When advocating for Open Education initiatives one may be asked the question “How many faculty members are using OER?” This broad and often daunting question could be requested by any number of stakeholders ranging from a departmental to an institutional level. The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley has begun to build an infrastructure to unpack this question and provide stakeholders insight on the state of OER usage at our campus. State legislation and an assigned Open Education Librarian have been essential in creating the momentum for this initiative.
Texas Senate Bill 810 (passed into law in June 2017) requires that Institutions of Higher Education in Texas include a designator in their course schedule’s list of required and/or recommended texts that identify a text as an open educational resource. Most institutions in Texas have struggled to implement this law mainly due to the difficulty in finding the instructors who are using OER, or other “Zero-Cost” options like library licensed materials, their own instructional materials, or no course materials at all. The first part of this presentation will focus on a successful method of finding these types of courses that was first implemented in the summer and fall of 2021 at UTRGV. This method consists of a brief form that has been added to the standard textbook adoption process faculty undergo each semester. This new approach has resulted in a 319% increase in the courses we have been able to identify as zero-cost, as compared with earlier efforts.
The second half of the presentation will review how the Open Education Librarian has been able to collect this course marking data and compile it into a relational database. As a member of the 2020-21 OpenStax Institutional Partner cohort, UTRGV was made aware of the importance of tracking OER data in proving the success of our campus OER initiatives. The data collected throughout the Institutional Partnership as well as the data collected from this iniative have provided a more defined notion of how many “Zero-Cost” courses we are offering on campus, what types of materials are being used in these courses, and what are the cost savings and number of students impacted by the use of OER. This data has then been utilied to lead outrech efforts at UTRGV.
After participating in this session, attendees will be able to:
- Understand the importance of tracking and marking courses that are being taught with OER and other “Zero-Cost” options at their universities
- Design and implement a successful method for increasing their institution’s OER course marking
- Understand the importance of tracking OER data for proving the success of campus OER initiatives
- Learn how to utilize collected data from course marking initiatives to futher lead OER outreach efforts
