While the adoption of open educational resources (OERs) in the undergraduate curriculum has the evident benefit of reducing cost to the student, thinking deeply about OER adoption reveals numerous questions: can OERs match the quality of traditional textbooks and other commercial educational resources? Are there problems associated with the current textbook landscape that OERs can solve? And how easily can OERs be integrated into classrooms with established modes of instruction? Each of the Provost’s OER Fellows will discuss briefly some of the most important conclusions from the current OER research literature and discuss these in the context of SUNY Albany and its students. They will be sharing their experiences adopting and adapting OER materials for courses in the humanities and the sciences

Adams, Marcus

Feldblyum, Jeremy

Franchini, Billie

Horowitz, Lenore

Ingram, Matthew

English

University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY): Scholars Archive

Open Educational Resources at the University at Albany: What the Provost’s OER Fellows have learnedOER Initiative at UAlbany“Provost’s OER Fellowship will provide support and funding for individual faculty who are passionate about OER and the movement to increase their availability and use. OER Fellows will work in the coming year to have an impact on increasing awareness, adoption, and use of open educational resources across our campus with a goal of making UAlbany more affordable and accessible to all students.”Our Work•Evaluating sources of OER in our disciplines•Adopting OER in our courses•Educating & encouraging OER in our depts./colleges (esp. gen ed, large enrollment)•Informing faculty university wide (workshops & recommendations)•Researching platforms --> institutional, free, fee-based•Researching OER in the literature --> student learning outcomes, withdrawal rates, course drop rates, cost savings, sustainability modelsWhat is OER?Open Educational Resources are teaching and learning materials that may be used and reused, at low cost or without charge. OER often have an open license (like Creative Commons or GNU) that states specifically how the material may be used, reused, adapted, and shared, or are in the public domain. https://textbooks.opensuny.org/information_for_facultyOpen Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits repurposing by others.http://open-nys.org/Open educational resources are materials for teaching or learning that are either in the public domain or have been released under a license that allows them to be freely used, changed, or shared with others. OER may include everything from a single video or lesson plan to a complete online course or curriculum and also include the software platforms needed to create, change, and share the materials.https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/03/29/what-is-oer-5-questions-about-open-oer.htmlOpen Educational Resources:Instructors, Students, and the Community have the right to:The 5 Rs of Open Educational Resources were first described by David Wiley and published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at http://opencontent.org/definition/.OER: By the NumbersWhat research indicates about OER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BookJeremy FeldblyumUniversity at AlbanyDepartment of Chemistryfeldblyum@albany.edu• High Textbook costs lead to- Reduced enrollment- Increased drop/withdraw rate- Lower gradesOER: Not just saving students a few bucks!Hendricks, C.; Reinsberg, S. A.; Rieger, G. W. Int. Rev. Res. Open Distrib. Learn. 2017, 18.0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%Earned a poor gradeDropped or withdrawn from acourseNot registered for a specific courseTaken fewer coursesNever Rarely Sometimes Often Very OftenAdapted from Jhangiani, R. S.; Jhangiani, S. Int. Rev. Res. Open Distrib. Learn. 2017, 18.OER: Not just saving students a few bucks!Hendricks, C.; Reinsberg, S. A.; Rieger, G. W. Int. Rev. Res. Open Distrib. Learn. 2017, 18.• 1000’s of students surveyed among multiple studies (two shown)• Results consistent across the U.S. and Canada• Data collected from students across all disciplines, demographics0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%Earned a poor gradeDropped or withdrawn from acourseNot registered for a specific courseTaken fewer coursesNever Rarely Sometimes Often Very OftenAdapted from Jhangiani, R. S.; Jhangiani, S. Int. Rev. Res. Open Distrib. Learn. 2017, 18.OER: Not just saving students a few bucks!2016 Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey: Results and Findings (October 7, 2016) https://florida.theorangegrove.org/og/items/3a65c507-2510-42d7-814c-ffdefd394b6c/1/22,000 students from a wide variety of FL universities surveyed• Reduced enrollment• Reduced performance• 2/3 of students did not buy required textbook!What About SUNY Albany?• ​Informal survey of chemistry students in my research lab and their peers• Survey queried actions taken (or not taken) specifically due to textbook costWhat About SUNY Albany?• ​Informal survey of chemistry students in my research lab and their colleagues• "After sophomore/junior year, I stopped buying the textbooks because the teachers did not require any... assignments where the textbook was necessary... the slides/notes from class are enough, otherwise Google."• "Most classes I've taken do not directly relate to the recommended/required book so they seem pretty useless..."• "They're very expensive. Never buy them."• "I only purchase books as a last option because they are so expensive."• "Interlibrary loan is a great help to students. The loan period should be [a] little longer than what it is now."Can OER Compete?Hilton, J. Ed. Tech. Res. Dev. 2016, 64, 573.Compiled results from 9 recent studies (>45,000 students surveyed)• 3 studies show improvement from OER• 3 studies show no effect of OER on grades• 1 study shows decrease in grades with OER0%10%20%30%40%50%Favor Neutral/N.R. DisfavorOER Influence on GradesCan OER Outperform?• OER allows faculty to directly edit course material- Like 90% of a book but want to change 10% of it? No problem!- Insert/remove topics as needed- Integrate current primary literature into the textbook itself• Inclusion of non-print media (e.g., audio, videos)- You may already be doing this! That often counts as OER. • From a research perspective, difficult to link these advantages of OER to student performance outcomesCan OER Outperform?• Demonstration of science concepts using- Hazardous reagents- Expensive materials- Large-scale phenomena (e.g., weather events)Credit: Berkeley eChem project:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1GLPA2lkZU&feature=youtu.beOER and Two Textbooks in PhilosophyMarcus AdamsUniversity at AlbanyDepartment of Philosophymadams2@albany.eduhttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Valladolid_Rodin_expo_2008_Pensador_03_ni.JPGProject 1: OER in 100-level “Critical Thinking”• Develop OER materials for “Critical Thinking” course (PHI 112)• Taught both online and face-to-face for the past 10 years (since 2015 at UAlbany).• In this course students …• Analyze (informally) arguments in terms of premises, conclusion(s), and levels of support• Consider others’ viewpoints, charitably interpret them, and then assess them• Avoid making and learn to spot fallacious reasoning…• Course incorporates activities such as:• Writing an argumentative essay in stages• Examining realistic cases of reasoning (e.g., YouTube videos of debates and editorials in newspapers) – finding these is the most challenging part of prepping the coursePricing for Two Critical Thinking Textbooks$15711e$21812e$104Lower-cost, reputable publishers like Oxford University Press and Hackett Publishing have explicitly positioned their offerings against the more expensive options.For example, OUP engaged in an email campaign last fall…One response to this marketEmail from OUP:  “…we invite you to compare the price and quality of our book to other books published for your course.”Finding OER Textbooks – Two Options • The OUP book @ $49 is comparable to the more expensive options• I was not convinced that there was pedagogical justification for the $49 option and certainly not for the more expensive options.• I found two OER alternatives (completely free, including problem sets):• Cathal Woods (Virginia Wesleyan), Introduction to Reasoninghttps://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-JtWIIJlOaFQmlVLWlrWXktbFE• Brad Dowden (CSU-Sacramento), Logical Reasoning (previously published through Wadsworth but out of copyright)Remixing this Existing OER Textbook• I have been using the PDF in my course since 2015• Downside: not easy to use on mobile device/tablet• Downside: not as accessible• Downside: author had placed a restrictive license to prevent alterations• Author relaxed licensing to CC-BY in 2017 edition• I am now remixing this book (to be done by Fall 2019)• This involves putting it into the Pressbooks format and adding my own material to chapter sections, exercises, case studies, and links to YouTube• http://oer.ed-beck.com/logicalreasoning/wp-admin/index.phpEDITING INTERFACEHow the Pressbooks textbook looks for users...• Accessible• Easily viewed on mobile devicesChallenges for Project 1• No supplementary course materials:• High-cost textbooks come with a full suite of supplementary materials, such as automatically-graded quizzes• My experience with these packages for Critical Thinking (PHI 112) and Introduction to Logic (PHI 210) is that they are of mixed quality• Hosting – where does the OER book that someone develops/remixes live?• Milne Publishing (SUNY OER) will host for free: textbooks.opensuny.org• SUNY OER Services will print on an as-needed basis and students will pay cost + small markup in bookstoreProject 2: OER for 17-18th Century Philosophy• The Critical Thinking project has been driven by cost and quality.• I regularly teach course that uses all primary texts (17-18th Century Philosophy)• Problem with textbook market – no single anthology fits all the needs:• Reflects only “canonical” authors• Closest anthology includes much more than students need for the course• Without OER, existing solution: students purchase 3 textbooks and rely on Blackboard PDFs for the restOER in 17-18th Century Philosophy• An existing OER anthology (Modern Philosophy, compiled by Walter Ott of UVa) includes most of the key authors I assign.• Using Pressbooks, I’ve “remixed” this OER book by adding two authors:• 17 chapters of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651)• 29 letters from Margaret Cavendish’s Philosophical Letters (1664)• This took 25-30 hours to format the text from public domain• For next semester, students will purchase an $8 book for the course, but all of the remaining readings will be in this new remixed anthology.• A hard copy (printed by SUNY OER services) will cost about $18.Thank you!Marcus AdamsUniversity at AlbanyDepartment of Philosophymadams2@albany.eduhttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Valladolid_Rodin_expo_2008_Pensador_03_ni.JPGOpen Research Methods:JupyterHub for teaching computing and statisticsMay 14, 2018Matthew IngramDepartment of Political ScienceRockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policymingram@albany.eduWhy OER in research methods courses?Challenges OER SolutionsHigh cost of textbooks- students avoid classes with costly texts, or even if they enroll they try to get by without buying textOpen texts with no (or low) costHigh cost of proprietary, commercial software (e.g., SPSS, Stata, SAS, Matlab)- Again, students tend to avoid these courses or try to get by without necessary materialsFree, open-source software (e.g., R, Python, Julia)Dependence on commercial software - students lose access to commercial resources provided while at UAlbany, so future use requires new licenses and additional costs moving forwardFree, open-source software (e.g., R, Python, Julia)Closed nature of proprietary, commercial software Free, open-source software (e.g., R, Python)- Valuable learning resource!Challenges of using OER?• User support• ANSWER: large, international user groups online; also, package documentation improving, including vignettes and examples • Identifying a user-friendly interface• ANSWER: Multiple interfaces available (integrated development environments, IDEs)• R: RStudio• Python: Spyder and Anaconda bundle• R, Python, and others: Jupyter platformJupyter• Acronym for Julia, Python and R programming languages• Free, open-source, online platform to “support interactive data science and scientific computing across all programming languages” (from “About Us” page below)• Main document interface is a “notebook” that combines • These notebooks enhance transparent, reproducible research practices, and can also be used for assignments, papers, presentations, and publications• See• Jupyter home: http://jupyter.org/• Jupyter “About Us”: http://jupyter.org/aboutJupyterHub• Server-based version of Jupyter• Advantages• Can set up for multi-user environment and groups (e.g., students in a class)• Can set up so that users can sign in with NetID and password• Multiple notebook extensions facilitate collaboration, presentations, and teaching• Focus on one example:• nbgrader (notebook grader)nbgrader in JupyterHubIn pilot phase.Close collaboration with ARCC at UAlbanyhttps://jupyter.arcc.albany.edu/hub/homeAdditional ResourcesJupyterJupyterHubNbextensionsnbgraderLenore HorowitzUniversity at AlbanyInformation Science, iCEHClhorowitz@albany.eduMy StoryINF108 Programming for Problem SolvingTextbook was free (pdf format) for an older version of PythonStarting fall 2017 course textbook had to be purchasedMy ProjectRemix a new OER textbook based on course notes and course materials that reside in the public domain or are openly licensed.OER Textbook• Using the new, remixed textbook this this semester in 3 sections of INF108. • No cost pdf file and e-book available through Blackboard. Bookstore provided a printed version for $5.50.• Using current students to engage in reviewing/revising the text.• Updating (live!) the textbook.What is Next?• Working with SUNY Press to publish the text for next spring.• Continue revising as necessary.• Complete instructor supplementary materials for use with the textbook.• Share the textbook!Report: Students Prefer Courses that Use Open Educational Resourceshttps://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/10/12/report-students-prefer-courses-that-use-open-educational-resources.aspx?fbclid=IwAR3RFPKXoFoL2O7AXplLpj2_PNis-qIFfl4T3IAno9FjNibit_UQs1XuQJ8Thank You!Marcus Adams, Philosophy madams2@albany.edu Jeremy Feldblyum, Chemistry jfeldblyum@albany.edu Lenore Horowitz, Information Science lhorowitz@albany.edu Matthew Ingram, Political Science mingram@albany.edu 

Panel Discussion: Provost\u27s Open Educational Resource (OER) Fellows

https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&amp;context=open_access_week

Panel Discussion: Provost\u27s Open Educational Resource (OER) Fellows

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University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY): Scholars Archive