INSTRUCTORS TAKE NOTE – OER CAN HELP

With the start of Winter Term, many MHCC students once again felt the burden of the cost of textbooks weighing on their wallet. Open Education Resources (OER) could help alleviate that burden, and more Mt. Hood instructors should embrace them.

A study published by the Student Public Interest Research Groups (Student PIRGs) last year states, “Since 2006, the cost of textbooks has increased four times the rate of inflation.” And, due to the lack of textbook market competition, students are forced to purchase materials required for classes, meaning it’s essentially out of their control.

The people who do have control are the professors or instructors choosing the textbooks for classes. The same PIRG study put the national average of textbook cost per course at $153; when compared to a course that uses OER, the average drops to $31.

Students often turn to secondary markets to get the best deal for required texts. While some books are less expensive used or rented, publishers are getting around this by creating online software which allows them to have complete control over how long students can use their product, often making it a one-time use product.

In terms of online methods of learning, publishers are ahead of the game compared to instructors. (This leads us to wonder if instructors will eventually become obsolete, due to online software which tracks student progress and gives instant feedback.) This software offers different ways to learn with video, audio, and visual components, as opposed to the traditional “read from this book, take a quiz, and write a discussion post.”

SAVINGS AT MT. HOOD

One way to ease students’ heavy cost is OER. They offer free materials online that grant specific permissions to use the content, based on their creative commons license. These licenses often are referred to as the 5Rs, with descriptions that are broken down to a one-word description: Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix, Redistribute. This was explained by David Wiley, keynote speaker in 2015 during one of OpenOregon’s Regional OER conferences, held at Mt. Hood.

There has been OER progress here. Heather White, the college’s technical services coordinator and co-chair for the Textbook Affordability Team (TAT) on campus, told the MHCC Foundation Board of Directors last year that from 2016 to 2018, students saved about $350,000 due to OER.

This led to the Foundation donating $50,000 in grant funding to be distributed over the next five years to support OER at MHCC.

During this Fall Term, 18 faculty members applied for the grant, some grouping together. There were a total of nine grant applications, seven of which were funded.

At the same time, MHCC has worked to create a system to tell students which classes offer low-cost (under $50) and no-cost ($0) textbooks when they register for classes online. The low-cost level of $50 was set by the Associated Student Government in the 2015-16 academic year.

This approach comes after the Oregon Legislature passed House Bill 2871 in 2015, which requires all publicly funded universities and community colleges to label courses that use OER or that offer low-cost/no-cost textbook options. The bill also established the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission’s OER Grant Program and set aside $700,000 in grant money for university and community college instructors to produce OER curriculum.

HELP FOR INSTRUCTORS

So: If students want there to be more no-cost-for-textbooks courses, it’s up to the educators to adopt OER. We understand that OER is not ideal for every degree program. However, most courses for general education could be transitioned to OER due to many resources already available.

It will take work. The OER Commons website has just about 30,000 post-secondary resources available, but under a search for Community College/ Lower Division, Curriculum/Instruction, Remix and Share, options quickly drop to 1,710 results. Narrowing to specific subjects cuts down available content even more.

How, then, can Mt. Hood faculty create OER that fits their instructional goals?

Luckily for those interested – and motivated – the TAT on campus has been working on ways to make the process easier. There is a Faculty Start Up Checklist, which goes through the steps of finding OER resources specific to instructional goals. The process also checks materials for accessibility, i.e., if the chosen text is screen reader-friendly, or if video and audio files have closed captioning.

By carefully remixing materials from multiple OERs, instructors can create a unique resource specific to their course’s learning outcomes. If no materials available meet their needs, there are grants available to create new OER. Along with the MHCC Foundation donation, there are also links available to additional outside grants available within Oregon, or nationally.

For more information regarding the TAT efforts, go to mhcc.edu/textbookaffordability.

If you’re a faculty member, you might be thinking, “Where will I find the time to create such a thing?” Wiley, the OER expert who visited the college in 2015, has led a series of classes in which students helped in creating new OER. The process doesn’t have to be on faculty members’ shoulders alone; it can be a collaborative process.

We at the Advocate understand that creating a body of work and sharing it is intimidating: We do that every week. The great thing about OER is that it takes away the barriers of learning for students who need it most. Community colleges in general serve students from low-income backgrounds. A costly textbook can be one more reason why a student can’t finish their degree program, let alone start. Secondary education is costly enough – why not try to help when you can? After all, as an educator you made the decision to share what you know with others so that they may learn from you.