them and said, well why aren't faculty using
these things? And so over the course of the
last few years, he's been exploring with faculty and
the College of Education and Human Development, what the
barriers are too use of those materials. And one
of the barriers just like the Batson survey showed was
that people didn't know where to find them. So
one of the first tools that he created was the
open textbook library. And so right now the open
textbook library is a referral Torrey. It contains around
170 items. They're lightly vetted textbooks. Um and
so they have to be a complete textbook. They
have to be in a portable format, not just
a website. Um they have to have been adopted
outside of the author's institution. And then what's the
fourth criteria always like go get three and then I
forget the fourth one. So complete textbook lightly um
adopted outside of the institution in a portable format.
And then it has to have an open license.
There we go. So it has it can't just
be freely available on the web. It has to
have an open license that allows people to use the
content. And in um in the next month or
two we're gonna be coming out with a new version
of the open textbook library that won't just be a
referral story. It will have some actual content housed
there as well. Uh huh. On those.
Thank you john. Online. Yeah. Thanks.
And what? Yeah. Right. So, so
open doesn't necessarily mean free. Um if it is
a digital version and it has an open license,
then yes, it's free. That open doesn't necessarily
mean digital and open doesn't necessarily mean free. So
if it's a print version you have to pay for
the printing costs and so it might cost you something
to print the material, but the material itself is
free. So say you have a large physics book
, maybe that cost you$50 to print, you
know 1000 page textbook or to buy the print version
of it. Whereas you know somebody who sells that
large, you know physics textbook from a publisher standpoint
is probably charging you$200 and$250. So um
students can often print on demand. So if they
if they don't want a digital version, there are
some vendors that will do print on demand. There
are some creators of digital of open textbooks that will
that sell you know they make freely available the digital
version and then they will sell for the cost of
the printing those textbooks as well. So those are
two good questions and we'll talk a little bit more
about that as well. So in addition to the
open textbook library, um Dave has been partnering with
various institutions and the Library of the University of Minnesota
to think about how we can overcome the barriers that
have been identified through his work um to support adoptions
on other campus. So we're really focused on open
textbook adoptions. Um and so there's a faculty education
and engagement piece with open textbooks and I'll give you
a flavor of that after this as well. Um
but there have been um libraries were also thinking about
how libraries and campus support staff training. In addition
to the fact that so we're having this conversation right
now. We had a conversation with instructional designers earlier
today. So it's not just going out to campuses
to talk about two faculty members about open textbook adoptions
. It's also to talk to a variety of folks
to think about what our roles might be in libraries
or as an instructional designers and supporting this and also
continuing to raise the awareness because we're here today,
but we're gone tomorrow. So what's going to happen
after we're gone? Um And and that program has
really focused on targeted faculty recruitment, small incentives to
faculty to get them to engage with an open textbook
. Um And there's more information about the full program
um at the z length there z dot umn dot
e d u forward slash open textbooks. That gives
you some idea about the open textbook network. And
we're thinking about how we sustain this over the long
term as well. So from that broader context of
here's this bigger ecosystem, not just what the work
that we're doing around open textbooks, I kind of
have to different slides here that talk about what libraries
librarians, library staff can do. Um but I
think um from my perspective, I've been working in
this area for a couple of years and I think
people can be impatient, like I want to go
now, I want to do this thing and I
want to have this impact. But I think sometimes
what we have to do is slow down because and
think about how we can affect change over time,
especially when it's something that's cultural, cultural shift that's
going to happen. So the first thing that I
think that we can all do is listen to really
smart people that have really strong arguments about why open
textbooks. Um it can be hard to go out
and try to convince faculty if we don't have a
strong argument ourselves about why does this matter? Why
should it matter to you? Um, and so
there's really great people who have been talking about this
for a long time. Dave is one of them
. Um but there's also people like David Wiley.
Um and so it's like he has slides out there
. Um Cable Green is another person who's talked.
There's got to be videos of these folks that you
can listen to and think about. And the other
thing I think is, you know, there's some
documentation that I have the mythbusters up there because there's
a nice, nice mythbusters um document. But as
we become conversant, we can think about what message
appeals to what group, what if students want to
hear, What do administrators want to hear? What
do other librarians need to hear in order to understand
what our role is. So you have to think
about honing, you know, what are the messages
? What are the arguments and then how do I
home that to the particular group that I want to
work with? Um the other thing that I think
that you can think about as a librarian is publishers
have sales reps, reps for their textbooks, They
have people who are distributing, they're going to take
a cookie out to faculty members and a cup of
coffee and saying, here, take a look at
my book. What can we do to become aware
of the open textbooks that are there in our subject
areas? If you're a liaison or if you're at
a service point and you have people coming in and
asking about materials, what can you do to introduce
them to those materials? Um what can you do
to develop an understanding of your own ecosystem and what
the pressures are that you might be able to use
in order to support open textbooks or open educational resources
on your campus? How can you be strategic?
So, for example, can you approach the math
faculty? You know, So did did your math
faculty have the reaction to l severe publishing issues that
are math faculty had at the University of Minnesota?
They have been outraged by many things that have pushed
them into thinking about open access in other areas related
to research. What might their reaction to open educational
resources be if they've supported other open type activities on
campus? So and how many students are in those
low level math classes? And how many open textbooks
exist for those low level math classes that they might
consider? Um So where can you have an impact
? And then once you have that impact, how
can you use that impact on market more broadly on
your campus? What is strategic for your particular ecosystem
? Again, forming campus partnerships, we met with
instructional designers earlier. Are there others on campus that
can help move your message forward that are natural players
in this area? Um and again, what are
your short term goals? But what's your long term
goal? Do you want a culture change in 10
years? Well, what do you need to do
today? This year? Tomorrow, next year in
order to make that bigger shift? Um, and
then how do you inspire each other to, you
know, it's like, how do I make sure
that every liaison in my organization is interested in this
topic and inspired to go out and talk to their
faculty members or what other groups do I need to
inspire in the libraries or how do I go out
and have an impact, you know, at this
organization that's outside my organization, so that we have
a community of folks who are supporting each other.
So those are the things that I think, and
this is the same slide, but it's like,
it's not what we can do. I think it's
what we must do from my perspective. So,
um, and there's a variety of resources and I
can share the slides with Anita so she can distribute
them. But some of the research that went on
around faculty attitudes related to open were there. So
that's kind of my broad perspective about open and why
libraries should be there. And then I'm gonna dig
in a little bit to the open textbook workshop and
the work that we're doing here and in other places
to talk to faculty. So do we want to
have any comments questions about that perspective? Sure.
It's all your work limited to higher end or.
Right. So I haven't done anything related to K
12. Dave's work is out of the College of
Education and Human Development. Um And so they have
links to um the Minnesota K 12 environment. Do
you want to talk about that Dave or? Yeah
, sorry. Leader leadership around the twin cities area
are very interested in him. One special looking for
grant money right now to get started. But if
you want an example of what can be done in
a 12 vote in Utah and David Wiley at Christie's
mentioned, the whole state of Utah now utilizes math
and science. Open math and science textbook process state
and pretty impressive. And it's very interesting actually.
Mhm. You know, people, the absence will
find us this. Thank you. Mr It's a
good question. Under the partnership for affordable content slide
, you mentioned stipend for faculty for can you talk
about what kind of budget overall for that and what
ideas people? Okay, So we just put out
the call this week and so and the and the
deadline is March 30, so we don't know yet
what we're gonna see out of that. So we
did market it to the folks involved in the open
textbook workshop. Um and so we're hoping that some
of those folks that are exploring open textbooks will want
to adopt, I think our budget overall is about
30,000. Um and so we're hoping to do,
You know, maybe 20 grants are, the statement
is from 500 to 1500. Um The money will
actually just go into a discretionary account, it won't
go to faculty as pay, but it will go
into a discretionary account that they can use to either
support the work that's related to alternative content. But
you know, if there's not work directly related to
that, they could use it for other things like
conference travel or hiring a student to help them work
on the alternative content project. It's not necessarily restricted
, It's an incentive. Um, it could go
to purchase content potentially, you know, so say
there's an e book available with a multi user license
if they wanted to use that for purchase, the
libraries might consider some purchasing too. I mean,
we'll have to look at the scope of what we
receive. Um I suspect that we might get some
proposals that want to utilize the digital course pack example
. Um you know, that we've created that was
a pilot project and we'll be going full scale on
campus. Um We have no idea exactly what we'll
get. We wonder if, you know, anybody
will. They're at the open textbook workshop this week
, somebody mentioned, oh, I'd like to publish
something. And so it's like, you know,
whatever that something is with this small stipend, be
enough for them to want to do that and,
you know, can we do it on a platform
that we have in existence in the libraries or we
have to help them find another platform. So it'll
be, you know, teams that are formed to
support whatever types of projects and it might include our
subject liaisons that might include technology support. It might
include, you know, we've asked them do they
want to think about their teaching and learning in the
classroom? Can we bring in partners from outside the
libraries to support that too? So we're at the
we don't know, and we hope stage. Um
Yeah, yeah, I worked with the college.
Right? So it will spend alive. Yes.
Also on nursing which is a lot of Palestine here
itself, pain in the butt. I know maybe
this is this is probably is too simple but why
doesn't a university simply charge Virginia tech charged students$10
And your feet 25,200 position. Mhm.$50,000-5 Faculty
members and have them right and open textbook and then
use that in our classes here and target the big
classes, the intro the social, the biology that
have 1000 students in them rather than those 1000 students
going out and spend$100 in Texas. You spend
$10 and offer nothing. So they say tens of
thousands of dollars just the first year and exactly.
So so that's a good question and that's a good
model. So I think there's a variety of models
and we haven't gotten complete by in yet from institute
like we're starting to socialize the notion that open textbooks
are a good idea and that's part of the work
that we're doing and that you all are going to
go out and do after today. Um You know
Dave and I have talked about like well why can't
we get you know 5 to 10 C. I
. C. Institutions to write this text book.
And then if every single one of those C.
I. C. Institutions adopted that for this class
then what would the impact be in terms of savings
of millions of dollars? And then they can you
know if it's open then it's available to Virginia Tech
and everybody outside of the C. I. C
. And Virginia text working on these textbooks then you
know then you create a whole different publishing model essentially
. So yeah exactly. So um so it hasn't
happened yet, but you know, so I'll talk
a little bit about this when we talk about what
gets conveyed to faculty, but the state of California
has legislated the creation of some open textbooks are open
educational resources for exactly those types of classes. And
it may not be that you need to write the
intro to social text because open sacks has an intro
to sociology book. So maybe what you just need
to do is give, you know, your faculty
who teach that class, you know, 5 to
$10,000 to adapt an existing open textbook and add to
it or change it and maybe create some support resources
to go with it. So um so you can
evaluate like what's already out there. And my sense
is what's happening in California is, To a certain
degree, some of those 50 textbooks that they're creating
to support students are going to be adaptations or remixes
of existing textbooks. So, um, then we
just have to assess where the gaps are and fill
in those gaps. Um, so right now,
the funding model hasn't necessarily been um, that strongly
supported by institutions. There's a few examples that I'll
get to that talks about, and actually it's been
, library is a little bit coming out of those
institutions that supported that as well. So I agree
. Like, why don't we be up? And
what you said to me, it seems like 12
would be a really low hanging fruit. I mean
, it's not that hard to write a book.
I'll work for free and then, you know,
like everybody in your state could use it. And
so I'm going, why hasn't this happened? He
12 first and then I'm drawing parallels between this and
make a decision, health care work, you know
, individual college, the ones having depending the textbook
prices, they're going to be complaining loudly. Whereas
, you know, if you have, you know
, if the, the school system or something,
he's buying the textbooks, you know, they know
how to say cost, but you don't, you
don't know. Yeah, so maybe it's that because
we're having to buy, people have to buy their
own college, they're aware of how expensive they are
, where it's at case of 12. Mhm It's
situation where hidden, you know, the same deal
in health care where you have your shirts, you
don't know how much things cost, depending yourself,
you know? Mhm Well, and maybe they don't
have to write that textbook, maybe Utah already has
it and they can just adapt it or adopt it
as it is too. So I mean like raising
that awareness that there are already things out there and
then it is, um, in addition to like
the creation of thing, there's an investment in,
you know, faculty having to redo curriculum, right
? So I mean they have to start from scratch
and everybody's busy and you know, I'll talk a
little bit about some of the barriers to actual adoptions
and so it seems like, you know, and
I agree like this solution, this idea of,
you know, like let's just use a small amount
of money to then support the creation of these things
that you can have a huge impact that's being strategic
. But then we have to address some of the
other variables as well that will be needed in order
to have like a complete culture shift. Um,
so again, long term plans, Right, short
term plans and then the long term plans. So
good question, other comments. Do do libraries have
a place, do you do you think that?
Or is this like, No, I don't I
don't want to be involved. That's it, yep
. So this isn't related to open. But we
had a we had a pilot program where are inter
library loan? If they identified a textbook that was
somebody had a request, they just went ahead and
bought it and if they could find it in an
electronic multi user format, you know, all the
better. And then they would put it on reserve
and email the faculty member and say this items unreserved
for your class and they created a reserve page if
one doesn't already exist. So it's kind of separate
from open. But you know, libraries are always
thinking about support services and how we can do that
. Well. Yeah. And which is the most
professor asked me we have this textbook. You don't
often what I'll say. Yeah. Yes. Other
textbooks that are online available to the students, maybe
you'd like to use it for supplemental, at least
I get them to look at the list and maybe
they'll actually adopt one as their main textbook. I
don't feel that I've got the expertise to say maybe
you want to use this textbook, but I can
always suggest supplemental reading on the same topic. The
idea maybe and now you can add open textbooks to
that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And and
even if they're not asking for supplemental materials, one
of the institutions that we visited created kind of like
a separate, um, you know, students support
materials out of a bunch of open materials. And
so, you know, like did you know,
these materials existed and your students are coming to the
libraries to use them to support their and you know
, so for me, I had a conversation earlier
today, I've got two different ways that I think
about this with regards to my work on campus.
It's like, I'm out there talking about alternative course
content in a variety of places, so I'm putting
little teeny tiny wedges and I don't know what I'm
putting wedges in, but it's like the tip is
this big, and I'm working on pounding that wedge
in. Um my parents had a wood furnace when
I was growing up, so, you know,
it's like you always had to get that wedge in
to break the wood apart, but so it's like
, I'm trying to get these little wedges in,
so that's one model. The other thing is I'm
, you know, I'm planting seeds and you all
complaints seeds, so I'm here planting seeds with every
single one of you and I'm giving you a handful
or a bucket full of seeds that you get to
take with you and go out and have those conversations
related to open and you give it to the next
person and they take their bucket or their handful and
they have a conversation if it resonated with them at
their faculty department meeting and maybe it takes you planting
seeds five times with that faculty member before they take
it to their apartment meeting. Or maybe it takes
10 times but it's like if we don't start having
the conversation um then we're not gonna make the shift
over time. But I think the argument is strong
. I think there's good reasons to consider and I
think that the open educational resources environment has changed in
a way to address some of the barriers that I'll
get to here as well. So any other comments
, you know, flight path? Uh huh.
For the you Yes. Mhm. Devices and then
Mhm. When they wanted out of Mhm. Well
even for Mhm. Mhm. A new work.
So I mean if they if they used something that
started with an open license on it, the if
it's not public domain, you know, and I'll
talk a little bit about the difference in the licenses
because that's part of understanding the situation. Um you
know, the basic open licenses that you attribute to
the original, you give some attribution to the original
creator and so, you know, it might end
up having a long list of attribution if, you
know, if you were mixed it and then I
used it and then Anita used it and then you
use it, you know, so it's like the
attribution list might be long and we might not know
exactly who created what unless we had multiple versions to
go back and compare. Um But so it can
get complex. But what we've seen so far is
that just getting faculty to use an open textbook by
itself is the starting point. So it's like usually
there's not a lot of immediate revision. The revision
sometimes happens further down the road and it's not always
a huge amount of revision, it might be an
added chapter or cleaning up some copy editing, that
kind of thing. So, so far, that
hasn't been a huge issue. That could be become
more of an issue over time. And I trust
that libraries and their expertise in dealing with um you
know, tracking things will have a role in that
as well if that continues. So any other questions
there, I just want to give you a flavor
of a little bit of information about what faculty will
be hearing about. Um So in talking about um
open textbooks, we introduce a couple of different issues
related to the problem space in higher education. And
so one of the things that they've often leads with
is higher education shall be equally accessible to all from
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, from the U
. N. And if you think about this,
when you have a reaction to this, who do
you think this applies to? Who do you think
this statement is coming from the United Nations? And
it's about higher education shall be equally accessible to?
Like your first reaction is who does this apply to
women, people people out in other countries. Right
. So we we you know when we first see
something like this, we don't necessarily think this is
applicable here, right? Like everybody's got access who
needs access to higher education in the US, but
that's not necessarily the case. And so um in
trying to talk to faculty about why um they might
want to consider open textbooks as an option. We
have to talk about why what the issues are related
to the cost of higher education today. And so
there's a variety of data that we present to faculty
about accessibility issues and the impact of cost on students
. And so I just have a few of the
pieces of data to share with you. So um
from this report from the Advisory Committee on Student Financial
Assistance, The cost barriers. So just cost kept
2.4 million students Who were prepared for college. They
took all the right um classes, they did all
the things they needed to do, um kept 2.4
million low and moderate income students from graduating in the
last decade. So there's all kinds of other reasons
and there's a bigger number to represent more people who
didn't graduate, but just cost by itself, kept
that many students from graduating. Mhm. Um This
is a piece of information that Dave pulled together,
that I think is really interesting from the perspective,
because I've heard people say, well why can't students
afford education? You know, it's no different now
than it was when I was going to school.
This is related to the cost, like how many
hours it takes to work at minimum wage to in
order to four, just tuition at the University of
Minnesota. So it goes all the way back to
the sixties and I went to college, you know
, kind of a little bit up here in the
eighties and you'll see that if I had gone to
the University of Minnesota, which I didn't, I
could have worked somewhere, you know, like maybe
up to 400 hours in order to just pay for
my tuition at minimum wage. So I could probably
do that over the summer, right? But today
You'll see that it takes students almost 1600 hours.
So how many people know students who are working full
time all of the time, all year, because
that's what they have to do in order to afford
tuition, just tuition, not room and board,
not books. So when faculties say, why can't
student support to go, um, it's no different
than it used to be. The data actually indicates
otherwise. Yeah, I mean, everyone that was
in college, it was like, well, you
just pay your way, you know, and it
was conceivable if you worked out, you know,
you could get through, but now forget it.
Exactly. And so if you, you know,
if you don't have the money and if you um
can't have somebody else pay for it, what are
you going to do to pay for it? You're
going to borrow, right? Or as Dave says
, maybe you can steal it, but hopefully not
. So the average borrower now can expect to walk
away with$30,000 in debt. I went to school
, I graduated from college in 89 I went to
a small private Jesuit institution in Omaha Nebraska And I
only walked away with$10,000 in debt and that was
at a private institution. Um, so this is
a big deal for students today. Um, and
you'll see that um just from 2006, moving up
to 2013, you know, credit card debt,
you know, we hit the financial crisis went down
and student loan debt just in that time period went
from 500 billion to over a trillion dollars. So
part of the experience of working with faculty is to
help them understand that the space is different um for
students than it used to be and then engaging them
in a conversation about what can we reasonably do and
talking about books and supplies, which might not be
the hugest portion of a student's um um academic expenses
, but it is a big amount and it's impacted
by cost as well. So textbook prices have increased
by four times the amount that they were, The
average student can expect to pay$1,200 a year,
depending on the institution. This might be more if
you're at like if you're in engineering, maybe you
pay a couple$1000 you know, for or if
you have a daughter in nursing, I bet um
those materials might be higher. And because of those
costs, students are making choices that are detrimental to
their academic success. Um so they might purchase an
older edition. Students are coming up with really savvy
strategies for getting around these things. They wait to
purchase a textbook until later in the semester Or they
never purchased the textbook. And so these are just
some of the tidbits that we have. We have
, we had a David Wiley spoke at an event
a couple of years ago on campus. And and
in the early portion there was a discussion and a
student said French hasn't changed. I can buy a
text book edition that's three editions older that I can
find on Amazon for like 10 of the cost,
but that student might not have the information that they
need to be successful in the classroom. Um this
is a survey that wasn't published, but that was
done by the state schools in Minnesota, and all
60 said that they had to wait for their financial
aid check. We've traveled around to various institutions at
Purdue. We heard from faculty members that said,
I don't know, I don't require any materials that
cost money for the first three weeks of class because
the athletes have to go through the athletic department in
order to get their textbooks and that takes like two
or three weeks and students on the G. I
. Bill have to go through an outside of the
institution in order to get their materials. And but
so that faculty member was being really considerate of students
who might have financial burdens in terms of getting those
materials, but not every faculty member is going to
do that right. Um So she was trying to
make sure that her students were successful, but that
wasn't even accounting for the students who were going to
choose not to buy the textbook. Um, Dave
has some nice videos that I'm not going to share
with you where students say, well, I wait
until I get behind and you know, decide whether
or not the family members actually going to use the
book to see if I need it. Um,
and then here's some more numbers that there's a couple
of different surveys. This is a large survey out
of florida. Again, the numbers about the same
6 60 to 70% of students say they haven't purchased
, not for every class, but for at least
one class. Um, they take fewer courses.
Do you have pressures on your campus to graduate students
, like within a particular time frame? Yes.
So our institution is always thinking about how we can
get these students out the door if they're taking fewer
classes because of the cost of course materials, then
they're graduating later. Right? So this is an
argument that should resonate with administrators who are interested in
that issue. Um they don't register for a specific
course, so, you know, maybe that would
be the best course for their major, but they
don't take that course because the materials are too expensive
. Um and then there are these academic success issues
, they earn a poor grade, they drop a
course or they fail of course. Um and that
dropping of course could be related, could relate to
graduation rates as well. So that's kind of,
you know, there's there's more that day presents,
but um, helping faculty understand the pressures that student
face because of cost and how the cost of higher
education is different than it used to be. And
helping them understand that this is one of the spaces
that they have a choice, but also it's the
space where students have a choice as well, and
that they make choices that um uh impact their academic
success. And so um Dave talks a little bit
about the publishing, the current publishing model. And
, you know, most textbooks are funded by publishers
, but what if we could do something differently?
Um basically what you need is an alternative thunder.
And so this is an example of an open textbook
um from open stacks. And on the first floor
downstairs, there's a, what do you call that
thing? Uh What is it? A display?
There's a display of textbooks from open stacks that are
all open textbooks. Um And so one of the
ways to address the situation is to come up with
an alternative funding model. Um and so one of
the things that gets in the way of open is
copyright. Um and so in addition to explaining if
we come up with a model where there's different funders
, we can come up with a, you know
, materials that can be freely available to everyone and
then have less impact on student economic success. But
we also have to have openly licensed materials and faculty
have to understand what open materials are. They have
to understand that there's a difference between free and open
, that not everything that's free is open and they
have to understand what they can do with those materials
. So, Dave isn't using this information and exactly
the way that I'm presenting it to you, but
helping them understand what those ours are that they can
use with open materials. Another question related to your
previous life do our most textbook agreements with the publisher
. Uh huh. So author retaining the copyright orders
, um It's my understanding that the authors don't generally
retain the copyright, that they turn it over.
There might be some um there might be some clause
that indicates when the copyright will return to the author
, but it's my uh thank you. Author owns
the copyright. They can sell the copyright at the
university routines rights to use any employees created materials for
. Yeah, So you're saying that it's not just
the it's not just the author, it's also the
institution it might be. Yeah. Right. Um
Other publishers, Well, I'm just saying that you
have been publisher. Yeah. Author of signed a
contract, published the Water or something. It seems
like there three parties involved. Mhm. Yeah,
I was just thinking like, well, you know
, suppose like what if there's some really great classic
? Okay, I think you might 1s in physics
, you know, like what if that author wanted
world is great, You know, like it would
be nice if they could just like say, okay
, you want that one, let this be a
free thing, you can do it. If he
was the only owner about the publisher has book,
then that would do that and that's where you Right
, right, but they would have had to have
did that, done that up front. And if
it's that great physics book was probably published like some
time ago and may not have that clause in there
. Yeah, and my understanding, like I've heard
faculty talk about, well, you know that biology
textbook that is, you know, got this author's
name on it, that person has been dead for
10 years. Um and there's continued to be edited
version. So whatever the clause was the contract that
the publisher wrote, evidently they get to continue to
use that author's name after their death. Um,
and for those things that make lots of money,
I'm sure that they make sure that that happens.
Um, so are folks kind of unilaterally familiar with
the creative commons pieces here. So the first icon
indicates CC by which means that you need to give
attribution to the author. Um, the second one
indicates, you know, noncommercial use, um,
if you use these, I give you the right
to use these materials, but you can't make money
on them. The next one is share. Like
, so if you use my materials, you have
to use the same license, which is kind of
what you're getting at. Um, and then the
final one is, I believe David Wiley would indicate
is not actually open. Um, if you go
by the five ours because you can't actually revise,
remix that kind of thing. Uh these are the
various combinations, um that can be used and but
understanding what open is um faculty have a hard time
. Like when you saw from the babson survey,
faculty don't understand if something has an open license.
So say I am a faculty member and I see
that there's a cc by share alike license on this
material. What does that mean in terms of my
use? So I think that librarians can bring support
and expertise to helping faculty understand what they can do
with those materials. Um, there's a bit of
a conversation with faculty about open being out there and
how ubiquitous it is. I have my slant on
this because I was a map library and um years
ago is, and I don't have my device out
, but I went for years without a fancy divisiveness
has got her device that um, so as a
math library in, you know, people before they
went to conferences when we were, when I was
at the university of michigan people would come in and
say, oh do you have like that little handy
map that I can carry around Chicago or san Francisco
with me so that I can make or one of
those little pop up maps for boston so that nobody
does that anymore. Right. Like we all have
these devices. So I think of how ubiquitous,
actually open licenses are in our lives and how we
don't even realize it uh kind of are similar to
like how ubiquitous maps have become and navigating with our
devices. Um so you can go to places like
M I T. Open courseware and you can see
that they have a cc by noncommercial share, like
license. And faculty might have gone here and pull
videos for physics or different things like that and they
may not even realize, you know what, what
they're using and what the licenses are in flicker.
I was working on a book, which actually isn't
open, but I was trying to provide some open
content to that faculty member. And so she was
looking at the devastation that happened from a tornado in
a state in the midwest. And so you can
find um attribution license information and you can search by
that in flicker. Um and then ted talks is
anybody who hasn't listened to attack dog? Um it's
harder to see now, but they used to have
on their website that there was a Creative CC by
non commercial, non derivative license. So you can't
break it up, but you can use the materials
with an open license. So helping faculty understand that
open is kind of all around us And then the
impact of open textbooks. So they can save students
either 100 if they use a digital version or if
they use a print version, they can usually save
about 80 of a commercial textbook costs. And all
of those kind of academic success issues go away.
They don't have to worry about having the right edition
. They don't have to worry about whether or not
they have the materials on the first day of class
, students can write or highlight in the text book
. A lot of students well if they want to
sell their materials back, they'll be like really careful
about how much they actually use the textbook because they
want to get the most money that they can.
Um, or if they rent a textbook, even
though the rental agreements usually say that they can highlight
and do different things to the text. They're worried
about not living up to the rental textbook agreement,
so they're constrained in how they use the materials.
Um And we had an e text pilot that had
, you know, they weren't openly licensed materials,
but students talked about those materials being books under glass
. Like they, because of the digital rights management
, they couldn't do anything with them, but with
an open textbook that digital version is there so they
can put it on their ipad, they can use
annotation software, they have access to all that content
and copy and paste out if they want to.
Um They can do all those things. Um And
so we also help faculty understand what where these things
come from. So there may have been individuals who
published them, but there's also a variety of professional
organizations. So for example, there's a group out
of Cornell that does some legal texts. It's like
a large professional organization, they all contribute. And
so there's a large number of texts available higher education
institutions, it's happening more. So um Oregon State
University is going to have a few things coming out
. Sunni has had some things. And Cyril,
Cyril who used to be there is now at humboldt
State and he's talking about publishing more. So there
are some institutions that are getting into publishing and a
lot of times it's related to the libraries, um
foundations. The Hewlett Grant has funded Dave, Dave
and I traveling around for so far for these things
, but open stacks, the textbook that I showed
you earlier is also one of the foundations that supports
the creation of peer reviewed open textbooks. So it's
the same sort of process that a publisher goes through
to create the materials, but it's just a different
funding model. You don't get a per unit back
kind of um income, you get funding on the
front end, a flat fee perhaps to to an
author and the support to create those materials and then
they're made available through an open license. And then
I mentioned California, the legislature there um, british
Columbia is also doing some work related to open textbooks
. So, um, the barriers that we're working
with trying to overcome, um, what keep faculty
from adopting open textbook is that faculty don't understand those
financial issues, so they don't have a sense of
urgency around those issues. And so the faculty development
piece, the workshop that we're offering just brings forward
the different pieces of data. Faculty don't necessarily know
what openness. So the questions earlier were about e
books versus print books and free books versus um,
open. So free isn't necessarily open and an e
book isn't necessarily the only version of an open textbooks
helping faculty understand openly licensed textbook can be a print
book because some faculty will say, well my students
want to print book, we can provide that for
you. It doesn't have to be one or the
other, um, and also helping them understand what
rights they have with US CC license versus retaining all
rights. So those two components aren't enough. Um
, faculty also need to know where to discover the
materials and so that's where the open textbook library that
I showed you earlier came into play. Um,
has anybody dug around in things like Merlot and connections
? I see some head shaking. I get really
frustrated when I go into those resources because I'm like
, there's so much there and I have no idea
what I could possibly say to a fact, like
this would be a really good one. I don't
know, you know, like, um so I
can't even imagine if my level of frustration as a
library and who knows how to look for things is
high in using those resources. What the level of
frustration is for faculty when they go and dig around
and try to find something open. The other aspect
of the open textbook library that I didn't mention earlier
is we're trying to speak to quality. So we
have those four criteria that do a light vetting,
but also, as part of the open textbook workshops
were asking faculty members who have the expertise in these
areas to review the textbooks to put their name out
there and say, I looked at this and I
think it's either good or I don't like it or
it's mediocre. Um so that they can help others
understand the quality of these materials. Um We're not
asking them to write a book about a book.
We're asking them to address a few different criteria.
Did you have a question? Okay. 23.
The reviews are openly licensed. Yes. Um or
they're they're they're posted, they're available to be read
, but they're also openly licensed so that if some
, so say if british Columbia wants to use those
reviews on their website, they can do that as
well. And then we're putting kind of the brand
of the University of Minnesota on this resource so that
folks know that um that we're standing behind the information
that's here and that we believe that considering open textbooks
is important. Um and then there's the, I'm
really busy factor. And so our engagement strategy is
incentives. A very small incentive I heard Dave's call
it today, like about the price of one textbook
. So we give faculty that small amount of money
to actually touch an open textbook and take a look
at it to kind of overcome that busy factor.
Um and we believe that if they touch these resources
, given that small amount of money, what we've
seen so far is that is combining the education piece
and the incentive is what leads to more adoptions.
So at the University of Minnesota, with the pilot
that Dave has been working on with some fairly small
classes, not large enrollment classes, we've seen a
savings of over$300,000 so far. And using the
Hewlett program, we've, this is number eight are
eighth institution. Um we're raising awareness about open textbooks
. Were providing those qualitative evaluations with fabulous reviews and
the incentive, we've talked about that. But finally
there's that last piece that we're hoping to build a
sustainable network. Um And Dave has another grant into
Hewlett. Um and so that network peace building out
that network is hopefully going to be funded soon as
well. And here's my final, what can you
do? So I give you the broad libraries what
can you do earlier? But this relates to the
open textbook work in general. So you so I
believe that textbooks are a good place to start if
one exists for your faculty members, because that's what
resonates with faculty textbooks make their lives easier in general
. Um If they can have one complete thing that
they could use. We did a quick and dirty
survey of faculty at our institution and over two thirds
of those that we talked to still use a textbook
of some sort. Um And David Wiley spoke,
there was an institute at L. A. Midwinter
on open educational resources. And David Wiley spoke from
a faculty perspective. And the thing that he said
is faculty need easy and open and and textbooks are
easy whether they're open or not, but textbooks are
easy. Um So you can advocate for reviews of
open textbooks right now, we're providing that incentive,
but if you can get a faculty member to engage
, um or maybe you provide some incentives through your
institution after today's workshop in the future, um you
can support faculty as they navigate the adoption of open
textbook. So, you know, maybe the fact
that the member will want to adopt something in your
area but not understand what they can do with the
open license that it has. So you can be
there to answer those questions, you can work with
campus partners to help them understand. Um, you
know, where do I put this open textbooks so
that I can distribute it to my students. Maybe
you don't answer that question. But I think that
libraries as connectors often help faculty find the resources and
support that they need. If they don't know where
to go. If you're aware of open textbooks in
your field that we don't have in the open textbook
library that we should be evaluating, please tell us
. Um, and the other thing that I think
is key as, um, as as individual subject
liaisons is understanding how textbooks selections are made. I'm
not sure about your institution, but at my institution
, the physics textbook is chosen by a committee and
the economics textbook might be, you know, by
the undergraduate director or something like, you know,
so it's like selections are made in a variety of
ways. And so in order to have an influence
, you know, if you know there's a good
economics open textbook, how am I going to influence
that person or that group to think about this in
the future? And I might not get them to
change now, but maybe that's where I start planting
seeds, I introduce them to this material, that
could be a supplement to their um students or um
but understanding how that process happens on your campus in
your particular subject area um and especially in areas where
you want to be strategic and then I know that
Anita is an avid participant in the spark live Oh
er let's serve. Um but others are welcome to
join us there for conversations about open educational resources to
so those are some ideas kind of related to this
particular slice where I think librarians can, you know
, take small steps plant particular seeds. Um And
so that's kind of my spiel that went on for
a long time but we had a little conversation there
in the middle. My school mysteries try. Yes
. Okay. Chapter Yeah made it fail. And
so there was not right. So proactive eyes.
Mhm. Yeah. So So we aren't focused on
a particular device. We're working on bringing up version
2.0 of um the open textbook library which will um
for particular textbooks that were selecting will have a wide
variety of formats, make a wide variety of formats
available which hopefully would make things less device centric.
Um I mean if if they want a digital format
um you know there might be any pub available in
a pdf available in a word version available. And
so um yeah so then that would allow students to
be able to utilize one of one of the not
problems, but one of the issues, like Officially
an open textbook might be editable, but if it's
not in a format that's easily editable, then that
is an issue. And so we're trying to think
about that with the version 2.2 of the open textbook
liver that we're bringing up and we're not gonna be
able to convert maybe everything that we point to.
We may not want to convert everything because some things
get updated, like the open stacks books fairly regularly
, but they already provide multiple for multiple formats.
Um, and so what we're doing is developing criteria
about which things we want to actually house in which
things we want to point to. So it sounds
like you're mhm. Is provide trying to get to
provide advocacy for Okay Resources. It's not about yes
. Or is that? Yeah. Their program you're
trying. Yes. Right. So the focus of
the Hewlett Grant to date is on adoptions. So
it's not just advocacy advocacy but using a strategy that
we hope will actually lead to adoptions. And we
hope to create the network that will focus on adoptions
of an open textbooks in particular. Not only are
we have a new content um a U. L
. Associate University librarian um Content and collections. And
so we have not had publishing support in the libraries
to date. But we have a new department within
content and collections that will be focused on that.
The early efforts are focused more on things like we've
had some requests for open journal type support and we've
we have some open journals that have been housed in
our digital repository but might need more robust support.
So we just got the press and we'll be doing
some things with moving some of that content into the
press environment and maybe publishing some new journals there.
But the b press environment will allow us to consider
pilots if faculty want to publish something. Um and
or the new version of the open textbook library will
have, it'll be on Wordpress with a plug in
um that would allow some publishing maybe to happen,
you know, so we'll have a variety of possibilities
to consider. And the partnership of for affordable content
that we're putting out there. If we had a
request to support publishing, we have to figure out
how we do that and that will be part of
that process. So we're early stages of maybe moving
into figuring out a little bit there other questions.
This may be a little bit wondering if Republican Party
, Harrison resources, dietary resources and insurances information.
Mhm. So there's sort of an analogy with moves
here, so muslim spiders are proprietary, collect a
tremendous amount of information about what are you doing when
they're used and all this sort that information. Right
. So I'm wondering if arguments about privacy companies knowing
more something here, least insurance. Mhm. Ways
in part, yes. As well as the flip
side, wouldn't it be nice to have all of
this great thing we from openly? Great. Yes
, this morning. Right? Yes, that these
arguments playing. Mm. Um So I think the
arguments have been more for impact positive impact on less
about learning analytics so far, you know, so
I think that we're you know the C. I
. C. Signed on to do some work with
um unison and canvas and uh which I and I
think some of the um which is a learning environment
um and it's focused on content as well and sharing
content. But I think there's some learning analytics that
go with that too. So I think that's coming
. I don't think that it's been that active of
a conversation yet, at least from what I've heard
about library. So obviously the publishers are trying to
sell some of that learning analytics stuff to a variety
of folks. And I think institutions are now beginning
to think about how can we do this rather than
giving that data away to publishers? Um I don't
think it's coalesce than any strong shape yet at this
point. But I do think those conversations are going
on at the administrative level and libraries, library library
administration are thinking about how that relates to content we
can track, so if we post something that's open
in our system as part of like a digital course
pack, we can track usage and you know like
get some kind of in house learning analytics from that
perspective. But you know, that's just based on
the system that we're using. So I don't have
a good answer for that. I guess that others
have perspective on that Anita. I know the perspective
on that, but I'm thinking your question, what
is being done to incentivize creating multiple open text on
the same side? If there is one source out
there, I can see, I holly side history
, I can see a lot of pushback that it
just contributes to modification of the faculty work and as
soon as that flag goes up, anybody on tenure
with tenure probably tenure track is going to run screaming
right. The people who are out in jumped cool
have other positions. But I can see a lot
of push back to the idea because any department I
used to teach and every department worked in at the
thought of a mandatory text across the department that immediately
generated resentment. Well, and that's interesting because I
mean that's true in some disciplines and other disciplines,
there are mandatory textbooks you can picture right when you
think about the disputes about the ap history class,
what is the most important thing to teach history?
What's the most important american politics? Well, with
open, you can take something that's there and you
can add where facilitate any opportunity for kind of face
to face competition if we're thinking, I want to
take a chapter out of a textbook. Okay,
we'll take the Supreme Court chapter here. The founding
chapter there. Most of those books are pretty standard
formulation content with the approach, yep. In those
chapters very different. And I think it's a question
what can be done to facilitate at that chapter level
? Mm more than simply there. Well, there's
this free textbook. That's wonderful. But you find
the instructor gets in the way of my control,
my work over my product. But it actually shouldn't
it should actually allow you to have more control.
But they're using a publisher version of well, but
if there are dozens of publishers selling competing textbooks,
then I can always take the closest approximation because of
the competitive nature of things. And I think this
it seems to me that the only our side,
the generation, the creation side I think has to
be said about to make it easier two Put together
before that I as an instructor, one. Uh
huh. And not just happens cheaper. Right?
Yeah. I mean we're not gonna we're not gonna
have textbooks in every area and it's not going to
, the argument is not going to resonate with faculty
. may still say this is the best textbook for
me and it's the commercial, you know, there's
academic freedom and and they should do that like they
should make the learning experience the best possible one were
Part of the argument is that they also just need
to consider the fact that that is the best textbook
for the students that will actually buy it for the
class and the rest of the students who don't buy
it. So we're part of the argument is cost
should be a consideration. It's not the only consideration
, but it's one of the variables that needs to
come into play 1000 for here. Who with the
read the book program where she wrote a book and
then she had that's suicide being brought out her expect
payments for the book. Right. And I was
curious if then he has. Mhm. Right.
It's been brought up in a couple different places that
I I haven't I'm not aware of any particular crowdsource
textbook funding at this point. I'm wondering too.
So since that visit, whether this can Hopefully getting
this, it seems like one way highlights your thoughts
highlight the most expensive experts. Yes. Pastors target
those and that sort of thing. This it seems
like, Yeah. To get like a compilation,
right? Yes right now and their list price.
Right? I think it has very but from institution
to institution. So like at Purdue, they've actually
created a system where students can get that information like
months in advance. Like it was a presidential initiative
that focused on, you know, so it's dependent
upon kind of the priorities of the institution. Um
So each institution has to publish what the average cost
for students is for course materials. They don't always
tell you how they reach that average cost or where
they got the data. Um but that is a
requirement for each institution. So I think it varies
depending upon the mission priority who owns the bookstore rights
um saying is that we continue to some rules text
books, the school or something like that. But
I know like our circulation gets a list text from
the bookstore. Every single all the books that are
required tries to get them off the stand. Right
, right. So I think there's already there there
is a list but I think those people who haven't
been told it's proprietary and they're not supposed to share
further, so that's a conversation, is that accurate
? Right. Right, right, right, right
mm. In this sort of memory? Mhm.
Sure. Mhm. Say. Mhm. Yeah a
compilation yeah. Mhm where people even host there person
. Mhm. So I mean anybody can deposit in
like connections themselves but and they were coming up with
, they were working on an editor. I don't
know that. No, no, we don't have
a tool like that at this point in time,
connections and open stacks was working on an editor that
I don't think it's ever been published. Um um
Yeah. Um So I mean you can take things
and then you can modify them and then you could
reload them into connections and your, you know,
for your with your derivative work. Um But there's
not like that is something that's been kind of bandied
about like and then the question is like how much
do faculty want to edit versus how much do they
want something that's readily available for them to use?
And so far most of the people that we've seen
so far are using something as is quite often.
Um so I think as the culture of open grows
in terms of adoptions, maybe we'll see more of
that adaptation. Um the other thing that Dave talks
about with faculty members is some of the impacts that
he's seen with faculty members who have actually adopted and
um um so there's the Z degree at Tidewater that
you know, has, um there's a degree that
students can receive that has no cost of materials and
they have lower dropout rate for classes, you know
, an increase since you're better grades and um,
an actual increase in amount of money that the institution
has received and then a variety of other impacts in
terms of what faculty have chosen to do with some
open materials, some examples of that. So yeah
, editing is kind of an issue that's still a
little bit dicey because there's a lot of PDFs and
those aren't necessarily easy to like edit. If you
really want to do some like hardcore, take this
, please take that piece and um come on,
run over time, Thank you all for coming.