Hagerstown Community College Open Educational Resources (OER) Guidebook
Prepared by Kendra Perry 2019
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Cover photos by Andrew Neel and Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash
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Table of Contents _
1. What are Open Educational Resources (OERs)? ............................................................................... 4 2. What are the benefits of Open Educational Resources? .................................................................. 4 2.1 Low cost .......................................................................................................................................... 4 2.2 Easily Adaptable .............................................................................................................................. 4 2.3 Free Knowledge Sharing ................................................................................................................. 4 3. What are the drawbacks of OERs?.................................................................................................... 4 3.1 Availability of Materials .................................................................................................................. 4 3.2 Time Allocation ............................................................................................................................... 4 3.3 Not Advertised / Hard to Find......................................................................................................... 4 3.4 Quality Varies .................................................................................................................................. 4 3.5 Availability of Ancillary Materials.................................................................................................... 5 3.6 Sustainability ................................................................................................................................... 5 4. How can the college support OER adoption and development?......................................................... 5 4.1 Make OER use a strategic goal........................................................................................................ 5 4.2 Encourage communication about OERs.......................................................................................... 5 4.3 Financially support OER creation or adaptation ............................................................................. 5 4.4 Promote student choice.................................................................................................................. 5 5. How can I use OERs in my classroom? ................................................................................................. 5 5.1 Adopt............................................................................................................................................... 6 5.2 Create .............................................................................................................................................. 6 5.3 Adapt............................................................................................................................................... 7 5.4 Implement Open Pedagogy ............................................................................................................ 7 References ................................................................................................................................................ 8 Appendix 1 ................................................................................................................................................ 9
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1. What are Open Educational Resources (OERs)? According to the Hewlett Foundation, “Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions” (2019). An OER can be a book, a courseware module, a video, or any other material. It may be print or online material. The emphasis is on the concept of “openness” – the resources are available to be freely used, distributed, and possibly even remixed. In order to maintain their openness, OERs are typically licensed via Creative Commons licensing rather than via copyright. See Appendix 1 for a chart summarizing the different types of Creative Commons licenses available. 2. What are the benefits of Open Educational Resources? 2.1 Low cost Because of their open licensing, OERs are often free or represent only nominal costs to students, such as costs of printing. This means that more students have access to course materials. Studies have found that many students avoid purchasing textbooks when costs are high, and this can negatively impact their academic success and persistence (Colvard, Watson & Park, 2018 and Florida Virtual Campus, 2012 as cited in Martin, et al, 2017). 2.2 Easily Adaptable The licenses of many OERs permit adaptation or “remixing.” This lets instructors customize the resource to their class by adding, deleting, or modifying material. Instructors who involve students in the production or adaptation of OER materials may also be participating in “open pedagogy,” or “assignments that leverage OER to create more meaningful learning experiences” (Munro, Omassi & Yano, 2016). 2.3 Free Knowledge Sharing The use of OERs also allows easy distribution of content beyond the walls of the classroom, making knowledge freely available to the broader community as well as the academic setting. 3. What are the drawbacks of OERs? 3.1 Availability of Materials Although many OERs are available for widely-taught, high-enrollment courses, pre-made materials for more unique courses may be difficult to find. 3.2 Time Allocation Locating, evaluating, and particularly creating open resources can be time consuming. 3.3 Not Advertised / Hard to Find Because OERs lack the advertising budget of traditional textbook publishers, faculty may have a more difficult time locating relevant materials for their classes. However, several repositories, referatories, and email listservs exist which can assist in finding the right materials. Libraries and librarians may also be a useful resource that can help in overcoming this barrier. 3.4 Quality Varies Some OERs are excellent quality and are even peer-reviewed; however, this is not the case for all OERs. As a result, OERs must be carefully evaluated prior to adoption.
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3.5 Availability of Ancillary Materials Some instructors rely heavily on ancillary materials that come packaged with textbooks from traditional publishers. These may include test banks, presentation materials, and workbooks. It can be more difficult and time-consuming to work with an OER if ancillary materials are not available and need to be created from scratch. As more and more instructors adopt OERs, however, ancillary materials are becoming more common. Many instructors are willing to share materials they have created, thus furthering openness. 3.6 Sustainability Because many content creators are not paid for their work on OERs, the materials may not be kept up to date as consistently as traditional textbooks. If online works are not hosted by a reliable institution, they may not be available for long-term use. 4. How can the college support OER adoption and development? 4.1 Make OER use a strategic goal Because OERs can impact student enrollment, success (Hilton, 2016; Feldstein, et al, 2012), course completion (Colvard, Watons & Park, 2018) and retention (Achieving the Dream, 2018), it makes sense to consider adding a campus-wide strategic goal regarding use of OERs across campus. 4.2 Encourage communication about OERs Expressed institutional support for OERs is certainly a significant element in widespread adoption, but effective communication among faculty can also help raise awareness and enthusiasm. Presenting professional development opportunities focused on OERs and highlighting faculty who are working with OERs and open pedagogy can increase “buzz” about OERs. Creating an OER working group can also help formalize channels of communication for and about OERs on campus. 4.3 Financially support OER creation or adaptation Although OERs may be free or low-cost to students, production of Open Educational Resources is not free. Someone must do the labor to produce, review, adopt, or adapt open resources to be used in classrooms. The college can help support this labor by offering grants, stipends, and/or release time to faculty involved in OER initiatives. The INTRO Model for sustainability indicates that increased enrollment can help cover these costs (Wiley, Williams, DeMarte & Hilton, 2016). Grants from outside organizations are also available in some cases. 4.4 Promote student choice Some institutions indicate in their course catalog and/or schedule which classes offer the use of OER materials to reduce textbook costs. This can be a selling point to students. 5. How can I use OERs in my classroom? University of Arkansas Libraries (2018) identify three ways faculty can become involved with Open Educational Resources: they can adopt already created OERs, create their own OERs, or adapt existing OER materials to fit their course. In addition, instructors can take OERs one step further by engaging in open pedagogy.
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5.1 Adopt 5.1A Find
The first step to adopting OERs is to find open resources in the relevant subject area. Faculty may conduct searches of repositories and referatories themselves (see the Hagerstown Community College Library OER LibGuide at https://hagerstowncc.libguides.com/oer/home for a list of the most up-to-date resources). Librarians are also available to assist in the search. 5.1B Evaluate Once relevant OERs have been located, the next step is to carefully evaluate them. Achieve, Inc. (2011) recommends evaluating OER Objects on the following criteria. A detailed rubric for each criterion is available at their website. • Degree of alignment to standards
• Quality of explanation of the subject matter • Utility of materials designed to support teaching • Quality of assessment • Quality of technological interactivity • Quality of instructional and practice exercises • Opportunities for deeper learning • Assurance of accessibility
Additional rubrics are available on the HCC OER LibGuide, or instructors may wish to create a custom rubric including the most significant aspects for their class(es). As always, accessibility for students with disabilities should play an important role in the evaluation process. 5.1C Adopt Instructors should be sure to go through the proper administrative processes to adopt open materials for their classes, including consulting with the lead faculty member for each course. This process may include departmental and/or division approval. In many cases, helping students access OER materials is as simple as providing them with a link to an online resource. The Campus Store and/or Digital Printing may also be able to provide options for students who wish to purchase hard copies of textbook resources. 5.2 Create If excellent resources are not readily available, instructors may wish to create their own materials from scratch. This could be as simple as creating a test to accompany an existing resource or as complex as writing a textbook from the ground up. Many excellent resources exist to guide faculty in this process. See the HCC LibGuide on OERs for more information. Instructors at Hagerstown Community College who wish to sell their self-published materials in the Campus Store must follow the Digital Printing Self-Publishing Guidelines available at http://www.hagerstowncc.edu/design-services/self-publishing When deciding how to license self-created content, authors should consider using Creative Commons licensing (http://www.creativecommons.org). Creative Commons provides a range of licenses from freely available with no attribution required to more restrictive licenses specifying that the author must be credited, derivatives of the work must also be shared freely, and that the work may not be used for
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commercial purposes. Librarians are available to help with this decision-making process as well. All self- authored works should clearly specify the type of license. 5.3 Adapt Sometimes relevant content is available, but it does not quite meet the excellence criteria for a given class. In this case, instructors may wish to adapt the material for their own use. Before beginning an adaptation project, faculty should be sure to verify that the license under which the work is released permits such activity. Once the license is verified, instructors can add material, delete irrelevant sections, or make changes to improve content. Sometimes two or more existing resources can also be “remixed” to form a better product. The license for the final product may be governed by the license of the original works. Credit should always be given to the original contributors whenever possible. 5.4 Implement Open Pedagogy Involving students in the production or adaptation of openly licensed materials is known as “open pedagogy” (Munro, Omassi & Yano, 2016). An example of open pedagogy on the HCC campus is the NEH grant project “Bridging the Antietam” organized by Alicia Drumgoole, Kate Benchoff, and Lore Kuehnert. This project involves students in collecting, compiling, and publishing local history. Other examples of open pedagogy could include having students review materials prepared for an OER or openly license their own videos or pamphlets created as class projects (Munro, Omassi & Yano, 2016).
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References Achieve, Inc. (2011). “Rubrics for evaluating open education resource (OER) objects.” Achieve.org. Retrieved February 27, 2019 from https://www.achieve.org/files/AchieveOERRubrics.pdf Achieving the Dream. (2018, Oct. 12). “New study reveals that OER courses and degrees benefit student retention and completion, improve faculty engagement, and result in cost savings for students.” AchievingTheDream.org . Retrieved February 1, 2019 from https://www.achievingthedream.org/press_release/17506/new-study-reveals-that-oer-courses-and- degrees-benefit-student-retention-and-completion-improve-faculty-engagement-and-result-in-cost- savings-for-students Colvard, N.B, Watson, C.E. & Park, H. (2018). “The impact of open educational resources on various student success metrics.” International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 30 (2), pp. 262- 276. Retrieved January 31, 2019 from http://www.isetl.org/ijtlhe/pdf/IJTLHE3386.pdf Feldstein, A., Martin, M., Hudson, A., Warren, K., Hilton III, J., & Wiley, D. (2012). “Open textbooks and increased student access and outcomes.” European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning , 2 . Retrieved February 1, 2019 from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ992490 Hewlett Foundation. (2019). “Open Educational Resources.” William and Flora Hewlett Foundation . Retrieved January 25, 2019 from https://hewlett.org/strategy/open-educational-resources/ Hilton III, J. (2016). “Open educational resources and college textbook choices: a review of research on efficacy and perceptions.” Educational Technology Research and Development, 64 (4), pp. 573-590. Retrieved February 1, 2019 from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11423-016-9434- 9?wt_mc=internal.event.1.SEM.ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst Martin, M.T., Belikov, O.M., Hilton III, J., Wiley, D., & Fischer, L. (2017). “Analysis of student and faculty perceptions of textbook costs in higher education.” Open Praxis 9 (1), pp. 79-91. Retrieved January 31, 2019 from https://openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/article/view/432/376 Munro, D., Omassi, J. & Yano, B. (2016). OER Student Toolkit: A BCcampus Open Education advocacy guide for student leaders. Retrieved January 30, 2019 from https://opentextbc.ca/studenttoolkit/ University of Arkansas Libraries. (2018). Open Educational Resources & You: Implementing OER in Your Courses. Retrieved January 25, 2019 from https://cpb-us- e1.wpmucdn.com/wordpressua.uark.edu/dist/a/315/files/2018/09/OER-Guide-1gegoik.pdf Wiley, D., Williams, L., DeMarte, D., & Hilton, J. (2016). “The Tidewater Z-Degree and the INTRO model for sustaining OER adoption.” Education Policy Analysis Archives , 23 (41). http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v23.1828
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Appendix 1
♺ Remix allowed ?
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Explanations
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Attribution
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You must give CREDIT to the original work’s creator. Commercial usage of the work is allowed.
You can remix the work.
Sharing is (always) allowed for commercial and non-commercial purpose.
Share Alike
You must give CREDIT to the original work’s creator. Commercial usage of the work is allowed.
You can remix the work.
If you remix this work, you're forced to use exactly the same license for your derivative version of this work. Sharing is (always) allowed for commercial and non-commercial purpose. You must give CREDIT to the original work’s creator. Commercial usage of the work is allowed. You CANNOT remix the work. Sharing is (always) allowed for commercial and non-commercial purpose. You must give CREDIT to the original work’s creator. Commercial usage of the work is NOT allowed.
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No Derivative
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Non- Commercial
You can remix the work.
If you remix this work, you're forced to use exactly the same license for your derivative version of this work. Sharing is allowed for non-commercial purpose only. You must give CREDIT to the original work’s creator. Commercial usage of the work is NOT allowed.
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Non- Commercial Share Alike
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You can remix the work.
If you remix this work, you're forced to use exactly the same license for your derivative version of this work. Sharing is allowed for non-commercial purpose only. You must give CREDIT to the original work’s creator. Commercial usage of the work is NOT allowed.
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Non- Commercial No Derivative
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You CANNOT remix the work.
Sharing is allowed for non-commercial purpose only.
Chart by Guillaume Déziel – CC-BY-NC-SA
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