OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES: AN OPEN ALTERNATIVE TO COSTLY TEXTBOOKS

San Diego Mesa College 12th Annual Language Conference

This presentation

• What are OER?

• Goals and value of the OER movement

• OER in California

• The situation for Italian

• The situation for Spanish

• How to get involved (Action Research)

What are OER?

• Open Educational Resources

(OER) are free and openly

licensed educational material

that can be used for teaching,

learning, research, and other

purposes.

Types of OER

• Open Courseware

– Power point slides, audio/video

lectures, syllabi

• Open Textbooks

– Digital/print-on-demand

• Classroom Activities, Lesson Plans, Quizzes

• Homework and Practice Exercises

• Authentic L2 Content (e.g., texts, video,

audio, images, realia)

Main goals of OER

• Developing royalty free textbooks

• Simplifying licensing of resources for authors and

educators

• Packaging and indexing educational materials so they

are easier to find and use

• Nurturing online communities for teachers and

authors

• Growing open education as a field and a movement

The Value of OER

• Textbook affordability

• Continuous improvement and revision of educational

resources

• Opportunity to develop material with more

contemporary teaching approaches and

methodologies

OER – A world view

OER in California

• Senate Bill 1052 (2012)

• California OER Council

• The California College Textbook Affordability Act (AB798)

• Merlot II – Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning

and Online Teaching (CSU)

• COOL4Ed – California Open Online Library for Education

• California Network for Higher Education

Success Stories

• Collaborative Statistics in Open Stax

• Washtenaw Community College

Support organizations

• Lumen Learning

• OpenStax College (Rice University)

How to get involved

• Merlot Peer Reviewers

Institutions Adopting Online Texbooks for Foreign Languages

• Portland State University

• Humboldt State University

• University of Kansas

82% Increase of textbook prices

2002-2012 6% increase per year

(3x inflation rate)

$1,207 Average student budget for books

and supplies for 2012-2013 source: GAO Report 2013, College Board, Student PIRGs

Impact of OER on Student Learning Outcomes

Few researches performed on how OER's utilization influences student learning, nevertheless:

• Studies show that the use of OER does not lead to lower student outcomes. (Bowen et al., 2014)

• Students who used the open textbook achieved higher grades in the course, had a lower withdrawal rate (Feldstein et al., 2012), and scored better on the final examination. (Hilton and Laman, 2014)

• Students in courses using OER enrolled in a significantly higher number of credits in the next semester. (Fisher et al., 2015)

Click Here

Click Here

Click Here

Click Here

First semester in Italian

“Gratis” vs. “Libre”

Photo source: free (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonx/2698947622/) / tonx (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonx/) / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)

How to find OER

OER Commons Search results:

http://libguides.humboldt.edu/openedu/span

https://sllc.ku.edu/open-educational-resources#Span

Advanced Search Results:

How to choose an open textbook

• Find the right textbook

– Search repositories • Review and evaluate

– Meets content standards?

– Platform compatible? • Decide if you want to use it as is, or edit

– Check for licensing allowances • Distribute it to your students

– Online? Downloadable PDF? Print shop?

To consider . . .

• Teacher training

• Student training

• Parent training

All of the above need ready and

reliable access at the point of need

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002158/215804e.pdf

STUDENT’S GUIDE

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1woWUiqvy9R9MXNhrB8IB2GuTmlVkIh-OlbznMeijVbQ/edit

How do we get involved?

OER through Action Research

Thank you!

Marina Laneri mschroeder@swccd.edu

Andrea Petri apetri@miracosta.edu

Silvia Santinato Kading skading@sdccd.edu

https://goo.gl/DIHrv7