Category Archives: Open Educational Resources

Inaugural Open Education Fellows Announced

The University of Texas Libraries is pleased to announce the cohort in the Open Education Fellows pilot program. A competitive application process yielded many high impact proposals, and the selection committee undertook the difficult task of narrowing the outstanding crowd to officially name three Open Education Fellows who will convert their courses to zero-cost required materials through the adoption of existing open educational resources (OER) and one team of Open Education Fellows who will develop their own OER to serve students at The University of Texas at Austin and beyond.

Please join us in congratulating the Adoption / Adaptation Fellows, Dr. Joel Nibert (Department of Mathematics), Dr. Diane McDaniel Rhodes (School of Social Work), and Dr. Amy Kristin Sanders (School of Journalism and Media), as well as the team of Authorship Fellows, Dr. Joshua Frank, Dr. Delia Montesinos, and Mina Ogando Lavin (Department of Spanish & Portuguese). Their work over the next year will impact students enrolled in the following courses:

  • M 358K: Applied Statistics
  • SPN 367D: Business in Hispanic Life and Culture
  • SW 334: The Practice of Social Work in Organizations and Communities
  • TC 302: The Surveillance State

The average price of a new, print textbook is a little over $65 at The University of Texas at Austin, per the University Co-op, but electronic resources and access codes can often cost students much more. Open Education Fellows aim to cumulatively save students enrolled in their courses thousands of dollars each semester by switching from commercial textbooks and other materials to OER and other freely available resources. The open licenses assigned to OER allow students to access course content immediately and at no cost. Beyond this benefit, these open licenses also permit instructors to make copies and customize materials in ways that better serve students’ interests and their learning outcomes. Authorship Fellows will apply open licenses to the works they create and contribute them back to the OER ecosystem for other instructors to discover, adopt, and adapt.

The Libraries will provide Fellows with professional development opportunities to support their activities in finding, evaluating, and/or creating OER as well as stipends to offset the time and effort that we recognize these activities take. In addition to OER adoption and creation, Fellows will share their experiences by participating in Libraries’ events and collect anonymous student perceptions or outcomes data to understand the impact of adopting OER and other no-cost materials in their courses.

The Libraries hopes that the work undertaken by the Open Education Fellows will serve as a model to other instructors who are interested in reducing the financial burden of course materials costs for their students. Vice Provost and Director of the University of Texas Libraries at The University of Texas at Austin Lorraine J. Haricombe has been a longtime advocate for open education and OER adoption.

“When faculty remain informed of OER initiatives at their institutions, there is an increased awareness of these resources and an increased reported likelihood of consideration of future OER adoption,” says Haricombe. “I am delighted to see UT’s first cohort of Open Education Fellows and Authors who will work with UT Libraries to unleash their creative endeavors to innovate how we educate our students.”

The cohort of Open Education Fellows will begin their work in January 2022. Adaptation / Adoption Fellows will integrate OER into their courses by Fall 2022, and Authorship Fellows will have a usable draft of their OER ready by Spring 2023.

Libraries uses Open Education to promote Inclusive learning opportunities

The Libraries announces the “Fostering Inclusive Classrooms with Open, Free & Affordable Course Materials” instructor learning community, to promote IDEA concepts through the adoption of open educational resources (OERs).

The OER Working Group eagerly seeks applicants to join its first instructor learning community in Fall 2021. With support from facilitators and guest experts, we hope to join participants from across disciplines in their efforts to make their courses as financially inclusive as possible by eliminating or substantially lowering course material costs. The emphasis of the community will be open educational resources (or OER), which are learning materials that carry open licenses and allow anyone to freely read, share, and modify them. These permissions also enable instructors to adapt them for greater cultural responsiveness and accessibility or even include students in building them. 

In the course of the learning community, participants will engage with the cohort to:

  • Understand the spectrum of affordable learning materials available openly or through campus / UTL services, with an emphasis on OER
  • Search for OER that may be relevant to the courses they teach in one or more repositories and evaluate them using open rubrics
  • Evaluate course materials for basic accessibility best practices & cultural responsiveness; identify opportunities to enhance these aspects of OER and self-created course materials
  • Identify and interpret open licenses associated with OER created by others and those they wish to apply to their own materials

If you’ve been interested in taking the first steps to transitioning your course to free or low-cost materials but need support to do it, please consider applying to join this instructor learning community. We will offer a nominal stipend of $200 (less withholdings) for completing the following requirements:

  • Participation in at least five of six required discussion sessions
  • Completion of a course map matching some of your course objectives to existing free and affordable material options
  • A sharing activity that may include openly licensing a learning object (such as a syllabus, lesson plan, module, or even your course map) or a proposed alternative

Please note that to maintain the level of interaction at which this group will most benefit, we will cap participants at 10 for Fall 2021. If interest exceeds that number, we look forward to offering more cohorts of this learning community in the future. 

See more details about who may be interested and what to expect from the experience. Apply here by Monday, 9/20. Notifications to accepted applicants will be delivered no later than Monday, 9/27.

UT Senate of College Councils Supports Low-Cost Course Materials Markings in Course Schedule

In April 2021, the Senate of College Councils (SCC) passed S.R. 2103: A Resolution in Support of Requiring That Low-Cost Course Status Be Displayed on the University’s Course Schedule. The resolution explains the necessity and value of this functionality and “seeks to have the registrar denote any low-cost course in the official course schedule with a marker appearing next to courses which meet the low-cost criterion.”

Currently, instructors at UT Austin provide their course materials adoption information to the University Co-op ahead of each semester in accordance with Texas H.B. 33, and the Co-op publishes all selected materials by course even if those materials are not available through the Co-op. 

More recently, Texas S.B. 810 requires additional transparency of institutions by requiring that they identify courses for which open educational resources (OER) are assigned. OER are typically available to students free of cost or at a very low cost compared to commercial textbooks and other materials. At present, these courses are identified on the Co-op website in list format. Website visitors will notice that this list is very short and not representative of all courses that utilize OER because instructors often do not provide this information to the Co-op if their course does not require students to purchase materials. 

While the University follows the letter of the law related to S.B. 810 in this implementation, S.R. 2103 asks the University to follow the spirit of it, which is to allow students to search for and identify courses with low or no cost course materials costs where they are most likely to make those decisions — directly in the course schedule. The resolution suggests that $45 be used as the cut-off for “low cost” course materials designation, which is similar to the guidelines of other universities who have already implemented this feature. Institutions that have already adopted free and/or low cost course markings in their course schedules include UT Arlington, the University of Kansas, the City University of New York, and many more. (See many examples in the open textbook Marking Open and Affordable Courses: Best Practices and Case Studies.)

This is not the SCC’s first resolution in support of open, free, or affordable course materials. This resolution builds on S.R. 1808 (A Resolution in Support of UT Libraries’ Advocacy for Open Education Resources) and S.R. 1911 (In Support of the Creation of a University-Wide OER Faculty Award Program). This year, the SCC also partnered with UT Libraries to launch the first-ever Affordable Education Champions award program to recognize faculty who select free and affordable course materials. In the first year, more than two dozen nominations were submitted by students across campus, and five faculty members were formally recognized as the inaugural Affordable Education Champions.

Originally posted at the Libraries’ Open Access blog.

Affordable Education Champion: Dr. Kirkland (Alex) Fulk

In celebration of Open Education Week 2021, the Senate of College Councils and UT Libraries partnered to solicit nominations from students across campus to recognize instructors who increased access and equity by selecting free or low cost course materials for their classes. We’ll be recognizing a few of those nominees this week as Affordable Education Champions!

Affordable Education Champions are instructors who assign free or low cost resources — like textbooks, websites, films, and more — for their courses. Sometimes they author their own materials, and sometimes they’re able to reuse free or low cost work created by others. We share gratitude and appreciation for their commitment to fostering access to high quality education at the lowest possible cost barrier for their students. 

Today, we congratulate and thank Dr. Kirkland (Alex) Fulk, who was nominated by his students in GER 331L (Advanced Conversation and Composition) in the Department of Germanic Studies. Dr. Fulk also teaches GER 346L (German Literature Between the Enlightenment and the Present) and GER 373 (Topics in German Literature), and he utilizes freely accessible resources in all classes. 

Dr. Fulk joined the Department of Germanic Studies as a lecturer in 2013 and since 2014 is an Assistant Professor of post-war German literature. His work centers on the intersections between literature, culture, and theory and has also moved into other forms of media. He has published for instance on photography and new literary ethnographic practices; post-colonialism and neoliberalism; the transnational connections of pop musical cultures, practices, and public spheres; and post-‘68 reevaluations of Marxism, futurology, and other science fictions.

When asked what led him to select free resources as required course materials, Dr. Fulk told us “This particular course (GER 346L) focuses on 18th and 19th century German literature, culture, and history. Because of this, many of the primary texts are no longer under copyright restrictions and are available thanks to Projekt Gutenberg, a free online archive of literary works. However, even in my other courses that focus on the 20th and 21st centuries, there is a wealth of online material available. For instance, the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. curates an online archive full of historical documents, photos, etc., and more recently the German Studies Collaboratory provides a forum for sharing a wide range of open-source materials. Not to mention, of course, the library resources, particularly Kanopy, which has been a game changer for film viewings (and a shout out to Uri Kolodney for always helping me out with film acquisitions).”

Dr. Fulk’s students shared with us some of the ways in which his choice to assign free or low cost resources impacted them.

“In my time as one of his students, Dr. Fulk has gone above and beyond the call of a professor not only to ensure that our virtual class experience is engaging and accommodating but also that finances are never a barrier to educational resources. Over the span of three courses taken with him, I have spent a total of $4 on educational resources (in the form of movie rentals). When he wasn’t able to provide certain readings for our GER 346L course, he directed us towards free online resources and personally assisted me in acquiring one reading after I had received the syllabus late. Dr. Fulk truly strives for equity and inclusion for all students in his classroom and I have confidence, and anecdotal proof, that he spares no effort in ensuring his students’ success through cost-free access to educational materials.” — Victoria Ritter, Chemistry & German Major 

Dr. Fulk generously offers three pieces of advice to other instructors interested in transitioning their courses to free and affordable materials:

  1. “Realize that students are in effect digital natives and that the internet is often the first place they go. This provides wonderful opportunities to engage with media literacies and to reinforce them through scholarly engagement with library resources.”
  2. “Be mindful of newer online initiatives such as those mentioned above that are often part of our professional organizations and aim to make teaching resources and materials widely available (most often for free).” 
  3. “It goes without saying that tuition is becoming more expensive as is the cost of living in Austin. Being attentive to this and doing what we can to lighten the burden might not offset the financial hurdles in higher education, but it does demonstrate that education does not have to be tied to monetary resources. Teaching students how to properly use what’s already at their fingertips can go a long way to cultivating best practices for continuing their education beyond the classroom and beyond the university.”

Join us in thanking Dr. Fulk for his contribution to making UT an inclusive and equitable environment where students can succeed without high course materials costs!


If you know of an instructor who is dedicated to making their courses as affordable as possible by selecting free or low cost course materials, let us know by contacting Ashley Morrison, Tocker Open Education Librarian (ashley.morrison@austin.utexas.edu).

Affordable Education Champion: Dr. George Pollak

In celebration of Open Education Week 2021, the Senate of College Councils and UT Libraries partnered to solicit nominations from students across campus to recognize instructors who increased access and equity by selecting free or low cost course materials for their classes. We’ll be recognizing a few of those nominees this week as Affordable Education Champions!

Affordable Education Champions are instructors who assign free or low cost resources — like textbooks, websites, films, and more — for their courses. Sometimes they author their own materials, and sometimes they’re able to reuse free or low cost work created by others. We share gratitude and appreciation for their commitment to fostering access to high quality education at the lowest possible cost barrier for their students. 

Today, we congratulate and thank Dr. George Pollak, who was nominated by his students in NEU 330 (Neural Systems I) in the College of Natural Sciences. 

Dr. Pollak received his Ph.D. in physiology from the University of Maryland Medical School in 1970. He then did his postdoctoral work in the Department of Anatomy and Biology at Yale University and was promoted to Assistant Professor of Anatomy before joining the faculty of the Zoology Department at the University of Texas at Austin in 1970. He is currently Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Pollak’s research concerns the neural processing of sound in the mammalian auditory system. He uses bats as experimental subjects due to their high reliance on hearing. Early in his career, in 1977, he was the recipient of a Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health. Later in his career, from 1987-1991, Dr. Pollak served on the National Institutes of Health Hearing Research Study Section and served as the chairman of the Study Section from 1989-91. In 1996 he received a Claude Pepper Award from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders, the highest award given by the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders in recognition of outstanding contributions to auditory neuroscience. In addition, he received an Alexander von Humoldt grant (for young investigators) and a von Humboldt Award for Senior Investigators, grants that funded his collaborative research with colleagues at the University of Munich.

Dr. Pollak has also received several teaching awards and honors, including the President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award (1997); the Texas Blazers Faculty Excellence Award (2000); Professor of the Month, awarded by the Senate of College Councils (2012); Professor of the Year, awarded by the Senate of College Councils (2013); and the Regent’s Outstanding Teaching Award (2014). We are delighted to add Affordable Education Champion to this impressive list. 

Dr. Pollak is very enthusiastic about teaching the brain to undergraduates.  He experiences  a profound sense of satisfaction when he can share his excitement and the views he  obtained from 40 years of research on the nervous system with a diverse group of young men and women.  He feels that our understanding of how the brain works represents one of the great achievements of mankind, and that the next generation should obtain an appreciation of that achievement.

When asked what led him to author his own freely available materials for NEU 330, Dr. Pollak told us about the gap between the existing texts and his needs for the course. “The material offered in Neural Systems I and its earlier versions, has evolved continuously during the 40 years that I have taught the course, due in large part to the numerous discoveries made in neuroscience…. [For] most of this period the textbooks available were designed for medical school. They were too complex for an introductory neurobiology course and covered too many topics. It was for these reasons that I wrote and illustrated the chapters that I use in my lectures. Each chapter is a written and illustrated form of the lecture presented that day. These now comprise 350 pages in 28 chapters. The newest findings in the field are incorporated into each chapter and several recent and exciting findings were incorporated as new chapters. New clinically relevant topics were added, especially those dealing with gene therapies, clinical tests based on the neural mechanisms discussed in lecture, and neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease. I wrote each chapter in Word and constantly make additions or changes to the text as new developments arise. The reader can view [as an example]…  ‘Chapter 3, Introduction to The Action Potential.’ I upload PDF versions of each chapter to Canvas…. There are no extra costs to students in my sections of Neural Systems I.”

In addition to the text he authored and updates, Dr. Pollak supplements the course readings with extensive video content to engage students beyond the written word. “I… make extensive use of movies in Neural Systems I, those that I made and movies that I purchased or downloaded, which are all provided to the students free of charge. The movies appropriate for each lecture are uploaded to Canvas and can be viewed or even downloaded free of charge.

I made the movies because I know I can’t absorb and retain everything I hear in a lecture, and the same is true of undergraduates, regardless of how good the lecture is. The movies provide the opportunity to preview the topics of each lecture and/or to review each lecture at the students’ convenience. The movies provide the students with an enormous advantage for learning the topics covered in Neural Systems I. Each movie is not only animated but also is also narrated, where I verbally explain the concepts and mechanisms of each lecture in a step-by-step sequence.

The initial motivation for making the movies was that the first half of the course, especially the first quarter, deals with basic biophysical and electrical features of nerve cells. Many, if not most, students have a less than solid background in physics and often find the electrical events that generate neural signals challenging. To help them, I decided to make movies to illustrate exactly how the electrical features of neurons are formed and how they operate.

The student response was so overwhelmingly positive, that I continued to make additional movies on the topics covered in the later portions of the course. There are now more than 60 movies that cover the subject matter of almost all the lectures of the course. I have established a YouTube channel that has all of the movies. The channel is available to the public and is also used by my colleagues at UT and at other universities…. An example is Movie #6, titled “The Action Potential-1- The Role of Voltage Gated Sodium Channels”, which is assigned with Chapter 3 cited above, Introduction to the Action Potential. This movie explains one of the most basic features of nerve cells, how they generate their electrical signals or action potentials, the universal language of all nervous systems. The first part of the movie can be readily understood, even by those who have not had Vertebrate Neurobiology or Neural Systems I. It can easily be accessed [on Dropbox].”

Dr. Pollak’s students enthusiastically praise the course materials and the ways they’ve enhanced the students’ learning experience and sense of belonging in the discipline.

“Dr. Pollak’s offerings of material he wrote specifically for this course allowed me to be confident that the material I was learning was applicable to his course, and easily accessible, without having to pay anything for it. I appreciated having an easily accessible textbook, which allowed me to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation for Neuroscience.” — Sophomore, Neuroscience Major

“Dr. Pollak’s use of no-cost instructional materials made my access to the class much less stressful and has taken a great deal of stress off of me, especially because of the impact of COVID on my financial situation. Dr. Pollak has provided a wealth of materials, from textbook chapters he wrote to incredibly helpful instructional movies, at no cost, and being able to access these materials has improved my learning process a great deal. Because this is a class for my major, having class materials that I didn’t have to pay for made me feel particularly welcomed into the Department of Neuroscience, knowing that there are no real economic barriers to get started with my major.” — Emma Babaian, Neuroscience Major

Please join us in thanking Dr. Pollak for his contribution to making UT an inclusive and equitable environment where students can succeed without high course materials costs!

If you know of an instructor who is dedicated to making their courses as affordable as possible by selecting free or low cost course materials, let us know by contacting Ashley Morrison, Tocker Open Education Librarian (ashley.morrison@austin.utexas.edu). 

Affordable Education Champion: Dr. Beth E. Bukoski

In celebration of Open Education Week 2021, the Senate of College Councils and UT Libraries partnered to solicit nominations from students across campus to recognize instructors who increased access and equity by selecting free or low cost course materials for their classes. We’ll be recognizing a few of those nominees this week as Affordable Education Champions!

Affordable Education Champions are instructors who assign free or low cost resources — like textbooks, websites, films, and more — for their courses. Sometimes they author their own materials, and sometimes they’re able to reuse free or low cost work created by others. We share gratitude and appreciation for their commitment to fostering access to high quality education at the lowest possible cost barrier for their students. 

Today, we congratulate and thank Dr. Beth E. Bukoski, who was nominated by her students in ELP 392Q (Advanced Qualitative Research Design and Analysis) in the Educational Leadership and Policy Department. 

Dr. Bukoski is an Associate Professor of Practice and Co-Program Coordinator of the Program in Higher Education Leadership in the College of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at The University of Texas at Austin. She is a faculty affiliate with the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies. She teaches utilizing liberatory pedagogies with an explicit focus on diversity, inclusion, social justice issues. Her research focuses on issues of social justice, equity, and diversity, particularly the persistence and success of underrepresented students, the experiences of underrepresented faculty, and leadership/administration across the P-20 pipeline. Her work centers on issues related to identity intersectionality and performativity — particularly constructs of gender, sexuality, and race; she uses qualitative methodologies such as case study, narrative and discourse analysis, and phenomenology and tends to use critical theories to guide her work.

Dr. Bukoski also currently serves as Vice-Chair for the Council for the Advancement of the Higher Education Programs (ASHE).

When asked what motivated her to select free resources as required course materials, Dr. Bukoski told us: “Neither of my courses ([ELP] 392Q and 395K) have a textbook this semester. I generally try to avoid having a textbook unless I can foresee students wanting to keep the text as a part of their library, or they will read all/most of it, or I cannot find enough other supplemental materials or materials available through the library to replace the text. For 392Q – Adv. Qualitative Methods, the library has extensive SAGE research materials and access to multiple top journals on the subject. For 395K – Community Colleges, the library has access to multiple journals on the topic and has been responsive to requests for specific chapters I need scanned. In addition, the only texts I could have used for 395K were prohibitively expensive.”

She notices that students appreciate the effort and intention that comes with selecting resources free to students, too. “Usually when I have been able to avoid text fees, students comment on the affordability and thank me for not having required texts. I think the increased access increases the likelihood of students engaging with the materials…. I have noticed I no longer have students coming to class unprepared because they could not afford the text or get their hands on a copy for free.”

We heard the same thing from Dr. Bukoski’s students. They can access course materials easily and benefit from engaging in the course through collaborative software. 

“She provided us articles to read that were accessible via UT libraries. We use various programs online in class like Google docs and Mural which are free and don’t require an account either. [I] can pay my bills with more ease and less stress. School is expensive and not having to pay for books and class materials is a huge relief because it helps reduce burden on students financially.” — Graduate Student, Educational Leadership and Policy

Join us in thanking Dr. Bukoski for her contribution to making UT an inclusive and equitable environment where students can succeed without high course materials costs!

If you know of an instructor who is dedicated to making their courses as affordable as possible by selecting free or low cost course materials, let us know by contacting Ashley Morrison, Tocker Open Education Librarian (ashley.morrison@austin.utexas.edu). 

Affordable Education Champion: Dr. James Curley

In celebration of Open Education Week 2021, the Senate of College Councils and UT Libraries partnered to solicit nominations from students across campus to recognize instructors who increased access and equity by selecting free or low cost course materials for their classes. We’ll be recognizing a few of those nominees this week as Affordable Education Champions!

Affordable Education Champions are instructors who assign free or low cost resources — like textbooks, websites, films, and more — for their courses. Sometimes they author their own materials, and sometimes they’re able to reuse free or low cost work created by others. We share gratitude and appreciation for their commitment to fostering access to high quality education at the lowest possible cost barrier for their students. 

Today, we congratulate and thank Dr. James Curley, who was nominated by his students in PSY 317L (Introduction to Statistics for Behavioral Sciences) in the College of Liberal Arts. 

Dr. Curley received his B.A. in Human Sciences at The University of Oxford (UK) in 1999. He was a member and scholar of Somerville College, Oxford. In 2003, he received a PhD in Zoology from the University of Cambridge (UK). His Ph.D research was conducted at the Department of Animal Behaviour, Cambridge, on the effects of imprinted genes on brain and behavioral development, particularly maternal and sexual behavior.

He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge for four years researching behavioral development, particularly how early life experiences shape individual differences in behavior. He was also the Charles & Katharine Darwin Research Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.

Following this work he joined the Psychology Department at Columbia University, where he continued to work on the development of social and maternal behavior. From 2012-2017, he was a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University. There, he established a research group studying social dynamics and social dominance hierarchies.

His lab at UT focuses on the neurobiological basis of social behavior in groups, as well as the long-term plastic changes in the brain and peripheral physiology that occur as a consequence of social status. They also are interested in developing novel methods for the study of social hierarchies and networks.

When asked what led him to author his own resources for required course materials, Dr. Curley told us about the many ways that his textbook and tools respond to student needs. “I have long thought that the cost of textbooks is too high. So I was clear from the beginning of designing this course that I wanted to make the textbook materials freely available. I found some excellent open source free online textbooks for statistics and programming. I then decided that I would write my own textbook [Introduction to Statistics for Behavioral Scientists using R] to be able to focus in more detail on the areas of stats and programming that I was introducing in my course. So then I spent last Summer (2020) co-writing the textbook for the course with my graduate student Tyler Milewski. For each module, I give readings from my textbook or another excellent free one online and let the students choose which they prefer to go with.

I also realized that a benefit of writing an online open source textbook was that I could update it in real time. If students want more explanations about certain topics, then it is relatively easy for me to write extra details or examples in the book and publish immediately. Obviously with the old textbook model it isn’t easy to update that quickly.

Finally, many students like to learn through interactive hands-on tools. Therefore I’ve been building a catalogue of browser based tutorial guides that students can play around with to learn statistics concepts. These sorts of materials are not part of traditional textbook offerings, so clearly making them freely available is the only way to go!”

While PSY 317L has never relied on a commercial textbook, Dr. Curley observes that compared to other courses where expensive texts were used, “students engaged a lot more with the textbook in this course. I think that is largely due to my tailoring its content to my course and the fact that it was available online in the browser. Students definitely comment on how glad that the textbook is free.”

We heard the same thing in Dr. Curley’s nomination. Students appreciated the savings, but they also deeply valued the breadth of free materials available to them — not to mention Dr. Curley’s own availability to support them throughout the class. 

“Stats was a really intimidating class for me, but having tons of free resources available, like videos, textbooks, websites, and SO MANY office hours, made me finally feel like I understood why UT wants psychology majors to learn statistics. Honestly, I think everyone should take a class like this because the skills we learned are applicable to so many different fields. [With the money I saved in this class, I] didn’t have to worry about whether I would be able to pay for the materials needed to do well in the class and instead could just focus on learning.” — Sophomore, Psychology Major

If you are an instructor thinking about adopting free or affordable course materials, Dr. Curley offers this advice: “I think it is well worth connecting with faculty at other institutions to see what they might be using. There are a lot of innovations in different fields and many faculty are very aware of the need to try and make materials affordable. I was pleasantly surprised by how many options there were for statistics and programming. Obviously writing your own textbook is not feasible for every course, but I found that doing this really led me to understand how best to deliver the material to students and was a really great use of preparation time for my class.”

Please join us in thanking Dr. Curley for his contribution to making UT an inclusive and equitable environment where students can succeed without high course materials costs!

If you know of an instructor who is dedicated to making their courses as affordable as possible by selecting free or low cost course materials, let us know by contacting Ashley Morrison, Tocker Open Education Librarian (ashley.morrison@austin.utexas.edu). 

Affordable Education Champion: Dr. Paul McCord

In celebration of Open Education Week 2021, the Senate of College Councils and UT Libraries partnered to solicit nominations from students across campus to recognize instructors who increased access and equity by selecting free or low cost course materials for their classes. We’ll be recognizing a few of those nominees this week as Affordable Education Champions!

Affordable Education Champions are instructors who assign free or low cost resources — like textbooks, websites, films, and more — for their courses. Sometimes they author their own materials, and sometimes they’re able to reuse free or low cost work created by others. We share gratitude and appreciation for their commitment to fostering access to high quality education at the lowest possible cost barrier for their students. 

Today, we congratulate and thank Dr. Paul McCord, who was nominated by his students in CH 304K (Chemistry in Context I) in the College of Natural Sciences.

Dr. McCord is a native of Abilene, Texas. He earned his B.S. in Chemistry from Abilene Christian University (ACU) in 1983. He continued at ACU to earn his M.S. in organic synthesis in 1985, after which he moved to Austin, TX. Dr. McCord received his Ph.D from the University of Texas in 1992 in the field of analytical chemistry under the mentorship of Dr. Allen Bard. After a short postdoc experience with Dr. Bard, Dr. McCord became a lecturer (Assistant Professor of Instruction) at UT in 1994. He is currently an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Chemistry Department.

Dr. McCord has taught mostly freshman level courses such as Principles of Chemistry I & II, and Introductory Chemistry (Chemistry in Context) over the years. In addition to those courses, Dr. McCord has also taught Analytical Chemistry and Physical Chemistry. His primary teaching mission has been to educate UT freshmen and prepare them for their journey into science-related fields. Dr. McCord supports lowering the cost of education by providing a no-cost chemistry textbook to UT students. He is currently working on his free eBook “chembook,” which is a free book for non-science majors. He is also currently teaching the non-major chemistry classes at the university.

When asked what led him to author free or low cost resources as his required course materials, Dr. McCord told us about how he and a team of colleagues initially developed a robust set of materials to meet the needs of CH 301 and CH 302 students.

“I have had an ongoing struggle with publishers over the years to deliver a more affordable product. Chemistry textbooks in hardback have gone well beyond $200, some even reaching $300. It is truly ridiculous… and sad at the same time. Even when they offered an eBook version, the cost only dropped to around $90, and this was just a ‘subscription’ for a year with no actual hardcopy. Back in 2011, the chemistry department was selected as a part of the Course Transformation Project which was a program funded through the provost’s office. We had 3 years to revamp our CH301/CH302 program. There were three of us on that project: Dr. David Vanden Bout (our current Interim Dean of CNS), Dr. Cynthia LaBrake and myself. Our big conclusion after much research was to just write our own book and provide it via a website for free to our students. That is exactly what we did. We also had enough money to fund the making of many help videos as well. The site [gchem] was up and running by 2012 and we (ok, mostly me) have kept it up and running ever since. We have some 3000+ chemistry students who use that site each and every year – for no cost.”

Not only are Dr. McCord’s students saving money, though; they’re performing even better with the open materials than they did with the previously used commercial textbook. Dr. McCord noted that the previous textbooks “were beautiful and content heavy… but students weren’t really reading the book that much. Our book was much much shorter. We only put in what we taught. We put it in the order that we teach it. It was concise and easy to read. We developed student outcomes from the very start of the project – so yes, student outcomes were actually better than what we had with the publisher’s books. We streamlined and made everything more efficient.”

But he didn’t stop at CH 301 and CH 302. Dr. McCord wrote an entirely new free and online textbook for his CH 304K and CH 305 students. “I got so used to just writing off the top of my head that I decided to completely redo and write a new book for our non-major courses…. I basically had to write the chapters right before my class needed to have that content. The site is the chembook site and I really like it and most of my students like it as well. I write in first person – which is different. I write in an informal/casual style which I like. I’ll admit though, I know some profs who do not like my casual tone – good news for them is they don’t have to use my book!”

Dr. McCord’s students shared with us some of the ways in which their choice to assign free or low cost resources impacted them, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold.

“I had this class last spring when everything was changed by the pandemic. I will never forget how committed this professor was to ensuring that his students did not have to pay for the textbook. His resources were entirely free and accessible to students. The textbook was also a simplified version of the longer, more complicated textbook, which I found to be extremely helpful, as well. With the money I saved in this class, [I] was able to adjust to the financial hardship of the pandemic. Though no one saw this coming when the semester had started, it was great to have a professor that was this accommodating. Additionally, his class is huge, so he is helping hundreds if not thousands of students a year.” — Isabela, Sophomore

Dr. McCord had this to say to instructors looking to transition their courses to more affordable materials:

“First, know your specific outcomes for your course – any decent course guru would tell you that. Second, decide how comfortable you are at authoring your teaching materials. We were pretty lax about being perfect. We knew things would be rough at first, but we fixed things as we progressed forward. Typos and basic errors are all a part of the deal. Most students realized that and we even encouraged them to find errors and report them. So it works, but you have to decide if you are writing all the content or not.

If you don’t write it yourself, then use what is available out in the wild. The OpenStax project (Rice University) is going great and their textbooks are free and really nice. They have lots of users and therefore the site is continuously tweaked. True OER [open educational resources] allows you to copy and paste and make your version of your class content. This is probably the main way most teachers would go about this.”

One last bit of advice from Dr. McCord? “Quit printing [$h!t] out! WHY are we still printing out everything? Making students buy course-packs? We have fast internet now and can deliver tons of material electronically.” And he’s right — even with copyrighted articles and chapters, materials can be linked from your syllabus or Canvas site for students. If you need help tracking down copies of licensed materials, talk to your subject librarian for assistance. 

Join us in thanking Dr. McCord for his contribution to making UT an inclusive and equitable environment where students can succeed without high course materials costs!

If you know of an instructor who is dedicated to making their courses as affordable as possible by selecting free or low cost course materials, let us know by contacting Ashley Morrison, Tocker Open Education Librarian (ashley.morrison@austin.utexas.edu). 

OER Faculty Author Spotlight: Dr. Christian Hilchey

In celebration of Open Education Week, UT Libraries is proud to spotlight a few of our talented faculty members who are on the forefront of the open education movement as open educational resource (OER) authors! Today we’re featuring Dr. Christian Hilchey, Lecturer in the Department of Slavic & Eurasian Studies. 

Dr. Hilchey received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2014 with a specialization in Slavic Linguistics. Prior to this, he taught Czech language courses at both the University of Chicago, as well as Indiana University as part of their annual summer workshop SWSEEL. Since starting at UT in 2014, he created the project Reality Czech, which is a full beginner’s textbook, workbook, classroom activity book, and open Canvas site for learning Czech.

Read more about Dr. Hilchey’s introduction to OER, what his students have gained from utilizing Reality Czech, and what he’s learned in the process. 

Want to get started with OER or find other free or low cost course materials? Contact Ashley Morrison, Tocker Open Education Librarian (ashley.morrison@austin.utexas.edu).

Do you recall how you first became aware of open educational resources (OER) or the open education movement more broadly? Tell us about what led you to author Reality Czech.

“I knew next to nothing about OER until I was hired into my current position. At the time, the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies was looking for someone who could both teach Czech and also develop a Czech language OER. I had a lot of experience creating materials for my own classes prior to this, but had never considered any other options besides the traditional textbook with a copyright. After starting my position here in 2014, I began working on what would eventually be called Reality Czech. I was immediately very enthusiastic about the project because, although I knew little about OER at the time, I had previously been very passionate about the open software movement, which shares many of the same values as Open Education. So in a sense I came to the movement well-disposed to these types of projects.

I immediately became fascinated by the possibilities of sharing my materials with others. Only later did I become aware of the affordances of open materials, specifically what media would be available by virtue of the fact that I had embraced Open Education. We are all familiar with Wikipedia, but many have not heard of Wikimedia Commons, which houses many images and other realia that can be utilized in our foreign language or other courses. The one caveat is that many of these resources are licensed under an Attribution ShareAlike license, which means that not only do you have to give the author credit, but any derivative works have to be shared under similar conditions. In order to use these works, I also had to share my work under the same license. I began to understand this as a major advantage. Much like the GPL, which helped propel Linux in the tech world, this license defines a new kind of contract between those who create open materials and those who wish to reuse these materials. In a sense, we all agree that leaving our materials open helps further a cause that we believe in — low-cost, high-quality materials that can be reused and redistributed as needed.”

What has been the greatest benefit of creating and using OER as an instructor?

“I have really enjoyed the freedom that Open Educational Resources give to instructors. I was able to create materials in a way that typically would not be possible for a traditional textbook. For example, because the materials are hosted online, I was able to use far more imagery than would be possible with a print textbook. Moreover, because I utilized openly licensed media, the sheer number (in the thousands) of images utilized far exceeds what would be practical to license from commercial sources or create on my own.

Openly licensed materials also allow instructors the freedom to adapt them as they see fit for their classroom and legally share them with other instructors. This type of sharing is a new frontier in the way that we think about course materials. If we only utilize closed materials in a closed format, it is difficult to make customized versions to suit a particular curriculum need. When we do create a customized curriculum, these rarely move beyond our own classrooms. In academia a lot of emphasis has been placed on the need to share research with the wider community, but we are not just a research institution. We also rightly focus on teaching and I think it is time for us to think about teaching in much of the same way as we think about research. I hope we can broaden instructors’ ability to share their materials in the same way. Utilizing the legal framework afforded by open licenses makes it possible for instructors to share what they are doing and how they are teaching in a much more fruitful way.

To that end, the aim of the Reality Czech project has been to share materials in a multitude of accessible formats so that students can utilize them in whatever format is most convenient and comfortable for them to use. Not only are the materials available over the website, but also as Google Docs, Microsoft Word files, PDF, as well as other formats available through the Google Docs download menu. While I currently actively maintain and am still adding to Reality Czech, there will hopefully come a time when others will contribute, create their own versions of materials, and even eventually take over the project. I think that’s the beauty of OER. Our projects outlast us and have the potential to take on a life of their own.”

What was the most challenging part of creating Reality Czech?

“Honestly, it mostly had to do with breaking the mold of previous Czech language textbooks. There’s a long tradition of focusing on grammatical proficiency first and foremost without much communicative emphasis. When I began my career as a Czech instructor during my graduate studies, I utilized these textbooks and progressively became disillusioned with their emphasis on learning paradigms over helping students find ways to use the language to talk about themselves, their families, communities, etc. Creating something different entailed a lot of trial and error and my first two years of creation involved more failures than successes.

I finally found my way after developing a set of 240 interview video compilations. Approximately 40 native speakers of Czech were interviewed on a variety of everyday topics such as food, weather, travel, holidays, school, etc. I compiled their answers in videos devoted to each question so that students could get an idea about how Czechs talk about their own lives. This was a good way of teaching the target culture, but it also turned into a way of structuring the grammar and vocabulary we would be learning in each chapter. Much of the textbook sequencing evolved organically from the language found in these videos. More than anything, I would highly recommend finding something such as this that helps naturally structure the content of a course.

I sometimes wonder whether this would have been possible without the freedom that OER allowed. I had the time to test out new strategies, make them available to students, and make iterative revisions over the course of several years. I didn’t have to worry about the concerns of a major publisher or restrictions on revisions. I am very grateful for this opportunity to develop in a less strict and more organic way.”

How have your students responded to the material?

“When the curriculum began to come together after about two years of development, the changes were immediate and striking. I began to notice students communicating more and using more elaborate language to talk about themselves and their lives. They responded positively not only to the videos I had created, but also the open media that I had selected from other sources. This type of positive feedback drove me forward, secure in the knowledge that maybe I’m on to something with this new direction in Czech pedagogy.”

What would you say to an instructor who is interested in creating or adapting OER but isn’t sure how to get started?

“I would definitely recommend starting small. If you can, create a lesson from start to finish and see what kinds of challenges you encounter. Also, let your own personality come out. I decided to have fun and add whimsy throughout the course. I’m a trained linguist and it is no problem for me to write linguistically accurate descriptions of grammatical phenomena. However, I wanted my course to be relatable and fun. Throughout the course you can find more vernacular descriptions of grammar, jokes, memes, and other such content. This was my course and so I decided to put it all on the table and just be myself. 

Also, consider what kinds of open content you can utilize in your work. The whole idea behind open licensing is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Even if there are no open materials on a subject matter, there are probably a number of smaller resources, such as pictures or videos, that can be incorporated into an OER project. Get comfortable with searching for these types of resources. You often have to use some creativity in your image searches to find exactly what you need. I began utilizing openly licensed videos available on Youtube and Vimeo, but first I had to learn to search for certain keywords and genres such as vlogs or timelapse videos. I ended up finding all sorts of materials that I had not planned on. 

What do you do with the unexpected? One of my favorite analogies is that of a farmers market. When you go to a farmers market, you can have a dish in mind that you want to cook, but what if that food is unavailable? What else can you come up with? I often found that the limitations imposed by the types of materials available ultimately helped enrich my content. I was forced to be more open to different types of materials and often found treasures and beauty where I least expected them. Overall I would say that my journey in the world of OER has helped me rediscover the possibilities of teaching and helped me to be a better educator through the entire process.”

Open Educational Resource (OER) Spotlights

Happy Open Education Week! We’re back today to share a few open educational resources (OER) chosen by members of the OER Outreach Working Group. Each of the resources below are great examples of OER in use at UT (and authored by our faculty and staff in several cases!). 

OER are teaching and learning objects that are generally free of cost, but just as importantly, they are free of the legal barriers that often prevent their unrestricted reuse and adaptation. Each of these resources can be accessed and shared freely, but anyone can also make copies with changes that suit the needs of their class or personal study. For example, you could translate them into Spanish, change examples or images to enhance their relevance, or combine them with other openly licensed resources to create something entirely new! These are the permissions and power that open licenses confer to you. 

Check these out, get inspired, and contact Ashley Morrison, the Tocker Open Education Librarian, if you’d like to know more or get help locating OER for your discipline. 

Information Literacy Toolkit, reviewed by Sarah Brandt, Librarian for First-Year Programs

Authored by UT Libraries Staff & UT Faculty

Licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

ToolkitHeader.jpg

The Information Literacy Toolkit is a set of customizable research and information literacy assignments, lesson plans, assessment tools, and course examples built over many years by UT Libraries staff and UT faculty. Though largely created with undergraduate classes in mind, these resources can be adapted for graduate-level courses. Most of the items in the toolkit are available as Google Docs so that they are easy to copy or download and modify for a particular course. This toolkit is a dynamic resource. Library staff add and update resources regularly, and work with faculty to add interesting course examples. UT faculty who want to implement an assignment from the Information Literacy Toolkit can request assistance from a UT librarian as they modify assignments for their purposes. We encourage instructors to take a look at this resource as they are creating research assignments and to send in feedback about resources they use or feel are missing from the toolkit.

Her Şey Bir Merhaba ile Başlar! (Everything Begins with a Hello!), reviewed by Sarah Sweeney, Project Coordinator at COERLL

Authored by Dr. Jeannette Okur, University of Texas at Austin

Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Her Şey Bir Merhaba ile Başlar is an open textbook for intermediate Turkish language learners, the result of a collaboration between the author Jeannette Okur, native speakers, students, and COERLL. These four units address aspects of modern Turkish society: family, love and marriage, the environment, and art and politics. The content includes a variety of authentic texts, videos, audio, and images curated from the internet, as well as audio and video created specifically for this project. The textbook is available for free as a PDF or in Google Docs, where teachers and students can adapt it according to their individual needs. A print copy can also be purchased. Supplementary materials include Quizlet vocabulary lists and interactive Canvas exercises.

Proteopedia, reviewed by Hannah Chapman Tripp, Biosciences Librarian

Authored collaboratively

Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Image: Porto, A., Martz, E., Sussman, J. L., & Theis, K. (n.d.). Lipids: Structure and classification. Proteopedia – Life in 3D. Retrieved February 24, 2021, from https://proteopedia.org/wiki/index.php/Lipids:_structure_and_classification

Proteopedia is an encyclopedia containing protein, nucleic acid and other biomolecular structures represented in 3D rotating format using Jmol technology. The tool contains both annotated and unannotated structures, representing efforts by the biomolecular community worldwide and automatic weekly imports from the Protein Data Bank respectively. The resource also contains syllabi, quizzes, concept pages and more developed by educators with the intent of reuse in mind. Proteopedia can be edited by registered users, allowing the community to contribute to resource construction. Each page that is supplemented contains a contributors and editors section at the bottom with links to author profiles including academic credentials allowing for appropriate citation, responsibility for content and trust in the content.