Pitching an OER initiative at your institution.

1. HOW TO TALK
TO YOUR
PROVOST
ABOUT OER
DR. ROBIN DEROSA, ENGLISH &
INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES
DR. SCOTT ROBISON, LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES
& ONLINE EDUCATION; CENTER FOR EXCELLENCE
IN TEACHING AND LEARNING
PLYMOUTH STATE UNIVERSITY, NH (USA)

2. 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 repurposing
by others. Open educational resources include full
courses, course materials, modules, textbooks,
streaming videos, tests, software, and any other
tools, materials, or techniques used to support
access to knowledge.
Hewlett Foundation:
http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education/open-

3. WHY OER AT OUR
UNIVERSITY?
• Save students money;
• Increase student success and retention;
• Increase enrollments;
• Enhance pedagogy;
• Enhance your public mission;
• Achieve long-range cost savings in open
access;
• Capture First-Mover Advantage.

4. SAVE STUDENTS MONEY
• Students spend on average $1,200 a year on textbooks
(U.S. Public Interest Research Group, survey of 156 campuses in 33 states)
• That’s equal to about 12% of our in-state tuition!
• Since 1978, college textbook costs have increased
812%. To put that in context, it means that textbook prices
have increased at 3.2 times the rate of inflation. (Mark J Perry,
AEIdeas. http://www.aei.org)
• Used/rentals/ebooks don’t solve the problem. Used textbooks
are undermined by new editions, rentals create a system
where we remove books from student hands. Many ebooks
have expiration dates and print limits.

5. SAVE STUDENTS MONEY
http://www.studentpirgs.org/sites/student/files/reports/The
%20Billion%20Dollar%20Solution.pdf
Average savings per student, per course with OER is $128.00.
Savings generated are often up to 6 times the amount invested.

6. INCREASE STUDENT
SUCCESS & RETENTION
• 60% of students report not purchasing a
required textbook because of cost, and
23% regularly go without books due to cost
• 50% of students report taking fewer
courses due to textbook costs
• 14% have dropped a course and 10%
have withdrawn from a course due to
textbook costs
2012 Survey of 22,000 students, Florida Virtual Campus, comprised of the 12 universities and 28 colleges in the Florida state system.

7. INCREASE STUDENT
SUCCESS & RETENTION
• Houston Community College. The introduction of an open
textbook was correlated with an increase in class grade
point average, an increase of the average score on the
departmental final examination, and a lower course
withdrawal rate. (2011, 690 students,
http://www.johnhiltoniii.org/)
• Mercy College. In a basic math course, OER- and non-OER
sections were compared. Pass rates were 8.54% higher in
OER sections. Similarly, students who were enrolled in
OER versions of a critical reading course performed better
than their peers who enrolled in the same course using non-
OER materials. (2012, 695 students,
http://www.educause.edu/)

8. INCREASE
ENROLLMENTS WITH
GOOD PRESS
Tidewater Community College: The Z Degree
• Tidewater Z-courses have drop rates that are 6% lower
than other courses. (Lumen Learning)
• In 2013 Tidewater reported a 90.4% retention rate for
students in the Z degree.
• They shaved 25% from the cost of degree, and saved
$128,000 in the first year of the program.
• Tidewater has received statewide and national press,
and is now a leader in Open Education. (US News &
World Report, Huff Post, Time, NBC, Hewlett Foundation,
and many local VA newspapers)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/256155220/Z-Degree-Report-
2015-Tidewater-Community-College#scribd

9. INCREASE ENROLLMENTS BY
APPEALING TO STUDENTS
• The Nebraska Book Company, which runs more
than 200 college bookstores nationwide, did a
survey in 2014 and found that nearly half of
students (49%) were actually willing to
choose one university over another if free
textbooks were provided all four years.
• The survey showed that college students
currently worry more about how they will
afford required college textbooks than they
do about paying the cost of tuition.
http://www.20mm.org/articles/neebo-survey-finds-college-
students-worry-textbook-costs-college-tuition-spring-

10. ENHANCE PEDAGOGY
• Current pedagogical informed practice is
experiential, engaged, collaborative, and service-
oriented.
• Open pedagogy is a student-centered model…with
teeth:
• Emphasizes transdisciplinary links to the wider
public (students become world-builders);
• Emphasizes students as producers rather than
students as consumers of knowledge (students are
asked to contribute to course design/outcomes and
to revision of materials);
• Emphasizes collaboration between faculty and
students (expertise is shared, real-world problems
are explored together).

11. OER CAN HELP MAKE
THE CASE FOR STATE
APPROPRIATIONS
OpenEd encourages academia to work in conjunction with
contextual communities, and demonstrates how the
university can control costs for students.
• Our university claims to offer benefit to the public.
Open pedagogy will support the transdisciplinary
initiatives we have in place.
• Our university claims to be working to lower costs
for students and doing our part to control the
budget. OER initiatives concretely show us doing
both.

12. LONG RANGE COST
SAVINGS
Saving students money directly using OER is only the beginning.
Our university pays hundreds of thousands of dollars per
year for access to databases and periodicals. Some single
journals cost thousands of dollars to access. How could we
reallocate those funds?
We can develop institutional policies to:
• Encourage the use of OER in courses;
• Value open-access publications in P&T processes;
• Funnel money away from paywalls and toward the
dissemination of research.

13. “FIRST-MOVER ADVANTAGE”
• By being one of the first to innovate, we have a
disproportionate advantage over our actual and
potential competitors (timely marketing).
• Once first-mover advantage is gone, it is gone, and
no amount of resources will get it back.
• We have no more than 3 years (at most) to capitalize
on the first-mover advantage. After that, we (and
everyone else) will be forced to play catch-up.
• First mover advantage is not just about getting there
first: speed is necessary for success, but not sufficient;
a range of supporting components are needed to
ensure success.

14. • Working with teaching centers and
learning technology personnel;
• Coordinating with sister campuses
in a university system;
• Involving the community
(access/pedagogy);
• Working with grant offices on
funding sources;
• Building structural relationships
with related offices;
• Working with First-Year Experience
directors and other program chairs;
• Working with departments to build
Z-degrees, and encouraging
single-class conversions.
COMPONENTS OF AN OER
IMPLEMENTATION
• OER Initiatives to convert
courses;
• Institutional policy on OER and
OA;
• Student involvement to drive
faculty buy-in;
• Working with Advancement on
marketing and leveraging the
press;
• Working with IT on
infrastructure;
• Working with Bookstore on new
models (print on demand, etc);
• Working with Institutional
Research to track results;

15. LAYING OUT NEEDS
• Release time
• Seed money for incentives
• Articulated institutional
commitment
• Time in front of faculty
• Etc.

16. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International License.