Onondaga Community College

Laine Lubar

CC0

Expanding OER in the Freshman Writing Program (Eng 099/103, Eng 103, Eng 104)

Currently, there are several OER offerings in the Writing Program: four sections of ALP (Eng 099/103 concurrent), several English 103s, and at least two English 104s.

There are tangible benefits to scaling up our OER offerings in the Freshman Writing Program:

1. Students have immediate access to the materials. Over the past few semesters, students have prioritized the courses in their majors when considering which textbooks to purchase first (if at all.) While having books on reserve may help part of the population, it will not serve the weekend college student who is not in class during library hours or the completely online student who may never come to campus. Access to materials early contributes to the success of the students.
2. Cost. OER materials are free or have nominal fees attached to them for hardcopies.
3. Faculty have prepared OER courses already. In addition to writing faculty, there are library faculty and IT administrators who can help implement an OER course in Blackboard.

Gaps and Potential Drawbacks

1. “Traditional” Literary Canon – English 104. SUNY (and by proxy OCC) have access to a set of OER courses by Lumen Learning. Unfortunately, Lumen’s course follows a very traditional literary canon and, therefore, doesn’t have literature that represents a diverse population and it contains much of the literature students may have had in English 11. This is due to the use of public domain literature.
2. Many of us already prefer to use an OWL rather than a bound writer’s guide. However, not all OWLs are alike. For example, Dartmouth’s content is meant for Dartmouth students only. Any instructor who distributes Dartmouth’s materials is breaking copyright law. However, Purdue’s OWL is open for anyone’s use. It’s up to the instructor to know which OWLs are safe and which are not.
3. Not understanding the licensing involved in using and creating OER

Plans to address Gaps and Drawbacks

1. Literary Canon – The heart of OER is collaboration. Many of us already use excerpted novels, short stories from collections, poems from anthologies, and plays from everywhere else. We know the changing literary canon and we like to have the ability to incorporate the college’s common read.

The library has several electronic copies of many plays, poems, short stories. Once in Blackboard, we can link to those resources to remain within the bounds of OER.

We are also able to use CC search to find resources that are appropriate to use to expand students’ awareness of a literary canon that doesn’t look like high school.

2. Several faculty, including library faculty, understand the licensing requirements for OER creation and use. While SUNY has one definition of “open resource,” Onondaga’s definition is different. Help is available for navigating licensing. The creation of a contact list for help in this area is easy to create and distribute.
3. Once enough people are aware of the licensing, an informal group can come together to examine the most popular OWLs for proper use.

Customizing or Creating?

This is a personal choice. Creating means understanding the licensing, updating a blank master course in Blackboard and creating all your course material which can be accessed online. This means having the material ready by the time Blackboard becomes available to students (two days before the start of the semester).

Creating

Creating doesn’t mean just creating text documents. You can create youtube videos, audio files, images, and interactive content. It’s all a personal choice.

There are also places to create and house created OER classes:

OER Commons
Formats: Web, PDF, Google Docs, EPUB, SCORM
Cost: Free

OpenStax CNX
Formats: Web, PDF, EPUB, ZIP
Cost: Free

MERLOT
Formats: Single web page or website
Cost: Free

Google Docs
Formats: Web, PDF
Cost: Free

All of these options are free. There are other options that can be paid for.

Customizing

For the person just starting OER, customizing may be a better way to enter OER. My first OER for Eng 103 was a list of links that I put into an interactive syllabus and writer’s guide. The readings were scanned in pieces that I found in either textbooks or print media that I created .pdfs from.

A note on customizing: my first foray into customizing led to documents that were not ADA complaint. Because I had copied and pasted into word documents before changing them into pdfs, they were unreadable by screen readers.

Be sure to use MS Word’s font functions to create navigation in your handouts.

On Merlot, there are many writing classes, some rhetoric based, others not. They all have different licensing, but they can be adapted for Onondaga’s learning outcomes and your personal choices in delivery.

Customizing can mean as little as changing the organization of the chapters to adding your own material and subtracting theirs. You can use one chapter, all the chapters, or somewhere in between.

Who to work with

All of these people have varying degrees of experience with OER and have shown a willingness to share. Other faculty outside of this list may also use OER.

There are several English faculty who have already had OER training:

C. Heisler

L. Lubar

J. Pritcherd

For questions about learning outcomes in Eng 103 & Eng 104:

M. Choseed

For questions about anything related to ALP

M. Delconte

Library Faculty & Administrators

L. Hoff (Librarian)

K. Blanchett (Interim Dean – Humanities)

OER Committee Members who have been using OER for years

K. Evans (Psychology)

What will you need to have in place to customize or create OER?

 There is an OER committee on campus that can help you start. Lisa Hoff in Coulter Library is the chair and she has many resources at her disposal.

Steps to start OER:

1. Come to an OER workshop. These happen at various times in the semester and during on-hand days.
2. Become familiar with Blackboard.
3. Do an inventory of what you already have. Perhaps you have supplemental materials that you already pass out. These may be customized for OER depending on its licensing.
4. Consider what you like about your textbook. Use Merlot or CC search to find the same material with an open license.
5. Do a survey of OWLs. See which ones have open licensing. Purdue is open, but there may be others that students prefer.
6. Consider videos and images that contain open licenses for conveying ideas in English grammar and structure. These are the things students miss because they are, well, boring.
7. Consider applying for an OER stipend. The process will include training. Contact Lisa Hoff for more information.

OER is not rocket science. It’s so easy an English professor can do it AND write about it. In a time when programs in our discipline are declining, we need to make writing look attractive because writing is necessary. It’s foundational and part of critical thinking. OER saves money, saves trees, and saves stress for our students.

Barbara Leo

CC0

1. What open educational resources exist within your specific discipline?

As of Spring 2019, minimal if any OER resources exist in the chemistry department at Onondaga Community College.

2. Where are you seeing gaps? What is missing?

I believe the gaps are mostly with a consensus of “resources” within the department as well as a main faculty member willing to take charge of the project.

3. What is your plan to address what is missing?

My plan to address the “missing” is to begin suggesting and adding resources to my blackboard class site and share it with my co-workers.

4. Who will you work with?

I plan on attending and working with the library staff at Onondaga Community College who have expressed interest and knowledge in OER.

5. What will you need to have in place in order to customize and integrate OER into your teaching, learning and research?

I need to have a better “blackboard” shell to effectively integrate OER into my classes.