Open Education 2017

Government funding for post-secondary education has fallen by over 20% in the province of British Columbia since 2001. International student recruitment has filled a pressing funding gap. However, international and domestic students alike are arriving on campus without the funds needed to live and study in Vancouver, one of North America's most expensive cities. Langara College Library has seen a dramatic spike in students seeking course reserves, while others report foregoing readings all together. Fischer, Hilton, Robinson, and Wiley (2015) found that course completion rates, "C-or better" grades, and enrollment intensity were higher among students using no-cost open textbooks versus commercial textbooks. What does adoption of open textbooks mean for international student recruitment, retention, success and engagement? Drawing on data collected through focus groups, the presenters will explore these important questions from the student perspective.

This session will present results from a survey administered to students at a medical / doctoral university who were enrolled in four courses using open textbooks instead of commercial texts. An existing open textbook survey (Jhangiani, Dastur, Le Grand, & Penner, under review) was adapted and distributed electronically to all students in these courses. Students were asked to share their views on the specific textbook compared to "traditional" textbooks they had used in other courses, in what format they preferred to access the texts, how they had dealt with the cost of commercial resources required for other courses, and other factors that could inform the open educational resources initiative at the university.

Results from all four courses will be explored, with an emphasis on a first year sociology courses, which had a particularly high rate of response (n=129/343). In addition, data about course averages and completion rates were obtained for this offering and the two previous when a commercial text was used, to allow for a comparison.

References

Jhangiani, R. S., Dastur, F., N., Le Grand, R., & Penner, K. (under review). As good or better than commercial textbooks: Students' perceptions and outcomes from using open digital and open print textbooks.

Unlike individual OER courses, which can be developed independently by faculty, developing an OER degree program requires sustained institutional involvement and investment in course development and infrastructure. Launching an OER Degree program requires a coordinated planning process between academic departments and college administrative units, the modification of institutional systems to identify OER course sections and implement course fees, and the enlistment of non-instructional support and advising staff.

Achieving the Dream, a national, nonprofit organization that champions and supports evidence-based institutional improvement, launched the OER Degree Initiative to investigate, among other things, how community colleges successfully roll-out and sustain OER degree programs. Through this ambitious initiative, 38 community colleges across the country are creating and piloting fully OER-based degree programs and ATD research partners SRI International and rpkGROUP are evaluating the student outcomes, project costs, and effective implementation strategies of these new OER degree programs.

During this session you will learn about the early findings of the OER Degree Initiative evaluation, with a particular focus on what we have learned about effective OER degree implementation.

This study analyzed the effect enrollment in an OER course had on student academic achievement when controlling for prior academic achievement in an introductory online history course at a large community college. A correlation analysis and simple linear regression were conducted. The results of this research indicate a significant positive moderate correlation between OER and student achievement. The study also provides a springboard for discussion about the value of rigorous research at community colleges using readily available data through student information systems. This session may be interesting for community college leaders who want to begin to use data more effectively or who seek to take on more of researcher/practitioner role at their institutions. This session can motivate community college leaders to conduct research of their own using data available from their own institutions to make decisions about OER use, adoption, and policy.

In 2015 - 2016, we surveyed students and teachers in post-secondary institutions across Utah to gauge their perceptions of textbook cost, selection, and OER. Responses were gathered from the majority of institutions in the state. This study was guided by the following research questions:

1. How do students perceive textbook costs influence their academic success?

2. What would students do with the money they saved if they didn't buy textbooks?

3. What are students' general feelings about textbook costs?

4. How do student responses on the above questions vary between two and four year institutions?

5. How do faculty members select their textbooks?

6. What percentage of faculty were willing to consider using and would like help finding open textbooks?

7. Are there any correlations between faculty perceived cost of textbooks (or the lack of knowledge about the cost) and their willingness to use OER?

8. Why do faculty members say they would or would not be willing to use an open textbook?

9. How do faculty responses on the above vary by institution?

In this presentation, we will present the findings of this survey. Notable findings on the student survey include that 2/3 of the students who participated in the study had to forego purchasing a textbook due to the high cost and more than 85% of students had to delay purchasing an expensive textbook which they felt negatively impacted academic performance. Students felt cost was burdensome, felt extremely negatively towards textbook costs, and would use potential savings from OER adoption back into their education and day-to-day expenses.

Faculty results include that adjunct professors are less often in a position to select their own textbooks, despite being willing to consider OER. Although there are no correlations between knowing the list price of text and being willing to adopt OER, over 90% of faculty were willing to consider adopting OER and their reasons for their willingness will be presented.

With the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, many institutions started to embed OER in their curriculum for both financial and pedagogical benefits. The current study examines the effect of OER on student learning in a systematic manner by incorporating both student-level and course-level characteristics in a multilevel modeling approach.

Data from 42 courses offered in a community college in Virginia in summer and fall 2016 semesters were collected and used in the current study. Among the 42 courses, there were 40 courses employed both traditional and OER-based curriculum in different sections. Those courses include a wide range of disciplines, such as business, mathematics, computer programming, biology, chemistry, history, music, and sports. OER adoption was considered as a treatment condition, and its effect on student learning was examined in this study. In addition to OER treatment, nine covariates at student-level were included in the model to control for individual differences. At the course-level, ten predictors which were calculated as aggregated variables from the student level were included in the model to explain the difference in OER adoption effect.

The results show that the effect varies across different courses with a majority of courses favoring OER, compared with non-OER. The variation in the effect can be partially explained by course-level characteristics.

Previous research on OER efficacy has analyzed student outcomes by comparing courses employing open source textbooks with courses employing commercial textbooks. This research takes a more granular approach, not just looking at whether a course employs OER, but rather looking at how different patterns of student usage of adaptive courseware affect student learning.

For the courses analyzed, Lumen Learning's adaptive courseware platform ("Waymaker") was employed. Waymaker was designed to encourage student metacognition, but to what extent was this successful? That depends on how it was actually used by students.

Waymaker modules include a formative pretest, a number of short formative assessments within the module and an end-of module summative posttest. The pretest provides information to students about what parts of the module they already know well and which parts do they still need to learn. As the student works through the module, after interacting with each bit of content, he or she takes a one or two question quiz to give them immediate feedback about how well they learned the material. Finally, a comprehensive end of module quiz provides information about whether or not the student has mastered the material in the module.

This presentation will catalog the different patterns of student usage of Waymaker.

- Are students working through the Waymaker modules regularly and systematically (e.g. to match the pace & coverage of what occurs during class sessions), or are students waiting until just before exams to bunch/cram their work with Waymaker just before exams?

- Are students taking the different assessments?

- How are students responding to the formative information provided by the assessments (e.g, are they putting more effort into those areas Waymaker says they haven't mastered)?

Last, the presentation will report the results of statistical analyses to estimate the effects of different usage practices on student learning.

The increasing cost of textbooks pose a financial burden for students, with some researchers hypothesizing that the high price of course materials may result in students opting to not purchase the text and being under-prepared for the course or taking fewer classes per semester, both resulting in a delay to graduation (Florida Virtual Campus, 2012). On the other hand, the adoption of Open textbooks have been associated with improved student grades, lower withdrawal rates, and higher concurrent and subsequent enrollments (Fischer, Hilton, Robinson, & Wiley 2015; Hilton & Laman, 2012).

Continuing the evaluation of Endes & Howard (2016), the goal of this study was to determine whether student performance at a large open-enrollment Alaska university would differ when using traditional publisher materials compared to open educational resources. Comparing additional data collected over four semesters (one using traditional textbook materials, three using Open educational resources), there appear to be no statistically significant differences in student performance on unit exams. Student feedback slightly favors the use of Open resources, with students specifically citing the free Open textbook as a factor associated with their success. Considerations for adoption and implementation will be discussed.

The Open Textbook Network's Open Textbook Library is a searchable catalog of more than 350 open textbooks. Since April 2012, faculty and instructors at the Open Textbook Network's more than 370 member campuses nationwide have authored more than 900 reviews of these open textbooks, concurrent with their participation in professional development workshops and with the incentive of a small stipend. In the same spirit of sharing that is highlighted by the OpenEd17 conference theme, these CC-BY-licensed reviews are available in the Open Textbook Library for consultation and reference by faculty and instructors everywhere who are exploring open textbooks for adoption in their course instruction.

In 2017 we have undertaken a qualitative analysis of all open textbook reviews that were published in the Open Textbook Library before April 2017. Our research asked, what do faculty consider to be the strengths and weaknesses of open textbooks, and how can these perceptions inform the work of open textbook authors and publishers? In this presentation, we will share findings from our qualitative analysis of reviews; highlight additional research studies that have considered faculty perceptions of open textbook/OER strengths and weaknesses; suggest how the work of open textbook authors and publishers may be informed by faculty perceptions; and suggest research questions for further study.

Merinda McLure is the Health & Human Sciences Librarian at the University of Colorado Boulder and a 2016-2018 OER Research Fellow.

Olga Belikov is a graduate student at Brigham Young University and a 2016-2018 OER Research Fellow.

David Ernst is founder and executive director of the Open Textbook Network.

Open educational resources (OER) tear down the barriers of access and cost that are most harmful to underprivileged students, but how OER permit us to transform our classrooms has often been overlooked. With adaptable, interactive "open pedagogy," we may discover powerful ways to empower students to learn based on their unique skills and goals.

This session will share the results of a 2016-7 classroom research study (in progress at the time of writing this proposal) assessing the impact of open pedagogy and resources on student skills mastery and perception across modalities. Approximately 200 students in English 101 and 102 participated. All sections used the same free OER, but about half were given traditional assignments (i.e. formal essays and grammar exercises) and the other half were given "open" assignments that involved designing and remixing open resources. Assignment results and other course metrics were used to investigate the impact on student skills mastery and anonymous surveys were used to investigate the impact on the students' perception of the relevance of English class to their lives outside of school. Because of the study's design, we can also evaluate the effects of this treatment on subsets of participants by their course participation (in-class or online) and modality (traditional or flex/hybrid).

The Affordable Learning Exchange (ALX) at The Ohio State University offers grants to support faculty in replacing traditional textbooks with high-quality open educational resources (OER) and library materials. Through this affordability program, colleagues in the University Libraries, Office of Distance Education and eLearning, and other teaching-oriented units combine their resources to help faculty successfully create or adopt no-cost or low-cost course materials. The faculty in the first cohort adopted OER for 12 courses in Fall 2016, and a second cohort is working on a similar number this year. The first two cohorts are projected to save students nearly $1.3 million annually. Through supporting faculty in the creation and adoption of OER, the team also noticed many faculty were re-thinking their course design, learning objectives, activities, and assessments in ways that seemed more strongly aligned with best pedagogical practices. Our mixed-methods study explores this observation in a more critical and rigorous way through interviews with faculty who adopt ALX-funded OER. The interview protocol includes questions about if and how the adoption of OER encouraged changes in the course's breadth or depth of coverage, proportion of time spent on different activities (e.g., lecture versus group work versus discussion), and number or types of assessments. In addition, faculty discussed whether and how student learning changed in terms of students' level of motivation and engagement, quality of participation, quality of collaboration with fellow students, and performance on assessments. This paper will present preliminary results based on qualitative analysis of the 16 interviews conducted with Cohort One faculty adopters to investigate under which conditions OER creation/adoption seemed to encourage changes in course design, how and why design changes occurred, and how those changes impacted the instructor's perception of students' engagement and quality of learning.

The movement toward open educational materials has been slow to gain traction among the teaching mainstream. OERs are still not generally discussed in teacher education programs. According to a study by The Boston Consulting Group (2013), only 21% of educators report being äóìvery awareäó of what OERs are, indicating that they may not be comfortable using them themselves. These findings seem to indicate that educators simply need more education and background on what OERs are and how to use them.



In truth, however, it is not well-understood as to why open educational resources (OERs) have been slow to gain traction among the mainstream of educators. Is it because these OERs are somehow fundamentally flawed or not useful to teachers, or is it simply a lack of knowledge and preparation regarding the use of these materials? Little is known as to why teachers and faculty don't use OERs more frequently, especially because many educators express concern for lowering the cost of materials for their students, one of the primary problems solved by the use of OERs.



To better understand these problems, the presenters embarked on a research project to measure and interpret educator's attitudes towards OERs. This research was conducted using a open online course on finding and using open and free teaching materials. The main purpose of this study was to determine whether additional knowledge and preparation on the use of openly licensed materials helps teachers feel more comfortable using OERs for their own teaching and learning applications. In this session, we'll share our findings from this experience and discuss implications for persuading and training educators on the use of OERs in the future.

Presenters will share results from a survey of 2014-16 applicants to Affordable Learning Georgia's (ALG) Textbook Transformation Grants, an OER and affordable materials adoption, adaptation, and creation-focused grant program. The survey asked respondents to identify and rank factors motivating their interest in adopting OER, from specific aspects of the ALG grant to a desire for improved student learning. Open-ended questions provided new information about the unanticipated challenges, benefits, and changes to teaching practices related to OER. ALG's strategic planning changes based on these survey results will also be discussed.

It has been shown that OER reduce cost of educational materials without risking academic success (Lovett et al., 2008; Hilton et al., 2013; Pawlyshyn et al., 2013; Bowen et al., 2014; Allen et al., 2015). Additionally, Hilton, Fischer, Wiley, and Williams (2016) demonstrate that students enrolled in courses with OER have a tendency to present higher course grades, are less likely to withdraw from the course, and have a higher chance of enrolling in more credit hours the following semester. While these initial findings are encouraging, studies also clearly acknowledge limitations within the research. In some cases, results are inconclusive and occasionally contradictory. Two factors that contribute to the complexity of studying OER are the nascency of this area of research and the difficulty of identifying causal relationship between OER and student learning and success outcomes.



While the literature shows the spectrum of benefits of OER, both financially at the institutional and student levels as well as facilitating access and student academic success, there is still a need for more research into the relationship between OER and student learning and success outcomes. The benefits of OER are not necessarily seen consistently across courses and institutions. This is confounded by the ever growing concerns around college completion.



This session provides a brief summary of current studies, focusing on methodologies and frameworks for research and identifies areas where more studies are needed. The rest of the session is set up like a workshop. It shares the developing research plan at SF State and includes interactive, hands-on time for participants to discuss their own research interests around OER. The workshop utilizes frameworks, guided questions, and templates to facilitate participant research plan development. Attendees will leave the session with tools to further develop and implement research at their own institutions.

The movement toward open educational materials has been slow to gain traction among the teaching mainstream. OERs are still not generally discussed in teacher education programs. According to a study by The Boston Consulting Group (2013), only 21% of educators report being äóìvery awareäó of what OERs are, indicating that they may not be comfortable using them themselves. These findings seem to indicate that educators simply need more education and background on what OERs are and how to use them.



In truth, however, it is not well-understood as to why open educational resources (OERs) have been slow to gain traction among the mainstream of educators. Is it because these OERs are somehow fundamentally flawed or not useful to teachers, or is it simply a lack of knowledge and preparation regarding the use of these materials? Little is known as to why teachers and faculty don't use OERs more frequently, especially because many educators express concern for lowering the cost of materials for their students, one of the primary problems solved by the use of OERs.



To better understand these problems, the presenters embarked on a research project to measure and interpret educator's attitudes towards OERs. This research was conducted using a open online course on finding and using open and free teaching materials. The main purpose of this study was to determine whether additional knowledge and preparation on the use of openly licensed materials helps teachers feel more comfortable using OERs for their own teaching and learning applications. In this session, we'll share our findings from this experience and discuss implications for persuading and training educators on the use of OERs in the future.

Presenters will share results from a survey of 2014-16 applicants to Affordable Learning Georgia's (ALG) Textbook Transformation Grants, an OER and affordable materials adoption, adaptation, and creation-focused grant program. The survey asked respondents to identify and rank factors motivating their interest in adopting OER, from specific aspects of the ALG grant to a desire for improved student learning. Open-ended questions provided new information about the unanticipated challenges, benefits, and changes to teaching practices related to OER. ALG's strategic planning changes based on these survey results will also be discussed.

It has been shown that OER reduce cost of educational materials without risking academic success (Lovett et al., 2008; Hilton et al., 2013; Pawlyshyn et al., 2013; Bowen et al., 2014; Allen et al., 2015). Additionally, Hilton, Fischer, Wiley, and Williams (2016) demonstrate that students enrolled in courses with OER have a tendency to present higher course grades, are less likely to withdraw from the course, and have a higher chance of enrolling in more credit hours the following semester. While these initial findings are encouraging, studies also clearly acknowledge limitations within the research. In some cases, results are inconclusive and occasionally contradictory. Two factors that contribute to the complexity of studying OER are the nascency of this area of research and the difficulty of identifying causal relationship between OER and student learning and success outcomes.



While the literature shows the spectrum of benefits of OER, both financially at the institutional and student levels as well as facilitating access and student academic success, there is still a need for more research into the relationship between OER and student learning and success outcomes. The benefits of OER are not necessarily seen consistently across courses and institutions. This is confounded by the ever growing concerns around college completion.



This session provides a brief summary of current studies, focusing on methodologies and frameworks for research and identifies areas where more studies are needed. The rest of the session is set up like a workshop. It shares the developing research plan at SF State and includes interactive, hands-on time for participants to discuss their own research interests around OER. The workshop utilizes frameworks, guided questions, and templates to facilitate participant research plan development. Attendees will leave the session with tools to further develop and implement research at their own institutions.

Since the inception of OER, the overwhelming focus has been on improving student access to educational materials. However, access to materials is only one piece of the educational puzzleäóîstudents still need to learn that information. Fortunately, research in cognitive science offers empirically validated techniques for improving learning. OER providers are uniquely positioned to improve learning by integrating these findings into their materials.

Over the last two years, we have been working to implement cognitive science principles into OpenStax textbooks. One such principle is retrieval practice. Retrieval practice refers to the act of recalling learned information from memory as part of the learning process (e.g., Answering practice questions). An overwhelming number of laboratory and classroom studies have found that practicing retrieval improves learning of text materialsäóîeven more than standard study strategies such as repeated rereading and concept mapping (Karpicke & Grimaldi, 2012).

Implementing retrieval practice within OER appears to be relatively straightforwardäóîsimply ensure that learning materials include practice questions for students to use. Indeed, including practice questions at the end of chapters within textbooks is standard practice. However, results from our early studies suggest that simply offering retrieval practice opportunities is not sufficient. First, students did not utilize the retrieval practice opportunity unless there was a grade incentive to do so. Second, students who answered the questions often engaged in maladaptive behaviors. For example, many students entered garbage responses in order to receive participation points or view the correct answer. Despite these challenges, students who properly utilized the retrieval opportunities saw improved learning outcomes. Thus, integration of cognitive science into OER appears to be a promising avenue for improving student learning, but there are significant challenges to consider.

The White Paper, published this year by Cengage Learning (2016), exposes the results of a survey they implemented on open educational resource (OER) use and creation in the educational community. What they disclose to the reader is that OER will potentially triple in size over the next five years. Additionally, it also exposes that there continues to be barriers to adoption, use, and creation which are inhibiting the full adoption of OER. This claim of increased OER production and use with the continuation of barriers restricting full OER adoption requires further investigation to fully understand.

This quantitative study, which replicates a preexisting study by Turkish researchers Kursun, Cagiltay, and Can (2016), further explores their report on faculty perspectives to OER use and the barriers, incentives, and benefits to OER which exist. This research was specific to Turkey and the faculty who were employed with local universities in that country. By replicating this research to include a wider geographical area (i.e., Canada, North America, etc.), and also to expand the population sample to include K-12 and higher education educators, a greater understanding of this topic can be obtained. This quantitative study replicates the preexisting and pretested Likert scale survey to expand on this research for a wider geographical and demographic population, providing a broader view of this topic to further validate the existing research. The results will be compared with the Kursun et al. study. The benefit of this study will be to provide insight into the barriers, incentives, and benefits for K-12 and higher education educators, to provide support in areas which do require attention, and to encourage potential policy and sociocultural modifications.

SLCC turned key developmental and gateway math courses open this year--Math 980: Algebra for College Success and Math 1030: Quantitative Reasoning. The department used the turn toward open content as an occasion to revisit how we guide students from developmental math to college-level math and beyond. In other words, SLCC joined thinking about open content and educational pathways to construct a potent student success intervention. In this presentation, we will talk about the work that went into this curricular/pathways reform and present the initial results. In addition to examining student success within the courses, we will present findings on time to college-level math completion for students who start at the developmental level.

Open Oregon Educational Resources OER grants support diverse statewide efforts to save money for students while offering high-quality resources for learning. Our research group designed studies to measure the impact that OER have on teaching, learning, and student success. This session will report on persuasive results from grant and research teams across the state.

Using two-part Psychology series (Psych 201A & 202A) we wanted to know what the student perspective was for using OER vs traditional text. We were also curious about performance between the two text-types as most of our students have minimal experience with OER materials to-date. This presentation offers our approach and the initial results.

At West Hills College in Lemoore, California, two instructors in sociology and psychology implemented a survey asking students about their experiences using OER textbooks and course materials. Students provided video testimonials (available on YouTube) with feedback concerning resources published by OpenStax. The study included both quantitative and qualitative measures and shows results regarding student success, learning, accessibility, quality, and use of OER.

West Hills College Lemoore (WHCL) is located in Central California and is one of two colleges in the West Hills Community College District (WHCCD). The college serves approximately 6,400 students and is a federal designated Hispanic serving institution offering programs designed to assist first generation and low income Hispanic students.

The purpose of this study was to investigate sub-populations of 1014 non-formal online learners who were using OER repositories, according to their OER use patterns. This study conducted a three-step latent class analysis to analyze data about how the impact of OERs on non-formal learning.

The results indicated that the participants were classified into three groups. The first class (50.06%) was characterized by their inclination to using social strategies. The item-response probabilities indicated that the learners assigned to the first class had higher probability scores for social strategy items than individual strategy items. We labeled this latent class as social. The second latent class (34.28%) showed higher probability scores for individual strategy items than individual strategy items. This latent class was labeled individual. The last latent class (15.66%) had higher probability scores in all the six items than those of the other two classes. This latent class was labeled overall.

A covariate analysis revealed that the learners' age decreased the likelihood of being in the overall class and increased that of being in the social class (B=10.9252, p=.000); older learners relied on social strategies alone. Learners' education level influenced the probability of being in the individual class (B=5.971, p=.015); more educated learners believed they can learn with OERs without additional social interactions.

Noticeably, the participants who reported challenges in finding the latest resources of high-quality were more likely to be in the overall class; learners who reported challenges had awareness of potential barriers in using OERs, which led to the use of both individual and social strategies. Non-formal learners who used both individual and social strategies had significantly stronger future intention to use OERs.



OER providers, institutions, and educators may benefit from stimulating learners to use individual and social strategies simultaneously

Over the past several years, many "OER Degree" programs have focused on adoption. The goal has been to remove commercial textbooks, and drive down the cost of educational materials. These efforts have not only saved students millions of dollars, but have also boosted student persistence and success. However, in many cases, students are still operating within the confines of a time-based traditional course. In February 2014, Thomas Edison State University and Saylor Academy came together to design a program that focused on assessment, rather than adoption. Thanks in part to our uniqueness (Saylor's library of hundreds of open courses and TESU's suite of prior learning assessments) we were able to create a degree program that built on both of our strengths, and provided students with a self-paced, low-risk, and affordable pathway to a degree. Three years later, hundreds of students have earned credits and degrees through the Open Course Option.

This presentation will examine the history of that partnership - its origins, its evolution, and its plans for the future. We'll share student outcomes and student voices, and also take a look at some of the obstacles that cropped up along the way. By sharing the lessons we have learned over the past three years, we hope to empower the audience to imagine other novel uses for OER.