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.

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[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.

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NU OER Research Highlights OER 2023

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