Faculty Interview Carolyn Brown Kramer-UNL

Brad Severa Author

10/06/2022 Added

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OER Seed Grant interview Carolyn Brown Kramer

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[00:00:05.220]I've experienced a variety of issues
[00:00:07.850]with students having to buy publisher-based textbooks,
[00:00:10.260]including not having the money
[00:00:11.900]at the beginning of the semester to buy their books,
[00:00:13.760]so they delay, and then they fall
[00:00:15.510]behind in their coursework.
[00:00:17.880]And I felt like, to some extent, it was a moral issue,
[00:00:21.760]that we have publishers making tremendous profits
[00:00:24.590]off of students and many of our students
[00:00:28.060]we know are struggling to get by.
[00:00:29.950]So part of it was this sort of moral question about,
[00:00:33.810]is this how we should be doing higher education?
[00:00:36.290]And some of it was, I was just excited
[00:00:38.790]to see what was out there.
[00:00:39.810]So that was my motivation for getting into this project.
[00:00:46.250]So when I decided to convert my course,
[00:00:48.200]it was a social psychology class, I signed up.
[00:00:53.490]I got a Kelly Grant without necessarily knowing
[00:00:55.980]what I was getting myself into.
[00:00:57.080]I hadn't dug too much into the availability of resources.
[00:01:00.920]So I spent much of the summer before the year
[00:01:05.110]when I wanted to implement it investigating.
[00:01:07.410]So researching what was out there,
[00:01:09.290]looking at different texts,
[00:01:10.580]looking at instructor feedback on different texts.
[00:01:13.570]That was the preliminary groundwork,
[00:01:15.590]and then once I had selected the book,
[00:01:17.770]I started to start to dig through the ancillaries
[00:01:23.490]that came with it, and I looked at the ancillaries
[00:01:25.520]for other OER resources, and really used a
[00:01:30.520]lot of support from my teaching assistant.
[00:01:32.810]And so he and I, over the course of the semester,
[00:01:35.760]then worked on finding additional sources
[00:01:39.040]from mostly open-source materials
[00:01:41.510]to fill in the gaps for what we really felt we needed to do.
[00:01:48.240]I polled my students at the beginning of a semester
[00:01:50.870]and then at the end of the semester.
[00:01:52.500]At the beginning of the semester I asked,
[00:01:54.230]what are your experiences with OER, if you've had any?
[00:01:57.040]What do you think about the cost of textbooks?
[00:01:59.410]How has that impacted your educational experience?
[00:02:02.400]And then, at the end of the semester,
[00:02:03.560]I asked them specifically about,
[00:02:05.200]what did you think about this book that we used?
[00:02:07.500]If you had to choose between this book
[00:02:09.620]and another one that has more bells
[00:02:11.110]and whistles for a little bit of a higher,
[00:02:13.340]well, a non-zero price, which would you choose?
[00:02:17.230]And I was taken aback that my students in particular,
[00:02:21.610]not just this abstract idea of a student,
[00:02:24.010]but that my students in particular had
[00:02:26.910]to forgo purchasing books or had to delay purchasing books,
[00:02:30.410]or they chose a different course
[00:02:32.120]because of the cost of the book associated with it.
[00:02:34.650]So it really struck me that it was an issue
[00:02:37.690]for these particular students.
[00:02:39.630]And then, at the end of the semester,
[00:02:40.790]when I surveyed them, what did you think about this book?
[00:02:43.510]They liked it.
[00:02:44.343]Now, of course they don't have the institutional memory
[00:02:46.750]of the previous semesters and incarnations,
[00:02:49.460]so I was going into this looking
[00:02:51.470]for a change in their experience,
[00:02:54.350]and they had nothing to compare it to.
[00:02:57.060]But they really liked the book.
[00:02:59.030]They thought it was very beneficial,
[00:03:00.560]and almost unanimously, they said
[00:03:03.560]I would rather have this book than a different
[00:03:06.210]one that's prettier-looking and has an easier-to-use table
[00:03:09.670]of contents that costs me more money.
[00:03:12.500]So they had a very positive attitude
[00:03:14.880]toward the text that I selected.
[00:03:20.470]So the question, what would I change?
[00:03:23.430]What would I do differently?
[00:03:24.890]I'm sure is going to vary across different instructors
[00:03:27.470]and different books, but from my experience,
[00:03:31.260]I might have looked a little bit
[00:03:33.080]more before I leaped, just to see
[00:03:34.410]what's out there before I committed
[00:03:35.850]myself to saying I'm gonna go all-in
[00:03:37.610]and I'm gonna commit to adopting an OER.
[00:03:40.230]For the particular course that I was selecting,
[00:03:42.450]there's not a lot of variety out there.
[00:03:45.010]And there are three OER texts for this book,
[00:03:49.070]and so I reviewed all of them.
[00:03:50.930]I chose the one that I thought was the
[00:03:52.180]best fit for my class.
[00:03:54.250]But it might be the case that,
[00:03:55.860]for other folks who are thinking
[00:03:57.140]about an introductory-level course
[00:03:59.470]in their discipline, there might be many more selections.
[00:04:02.250]So depending on the circumstance
[00:04:05.080]in which the faculty member finds themselves,
[00:04:06.970]they might wanna think a little bit
[00:04:08.170]about what's out there before they commit to adopting.
[00:04:14.518]If you're thinking about converting
[00:04:15.680]your course to OER, I would suggest thinking
[00:04:19.970]about your course wholistically.
[00:04:21.910]So to what extent is the course focused
[00:04:25.980]around this book that you're going to adopt?
[00:04:28.200]Or is it a bunch of different activities
[00:04:29.970]and there's a book on the side?
[00:04:32.120]If the text is really central to
[00:04:34.500]what it is that you do in your class,
[00:04:36.240]think carefully about what options are out there
[00:04:38.620]and explore them a little bit.
[00:04:40.290]Make sure that you're doing a really careful examination
[00:04:43.310]and exploration of the options.
[00:04:45.050]There are some fantastic OER resources out there,
[00:04:48.280]in my experience in my discipline,
[00:04:50.600]but that might not be the case for everybody.
[00:04:56.480]The thing that I would say surprised
[00:04:57.750]me most about converting from a traditional textbook
[00:05:01.000]to open educational resources is
[00:05:03.730]how many of the things I was using,
[00:05:05.710]aside from just the textbook,
[00:05:07.540]also were copyright-protected or otherwise not OER.
[00:05:11.720]The way that I ended up doing my class is
[00:05:14.140]I adopted an open-source textbook,
[00:05:16.810]but not necessarily everything
[00:05:18.550]in my course was OER, and so I found
[00:05:20.980]it to be a lot more challenging
[00:05:22.810]to look at every single one of my activities
[00:05:25.330]and videos and interactives and say is this OER?
[00:05:29.280]Can I say that my course is fully OER at the end?
[00:05:32.350]And ultimately the answer for me was no.
[00:05:34.600]The text is OER.
[00:05:36.060]Many of the resources are, but not all of them.
[00:05:42.269]I really enjoyed the process of converting to OER,
[00:05:45.300]partly because it was an interesting opportunity
[00:05:47.620]to reexamine my course from a different perspective
[00:05:51.190]and pause and say, what else is out there?
[00:05:54.120]I tend, personally, I can't speak
[00:05:55.680]for other faculty, but I tend to get
[00:05:58.870]into a particular mindset and I say
[00:06:01.040]this is what the book says so I have to stick to the book.
[00:06:04.150]And so deeply examining a different text was
[00:06:08.470]really beneficial to me, but then also asking myself,
[00:06:12.000]how is this resource benefiting my students?
[00:06:15.070]Am I doing it because it's the easiest thing for me?
[00:06:17.410]Am I doing it because it's easy to find?
[00:06:21.320]Or am I really choosing these resources
[00:06:23.430]for my students' sake and benefit?
[00:06:29.390]My exams course didn't change significantly
[00:06:33.070]from one semester to the semester that I used OER.
[00:06:37.650]I changed the structure of my course simultaneously,
[00:06:40.050]so I can't necessarily attribute
[00:06:42.430]that only to the OER conversion.
[00:06:45.760]I changed it from being a little bit
[00:06:47.070]more lecture-oriented course to being
[00:06:48.810]more active learning in nature.
[00:06:52.780]But the students seemed to enjoy the course more.
[00:06:56.725]They seemed to like reading the book just as well.
[00:07:00.130]But in terms of their course performance,
[00:07:01.880]academically, it didn't seem to make a difference
[00:07:03.710]whether it was OER or a traditional textbook.
[00:07:09.310]The biggest instructional challenge
[00:07:10.640]I had in this experience was that the text
[00:07:14.850]I selected did not have the same level
[00:07:17.630]and set of ancillary materials as I was accustomed to.
[00:07:20.960]In my experience,
[00:07:22.220]most of the traditional publisher textbooks
[00:07:24.440]that I've used across my courses have extensive test banks
[00:07:29.070]and instructor resources, and for some
[00:07:31.410]of the OERs I looked at that was true,
[00:07:33.480]but for others it was less so.
[00:07:35.140]And ultimately the book that I chose,
[00:07:37.400]I chose it based on writing style.
[00:07:39.210]I chose it based on content coverage.
[00:07:42.150]But the trade-off there was that
[00:07:43.640]this particular text didn't have
[00:07:45.440]those complementary resources that
[00:07:47.700]I rely very heavily on.
[00:07:49.670]So I ended up having to spend a
[00:07:51.810]lot of my own time and have a lot
[00:07:53.950]of help from my teaching assistant
[00:07:55.350]to find and create supplemental resources.
[00:07:58.900]So we ended up spending more time than I had anticipated,
[00:08:01.910]but it was productive time, in trying to create
[00:08:05.570]those supplemental materials that I really needed.
[00:08:11.991]I feel like my students performed similarly well
[00:08:14.710]when I've used traditional textbooks versus OER.
[00:08:17.990]I will say that the students seemed a
[00:08:19.350]lot more active and engaged when I used my OER text.
[00:08:23.520]Of course that is also potentially attributable
[00:08:26.300]to the change in the course structure.
[00:08:28.920]But in terms of the actual resources,
[00:08:31.540]they thought deeply about them.
[00:08:34.760]They responded really well in discussions with their peers.
[00:08:38.840]They were able to use the resources
[00:08:40.200]in just the same ways that I experienced
[00:08:42.100]with a traditional textbook.
[00:08:43.770]So given the text that I chose
[00:08:47.527]and the course that I was in,
[00:08:49.410]I felt they performed admirably.
[00:08:55.890]I would recommend, if you're thinking
[00:08:57.190]about adopting OER, you think about
[00:08:59.420]your reasons for doing it, and if you feel
[00:09:03.630]like I can benefit my students pedagogically,
[00:09:07.340]I can benefit my students financially,
[00:09:10.000]and this is something that really speaks
[00:09:12.640]to you as an instructor, absolutely go for it.

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Faculty Interview Carolyn Brown Kramer-UNL

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