OERs at StFX
/A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, students didn’t spend thousands of dollars on textbooks, for many were freely provided by the institution they attend. But wait, this isn’t a fairy-tale—for many students attending university in British Columbia, it’s reality. Since 2012, students on the West Coast have saved almost $24 million dollars as many of their courses are taught using open textbooks. It’s not just students that benefit from these open textbooks, either—hundreds of faculty members have made the switch and have a variety of free textbooks at their disposal.
What is AtlanticOER and Why Does it Matter?
Open Educational Resources (OERs) are online, freely distributed textbooks, but can also include a variety of resources such as videos and educational materials. To learn more about these OERs, I attended the virtual launch event of AtlanticOER and spoke with its lead organizer, StFX alumna Tiffany MacLennan ’19, ’20.
First, MacLennan explains, “AtlanticOER is a repository of open educational resources that are going to be available to any student in Atlantic Canada. That means that once it gets off the ground and gets building itself a little bit more, it will be a place that any professor in Atlantic Canada can put in either their textbooks, educational materials, or videos. As it grows, the aim is that students get access to free educational materials and we can ween away from the traditional textbook model.” You don’t have to convince any student about the benefits of OERs. Many of us know that textbooks can be expensive, unengaging, and unhelpful to the learning process. Many students choose not to buy textbooks for a class because for them, it is a choice between textbooks and groceries.
There are benefits for professors, too. MacLennan explains that “bringing OERs into your classroom can provide you with a new learning opportunity and can force you to have more exciting and inviting conversations with your students. Through using OER, you get to learn more yourself… and you get to play with it—it’s a fun initiative. We also have librarians who can comfortably find OERs for a classroom to remove some of the burden.”
AtlanticOER was established to eliminate some of the barriers to creating OERs, McLennan shared. First, “it gives educators the platform to start creating and sharing their own OERs,” she said. It also helps overcome the challenges that come with creating textbooks and educational materials by addressing the barriers of limited time and resources. “Creating a textbook isn’t very fast–they take a lot of work. With the AtlanticOER repository, there are grants you can apply for that compensate your time spent on OERs or to hire students to help create OERs.” The organization also places a great deal of emphasis on disseminating knowledge, helping people understand the benefits that come with OERs. For McLennan, “the end goal is that no student makes the choice not to buy a textbook based on affordability. The grad gift this year is
for student food insecurity due to an uptick in food related asks from the financial aid office. That tells us those decisions are being made more and more often.”
Students’ Union Advocacy
I also sat down with Siobhan Lacey, current Vice President Academic (VPA) of the StFX Students’ Union to find out what they’re currently doing to advocate for OER adoption. Provincially, they’re working with StudentsNS, the province’s non-profit advocacy group that represents post-secondary students, to advocate to the provincial government for OER funding, such as providing financial incentives and grants to professors. Close to home, the Students’ Union is facilitating conversations with key stakeholders such as faculty and students.
Prior to the launch of AtlanticOER, StFX did not have the on-campus resources to push for OERs; but now, Students’ Unions across the Atlantic region are undergoing training to advocate for OERs at their University Senates. Moving forward, it is important for our Students’ Union to make a bigger push on OERs, but this change can only happen if students want it. It will require students talking to their professors about OERs to create an Open Education culture on our campus.
When asked about the barriers to implementing OERs, Lacey said that “there are a couple big ones. The biggest one is obviously funding. It’s always going to be funding. But to first develop an online infrastructure that can host a variety of OERs… is going to be very expensive, maintaining that even more so. The funding [barrier] is why I think we’re seeing such communal effort around OERs, and why no separate university is developing them. It would take a big budget that I don’t think one university would be able to sustain. Another barrier we’re seeing is incentivizing faculty to develop their own OERs. Obviously, developing a textbook is time consuming and can be a lot of work for faculty. But, ultimately, we know that it’s so much more beneficial for students. So, it’s about incentivizing those folks and showing them the benefit it has to student academic success.” The final barrier Lacey identified was awareness: “trying to encourage faculty to develop OERs because students want them while the majority don’t know what they are is a little difficult to do!” Earlier this year, StudentsNS ran an awareness campaign focusing on this final barrier, and is currently putting a lot of emphasis on knowledge translation to provide students with the skills to engage in conversations with faculty about OERs.
Offering advice to future VPAs or students interested in OERs, McLennan says “not be discouraged by the slow uptake at first, because all good things take time. Starting conversations isn’t easy, especially when faculty have been teaching with these books for [several] years. Use the time it takes to build things to build things right. We need more students to know about OERs to get more students to talk about them… with our faculty, administrations, and librarians to actually push this forward.”
University Administration
The university administration can play a big role in implementing OERs. On March 5, 2021, University Academic Vice President and Provost Dr. Kevin Wamsley agreed to sit down with me for an interview. “I’m a fan of educational resources being distributed to as many people as possible,” he said. “Education is difficult, it’s hierarchical, it can favour those with more resources, and textbooks have, for the past twenty-to-twenty-five years, become very expensive. Textbook companies have become unfair in their pricing. While education has been brought onto the open market readily, the burden of this falls to the student… providing free or low-cost educational resources makes education more accessible.”
When asked about benefits for faculty, Wamsley emphasized that the role of the professor is to disseminate knowledge. “I think it’s important that professors are actively involved in producing materials for class. Professors creating and modifying OERs is an important part of the process… professors are excited to talk about their work and that’s the way it should be. Once you begin to contribute, and you see how it can be dynamic in your classroom, I think people are going to be all in,” he said.
Coming back to one barrier identified by the Students’ Union in implementing OERs, I asked Wamsley about incentivizing professors to adopt and create them. He said there are no current plans to incentivize professors to take this project on, but went on to explain that the school does have a plan: “we have a fabulous teaching and learning centre over in Mulroney Hall operated by Dr. Angie Kolen, and this presents a marvellous vessel to get the word out and provide workshops about OERs and how to get involved.” Further, he says, “professors are not getting rich selling textbooks. They’re not, they never will,” so there’s nothing standing in the way of making future publications accessible.
