McLennan Community College - OER Essentials PD Training, Spring 2024

Hello, everyone!

It's such a joy to see you all in class.

Jessica

1. I am in the position of preparing to teach a course online for the first time (Music Appreciation), so I figured it was a great opportunity to re-evaluate my approach to the course as a whole and incorporate OER as I design the onine course. I hope to gain a solid foundation in OER so I can find and evaluate materials more quickly in order to decide what to use and what not to use. I also hope that my course re-design, or at least parts of it, can then be shared and be useful to others who teach Music Appreciation.

2. I think my biggest limiting factor right now is time. I only have about a month to do the bulk of the course building. If I had even more time (and loads of cash wouldn't hurt either), I would love to write more of my own materials, but with the current constraints, I will have to live with using OER as much as possible.

3. I have liked the idea of OER for several years now. I have never loved the textbooks avaialble for my course and hate that the students have to spend 20% more to take my course in order to have access to a textbook that I don't really love using. As an adjunct, I have not been in a position in the past to choose my own materials, but I now have the opportunity, so I want to choose a way that I can be happier with and will encourage more students to take my class. I want all students to have the opportunity to take Music Appreciation because I belive learning about and understanding music is important for all, and I think having an OER course avaialble will encourage more students to take the class.

Peter, I love that you're taking this approach to teaching Music Appreciation!  In Spring of 2023, I took Bonnie Sneed's Music Appreciation course for Music Majors and enjoyed it tremendously!  We had a decent textbook, but she put a huge amount of her own knowledge and experience into our class and curated music videos to give us a wide variety of time periods and genres.  Considering that my field is in Crimiinal Justice and Forensic Science, I was proud of what I gained from the music class.  I just know that what you do will be great! 

It's not that I hate the textbooks, it's just that they often are too wordy, don't focus on what I want to focus on, and include way more than I need. Mostly the same reasons Jessica also points our below. I see one additional benefit of OER is that I can use sections from several textbooks if I want because the students don't have to pay extra!

Hi, Peter!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree absolutely that time is a big consideration. For me, that was definitely a concern when I switched to OER last year. In fact, I picked the OpenStax textbook because it involved the least investment of time on my part--there might be other resources I'd like even more, but I felt it was the 'doable' option for me.

I also agree with your point about not 'loving' the resources available from most publishers. This comes up with me when I choose textbooks for literature courses A LOT! Most of them have about 65 - 70% of what I want, but almost none of them have everything I need. Often, there's a bunch of other stuff that I don't teach at all, too. Why are students paying for that when we aren't going to use it? One of my goals is to find better OER options for literature classes, particularly courses that rely on material that's still under copyright.

Thanks again for sharing!

Jessica

Hi Peter,

I was a music major many years ago. Unfortunately, my talent for music did not equal my love for music but it still feels like a big of my identity. I do regret having never taken music appreciation and do hope to do that one day.

I don't think you will have any issues with finding materials to quickly put an OER class together. I did a search and was surprised to find that there are actually quite a few OER sources for music appreciation. Deciding which materials to use out of all the resources available may be a different story. A few that stood out during my search were the following: 

Understanding Music Past and Present which I found under Galileo Open Learning Materials 

Music Appreciation available as a Pressbook from LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network which I located on Merlot

1.  My goals related to OER are to learn the best use of these new techniques opening to me.  I hope to learn resources that will be convenient and inexpensive for my students to use.  As to my own growth, it will be beneficial to have these methods available to my fingertips. 
2. In order to achieve these goals, I do need time, knowledge, and skills, but do not need loads of cash.  One of the attributes of OER is free or inexpensive access to resources.
3. Priorities that guided me to my goals are a recognition of how OER can benefit my students and a realization that the OER trend will lead to expectations on the part of my students and institution that we teachers will be able to respond to their economically driven requests for lower cost books and resources.  My assumption, based on experience, is that students’ needs are for both lower cost resources and for the best uses of their time.  Time is a value for most people, I think, but post-Covid I’ve observed that students’ assumptions about time and money have changed from thinking that they must conform to traditional ways of doing things to wanting innovations that will give them wiggle room in their plans.

I agree that the new crop of students are becoming more aware of advocating for their time and money, as they should.  I think we can in most cases meet the students where they are at without sacrificing the quality of the course.  However, these adaptations are going to take time and effort on our parts, and I'm sure there will be associated challenges I haven't thought of yet.

Hi, Suz!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree with you wholeheartedly about the need to support students and help them achieve their academic goals. Especially at two-year institutions and technical colleges, I feel that to remain competitive, we have to do everything we can to provide a rigorous education at the lowest possible cost. Other colleges across the nation are doing this, and they have seen results. To me, OER is an investment of time and labor on our part as faculty, but it's an investment that's entirely worth it in terms of job security and providing the best benefit to our students and community.

Thanks again!

Jessica

1.  I would like to start small by adapting one aspect of my courses at a time to OER.  At this point, I think I will be creating and/or remixing physics lab materials.  I hope to get more familiar with this process, so that I can continue to adapt these things in the near term.

2.  I think I need knowledge and skills, but  also need time.  Expense would exist only if I develop labs for which we don't already have equipment.

3.  I think making course materials more accessable (cheaper, online, etc.) helps with inclusivity.  I would like to begin to remove barriers to success from my classroom, especially when they don't relate to what the course objectives are.

Hi, Bernie!

Great point about inclusivity and OER! The last part of our course focuses on inclusivity in terms of OER materials, and I believe strongly that removing barriers to education aligns with MCC's mission and values. Just personally, it's also something I value a great deal, too. I remember that in my first semester of graduate school (for a humanities degree, btw), I had to buy this one book by Hazard Adams called Critical Theory Since Plato. It cost $190. Seriously! I'd paid big bucks for science textbooks back in the day, but I remember thinking, "Why are we using this book? All this stuff is really old! It's in the library..." I still have that book.

Also, I think lab materials are a great place to start. Several faculty I've heard from at training sessions have taken a similar approach, so you may be able to find some resources you can remix and adapt. I sure hope so!

Thanks so much for sharing!

Jessica

1. 

I taught OER or several years, beginning around the time the OpenStax textbook became available in 2013. Although, I was generally satisfied with my OER class, I decided to give inclusive access a try and have been using it for the past few semesters.

Unfortunately, I have felt a bit detached from the publisher's content and have had several students express a preference for my OER materials which I’ve continued to make available as additional study resources. My goal is to update and improve my existing materials and return to offering an OER class.

2. 

Time is the most important thing I could ask for in terms of achieving the goals. It would also be amazing to get a class release or stipend in order to teach fewer classes. This would provide time to develop something that our department could have the option to use and perhaps even participate in developing, if interested.

3. 

My initial desire  to change to OER was primarily out of frustration with technical issues with the publisher's materials. However, as I learned more about the OER movement and its value to my students, I became committed to its goals.

The values that informed my reflection have come from listening to my students. Although I have quite a few students who are unaware of textbook expenses, there are always at least a handful of students each semester who pay out of pocket for their classes and express appreciation for the free textbook and OER materials. Therefore, it enables access and equity. I also enjoy the ability to be creative with the materials in order to make them engaging, while customizing them to the specific learning requirements and needs of my students and classes. 

Hi, Shannon!

Thanks so much for your response. I couldn't agree more about the time investment--a course release would be so helpful for projects like this. Your journey into OER is quite similar to mine, too. I started looking into it just out of dissatisfaction with publisher materials (which are expensive, bulky, and still often don't have what you want), but the "Open" movement really aligned with a lot of my goals as a faculty member. For me, teaching at a community college is important because it allows me to reach students who have been marginalized in their education, for whatever reason. That's something I find really rewarding. Students who've done well and had a lot of resources to support them will probably do well with or without my help, but students who've never had the benefit of an instructor who works to support them need it to get ahead. OER is really part of that support.

Thanks again!

Jessica