[Image: “Frankenstein” by Khánh Hmoong CC BY-NC 2.0]

This semester is my third semester using OER (Open Education Resources) here at NMC to teach ENG 111, and I have also jumped in with OER for my ENG 112 course this fall.

On ENG 111: I spent my first semester of OER usage compiling resources from a variety of places and getting them into one usable document for my students. I shared a new chapter created in Google Docs each week with students, and they printed and annotated and brought their slowly-growing textbook to class. This was all right for most of them, but some lamented the ability to read ahead. In the second semester I refined the chapters, edited to include better content, and even wrote bits and pieces myself.

Now, as the third semester is midway through, in the spirit of constantly reflective teaching, I’m considering looking for something completely new for ENG 111 next year, as many new options are being created. It feels tough, on some levels, to abandon what I’ve done, because I spent many hours on it. I like the text I have for my students, and the content is pretty strong. I think it’s kind of boring (not a lot of images or fun design elements) and my major issue is a lack of sample readings. Most of the essays I’d like to include are not licensed with creative commons licenses, and even with educational fair use laws, I don’t think we can distribute them the way I want to distribute the text. My Frankenstein book isn’t listed with any copyright right now, but if I’ve ever got a more or less “final product”, I plan to license it with a CC 4.0 SA license. Some of the complications with that involve sample readings, as mentioned above, which may have to live behind the Moodle paywall and therefore render my “textbook” less of a usable textbook for others.

My other challenge this semester has been that, last spring, the Modern Language Association (MLA) updated their citation styles and the textbook I was using in ENG 112 had to be updated to a new version. This was a catalyst for me to go ahead and switch to a new OER I had seen for writing classes called the Writing Commons. This resource is a textbook that’s peer reviewed (and award-winning)–it’s dynamic, always adding new content and editing any mistakes. It also includes multimedia resources in many of its chapters, which I really like. What I don’t like about it is the “no derivative” part of the creative commons license, because I can’t download it and change things that I wish were longer or shorter. I also don’t like that it’s a website and doesn’t have a downloadable version of the text all in one place: students have to click through to each article and print them if they want their readings on paper.
I continue to plug away at this project for both courses because I believe in it. A few weeks ago I presented on OER at the TYCA Midwest Conference in St. Louis, MO, and had a really good conversation with folks all over the Midwest who are on the cutting edge of using OER in their community college classrooms, too. The data so far shows that OER doesn’t make students do worse or better than traditional texts, but it does increase students’ access to an education, especially in cases where textbook costs make students take fewer classes or cause students to try to get by without a textbook, and fall in line with the spirit of education: the democratic sharing of information for all.

If you’d like to read a study discussing some of the reasons people turn to OER and the impacts it has in the classroom, here’s a library permalink to one I cited in my recent presentation:
https://login.proxy.nmc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=afh&AN=57378795&site=ehost-live

Finally, I’ll leave you with a quote from the study linked above: “Use of the open textbook was reported by study participants as positively impacting both teaching and learning. Both faculty and students observed that the open textbook supported increased interactivity with course materials, noting the potential for open textbooks to stimulate collaboration around content as well as to enhance study and pedagogy,” ( L. Petrides et al. 46).