Open educational resources save students $2.8 million

By Lilly Kujawski
Editor

WCC met its “20 by 2020” goal to develop and provide open educational resources, or OERs, in place of textbooks for 20 courses.

OERs are free, publicly accessible and openly licensed media—including print and digital materials—that can serve as an alternate or enhancement to traditional, usually commercially produced, media.

OERs saved students $2.8 million in textbook costs in the 2018-19 academic year.

Recently, Joyce Hommel, executive director of the learning resources division of the Bailey Library, set a new goal for OERs at WCC: a “Z degree by 2023.” This would mean students could potentially earn an entire degree at WCC with zero textbook costs.

Many for-profit textbook companies regularly come out with new editions of the book, often with very few updates or changes, according to Bonnie Tew, a communications professor.

The prices of these textbooks can be “astronomical,” Tew said. Some regular textbooks can cost as much as $200.

Douglas Waters, a business professor, had similar experiences in his classes before he developed an OER for his business law course, and later, his introductory business course.

“A fringe benefit of adopting an OER is you get the textbook reps out of your life,” Waters said.

In 2014, Tew took a sabbatical to develop an OER for her interpersonal communications class.

High textbook costs can be a barrier for students at WCC, Tew said. She said some students wait a few weeks into the course before buying the book to determine if they really need it, or in order to sort out financial aid funds. This can put students behind in their classes and affect their success rates.

Tew said that since developing and using OERs in her courses, she no longer has this problem.

“The thing that was motivating me, again, was the ability to provide students with cost-savings and also provide students with the opportunity to start a semester hitting the ground running and having all the materials that they need readily available,” Tew said. “That reduces stress. My students have told me they appreciate it.”

“I just felt that I had an ethical responsibility; if I could do it, then I should do it,” Tew added.

Molly Ledermann, a librarian at the Bailey Library, helps lead cohorts that are meant to assist teachers in developing OERs. According to Ledermann, teachers receive a small stipend if they create/adapt an OER.

Another benefit of adopting an OER for a course is that it allows teachers to only include content they actually need for the course, instead of skipping around chapters and sections that aren’t part of the curriculum, Waters said.

According to Heather Zettelmaier, an English as a Second Language professor, OERs are “100% useable,” which helps cut down on prep-work for instructors.

Zettelmaier said it costs her students less than $3 to print out her OER in the copy center.

Tailen Toliver, 21, is a business major who took Waters’ course, and said taking a class that used an OER helped him save money.

A lot of students new to WCC have concerns about textbook costs, according to Toliver, who is a student ambassador at the college.

“I just think that all professors should incorporate OERs in their lessons,” Toliver said. “It just saves [students] so much; you know, so much grief, so much stress.”

The process to develop and adapt an OER can be tricky, which is why Bailey Library staff members are available to assist teachers.

Zettelmaier said one of her biggest challenges in developing an OER was navigating Creative Commons licensing and attribution specifics.

Particularly, library staff members can help teachers with copyright concerns, Ledermann said.

Whenever a WCC faculty member develops or adapts an OER, they make it copyright-free so it can be accessed and used outside of the WCC community, Ledermann said.

A list of courses that use OERs can be found on the Bailey Library website under “OER Cohort Registration.”

Four new courses are signed up to join the cohorts in the fall of 2020, Hommel said.

She added that she anticipates a “z-degree” to be available in the next year.

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