Open jibc presentation sept_13_slideshare
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A presentation about openness, oer, and open textbooks, given at the Justice Institute of BC on Sept 12, 2013.
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Open jibc presentation sept_13_slideshare
- 1. JIBC in the Open Mary Burgess Director, Curriculum Services and Applied Research
- 2. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. Introductions I’m Mary Burgess, Director of Curriculum Services and Applied Research at BCcampus. What’s your role at the institution? Show of hands… • Instructor? • Administrator? • Librarian? • Instructional Designer? • Educational Technologist? • Other? 2
- 3. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. What is BCcampus? 4 research universities 6 teaching universities 11 colleges 4 institutes 25 public post-secondaries
- 4. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. 4 JIBC in the Open Agenda •What is Open? •Creative Commons licenses •The BC Open Textbook Project •Finding Open Textbooks •BCcampus Collaborative Programs
- 5. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. JIBC in the Open What is Open? 5
- 6. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. O And you’ve probably heard about…
- 7. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. 7 Day of the MOOC by Michael Branson Smith used under CC-BY-BC license MOOCs
- 8. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. 8 What isn’t Open?
- 9. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. 9 Openwashing
- 10. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. 10 OER
- 11. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. “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 http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education-program/open-educational-resources What are Open Educational Resources?
- 12. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. “Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them.” UNESCO http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-educational- resources/what-are-open-educational-resources-oers/ What are OER?
- 13. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. What does open enable?
- 14. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. © Licensing
- 15. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. An alternative
- 16. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. Image from Copyright in Education & Internet in South African Law http://education-copyright.org/creative-commons/ Used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 South Africa license CC Licenses
- 17. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. 17 Questions about licenses? Let’s try an example… I write a calculus textbook (hilarious), and publish it CC-BY-SA. You also teach calculus, but the learning outcomes of your course are a bit different from mine, so you want to change the text a bit. Under the terms of my license, can you do that? What does my license require you to do if you use and modify my work? What if I choose a CC-BY-ND license? How would the above work?
- 18. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. 18 Let’s get even more specific now, and talk about Open Textbooks. Open Textbooks Image source: www.flickr.com/photos/austinevan/1225274637/
- 19. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. JIBC in the Open We have a problem… 19 Images from http: //www.openeducation.net/2009/09/17/beyond-textbooks-andy-chlup-discusses-digital-learning-models/ CC-BY and http: //markmcguire.net/2011/01/01/r-i-p-department-of-design-studies/ CC-BY-NC
- 20. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. What students think of textbooks “The price of textbooks has influenced my decision to take classes. When the same class is offered by three different instructors, I check which book is the cheapest, and even though the professor might not be good, I’m forced to take that class because the textbook is the cheapest.” “For my ‘Intro to Stats’ class, the usual cost of the textbook is like $120. But then I got a copy from India for like $29. And it’s the exact same copy.” “I was in lab one day and the guy sitting next to me had the PDF version of the book opened on his computer. And I was like, Oh, can I have a copy? And he sent it over to me.” “I have a friend who actually didn’t spend any money last year for books because he went to the library at the beginning of the quarter, borrowed books, scanned everything, and had the PDF file.” “My most expensive class was clinical psych, because she writes the textbook herself, and it has a new edition every semester or something ridiculous. So it was like almost $200. And the thing is that you can’t use the previous edition, because she changes it herself because she knows the textbooks sell well. It’s like so manipulative.” Students Get Savvier about Textbook Buying, The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 2013 http://chronicle.com/article/Students-Get-Savvier-About/136827
- 21. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. Fortunately, there are solutions… 21 Images from http: //collegeopentextbooks.ning.com/page/adopt-1 CC-BY and http: //classroom-aid.com/2011/12/07/why-dont-teachers-publish-their-own-textbooks-k12/ CC-BY-SA
- 22. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. What is an Open Textbook? What do you think? 22 Image from: http: //maczee.deviantart.com/art/Hanging-Ideas-66244580 CC-BY-ND
- 23. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. What is an Open Textbook? • An instructional resource • An ebook • A printed book • Uses a Creative Commons license to enable others to further share and modify 23 Images from Bccampus.ca and CreativeCommons.org. CC-BY
- 24. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. The BC Open Textbook Project 24 Image from Bccampus.ca
- 25. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. 25 Why are we doing this project? •To increase access to higher education by reducing student costs •To enable faculty more control over their instructional resources •To move the open agenda forward in a meaningful, measurable way Images from Oxfam.org CC-BY and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Mietchen/Talks/World_Open_Educational_Resources_Congress_2012 /How_Open_Access_and_Open_Science_can_mutually_fertilize_with_Open_Educational_Resources CC-BY
- 26. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. The project: • 40 Texts, aligned with the 40 most highly enrolled 1st and 2nd year subjects in BC • Not just for online delivery • Ebook (multiple formats) or print on demand 26
- 27. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. Project Phases: Phase One: Call for reviews of existing open textbooks This is happening now and will continue through the project. Phase Two: Call for adaptations Date: Fall 2013 Phase Three: Call for creation from scratch Date: Jan 2014 27 Images from http://www.advanc-ed.org/issues-in-education/perspectives/worth-investment-strengthening-teacher-evaluation-age-accountabilit http://www.flickr.com/photos/wakingtiger/3156791341/ http://gutsygirls.net/gygsns2/pages/c-and-v-page
- 28. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. CTLT Institute: Open Textbook Workshop What about quality? •Reviews – we’re relying on instructors •Collaborations – peer support, idea generation, subject matter expertise •Supporting players: Instructional Designers, Professional Editors 28 Images from http://fundermental.blogspot.ca/2011_09_01_archive.html http://thevarguy.com/blog/visual-collaboration-next-var-opportunity-arrives http://quotesweliveby.blogspot.ca/2010/08/quality-begins-on-inside-quality-quotes.html
- 29. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. Open Textbook Technology 29
- 30. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. Pressbooks 30 This is what a Pressbooks text looks like.
- 31. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. JIBC in the Open 31
- 32. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. JIBC in the Open 32
- 33. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. Project Q&A Contact me later at mburgess@bccampus.ca if you think of anything you wish you had asked… 33
- 34. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. Finding Open Textbooks • Who has tried to find an Open Textbook? • Who has tried to find an OER? It’s notoriously difficult! Some places to look: Connexions – cnx.org Merlot – merlot.org OER Commons – oercommons.org 34
- 35. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. JIBC in the Open Benefits and Challenges of Open Textbooks What do you think? 35
- 36. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. JIBC in the Open Individual and institutional readiness and change… Consider the following: 36
- 37. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. JIBC in the Open • What would need to be in place for you to adopt an open textbook? • Is collaboration valued at your institution? • Is the creation of new work more highly valued at your institution than the reuse or revision of existing work? • To what extent do current institutional policies motivate educators to invest at least a portion of their time in ongoing curriculum design, creation of effective learning environments and the development of high quality instructional materials? Questions adapted from http://www.oerafrica.org/policy/OERpolicyreviewprocess/tabid/1095/Default.aspx CC-BY 37
- 38. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. JIBC in the Open Collaborative Programs at BCcampus 38 Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thinkpublic/3042777307/ CC-BY
- 39. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. Collaborative Programs & Services Applied Business Technology Northern Collaborative for Information Technology
- 40. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. Summary 40
- 41. Page |BCcampus | connect. collaborate. innovate. Thanks! mburgess@bccampus.ca 41
Editor's Notes
- Introduce myself including role at RRU (ID, Moodle project, OER project, Director) and ask for a show of hands in the room for institutional roles – I’m asking because an institution considering working more in the open needs to consider that activity from a holistic perspective. Who would be impacted by a move to more openness? Certainly faculty and students, but also key roles to be played by IDs, Ed tech staff, Librarians, IT Services, bookstore staff, senior administrators. This is a cultural shift for many institutions and one that has to be carefully considered.
- So we ’re not an institution– but we provide services to BC’s institutions. We ’re under the Ministry of Advanced Education, but administered by Simon Fraser University. Started in 2002 Two offices – Vancouver & Victoria + people who work remotely – about 24 people give or take contractors BCcampus gets its strategic direction from a STRATEGIC COUNCIL made up of 6 institutional representatives from the post-secondary sector - 2 representatives from the government Ministry of Advanced Education The BCcampus CEO Dr. Anna Kindler, University of British Columbia Dr. William Krane, Simon Fraser University Dr. Scott McAlpine, Douglas College Dr. David Bogen, Emily Carr University of Art & Design Dr. Alan Davis, Kwantlen Polytechnic University Lauri Rancourt, Northern Lights College Susan Brown, Ministry of Advanced Education, Innovation and Technology Dawn Minty, Ministry of Advanced Education, Innovation and Technology
- I’m going to blast you with a bunch of information but I’ll give you a chance to ask me questions and you can always contact me after the session if you think of anything you wanted to know.
- You’ve probably heard the word Open thrown around a lot lately – Open Government, Open Data, Open Source Software. It’s becoming a THING! Open Culture: social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify creative works in the form of free content by using the Internet and other forms of media. Open Government: citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight. Open Source Code: You’ve probably heard of tools like Moodle, Linux, Apache, Dspace, Firefox. These are pieces of software in which the code behind the application is accessible by anyone who wants it, contrasted by proprietary systems in which we have to pay to access the application and usually have no access to the code itself.
- Where else are we hearing the word Open?
- Ask them what MOOC stands for. MOOCs – this is a big buzzword for us in ed right now, MOOCs. And, as with all movements, it’s origins are controversial with some arguing that it started even before the guys listed here who are Canadian Ed Tech Rockstars, in fact, there are some who say the father of the OER movement (also debatable of course), David Wiley, is the one who began the movement. In this case, the OPEN means OPEN access. Why am I being clear about that? They are actually usually not completely open. That’s not to say they are bad, although we’ve certainly seen some examples of really badly designed MOOCs, and right now, they’re something new and hot that everyone is talking about so there is a lot of debate. They enrollment is usually open (thought not always), but the content is not available for free, which is one of the basic tenets of openness. Because seriously, let’s talk about what Open isn’t…
- A bit of the conversation from those on the front lines ARL – Association of Research Libraries Cable is Director of Global Learning - CC
- And then things start getting sticky. You may have heard the term “ Greenwashing ” , in which companies latch onto the the word “ green ” or “ natural ” in order to sell products, whether or not there actually is a true environmental friendliness to what they are selling The same holds true for OPEN. Researchers in the OER space are writing and speaking about examples of companies they perceive to be waving the Open banner in a disingenuous way. Pearson has been accused of this with respect to the release of their new OpenClass – a cloud based LMS that is completely free to use--free of licensing, hardware, or hosting fees. However, though they're using the term "open, ” , it is being speculated that the Pearson materials most compatible with the platform will remain copyrighted and fee-for-use. Pearson is not part of the Open Community or the Commons and are thus suspect as a for-profit company. Needless to say, the Open space has it’s controversies and the conversations around purity will continue while projects to produce and reuse OER happen alongside that dialogue.
- So, let’s move on to a topic closer to our hearts. While those other concepts of openness are important, what we’re really interested in is Open Educational Resources. What are they?
- Give time to read. Here’s one sort of official definition that comes from the Hewlett Foundation. Hewlett, the Gates and Shuttleworth foundations are just a few big players who are providing massive amounts of funding in the US to promote OER – to the tune of millions of dollars. We benefit from that because the resources that get created are ones we too can make use of due to the licensing.
- Give time to read. And another similar one from Unesco. Unesco promotes open access to resources like scientific information and research and are working to promote OER usage in developing nations like the Grenadines and parts of Africa where there is a huge gap between what teachers and students need and what they have access to.
- I mentioned David Wiley earlier in the piece about MOOCs – he created this helpful matrix to increase understanding of his view on openness (and the view that Bccampus shares, by the way). What makes OER “OPEN” is the ability to do the following things. Reuse – this means that you can adopt an instruction resource, let’s say a diagram that helps student understanding of a given concept, or a set of quiz questions, and use them however you want without paying any copyright fees for them. Revise – you can take those same instructional resources and modify them to better suit the needs of your students. Remix – you can use those instructional resources, plus some other ones and pull them together into a new instructional resource. So maybe you find some content about a given topic in one place, and some diagrams to support the learning about that content in another place, and some quiz questions for students to use in assessing their understanding, and you put them all together into one new instructional resource. Redistribute – you can share the work you adopted or revised or remixed with your students, with your institutional colleagues, with others in the world who want them. This all happens for free. Let’s talk about how those things are enabled.
- Now let’s talk about licensing. Who knows what this symbol stands for? This is the way we’re used to educational resources being licensed. The creator holds copyright and in our world of higher education, often that means they sell their copyright to a publisher, who then limits how the resources can be used. Usually this means there is a fee for using the resources, either charged to use research journals, or to buy a textbook or some other resource.
- Who has seen this symbol before and can tell me what it means? Creative Commons is an organization that has developed an alternative to traditional copyright. Those people or organizations who choose to use CC licenses still retain copyright or intellectual property rights to the materials they create, but they give other people permission to use them for free in a variety of ways, depending on the license they choose. We’ll go through those licenses so you get a better understanding of what I mean.
- There are a number of different Creative Commons licenses, so let’s work our way through them. CC-BY – This is simply an attribution license. like it says up there, READ IT about attribution. This is the most open license and using it means the largest number of people will benefit from your work. However, it’s also the most open license, and that means that anyone can do anything with your creation. Some people are afraid this will mean some big publisher is going to come along and take the work they created and make a million dollars from it. There is not a single example of this having happened. CC-BY-SA – this is attribution, plus others also have to then share the work you created, and that means share freely. Some people are more comfortable with this license because it eliminates the possibility I just described – the publisher would have to share whatever new work they created with the old work, and thus they would be unlikely to profit since nobody is going to pay for something they can get for free (at least not knowingly) CC-BY-NC – this is attribution with the stipulation that the reuse of the work cannot be commercial, i.e., nobody can profit from it. Again, this is often used by people afraid someone is going to make $ from their work. It is, however, limiting, because profit is profit, whether it’s for good or for evil. So for example, let’s say a charitable organization is creating a calendar they will sell to make money for their charity. They find a photo online they want to use in the calendar, and it’s openly licensed so it won’t cost them any money to use. But wait, it’s licensed NC, so they actually can’t use it to make money. Thus the picture does not get adopted and reused. SA does essentially the same thing, with fewer restrictions, so it’s a better choice if the goal is reuse. CC-BY-ND – ND is a tough one, and it’s actually not considered an open license by many advocates, including Bccampus, David Wiley, Creative Commons. No derivatives is problematic because, while it does provide a free resource, it allows for no remixing or revising. So if you had that set of quiz questions we talked about earlier, and you didn’t like one of the questions, you can’t change it under this license. It’s still good, because it’s providing a free instructional resource, but it’s not open. Limits reuse. Questions about the licenses?
- Give the audience a chance to ask questions about the licenses. Note that just because you choose an open license, does not mean you lose IP. You are still the copyright holder of the work you created, and as such you get to make decisions about how it gets used.
- There are obviously a lot of different types of OER, everything from entire courses, to multimedia objects, to assessment tools and so on. One of the types is of course textbooks. So let’s talk about that.
- There are two problems with the way textbooks are traditionally published. They are extremely expensive, so they create a barrier to higher education. In many cases, students just can’t afford the cost of texts, so they just can’t get the education they need. In addition, the fact that the content is locked by the license means that faculty have no control over their instructional resources. If what they want to teach their students doesn’t align with the content of the textbook, they have to find other ways of delivering that content, and also do fudgy things like having students buy an entire textbook, but only assign readings from a few of the chapters.
- These are some comments from students about textbooks. Give them a chance to read the quotes. We’ve heard stories of students who are enrolled in a course, find out what the textbook costs, and drop out. We’ve also heard about students who can’t afford to buy the texts for their courses until they get their student loan funding, so for the first few weeks of the course, they are without the necessary resources. As you can see from the above example, students are also actively breaking the law to get access to resources, putting themselves and their institutions at risk of legal action.
- Open textbooks are one alternative to this challenge. They are not the only solution, as rentals and second hand texts can also be used, but this is the solution we’re working on right now with our project.
- Before we get into the details of the project, what is an Open Textbook? Ask them to tell me.
- It’s these things, just like you all just said. Show the samples.
- So we’ve been working on an Open Textbook project at Bccampus since last fall, and I’m going to tell you about that now. At the Open Ed Conference in Vancouver in October 2012, then Minister of AVED John Yap announced funding for the production of 40 open textbooks in the most popular courses in BC. Bccampus is tasked with carrying out that project. And luckily for us, a new Minister doesn’t mean the project goes away!
- We are doing this for several reasons: We want to enable more access to higher education. Textbooks are a cost that is a barrier to people who want more education and skills. We also believe that instructors are the ones who should be making decisions about what resources their students use. Openly licensed instructional materials enable that flexibility. At Bccampus we’ve been working on the open agenda for ten years, and this is a way of making a really concrete contribution to the open space.
- 40 texts BCcampus has been tasked with managing that project and the associated grant of $1 million. The texts are to be aligned with the most highly enrolled subjects across the BC post secondary system. Data on the Top 40 came from the Central Data Warehouse and institutions themselves. We have created broad categories for subjects (rather than individual courses) because we needed to represent the entire BC post secondary system, and courses are taught differently at each of the institutions. In some cases there is a more broad or survey type course, and in others, for example the bigger institutions, there is more diversity in course offerings in a given subject area. I realize that none of those subject areas include you guys, which is really crappy. As you may have heard, one of the election promises the liberals made was for 20 more textbooks. We are working with them right now on what the focus of those 20 will be and advocating against more high enrolment and instead looking for a focus on skills training in areas that enable people to get jobs. I am very hopeful that there will be some subject areas in that 20 that are applicable to your institution. And actually I noticed you have some courses as part of your program in liberal studies that would benefit from the top 40 as well, so hopefully you’ll consider saving your students $ by adopting some of what’s been produced as part of our project. Not just for online delivery: Want to be clear that these texts are intended to be used across the system in all delivery formats, not just online. Sometimes people think that because they are originally digital resources, they're only for online delivery, that's not the case. Ebook or print on demand: The texts will be provided in a variety of digital formats so they can be read across devices and will also be available via print on demand for a small fee (less than $30 in most cases, more if it is a complicated book to print, i.e. something with a lot of graphics etc, but fundamentally the it’s about cost recovery, not profit).
- First we went and found a bunch of existing open textbooks from projects that came before ours, and we put those on our website. Call for Reviewers of existing open texts went out April 15 th . These were texts that already existed in the commons, created by other jurisdictions. Reviews based on a rubric BCcampus created, and reviews are to be written by faculty in BC institutions teaching in the subject areas and graduate student teaching assistants (we didn’t get any of those, but hope to engage them at other stages). We got 60 applications to review. Reviews were due by Sept 3/13 Reviewers to be paid a $250 honorarium Where appropriate (i.e. the reviewed texts is determined to be of high quality), we will encourage adoption of the texts. For adopters, there will be the option to engage with BCcampus in an evaluation of that process, which will be funded. We funded everyone who applied and completed a review. Not everyone who applied completed. There will be more calls for reviews as we get more texts on our site. This phase is now complete and we have 38 reviews on the site of 15 of our texts (there are actually 23 texts on the site now) We want to get at least one review for every text on our site, so we’ll be putting out more calls for reviewers as we get more texts. Phase Two: Fall 2013: Funding will be provided. Call for Proposals to Adapt existing open materials to create open texts which align with the 40 most highly enrolled subjects in the province. This might be just a few tweaks to an existing open text from our site (addition of some BC data for example), adding a glossary, modifying some graphics or it might be bringing together a bunch of existing open resources into something that looks like a text. Some adaptations will be based on what the reviewers said needed to be changed. We'll be asking people to submit proposals about what they want to adapt, and part of that will be making the case for why it's a good candidate (i.e. it will impact a large number of students, it's a text that would be widely adopted if only x and y were done to it, there is potential for collaboration between several faculty who want to do the adaptation together) Evaluation committees made up of faculty and staff from BC post secondary institutions will be struck to determine which proposals to fund BCcampus will provide support to adapters (technical, instructional design, professional editors etc) Phase Three: January 2014: Funding will be provided. Call for Proposals to create new open texts from scratch. We’ll be looking at which subjects have not been addressed in the first two phases and asking faculty to fill those gaps by creating materials from scratch.
- How are we going to ensure these resources are high quality? This is a question that comes up often, not just with our project but with open resources generally. We knew when we started the project that we'd have to focus on quality if the resources were actually going to be of any use to anyone. Reviews - we need to work with faculty and engage them in what is a review process to determine quality. We've developed quality assessment criteria against which to review the materials, and we want to work with people who will actually use the materials since they know the content and the students. Collaborations, peer support - we're hoping that faculty will want to work with each other. It's been our experience that when faculty collaborate, we end up with a higher quality end product because they bring different kinds of expertise to the table. Just as in the publishing industry, we want to make use of support that can contribute to a high quality resource. We'll be asking faculty to work with IDs, editors etc in their institutions, or to work with those we provide.
- Just a few words here about the technologies we’re using for the project. This has actually been a significant amount of work because we need several different kinds of technology. We need software on which to host the books, a repository, and the one we’re using is called Equella, it’s ironically a Pearson product. This is what houses our SOLR repository – our collection of OER created by people in BC instutitutions using the online program dev fund. SOLR has a reputation for being hard to navigate and not very user friendly, so we’re making the collection of Open Textbooks available for viewing and download from our Wordpress site at open.bccampus.ca. Finally, we’ve selected a tool for editing and creating texts which is called Pressbooks. It’s a Canadian company out of Montreal, and the software is open source, based on wordpress.
- Just to give you an idea… this is what they look like when they’ve been produced, and you can see I’ve got the TOC dropdown open, so it’s pretty easy to navigate, and images etc can be inserted. We do need to do some modification to the software to make it all we need it to be, but when we looked in the space there was nothing that didn’t need to be modified, so we chose the one closest to our needs.
- This is a screen shot of our website open.bccampus.ca, at the record for one of our textbooks, so you can see how we’ve got the downloads, the CC license, and the reviews listed below.
- Join us for the Online Open Textbook Workshop What is open What is an open textbook CC Licensing Finding OTs Institutional issues etc Also, it’s open, so you can take the content and run it yourselves if you want to.
- Now’s your time to ask me any questions you have about the project.
- Just a few words about other places you could look for open textbooks. One of the reasons we’re spending time on displaying collections of texts the way we are at Bccampus is that finding an OER you can actually use before getting overwhelmed with frustration is pretty uncommon. The repositories are notoriously hard to navigate, and the quality of items is very difficult to determine. That said, there is A LOT of free content out there, and if you do some digging, you can find some real gems. And we are here to help. If you’re looking to adopt an open textbook and are having trouble finding one, get in touch with us at Bccampus because we have a good network of people who know about what exists in the Commons.
- Benefits: Cost savings to students, ability to tailor content to learning outcomes and student needs Challenges: difficult to find, questions about quality
- Let’s scan back out to a bigger picture view of OER and openness generally now that we’ve looked at the topics contained in that paradigm. . I mentioned in my introduction that it’s important to think about all the roles at your institution who might be impacted by a move to more openness. There are also some questions to consider when thinking about that, points to ponder so to speak, around the culture of your institution and you as an individual with respect to readiness for this kind of change.
- Here are some things to think about as your institution moves to doing some work in the open. They are just meant as starting points for discussion, but could help uncover some barriers to moving forward. Talk to each point What would need to be in place for you to adopt an open textbook? – how can you make this happen? What kind of support do you as an individual instructor need to make a decision about an open textbook (or a change in textbooks generally) Collaboration – we ask this question because we need to think about instructors being willing to share resources with each other, to develop resources together – openness works so much better when people talk to each other and ensure nobody is reinventing the wheel. It also helps with quality if instructors are working with each other to ensure the resource is going to be usable in a variety of contexts. Creation of new work versus the use of old – in some institutions, research is valued more highly than teaching, and the creation of primary research is certainly a noble cause. It’s helpful to think about the culture of your institutions with respect to whether or not instructors would be encouraged to adopt open resources or if this might be frowned on by colleagues who think that work created by publishers is superior. Curriculum design etc – to think about adopting an open textbook or any type of OER is to consider the best instructional resources for student learning. In some cases, instructors barely have time to breath let alone taking time to consider redesigning their curriculum to better meet student needs, whether that means adoption of an open resource or some other way of changing the way a course is delivered. This is all really just food for thought as you consider moving to a more open way of delivering instruction to your students.
- We’re going to change direction now a bit to another bit of work Bccampus does. Tannis asked me to talk about this a little bit. I’m going to preface this by saying this isn’t part of my portfolio, but I can certainly give you an idea of what Collaborative programs we have and how they work, and if you would like more information, I can put you in touch with the Director at Bccampus who has this as part of his portfolio so is obviously more able to answer questions.
- We support Collaborative Programs – these are programs delivered online by more than one institution. Students register at a “home” institution but in order to complete the program they may take courses from several different post-secondary institutions. Currently we have two Collaborative programs: Applied Business Technology – Colleges together – Camosun, NWCC, Douglas, VIU, Yukon College, Okanagan College, NIC NCIT or Northern Collaborative for Information Technology – College of NC, Northern Lights, Yukon, and NWCC You can see how for a small institution, pairing with others can bring efficiencies of scale they couldn’t achieve on their own. students take online courses from many institutions even though they receive a credential from a single one. institutions coordinate existing resources to deliver online learning or student services beyond what any individual institution could provide on its own.
- We’ve had a chance today to explore the concept of openness, open licensing open educational resources, and open textbooks. I hope this has given you a clearer understanding of those concepts. If you have any further questions I would be happy to answer them now, or you can also contact me separately if you have questions or feedback about the open textbook project.