Education is
Open for Business
Open Educational Resources Introduction
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Meet Kevin Corcoran
Kevin Corcoran has been the Executive Director
of the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium
(CTDLC) since 2011. He joined the CTDLC in
1999 and has been responsible for developing and
growing the products and services offered to
support eLearning initiatives.
Kevin received his B.A. in English from the
University of Connecticut and his M.B.A. with a
specialization in Technology Management from
Walden University.
What are OER?
OER Defined
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 re-purposing
by others.
- William & Flora Hewlett Foundation
OER Can Be …
 full courses
 course materials
 modules
 textbooks
 streaming videos
 tests
 software
- William & Flora Hewlett Foundation
 and any other
tools, materials, or
techniques used to
support access to
knowledge.”
Why Does OER
Matter?
Questions
 How often do your students arrive for the first day of
class without their textbooks?
 Have you ever ordered a textbook and then spent
hours and hours creating additional documents or
handouts for your students because the textbook isn’t
exactly what you need or had errors?
 How do we know the materials work for our
students? Or are even used by the students?
-Connie Broughton – Open Course Library
Faculty Benefits
“open textbooks are about empowering faculty to better meet the needs of
their students.”
David Porter – BCcampus

Faculty have full legal control to customize and contextualize
learning resources for their students

Improved learning: Day 1 access and customized resources

Engaging students through a variety
of learning opportunities

Collegial collaboration
Faculty Benefits
Access:







Supplement or replace current curriculum
Address student access/readiness/Day 1
Just-in-time materials
Peer reviewed material to enhance curriculum
Diversity of perspectives and approaches
Appropriate copyright
Improve marketability - attract more students
Faculty Benefits
Customization:




Build your own resources from existing OER
Add localization/contextualization
Academic freedom –unbundle from publisher
Course re-design/learning outcomes focus
Faculty Benefits
Collaboration:





Foster collaboration/networking/innovation
Peer Review
Collaborative approaches to teaching/learning
Promote your work to a global audience
License your own OER so others can use it
What Faculty Are Using
O P E N I N G T H E C U R R I C U L U M:
Open Ed u c a t i o n a l R e s o u rc e s i n U. S . H i g h e r E d u c a t i o n , 2 0 1 4
OER Awareness Among
Faculty
OER Adoption: The Worst of Times and The Best of Times by Phil Hill (Oct. 31, 2014)
The Student Dilemma
My Textbook is…







back-ordered
in the mail
out of stock
the wrong edition
on hold until my student loan
arrives
unnecessary until I decide I
want this course
unnecessary until the exam
How often do
students start the
term without the
resources they
need?
David Porter – Bccampus – Beyond Free
16
inflation over the course of nearly two decades, increasing at an average
of 6 percent per year and following close behind increases in tuition and
fees. 8 More recent data show that textbook prices continued to rise from
2002 to 2012 at an average of 6 percent per year, while tuition and fees
increased at an average of 7 percent and overall prices increased at an
average of 2 percent per year. As reflected in figure 1 below, new
textbook prices increased by a total of 82 percent over this time period,
while tuition and fees increased by 89 percent and overall consumer
prices grew by 28 percent.
Cost of Education
Figure 1: Estimated Increases in New College Textbook Prices, College Tuition and
Fees, and Overall Consumer Price Inflation, 2002 to 2012
Chart from US Government Accountability Office
8
MA Textbook Projections
Data Provided by Lumen Learning
Textbook Costs vs. Student Success
60%+ do not purchase textbooks at
some point due to cost
35% take fewer courses due to
textbook cost
31% choose not to register for a
course due to textbook cost
23% regularly go without textbooks
due to cost
14% have dropped a course due
to textbook cost
10% have withdrawn from a course
due to textbook cost






Source: 2012 student survey by Florida Virtual Campus
Slide: CC-BY Cable Green, Creative Commons via http://www.project-kaleidoscope.org/
19
OER Impact on Student Success
Kaleidoscope Open Courseware Initiative
Textbook Costs
Rental Costs
OER Cost
OER in Print
Most texts
are under
$50 to print
Student Action
CT OER Legislation
HB 6117: An Act Concerning The Use Of Digital OpenSource Textbooks In Higher Education
 Open Textbook Pilot
 Study the Use of OER
 Build Awareness of OER
 Report Back to Legislation of Findings
 Establish OER Task Force for Best Practices
Signed into law July 2, 2015
Affordable College Textbook Act
 U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL)
 U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-MN)
 U.S. Senator Angus King (I-ME)
Propose a competitive grant program to support the creation
and use of open college textbooks
Companion legislation was introduced in the House of
Representatives by U.S. Representatives Rubén Hinojosa
(D-TX) and Jared Polis (D-CO).
October 8, 2015
Business Impact
http://impact.lumenlearning.com/
How Does OER Work?
Challenges of Copyright
“The Internet makes it easy to create and disseminate
information. But copyright law doesn’t currently reflect
these new opportunities to share with colleagues and
students. By using open copyright licenses on the
materials you create, you can share them legally
throughout the world and specify how others may use
them.”
CC BY – The Regents of the University of Michigan
http://open.umich.edu/sites/default/files/3659/PDFs/OERbenefits-handout.pdf
Which is Copyrighted?
CC Licensing Attributes
“A simple, standardized way to grant copyright
permissions to your creative work.”
Cable Green – Creative Commons - Textbook Rebellion
Share Alike
Attribution
Non-Commercial
No Derivative Works
CC Combinations
most free
least free
5 Rs of OER Permissions
Retain
• Make and own copies
Reuse
• Use in a wide range of ways
Revise
• Adapt, modify, and improve
Remix
• Combine two or more
Redistribute • Share with others
See www.opencontent.org for full definition.
Course Re-Design
 Level 0 – Replace
simply adopt OER (most often an open textbook) in place of a
commercial textbook and preserve other aspects of the course as
they taught it previously.
 Level 1 – Realign
remix open course materials, focusing learning outcomes, and
then selecting the OER from multiple sources will best support
student learning of specific course learning outcomes.
 Level 2 – Rethink
remix both course materials and pedagogy; create or select new
learning activities and assessments – possibly inviting students to
co-create and openly share them – often leveraging the unique
pedagogical possibilities provided by the 5R permissions of OER.
David Wiley
http://opencontent.org/blog/page/5
Who is Using OER?
OER Efforts
OER Initiatives
Washington SBCTC
Cal State
UMinn
Tidewater CC
UMUC
•Open Course Library
•Merlot
•Affordable Learning Solutions
•Open Textbook Library
•Z Degree
•Eliminating all undergrad publisher textbooks by Fall 2016
Maricopa Community Colleges
CT Success Story
Projected Savings 1 Academic Year: over $200,000
$260
$30
MA Success Story
 $18,000 Investment
 Over 2,000 students have benefited
 37 sections of OER in Spring 2016
Spring 2016
Fall 2015
•$319,000
Spring 2015
• $167,147
Fall 2014
• $56,758
•Projected
Savings
•$450,000 +
OpenStax College
Open Textbook Library
Cal State – ISBN Search
Where Do You Start?
How Do We Achieve Our Goal?
Awareness
Make
Resources
Available
IT-Library
Collaborative
Training
Faculty
Education
Student
Awareness
Funding
Endorsement
Professional
Development
Funds
Support
efforts from
top down
Support
Experimentation
Support a
state
mandate to
use OER
materials
Collaboration
Join the
Northeast
OER
Consortium
How Do You Begin?
Start small.
Explore existing OER
Apply for a Grant
Enlist Library and/or ID Help
Develop a habit of working in teams
Augment course material
Consider publishing
Resources
My Open Math
Flickr OER Images
YouTube OER
OER Commons
Creative Commons
Media Search
Google Advanced Search
Northeast OER Consortium
NE OER Consortium Focus
Professional Development.
The collection and development of training resources
to support faculty, librarians, and administrators with
the implementation of OER.
Modeling.
The collection and development of standards,
templates, and exemplar works to model successful
OER implementation.
Collection.
The collection and reporting of individual OER efforts,
including the cataloging of assets developed in the
region and open collaborations taking place.
Any Questions?
Kevin Corcoran
kcorcoran@ctdlc.org
@kevincorcoran
BRANDEIS GPS
MASTER’S DEGREES
• Bioinformatics
• Instructional Design & Technology
• Health & Medical Informatics
• Project & Program Management
• Information Security
• Software Engineering
• IT Management
• Strategic Analytics
• Digital Marketing and Design
• User-Centered Design
58
Higher Ed Opportunity Act
Passed 2008; effective 2010
1.
Price Disclosure. Publishers are required to disclose
prices and revision information when marketing
textbooks to professors.
2.
Unbundling. Publishers are required to offer all of the
items in textbook bundles for sale separately to give
students freedom to buy only what they need.
3. Textbook lists. Colleges need to provide the list of
assigned textbooks for each course (including ISBNs
and prices) during registration.
http://www.studentpirgs.org/resources/textb
ook-price-disclosure-law
https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/10/
19/openly-licensed-educational-resourcesproviding-equitable-access-education-all
Houston Community College
Psychology Department modifies an existing open
textbook to create custom textbook
“During the fall semester 2011, 690 students used this book.
Compared with students using a traditional text in the spring of
2011, students who used the free online textbook scored higher
on departmental final examinations, had higher grade point
averages in the class and had higher retention rates.
Source: One college’s use of an open psychology textbook, John Hilton III, Carol Laman,
Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning Volume 27, Issue 3, 2012
62
Virginia State University
School of Business
Open Textbooks in 9 courses (Flat World Knowledge)
“Students in courses that used FWK textbooks tended to have
higher grades and lower failing and withdrawal rates than those
in courses that did not use FWK texts.”
Andrew Feldstein, Mirta Martin, Amy Hudson, John Hilton III, & David Wiley. Open Textbooks
and Increased Student Access and Outcomes. Retrieved April 28, 2013, from
http://www.eurodl.org/?p=current&article=533
63
CT Community Colleges
• 2011-2012 Academic Year
• 11,000 enrollments in General Psychology
across the 12 campuses
• Average textbook cost was $175 for this one course.
• CCC Students paid $1.9 Million for
one text for one course
Data provided by CT Board of Regents
Permissions of OER
Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix, Redistribute
Responsibilities for Sustainability






Design
Deliver
Integrate
Update
Maintain
Measure






Create
Store
Curate
Organize
Attribute
Align
Fair Use
http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/copyright.cfm
Copying by instructors must meet tests for brevity and spontaneity:
-Brevity refers to how much of the work you can copy.
-Spontaneity refers to how many times you can copy and how much
planning it would take to otherwise seek and obtain permission
from a copyright holder (U.S. Copyright Office, 2009, p. 6).
What Should Be Avoided?
Making multiple copies of different works that could substitute for the
purchase of books, publisher's reprints, or periodicals.
Copying and using the same work from semester to semester.
Copying and using the same material for several different courses at
the same or different institutions.
Copying more than nine separate times in a single semester (U.S.
Copyright Office, 2009, p. 7).
Less than 11% goes to the faculty
Sustainable Content
Question around sustaining content
Seek out peer reviewed heavily adopted works. Built in
support system. Advocacy groups like OpenStax and
Merlot and Lumen Learning continue the QA efforts