OER and Beyond: Reducing Costs, Transforming Teaching: A Keynote at Holyoke Community College

1. OER and Beyond:
Reducing Costs,
Transforming Teaching
All photos CC0 Alan Levine from Flickr
#GoOpenHCC
@actualham
Presentation CCBY Robin DeRosa Images CC0 Alan Levine

2. How Open Education
Can Work for HCC
• Drive down the overall cost of college for students
• Improve throughputs and student success
• Increase student engagement
• Connect students with their fields, professions, and
communities
• Reinvigorate faculty engagement with teaching
• Build collaboratives with other public colleges and
universities
• Build a case for public funding of higher education

3. Book Costs Move Off the Charts

4. • 56% of students pay more
than $300 per semester
• 20% pay more than $500
per semester
(that’s equal to 56% of
tuition at HCC!)
• Students worry more
about paying for books
than they worry about
paying for college.

5. Effects of Textbook Prices
• 67% did not purchase
a required textbook
• 38% earned a poor grade
• 20% failed a course
• 48% occasionally or frequently
took fewer courses
• 26% dropped a course
• 21% withdrew from a course
2016 Survey of 22,000 students,
Florida Virtual Campus, comprised of the
12 universities and 28 colleges in the Florida state system.

6. CreativeCommons

7. OER
OpenStax Books

8. Student Success
“students who use OER
perform significantly better
on the course throughput
rate than their peers who
use traditional textbooks,
in both face-to-face and
online courses that use
OER.” (2016) Throughput Rate
an aggregate of:
drop rates,
withdrawal rates,
C or better rates.

9. Tidewater Community College

10. Quality
“The classes with traditional
published textbooks I study
and memorize to pass tests. In
this class I have a greater
appreciation for the things I
learned because I actually
experienced the material and
lesson as opposed to simply
passing a test. This knowledge
will last a lifetime.”
Tidewater Community College (2015 Report)

11. OER
Open
Pedagogy
Tidewater Community College (2015 Report)

12. Where I Began

13. Collaboratively Built:
Alums, Incoming Students, Professor

14. Constantly
Evolving:
Students &
Teachers
Add,
Improve,
Share

15. MultimediaContributions

16. Interactive and Public Annotation

17. An Open
“Textbook”
Can Be:
• Interactive
• Collaborative
• Dialogic
• Dynamic
• Empowering
• Contributory
• Current
• Accessible
• Multimedia
• Public
• (Free)

18. Open Pedagogy
•Improves access to education.
•Treats education as a learner-driven
process.
•Stresses community and
collaboration over content.
•Connects the college to the wider
public.

19. CCBY Jonathan Brodsky https://flic.kr/p/37z2C2
Access, broadly writ.
digital divide & redlining, accessibility, online safety & harassment,

20. Student-Centered  Learner-Driven

21. Content
≠ King
• Rhizomes
• Networks
• Communities
• Collaborations

22. Public
Blogs, PLNs, ePorts
• @gardnercampbell
• @anrikard
• @audreywatters

23. Personal
Reflective
Portfolio
Portal for sharing
and collaborating

24. to OPEN
(vb.)
• Challenge barriers to
access.
Be honest and critical.
• Center learners.
Be radical and real.
• Facilitate connection.
Be a sticky node,
not a gate.
• Share your practice.
Be generous and just.

25. AMovement=ACurrent

26. Partnerships
• First Movers:
Maricopa Millions ($7.5 in 4 years),
The Tidewater Z-Degree
• #GoOpen: Dep’t of Ed.
• Mass #GoOpen:
$1 million+ in 2017-18
• Achieving the Dream
• CCCOER
• 2 + 2 Agreements
(UMASS Amherst)

27. Public
Higher
Education
We can’t save public higher education
by privatizing it.
Instead, let’s focus on access, on connected
learning, and on sharing our resources.
Instead of competitors and comparators,
we will build a network of collaborators.
Open Education offers us real strategies
to increase student success and empowerment,
engage learners with the world
outside the college walls,
and invite the public to share
in the knowledge commons.

28. Afternoon Workshop
Tools/Techniques
• Annotating Readings
with Hypothes.is
• Building ePorts with
Domain of One’s Own
• Building Personal Learning
Networks with Twitter
• Creating Open Textbooks
with PressBooks
• “Opening” your syllabus
Tweet to #GoOpenHCC