1. Opening English Education:
An Introduction to Open Educational Practices
Michelle Reed, @LibrariansReed
Open Education Librarian | UTA Libraries | 4.26.17
https://www.slideshare.net/oelib/opening-english-education
2. Openness is the only means of doing education. If there
is no sharing, there is no education. Successful educators
share most thoroughly with the most students.
- David Wiley
“Be a champion of a cause and don't give up.”
- TJ Bliss
“Research provides the foundation of modern society. Research leads to
breakthroughs, and communicating the results of research is what allows us to
turn breakthroughs into better lives—to provide new treatments for disease, to
implement solutions for challenges like global warming, and to build entire
industries around what were once just ideas. However, our current system for
communicating research is crippled by a centuries old model that hasn’t been
updated to take advantage of 21st century technology.”
- Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
“Isn’t it amazing that
what serves social justice
also serves effective pedagogy
and is empirically supported?”
- Rajiv Jhangiani
7. Open Educational Resources Defined
“Open Educational Resources 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. OER include full courses, course materials,
modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any
other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to
knowledge.”
- William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
11. 2012 2016
63.6% 66.5% Not purchase the required textbook
49.2% 47.6% Take fewer courses
45.1% 45.5% Not register for a specific course
33.9% 37.6% Earn a poor grade
26.7% 26.1% Drop a course
17.0% 19.8% Fail a course
In your academic career, has the cost of required
textbooks caused you to:
14. Create/share “translator” syllabus providing
page/chapter numbering for alternate versions
Direct student to public domain works
when available (e.g., Project Gutenberg)
Consider library-licensed materials
Clearly note on syllabus when free or open
resources are used in a class
Journeying Toward Affordability
15. More open access publishing
A change in how we allocate spending
Increased engagement
Improved retention
Improved completion rates
Improved pedagogy
Ownership of course content
New partnerships and collaborative opportunities
Beyond Affordability
18. Open Textbooks, Open Pedagogy
“I’ve spent some time talking about open pedagogy at several universities this Spring, and in each of those
presentations and workshops, I have usually mentioned The Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature, an OER
anthology that my students and I produced last year for an American literature survey course I taught. When I talk
about the anthology, it’s usually to make a point about open pedagogy. I began the project with the simple desire to
save my students about $85 US, which is how much they were (ostensibly) paying for the Heath Anthology of
American Literature Volume A. Most of the actual texts in the Heath were a public domain texts, freely available and
not under any copyright
restrictions. As the Heath
produced new editions (of
literature from roughly 1400-
1800!), forcing students to buy
new textbooks or be irritatingly
out of sync with page numbers,
and as students turned to rental
markets that necessitated them
giving their books back at the end
of the semester, I began to look in
earnest for an alternative.”
- Robin DeRosa
21. How is Open Different?
Current: Students research a current issue related to a northwestern Native
American tribe
New: Students determine the gaps in the commonly available literature
and interview members of a tribe in order to add native voice to the
available perspectives. The bibliography is published in an open format.
Students discuss what gets published, why, and whose voice is left out of
“published” conversations.
22. For Additional Ideas…
Open Pedagogy Library
curated by the Open Education Group:
http://openedgroup.org/openpedagogy
23. OER in Texas
Require disclosure of OER as textbook
& searchable list of OER only courses
Establish OER grant program
to encourage development of OER only courses
Conduct feasibility study
of statewide OER repository
25. Requests
Contact me before you commit to writing or
contributing to a commercial textbook.
Consider opportunities for integrating open
practices into teaching and learning.
Open education is ripe with grant prospects.
Get in touch! I’m here to help.
This presentation is licensed under an Attribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ It was presented to UTA’s Department of English.
About me: I am an open advocate.
Open = free to access + permissions to reuse
“Lock” is used with permission from Freeimages contributor lyn belisle: http://www.freeimages.com
Open means free for anyone to access and includes permission to engage in the 5R activities. Frequently communicated via CC license, which provides alternatives to “all rights reserved” copyright. More at http://creativecommons.org/about
CC-zero license is an option for releasing work into the public domain, freeing it of all copyright restrictions: https://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/
Slide from David Ernst’s “Open Textbooks” presentation at University of Texas at Arlington: https://www.slideshare.net/djernst/university-of-texas-at-arlington-72016692
One way to “go open” is to adopt OER
“Open” is used with permission from Freeimages contributor Joanie Cahill: http://www.freeimages.com
Open Textbook Library: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/
Open Textbook Library: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=206
OpenStax: https://openstax.org/details/us-history
Image Source: http://www.chronicle.com/article/required-reading-really-/136875
Text source: College Board
Source: http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/pdf/2012_Florida_Student_Textbook_Survey.pdf
Slide from David Ernst’s “Open Textbooks” presentation at University of Texas at Arlington: https://www.slideshare.net/djernst/university-of-texas-at-arlington-72016692
What UTA students have to say about textbook.
I would like to tell your story.
Source: http://www.chronicle.com/article/required-reading-really-/136875
John Barnes (from the comments):
1. If course content really doesn't change that much but the publishers are working the "new edition with different page/chapter numbering" scam, make available (online or as a simple handout), a "translator" syllabus so that students with old used editions can use them. (This might make the bookstore mad at you, and textbook sales people very mad at you. To which the correct answer is, oh, just go victimize somebody else's students).
2. If you're teaching a classic readings course -- Shakespeare is the primary example but this also works for many other poets and playwrights -- and there's a good used bookstore in town, if you alert them a few months in advance, they can often have a good array of used though not matching editions available. Many students don't mind using act/scene/line numbering instead of page numbers, or being pointed toward individual plays, novels, etc. You have to watch out for the chronic revisers during their liftetimes like Shaw, but in general it doesn't really matter which of many editions the student uses. Even some particular translations are so often reprinted that it's not hard to get them in multiple versions.
3. Project Gutenberg for public domain stuff. You can almost always find a budding entrepreneur who will put together paper editions very cheaply for his/her less e-minded classmates.
If you can get the bookstore to put up a big GO TO CLASS FIRST notice by your books, this will help. Often they won't, once they realize you're deliberately hurting their sales, but you can do your best to get word out on that by other means.
Source: Sarah Faye Cohen. “Barriers to Open Textbook Adoption.” April 29, 2016. http://www.slideshare.net/thesheck
For more on retention and completion rates, see Open Education Group “Review” - http://openedgroup.org/review
In short, open ped is about student-generated content that lives beyond the classroom and is openly licensed to make a difference in the greater community.
“Open” is used with permission from Freeimages contributor Joanie Cahill: http://www.freeimages.com
Disposable v. renewable assignments
“Unusual Dumper” is used with permission from Freeimages contributor Joe Zlomek: http://www.freeimages.com
Robin DeRosa is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Plymouth State University.
Read more about the project at http://umwdtlt.com/open-textbook-pedagogy-practice/
Current anthology: https://openamlit.pressbooks.com/
In the spirit of open = sharing, work on revision of the anthology has been picked up by the Rebus Community. Info here: https://forum.rebus.community/topic/66/lit-the-open-anthology-of-earlier-american-literature-lead-tim-robbins-graceland-university
http://libguides.uta.edu/oe-data
Play the game online at ku.lib.edu/game
Slide used with permission from “Going OER: Open Education to Transform” by Quill West, Deb Gilchrist, and Kathy Swart.
More information in the Open Pedagogy Library curated by the Open Education Group: http://openedgroup.org/openpedagogy