Celebrate OERs at Tech and Beyond
Celebrate Open Education Week with the Van Pelt and Opie Library by participating in our weeklong discussion. Today is your last chance to post your thoughts, but don’t worry — the Library is here to listen all year long! Today, the Library wants to know: What’s one thing you wish the Library knew about selecting course materials? Tell us your thoughts, share the discussion and follow along in the OE Week discussion section of the Library’s Open Educational Resources (OER) page.
Mike Meyer, director of the William G. Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) and lecturer in the Department of Physics, recently chatted with the Library about his use of the open textbook "College Physics" in his introductory college physics courses. In his opinion, it’s comparable to other intro-to-physics texts available from traditional publishers, making the decision to choose this particular OER an easy one.
For Meyer, a huge benefit to using an open textbook is that it provides students with regular, convenient access to course materials. Lowering costs for students is certainly a factor, but another huge concern is student learning, which is hindered if students don’t have the materials they need regardless of the reason. He notes that while students are able to purchase a physical version of the textbook, few have in the six years he’s been teaching with it. They simply don’t need to. In that time, the textbook has seen regular updates. Meyer is quick to point out these have been incremental, another benefit of using OER. Traditional textbooks publishers may push out significant updates in an effort to drive purchases of the newest version, increasing costs for students and creating more work for instructors.
Curious about a broader use case for OERs than a single instructor? Meyer suggests we look no further than Bay de Noc Community College. Bay, a public two-year college in Escanaba, launched a degree pathway using all OERs in 2017. Their OER Degree Initiative is “working to create a library of high-quality, digital, open courses available to other institutions and the public at large.” Bay hopes that by making all resources easily available, the program will encourage OER adoption at other institutions. Read more and view the list of courses using OERs on their Open Education page.
The Library and CTL realize that adopting a single OER for just one class may seem daunting, much less for an entire degree program. Meyer has some great advice for all instructors concerned about the work involved: When you’re updating any textbooks or other materials in your course, investigate OERs. If you’re already making a change, OERs won’t be any more difficult to implement than content available from a traditional publisher.
Thank you for celebrating Open Education Week 2022 with the Van Pelt and Opie Library! Please send us additional comments, questions and ideas at library@mtu.edu. We would love to keep this conversation going all year.