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When Dr. Rebekah Smith, Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Mississippi, began teaching cognitive psychology over twenty years ago, textbooks in this area did not come with much in the way of additional resources, so she began creating her own collection of test bank questions, lecture slides, and demonstrations. Newer textbooks come with more instructor support, but also include more and more content with each new edition. Dr. Smith writes, “There is a limit to how much information is necessary and how much information students can effectively learn.” 

By drawing on selective open resources, including the California State System’s MERLOT collection and materials available from the university library, as well as creating her own content, Dr. Smith minimizes the amount of unnecessary information students have to process. This more focused approach allows her students to engage more deeply with the content, focusing on developing critical thinking skills rather than memorizing facts. Finally, by using OER, not only is Dr. Smith getting the exact content she needs for the class, she is saving the 320 students who annually enroll in her classes a combined $56,800.00.

Thanks to a grant by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the University of Mississippi was able to provide funding for her doctoral student, Alex Kuka, to assist with the course conversion. Mr. Kuka completed the Essentials of Online Teaching course offered by the Division of Outreach, and also gained valuable experience as he helped Dr. Smith load the content into the university learning management system, helped to create mini-quizzes, and reviewed the over 50 short videos Dr. Smith created for this course. 

Dr. Smith, who spent 200 hours preparing for and revising the web class, added that the process was more involved for a web course and her course revision would have taken considerable time even with a traditional textbook. She encourages other faculty to consider OER options when the time comes for their own course revisions, noting that some courses have complete OER textbooks available, as is the case for Associate Professor of Psychology Dr. Stephanie Miller, who adapted an online OER textbook for her statistics course in spring 2020.

Dr. Smith suggests that a stumbling block for many faculty considering a switch to OER can be giving up the test bank that comes with traditional textbooks. Rethinking assessment is one way to address this concern. Dr. Smith writes “As part of the team that put together the university’s Resilient Teaching Learning Community to train faculty leaders this summer, I benefited from information brought to the course by other team members, especially in considering assessments and in applying the concept of backward design to keep learning objectives at the forefront in my planning.” Dr. Smith reports that this resulted in the use of a greater variety of assessments in the revised course and helped her to prepare for the shortened fall semester due to COVID-19.

Mid-semester student feedback the revised class has been positive, with one student writing,

“Cognitive Psychology, taught by Dr. Smith, may be my favorite online course I’ve ever taken. I am thoroughly learning the material in a way that it is fun. This class is designed to help me in the best way possible learn what I really need to know. I can see myself holding onto the information taught from this course after completion.”

An unexpected benefit at the start of this semester was a dramatic decrease in the number of emails in the first week of classes as students were no longer writing to ask about access to the customized etextbook and specialized software she used previously.  More importantly, Dr. Smith now has a course that has exactly the content she requires, adds no costs for her students, and is resilient to changes in the discipline and in higher education.

More details will be forthcoming about the future of OER development opportunities.

Please contact oer@olemiss.edu with questions.

By Patricia O’Sullivan
July 9, 2019

The catalyst

Dr. Michelle Baragona is a planner. As Vice President of Instruction at Northeast Mississippi Community College (NEMCC), Dr. Baragona knew the college had to do something proactive in the face of the rising cost of education, an outdated computer infrastructure, and a national trend of decreasing enrollments.

With the vision and support of NEMCC’s President, Dr. Ricky G. Ford, the college partnered with Apple to provide iPads to each incoming student in Fall 2013. The following year, the college contracted with e-textbook provider, Vital Source, to provide digital textbooks to students. The final piece of the digital transformation plan came when Public Speaking instructor, Dr. Justin Treloar, heard of a grant offered by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation through the University of Mississippi. The grant offered stipends to higher ed faculty throughout the state to replace their textbooks with open educational resources (OER). During the first year of the grant, a handful of instructors at NEMCC took part. They were so impressed with the benefits of OER and the training and support provided by Lumen Learning, they convinced a dozen more instructors to take part in the grant program the following year.

The technology

As faculty made each of these changes, Dr. Baragona and her colleagues were not sure any one piece of the digital transformation would work, but President Ford had faith in his faculty’s expertise and sense of shared mission. Now, six years later, Dr. Baragona has the data to validate the digital transformation of the NEMCC campus, and she credits the NEMCC faculty with leading the transformation, “I cannot stress how lucky we were to have a team of faculty who helped push the agenda forward. The administration provided the vision, but the faculty are the heart of how that vision was achieved.”

While the fee for a school-issued iPad is $354.00, that is a one-time fee for students, and ensures they have the tools they need to access all of the academic and support apps they will need to succeed at NEMCC. In addition, students who already have an iPad may opt out of purchasing one from the school. Although 100% of students were given an opportunity to purchase an iPad in Fall 2016, only 36% of courses at NEMCC were digital. This figure represents a campus in transition as Dr. Baragona worked with faculty and with Vital Source to ensure students could have both online and offline access to digital textbooks. Students who opt to purchase print copies of their textbook will also save money as the college has ensured that print copies of digital textbooks sold at the college bookstore will not exceed $30-40. Digital textbooks will not exceed $150. By Fall 2019, Dr. Baragona estimates 94.5% of all classes at NEMCC will offer a digital version of the textbook for students.

Hand-in-hand with the push to provide digital versions of textbooks was a push to encourage faculty to consider replacing publisher textbooks with OER textbooks. This effort resulted in a surprisingly enthusiastic and quick response from faculty. In fact, so many faculty teams adopted open textbooks and customized them for their students, that Dr. Treloar requested a block grant from the University of Mississippi in order to locally manage faculty support. In Fall 2016, 27% of all classes at NEMCC used OER materials as their primary text. The majority of these customized texts are developed on Lumen Learning’s Candala platform and integrated into the school’s learning management system, Canvas. By Fall 2019, 66% of all classes at NEMCC will use OER.

The data

While the average cost of textbooks per course was $122.00 in Fall 2016, because of OER, that average cost has dropped to $26.53 per class. If we consider the average student at NEMCC takes 10 classes annually, from Fall 2016 to Fall 2019, students are saving $954.70 per year. That number represents over half of the cost of tuition for in-state students and 30% of tuition for out-of-state students. Since Fall 2016, the digital transformation triad of iPads, digital textbooks, and OER have saved students at NEMCC $5 million.

In yet a further outgrowth of their OER success, as of Fall 2018 NEMCC is the first post-secondary institution in Mississippi to offer a complete Z-degree. The University of Mississippi began the Z-Degree initiative in 2016. Z-Degree is a plan to expand adoption of OER in Mississippi public higher education. When faculty adopt OER for their courses, those courses are tagged as “Z-Degree” on the course schedule, indicating that they have “zero textbook cost.” Once enough courses are designated Z-Degree, it is possible for students to earn a degree with no textbook costs. A student at NEMCC can complete a degree in general studies without needing to pay for a single textbook.

Beyond cost savings, however, is a more important narrative about access correlating with success. In Fall 2016, 76% of students at NEMCC scored A’s, B’s, or C’s in their classes. By Fall 2018, that success rate reached 80%. While research needs to be done to determine the causes of this increase, the combination of free and open textbooks and the customization of these textbooks by faculty teams for the NEMCC student population is transforming the way students and instructors experience course materials.

January, 2020 update 

NEMCC is approaching 70% OER for all courses.

The current price of textbooks per course is $25.67

97% of all courses have digital textbook options.

Students are paying $256 per year for books with an average load of 10 courses over two semesters per year.

 

By Robert Cummings

14 March 2018

On 3 November 2017, Northeast Community College extended its partnership with Z-Degree Mississippi by launching an ambitious new expansion of its Z-Degree OER initiative.

 

Photo: Robert Cummings, CC-BY

Over 12 teachers attended OER training sessions hosted by Elizabeth Spica of Lumen Learning and funded by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. These faculty teach a range of subjects, including College Algebra, Physical Science, American Literature, Elementary Spanish, World Geography, and Principles of Biology. In all, these teachers will develop Open Educational Resources to replace expensive textbooks in 20 courses, and will save their students an estimated $1,095,995 in textbook costs.

How bad is the textbook cost problem? According to information available from the website of the Northeast Mississippi Community College Bookstore, a new copy of the required text for Legal Environment of Business, Business Law Today, sells for $413.00. By comparison, a Mississippi resident who enrolled in Legal Environment of Business would pay $450 in tuition. For that person, the new textbook cost – after sales tax – would almost equal the tuition cost. And if that Mississippian enrolled full-time, and the tuition cost were less, then the $413 new textbook would cost more than the tuition.

Fortunately, the faculty and administrators of Northeast Community College are committed to lowering textbook costs for their students and improving access to higher education. Through the Z-Degree initiative, the community college plans to launch up to twelve two-year degrees which will involve no textbook costs, beginning fall of 2018.

Justin Treloar, who serves as Speech Instructor, began the initiative when he partnered with the existing Z-Degree Mississippi initiative in the spring of 2017.

 

Story by Bracey Harris, The Clarion-Ledger

A new program this fall, spearheaded by the University of Mississippi, will allow students at participating universities and community colleges in the state to enroll in courses that offer free or reduced-cost textbooks with the ultimate goal of creating a pathway to obtaining a degree with limited textbook costs.

Faculty members from Ole Miss, Mississippi State University, Delta State University, the University of Southern Mississippi, Mississippi University for Women and Northeast Mississippi Community College have signed on for the first phase of the “Z-Degree Mississippi” initiative. The model is based in part on the “Z-Degree” program at Tidewater Community College in Virginia in which students earn an associate degree in business administration with no textbook costs. Mississippi’s program aims to duplicate that with a four-year degree by 2020.

Sharon Morrisey, vice chancellor for academic services for the Virginia Community College System, told Inside Higher Ed that more than 2,500 students have saved a collective $253,400 by forgoing textbook costs.

To accomplish this, faculty rely on Open Educational Resources materials for instruction available online at little or no cost.

According to the state College Board, the estimated annual cost for books and supplies for in-state, full-time undergraduate students at a public university is $1,298. At Ole Miss and MSU, that estimate dips to $1,200, but for some the price tag is still too high.

Nicole Leach, an assistant professor of educational psychology at MSU, said some of her past students have forgone buying textbooks. Not having the material, Leach said, meant giving lectures to students who had not completed supplemental assigned readings. The result: At best, students weren’t able to fully engage; at worst, they were disoriented and subject to falling behind.

“(I believe) land grant universities have a certain responsibility to serve under-represented students, particularly local students who do not have hundreds of dollars for textbooks,” she said.

Passionate about affordability, Leach incorporated Open Educational Resources materials into her summer course and plans to do the same this fall.

Another perk to going online was having the ability to make the text more dynamic with multimedia elements such as podcasts and video clips.

“Z-Degree Mississippi” is being funded by the Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Ole Miss College of Liberal Arts. Robert Cummings, chairman of the Department of Writing and Rhetoric said faculty, who receive grants to participate, are expected to contribute and review academic materials from their respective fields, but grantees are paid for their time.