Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education

Letter from the Editors

Kristina Clement, Hilary Baribeau, Amanda Larson, Sabrina Davis, Chelsee Dickson — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Review of Rhetoric Matters

Leslie Drost — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

New students in higher education may come to their university with the expectation that they are already trained to write academically. Their instructors may also have this expectation, but that is often not the case. The authors of Rhetoric Matters have put together a comprehensive textbook for these students which encompasses the entire research and scholarship process, from reading effectively to sources and research to accurately using multiple citations styles.

KEYS to Teaching Success

Nancy Lawson Remler, Janel Smith — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

To earn teacher certification in Georgia, preservice teachers must pass an evaluation titled InternKEYS, which consists of ten professional standards assessing teachers’ pedagogical, subject matter and professional knowledge. Until 2022 Georgia’s teacher preparation programs drew from varied texts and resources to teach these skills and concepts. With grant funding from Affordable Learning Georgia, a team from Georgia Southern University developed KEYS to Teaching Success, a digital OER designed to align directly with the InternKEYS assessment. This column outlines the multiple benefits of making this resource available to future educators. In addition to filling a gap in teacher preparation resources, KEYS to Teaching Success mitigates the high cost of preparing for a modestly-paid profession. It also fosters valuable professional relationships among those working on the development team. Most importantly, as initial assessment data indicate, KEYS to Teaching Success effectively supports Georgia's preservice teachers as they prepare for initial certification.

Equity and Innovation

Molly Cummins, Melanie Mason — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Many students are facing multiple barriers to accessible education. Some instructors have attempted to help address these concerns through the adoption and use of Open Educational Resources (OERs). When questions of access arise, however, McWilliam (1999) reminds pedagogues to question what concept(s) does the word “access” refer to. For us, a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approach to education works well with OERs aimed at levelling playing fields toward greater student equity.This column details a feasibility study we undertook and underscores that, while a professional human audio component might be cost-prohibitive, creators and utilizers can still create (human) voice audio components for their OERs that open access to more students.

Fostering Student Agency Through Ungrading

Tiffani Tijerina — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Students in service writing courses, particularly those enrolled in non-writing majors, often struggle with low confidence in their writing ability, resulting in a desire to “just get through” the class with a passing grade. Furthermore, instructors of such courses often struggle with a balance between what students actually need to learn in order to be successful in their careers and the level at which they want students to be proficient in writing practices–and students struggle with the same notions. Using a pedagogy called “ungrading,” students are released from their fear of “bad grades” caused by the feeling of being at the mercy of their instructor–this release fosters empowered students who can focus on their actual learning and improvement in writing. Using case studies from my TCOM 2010: Technical Writing and TCOM 3030: Instructional Design courses at Kennesaw State University, this innovative practices article introduces two methods for implementing ungrading in any class, including resources from my classes and considerations for implementing these methods in other fields.

OER Discovery

Beth Burnett, Nikki Cannon-Rech, Rebecca Hunnicutt, Jeffrey Mortimore — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

This paper discusses the challenges of ensuring discoverability of Open Educational Resources (OER) in the absence of clear standards for sharing them. Despite the efforts of librarians and instructors to create a wealth of OER, discoverability remains limited and often relegated to a list of links on a LibGuide. The authors address this challenge by highlighting technical and descriptive barriers to OER discoverability. The authors then describe the development of a hybrid metadata standard for OER and its deployment through the institutional repository. Although provisional, this approach ensures that OER records can be adapted to future metadata standards and exported to third-party repositories. This paper underscores the importance of developing an effective metadata standard for OER to ensure their discoverability for learners and educators.

Making OER Sustainable in the Library

Joanna Thompson, Joshua Peach — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

While open educational resources (OER) programs are often situated in university and college libraries, librarians come to the practice with different levels of exposure and knowledge. At the New York City College of Technology (City Tech) library, we attempted to bridge this gap by offering a paid training for all full-time librarians at the college. Our goal for the training was to integrate the philosophy of open educational resources and its approaches into librarians’ everyday work. This article outlines the rationale for our approach to professional development, the program design, participant feedback, and future directions.

Combining Open Pedagogy and Undergraduate Qualitative Research

Karina Cespedes, James Paradiso — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Applying open pedagogical principles within the field of cultural and ethnic studies provides students with the opportunity to engage in reflections that capture the complexities of learning in an era of polarization—with national debates emerging on the role of pedagogy and the impact of environmental and public health uncertainty in the aftermath of how COVID-19 transformed the economic, social, and educational landscape. This article considers what it means to teach, and to learn during this epoch. It provides an assessment of how a student-centered framework prioritizing relationality and relational reflexivity can refocus engagement via a dynamic process by which students are empowered to simultaneously learn and contribute to knowledge production.

A Bibliometric Study of Open Educational Resources, Open Textbooks, and Academic Librarianship

Rachel Chandler — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Open Educational Resources (OER) play a key role in reducing the financial burden and increasing the accessibility of learning for students in higher education. OER can be considered an important field of research for academic librarians and supports the democratic mission of academic libraries. This study aimed to track the publication of scholarly literature about OER and higher education from 2002 to 2022 using a bibliometric research methodology. In addition, this research sought to assess the productivity of Library and Information Science (LIS) scholarship on this topic and investigate research trends, like open textbooks. Web of Science (WOS) was searched for publications and the search results were mapped to determine publication productivity, core authors, core journals, and research topics in the scholarly literature about OER and higher education. Research on OER has been steadily increasing since 2002, and this study indicates that research has increased significantly on the topic in the last six years. The data in this study support that most productivity in research on this topic is in the field of Education, but also found a presence of scholarship on the topic in the field of LIS.

Reimagining Leadership in Open Education

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Challenging traditional notions of leadership, and leveraging non-hierarchical learning structures, the Regional Leaders of Open Education Network (RLOE) was created to bring together leaders from a broad diversity of institutions in the U.S. and Canada to build strategic plans for open education that especially support underserved and underrepresented students. All members of the network, including an advisory team, collaborators, student mentors and cohort participants were engaged in a multi-directional learning program over two years (2021-2022) that included a variety of synchronous and asynchronous online engagement opportunities, as well as the opportunity to attend an in-person summit. Analyses of surveys and reports completed by network participants indicated that RLOE was successful in building community and in providing vital networking opportunities that supported them to design and begin to implement open education strategic plans that included initiatives in professional development, forming partnerships, integrating DEI as well as many other goals and accomplishments. Cohort participants indicated statistically significant gains in 1) developing and leveraging their leadership skills to serve marginalized and underrepresented students, 2) understanding how OE practices can empower all students, especially marginalized students, and 3) how OER can be used to specifically support underrepresented and underserved groups. In addition, 90% of cohort participants indicated that the RLOE Network helped them to center principles of diversity, equity and inclusion into their open educational work.

OER by Any Other Name

Andrea Schuler, Alyn Gamble — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

The importance of OER in higher education is well-documented, but additional factors are necessary to explore in order to understand the perception, use, and development of these resources. These include scans of academic environments beyond community colleges or large public universities, and the utilization of novel techniques such as listening tours. In this study, a faculty listening tour was conducted at a private, mid-sized research university. Fourteen faculty members from a variety of disciplines participated in the study, with STEM disciplines being slightly more represented. Semi-structured interviews revealed findings related to faculty usage of textbooks, understanding of student financial needs, perceptions of OER, as well as faculty communication preferences. Faculty members were found to be thoughtful in their selection of course materials, albeit limited by time to include or create new resources, and considerate of cost when choosing textbooks. Faculty members were also found to be unable to define inclusive access models and had difficulty understanding the term OER, leading to a change in librarian vocabulary when referring to these resources. This listening tour led to new approaches to outreach and communications regarding OER among faculty, as well as the development of a staff listening tour, to better support campus needs and facilitate the use of more low-and-no-cost materials.

Catalysts of Open Education in Colorado

Maya Hey — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

What are/were the catalysts that enabled Open Education (OE) momentum in Colorado, and what can be gleaned from its origin stories? Using a mix of qualitative methods (e.g. interviews, narrative analysis, discourse analysis), this paper maps the forces, both actual and imagined, that enabled OE to flourish across the state. This paper locates patterns specific to Colorado and analyzes the interdependent and interpersonal aspects of the OE movement/philosophy there. It arrives at the conclusion that two themes in particular (state-level support and community characteristics) contribute to Colorado’s reputation as an OE leader. Rather than view these as distinct forces, the two themes entwine and synergistically enhance the other. This paper contributes to growing research in the area of second-order OE thriving and sustainability. It makes the case that, while identifying barriers to OE can assist with action-oriented research, identifying the enabling forces can also offer a more nuanced understanding in a particular place: less of the bad is one tactic, more of the good is another.

Assessing the Impact of a Collaborative OER & Affordable Resources Committee

Abbey Elder, Md Imtiajul Alam — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

This case study shares observations from a 2022 survey of 197 instructors at Iowa State University, a public research university in the United States. The survey sought to explore instructor awareness of three major affordable course material initiatives supported by the university’s Open & Affordable Education Committee (OAEC): open educational resources (OER), Course Reserves, and Immediate Access. Results from the survey found that despite significant cross-promotion and collaboration between the three programs represented on the OAEC, the awareness and uptake of each program varied wildly, as did instructors’ understanding of the differences between each material type. This paper shares the results of that survey, as well as improvements which have been made to the OAEC’s programming and promotion efforts in the year since.

Open Educational Resources

Dr. Amy Smith, Dr. Jamie L. Workman , Dr. Taralynn Hartsell, Dr. D. Laverne Hill — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Open educational resources (OER) provide college students with course materials on the first day of class, ensuring an equitable learning experience for all. Faculty are the driving force behind OER but need more support to understand, locate, and evaluate resources. Faculty and librarian collaboration can bridge together ideas and resources to benefit students. The researchers used a qualitative case study to understand how faculty and librarians collaborated at a community college to adopt OER. The primary researcher interviewed librarians and faculty to understand their experiences of working together to promote and adopt OER at their campus. The researchers analyzed data from the participants which revealed seven primary themes consisting of communication, student benefits, faculty hesitancies, departmental and administrative decisions, librarian partnerships, and campus repository building. Findings revealed how the collaborative efforts of librarians and faculty helped move OER initiatives forward.

The Creation of an OER to Establish and Maintain a Writers’ Community at a Regional Public College

Dan Ehrenfeld, Christopher Iverson — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

This article explores the creation of an Open Education Resource by the Writing in the Disciplines (WID) committee at Farmingdale State College (FSC). After COVID-19 shut down in-person activities on campus for one year and made in-person activities in general more difficult thereafter, the WID committee faced a challenge: how do we re-establish the connections made before 2020?

Processes started as an idea to promote writing on campus. But as the project took shape, stakeholders from across the university emerged and participated, including faculty, students, and even the college president. This article posits that Open Educational Resources can serve as community-building/re-building projects that bring scholars and students from disparate disciplines together. Drawing upon Etienne Wenger’s (1999) research on “modes of belonging,” it considers the ways that cross-disciplinary OERs contribute to the maintenance of community connections within institutions. Processes is a home-grown effort, but as an Open Educational Resource it is accessible to many, and students, faculty, and administrators on and off campus can use it for their own purposes. Sharing their experiences editing this collection, the authors encourage the development of similar projects.