Open Educational Resources (OER) are becoming a significant, mission-driven trend within educational literature. To help address rising costs, instructors and designers are looking to OER to effect...

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The power of open: benefits, barriers, and strategies for integration of open educational resources

COVID-19, What to do now? This issue has had devastating effects in all domains of society worldwide. Lockdowns, the lack of freedom and social distancing meant the closure of a country’s entire activity. Having effects at all levels, beside incalculable ones in health, it is argued that scientific activity in education, business, economics and management suffered some of the most drastic impacts of this pandemic. This study aims to map the scientific literature in these areas in the context of COVID-19 and analyze its content through bibliometrics, which made it possible to highlight the scarcity of studies on the topic, namely empirical studies on the effects of this pandemic on scientific research and teaching/education. The results show there is a lack of peer-reviewed publications on this topic, with the studies covered (93) via the threads used revealing only 28 articles coming within the proposed objective. The bibliometrics corroborates that shortage. Finally, the contributions and implications for theory and practice are presented, followed by the limitations and suggestions for future research.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/18/7362/pdf

COVID-19 and disruption in management and education academics: bibliometric mapping and analysis

The textbook industry is in significant flux that is fueled by evolving technologies, increased availability of online open content and curricula, active used textbook markets, and, most recently, a rash of textbook rental start-ups, just to name a few of the factors at play. At the same time, Open Educational Resources (OERs)—learning materials distributed openly for either no or minimal cost—may have become commonplace enough that a credible, viable infrastructure for open textbooks, one that mainstream faculty would accept, could be imagined. Our research, which employed an online survey and focus groups, explored faculty perceptions about affordability and open textbooks. Our results indicate that faculty want a diversity of choices when they choose a textbook. They are independent thinkers, exceptionally busy, suffer from extreme information overload, are generally dedicated to ensuring their students’ success, and do not take well to “one size fits all” solutions. Our data indicated that any discussion about textbook affordability solutions must also take into account that most faculty are active and independent decision makers when it comes to choosing a textbook or other curricular materials for their courses; the top-down high-school model of textbook adoption is anathema to many professors and instructors. Complicating the picture are the natural, heterogeneous needs among the institutions, disciplines, and courses encompassed by higher education; the type of institution and the level and content of the course will ultimately determine which curricular forms offer the best solutions. Faculty made clear that their students represent a plethora of learning backgrounds and goals, and also desire flexibility and choice in textbook options. What is notable and cannot be ignored is that purely electronic solutions will not be universally embraced in the near term. Reasons for resistance included students’ need for the safety net of a printed textbook and the positive pedagogical practice of engaging with the text by “writing in the margins” (which is not a practical reality in current electronic platforms). Regarding the demand for open textbooks, there simply are not enough currently available in enough disciplines to satisfy the multitude of faculty and student needs in lower and upper division courses; a much wider array of high-quality, easy-to-use, and reliable open textbooks will have to be produced for more widespread faculty adoption to be realized. Even then, open textbooks will likely be only one of many players in the curricular materials market. This work, directed by Diane Harley, was conducted under the aegis of the Higher Education in the Digital Age Project at the Center for Studies in Higher Education: http://cshe.berkeley.edu/people/dharley

AFFORDABLE AND OPEN TEXTBOOKS: An Exploratory Study of Faculty Attitudes

Effective Engineering Information Literacy Instruction: A Systematic Literature Review

There is a growing trend in higher education to explore the various benefits of Open Educational Resources. This applies not only to the cost benefits, but also to potential pedagogical benefits as well. This study explores the process of developing and implementing an Open Educational Resource for an undergraduate course and experimenting with OERenabled pedagogy. Interview data provide an account of this process, outlining challenges and highlighting insights, which might prove useful for other professionals contemplating the move toward developing Open Educational Resources. Interview data are also organized using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology constructs pertaining to attitude, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, technology self-efficacy, and facilitating conditions. A qualitative interpretive approach was then used to analyze the data. Analysis indicates that most of the constructs can strongly influence faculty to adopt Open Educational Resources but that “social influence” has no effect on adoption. Findings also include reflections on OER-enabled pedagogy as it was applied in the course. These findings indicate that OER-enabled pedagogy has the potential for increasing student engagement, though this potential has not yet been realized. Finally, findings provide an outline of recommendations that might guide others when considering developing and implementing Open Educational Resources.

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Developing an Open Educational Resource and Exploring OER-Enabled Pedagogy in Higher Education.

Anderson, T., Gaines, A., Leachman, C., & Williamson, EP. (2017). Faculty and instructor perceptions of open educational resources in engineering. Post-print. The Reference Librarian. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02763877.2017.1355768.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02763877.2017.1355768

Faculty and Instructor Perceptions of Open Educational Resources in Engineering

INTRODUCTION Open educational resources (OER) are gaining traction in higher education and becoming accepted by academics as a viable means for delivering course content. However, these resources can be difficult to find and use, both due to low visibility and confusion about licensing. This article describes one university’s work with faculty members to identify barriers in their search process when they are looking to adopt OER. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM A scholarly communication librarian and science librarian partnered to collect faculty and instructor reactions to a particular OER search tool, with the intention of better understanding the difficulties encountered during the search process. Eight interviews were conducted as participants were asked about their preferences when it comes to locating OER, understanding licensing information, and adopting materials for class. NEXT STEPS From these interviews, the librarians identified practical recommendations for instruction/liaison librarians and technical services/systems librarians as they continue working to support faculty and instructors through the OER discovery and selection process. These recommendations relate to four themes uncovered in interviews with faculty and instructors: the need for increased transparency in search tools, the importance of intuitive narrowing and broadening features in search tools, the need for detailed and consistent metadata in OER records, and the need for clarity in intellectual property statements. The librarians note that these recommendations might best be pursued through wide-scale collaboration across library units and, more generally, between libraries, consortia, and institutions.

https://www.iastatedigitalpress.com/jlsc/article/12835/galley/12524/download/

Strategies for Supporting OER Adoption through Faculty and Instructor Use of a Federated Search Tool

As open textbook initiatives are on the rise, a burgeoning literature has begun exploring student perceptions of openly licensed textbooks used in higher education. Most of this research has lacked consideration of potential differences in the perceptions of online and on-campus students and has failed to include a control group of students using traditional textbooks. Therefore, the authors employed a 2 x 2 design to directly compare perceptions of online students with on-campus students assigned either open or traditional textbooks. Students (N = 925) enrolled in multiple sections of psychology courses at a midsized R1 institution completed a survey on their perceptions of their particular book’s format and features, as well as strategies they typically employ to offset the cost of expensive course materials. The results revealed that online and on-campus students report disparate strategies for offsetting the high costs of textbooks, different preferences in textbook formats (print versus digital versus both) when cost is not a factor, and differences in their ratings of the importance of various textbook features. Moreover, the results indicate that the use of open textbooks may increase preference for free digital textbooks over paid printed textbooks. Based on these results, the authors suggest that campuses might consider providing customized support to different student populations as open textbook initiatives gain in popularity on university campuses. Additionally, they suggest that prior exposure to open textbooks may increase students’ willingness to use openly licensed materials in future courses. They recommend future research on this question, using a longitudinal within-subjects designs.

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Open to Open? An Exploration of Textbook Preferences and Strategies to Offset Textbook Costs for Online Versus On-Campus Students

Open Educational Engineering Resources: Adoption and Development by Faculty and Instructors Chelsea Leachman, Washington State University Chelsea Leachman is the engineering librarian at Washington State University. She obtained here Masters of Library and Information Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2011. She has a background in science and engineering. She received her Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science with a minor in geology from the University of Idaho 2007. Ms. Talea Anderson, Washington State University Talea Anderson works as Scholarly Communication Librarian in the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation at Washington State University.

Open Educational Engineering Resources: Adoption and Development by Faculty and Instructors

Siyali Ramamrita Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science (1931) has long served as a philosophy for the practice of librarianship. The original five laws remain relevant almost ninety years after they were originally proposed (Ranganathan, 1931). As new modes of information and access, as well as resources and technology, have come into existence, these laws have remained flexible and open to adaptation. However, extant library literature has not yet situated Ranganathan’s Laws within the context of open educational resources (OER). As freely accessible teaching and learning resources, OER reflect the core values of Ranganathan’s Laws; further, viewing OER through Ranganathan’s lens offers new opportunities for librarians to situate their OER work within one of the discipline’s most foundational philosophies. The following sections introduce Ranganathan’s Five Laws and their recent adaptations and provide a new interpretation of these laws within the context of OER. The implications for situating OER within Ranganathan’s Five Laws are also shared.

https://iastatedigitalpress.com/jlsc/article/12846/galley/12533/download/

Talea Anderson

Papers

Faculty and Instructor Perceptions of Open Educational Resources in Engineering

Strategies for Supporting OER Adoption through Faculty and Instructor Use of a Federated Search Tool

Open to Open? An Exploration of Textbook Preferences and Strategies to Offset Textbook Costs for Online Versus On-Campus Students

Open Educational Engineering Resources: Adoption and Development by Faculty and Instructors

The Five Laws of OER: Observations from Ranganathan