scaling open | reducing textbook costs across virginia’s community colleges

http://www.openeducationweek.org/

Happy Open Education Week

Scaling OPEN

Reducing Textbook Costs

Across Virginia’s Community

Colleges

Innovations Conference 2015

Boston, MA

March 10th, 2015

Preston Davis, Director, Extended Learning Institute Northern Virginia

Community College

wdavis@nvcc.edu

Cheryl Huff, English Department Chair

Germanna Community College

chuff@germanna.edu

Jane Rosecrans, Faculty

J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College

jrosecrans@reynolds.edu

Richard Sebastian, Director of Teaching & Learning Technologies

Virginia Community College System

rsebastian@vccs.edu

Scaling OPENPanel

PROBLEMWe’ve all seen this graph, right?

BACKGROUND

• The Textbook Costs and Digital Learning

Resources (TCDLR) Committee TCDLR Final

Report, released in January 2015.

• The Chancellor’s OER Adoption Grants (I & II)

offered selected faculty and library staff stipends

and support to adopt and adapt high-quality OER

for high-enrollment courses.

BACKGROUND

• The Chancellor’s Innovation Fund also funded

several OER projects, including the development

of Northern Virginia Community College’s all-

OER associate degrees in general studies and

social science.

• Tidewater Community College developed the Z

Degree, an associate of science degree in

Business Administration that can be earned with

no textbook costs.

SO FAR

• 70+ OER courses

• 16 colleges

• 3 all-OER degrees

• Approaching $2+ million in savings in

textbook costs.*

• OER interest and use by VCCS faculty has

grown significantly in the past 2 years.

SOLUTION?

OER

OPENCOURSEWARE

MODULES

TEXTBOOKS

STREAMING

VIDEOSOPEN

JOURNALS

TUTORIALS

LEARNING

OBJECTS

Open Educational Resources at Northern Virginia’s

Extended Learning Institute (ELI)

Preston Davis, Director, Extended Learning Institute Northern Virginia Community College

wdavis@nvcc.edu

Current ELI OER Courses 40 Digital Open classes with no textbook costs

• English: ENG 111, ENG 112, ENG 123, ENG 125

• College Mat: MTH 151, MTH 152, MTH 157

• Science: PHY 201, PHY 202

• History: HIS 121, HIS 122

• Communications: CST 110

• Physical Education: PED 116

• Economics: ECO 201, ECO 202

• Student Development: SDV 100

• Information Technology: ITE 115

• Humanities/Fine Arts: ART 101, ART 102, REL 100, MUS 121

• Social/Behavioral Sciences: HIS 262, PSY 200, SOC 200

Costs of Pilot Course Textbooks

ENG 111: $140

ENG 112 : $93

ENG 125:$89

MTH 151:$263

PHY 201: $269

PHY 202: $244

HIS 121: $109

HIS 122: $109

ART 101: $226

ART 102: $226

SDV 100: $77

CST 110: $140

ECO 201: $281.80

ECO 202: $281.80

ITE 115: $182.70

MTH 152: $161.80

MTH 157: $123.55

MUS 121: $141.45

PED 116: $92.85

PSY 200: $107.15

REL 100: $138.55

SOC 200: $114.65

Potential savings of $3600 per

student completing full OER AS

Degree Track

Average cost of Textbooks =

$185

Outcomes

AccessOver 5000 NOVA students have taken a course in our OER program since fall 2013, with access to free/open material digitally delivered through the LMS in the OER online courses!

AffordabilityNOVA students enrolled in OER courses in the ELI Open Educational Resources AS program have saved over $800,000 to date… soon to exceed a million dollars!

Student SuccessThe overall student success rates in the pilot OER-based courses was 9% higher than the overall success rate for the equivalent textbook-based courses!

The Development and Use of OER Materials

by Community College and High School

Faculty

Jane Rosecrans, Faculty

J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College

jrosecrans@reynolds.edu

Reynolds’ Advance College

Academy (ACA) and OER

Initiative

Overview• Community college and high school faculty

developing Open Educational Resources (OER)

• Led by a college Facilitator

• Eleven (11) JSRCC faculty members serving as content specialists for General Education Certificate courses.

• ACA initiative is led by a full-time Director

• Seven (7) faculty liaisons representing the disciplines that make up the AS in Social Sciences Curriculum

• Thirteen (13) high school faculty members

Project InnovationHigh school and community college faculty

from a variety of disciplines form“OER

Community“to:

• collect and curate materials to be used in

specific courses

• create new materials to fill gaps

• contextualize all materials to align with

course outcomes; and

• construct syllabi and course materials for

use in online and face-to-face teaching.

OER and VCCS Materials• Using the mapping guide developed by

Lumen Learning

– Requires faculty to connect course learning

outcomes with OER resources

• High school faculty forced to develop their

own materials from reserves they have on

hand and new online sources (OER)

• Faculty in math, biology, history, and

student development have opted for open

textbooks

OER and VCCS Materials• Faculty in composition have used materials

from OER courses the VCCS has developed

over the past two years

• Faculty in literature have put together their

own courses using links to literary readings

and audio-visual materials found online

Portability• Portability is complex for both high school and

college faculty.

• ACA courses: course materials need to be portable from instructor to instructor given the lack of funding for printed textbooks.

• For Reynolds faculty:

– Several disciplines at the college that have turned to OER favor open textbooks to other forms of OER.

– Faculty who have pulled together OER materials from VCCS courses and their own online links to readings and websites, the issue of portability is more difficult.

Portability• For ENG 111-112 and literature

courses it is difficult for instructors to

access materials without a central

commons.

• A team of Reynolds faculty will

develop an OER anthology of

American Literature

• Anthology will be openly available on

Lumen Learning’s Candela platform

Just start somewhere

OER at a Germanna Community

College

Cheryl Huff, English Department Chair

Germanna Community College

chuff@germanna.edu

At first, OER was...

Folks at Germanna were

talking about it...

Fig. 2. Google Clipart

But it was purely grassroots...

Fig. 3. Mayne, Paul. Wheat Grass. Digital image. FLICKR. N.p., 28 May 2005. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. <https://www.flickr.com/photos/paulm/16106254/>.

So grant money turned on the planning

We organized, planned,

presented...

We have avoided having a

committee...

Fig.6."Camel." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 16 Oct. 2014. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel>.

We are now intrinsically linked to other

VCCS initiatives...

Fig. 7 Evans, Luke. Three Musketeers in 3D. Fancarpet. 2011. Web. 14 October 2014. http://www.thefancarpet.com/ActorGalleryPicture.aspx?mga_id=124485&a_id=3570

Sometimes you just have to start

somewhere...

Kertesz, Julie. Oh the Places You'll Go. N.d. Web. FLICKR. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. <https://www.flickr.com/photos/joyoflife/3709840577/>.

Challenge: What’s wrong with this picture?

Creative Commons licenses the

photo, but not the cover.

CHALLENGES

• The overall percentage of faculty adoption

is relatively low.

• Limited access to data on OER use and

impact.

• Need an OER Commons

• OER adoption has yet to scale in a broad,

systemic way by a large postsecondary

system like the Virginia Community College

System.

CHALLENGES

Create a sustainable

infrastructure so the OER can be

scaled effectively among

colleges and the full potential of

Virginia’s investment in open

can be realized.

Portability = scalability

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mag3737/514979823/

Innovation-Decision Process

OCCIorganization’s capacity for continuous innovation

Z x 23 Project

William & Flora Hewlett Foundation

Z x 23 Project1. 50,000 students will successfully

complete Z degree courses at fifteen (15) VCCS colleges.

2. Establish a model for sustaining and supporting the z courses and other OER infrastructure.

3. Create a detailed “roadmap” to for postsecondary institutions interested in scaling and sustaining a statewide or system OER infrastructure.

Attribution1. “The Future of Books” by Johan Larsson is licensed under CC BY 2.0

2. “iPad” by Sean MacEntee is licensed under CC BY 2.0

3. “NASA Visualization Explorer Now Available For All iOS Devices”, NASA

is licensed under CC BY 2.0

4. "Planking in bookstore" by Erin! Nekervis is licensed under CC BY 2.0

5. “"Girl sitting at desk flipping through textbook pages at Putnam School"

by Library and Archives Canada is licensed under CC BY 2.0

6. "No luggage" by Tom Magliery is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0