OER &
Open Textbooks
on the Access
Services Horizon
November 13, 2014
Access Services Conference
Tucker Taylor
Head of Circulation
University of South Carolina (Columbia)
Jeff Gallant
Affordable Learning Georgia Visiting Program
Officer for OER
Board of Regents of the University System of
Georgia
Textbook Costs
Costs to Students
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Tuition
Housing
Food/Clothing/Living
Textbooks
• Textbooks are the one cost you can control
Effects on Students
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60% do not purchase
35% took fewer classes
31% chose not to register for a class
14% dropped
23% regularly go without
• Source- student survey by Florida Virtual Campus, 2012
http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/%5Cpdf%5C2012_Florida_Student_Tex
tbook_Survey.pdf
South Carolina
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USC Upstate
Coker
Winthrop
USC
Clemson
Coastal
Furman
Piedmont Tech
College of Charleston
Charleston Southern
Denmark Tech
Voorhees
Midlands Tech
$800-1,200
$1,000
$1,000
$1,008
$1,138
$1,147
$1,200
$1,200
$1,207
$1,400
$1,500
$1,500
$1,632
Cost to USC Freshman
• Typical Freshman Semester
– English 101
– Biology 101
– Math 141
– Spanish 121
$98
$367 plus an optional $230 textbook
$231
$213
• Criminal Justice $238
USC
• $1377 Your first semester of textbooks
• 190 hours of minimum wage work
– Chemistry 111
• $174 plus an optional $476 package
What are Libraries Doing?
• Nothing
• Lending and ILL-ing textbooks
• Reserve textbooks
University of South Carolina
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2008
100 students or more
20,000-25,000 per year
1000+ textbooks
Circulation Statistics
Problems
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Meeting the need
Perception
Cost
Lack of e-book availability
Fear of Promotion
Band-aid
Perpetuation of a bad system
Jeff Gallant
jeff.gallant@usg.edu
www.affordablelearninggeorgia.org
No, seriously, send me an email!
What is an Open
Educational
Resource (OER)?
First, you must
know what we
mean by “Open…”
What is an OER?
A resource is open if you
can:
• Access it at no cost
• Share it with no restrictions
• Transform it into something
new
• Adapt it for your particular
audience
What is “Open?”
A resource is not open if:
• There is no way to
access it without cost
• Sharing is either
prohibited or inhibited
• Transformation and
adaptation are not
allowed
What isn’t “Open?”
How do resources become open?
Unless a work is in the public domain by
law, resources are made open through
open licensing.
Open licenses give permission to access,
share, and adapt a resource.
For OER, we typically use Creative
Commons open licenses.
Open Licensing
Image courtesy of foter.com, CC-BY-SA 3.0
Therefore:
An Open Educational Resource is any
educational resource that is accessible,
modifiable, adaptable, and shareable:
• Open Textbooks
• Open Assessments (tests, quizzes)
• Open Courseware
• Open Audiovisual Materials
OER Formats
+
The OER “Wild West”
With OER, authority is always shared.
OER Evaluation
Types of OER review methods:
• Editorial Review
• Double-Blind Peer Review
• Faculty Review (Amazon-esque)
• Subject Expert Review
• No Review
OER Reviews
Affordable Learning Georgia’s
OER Evaluation Criteria
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Clarity, Comprehensibility, and Readability
Content Accuracy and Technical Accuracy
Adaptability and Modularity
Appropriateness of Material
Accessibility
Quality of Supplementary Resources
OER Evaluation
What is Affordable Learning Georgia?
Programs to support more affordable learning materials, including campus
advocacy, faculty development, bookstore collaborations, and grants for
textbook transformation.
A website designed to be a one-stop service to help University System of
Georgia (USG) faculty and staff identify lower-cost, electronic, free, and
open educational resources (OER), building on the cost-effective
subscription resources provided by GALILEO and the USG libraries.
www.affordablelearninggeorgia.org
An initiative of the University System of Georgia and GALILEO, Georgia’s
Virtual Library. www.galileo.usg.edu
Affordable Learning Georgia Is…
Goals and Programs:
• OER for Top Fifty Courses
• OER for eCore
• USG online core curriculum
• Partnerships for scale and
quality (CSU, OpenStax, eCore)
• Bookstore program
• Symposium on the Future of the
Textbook
• Textbook Transformation
Grants
ACTIVITIES AND STRATEGIES
Why Grants?
Adoption, adaptation, and creation
take time. Faculty often lack the time
to do this alone.
Textbook Transformation Grants
allow for:
• Course releases or extra-workload
compensation for faculty
• Assistance from instructional
designers
• Support for training session travel
Why Grants?
Vector art designed by Freepik: http://www.freepik.com/free-vector/simplesmall-icon-vector-material_575034.htm
External Project Impact
• Shared evaluations
• Sustainability measures
• Shared creations and
adaptations
• Lessons learned
• RPG statistics
• Student savings
Why Grants?
Vector art designed by Freepik: http://www.freepik.com/free-vector/simplesmall-icon-vector-material_575034.htm
Summary of Round One Grants and Grantees
• 48 proposals from 19 institutions; 30 awarded
• 64 participants
• $314,590 awarded
• $2,206,138 in potential savings to students
annually
• 19 Top 50 courses addressed
• Spring 2015: Semester offered to Students
Round One
Textbook Transformation Grants
RPG =
Retention
Progression
Graduation
New formula funding model in FY16 for USG
from General Assembly will take this into
account.
Research on OER and RPG measures are new
and ongoing, but recent case studies are
promising.
Retention, Progression, Graduation
About 66% of
instructional faculty
surveyed by
Babson in 2014
were not aware of
OER.
This goes to 80% if
you include
“somewhat aware.”
Part of an infographic by Babson Survey
Research Group and Pearson, CC-BY 4.0:
http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/repor
ts/openingthecurriculum2014infographic.pdf
OER: Awareness Wanted
Part of an infographic by Babson Survey
Research Group and Pearson, CC-BY 4.0:
http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports
/openingthecurriculum2014infographic.pdf
Red box added by Jeff Gallant.
OER: Librarians Wanted
Librarians are here
to help:
• As consultants on
finding/evaluating
resources
• As instructors on using
these resources
• As designers of openlyaccessible LibGuides or
other web guides
Library Services
Online library resources are both licensed and
zero-cost to students.
Permalinks (permanent links) make off-campus
access easy, no matter where the link is located,
including freely-available LibGuides.
Library Resources
For example:
Every USG Institution has an
Affordable Learning Georgia Library
Coordinator.
http://www.affordablelearninggeorgia.org/about/champions_coordinators
USG Library Coordinators
What can Access Services Librarians
do about OER and textbook replacement?
OER and Access Services
1) Advocate with your specialized knowledge
• Are textbooks and other required course resources
your most-circulated items? How about your
reserves?
• Leverage that data to illustrate the cost burden on
your students.
– Textbook library checkout is a student sacrifice due to
costs – no notes, highlighting, work allowed in the book
– Do you get many ILL orders for textbooks? What classes
are the “regulars” for this practice?
OER and Access Services
2) Make OER visible to your
patrons
• Example: Virginia Tech
OpenStax kiosk
OER and Access Services
3) Be informed
• Keep informed on new high-quality OER/open/freelyaccessible/no-cost alternatives, especially for
subjects where faculty often order or reserve
textbooks in the library.
• Check up on the latest OER news and research – an
easy way to do this is following Nicole Allen and/or
David Wiley on Twitter
OER and Access Services
4) Inform your peers
• Talk to your teaching faculty about OER, and
recommend high-quality alternatives you have seen
and evaluated.
• Are you the library expert on copyright? Help others
understand open licensing.
• Connect your peers with new programs which assist
in implementation (such as ALG, UMN Open
Textbook Library, etc.)
OER and Access Services
Thank you!
Questions?