SUNY Admin

August 8, 2018

Jamie Frankenfield

CC0

First, this is an exercise geared more toward on-campus staff; not technical support staff. I will approach it with reflection and abstraction instead. I define OER as a collection of resources and materials available to the all, inside and outside of academia. OER is a catch-all term that includes everything from scholarly works to images and videos. OER can be collective projects or single works produced by people for people, with a key feature – in the public domain. One strength of OER is the level of accessibility they afford most users. One weakness I see in OER remains its presence and assumptions made about the widespread understanding of what OER is and means to students. Too many faculty appear to be answering for the students instead of with the students. While faculty and staff members embrace OER and improve their own understanding of OER, what they are and how they benefit students, it is unclear to me whether or not students are doing the same. Faculty and staff speak about OER in a way that assumes students already know what they are. That is not the case, especially outside of an OER classroom.

It is difficult for me to elaborate on how I use open materials in a classroom because I am neither an instructor, a campus administrator, nor a librarian. I am, however, a former grad student who studied and worked with adult learners. My Master’s Thesis discussed education accessibility for adult learners, and I mentioned OER as a way to repair several gaps in education and to overcome obstacles to completion for adult learners. I see a clear path, or at least an intriguing research opportunity, for OER to improve adult learner retention and engagement with the academy. I am, however, concerned that poorly executed OER courses would hinder an adult learner’s progress as well. Perhaps a dissertation is necessary for me to fully articulate and understand the impact of OER on adult learner success in undergraduate studies. If I had unlimited access to resources and time, I would use it studying such a topic.

The rest of the questions may not apply to me and my department, but we are excited about supporting those who are getting started and implementing this monumental project at their campuses.

Nina Santiago
HelpDesk Analyst, Open SUNY

CC BY-SA-ND

Write the definition of OER in your own words, one strength, and one weakness as you see it.

While my understanding of OER is primarily guided by my position as HelpDesk Analyst doing LMS support, my own scholarly research interests also come into play regarding benefits to students. In general, my professional involvement with OER consists primarily of facilitating a new work flow for instructors requesting course materials. As a graduate student in a Latin American studies program, I am compelled by initiatives that minimize obstacles to education, such as costs of course and economic status. Without question, a course that minimizes or eliminates the cost of textbooks or other materials ensures that economically disadvantaged students have greater opportunities to pursue their studies. If a book costing $50 dollars is out of reach for even one student, then we must consider alternatives for lower or no cost.

Likewise, for instructors, OER offers a unique opportunity to diversify available course material offerings. To remix existing content and share the results, an instructor is offered a platform to refine existing content to include different theoretical approaches to topics or greater detail. Because of Creative Commons licensing options and functions of the Lumen platform, no resource or book is static. Each adaptation by an instructor can serve as another iteration of the material. SUNY’s OER initiative is a collaborative effort across departments and institutions to foster relationships between instructors for continuous growth of scholarly resources, all to benefit students by improving affordability of courses.

Despite robust functionality of platforms or the myriad of materials available online, I suspect an obstacle ahead may lie in ensuring instructors trust the reputability of materials. Considering this is a new initiative, instructors likely have developed courses around particular textbooks or collections of other materials. The possibility of this issue can be addressed preemptively by ensuring that instructors are aware of resources like the open-nys.org site for guidance as well as having good working relationships with librarians who are knowledgeable about development and use of OER materials. Ultimately, instructors’ use of all available resources for the benefit of students will improve course quality and may impact their students’ economic mobility.