International Journal of Open Educational Resources Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2019/Winter 2020 | Page 231

Coordinating OER Efforts Across a Mid-Sized College Campus
offset the time required for this activity.
The working group has proposed a
Provost Grant Program modeled after
successful programs at other colleges
and universities. Invaluable to our efforts
to create this proposal is the work
done by Grand Valley State University
to compile a fairly comprehensive document
detailing OER initiatives and
grant programs at colleges and universities
across the United States (Yahne,
Rander, & Ruen, n.d.). The proposal
also was greatly informed by the ongoing
successful grant program in Oregon
(OpenOregon, 2018) and the work
done by Christopher Barnes as part of
his SPARC Open Education Leadership
Program requirements (2018).
As part of this grant program,
instructors who receive awards will be
encouraged to assess their use of OER
in the classroom. It would be beneficial
for UNA’s instructors to add to the
growing body of literature on education
outcomes of OER and OER-related
institutional efforts. To that end, we
would like to see instructors consider
employing the model used by similar
grant programs, where they obtain
IRB approval for a comparison study of
student learning outcomes using traditional
course materials and OER course
materials. Instructors would also be
encouraged to publish and share their
adapted or new OER materials via the
UNA Scholarly Repository and in Alabama’s
OER Commons.
The working group gauged instructor
perceptions of course material
costs through several survey questions.
The evidence from the survey generally
indicates that instructors on campus are
aware of the costs of course materials to
students. They generally have a good
perception of the average cost of materials;
the majority has checked the price
of their course materials in the last 11
months and several instructors indicated
they had fielded questions from
students about other options to purchasing
the textbook. This awareness of
course material costs and the potential
impact on students could suggest an
opportunity to promote OER as a way
to lower costs for students, make education
more affordable, and encourage
instructors to consider OER adoption
as a benefit for students.
The library has become heavily
involved in the push to reduce textbook
costs for students. They have begun a
program called the Textbook Affordability
Initiative, which utilizes a variety of
measures to purchase learning materials
for students. One part of this project
that has already begun is the strategic
purchase of textbooks for high-enrollment
courses. These books are placed
on course reserve so that students have
access to the materials without having
to purchase expensive textbooks. Another
push by this project is to begin
to strategically purchase databases that
can be used to supplement or replace
traditional learning materials.
The survey also aimed to identify
whether campus instructors had experience
using OER in their teaching. The
survey data reveals some use of OER by
UNA’s instructors. Twelve respondents
have used or were using OER at the time
of the survey. This current use of OER,
though small, could be a foundation for
increasing OER use on campus. One
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