Open Educational Resources aim to reduce costs

Mt. Hood’s Associated Student Government (ASG) teamed up with the Textbook Affordability Council (TAC) to throw a busy festival in the Main Mall Wednesday to bring awareness to students about free and low-cost alternatives to traditionally published textbooks.

The focus of the festival, which ran from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., was Open Educational Resources (OER).

Heather White, Mt. Hood’s Library Technical Services Coordinator and TAC chair, explained what OER is during a noon gathering in the Mall: Basically, OER is modeled after the open source movement, which is prevalent in the computer  software industry.

OER materials are available for instructors to change and adapt to their course needs, she said.

“You can make copies, you can make changes, you can share, all in the spirit of creativity and sharing knowledge, and coming up with the best content possible to meet whatever need arises,” said White.

ASG President Seth Albert explained OER a bit more specifically.

“OER can be edited by teachers, there’s no licensing on it, so it can be freely distributed, and say, somebody from Harvard wanted to write something, and post that as OER. Somebody from Mt. Hood could use that and tweak that for their class,” Albert said.

“It’s completely open for sharing; the only cost to students would be if you wanted to print it. Otherwise it’s just a PDF teachers can post on the (MHCC) portal,” he said.

TAC co-chair David Pontius urged students to talk to their instructors about considering OER in their courses, if they don’t already.

“I encourage you – be assertive. Talk with your instructors about this, put the notion and the thought in their head, in their ear,” said Pontius urgently.

MHCC President Debbie Derr talked to the students at the event and gave her support for OER.

“An open educational resource is a strategy; it’s a way that our instructors can work to bring down cost of textbooks through a variety of needs,” Derr said. “Some of those include creating their own resources, some of those include using resources that are available online.”

To help Mt. Hood’s instructors with developing OER, Derr and the TAC set aside $10,000 of Junki and Linda Yoshida’s donation money (a $1 million pledge given in September 2014) to the MHCC Foundation to aid in that venture.

During the noon event in the Main Mall, Albert, and ASG Vice President Lindsay Patiño passed out certificates to several faculty and staff members, recognizing them for using and being involved with OER.

Albert and Patiño also hosted a variation of “The Price is Right” game, where students had to guess the prices of various textbooks, and winners got MHCC merchandise. A Chromebook was awarded to the winner of the last round.

OER has been something Mt. Hood’s ASG has been prioritizing all year.

“This is just a festival to celebrate all the (progress) that we’ve made, and TAC council has so much more that they’ve been working on, and how they’re going to be working with the bookstore,” said Patiño.