This slide deck gives an overview of open educational resources (OER) for faculty and administrators.

1. Hello!
I am Elizabeth Mays
I am here to talk about OER & my work in
open textbooks over the past three years.
1

2. What is an
open
educational
resource or
OER?
1

3. “
high-quality teaching,
learning, and research
materials that are free for
people everywhere to use
and repurpose” - Hewlett
Foundation
3

4. Observes 5Rs
Retain
“the right to make,
own, and control a
copy of the resource”
Revise
“the right to edit,
adapt, and modify
your copy of the
resource”
Remix
“the right to combine
your original or
revised copy of the
resource with other
existing material to
create something
new”
4
Reuse
“the right to use your
original, revised, or
remixed copy of the
resource publicly”
Redistribute
“the right to share
copies of your original,
revised, or remixed
copy of the resource
with others”
Credit to David Wiley (CC BY): https://opencontent.org/definition/

5. Why would faculty
want this?
Reduce costs
Increase college
affordability for
students
Specialized texts
Customized for
your course
Control & Revise
Revise, localize &
update content
5
Raise your profile
Authority &
advancement
Open pedagogy
Involve students
in making course
materials
And more!
First-day access,
accessibility &
diversity

6. Why would deans &
provosts want this?
Recruitment
Attract students
with lower costs
and/or Z degrees
Retention
29% lower course
withdrawal rate*
Funding
Grants &
legislative
appropriations
6
Universities
Can own their
infrastructure
*Clinton, V., & Khan, S. (2019). Efficacy of Open Textbook Adoption on Learning
Performance and Course Withdrawal Rates: A Meta-Analysis. AERA Open.
https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858419872212
Distance learning
Fair use different
in this context
Access
Measure by
whom we
include

7. Publishers’ changing
business models
Textbook rental
Can’t keep
textbook
Access codes
Can’t share
textbook--log in
through student id
Courseware
Buy textbook AND
courseware to take
your tests
7
Inclusive access
Automatic
textbook rental
for all
Limited
modalities
Pay for each
format of the
book
Mergers
Could limit
options

8. 64%
Don’t buy the textbooks
41%
Opt not to register for a course
43%
Don’t take as many courses
8
Students
Cope by:
23%
End up dropping a course
2018 Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey Results and Findings (Florida Virtual
Campus). To view the full report, visit www.dlss.vc.org. Infographic: http://bit.ly/flvcsurvey

9. Collaboration
Across institutions and geographies
Access/equity
Remove systemic obstacles
Sharing/reciprocity
Make work useful to the ecosystem
9
Key OER
Values

10. OER Projects
Examples and inspiration
10

11. Media Innovation &
Entrepreneurship
￮ Collaboratively built by community of
faculty teaching these subjects
￮ Modular, remixable (CC BY)
￮ Interactive - annotatable
￮ Interactive - quizzes
￮ Use as course spine in LMS
11
http://bit.ly/mieprojectpage
http://bit.ly/mieopentextbook

12. 30+ authors
From those teaching the subject at 15 institutions +
practitioners + student entrepreneurs
12 classrooms
Of student and faculty beta testers
12+ peer reviewers
And the community of practice + full-book reviewers
+ additional reviewers facilitated by OTN, Merlot
12

13. A Guide to Making
Open Textbooks with
Students
￮ Collaboratively built
￮ Essays by leaders in open pedagogy
￮ Interviews and case studies
￮ Faculty and student perspectives
￮ Sample assignments you can use
￮ Won the 2018 OEC Award for Open
Textbook
￮
13
http://bit.ly/makeOERwithstudents

14. Examples
￮ University/student success manuals
￮ How to do research / writing for a
certain discipline
￮ Language texts
￮ Public domain anthologies
￮ Open pedagogy classroom projects
14

15. J-Examples
￮ Grad students - final project to detail
FOIA guidelines for various agencies,
public meetings, etc. Sports: guide to
covering sports teams, etc.
￮ Remix the MIE open textbook in a
classroom project by students, for
students
￮ Make a whole new degree with
zero-textbook-cost
￮ 15

16. Sound interesting?
￮ Adopt an open textbook
￮ Adapt an open textbook
￮ Create OER materials
16

17. Where to find OER
￮ Open Textbook Network Library
￮ https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/
￮ BCcampus Open Ed Resources
https://open.bccampus.ca/
￮ OpenStax (at Rice U, foundation funded)
https://open.bccampus.ca/
￮
And many others!
17

18. Ask a librarian
University librarians help faculty find
open educational resources.
￮
￮ [insert contact info for
designated
￮ OER librarian]
18

19. Credits
Special thanks to all the people who
made and released these awesome
resources for free:
￮ Presentation template by
SlidesCarnival
￮ Photographs by Unsplash and Pexels
￮ Open book photo by Joël Super from
Pexels
19

20. License
Feel free to reuse, remix, revise, retain
and redistribute these slides with
attribution.
￮ Licensed CC BY 4.0
20

21. 21
Thanks!
Any questions?
You can find me at
￮ https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethgmays/