Open Education 2017

There is no program more appropriate for transforming to textbook-free than an instructional design degree.

When our campus launched a training program for faculty to adopt affordable and open course content, the director of our Master of Science in Instructional Design and Technology (MSIDT) program signed up all of her faculty. A year later, every single one of the program's courses have no additional cost for instructional materials beyond the cost of tuition.

A transformation this quick resulted in a hybrid model: faculty use a variety of library-licensed content, open educational resources, and external web content to eliminate textbook costs for students.

While already successful, the journey has just begun. The program's director, faculty, and liaison librarian continue to work to locate and adapt the perfect instructional resources. One course has a unique textbook that is out-of-print, so our campus used a grant to hire a third party vendor to develop custom content. Program faculty continue to remix their chosen resources to include better accessibility features and to incorporate Universal Design principles.

In this presentation, the MSIDT Director will describe her motivation, goals, and victories, as well as the challenges with enacting a transformation of this magnitude. MSIDT's liaison librarian (also the campus Instructional Design Librarian) will discuss her role in advising on library-licensed content, copyright, and OER identification, as well as her experience teaching with these resources in her dual role as a part-time MSIDT faculty member.