Charlotte Hoopes had no idea what open educational resources (OER) were until she had to build an introductory business course from scratch in 2021, her first year as an assistant professor in the McIntire School of Commerce*. The cost of business case studies and simulations consumed her class budget, leading her to discover free, “open” textbooks. As she delved into the world of OER, she discovered resources and grants through UVA Library that allowed her to create her own open textbook specifically tailored for her class. That textbook is now available worldwide, and has been used by more than 1,000 students.
Open educational resources include everything from textbooks to videos to assessment tools – and they’re free and specifically licensed to be available for sharing, adapting, and reuse. UVA Library offers resources, tools, and consultations for instructors interested in incorporating OER into their course materials. The Library also cosponsors UVA’s Open Educational Resources Learning Community through the Center for Teaching Excellence. The six-session community group meetings are open to any UVA faculty, graduate students, postdocs, or staff interested in learning about OER. The meetings will start again this fall.
Hoopes participated in the 2023 OER Learning Community, as did Daniel James, an assistant professor of mathematics who has what he describes as “a longstanding interest in reducing costs and providing things freely accessibly to all of my students.” At one of the OER community meetings he learned about the Library’s Affordability and Equity Grants, sponsored by the Jefferson Trust, which provided support to instructors who wanted to use or create OER materials for their classes. James applied for a grant and met with Bethany Mickel, a Teaching and Instructional Design Librarian, and Judy Thomas, the Library’s Director of Faculty Programs. He was ultimately awarded a grant to improve student access to STEM fields through the application of transparent assessment methods in his introductory calculus class.
“Daniel’s work is characteristic in some ways of many of the other projects we're seeing, in that it starts with a pedagogical problem,” said Thomas, who created the Affordability and Equity grant program. “These are these are faculty who have said, ‘I need to teach this class differently, to address the particular needs that I see in my classroom. And I've got some great ideas for how to do this.’ That’s the point that they’ve come to us.”
Thomas and Mickel work with instructors like James and Hoopes (who also received an Affordability and Equity Grant to create her business class textbook) to help them locate and adapt open resources that align with their pedagogical needs. For instructors who create new OER, the librarians assist them with Creative Commons licensing and sharing their work openly on platforms that others can access.
“I’d like UVA faculty to know that it’s those little steps that often lead to bigger ones,” Mickel said. “And there is support for OER work here in the Library. It's part of what we do. We get excited about the discovery process of finding what's out there. Your idea or project doesn't have to be aligned with a grant … it can be something small, and we're here to help flesh it out.”
We spoke to Mickel, Thomas, Hoopes, and James about using OER in the classroom and the many ways open materials can improve students’ learning experiences (and lower their expenses!). Our edited conversation is below.
Q. Can you give me an overview of the Affordability and Equity Grant program as well as the Open Educational Resources Learning Community?
Judy Thomas: I originally set up the basic framework for the Affordability and Equity program and secured the money for the grant with the Jefferson Trust as a way to jumpstart our OER support efforts and build a community of committed faculty. Bethany has done much more hands-on work with the faculty. She’s led our learning community and given hands-on help to the Affordability and Equity Grant awardees. Although the funding for the program has been exhausted, we still provide robust support for the discovery, use, and creation of OER.
Bethany Mickel: I formed a really good working partnership with Emily Scida, a Senior Instructional Designer and former faculty member in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. Together, we wrote the University of Virginia OER Learning Community Guide and organized the OER Learning Community group. As someone who's been a faculty member and also has that learning design and technology ability, Emily has helped to open some different doors for us. The connection that's been forged has really proven to be beneficial. I love the fact that it's the Library working with another department on this larger-scale type of project.
The OER Learning Community group met over a series of six weeks last fall. We used the community guide as sort of the scaffold for each week's discussion. So, participants would read and engage with the material ahead, and then it would allow us during our in-person time to really have some meaningful conversation around the topics. And we opened it up really to anybody with an interest in OER. We’re looking forward to running it again this fall. This time we're going to highlight the renovated Shannon Library space.
Q. What are some of the major benefits of OER?
Thomas: In addition to cost savings by eliminating expensive textbooks, research shows that students have achieved the same or better learning outcomes using OER. And then there is the importance of creating inclusive classrooms: many our participants in the Affordability and Equity program have talked about the need for learning materials that reflect students’ lived experiences, are up-to-date, and are free of the kinds of biases they were seeing all the time in published work. Through the practice of open pedagogy, faculty can further engage students by involving them in the creation of course content.
And I don't think we should discount the affordability piece. There is a perception that students here at UVA are wealthy and that they can afford whatever they need, but data from a couple of recent surveys from VIVA (Virginia’s academic library consortium) and SERU (Student Experience in the Research University) proves that is not true. Several of our participants in the program did mention the importance to them of being able to provide free materials to their students, and Charlotte is an example of one who created a textbook to save on costs.
Charlotte Hoopes: In terms of student feedback about the textbook, one of the overarching themes was they really liked that it was free. I’ve heard students talk about when a faculty member writes a textbook, and then the student has to pay around $200 to use it; there’s usually a negative feeling that comes with that. So, they had the opposite reaction to this OER textbook; they loved that it was free.
Daniel James: The end goal of my project is to actually eliminate the costs that students incur when they take the class. I was a first-generation college student, and I come from a single-parent household, and it was not an affluent single-parent household. When I got to college, if I took a course where there was $150 textbook, then I either didn't take the course, or I didn't buy the textbook, and I just took the course without it. So being in the position now where I'm the one deciding the course materials, this is something that keeps me up at night, knowing that my students have to pay money to take my course beyond what they already have to pay just to be here, in terms of tuition, in terms of rent, in terms of food, etc. So it's definitely something I'm very motivated to try to make an impact on.
Q. Can you tell me more about student involvement as well as feedback to your OER projects?
James: I was really enthusiastic to have some funding specifically set aside to get undergraduates to contribute to this project, because I want it to be a product for them. And I feel like the best way I can make a product for them is if it's partially by them, too. My undergraduates are helping me extract and improve rubrics that I've used to grade test questions. They can provide that insight specifically for UVA students in ways that I would not be able to.
The learning target activities for my class were created using “H5P” [an open-source content framework with suite of interactive activities]. The activities have been made public and are already being used in calculus classes in a local high school.
Hoopes: Many of my students commented on how the open textbook was distilled down into only what they needed to know. And that was one of the things that I worked really hard to do in putting the resource together: to cut out any fluff that felt redundant in the other resources.
Another thing that a lot of them commented on was that they liked that there were these short videos kind of interspersed in the textbook. Using UVA Pressbooks, I could easily embed videos to help either teach a concept or reinforce it, as well as create some variety in a chapter so that it wasn't all text. Finally, I was inspired by my TA to do this: at the end of each chapter, there's a set of H5P flashcards. And I know students have appreciated using those.
Q. What was your experience like working with the Library?
James: The support that the folks in the Library have provided has been really incredible compared to the places that I've been before, not just having so many people to help with it, but just the enthusiasm for providing assistance and the genuine interest. These folks are motivated. They have changes they want to enact in the world, and they want to do their part to make that happen.
Hoopes: I think the Library is a fantastic resource, and I hope that more faculty will take advantage because they are there to assist. Bethany and Judy have been super helpful. Anytime I've had a question, they've been able to answer it. They have a lot of good resources and support for faculty who are interested in developing this. People don't necessarily have a ton of time to invest in OER. But they help to streamline the process and connect people with the resources that they need.
Q. What advice do you have for instructors who are considering using OER?
Hoopes: A lot of my fellow faculty members are not themselves familiar with OER. I think one of the nice things about OER is that it allows faculty to make material their own. I think that's a valuable thing for faculty to do in the classroom — to be able to customize materials to fit your needs to adapt things. With OER, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel where it doesn't need to be reinvented; there's a lot to draw on already.
I know not every faculty member wants to create their own materials, whether it’s a time issue, or that's not a priority for them. But I personally think it's a way to kind of be invested in the teaching process. You know, the feedback generally, besides enthusiasm that the textbook was free, was that students liked that I had put in this work to create this resource. I think there is a lot of opportunity to involve students in this.
James: Creating and adapting OER is not something that most faculty are incentivized to do. But the Library team does a good job of making it worth our time in other ways, and I really appreciate them and their efforts for that.
To participate in the Open Educational Resources Learning Community this fall, reach out to Bethany Mickel.
* Beginning this fall, Charlotte Hoopes will be an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Washington and Lee University.