OER, Open Pedagogy, & Open Access

1. Introduction to OPEN:
OER, Open Pedagogy,
& Open Access
Robin DeRosa
Professor of English & Chair of Interdisciplinary Studies, PSU
OER Ambassador Pilot Consultant, UNH
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License.

2. Open 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 their free use and repurposing by others.
Open educational resources include full courses,
course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming
videos, tests, software, and any other tools,
materials, or techniques used to support access to
knowledge.
Hewlett Foundation: http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education/open-educational-resources

3. The 5 R’s of OER
• Reuse
• Remix
• Revise
• Retain
• Redistribute
Gratis/Libre
CC BY Yamashita Yohei flic.kr/p/uG21U

4. CreativeCommons

5. Save Students Money
• Students spend on average $1,200 a year on textbooks
(U.S. Public Interest Research Group, survey of 156 campuses in 33 states)
• That’s equal to more than 12% of PSU in-state
tuition!
• Since 1978, college textbook costs have increased
812%. To put that in context, it means that textbook
prices have increased at 3.2 times the rate of
inflation. (Mark J Perry, AEIdeas. http://www.aei.org)
• Used/rentals/ebooks don’t solve the problem. Used
textbooks are undermined by new editions, rentals
create a system where we remove books from
student hands. Many ebooks have expiration dates
and print limits.
CCBY Sean McMenemy flic.kr/p/8L2hMU

6. Effects of
Textbook Prices
• 60% of students report not
purchasing a required
textbook because of cost,
and 23% regularly go
without books due to cost
• 50% of students report
taking fewer courses due
to textbook costs
• 14% have dropped a
course and 10% have
withdrawn from a course
due to textbook costs
2012 Survey of 22,000 students, Florida Virtual Campus, comprised of the
12 universities and 28 colleges in the Florida state system.
CCBYDagnyMolflic.kr/p/5ksCNP

7. When Universities Address
Textbook Costs:
Houston Community College
• OER --increase in class grade average, increase in
average score on departmental final exam, and a
lower course withdrawal rate. (2011, 690 students,
http://www.johnhiltoniii.org/)
Mercy College
• Pass rates 8.54% higher in OER math sections. (2012,
695 students, http://www.educause.edu/)
Tidewater Community College
• 90.4% retention rate in all-OER Z-degrees.

8. Textbook Costs REALLY Matter
to Students
• A 2014 survey found that nearly half of students
(49%) were actually willing to choose one
university over another if free textbooks were
provided all four years.
• The survey showed that college students currently
worry more about how they will afford required
college textbooks than they do about paying the
cost of tuition.
http://www.20mm.org/articles/neebo-survey-finds-college-students-worry-textbook-costs-college-tuition-spring-
semester/
Image CCBYNC Thomas Hawk https://flic.kr/p/PNrwk

9. This is not (only) about COST
We could save students money in tons of
easy ways:
– Increase all class sizes to 100+;
– Increase all teaching loads to 6-6;
– Close the library! Close the gym!
– Turn off the heat!
Cheaper isn’t the (only) point. Affordability will
bring more students to the table and keep them
there. But that is only the beginning of how OER can
improve the learning process.

10. Resisting
“Students as
Consumers”
“Student-centered”
≠
“give the customer
what s/he wants.”
Photo: CC BY SA Magnus Manske

11. Open Pedagogy
• Community and collaboration over content.
• Connects the university with the wider public.
• Treats education as a learner-developed process.
• Is skeptical of hoops, products, end-points, experts,
& gatekeeping.
CC BY Tripp flic.kr/p/6K8Kmv

12. Required Texts
Learning Outcomes
Schedule of Work
Assignments
Grading Criteria
Syllabus

13. Required Texts:
what does OER
enable?
• Add Components
• Revise & Reorder
• Customize
Autonomy, Creativity,
Critical Thinking

16. Learning Outcomes
What will your students bring to the class?
Where will they take it?
CCBYSA Patti Neumann http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buttress_roots.JPG#/media/File:Buttress_roots.JPG

17. TechnoRhizomatic
Image by Daniel Lynds, @daniellynds

18. Schedule of Work
What is the role of content in your community?
CCBYStateLibraryVictoriaCollegeflic.kr/p/bibPkt

19. Schedule of Work
Function of CONTENT:
for students to learn to identify what matters to them.
The shelf-life of discipline-specific content is short.
The shelf-life of learner-centered inquiry is forever.
CC BY Gayle Nicholson flic.kr/p/5wuqSd

20. CONTENT as
Dynamic
“The amount of
knowledge in the world
has doubled in the past
10 years and is [now]
doubling every 18
months…To combat the
shrinking half-life of
knowledge, organizations
have been forced to
develop new methods of
deploying instruction.”
~Cathy Gonzalez
www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/1692/decrease-in-knowledge-shelf-life-makes-performance-support-mandatory
CCBY Kevin Dooley flic.kr/p/5ttM97

21. Assignments
Connected, Not Disposable
CCBYSA Martin Abegglin flic.kr/p/7AUF3h

22. Grading
• Training peer graders like we train standardized test
graders (the @Chris_Friend model)
• Open p2p Badges (the BC Campus model)
• Grading by contract and crowdsourcing (the
@CathyNDavidson model)
• Grading by guided, frequent self-evaluation (the
@Jessifer model)
• Grades that emphasize effort/engagement (the
@davecormier model)
“Every study of peer review among students shows that students
perform at a higher level, and with more care, when they know they
are being evaluated by their peers than when they know only the
teacher and the TA will be grading” ~Cathy N. Davidson

23. Beginnings&Endings?
OnlyMIDDLES!
CCBYNCND Andrew Purdam flic.kr/p/3dCSg1

24. Open Access
• Intellectual Property  Scholarly Dialogue
• CC Licenses Retain Copyright
• Open Access Journals & Peer Review
• Green and Gold OA Publishing
• Institutional Policies for OA
• Access is a Social Justice Issue
• The High Cost of Paywalls

25. Why Do You Do What You Do?
If you write to be read, to encourage critical thinking and
to educate, then why wouldn't you disseminate your
work as far as possible? Open access is the answer.
~Martin Eve, University of Lincoln
Photo: CC BY SA Ken Lund, https://www.flickr.com/people/75683070@N00

26. Going Open
• OER has to be gratis AND libre.
• Saving money is HUGE to students.
• OER can empower learners.
• Rhizomatic approaches honor student
contributions and enable lifelong learning.
• Content isn’t everything.
• Assignments should matter to students and
should involve their communities.
• Grading should match our pedagogy.
• Our courses are communities and communities
don’t have end dates.
• Scholarly work should be accessible to the public.
CCBYNC Ian-bogdan dumitrescu flic.kr/p/mRKNQ