International Journal of Open Educational Resources Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2019/Winter 2020 | Page 156

International Journal of Open Educational Resources
pus were mostly confined to individual
faculty locating or creating materials on
their own. Several faculty members had
taken the initiative to apply for earlier
statewide grants to produce open textbooks—and
were successful—but there
was no collective action on campus
around the use of OER.
During the 2018-2019 academic
year, however, things began to change.
Due to Open Oregon Educational Resources’
faculty stipends, WOU saw an
increasing number of faculty members
engage with OER. The Open Oregon
Educational Resources Director traveled
to the Monmouth campus to deliver
an Open Textbook Library (OTL)
presentation on two separate occasions.
Thirty-five faculty members attended
each of the presentations, 23 completed
reviews of open textbooks in OTL, and
16 planned to adopt the textbook.
Open Oregon Educational Resources
also launched a new initiative
during Open Ed Week 2019—the
Textbook Sprint. Faculty were given a
week (and a $750 stipend) to redesign
a course using OER. Eleven of the 13
WOU faculty members who started the
sprint completed it in its entirety. One
faculty member completed the required
OER online training and received $250,
but she was unable to finish the redesign.
The other instructor reported he
was experimenting with not using a
textbook at all.
Courses redesigned during the
Textbook Sprint varied considerably.
Three are described below.
1. Math faculty members at WOU
were divided over the possibilities
that OER can engender, and skepticism
had inhibited OER adoption
efforts until Open Oregon Educational
Resources introduced the
Textbook Sprint. When one faculty
member described the initiative at a
department meeting, she was given
the go-ahead to redesign Calculus I
(MTH 251) using the corresponding
OpenStax Textbook. The savings
for students in 2019-2020, because
of that change, is estimated to
be over $16,000.
2. A writing instructor redesigned
Workplace and Technical Writing
(WR 300). The course makes extensive
use of the open textbook,
Technical Writing, and the Purdue
Online Writing Lab (OWL). There
is a detailed syllabus with a weekby-week
list of readings and activities,
several assignment prompts
with grading rubrics, and a final
assignment (also with a grading rubric).
The final assignment allows
students to choose between two
non-disposable projects, both of
which can easily be adapted for students
at different institutions. The
Writing faculty member estimates
students will save $17,000 annually
by moving away from a traditionally
published textbook.
3. A chemistry professor who obtained
an earlier Open Oregon Educational
Resources grant chose to redesign
CHEM 450: Biochemistry I during
the Textbook Sprint. CHEM 450
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