NU OER Research Highlights OER 2023
Brad Severa
Author
04/27/2023
Added
4
Plays
Description
Dr. Dan Hawkins, Director of Online Development & Professor of Sociology and Dr. Julie Pelton, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, both at the University of Nebraska Omaha, present research related to the use of no-cost and low-cost materials, that are a part of Open Nebraska. They present preliminary results that compare grades earned and retention rates in Open Nebraska courses to courses that use traditional materials across three NU campuses.
Searchable Transcript
Toggle between list and paragraph view.
- [00:00:00.750]Okay.
- [00:00:01.583]Thanks for everyone who's joining us remotely today.
- [00:00:04.230]Very excited to have Julie and Dan with us, presenting.
- [00:00:08.010]Julie and Dan
- [00:00:09.840]recently completed
- [00:00:11.550]a
- [00:00:12.810]study that was looking at the effect
- [00:00:15.420]of open educational resource adoption on student success
- [00:00:19.770]at UNO.
- [00:00:20.603]We've had a program at UNO that's taken several forms,
- [00:00:25.530]including grants.
- [00:00:26.640]And if you attended
- [00:00:29.010]earlier in the week,
- [00:00:31.290]you would've seen Dan's presentation on
- [00:00:34.800]his
- [00:00:37.590]development of an OER degree pathway,
- [00:00:40.200]or an affordable content degree pathway through the
- [00:00:46.530]Department of Sociology major.
- [00:00:48.960]And having established that, we
- [00:00:53.130]really needed to look at the impact on student success.
- [00:00:55.800]And so Dan and Julie, using their expertise
- [00:00:58.920]as social science researchers, were able to address that,
- [00:01:02.760]and came up with some pretty great results, I feel like.
- [00:01:05.940]We're all super excited about it,
- [00:01:07.260]and happy to hear you share the results of your research.
- [00:01:12.750]So
- [00:01:14.490]whoever's gonna be leading off,
- [00:01:15.750]I'll turn it over to you,
- [00:01:16.650]and thank you again for presenting with us.
- [00:01:19.200]And thanks for doing it twice in a week, Dan.
- [00:01:22.440]Thanks, Craig.
- [00:01:23.280]Appreciate the introduction,
- [00:01:24.510]and thanks, everybody, for being here.
- [00:01:25.770]I'm gonna share some slides here.
- [00:01:45.531]Okay.
- [00:01:46.364]So I'm Dan Hawkins,
- [00:01:47.197]and I'm a professor of sociology
- [00:01:48.900]and now director of online development in the
- [00:01:53.340]Division of Innovative and Learning Centric Initiatives.
- [00:01:55.590]That's how I
- [00:01:57.120]got added to this project a little later
- [00:01:59.880]than some of the other people that we're gonna talk about
- [00:02:02.790]who are part of this research as well
- [00:02:04.620]'cause this was a four campus initiatives,
- [00:02:06.810]so there's quite a few other people involved
- [00:02:08.370]in helping to conduct this research.
- [00:02:11.880]And one of those lead people is here with us, Julie Pelton,
- [00:02:15.660]she's chair of,
- [00:02:17.580]associate professor of sociology
- [00:02:19.170]and chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology,
- [00:02:21.600]and has been with this project from the beginning,
- [00:02:24.090]and is gonna tell you a bit more about its origins.
- [00:02:26.160]But we are really excited to share this with you
- [00:02:29.160]'cause it's the first systematic evaluation
- [00:02:33.270]of the effect of this Open Nebraska OER
- [00:02:37.560]project
- [00:02:39.840]on students beyond the money that it's saved.
- [00:02:42.300]And we've been over that at.
- [00:02:43.830]We're up to something like $15 million in savings
- [00:02:46.110]since the start of the program,
- [00:02:47.820]but we thought,
- [00:02:49.710]or the people who started this project thought
- [00:02:51.690]maybe there's some other positive effects on student success
- [00:02:56.940]as a result of starting these OER sections.
- [00:03:00.840]And that's what we want to talk to you about today.
- [00:03:06.090]It's gonna take the form of a basic research talk here,
- [00:03:09.240]where Julie's gonna share
- [00:03:10.110]the purpose and background with you,
- [00:03:11.400]and a little bit about the methods we used,
- [00:03:13.020]and then I'll get into
- [00:03:15.870]the results, the findings of the study and some conclusions
- [00:03:19.080]and recommendations,
- [00:03:20.010]so I will just turn this over to Julie.
- [00:03:24.030]Thanks, Dan.
- [00:03:24.900]And I'll echo everyone's thanks
- [00:03:26.550]to folks who are here, joining us.
- [00:03:29.220]I'm really excited to be able to present
- [00:03:31.560]some of the initial work that we've been doing
- [00:03:34.860]across the campuses to understand, beyond cost savings,
- [00:03:38.790]what all of our efforts at increasing
- [00:03:42.630]OER adoption means for our students.
- [00:03:46.830]So, Dan, if you wanna advance the slide.
- [00:03:48.780]I'm not gonna go into all of the efforts
- [00:03:51.930]that have been going on at each campus,
- [00:03:54.960]but I do wanna talk a little bit about
- [00:03:56.760]the origins of this group, the research committee,
- [00:03:59.970]because without these folks,
- [00:04:01.410]we wouldn't have any data to present to you today.
- [00:04:04.800]And this goes back, actually, to Dr. Jaci Lindburg,
- [00:04:09.090]who, without her efforts to get some grant money
- [00:04:13.500]to support our efforts,
- [00:04:15.000]we also wouldn't have any of the things
- [00:04:17.250]that I get to share with you today.
- [00:04:19.710]So Jaci is now director of digital learning at UNO,
- [00:04:23.940]as you probably know,
- [00:04:25.440]but she initially got us some money
- [00:04:28.200]through women investing in Nebraska,
- [00:04:29.940]as well as some matching Kelly funds a couple of years ago
- [00:04:35.490]with the goal of helping to support faculty efforts
- [00:04:40.260]to convert their courses to OER
- [00:04:44.010]with the idea of saving money,
- [00:04:45.450]but also that those efforts
- [00:04:47.550]would result in some other benefits for students,
- [00:04:50.670]and so this group was also convened to take on that effort.
- [00:04:55.680]And so you see here the names of the folks
- [00:04:57.960]who originally began this work.
- [00:05:01.980]Kim Carlson at UNK, Nathan Wakefield at UNL,
- [00:05:06.527]Marquisha Frost, myself and Jaci began meeting in 2021.
- [00:05:13.260]We have added on some other folks
- [00:05:16.350]as the group has changed over time.
- [00:05:19.320]And so we're here to present some initial findings,
- [00:05:22.770]but I also wanna share some of the bigger ideas
- [00:05:25.860]that this faculty-led research committee created
- [00:05:29.700]as we started to shape the outlines
- [00:05:31.920]of this research project.
- [00:05:38.430]I think
- [00:05:41.617]when this group started meeting,
- [00:05:42.750]we really started by trying to dig into the research on OER,
- [00:05:48.150]and to understand what was going on on all three campuses
- [00:05:52.590]in order to really be able to explore
- [00:05:54.390]the wide variety of mechanisms
- [00:05:56.100]that we could potentially pursue
- [00:05:57.780]in order to assess the effects of OER for students.
- [00:06:02.130]These brainstorming efforts
- [00:06:04.110]and research into the past literature, essentially, I think,
- [00:06:07.680]dovetailed into two broad research questions,
- [00:06:11.820]or priorities, I guess,
- [00:06:13.020]or needs in terms of what kind of data
- [00:06:15.360]the different campuses might want to have
- [00:06:17.970]at their fingertips.
- [00:06:20.190]The first set of questions
- [00:06:22.830]really reflects on the presence and impact of OER
- [00:06:25.860]across our campuses, across the system.
- [00:06:28.320]And the second really focused in
- [00:06:30.540]on faculty and student satisfaction.
- [00:06:33.270]Ultimately, we're only gonna be talking about
- [00:06:35.640]the results of one of these ideas for our research,
- [00:06:39.630]but I share this with you to let you know
- [00:06:41.820]that in terms of the big picture,
- [00:06:43.530]there's a lot of potential future research
- [00:06:46.050]that we could be doing
- [00:06:47.790]as we build on these initial findings.
- [00:06:52.260]Everything that you're seeing on this screen,
- [00:06:54.330]from talking about rates of adoption
- [00:06:56.880]within and across campuses
- [00:06:58.530]or comparing different disciplines,
- [00:07:00.630]understanding faculty satisfaction
- [00:07:04.440]and factors affecting adoption,
- [00:07:06.780]as well as
- [00:07:09.150]how OER might affect or be affected by pedagogical approach
- [00:07:13.350]or teaching practices and learning outcomes.
- [00:07:15.480]All of these are recommended in the literature on OER,
- [00:07:19.230]and by the Open Education Group's guidebook
- [00:07:22.440]to research on open educational resources.
- [00:07:26.100]This group was really helpful for me in terms of
- [00:07:29.160]understanding
- [00:07:31.289]the best practices and evaluating OER research,
- [00:07:34.710]or OER efforts rather.
- [00:07:36.780]So this group conducts research
- [00:07:38.520]on the impact of OER adoption,
- [00:07:40.830]and has also created a toolkit,
- [00:07:42.840]which has a lot of great resources.
- [00:07:45.180]Were we ever, as a system or within our individual campuses,
- [00:07:49.860]interested in pursuing some of these other routes
- [00:07:52.320]for analysis and evaluation?
- [00:07:55.200]So for example, if we wanted to survey faculty and students,
- [00:07:59.520]they've got sample surveys that we could be used.
- [00:08:04.080]And I'll just put a plug out there that
- [00:08:08.040]we did explore whether and how we could
- [00:08:12.000]conduct all of these different types of research.
- [00:08:14.340]There's some drawbacks and barriers,
- [00:08:16.140]and time being one of them, that made us decide
- [00:08:20.310]to focus in on looking at
- [00:08:22.020]the impact of OER on student success.
- [00:08:24.960]But a lot of the barriers, I think, that we identified
- [00:08:28.080]and focused us in this direction are gonna go away,
- [00:08:31.890]and this type of research
- [00:08:33.630]will be easier to implement going forward,
- [00:08:35.850]especially now that we've got the system-wide
- [00:08:38.610]course marking processes underway.
- [00:08:41.130]For example,
- [00:08:41.963]surveying students and faculty about satisfaction
- [00:08:44.490]becomes a lot easier now that we know
- [00:08:46.410]who is teaching OER courses
- [00:08:47.940]and what students are in those courses.
- [00:08:52.350]So, ultimately,
- [00:08:55.710]we ended up
- [00:08:58.860]creating a path that would allow us to look at
- [00:09:01.440]the impact of OER on various types of student success.
- [00:09:10.860]So I'm just gonna share a little bit about what we know
- [00:09:13.290]in terms of the background research
- [00:09:14.940]on the connection between adoption of OER materials
- [00:09:19.260]and student success.
- [00:09:21.505]I'll start with the caveat
- [00:09:23.190]that a lot of the past research on this
- [00:09:25.500]is mixed with some researchers finding pretty strong effects
- [00:09:29.730]between adopting OER and the various outcomes
- [00:09:33.420]that you see on your screen, like higher course grades,
- [00:09:36.780]higher overall GPA, lower DFW rates,
- [00:09:40.020]greater enrollment intensity
- [00:09:41.760]in terms of the number of courses students take,
- [00:09:44.490]and the likelihood
- [00:09:45.750]that they're going to come back to campus the next year.
- [00:09:51.690]A lot of,
- [00:09:53.670]sorry.
- [00:09:54.503]I Lost my place.
- [00:09:56.220]Strong effects.
- [00:09:57.960]Some research is finding,
- [00:10:00.540]Some research findings are less strong,
- [00:10:03.390]and to a certain degree,
- [00:10:04.800]it's because this kind of research is complicated
- [00:10:07.470]by a lot of different factors.
- [00:10:10.170]But generally speaking, the body of research does find
- [00:10:13.770]that there are some connections between adopting OER.
- [00:10:18.810]The mechanisms for how
- [00:10:21.480]adopting OER
- [00:10:22.980]results in these kinds of outcomes is interesting.
- [00:10:26.580]I'll just share a couple of things with you
- [00:10:28.290]based on past research.
- [00:10:29.910]So one mechanism we think is going on is that
- [00:10:34.500]because we lower the cost of course materials,
- [00:10:37.950]they're more accessible,
- [00:10:39.060]and, therefore,
- [00:10:39.893]more students are likely to either buy the text
- [00:10:42.060]or have access to the text rather than skipping that.
- [00:10:47.280]And in fact,
- [00:10:48.113]we know from research by the Student Public Interest Group
- [00:10:53.700]that about 65% of students
- [00:10:55.710]admit to skipping purchasing of materials
- [00:10:58.110]just because of the cost.
- [00:11:00.660]One of the mechanisms
- [00:11:01.680]that might be leading to lower withdrawal rates
- [00:11:05.670]comes from research, that's really interesting,
- [00:11:07.890]on historically underserved students,
- [00:11:10.530]where we find that,
- [00:11:14.370]especially this group of students
- [00:11:18.049]might find it easier to catch up rather than withdraw
- [00:11:21.750]once they've missed materials covered in class
- [00:11:25.650]because they have easy access to the materials,
- [00:11:29.400]the textbooks.
- [00:11:31.890]There's also some really interesting research
- [00:11:34.020]on a socioeconomically at risk students.
- [00:11:38.160]Some of this research has found
- [00:11:39.930]that these students in particular,
- [00:11:42.180]when they're in an OER course,
- [00:11:44.670]have higher rates of motivation and confidence
- [00:11:47.550]as they're going throughout the course,
- [00:11:49.230]and in their ability as a student.
- [00:11:52.410]The mechanism here is perhaps that they're perceiving
- [00:11:56.070]that the university is invested in taking steps
- [00:11:58.920]to reduce the financial burden on students,
- [00:12:01.830]and that's having these positive outcomes.
- [00:12:05.520]Lastly, just really quickly,
- [00:12:07.020]I'll also talk about higher rates of persistence.
- [00:12:10.920]This particularly seems to
- [00:12:14.430]impact first-generation college students.
- [00:12:16.920]So
- [00:12:18.360]when campuses offer more OER courses,
- [00:12:21.960]first-generation students
- [00:12:23.010]are more likely to enroll in more courses,
- [00:12:25.320]and they definitely seem to be seeking out OER courses.
- [00:12:29.910]The basic gist of the research is a do-no-harm principle.
- [00:12:34.860]Even if you don't see particularly strong connections
- [00:12:39.030]between OER conversion and these student success outcomes,
- [00:12:43.920]we're still saving our students some money,
- [00:12:47.190]and they're still learning in the same way as they would
- [00:12:50.790]if they were in a non OER course.
- [00:12:55.320]In terms of the data and the methods,
- [00:12:58.290]I'm just gonna get a little bit into
- [00:13:01.710]the data that we have access to,
- [00:13:04.140]ultimately the research goal for this group
- [00:13:07.050]was to be able to get data
- [00:13:09.120]to be able to compare OER and non OER courses
- [00:13:11.820]in terms of three major student success outcomes.
- [00:13:15.300]So final course grade, the percent of A's earned in a course
- [00:13:19.290]and drop fail withdrawal rates.
- [00:13:23.250]In order to do that,
- [00:13:24.750]each campus representative
- [00:13:27.870]was responsible for working to identify
- [00:13:29.790]the best courses to use
- [00:13:32.280]because we really needed to have enough sections
- [00:13:34.590]that were taught prior to OER conversion
- [00:13:37.620]and after OER conversion.
- [00:13:39.750]And so you see on the screen
- [00:13:41.580]that each person from the three campuses
- [00:13:44.370]which we're able to present data,
- [00:13:46.260]we're able to take the information that they had
- [00:13:48.300]in terms of OER efforts on their campus
- [00:13:50.400]and identify
- [00:13:51.690]especially large enrolling general education courses
- [00:13:54.900]that we know transitioned to OER at some point in time.
- [00:13:58.320]And the reason we had to go this route
- [00:13:59.760]was because the system-wide course marking system
- [00:14:03.840]wasn't in place,
- [00:14:05.250]so we needed to identify courses
- [00:14:07.050]that we knew exactly when they were converted to OER
- [00:14:10.110]in order to have adequate data for this comparison.
- [00:14:14.460]Ultimately, we're gonna have access to a lot more data
- [00:14:18.660]so we can do stronger comparisons
- [00:14:21.150]between OER and non OER courses and student success
- [00:14:24.840]just because the course marking system
- [00:14:26.580]will make it easier to identify that data.
- [00:14:31.410]I will just mention one thing
- [00:14:33.630]that I think we've learned over the course of this research,
- [00:14:36.660]which is connected to the vulnerability of this data.
- [00:14:40.770]We're really dependent on course schedulers
- [00:14:43.470]to make sure that all OER courses are marked
- [00:14:49.099]as OER.
- [00:14:54.055]I think we can move on, Dan.
- [00:14:58.440]Ultimately,
- [00:14:59.273]we were able to work with enterprise data solutions folks,
- [00:15:02.520]special shout out to Vanessa Roof, to get access,
- [00:15:06.720]to request access to data from all three campuses.
- [00:15:11.130]The process involved making sure
- [00:15:13.890]that the data that was shared with us was cleaned up
- [00:15:17.550]and as complete as it could possibly be.
- [00:15:21.030]Ultimately, we've gotten a lot more data
- [00:15:24.060]than I'm showing you here,
- [00:15:25.380]in terms of different types of variables.
- [00:15:28.260]But what we used for this particular study course level data
- [00:15:32.880]that allowed us
- [00:15:35.070]to assess OER versus non OER, obviously,
- [00:15:40.020]for part of purposes of being very transparent,
- [00:15:44.850]the courses that were in the system
- [00:15:46.890]pre-course marking occurring,
- [00:15:50.040]those were all retroactively identified as OER.
- [00:15:53.910]We've also got the ability to compare based on modality,
- [00:15:57.510]whether OER makes
- [00:15:59.130]a different difference in online versus in-person classes.
- [00:16:02.250]We've got a lot of student level data,
- [00:16:06.150]including final course grade,
- [00:16:08.190]whether they dropped or withdrew from the course,
- [00:16:10.980]how they were enrolled,
- [00:16:11.940]whether full-time or less than full-time,
- [00:16:14.670]and a lot of great demographic data,
- [00:16:18.150]including gender, race and first-generation status.
- [00:16:22.110]And I think I get to turn it over to Dan now
- [00:16:25.350]to talk about our results.
- [00:16:34.500]Thanks, Julie.
- [00:16:35.460]Wait till my menu came up so I could unmute myself.
- [00:16:40.020]So if you're wondering what
- [00:16:43.260]the courses looked like across the campuses
- [00:16:46.140]or for two of those campuses, what the students were like
- [00:16:49.290]in terms of our sample characteristics,
- [00:16:52.500]you can see them here in this table.
- [00:16:53.730]And I can just go through this quickly.
- [00:16:55.680]There's probably not a lot of surprises
- [00:16:59.400]if you compare Omaha and Lincoln,
- [00:17:00.810]given the nature of the two campuses
- [00:17:04.140]in terms of student demographics,
- [00:17:05.760]and the fact that those Lincoln classes
- [00:17:08.640]all came from the math department
- [00:17:10.320]is something to keep in mind.
- [00:17:13.110]There were more OER classes
- [00:17:15.990]in the sample from Lincoln.
- [00:17:17.430]It was almost three quarters and Kearney was over half,
- [00:17:20.070]whereas Omaha was about 44%.
- [00:17:24.180]The Lincoln students,
- [00:17:25.410]the higher percentage of white students
- [00:17:26.880]was a higher percentage of minority students at UNO.
- [00:17:31.530]Majority women at UNO,
- [00:17:32.880]whereas in those Lincoln math courses,
- [00:17:34.380]it was a majority
- [00:17:37.110]men,
- [00:17:37.943]but
- [00:17:38.776]it's pretty close to 50/50 in both cases.
- [00:17:41.850]More first-generation students at UNO,
- [00:17:44.460]almost twice as many as at Lincoln.
- [00:17:47.310]More full-time students at Lincoln, no surprise,
- [00:17:49.710]although 75%
- [00:17:51.930]or so at UNO were full-time.
- [00:17:55.620]The big difference,
- [00:17:56.790]one big difference in the courses
- [00:17:58.110]comes in terms of what modality they were offered in.
- [00:18:01.530]Those Lincoln courses were almost all
- [00:18:08.490]in-person.
- [00:18:09.570]This is a mistake here, that 0.72,
- [00:18:11.280]that was carried over from something else.
- [00:18:13.260]They were almost all in-person,
- [00:18:15.720]and about 1% were online asynchronous.
- [00:18:18.330]Similar at Kearney.
- [00:18:19.200]About 92% in-person and 8%
- [00:18:23.460]asynchronous.
- [00:18:24.293]And UNO had more of a mix,
- [00:18:25.560]where a little over half of the courses were in-person,
- [00:18:28.650]but almost 10% offered hybrid or remote,
- [00:18:30.810]and then about a third online asynchronous.
- [00:18:33.540]So those are some differences that we ended up
- [00:18:37.320]taking into account later.
- [00:18:38.400]We controlled for those factors using a multiple regression,
- [00:18:41.250]which I'll talk about in a minute.
- [00:18:42.510]It didn't seem to affect the results very much.
- [00:18:44.340]But that is what the different samples...
- [00:18:46.380]They were different types of samples,
- [00:18:48.600]and they were analyzed separately partly for that reason.
- [00:18:54.840]The next table is really the meat of the results here.
- [00:18:58.470]This is the, this is the big story here.
- [00:19:00.960]So these are just simple bivariate results here,
- [00:19:03.180]where we compared, again, separately by each campus,
- [00:19:07.410]three different outcomes.
- [00:19:09.300]These are things we could draw from the registrar
- [00:19:11.520]that the people who collected the data were able to do.
- [00:19:14.700]So DFW rate,
- [00:19:15.960]or drop fail withdrawal rate.
- [00:19:18.690]So basically non-successful completions of the course.
- [00:19:21.870]So in this case, lower numbers is a better result.
- [00:19:26.550]In the other two cases, they're both based on grades.
- [00:19:29.370]We have your average grade
- [00:19:30.810]on a traditional four-point scale, from 0 to 4.
- [00:19:34.920]So those are the average grades earned in those courses.
- [00:19:38.040]And then we also converted that
- [00:19:39.510]to a percentage of A's earned
- [00:19:42.240]'cause some of the literature finds that
- [00:19:45.090]it does affect average grade,
- [00:19:46.320]but even bigger effect is on students
- [00:19:48.300]achieving the highest level of success in the courses
- [00:19:50.670]by earning in A's,
- [00:19:52.190]so we looked at that as well.
- [00:19:54.240]So, of course, in those two cases,
- [00:19:55.440]higher numbers would be more positive results.
- [00:19:59.040]So looking across the Omaha campus,
- [00:20:00.738]you can just compare the two numbers side by side here
- [00:20:04.470]for each outcome.
- [00:20:07.200]About 15% of the students in OER sections withdrew
- [00:20:11.820]versus about 19% in the non OER.
- [00:20:14.550]So we've got a 4% difference in the right direction there.
- [00:20:18.540]Students at UNO and OER sections, less likely to earn a DFW.
- [00:20:23.010]They did earn slightly higher grades as well,
- [00:20:25.110]if you look at the next set of columns.
- [00:20:27.870]Not a huge difference,
- [00:20:29.370]but about 0.05 points higher
- [00:20:32.220]on average
- [00:20:34.410]grades earned in OER sections
- [00:20:36.060]versus non OER sections.
- [00:20:37.560]So a small difference but in the right direction.
- [00:20:40.410]The percentage A's is a bigger difference, 5%.
- [00:20:44.861]In the OER sections,
- [00:20:45.694]almost half of the students earning A's,
- [00:20:47.340]whereas in the non OER sections, it was a little under 45%.
- [00:20:50.543]5% difference there.
- [00:20:55.020]Moving to Lincoln.
- [00:20:57.120]The only
- [00:20:58.650]negative result, I would say,
- [00:21:01.996]in the bivariate results is this first one here
- [00:21:03.540]in the DFW rate,
- [00:21:04.530]where, for some reason in these Lincoln math classes,
- [00:21:07.830]the students in OER sections were about 4% more likely
- [00:21:12.000]to drop fail withdraw their classes than the non OER.
- [00:21:15.180]Something that
- [00:21:16.013]we'd probably wanna dig into a little bit there
- [00:21:17.310]to see what's happening there.
- [00:21:20.190]But the other two results, again, they're small differences
- [00:21:22.620]but they're positive,
- [00:21:23.520]where grades are slightly higher in OER sections
- [00:21:26.880]than non OER sections for Lincoln,
- [00:21:30.330]0.03 point difference.
- [00:21:32.280]And then, basically, a 1% difference here,
- [00:21:34.920]where
- [00:21:36.204]35% of the grades
- [00:21:39.360]at UNL and OER sections
- [00:21:41.640]were A's versus 34%.
- [00:21:43.770]So tiny differences here,
- [00:21:47.246]but generally similar across the two sections.
- [00:21:49.350]Two of the results in the positive direction, one negative.
- [00:21:52.980]Kearney. Similar results for Kearney as UNO, I would say.
- [00:21:56.760]Maybe not quite as strong across all the measures,
- [00:22:00.030]but stronger in some,
- [00:22:01.080]so about a 1% difference here for DFW rate.
- [00:22:04.350]It was lower,
- [00:22:05.603]1% lower
- [00:22:07.920]in OER sections and non OER sections,
- [00:22:11.310]but in the right direction.
- [00:22:12.270]And then almost a 10th of a point difference
- [00:22:14.340]between grades here, where OER sections were earning
- [00:22:18.960]grades
- [00:22:20.460]above a B,
- [00:22:21.420]and in the non OER sections, just under a B
- [00:22:25.110]for about a 10th of a point difference.
- [00:22:26.730]And then almost the identical result as
- [00:22:30.360]with UNO,
- [00:22:31.380]where 5% more A's were earned in OER sections
- [00:22:34.620]than non OER sections at Kearney.
- [00:22:37.740]So we've got nine results,
- [00:22:39.450]and eight are in the right direction,
- [00:22:41.580]and even the negative result is not
- [00:22:44.070]hugely worrying is a good sign.
- [00:22:46.980]We did go on and do a little more
- [00:22:50.310]nuanced analyses after that,
- [00:22:52.230]and we did find some notable differences
- [00:22:55.110]in how these OER sections were affecting
- [00:22:58.890]different types of students.
- [00:23:00.117]And that is based on some of the background
- [00:23:03.300]that Julie has presented earlier,
- [00:23:04.620]where we were able to look at gender, race, ethnicity,
- [00:23:08.940]first-generation status as well as full-time status,
- [00:23:12.150]and see
- [00:23:13.590]if
- [00:23:16.581]some students were benefiting more from OER
- [00:23:19.380]than maybe others were.
- [00:23:21.330]And we did find that, at UNO,
- [00:23:24.750]men were earning grades that were 0.15 points higher
- [00:23:30.330]in OER sections versus non OER sections.
- [00:23:32.820]The result for women was almost...
- [00:23:35.010]Actually, their grades were slightly lower in OER sections,
- [00:23:39.403]0.01 points.
- [00:23:42.480]Seemed to benefit first-generation students, particularly.
- [00:23:44.670]They earned 10% more A's when OER was available
- [00:23:48.540]than when it wasn't.
- [00:23:50.760]And our part-time students also seemed to be doing better
- [00:23:53.910]when OER was offered in their sections,
- [00:23:55.860]with 8% lower DFW rates.
- [00:23:58.200]So, in a lot of ways, the
- [00:24:02.310]underrepresented students at UNO seemed to benefit from OER
- [00:24:07.170]more than our majority students.
- [00:24:09.750]The pattern was the opposite at UNL.
- [00:24:13.800]Again, something we wanna dig into a little further.
- [00:24:16.860]Another just reminder
- [00:24:18.000]that these are all math classes in this case,
- [00:24:19.830]but it seemed like white and non-first generation students
- [00:24:23.040]were getting slightly higher grades in the OER sections
- [00:24:26.670]and earning more A's.
- [00:24:29.310]The full-time students were also doing better
- [00:24:32.610]in these OER sections.
- [00:24:35.190]4% lower DFW rates, which is a bigger effect
- [00:24:38.130]than for the general student body.
- [00:24:40.506]0.05 point higher grades and earning 4% more A's.
- [00:24:43.380]So for some reason,
- [00:24:44.730]and again, this is something
- [00:24:45.750]we'd like to pursue in further research,
- [00:24:47.760]the majority students seem to have more of a benefit for OER
- [00:24:51.780]at UNL, which is the opposite of what was going on at UNO.
- [00:24:56.250]As I mentioned earlier,
- [00:24:57.330]we did wanna make sure
- [00:24:59.550]that these by bivariate types of results,
- [00:25:01.680]or, in this case, there's a third variable added in,
- [00:25:05.970]that they held up even after we controlled for
- [00:25:10.890]the instructor 'cause
- [00:25:13.500]some of these big effects
- [00:25:14.550]might be due to a particular instructor
- [00:25:15.960]being extremely good at implementing OER
- [00:25:19.410]or the way they grade or something like that.
- [00:25:21.000]So we're able to hold that constant
- [00:25:23.190]as well as hold the discipline constant
- [00:25:24.960]'cause there were
- [00:25:27.030]courses across social sciences, humanities, natural sciences
- [00:25:30.900]and so forth.
- [00:25:32.490]Some might be harder,
- [00:25:33.420]some might be harder to find OER materials,
- [00:25:36.060]there are different students in those classes.
- [00:25:37.800]So we were able to control for those things
- [00:25:39.420]in a multiple regression analysis.
- [00:25:40.650]I'm not gonna show those results,
- [00:25:41.850]but
- [00:25:43.290]it really didn't change the results
- [00:25:45.450]that I presented in this table
- [00:25:47.880]or the results that I talked about above.
- [00:25:50.760]They pretty much held
- [00:25:53.400]with those controls.
- [00:25:55.080]But, again, something we'd like to dig into more
- [00:25:57.360]in future research.
- [00:26:00.660]To wrap up and give some thoughts about
- [00:26:05.130]what's happening with Open Nebraska
- [00:26:06.990]and what might happen down the road,
- [00:26:09.990]seems like a really promising start.
- [00:26:13.650]We were able to confirm a lot of the hypotheses
- [00:26:17.430]or agree with a lot of the past research
- [00:26:19.980]that shows there are these positive effects
- [00:26:23.280]beyond just saving students money.
- [00:26:25.860]They were modest.
- [00:26:27.120]Not huge effects,
- [00:26:28.650]but they were pretty consistent across all three campuses,
- [00:26:32.040]which really have different student bodies,
- [00:26:34.110]and we're looking at different classes.
- [00:26:35.640]So that's a good sign.
- [00:26:39.861]I also suspect that we might even be underestimating
- [00:26:44.580]the positive effects of Open Nebraska.
- [00:26:46.710]As Julie talked about before,
- [00:26:49.740]although we tried really hard to make sure
- [00:26:52.350]that all the classes that were actually using OER materials
- [00:26:56.280]were actually marked as such,
- [00:26:59.100]it's possible that...
- [00:27:00.690]There's been faculty doing this for a long time,
- [00:27:02.610]and it's just part of their process of
- [00:27:05.790]how they choose their course readings and materials,
- [00:27:09.510]and they may not have applied for a grant
- [00:27:12.060]or been identified as such,
- [00:27:13.230]so it's possible that there are actually some OER sections
- [00:27:17.310]that were labeled as non OER sections,
- [00:27:19.230]and that students were doing maybe even better in.
- [00:27:22.020]So I suspect that the effects might even be more positive,
- [00:27:25.410]which is why we'd like to continue this research
- [00:27:29.370]with the new Open Nebraska marketing system that we've got.
- [00:27:33.210]But,
- [00:27:35.070]as Julie said, the do-no-harm principle.
- [00:27:38.010]At the very least...
- [00:27:39.960]There's not a huge difference
- [00:27:41.070]between those sections that use OER and those that don't.
- [00:27:45.090]The effects seem to be positive.
- [00:27:48.600]But certainly, at the very least,
- [00:27:51.000]we're saving them a lot of money
- [00:27:52.680]while they're still able to succeed in their courses
- [00:27:55.620]using these high quality open source materials.
- [00:28:00.810]But like I said, we wanna do more.
- [00:28:02.580]We wanna do more work on this.
- [00:28:04.140]We wanna follow up and do more research with new data.
- [00:28:09.540]I can't remember if Julie mentioned it or not,
- [00:28:10.647]but we ended up dropping the semesters that happened during
- [00:28:14.970]the middle of the pandemic,
- [00:28:16.170]the spring 2020 through spring 2021 semesters,
- [00:28:21.360]in which student success was harmed.
- [00:28:23.880]Lots of classes were taught remotely
- [00:28:26.370]rather than their normal modality of in-person
- [00:28:28.500]or another way.
- [00:28:30.480]So we'd like to gather more data
- [00:28:32.550]as we hopefully move out of and stay out of the pandemic.
- [00:28:39.750]That was a confounding variable
- [00:28:40.950]that we just couldn't do anything about,
- [00:28:42.930]so we just ended up dropping those years.
- [00:28:44.760]But a lot of the,
- [00:28:45.630]unfortunately, a lot of those OER conversions
- [00:28:47.280]also occurred during that time,
- [00:28:48.570]so we'd like to see, going forward
- [00:28:50.850]as more OER conversions occur,
- [00:28:53.280]how long does it take for those effects to come into play?
- [00:28:56.580]Also, it'd be nice to have, as Julie talked about before,
- [00:29:00.180]data that have come after everybody knows,
- [00:29:04.140]the course schedulers know that they should
- [00:29:06.930]and how to mark classes as Open Nebraska.
- [00:29:09.390]And we get really consistent about that,
- [00:29:11.400]and have really accurate and valid data
- [00:29:13.830]on which sections are being taught with OER
- [00:29:16.317]and which are not.
- [00:29:18.270]And again, I suspect we'll see even stronger effects
- [00:29:20.580]once we have those data.
- [00:29:23.520]It'd be great to add some additional
- [00:29:26.160]variables to
- [00:29:28.504]this study.
- [00:29:29.460]A smaller scale study could actually look at other outcomes
- [00:29:33.720]besides the grade-based outcomes we've shown here.
- [00:29:38.880]Can we measure if students have greater confidence
- [00:29:42.030]when they're able to access OER materials
- [00:29:45.360]or greater feelings of belongings when they know
- [00:29:47.040]their faculty, their instructors
- [00:29:49.290]are trying to get them high quality materials
- [00:29:51.960]at a low cost price point?
- [00:29:55.560]Some student characteristics
- [00:29:56.640]we didn't have this time around, that would be nice,
- [00:29:58.740]are age, and, as Julie mentioned, socioeconomic status.
- [00:30:01.950]There's obvious reasons
- [00:30:02.970]for why we think OER would especially benefit students who
- [00:30:08.100]are of lower socioeconomic status
- [00:30:09.840]because they don't have to worry about paying for the book,
- [00:30:11.580]and they have access to it right away.
- [00:30:13.350]There's also some findings from past research about age
- [00:30:16.530]that may be non-traditional students
- [00:30:18.870]might be less comfortable,
- [00:30:19.920]more used to the traditional textbook and
- [00:30:24.840]may benefit less,
- [00:30:26.010]or maybe there needs to be more informational campaigns
- [00:30:28.470]to tell them about OER materials,
- [00:30:31.530]that they're easy to access and high quality.
- [00:30:34.800]It'd be nice to have some instructor characteristics.
- [00:30:37.050]We could control for instructor
- [00:30:38.280]in terms of just who they were,
- [00:30:40.350]and which sections they were teaching,
- [00:30:42.630]but it'd be nice to know how long they've been teaching
- [00:30:44.910]and how have students assessed their teaching in the past,
- [00:30:48.540]their teaching effectiveness and how comfortable were they
- [00:30:50.700]with OER adoption when they tried to do that.
- [00:30:52.800]Those might be some variables
- [00:30:54.270]that affect our results as well.
- [00:30:58.050]It would also be great to actually have...
- [00:30:59.910]We have longitudinal data,
- [00:31:01.320]in the sense that it's collected over a semester,
- [00:31:03.810]but it would be nice to actually track, again,
- [00:31:07.260]when did the OER conversion happen,
- [00:31:09.210]and how long has it been since a course has been changed.
- [00:31:12.600]And then I'll also to do some of these multi-level analyses
- [00:31:15.270]that I alluded to before.
- [00:31:18.030]We, basically, analyzed the data at the student level.
- [00:31:22.380]Each case was a student who was in a particular section
- [00:31:26.160]and earned a grade in a particular section.
- [00:31:28.110]But really you have multiple levels of data here.
- [00:31:30.510]You've got students within courses,
- [00:31:33.210]and it would be great to see how
- [00:31:35.370]you could pull out that average effect
- [00:31:37.170]of being an OER course
- [00:31:38.400]and see what's due to the student benefiting from it
- [00:31:41.070]and what's due to the whole course,
- [00:31:43.410]all the students in the course benefiting from it.
- [00:31:45.630]So that'd be something
- [00:31:46.463]that would be really interesting to take a look at
- [00:31:48.960]down the road.
- [00:31:54.720]So overall,
- [00:31:57.030]this seems to be something that's going very well,
- [00:31:59.370]and we'd like to keep that momentum up.
- [00:32:01.140]So
- [00:32:03.930]continuing to fund grants that support conversion to OER
- [00:32:08.850]is a big deal.
- [00:32:09.683]Of course Craig does that here at UNO in the library now.
- [00:32:12.990]We wanna continue to fund that.
- [00:32:15.060]And then, of course, let's keep monitoring and assessing
- [00:32:17.580]how it's affecting students going forward, as I mentioned.
- [00:32:21.360]I think getting the word out to faculty
- [00:32:24.630]about how much students appreciate
- [00:32:29.370]open educational resources.
- [00:32:32.400]Again, what this study is suggesting
- [00:32:33.943]is that it is good for them to have,
- [00:32:37.290]and that there's best practices
- [00:32:38.910]around open educational resources that...
- [00:32:41.070]We have experts on all of our campuses
- [00:32:43.230]that can help with that.
- [00:32:44.640]We need to get that out there.
- [00:32:45.630]But then we also need to reward the faculty for doing it.
- [00:32:47.880]It's one thing to tell them,
- [00:32:49.380]and, of course, out of the goodness of their heart,
- [00:32:50.940]many faculty will do this,
- [00:32:52.080]but it'd also be nice
- [00:32:53.070]if you could put this as a line in your annual review
- [00:32:56.220]or your RPT, we call it at UNO,
- [00:32:58.680]your promotion and tenure evaluation,
- [00:33:00.810]and that our colleagues in our colleges would say
- [00:33:03.750]hey, that's an important thing you did
- [00:33:05.910]in your teaching profile for our students,
- [00:33:08.370]and really value that going forward.
- [00:33:12.060]I think we also have an opportunity
- [00:33:13.500]to really advertise the Open Nebraska program in general
- [00:33:17.100]more widely.
- [00:33:19.350]A survey that I was part of earlier in the academic year
- [00:33:23.490]suggested that most students
- [00:33:24.600]aren't really familiar with the Open Nebraska brand.
- [00:33:26.760]They might know that they were in a course
- [00:33:28.950]that had low cost or no cost materials,
- [00:33:31.650]but they don't, necessarily, know
- [00:33:32.910]to search for that attribute
- [00:33:34.500]when they look for their courses.
- [00:33:38.010]There's some universities in this region
- [00:33:39.840]that actually advertise free books on their billboards,
- [00:33:42.570]free books for all students.
- [00:33:43.470]We could advertise something like that.
- [00:33:45.390]We have this Open Nebraska program,
- [00:33:46.890]where we even have some majors.
- [00:33:48.960]Sociology is one where
- [00:33:51.120]you can get through the entire program
- [00:33:52.650]without ever having to pay more than $40 for a book.
- [00:33:55.560]I think that's something
- [00:33:56.393]we should get out the word to the community,
- [00:33:58.740]to students and prospective students and their families
- [00:34:02.190]and other stakeholders in Nebraska, in the region, that
- [00:34:07.170]this is something
- [00:34:08.850]that is having a really positive effect
- [00:34:11.190]on students' pocket books and even their student success.
- [00:34:15.930]So I will stop there,
- [00:34:17.310]and Julie and I can
- [00:34:19.680]take questions if they're out there.
- [00:34:23.640]All right. Thanks, Dan and Julie both.
- [00:34:27.660]I just wanted to say,
- [00:34:28.560]and
- [00:34:29.760]to
- [00:34:30.900]iterate this,
- [00:34:32.040]the effort towards
- [00:34:34.574]OER and affordable content in the NU system,
- [00:34:36.750]it's involved so many people at all the campuses.
- [00:34:40.560]As a university,
- [00:34:42.360]there was that...
- [00:34:43.770]I think President Carter
- [00:34:45.030]had identified a goal of $10 million
- [00:34:47.490]in impact in student savings by 2023 or 2024.
- [00:34:52.020]And we hit 13 by the end of last year.
- [00:34:55.440]So far ahead of schedule.
- [00:34:57.060]And
- [00:34:59.220]I think that's just...
- [00:35:01.775]It's due to the fact that we had so many stakeholders
- [00:35:06.450]buy into this.
- [00:35:07.530]There's grant incentives, administrative buy-in,
- [00:35:11.100]the First Day Access program,
- [00:35:14.250]the Division of Innovative and Learning Centric Initiatives,
- [00:35:17.280]campus bookstores, libraries, university administration,
- [00:35:19.980]the registrar,
- [00:35:22.800]the OER community of practice.
- [00:35:26.130]It's been
- [00:35:28.290]super amazing for me coming in here
- [00:35:30.330]to be part of an initiative that's seeing such buy-in
- [00:35:33.630]from such a diverse population of people
- [00:35:35.580]across the university at all of the campuses.
- [00:35:38.130]Everywhere I've turned
- [00:35:39.000]since I've started here a couple years ago,
- [00:35:40.590]I've just met people who are like,
- [00:35:41.557]"Yeah, that sounds like a great project. That sounds cool.
- [00:35:43.410]Let's do that."
- [00:35:47.220]So thanks to both of you for your work on this paper,
- [00:35:50.340]showing that
- [00:35:53.190]it's paying some
- [00:35:55.410]dividends for us,
- [00:35:56.370]not just in terms of financial impact,
- [00:35:59.670]but also some indications that, yeah,
- [00:36:01.890]we're having a positive impact on student success.
- [00:36:05.310]And
- [00:36:06.450]I think...
- [00:36:09.180]I've seen some studies
- [00:36:10.860]that when they were looking at the comparisons
- [00:36:14.070]at a various university,
- [00:36:15.270]they saw no difference whatsoever
- [00:36:18.810]or even, sometimes worryingly, a negative effect.
- [00:36:22.050]And so I think, also,
- [00:36:23.670]it's important to acknowledge
- [00:36:26.340]that I think the fact
- [00:36:27.240]that we've got some numbers that y'all found
- [00:36:30.060]that indicate a positive impact on student performance,
- [00:36:33.360]and that also just speaks to
- [00:36:36.079]the energy and the quality of the faculty and instructors
- [00:36:39.120]in the NU system.
- [00:36:41.700]That $13 million amount wouldn't have been hit so early
- [00:36:45.630]if we also didn't have such a huge population of faculty
- [00:36:48.477]and instructors who were excited about doing this
- [00:36:51.030]and are not put off or intimidated by this idea
- [00:36:55.470]of adopting open educational resources
- [00:36:58.684]or, at the very least, finding affordable content
- [00:37:01.590]using that,
- [00:37:02.880]and then having to completely rearrange
- [00:37:06.330]and pre-design their classes.
- [00:37:08.070]Yeah.
- [00:37:09.079]I think just here through the Chris Library's
- [00:37:11.370]affordable content grants,
- [00:37:12.510]we've had faculty instructors from every college,
- [00:37:15.450]and I think 26 or 27 areas of study so far.
- [00:37:20.130]And that's just for one initiative at campus.
- [00:37:22.800]So I did want to acknowledge that as well.
- [00:37:27.210]If no one has a question yet, I do have one myself.
- [00:37:35.610]As Julie mentioned,
- [00:37:37.500]the idea of better looking at socioeconomic background.
- [00:37:44.400]I've read that an issue
- [00:37:45.450]with trying to do an all population comparison
- [00:37:48.060]is that for the improvement in student performance,
- [00:37:51.150]a lot of that relies on let's get it students who
- [00:37:57.270]have reported not buying a textbook
- [00:37:59.790]or trying to get by without it.
- [00:38:01.320]And as we all know,
- [00:38:03.270]the student in class who doesn't have the book,
- [00:38:04.740]and they try to cobble together chapter by chapter
- [00:38:06.990]from their classmates,
- [00:38:07.823]they're less likely to have a good outcome.
- [00:38:10.560]But if we're doing a whole population comparison,
- [00:38:13.890]then we're also including a great many students
- [00:38:16.290]who don't have that access issue.
- [00:38:19.590]So they aren't
- [00:38:22.620]as financially at risk,
- [00:38:23.730]they aren't having to figure out
- [00:38:26.070]how to get this book or that book.
- [00:38:28.200]So do you think, given what we've seen here,
- [00:38:31.350]in that these numbers indicate
- [00:38:34.500]some positive impact on student success
- [00:38:36.780]that that would become magnified
- [00:38:38.910]if we were able to zero down on these target populations
- [00:38:44.520]of the students
- [00:38:46.020]who are more likely to try to make it without the book?
- [00:38:54.270]Go ahead, Julie.
- [00:38:56.190]I mean,
- [00:38:57.314]I think the short and simple answer to that question
- [00:38:58.860]is absolutely.
- [00:39:00.810]I think if we were able to get some sort of data
- [00:39:05.100]that let us know
- [00:39:08.040]family background or current income level,
- [00:39:12.540]it would certainly be the case.
- [00:39:15.210]I feel like this is the strongest finding
- [00:39:17.130]across the literature, that we're helping
- [00:39:19.980]our most economically disadvantaged students
- [00:39:23.010]when we're moving to free or very low cost course materials.
- [00:39:28.860]The variable that is used in a lot of research
- [00:39:31.620]is whether or not a student is a Pell Grant recipient,
- [00:39:35.580]which, obviously, is challenging to negotiate
- [00:39:40.020]when you're just starting a research project
- [00:39:42.540]because that brings in financial aid
- [00:39:44.730]and student privacy issues.
- [00:39:47.700]But, generally,
- [00:39:48.533]the research that has been able to compare and contrast
- [00:39:51.390]Pell Grant recipients with non-Pell Grant recipients
- [00:39:53.940]finds that the effective going OER
- [00:39:56.970]is stronger for that group for sure.
- [00:40:00.870]You can see it a little bit in the UNO data with the
- [00:40:05.370]bigger effect that it has on first-generation students.
- [00:40:07.635]Now, it's not a perfect proxy for SES by any means,
- [00:40:10.470]but it's probably correlated as well.
- [00:40:14.010]So they seem to be benefiting,
- [00:40:16.080]particularly from the OER sections
- [00:40:18.930]relative to the students that are not first-generation.
- [00:40:22.230]So I think that's a sign that if we could
- [00:40:25.560]get better measures of SES,
- [00:40:27.000]we would find those bigger effects you're talking about,
- [00:40:28.800]Craig and Julie.
- [00:40:33.690]We do have a question in the chat now,
- [00:40:35.730]and, yeah,
- [00:40:37.530]anyone attending, if you have a question,
- [00:40:39.090]please throw it up in the chat,
- [00:40:39.923]and I can read it.
- [00:40:41.820]This is from Catherine.
- [00:40:43.950]Thanks for this presentation.
- [00:40:45.750]I am interested in and excited to hear about
- [00:40:47.430]the team's plans to add variables
- [00:40:49.740]including student confidence and feelings of belonging.
- [00:40:53.370]Curious if you've talked yet
- [00:40:55.050]about how you might measure those variables,
- [00:40:57.960]student surveys, interviews, something else.
- [00:41:02.130]I'll let Julie talk about
- [00:41:03.540]if the team previously had conversations about this.
- [00:41:08.070]Partly what made me think of that
- [00:41:09.780]is the student panel yesterday,
- [00:41:11.700]which, in some ways was
- [00:41:14.850]almost a focus group, a qualitative effort at
- [00:41:19.230]identifying the effects that OER had on them.
- [00:41:21.930]And they mentioned some of these things.
- [00:41:25.140]I mean, one, just
- [00:41:27.240]the burden that was off them,
- [00:41:28.350]the easing of their mind about worrying how to pay for this.
- [00:41:32.160]One thing that was interesting
- [00:41:33.480]was there's other things I could then do with this money
- [00:41:36.540]that are good for my wellbeing that probably then
- [00:41:39.210]cascade over into student success as well.
- [00:41:41.370]So I think
- [00:41:43.777]a smaller qualitative study might be really interesting.
- [00:41:47.340]I think if we wanted to add
- [00:41:49.650]things like Catherine asked about in the chat,
- [00:41:51.390]student confidence, feelings of belonging,
- [00:41:52.710]we could do that in a survey as well.
- [00:41:56.820]I don't know that you could integrate it
- [00:41:57.960]with the data we used in this particular study.
- [00:41:59.940]It would probably have to be something different,
- [00:42:02.580]but I think probably worth pursuing long-term.
- [00:42:07.290]Yeah. I'll concur.
- [00:42:08.490]I think, Dan, you're right.
- [00:42:10.140]I think the challenge there
- [00:42:11.430]would be a significant challenge,
- [00:42:12.960]trying to align data we collected
- [00:42:15.450]with data that's available through the registrars
- [00:42:17.970]on all of the campuses.
- [00:42:19.710]But all of this is definitely worth pursuing.
- [00:42:23.820]Originally,
- [00:42:25.260]I tried to describe...
- [00:42:26.760]The group really was interested in more
- [00:42:31.020]developing a survey instrument
- [00:42:32.370]that would go out to faculty and students
- [00:42:35.010]to get at those satisfaction
- [00:42:38.580]types of variables like confidence
- [00:42:41.550]and feelings of belonging.
- [00:42:44.190]Ultimately,
- [00:42:46.290]we weren't able to get that going
- [00:42:48.180]under this particular grant
- [00:42:49.440]within the timeframe that we were working in,
- [00:42:52.140]but I would love to see UNO
- [00:42:54.900]and any of the other campus partners
- [00:42:57.150]who want to continue to go that route.
- [00:42:59.400]It could certainly be interviews.
- [00:43:00.930]I think surveys
- [00:43:03.480]are a worthwhile method of collecting more data, too.
- [00:43:07.050]And I'll just add, in the chat,
- [00:43:10.020]the link to that Open Ed Group that I was talking about.
- [00:43:13.380]I think the great thing about Open Education research
- [00:43:17.460]is that they're embodying Open Education
- [00:43:21.513]of principles.
- [00:43:22.346]And so there are so many
- [00:43:25.920]folks out there sharing how they've measured the effect
- [00:43:29.663]of OER conversion within courses on student outcomes
- [00:43:33.210]that are a lot more
- [00:43:36.000]subjective rather than just grades and GPA and all of that.
- [00:43:39.780]And so if anyone's interested in looking at that toolkit,
- [00:43:43.410]there are surveys that can be adapted, freely used
- [00:43:48.630]for anyone who is interested,
- [00:43:51.180]even if it's an instructor out there
- [00:43:53.010]who's just curious
- [00:43:54.000]about how their personal conversion of a course to OER
- [00:43:58.620]is affecting their students
- [00:44:00.300]or what they think about their OER materials.
- [00:44:18.600]You're on mute, Craig.
- [00:44:23.970]I was wondering
- [00:44:30.494]if you're trying to do, like you said,
- [00:44:33.540]a qualitative companion to this, all right,
- [00:44:36.960]and turn it into a mixed method study.
- [00:44:42.030]And I ask this 'cause I don't know.
- [00:44:46.020]Julie said that there have been studies
- [00:44:48.450]comparing Pell Grant recipients
- [00:44:50.340]to non Pell Grant recipients.
- [00:44:52.980]Were those also qualitative
- [00:44:54.690]or were those similarly anonymized
- [00:44:56.700]in the way that the data that you looked at was?
- [00:44:59.790]Because it would be interesting and great
- [00:45:02.760]if you could do a qualitative study,
- [00:45:05.610]a series of interviews
- [00:45:06.540]with those financially at risk students.
- [00:45:08.700]The question being how to approach that
- [00:45:12.840]ethically
- [00:45:15.240]so that you're not just reaching out of the blue
- [00:45:16.710]and,
- [00:45:18.067]"Hey, we know that you're a Pell Grant recipient.
- [00:45:19.740]Will you come talk to us about textbook affordability?"
- [00:45:22.440]And that could be problematic.
- [00:45:24.930]So
- [00:45:27.390]how might that be approached, do you think?
- [00:45:31.110]Most of the research I'm familiar with
- [00:45:33.240]that is able to use Pell Grant as a variable
- [00:45:36.660]has been quantitative research.
- [00:45:39.600]But I think you could very easily,
- [00:45:41.610]from a perspective of thinking about critical pedagogy
- [00:45:45.480]and social-justice based teaching practices,
- [00:45:48.840]design some sort of an interview study
- [00:45:51.540]that would get at the more qualitative aspects of why
- [00:45:55.830]OER as an intentional teaching practice
- [00:46:03.480]can be specifically enacted to help those students
- [00:46:06.180]who need our help the most.
- [00:46:09.540]Yeah.
- [00:46:10.557]I think the advantage of a qualitative study in that case
- [00:46:11.820]is you would find things out about students' background
- [00:46:14.640]that you didn't anticipate at all
- [00:46:15.870]that might be affecting their ability to afford materials
- [00:46:19.440]or whatever else it might be.
- [00:46:21.510]They might be benefiting in particular ways
- [00:46:23.280]that you just didn't suspect at all.
- [00:46:25.530]That would be the cool thing about that.
- [00:46:27.120]You wouldn't need to reach out to
- [00:46:29.100]Pell Grant recipients particularly.
- [00:46:30.600]You just let that come out organically
- [00:46:32.010]through the conversations.
- [00:46:51.566]Okay.
- [00:46:52.399]Well, not seeing any more questions pop up.
- [00:46:55.290]I guess as closing thoughts,
- [00:46:58.170]what do y'all see
- [00:47:01.590]any immediate or near future next steps as being
- [00:47:05.730]in regard to
- [00:47:10.793]the study and then chaining possible future
- [00:47:16.560]looks
- [00:47:17.728]at student performance and OER?
- [00:47:21.750]So there is a white paper coming.
- [00:47:23.580]It's, hopefully, in the final stages of drafting,
- [00:47:26.070]and Julie and Craig are both involved in that,
- [00:47:27.840]but
- [00:47:29.520]that'll be shared probably with some particular groups
- [00:47:33.090]like the OER community of practice
- [00:47:35.490]and then some campus leadership.
- [00:47:36.780]And then I hope, hopefully, quickly shared more widely
- [00:47:40.920]across campus and in the community.
- [00:47:42.360]So it, basically, is reporting the results
- [00:47:44.490]that you've seen here today
- [00:47:45.780]but with a little more,
- [00:47:47.220]a little more framing, a little more background,
- [00:47:50.100]but a lot...
- [00:47:50.933]And more literature.
- [00:47:52.560]But very similar to what you saw,
- [00:47:54.300]and we'd really like to get that out there.
- [00:47:55.680]So that's the immediate
- [00:47:58.170]related to this study.
- [00:48:01.590]Julie, I'll let you take over from there
- [00:48:03.840]if there's other things you wanna say.
- [00:48:06.780]I mean, I'm just looking forward to,
- [00:48:10.410]as the marking system
- [00:48:13.020]means we're getting more and better data to do some
- [00:48:18.360]digging into what we think we see now
- [00:48:20.910]so that we can tease out some of
- [00:48:24.932]the other effects
- [00:48:27.000]based on the quantitative data that we have.
- [00:48:29.370]And absolutely interested in starting to get
- [00:48:34.075]some work on student and faculty satisfaction.
- [00:48:38.040]I think the more that we can identify barriers
- [00:48:40.530]to adopting OER at the instructor level,
- [00:48:43.800]the more we're gonna keep increasing
- [00:48:46.290]all of the great things that are happening for our students,
- [00:48:49.410]the more we can understand how to
- [00:48:52.830]make the process of using
- [00:48:54.240]OER resources for students seamless,
- [00:48:57.120]the better we're gonna be doing.
- [00:48:59.160]And all of that information would be helpful
- [00:49:01.260]for all of our digital learning folks,
- [00:49:03.300]our course design folks and our faculty and our students.
- [00:49:07.285]Just looking forward.
- [00:49:08.118]I feel like we've just barely scratched the surface here,
- [00:49:11.490]and it's taken a lot of work to get here
- [00:49:13.260]in the past two years,
- [00:49:14.130]but it's really exciting to see this research group
- [00:49:17.100]actually have some data to share
- [00:49:18.570]with everyone across the campuses.
- [00:49:20.970]Yeah, for sure.
- [00:49:21.803]And, hopefully, these early positive results
- [00:49:25.320]will make campus leaders realize
- [00:49:26.850]there's maybe even more positive things to come of this
- [00:49:29.700]if we can get the data and keep digging into it
- [00:49:32.220]so that we can
- [00:49:35.100]implement OER in the best way possible across campus,
- [00:49:38.490]campuses.
- [00:49:43.110]I'm gonna jump in real quick,
- [00:49:44.400]and, one, I'm gonna correct something
- [00:49:46.140]Craig just said a bit ago.
- [00:49:47.970]Our new total is now 15 million instead of 13 million.
- [00:49:51.330]So it's increasing every year, which is really great.
- [00:49:54.660]I also pasted a link to a session survey if you'd like to,
- [00:49:58.955]if people would like to go fill that out.
- [00:49:59.788]Just follow that link.
- [00:50:01.230]And all three of the sessions we've been recording,
- [00:50:04.290]they will be posted soon.
- [00:50:05.670]They will be posted back to the site where
- [00:50:08.640]that head webinar schedule at the university system level.
- [00:50:13.680]So that link's there also
- [00:50:15.330]if you wanna try to watch some of those.
- [00:50:17.970]The student one, if you weren't there for,
- [00:50:19.650]would be one that I'd highly recommend.
- [00:50:21.630]That was a good session.
- [00:50:33.540]All right.
- [00:50:34.373]Well, if nobody has any further questions,
- [00:50:35.760]we can wrap up a little bit early,
- [00:50:37.740]and give you a few minutes of your lunch hour back.
- [00:50:40.890]So thank you for attending.
- [00:50:42.360]Dan, Julie, thanks so much for all your work in this study.
- [00:50:47.400]So I'll say I was technically a part of this,
- [00:50:51.060]but I can't do what Dan and Julie do.
- [00:50:54.240]I can write introductions and lit reviews,
- [00:50:56.430]and after that, I'm really just lost.
- [00:50:59.580]So without them and their expertise
- [00:51:02.850]and their ability to do this kind of research,
- [00:51:04.770]we wouldn't have this.
- [00:51:05.730]It wouldn't have been possible,
- [00:51:06.570]so thank you so much
- [00:51:07.410]for devoting your time and energy to it,
- [00:51:10.350]and to coming here today to share this
- [00:51:14.036]with us and with all the attendees.
- [00:51:17.400]Thanks, everybody,
- [00:51:18.233]and thanks, Craig for hosting.
- [00:51:20.070]Appreciate it. Yep.
- [00:51:20.970]Thank you.
- [00:51:22.366]Okay. All right. Bye.
The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!
You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.
Log in to post comments
Embed
Copy the following code into your page
HTML
<div style="padding-top: 56.25%; overflow: hidden; position:relative; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex-grow: 1;"> <iframe style="bottom: 0; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; border: 0; height: 100%; width: 100%;" src="https://mediahub.unl.edu/media/20757?format=iframe&autoplay=0" title="Video Player: NU OER Research Highlights OER 2023" allowfullscreen ></iframe> </div>
Comments
0 Comments