Motivating Factors Among USG Faculty for Adopting OER

Susan Hrach, Columbus State University; Tomohiro Nagashima, Carnegie Mellon University;

Jeff Gallant, University System of Georgia

Survey design and response

●The survey was conducted from May 16-July 1, 2016, in electronic format; applicants for Affordable Learning Georgia (ALG) Textbook Transformation Grants from Rounds One through Five were invited to participate.

●Of the 458 potential participants, 77 responses were received, reaching close to a 17% return rate. The demographics of survey participants reflect a diverse and representative range among all institutional sectors in the USG, all instructional ranks, and various levels of experience teaching the course for which they considered adopting OER. Respondents were almost equally male and female, and most fell into an age range between 35-44 and 45-54.

Findings: qualitative data supported and expanded upon quantitative results

●Asked to identify motivating factors for adopting OER, twenty-four (24) responses were offered as optional comments. Most frequently mentioned (by 33%) as a motivating factor was faculty members’ interest in helping students. Helping students was an equal, if not more powerful, motive than monetary incentives, as suggested by the comments. “The biggest motivating factor was giving students a free textbook!,” and “I got tired of smart, motivated students dropping or failing my class because they couldn’t afford the textbook,” are representative comments that express a motive to help students, both through cost-savings and through improved learning.

●Asked to identify unanticipated challenges to adopting OER, forty-two (42) comments provided valuable data. Respondents repeatedly identified the challenge presented by time, including the need to devote time to all of the following activities involved in adopting OER: searching for materials, creating materials, editing materials, experimenting with materials, maintaining materials, collaborating with colleagues, and educating colleagues and students about the adoption and use of OER.

●Thirty-nine (39) respondents answered the question, “Did you find adopting OER led to any other changes in your teaching practice? If so, what were they?” Comments followed two general themes: improved use and quality of course materials, and increased implementation of active learning strategies. Respondents mentioned a greater awareness of cost and inefficiencies in publishers’ course materials, and appreciated the ability to improve materials’ currency and relevance. Several comments powerfully testify to transformative effects of OER adoption on classroom pedagogy:

○I changed from a primarily lecture-based style to a primarily ‘flipped’ classroom. Adopting an OER is what prompted and motivated me to make such large scale changes in my course.

○We have encouraged students to become part of the project and learn not just the material contained in the course material, but how the course materials themselves are built and contribute feedback.

○I have moved toward flipping several topics and using many different active learning strategies in the course.

Implications

●The grant opportunity seems to have provided momentum through reward and recognition for adopting open materials, and was most appreciated by “early adopter” faculty who were prepared to invest their time with or without the monetary support of a grant: “The grant did not motivate us to create the resources. It enabled us to do so without undue burden.” Evidence to buttress faculty motives apart from grant incentives can be seen in the 57.6% of those who applied but did not receive a grant, yet adopted OER anyway.

●This set of open-ended responses suggests that adopting OER encourages a faculty shift from serving as deliverers of publisher-designed content to embracing their own authority as curators of open content that they have discovered, organized, and/or created with specific needs in mind. This empowering shift in control over content further encourages faculty’s willingness to transform teaching practices.

●Time presents a formidable obstacle. Only two respondents suggested potential solutions to the challenge of time, both involving the resource of student assistance. Students are a potentially underutilized resource for helping to mitigate the time demands of adopting OER.

Affordable Learning Georgia: Strategic Planning Based on Applicant Survey

Affordable Learning Georgia (ALG) is a University System of Georgia (USG) initiative to promote the adoption, adaptation, and creation of open and no-cost learning materials, working with faculty to save students money on textbook costs, provide equal day-one access to materials for all students, and contribute to student success.

Finding 1: Textbook Transformation Grants have targeted the correct primary barrier of USG faculty OER adoption: time.

●ALG will continue the Textbook Transformation Grants program, providing faculty with the time and support they need for large-scale OER implementations.

●ALG will continue funding the creation of materials which make the OER adoption process faster, easier, and more customizable, including open ancillary materials to existing open textbooks.

●ALG will partner with organizations which make the OER adoption process faster, easier, and more customizable, such as Rice University’s OpenStax.

Finding 2: Outside of what funding itself provides, being awarded a grant fosters more recognition and awareness of OER implementation.

●ALG will expand grant offerings to include smaller mini-grant projects to review and revise materials, bringing not only improved and new OER but also more recognition to small projects via a more accessible funding level.

●ALG will pursue other methods of raising awareness within each USG institution.

Finding 3: OER adoption is happening at a significant rate outside of funded Textbook Transformation Grants projects.

●ALG will work with USG offices to embed no-cost and low-cost materials designations within course schedules at a section level, therefore providing recognition for and tracking current non-grant OER usage.

●With a uniform designator, there will be a larger pool of data for research into the efficacy of OER implementation in terms of student performance, retention, and success.

Finding 4: Through OER, faculty have noticed significant pedagogical freedom by having more control over the content used.

●ALG is pursuing the creation of Faculty Learning Communities and a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Fellow program in order to research and advance effective teaching strategies within OER implementation.

Further Considerations:

●The support of student assistants is possible within a Textbook Transformation Grants project, but this is heavily dependent on the institution and the instructor’s current situation. Making this more well-known in the application process may help.

●Different measures may need to be taken in order to raise awareness of OER beyond the early adopters mentioned in this survey. These may include having more pre-built but still customizable solutions that further reduce the time barrier to implementation.

This roundtable handout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.