Open education resources make college more affordable

Written by experts, textbooks can spark scientific breakthroughs, nurture fluency in second and third languages, guide new business ventures, and more.

“When you think about grabbing a book to read, textbooks might not be the first thing you think of. But good ones really are amazing in how much information they contain and how they are organized to help us learn,” says College of Education, Health, and Human Services Librarian Raya Samet.

If textbooks are inaccessible to students due to financial constraints, however, they can’t learn from them. With UM-Dearborn’s large population of students who are PELL eligible and the first in their families to attend college, Samet says this is a real concern among Dearborn Wolverines.

So Samet — along with faculty, staff and students on UM-Dearborn’s Open Education Resources Committee — wants the university community to know that there’s UM-Dearborn-based educational and financial support for faculty members interested in pursuing open education, or OE, which is a movement toward free-to-use openly-licensed materials for teaching and learning.

To be clear, Samet says people should be compensated for their contributions toward authoring educational materials. But with the skyrocketing costs of materials — the cost of textbooks outpaced currency inflation by 238% from 1977 to 2015 and prices have doubled since 2001; the news site Vox explains why — students need alternative options.

“Everyone at this university is here for our students. We want them to be successful and graduate,” she says. “But, to do that, we need to remove barriers and make sure they have the materials they need to be successful.”

Samet says the campus community is invested in OE practices because they benefit student learning. “It’s important to put time and energy into developing the materials that develop students,” she says.

The OE committee, which Samet chairs, and the Hub for Teaching and Learning are available to support faculty and staff through answering questions, giving advice, directing toward resources, granting financial assistance and more, she says. For example, they have an Education grant, which is up to $500, open to faculty and staff for professional development to learn more about OE — and there’s an Open Education Conference happening online on Nov. 7, 8 and 9. If you sign up to attend, this grant would cover registration fees. 

Questions about grants or resources? Contact [email protected].

In addition to accessibility and affordability reasons, Samet says more faculty members are using and developing OE resources when re-evaluating their courses and class materials to align with UM-Dearborn’s focus on practice-based learning, hybrid course models, and the shift from three- to four-credit courses. Faculty like Journalism and Media Production Lecturer Benjamin Wielechowski are finding that they want more personalized content for their courses — and the Hub and OE committee is ready to help.

Wielechowski says he applied for an OE Creation grant — which awards up to $5,000 — when he couldn’t find the right materials for narrative journalism class. Most of the texts he reviewed had traditional forms of storytelling, but Wielechowski wanted to include podcasts, “Humans of New York”-style social media posts, TED Talks, blogs and more. And he wanted the ability to regularly update it with new examples.

With the help of Samet and Hub for Teaching and Learning Instructional Designer Autumm Caines, Wielechowski developed the digital book “Introduction to Narrative Journalism” on the Pressbooks platform. In addition to embedded videos and external links, he also included dozens of examples of his own students’ work. “If I can show current students what past students have created in direct response to an assignment prompt, and can show the variety of ways students have approached it, it just clicks with them so much faster,” he says.

Samet says that’s one example of OE faculty involvement from across the university. Anthropology Associate Professor John Chenoweth recently is using an Adoption and Remix grant to adopt a textbook for his “Introduction to Archaeology” course, a hands-on lab course where students compare different dig sites and research projects. And History Lecturer Jamie Wraight is working on a digital textbook about the Holocaust, which would incorporate survivor stories from the university’s oral history archive.

When working on his digital book, Wielechowski says he had a vision about what he wanted — and the OE Committee gave him everything he needed to make it happen. “What would have taken a few years to do on my own, took me a summer because of the guidance they gave me,” he says. “Working with Raya and Autumm helped me rethink how I teach and convey instruction. Not only were they encouraging, they also showed me all the cool tools that are out there. I think it’s amazing that we have this available to us on campus.”

First-year student Alyamamh Rahimee — a first-gen, PELL-eligible pre-med student who wants to be a family physician — says she spent around $500 on books this semester. Rahimee says she’s aware of open educational resources because they are used in her “People and Technology” course, which is taught by Lecturer Pamela Todoroff and Hub Instructional Designer Caines.

“It gives me hope that the university is looking to do this more. There are already so many obstacles we face that make it hard to navigate college — things that the university can’t help us with like cultural barriers or financial struggles at home. It’s nice to know they are looking at ways to remove obstacles where they can,” Rahimee says. “It shows me that they care about us.”

Article by Sarah Tuxbury.