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.

Writing, critical thinking, and reading comprehension are essential for academic and career success. Yet, adults in the U.S. score below average on these basic literacy skills. Excelsior's open multimedia Online Writing Lab (owl.excelsior.edu), developed in partnership with 8 community colleges, is a tool designed to address this issue.

The OWL applies best practices in education technology and instructional design to deliver students an immersive user experience. Over the past seven years, the OWL has secured over $2 million in grant funds and garnered 12 national awards for educational innovation. These innovations are based on a wealth of research indicating that greater engagement, scaffolding, and immediate feedback lead to increased student learning.

Two multi-campus, controlled pilot studies demonstrate the OWL's effectiveness. The OWL increased final grades by 6.62 points, improved student writing in 3 of 5 areas on the AAC&U writing VALUE rubric, and strengthened argumentative essay writing.

Designed to be easily incorporated into traditional, online, or blended courses, the OWL offers a free and easy-to-use textbook alternative. According to a 2014 report by U.S. PIRG, textbook costs are a major obstacle to student success. The free OWL replaces textbooks in English 101 and 201 at Excelsior, for a total savings of $153,000 in student costs annually.

OWL modules include: The Writing Process, Research & Citations, Rhetorical Styles, Argument & Critical Thinking, Online Writing & Presentations, Grammar Essentials, Avoiding Plagiarism, ESL Writing, Educator Resources, and writing process game – Paper Capers.

Presenters will review these modules, as well as demonstrate how to create Owlets (customized versions of OWL) and embed interactive writing activities into course materials. They will also debut the new open Online Reading Comprehension Lab, set to pilot in spring 2017. Come learn how to transform your approach to writing and reading instruction.

Open educational resources are a direct path to student savings at almost every institution. This is not strictly the case at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.

UW-Stout has a long tradition of providing its students with low-cost textbooks. For over one hundred years, that program has been delivered through different variations of a print textbook rental system provided through a student fee funded model. UW-Stout's students pay about $360 per year for course materials.

In 2012, digital textbooks and adaptive learning platform access codes were included with textbook rental to provide a broader range of classroom tools for faculty and students. The move to digital course content has complicated the landscape of providing a student fee funded textbook program at a low cost. Digital content often costs twice as much to provide to students than in the traditional print rental system. UW-Stout has implemented several strategies to combat the increase in cost. One of these strategies is the inclusion of a vibrant open educational resource program.

OERs offer an excellent opportunity to include quality, low-cost resources to the Stout curriculum and stabilize cost. The decision to utilize OERs has resulted in the Stout Open for Learning and Value in Education (SOLVE) program. The SOLVE Program has been developed to make OERs a critical component of a three-pronged approach to ensuring course content affordability at UW-Stout.

This session will share insight and techniques of how UW-Stout is utilizing strategic vision and a century of institutional knowledge about providing low-cost content to provide a comprehensive, sustainable approach to making OERs an integral part of their affordability approach for the next one hundred years.

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.

This presentation focuses on the collaborative efforts and support necessary to develop sustainable Z-degrees through Guided Pathways. Lansing Community College (LCC) is a Guided Pathways school and has created clear Program of Study (degree) maps that define the courses students take and the order in which they are taken with the goal of increasing timely completion of degrees/certificates. Another main initiative at LCC is Operation 100%, in which the goal is nothing less than 100% completion for the students in degree, certificate, and/or transfer pathways. Both of these initiatives have been strengthened through the adoption of Open materials because research shows that students who are in OER-based classes are able to complete more coursework. The presenters therefore believe by creating Z-degrees within Guided Pathways, LCC is able to better support its students. This session will discuss the implementation of these programs so that participants will gain an understanding of the early stages of developing sustainable Z-degrees within Guided Pathways that could be implemented at their own institutions to increase student success rates. Additional discussion will show how to combine these degrees with available open educational materials to maximize student success. The presenters will share their experiences in managing the collaboration between the Guided Pathways Coordinator and world language faculty to develop sustainable Z-degrees within Guided Pathways. They will also discuss the challenges faced in advocating for these programs and those associated with the beginning stages of creating Z-degrees; strategies to overcome these difficulties will be addressed. The presenters of this session envision the Guided Pathway Z-degrees will rapidly take off at their institution and make LCC a national leader in this area. This session is going to be both educational and interactive and will allow participants to jump in and ask questions when necessary.

The OER movement is growing in Massachusetts! A statewide initiative, funded by the federal TAACCCT grant, kicked off last year for the Massachusetts community colleges. While many of the 15 community colleges had an existing OER project, this new initiative has created a truly collaborative process where faculty work together to adopt, adapt and if necessary, build, high quality OER materials for courses that are common across the state.

Led by Sue and Jody of Northern Essex Community College, this project began with the development of an OER council that included representatives from each of the community college. The council's focus is to promote an open philosophy and to encourage collaboration on OER adoption and development across the state. Go Open mini-grants are the council's main project, scaled from NECC's Adopt Open initiative. These mini-grants solicit proposals from faculty seeking to "Go Open" in their courses. The council also supports statewide events which promote and provide training on OER pedagogy.

Sue and Jody will share the model of the initiative including their role as consultants to the other colleges, the Go Open mini-grant proposal written by the council, the materials created and updates on the project. The presentation will also include information on the benefits and challenges to working with 15 very different and independent community colleges and share some of the unique ideas developed through the collaboration. And, of course, all the materials that go with this work!

1. Beginnings of OER in one department

2. Initial objections to OER in the department and campuswide

3. Strategies for addressing department concerns

4. Strategies for addressing campus concerns

5. Expanding OER for an increasing number of courses

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.