Tag Archives: open education week

Affordable Education Champion: Dr. Nico Osier

In celebration of Open Education Week 2022, 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. Nico Osier, who was nominated by their students in both N 223 (Genetics in Healthcare) in the School of Nursing and UGS 302 (The Art of Science Communication), a Signature Course in Undergraduate Studies.

Dr. Nico Osier, School of Nursing

Dr. Osier is an Assistant Professor, and they hold joint appointments in the School of Nursing (Division of Holistic Adult Health) and Dell Medical School (Department of Neurology). They have contributed to enhancing the curriculum at The University of Texas at Austin through creation of 2 novel signature courses and addition of an ethics flag to an existing course. They have mentored other faculty in teaching through their inclusion as a fellow in the Provost’s Teaching Fellows program and as an ambassador in the Experiential Learning Initiative.  Dr. Osier is very passionate about teaching and mentoring the next generation of registered nurses and nurse scientists. They currently teach Genetics in Healthcare in the School of Nursing, and The Art of Science Communication for incoming students. Dr. Osier also runs The Osier Laboratory, where they have mentored over 200 motivated undergraduates, gap-year, and graduate students and provided them with meaningful research experiences, soft skill development, as well as opportunities to publish and present.. They really enjoy working with students outside of the classroom – both in the laboratory and on manuscripts, presentations, grants, and other professional development activities.

Dr. Osier’s choice to assign no-cost resources is inspired by their own experience as a first generation college student. Dr. Osier tells us, “I knew firsthand the impact free course materials could have on students in my class. I had a few teachers who were explicitly mindful of not making us spend money to be successful in the class and that was something I wanted to incorporate into my teaching strategy.”

Their students noticed this and agreed. “Buying or renting textbooks can be very expensive. Professor Osier ensuring that course materials were of no cost was amazing because it helped ease my financial burden of acquiring textbooks each semester,” said Njeri, a student who nominated Dr. Osier.

Beyond selecting materials that can be acquired at no cost, Dr. Osier also takes care to select and make available materials that are as inclusive as possible. One of their student nominators, Olivia, noted, “Dr. Nico Osier is flexible and continues to be one of the most memorable professors I have had. I took their class my freshman year and thought their impact on inclusive classroom materials taught me how important it is to have all kinds of… representation.” Another noted their efforts to make sure audio / visual course materials were appropriately captioned. 

For Genetics in Healthcare, Dr. Osier assigns an open access text published by the American Nurses Association, Essentials of Genetic and Genomic Nursing: Competencies, Curricula Guidelines, and Outcome Indicators (2nd edition). The ANA makes this content available at no cost and with permissions granted to reproduce the work with attribution. For other instructors interested in adopting open and affordable course materials, they offer this advice: “There is so much reputable and engaging content out there that won’t cost your students a penny and won’t require you to reinvent the wheel. This is also a valuable opportunity to utilize multiple means of representation, by including reading as well as other multimedia sources (videos/movies, comic strips, podcasts, etc.). Not only does this maximize your ability to reach diverse learners, tying what they’re learning into popular culture engages students and highlights the relevance of the course content.”

Need help finding OER and other free or low cost course materials? Contact Ashley Morrison, Tocker Open Education Librarian (ashley.morrison@austin.utexas.edu). 

Affordable Education Champion: Dr. Sean Gurd

In celebration of Open Education Week 2022, 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. Sean Gurd, who was nominated by his students in CTI 301G (Introduction to Ancient Greece) in the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts & Ideas

Dr. Sean Gurd, Department of Classics

Dr. Gurd is a Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin. His active research interests include the areas of ancient theatre (especially tragedy), ancient music, and any part of intellectual culture that interfaced with the concept of art (or techne). He is also the director of the Ancient Music and Performance Lab, which is dedicated to exploring innovative ways of integrating arts practice with humanities scholarship.

He has authored four monographs: Iphigenias at Aulis: Textual Multiplicity, Radical Philology; Work in Progress: Literary Revision as Social Performance in Ancient Rome; Dissonance: Auditory Aesthetics in Ancient Greece; and The Origins of Music Theory in the Age of Plato. Dr. Gurd is currently writing a book on the NY area poet and performance artist Arman Schwerner, and a book on Music, Physics, and Theology in Hellenistic writers from Aristoxenus to Philo of Alexandria. He is an editor of Tangent, a scholar-led imprint of punctum books dedicated to publishing innovative books and projects that touch on classical antiquity. All of the imprint’s books will be free to all (open access) on the web six months after their publication. 

Like many instructors who select open and free course materials, Dr. Gurd is motivated by a desire for students to guide their own learning with immediate access to high-quality materials. In his Introduction to Ancient Greece course, that means enabling them with texts to which UT Libraries subscribes, available to students at no cost. Importantly, he has also found that these materials support his pedagogical goals. “Often in a large undergraduate class the instructor decides what’s important and assigns readings or texts on that basis. In this class, I want people to discover ancient Greek culture by exploring it themselves; and I want their explorations to be based on what matters to them, not what matters to me. This course is designed to let students do this: they start by identifying a big theme or issue that matters to them, and then they look for ancient Greek texts that address that theme, so that by the end of the semester they have built a small personal anthology of ancient texts. It’s an amazing feeling to be teaching to a large undergraduate class and to know that every single student will finish the class with knowledge that reflects what they individually care about,” says Dr. Gurd. Further, he’s observed a higher level of student engagement that may be partially attributed to the availability of diverse subject matter in the resources available to students. 

His students clearly appreciated the cost savings and also noted the ways in which the course material choices enhanced their learning experience. As one of his student nominators shared, “Not only did Professor Gurd save his students money, he did it in a way that actually contributed to the overall education of the class. The translations we used are actually known in the classics world as some of the best translations, but they’re normally quite expensive, but we were able to access them for free” (Freshman, Classical Languages major). They also highlighted the specific database that facilitates access to the course texts, Loeb Classical Library, as fundamental to facilitating both cost savings and the best possible learning experience: “This class is heavily reliant on Greek plays and dramas, which can be expensive, especially for accurate translations, but Professor Gurd had us use UT provided translations from the Loeb Classical Library for the class, which is great! They’re awesome translations, plus they’re free.”

And Dr. Gurd’s personal commitment to openness is not limited to course materials. At each step of the research cycle, he seeks out tools that are available openly. He tells us, “I do most of my writing in a free text editor (Atom), I manage my bibliography using free database tools (Zotero and Bibdesk), and I prefer to finish documents in an open source typesetting system (LateX). I energetically proselytize for this way of doing things, and will show my tools to anyone who asks (and sometimes even to people who don’t ask!).”

We asked Dr. Gurd what advice he might offer to other instructors who are considering making the switch to open, free, or affordable course materials. He shared this wisdom: “When I’m selecting materials, I try to ask myself: what do I want out of this course? How do I imagine the various parts—assignments, class time, reading and research—working together to create a positive experience for students? I feel lucky when I’m able to get everything working together; if it happens that I am able to do it while passing no additional cost to the student, then I really feel like I’ve hit the jackpot. My advice would be to let your goals tell you what the course needs, and to consider nothing sacred (including the tradition of assigning a textbook for purchase) in meeting those goals.”

Need help finding OER and other free or low cost course materials? Contact your subject librarian or Ashley Morrison, Tocker Open Education Librarian (ashley.morrison@austin.utexas.edu). 

Affordable Education Champion: Dr. Matt Worden

In celebration of Open Education Week 2022, 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. Matt Worden, who was nominated by his students in CH 153K (Physical Chemistry Laboratory) in the Department of Chemistry. Matt is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has taught since 2016. A Canadian by birth, he received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Waterloo in Ontario and completed his PhD at Kent State before doing a postdoc at Boston University.

Dr. Matt Worden, Department of Chemistry

Students who nominated Matt emphasized the value that his efforts to develop his own course materials, including lab manuals and guided questions for investigations, have had on their educational experience in the course. All the materials are relevant and customized to the learning outcomes students are expected to achieve. Having materials shared directly on Canvas also made access seamless. 

Matt is committed to keeping the cost of education low and transparent, but he also recognizes the pedagogical value of developing his own course materials. He tells us, “I’m teaching these labs. For [the materials] to be ‘mine’ in any meaningful sense, I have to be able to justify everything that is presented to and required of the students. And so the best way for me to do that is to write the manuals myself. In the few cases I haven’t done this myself, the manuals are sourced from professors working with the POGIL (process oriented guided inquiry learning) project whom I have worked with before and whose overall teaching ethos is similar to my own.” This approach aligns with Matt’s interest in experiential learning, making lab instruction a great fit.

If you want to minimize costs and make materials accessible for your own students, Matt recommends checking out education journals for your field. “The Journal of Chemical Education, in my case, is great to gather ideas, advice, and resources for teaching experiments or lecture topics.” Not sure which journals you can access through UT Libraries? Contact your subject librarian to learn more! 

OER Faculty Author Spotlight: Dr. Victor Eijkhout

Dr. Victor Eijkhout, Texas Advanced Computing Center

In observation 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! Because we can’t limit ourselves to just one week, we’re excited to celebrate open education throughout the month of March. 

We’re starting this year’s series with Dr. Victor Eijkhout. Dr. Eijkhout is part of the Texas Advanced Computing Center, which he joined in 2005 as a Research Scientist in the High Performance Computing group. He conducts research in linear algebra, scientific computing, parallel programming, and machine learning. Before coming to TACC, he held positions at the University of Illinois, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Dr. Eijkhout has authored open courseware, including several open textbooks and accompanying programs and code sets. Below, he generously shares his experiences developing OER with us.

Do you recall how you first became aware of open educational resources (OER) or the open education movement more broadly?

“In science, open software and open courseware predates the term ‘Open Source’ by a wide margin. In the 1980s I provided feedback on a tutorial document that someone on   a different continent was making, and that proved very popular. In the mid-1990s I co-authored a computer science textbook for which we got the publisher (SIAM) to agree on a dual license: the book was for sale but also downloadable (including software) and viewable as web pages. In a similar spirit, I started writing my textbooks about 15 years ago without any awareness of being part of a movement. After I finished my first open textbook I did some searching and found the Saylor Foundation which develops OER. They licensed my book for what is probably a similar amount as I would have made from commercially publishing the book.”

You’ve developed a wealth of open courseware, including several open textbooks and accompanying materials like Introduction to High-Performance Scientific Computing; Parallel Programming in MPI, OpenMP, PETSc; and Introduction Scientific Programming in Modern C++ and Fortran. What inspired you to create these resources?

“These textbooks were written for courses that TACC teaches. (The Texas Advanced Computing Center provides a small number of academic courses in addition to many short trainings. These courses are – for historic reasons – provided as part of the SDS department.) When I was slated to teach a course, I searched for available textbooks, but usually I disagreed in some way or other with the approaches they took, so I started writing my own. In a way, writing a textbook, for me, is a form of self-defense: if I only prepare lecture notes, I will often find, standing in front of the class, that I miss details. By writing out everything in full paragraphs and mathematical derivations, I make sure I don’t overlook anything.”

What was the most challenging part of developing your own resources? Was there anything that surprised you?

“The challenge is in dotting the is and crossing the ts. As in most things, the first 80 percent is easy. Getting to a finished product is hard, which is why you find many more lecture notes online than textbooks. An example of what I ran into in my programming books is the challenge of making sure code is 100% correct, and corresponds 100% to the output given. For this, I developed a whole infrastructure of example programs, from which snippets are clipped to be included in the text, and similarly the output captured to be included side-by-side.


In this aspect, self-publishing the way I do, through downloads and repositories, has advantages over publishing commercially: you can release a product informally in an earlier stage and revise it more easily and more often.”

Do you use any OER developed by others as teaching resources?

“Not directly, but if I come across resources I will often peruse them to get inspiration, or even to ‘borrow’ bits for my own texts.”

How do your students respond to the resources you’ve developed?

“I wish I could say that they really appreciate it, but the reactions have a wide range. For many of course a textbook is just a textbook and it goes unmentioned. Some of them have delved into the literature and tell me my book is really good. On the other hand, in a sign of the times, students’ first reaction to problems seems to be to look online rather than in the textbook. Unfortunately, in programming this sometimes leads them to outdated material.”

What advice would you offer to an instructor who is interested in using or developing their own OER but isn’t sure how to get started?

“The threshold for open resources is low. Any lecture notes you put up for download will be found by the search engines. My advice would be to write what *you* need. If it’s useful to other people it will be found.”

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)

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.”