Open Education 2017

At San Francisco State, instructional materials adoptions are controlled by the faculty as an expression of academic freedom and intellectual property rights and practices. In our Affordable Instructional Materials and OER Adoption programs, we encourage appropriate adoption decisions, influencing faculty whenever and however we find opportunities. One important channel of influence we have recently found to be effective is through campus leadership, including the President, President's Cabinet (VPs), College Deans, and Student Leadership. In our initial three years, we have gathered and reported statistics about the impact of high-cost instructional materials on students and reported those to the campus in various ways. We have gathered data about how much our local efforts are saving students in instructional materials costs and we publish this success in multiple channels. We have analyzed student grades and retention to ensure that lower-cost materials were not contributing to declining student success, and in some cases may be direct contributors to improving performance in certain courses. We have publicly recognized faculty participation in our campus efforts to lower the cost of learning and we make their stories available for others to read and find encouragement. Our efforts have had an impact on faculty awareness, interest in considering OER, and ultimately making decisions to adopt low cost or free instructional materials, though our overall reach into the faculty has been limited. (Less than 100 faculty in three years have been actively involved in recognized projects.) Recently we launched a new effort to communicate more effectively to the leadership of administration, faculty, and student constituents in an attempt to leverage substantial initial success and raise the level of interest and discourse in all areas. This presentation explains our approach to campus leadership (President/Cabinet), academic leadership (Deans) and student leadership.