6. 6
QUALITY CONTENT IS A MUST
• Standard scope and sequence
• Expert-written
• Extensively reviewed by peers and
industry
• Rigorous editorial process
• Regular errata and industry updates
Quality comparable to commercial texts
11. FACULTY NEED MORE THAN A BOOK
11
• Online homework (from partners)
• Online labs (from partners)
• PowerPoint slides
• Pronunciation guides
• Solution Manuals
• Test banks
• And more (via community resources)
13. 28 hours working a minimum
wage job to purchase a $200
textbook
“Covering the Cost,” Ethan Senack and Robert
Donoghue, The Student PIRGS, February 2016
15. 65% of students said that
they had decided against
buying a textbook because
it was too expensive
“Fixing the Broken Textbook Market” by
U.S. PIRG Educational Fund, January 2014
16. “Students reported that they”
occasionally or frequently take fewer
courses (47.6%); do not register for
a course (45.5%); drop a course
(26.1%), or withdraw from courses
(20.7%)” due to the high cost of
textbooks
“2016 Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey”,
Florida Virtual Campus, October 2016
17. EFFICACY RESEARCH
17
Number of Credits Taken
• Fischer et al (2015). Students enrolled in OER courses
took more courses in the semester they used OER and
the following semester after the use of OER.
• Robinson (2015)
Lower withdrawal rates
• Feldstein et al. (2012)
• Hilton and Laman (2012)
• Wiley et al. (2016)
18. 18
• 11 peer-reviewed studies
• 48,623 students
• 93% of students did as well or
better using OER
• “As well” is still a win with students
saving $
EFFICACY RESEARCH
Analysis by John Hilton, Brigham Young University
19. Students now have the
freedom to access their
content wherever they are,
whenever they want, however
they learn
20. STUDENT CONTENT FREEDOM
20
Wherever they want
• Different formats for different devices and situations
• Share on social networks and public forums
• Share in blended learning environments
Whenever they want
• Instant, unlimited access
• Permanent access, they own the content forever
However they learn
• Use content in their work legally
• Make videos/class assignments legally
• Put into a format that meets their study habits
21. Open Educational Resources 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. OER 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
22. “OER-BASED”
22
Publishers offering “OER-based” content for a fee
Students
• Restricted access to content
• Copyright restrictions
• No choice in purchasing content
Faculty
• Limited academic freedom
• Copyright restrictions
• Limited choice
23. “OER-BASED”
23
"Box of Donuts at Work GVSU" by Steven Depolo, via
Flickr Creative Commons is licensed under CC BY 4.0
If they are
bringing you
donuts, it’s
not OER
- David Harris
24. INCLUSIVE ACCESS
24
Publishers offering short-term access to their content. Billed
directly through student accounts.
• Back to copyright restrictions, which limits faculty academic
freedom and student freedoms.
• Students have access to content for a limited time only.
• Students are billed direct, limiting choice & competition.
• Does not significantly lower costs.
25. POST-COURSE ACCESS TO CORE
CONTENT MATTERS
25
• Courses that span multiple semesters
• Retaking the course
• Reference for advanced courses
• Studying for higher education entrance exams &
certification exams
Any of the above could mean a student needs to purchase
another access code or rent the content again
26. Faculty now have the
freedom to use the
content to match their
teaching
27. OPEN LICENSING
27
• Distribute
• Remix
• Tweak
• Build upon
• Use commercially
• Only attribution required
• Distribute
• Remix
• Tweak
• Build upon
• Non-commercial
• Share alike required
• Attribution required
28. ADOPTION
28
• Every student has immediate & unlimited
access
• Standard scope & sequence makes it easy to
adopt
• Variety of technology partners allow choice
• Permission free use, editing & adaptation
• Variety of formats/partners eliminates one size
fits all
• Ownership of the content. Forever
• Moving to a new edition is optional
34. 34
3,600+ SCHOOLS USING OPENSTAX
• University of Maryland University College
• Austin Community College
• Harvard
• California State University System
• Houston Community College
• Stanford University
• Baylor College of Medicine
• Rice University
• Ivy Tech Community College System
• State University of New York
35. 10% of introductory
courses in the U.S. are using
at least one OpenStax book
Babson College Survey,
July 2016
36. PARTNER & AFFILIATE SCHOOLS
36
Alamo Colleges
Auburn University
BC Campus
Central New Mexico CC
College of the Canyons
Grand Rapids Community College
Lansing Community College
Maricopa Community Colleges
Northern Essex Community College
Pasadena City College
Salt Lake Community College
South Florida State College
Tarrant County College
Tulsa Community College
UCONN
University of Idaho
UMass Amherst
University of Texas, San Antonio
Utah State University
The Ohio State University
The University of Arizona
The University of Georgia
The University of Oklahoma
The University System of Georgia
Virginia Tech
Washington State University
38. 1) Adopt an OpenStax book
2) Recommend an OpenStax
book as an option for
studying/affordability
39. FAQ’s
39
• What’s the catch or obligation?
• What about sustainability? Revisions?
• With no sales reps how do I get service?
info@openstax.org
• Do you have comp copies?
• What about accessibility?
openstax.org/accessibility-statement
[Tell the Rice story….]
Rice University began working in OER in 1999
Originally called Connextions.
OER repository where faculty could upload and share content
We now call it cnx.org and it has over 40,000 pieces of content
So we thought “no one will ever have to pay for content again”
Except that isn’t what happened
In most cases, only the faculty member who uploaded the content was using it
So we had to go back and find out why
And what we found is that faculty weren’t willing to adopt content where they were unsure of the quality and it didn’t meet standard scope and sequence [this is a REALLY important point to make because it shows why creating OER locally will never scale. We’ve been there and done that]
So we formed OpenStax in 2012 and started with content that...[read bullet points]
So how do we fund all of this?
The development of the textbooks is very expensive because we following a similar process to that of the publishers to ensure quality
These generous foundations provided the nonprofit startup funding as well as continue to provide the funding for our books
Here are our books thus far
Everyone wants to know how we are choosing which books to publish
Since our mission is to drive down costs and increase access, there are two main criteria:
How many students take the course nationwide. There are 1 million students per year taking Psychology and US History
How expensive are the textbooks currently in the market. For example, it’s not uncommon for a Physics book to be above $300, it’s not uncommon to find a Statistics book above $300. I find it ironic but Economics books are some of the most expensive books in the market.
So how do students get access to the book?
[demo the website in a browser you don’t use for normal work]
[go to the homepage and show them that you are not logged-in to the website]
You can see I’m not logged in to this website
So this is as if I was a student in your class, you told me about my free book, and I cracked-open my laptop
[Go to subjects and go to all….talk through what you are doing with them...click on Physics]
[talk aobut how you can see the senior contributing authors but they can go to the preface of the book to see the full list of authors and reviewers]
[Go through the various formats and prices. Click and open both the .pdf and webview and navigate around them to show how easy it is]
[click the print copy so they can see the bookstore link, the Amazon link, and tell them about why we post the price]
[highlight Adopt this book button]
[scroll down and talk about the instructor resources and our faculty verification process and explain that process]
[talk about Community Hubs next and how faculty like to donate resources back, but how we don’t have funding to peer-review them, so they are on Community Hubs, click on the Hub to demo it]
[scroll down and talk about the student resources, ISBN, errata links, etc.]
[back to powerpoint]
Sustainability is also important
Would we be able to continue and offer the books if all of our foundation funding went away?
Yes, we have a sustainability model and the largest part of this model is our partnerships with independent and publisher
Homework partners
Courseware partners
Clicker technology partners
Custom print providers
These providers offer services faculty often need to support our content at reasonable prices.
If a faculty member chooses to use one of these services with our books, and it is OPTIONAL, part of the student fee comes back to us as a mission support fee
Which funds the sustainability of our organization, our content, and funds revisions of the book as well
For example, we were able to fund a second edition of our Sociology book based on these mission support fees
And again, we have additional faculty resources for our books, depending on the subject area and grant funding.
These include…[read bullet points]
But the real question is, how does this help students learn?
First, it eliminates a huge cost barrier for them.
Student PIRGS points out that….[read stat]
And if you think about it, most students are buying multiple books per semester, often so much that it’s about 6 months to a year’s worth of groceries for them
So high costs lead to students opting not to buy the book
Which is frustrating to you as faculty because you’re trying to move forward with your learning objectives
And now 65% or more of your students don’t have access to the book!
They are waiting for financial aid, their rental to start, the book to be shipped from wherever they bought it from, etc.
And it shows up in persistence
According to Florida Virtual Campus…
So my question to you is,
What if every student had instant and unlimited access to the text? That’s what we’re talking about with Open Educational Resources
We’re also seeing students take more credits and withdraw less with OER
The Fisher study is especially notable because he found that ….[read text above]
The results also show in research
[read bullet points]
But beyond cost savings and persistence….
Different formats for different devices and situations – They can study from their phone on the bus, use their tablet in labs, etc.
Use content in their work legally – Use our charts and graphs in research papers
Put into a format that meets their study habits – UTSA student created study guides from the .pdf
As we hear a lot about rentals and subscriptions for content, I also want to highlight why post-course access TO CORE CONTENT matters….
From the faculty perspective….
At the same time, we found that Open Licensing the content was very valuable to faculty
All of our books except Calculus are licensed under the CC-BY license, which allows you to….
Our Calculus books are licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA, which means…[outline difference[ but still very open
Every student has immediate & unlimited access – which means you can begin your teaching right away
This freedom allow you and everyone else to adapt the content to make it perfect for your specific course.
UCONN example.
UConn teaches Chemistry Atom’s First
So one of their faculty wanted to modify our book to meet this format
Uconn Undergraduate Student Government, working with the Uconn library, funded the professor to modify the book and then have it peer-reveiwed
Donated the book back to OpenStax, so now we have two Chemistry books
It allows a community to grow up around the content.
This is a partnership we have with OER Commons, where OpenStax users can join the community and share resources that they have created to accompany the core text.
And to engage with others who are using OpenStax resources.
UMASS Physics flipped classroom on YouTube.
This wouldn’t be legal with publisher content
[highlight the variety of schools on this list]
So if you’re a faculty member, we’d like to ask you to do one of two things to start….
So here’s our final thought that I’d like to leave you with….
