1 Chapter 1 – Context for OER at Penn State University
Open Educational Resources at Penn State – A Strategic Imperative
Penn State’s Open Educational Resources (OER) Initiative is a direct outgrowth of President Eric Barron’s imperative to address access and affordability.1 Penn State’s mission statement includes a critically important sentence. “As Pennsylvania’s land-grant university, we provide unparalleled access to education and public service to support the citizens of the Commonwealth and beyond.”2 Additionally, one of the plan’s foundations includes Enabling Access to Education with “We will place pursuing and completing a Penn State education within reasonable reach for students and their families.”3
Course materials comprise a significant financial burden for students, with costs hovering around $1200 annually for undergraduate students. Textbook prices have risen 812% since 1978, far outpacing the consumer price index ,which rose 250% during the same period.4 Although the cost of textbooks is increasing, a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education noted that student expenditures on textbooks dipped slightly in the most recent year. A major reason is that students are not purchasing their texts because of cost. In one study 65% of students reported not purchasing a textbook because of its high cost.5 Faculty have observed that some students do not have texts until well into the semester, if at all. OER is an important component, not only to support access and affordability, but also to drive pedagogical innovation. Studies conducted at Virginia State University and Houston Community College found that students who used open textbooks tended to have higher grades and lower withdrawal rates than their peers.6
The worldwide OER movement embraces the unprecedented opportunity afforded by technology to expand access to knowledge and advance pedagogy in creative ways. OER as a term was first designated by UNESCO in 2002 at the Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware
1 The Pennsylvania State University, Our Commitment to Impact: The Pennsylvania State University’s Strategic Plan for 2016-2020. http://sites.psu.edu/strategicplan/wp- content/uploads/sites/40561/2016/02/PennStateStrategicPlan2016-2020.pdf.
2 Ibid., 3.
3 Ibid., 4.
4 Dan Kopf. “Which Major Has the Most Expensive Textbooks?” Priceonomics (August 24, 2015). http://priceonomics.com/which-major-has-the-most-expensive-textbooks.
5 U.S. PIRG Education Fund and the Student PIRGs, Fixing the Broken Textbook Market.
http://www.studentpirgs.org/reports/sp/fixing-broken-textbook-market.
6 John Hilton III & Carol Laman, “One College’s Use of an Open Psychology Textbook.” Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance, and e-Learning, 27, no. 3 (2012): 265-272; Andrew Feldstein, Mirta Martin, Amy Hudson, Kiara Warren, John Hilton III, & David A. Wiley, “Open Textbooks and Increased Student Access and Outcomes.” European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, (2012).. http://www.eurodl.org/?p=current&article&article=533.
for Higher Education in Developing Countries.7 Then in 2012, UNESCO held the first worldwide summit on OER in Paris.8 UNESCO, in partnership with the Commonwealth for Learning, has also published guidelines for OER in higher education.9 OER has parallels with the open software movement, premised on values of free, editable, and reusable content.10 Even before the term OER was coined at the UNESCO forum to encompass diverse efforts in the open education domain, MIT, funded by the Hewlett foundation, had begun its OpenCourseWare initiative in 2001. While precise definitions for OER vary, there is general agreement on core principles of open educational materials that include being freely available to everyone and reusable in other contexts.11
While research pertaining to OER is relatively new, there has been some key empirical work done considering adoption, usage, barriers, and the teaching and learning impact of OER. Additionally, research in the area of OER has significantly increased in recent years, suggesting worldwide growth of the OER initiative.12 Such audiences are increasingly relevant as Penn State physical campuses continue to diversify internationally and especially for the World Campus as students physically located internationally increasingly enroll for Penn State Online.
Defining OER
While there are a few different definitions of OER that are typically employed, they all have overlap in a few key areas: they refer to resources that are free, reusable, and typically modifiable. Some common definitions are provided below.
- UNESCO DEFINITION: “Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation.”13
7 Airton Zancanaro, Jose Leomar Todesco, & Fernando Ramos, “A Bibliometric Mapping of Open Educational Resources.” International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16, no. 11 (2015): 1-23.
8 Javiera Atenas & Leo Havemann, “Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review.” Research in Learning Technology, 22, no. 13 (2014).
9 UNESCO, Guidelines for Open Educational Resources (OER) in Higher Education. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002136/213605E.pdf.
10 Ethan Senack,Open Textbooks: The Billion Dollar Solution, (2015). http://studentpirgs.org/sites/student/files/reports/The%20Billion%20Dollar%20Solution.pdf.
11 Martin Weller, Bea de los Arcos, Rob Farrow, Beck Pitt, & Patrick McAndrew, “The Impact of OER on Teaching and Learning Practice.” Open Praxis, 7, no. 4 (2015): 351-361.
12 Javiera Atenas & Leo Havemann, “Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review.” Research in Learning Technology, 22, no. 13 (2014).
13 UNESCO, What Are Open Educational Resources (OERs)?
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-educational- resources/what-are-open-educational-resources-oers.
David Wiley’s 5 Rs of OER:
- Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
- Reuse – the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
- Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
- Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
- Redistribute – the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)14
Hewlett Foundation Definition of OER:
“OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.”15
Penn State OER Definition
Penn State’s OER definition is noted below and is intended to encompass a wide range of affordable approaches:
Penn State University – Open Educational Resources (PSU-OER) are any type of educational materials that are available to the university community with little or no cost. It may also be the case with PSU-OER that the nature of these open materials means that students, faculty, and staff can legally and freely copy, use, adapt, and re-share them within the university community.
14 David A. Wiley, “The Access Compromise and the 5th R.” http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221. 15 The Hewlett Foundation, “Open Eductional Resources.” http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education/open-educational-resources.
