3. WHY ARE WE RELUCTANT?
• Comfort with old methods
• Confusion over what OER means
• Lack of time
• Lack of resources (money, examples)
• Lack of support
• Unclear outcomes
• Profit/involvement in old system
6. Frame OER
as “what will
this fix?”
Goals
Must it be
online?
Format
Who has
done this
before?
Support
What can I
use? What
can I do?
What does it
afford?
Licenses
CLARIFY
8. EXTERNAL
MOTIVATION
• Department/dean pressure
• Peer pressure
• Awards and/or professional development
opportunities
• Money or incentive rewards
• Time (Course Release, inservice)
• Resume building or networking
9. INTERNAL
MOTIVATORS
• Student access (cost/social justice)
• Belief/knowledge that they could do the
course better
• Desire to be “on the cutting edge”
• Dedication to open pedagogy
Status quo is pretty comfortable. If your textbook isn’t about to go into a new version, why change?
OER may sound like sharing your work for free with no benefit. It might also sound like anything goes. Is the New York Times an OER? Is Google? So maybe creating a new book or set of resources doesn’t sound so great
Biggest problem with OER – it could eat your entire day, week, life. Even great repositories take a long time to get through.
If you have the time, you may not have the resources. What if I want a great open biology example, but it would require a 3D microscope and a video lab to make that? What if I’ve never seen a great example?
This goes into support: if you feel like you’re the only one doing the work, then it seems impossible
It might seem difficult to find OER if the outcomes for your own course are unclear. Or, the outcomes for creating an OER might be amorphous – am I trying to save money? Create a better class?
Finally, some faculty have investment in the old system. It’s easy to dismiss this as ego, but it’s not: this is the way you could advance, and it still is. Why should I work on something that’s openly available when my promotion or tenure committee is going to be looking at what I’ve published into closed-access journals?
With presentations like Rajiv’s this morning!
Why would I switch to OER? What can it do for me? Well – we clarify this by rephrasing as “What will this fix?” It might fix cost. It might also fix currency. If you’re teaching writing right now, or history, or political science – then this should be pretty meaningful. In addition, we can talk about rigor, too – and let’s review what Rajiv said this morning, that peer reviewed studies – at least 13 so far – have found that students are doing as well or better with OER.
Clarify the format. Often we think of OER as being online, but it could very easily be a printed book. LCC example of the $10 text in the bookstore. Students still want printed materials, even in online courses, and OER does not need to exclude that preference.
Support can be informal or formal. You might be lucky enough to have a dedicated OER librarian. If not, maybe there’s someone in your department who has taught without a textbook for a few years, or someone at the next college over who has a self-written book you could work with. Find the people who have done it before, and clarify to whom new adventurers can turn for help.
Finally clarify the licenses and what they mean. For faculty who are new to the process, Open may sound like “free buffet.” It is, and it’s not. Certain licenses allow pretty open sharing, and those can be liberating if what you want is to find a resource that you can pull apart and reconstruct – remix and reuse. Others, though, limit who can use the resource and for what purposes – so if you have a colleague nervous that their work is going to end up on a Nike ad or something, they can say no commercial use, no derivatives, and then that’s still allowing free sharing but it’s not going to allow any changes or anyone else to make a profit.
The CC page itself is a great resource for this explanation. It has a license builder that’s clear and helpful and demystifies the whole process. CreativeCommons.org/choose
Going back to the keynote today: that Florida study was amazing, so terrifying. Two-thirds of students didn’t purchase the required textbook for a course, and almost half didn’t take certain classes. This is an access issue, this is a social justice issue. For my school, community college, where we’re trying to help
The OER process is recursive. It’s endless. It’s not a textbook that’s finished, and making that the goal is harmful. So all of this – it keeps going. We keep going, keep working, keep adding to the repositories and sharing our work and adapting that of others.