Open Textbooks: Opening the doors to education

Amanda Coolidge, Manager of Open Education, BCcampus

Agenda

• What is an Open Educational Resource?

• What is an Open Textbook?

• BC Open Textbook Project

• Food for thought

• Case Studies

Books image source https://www.flickr.com/photos/peskylibrary/352846113/ CC-BY-NC-SA

What is an OER?

Headline

“OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.”William & Flora Hewlett Foundation http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education-program/open-educational-resources

What are Open Educational Resources?

Thank You

The 5 Rs of Opennessdoes open enable?

Source: David Wiley, http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221 March 5, 2014, CC-BY

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Let’s get even more specific now, and talk aboutOpen Textbooks.

Open Textbooks

Image source:www.flickr.com/photos/austinevan/1225274637/

We have a problem…

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Images fromhttp://www.openeducation.net/2009/09/17/beyond-textbooks-andy-chlup-discusses-digital-learning-models/ CC-BY andhttp://markmcguire.net/2011/01/01/r-i-p-department-of-design-studies/ CC-BY-NC

Principle Agent ProblemNPR, Planet Money, October 9, 2014

What students think of textbooks

•“The price of textbooks has influenced my decision to take classes. When the same class is offered by three different instructors, I check which book is the cheapest, and even though the professor might not be good, I’m forced to take that class because the textbook is the cheapest.”•“For my ‘Intro to Stats’ class, the usual cost of the textbook is like $120. But then I got a copy from India for like $29. And it’s the exact same copy.”•“I was in lab one day and the guy sitting next to me had the PDF version of the book opened on his computer. And I was like, Oh, can I have a copy? And he sent it over to me.”•“I have a friend who actually didn’t spend any money last year for books because he went to the library at the beginning of the quarter, borrowed books, scanned everything, and had the PDF file.”•“My most expensive class was clinical psych, because she writes the textbook herself, and it has a new edition every semester or something ridiculous. So it was like almost $200. And the thing is that you can’t use the previous edition, because she changes it herself because she knows the textbooks sell well. It’s like so manipulative.”

Students Get Savvier about Textbook Buying, The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 2013http://chronicle.com/article/Students-Get-Savvier-About/136827

There is a direct relationship between textbook costs and student success

60%+ do not purchase textbooks at some point due to cost

35% take fewer courses due to textbook cost

31% choose not to register for a course due to textbook cost

23% regularly go without textbooks due to cost

14% have dropped a course due to textbook cost

10% have withdrawn from a course due to textbook cost

Source: 2012 student survey by Florida Virtual Campus

Fortunately, there are solutions…

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Images from http://collegeopentextbooks.ning.com/page/adopt-1 CC-BY and http://classroom-aid.com/2011/12/07/why-dont-teachers-publish-their-own-textbooks-k12/ CC-BY-SA

What is an Open Textbook?

• An instructional resource • An ebook• A printed book • Usually uses a Creative Commons license to enable others

to further share and modify

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Images from Bccampus.ca and CreativeCommons.org. CC-BY

The BC Open Textbook Project

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Image from Bccampus.ca

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Why are we doing this?Yhy are we doing this project?

• To increase access to higher education by reducing student costs

• To enable faculty more control over their instructional resources

• To move the open agenda forward in a meaningful, measurable way

Images from Oxfam.org CC-BY and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Mietchen/Talks/World_Open_Educational_Resources_Congress_2012/How_Open_Access_and_Open_Science_can_mutually_fertilize_with_Open_Educational_Resources CC-BY

The project:

• 40 Texts, aligned with the 40 most highly enrolled 1st and 2nd year subjects in BC, plus 20 more for skills based programs

• Not just for online delivery• Ebook (multiple formats) or print on demand

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Project Phases

Phase One – Harvest and Review

Phase Two – Adapt

Phase Three - Create

Phase One: Harvest and Review

Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvest CC-BY

Phase Two: Adapt

• Make use of what exists

• Improve what exists

No, it really, really isn’t easy

• Provide funding• Provide support

Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jaxed/285108485/ CC-BY

Phase Three: Create

What are some ways of doing this?

Faculty collaboratively authoring

Buy the rights from publishers

Book sprint

• Reviews – we’re relying on faculty

• Faculty Fellows Program

• Collaborations – peer support, idea generation, subject matter expertise

• Supporting players: Instructional Designers, Professional Editors

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Images from http://fundermental.blogspot.ca/2011_09_01_archive.htmlhttp://thevarguy.com/blog/visual-collaboration-next-var-opportunity-arriveshttp://quotesweliveby.blogspot.ca/2010/08/quality-begins-on-inside-quality-quotes.html

What about quality?

Results

Results

Results

Results

Results

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Case Studies

University of Massachusetts Amherst OER initiative

• 8 faculty members• 10 grants • $1,000 each

2011-2012 academic year 700 studentsSaved more than $72,000

20 more grants this year beingworked on.

Image from: http://www.library.umass.edu/about-the-libraries/news/press-releases-2011/taking-a-bite-out-of-textbook-costs

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Case Studies

Tacoma Community College Liberate 250K

Image from: http://www.tacomacc.edu

• Save students 250k on textbooks over 2 years

• Hired an OER librarian to help faculty

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Case Studies

Oregon State University Open Textbook Initiative

• 50k

• Published in 2014/15

Students: 60Previous Textbook: $187OpenStax Textbook: $0

Student savings: $11,200

1 class 1 institution 1 term

Early Adopter and Adapter: Dr. Takashi Sato Physics KPU

Want to adopt an open textbook? You just need to give a link to your students to get started.

Want to get your feet wet? Start with a review, we have 76+ texts to choose from!

Want to adapt one of the texts in our collection or create a new one for one of our 2 areas of focus ? Send us an application!

Next steps…

If you’ve already started, we’d love to hear from you!

image from https://openclipart.org/detail/181693/woman-on-telephone-by-liftarn-181693 public domain

Image from http://pixabay.com/en/nature-water-blue-mood-from-above-203939/ public domain

Questions?

http://open.bccampus.ca

Thanks!

acoolidge@bccampus.ca

@acoolidge