Free Up Your Teaching: Open Access Teaching Made Easy

Ann Ludbrook, Michelle Schwartz, Nancy Walton, Dana Lee, Chris

MacDonald, Gavin AdamsonOctober 21, 2015

Agenda• An introduction to open access education• Demo: Building a mix and match course• Guest speakers:– Nancy Walton, Director of e-learning– Dana Lee, Associate Professor, RTA School of Media, and

Director of the Sports Media Program– Chris MacDonald, Associate Professor, Business and

Law, and Director, Ted Rogers Leadership Centre– Gavin Adamson, Associate Professor, School of

Journalism.

What is open access education?

Open Access Education

“A collection of practices that utilize online technology to freely share knowledge” – UBC•Open access journals (DOAJ)•Open data (Toronto Open Data)•Open source software (Firefox, Wordpress)•Open textbooks (BC Open Ed, Open Stax)•Open educational resources (OER Commons)

BC Campus, “Adopting Open Textbooks.” http://adoptotb.com

Open Educational Resources

• “teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain or released with an intellectual property license that allows for free use, adaptation, and distribution” –UNESCO

BC Campus, “Adopting Open Textbooks.” http://adoptotb.com

5Rs – What Makes Material Open?

• Retain – make, own, and control content• Reuse – use content for any purpose• Revise – adapt, adjust, or modify the content• Remix – combine original or revised content

with other open content to form new content• Redistribute the remixed work under a similar

licence so others can use your work too!

David Wiley, “The Access Compromise and the 5th R.”http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221

What are some benefits to open access education?

Benefits of Open Access

• Jack Andraka – high school student who invented screening test for pancreatic cancer by reading open source journals articles

By XPRIZE Foundation (Flickr: Visioneering 2013) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Why Use Open Access Resources?Price

• Average undergraduate cost textbooks and supplies $200.00 CAN per course

• Textbooks increasing at a cost of 6%-7% per year• Estimated 82% increase in the price of college

textbooks since 1982 in the US • E-textbook licenses often expire and are sometimes

limited to only 6 months• Textbook refreshment cycle of every three years

means the used textbook market is limited

Why Use Open Access Resources?Access

• U.S. PIRG survey found 65% of 2000 students surveyed had opted out of buying the required textbook because of price

• 94% of the students who had skipped buying textbooks believed it could hurt their performance in class.

• 48% of the students said that they had altered which classes they take due to textbook costs

Why Use Open Access Resources?Improved student performance

• US study of 4,183 science students showed an increase of .65 points on standardized tests using open textbooks

• Virginia State University study showed higher grades in courses that used open textbooks

Case Study: University of Virginia

• Study looked at student experience of open textbooks

• 991 students in 9 business courses• Increased student marks • Students were satisfied with the resources• Improved access to resources (parity)• Weakness – possibly better suited to

introductory coursesFeldstein, A., Martin, M., Hudson, A., Warren, K., Hilton III, J., & Wiley, D. (2012). Open Textbooks and Increased Student Access and Outcomes. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning.

• Putting individual copyrighted chapters on e-reserve using fair dealing

• Remixing open access resources to focus only on what is needed for your particular course

• Providing links in your course shell to material on the web

• Working with the library to clear copyright on on different types of material

Using open access readings:The Mix and Match Approach

Build a Mix and Match Course

Build a Mix and Match Course

Build a Mix and Match Course

One chapter from a traditional textbook (used under fair dealing)

Build a Mix and Match Course

Build a Mix and Match Course

Build a Mix and Match Course

Build a Mix and Match Course

Build a Mix and Match Course

Build a Mix and Match Course

Build a Mix and Match Course

Build a Mix and Match Course

Build a Mix and Match Course

Use Open Access Educational Resources

• Research what is out there • Review and evaluate• Decide if you want to use as is OR edit

and customize• Distribute to your students and cite• Let other instructors know how it worked

out

Supports available at Ryerson

• LTO will help with best practices on open access educational resource creation

• The library can host Open Access Textbooks and Resources in the RULA Digital Repository

• Copyright Librarian will help with research on open access resources

• E-Learning Librarian can help with tips on software etc.