We鈥檙e unlikely to see any improvements unless we鈥檙e willing to make some radical changes and look at alternative models of textbook provision.
We鈥檝e recently begun to look at Open Educational Resources (OER) and assess how much of a game-changer they could be.
What is OER?
defines OER as 鈥渢eaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open licence that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or few restrictions.鈥
What are the benefits of OER?
They are free for everyone to read, adapt and distribute without limitation. Your students can access open textbooks and other OER at no cost to themselves or the institution
They have a pedagogical impact 鈥 you can manipulate OER in a way you can鈥檛 commercial textbooks
OER enable your academic freedom and professional autonomy. You don鈥檛 have to teach a class based on what a commercial publisher provides, so the material can be adapted to suit the needs of your students, and your learning outcomes
If you want to customise textbook content to suit your curriculum OER allows you full flexibility
Students do just as well, if not better, with OER (see a synthesis of research published between 2015 and 2018.
Also, A meta-analysis 鈥 Virginia Clinton, Shafiq Khan, 2019)
They don鈥檛 harvest student data unlike some commercial publisher platforms (e.g. )
You can involve students as co-creators and contributors (see )
They address the University鈥檚 PLA priorities of:
Employability: students retain access to OER after graduation.
They support graduates who are practitioners and need ongoing access to key texts in their field, and they can be instrumental in lifelong learning.
Inclusivity: many of us are aware that commercially published texts are often US- or Euro-centric. OER present an opportunity to include material that鈥檚 more representative of the global scholarly community.
Sustainability: OER can offer longevity. Traditionally published material, particularly in digital format, can be withdrawn with little or no notice, or prices and access models changed to make it difficult to purchase for our institution.
OER are preserved and curated for the long term, always remaining free at the point of use.
How can I find OER?
You can already find freely available material in and there鈥檚 an 鈥榦pen access鈥 filter to help you do this.
Unfortunately, it鈥檚 not that easy to see at a glance what the licence terms are, so you can鈥檛 readily tell whether a work can be modified for your own use.
We鈥檙e working on this! In the meantime sources such as the , , , and are useful starting points.
What鈥檚 next?
Our new content strategy clearly states our support for initiatives in the field of open scholarship. We want to hear from you 鈥 from the students and staff in our core communities 鈥 as we begin to develop the infrastructure and services to support the discovery, use and creation of OER.
We鈥檙e working closely with the university libraries of Leeds and York to progress these objectives.
This Autumn we鈥檒l be surveying teaching staff and talking to those already working with OER to help inform our work.
In the meantime get in touch with us, make your views known and let us know about any OER work you鈥檝e created.
Helen Moore