Iowa OER hosted its third webinar for Fall 2020 with Frank O’Neill, Biology and Sports Medicine Instructor at Western Iowa Tech Community College. During his time teaching at Western Iowa Tech, Frank has gained extensive experience finding and creating OER for use in the classroom. This is a notable topic for our webinar series because it touches on one of the most common themes in OER spaces: sharing and building upon existing work rather than starting from scratch.
You can see the recording for this webinar below, with more notes from the discussion to follow.
Why OER?
Frank discussed two experiences he has had with OER in this webinar: the resources he has curated and pulled together and the resources he has created to supplement original OER. To begin, he discussed why he chooses to use OER in the classroom:
“I think that it’s super important that we do whatever we can to balance the educational experience with cost. There are lots of ways to give students a wonderful educational experience but many of them are just too expensive for the typical student.”
Balance is key here. An OER may not always be the best resource for your class, but when the difference between an open textbook and a commercial one is negligible, then it’s time to weigh the benefits against the barriers. Think about whether a more expensive course material will have a big enough impact on student learning to offset the negative impact of some students not having access at all due to prohibitive costs. As Frank mentioned at the end of his talk:
“Besides them greatly appreciating that I respect how expensive an education is by trying to keep costs low, the most common positive feedback that I get is that students love that they can do these kinds of activities and they can involve their family… they get to show their kids how important an education is by doing [these lab activities] with them.”
And remember that OER will not always be a worse option! Sometimes, an open resource will be a better fit for your course than the commercial resource you’ve been using for years. Yes, cost is the first and biggest thing that Frank notes about OER in his talk, but it isn’t the only upside. Frank also notes that the loves the “flexibility” of open resources and the fact that he can adapt and add to them to make OER fit his teaching style and needs. That’s the power of “open” beyond being free.
Curating before creating
In his discussion about curating resources, Frank talks “frankly” about his experiences trying to find OER for his classes and brings up a relatable experience: he was unsuccessful when he originally looked for OER. However, the number and breadth of open resources available has skyrocketed as the use and creation of OER has seen more support from colleges around the world. Now, Frank can find quite a few resources on his topic, and while the OER ecosystem isn’t as saturated as the traditional textbook market, it’s worth exploring a few OER repositories to see what you can pull together. As Frank states:
Look and see what is available, find the best resources that already exist, and then you can fill in the gaps with the content that you create.
Specifically, Frank mentions how he has pulled content from the OpenStax library of open textbooks for his physiology courses, since their introductory textbooks cover a wide range of topics.
Why create at all?
After discussing how he curates existing resources for his courses, Frank answered the question of why he creates OER for his courses. The answer is twofold:
- there are some gaps in the instructor materials available openly, and
- having a personal touch to his materials enhances the connection that Frank has with the learners in his classroom.
My students get to see and hear me every day when they’re working on their content.
That doesn’t mean that you need to create OER right away, though, Frank cautioned. Instead, start by finding what already exists, and then if you feel compelled to contribute to the conversation, add your own materials to the corpus you’ve been building.
If I’m going to teach a topic, why not teach anyone that wants to learn rather than just my handful of students? I spend as much time now creating resources as I used to, but now I can share them with a larger audience and help more people.
As you can see, there were many excellent quotes in Frank’s talk, but we will let you explore the webinar in your own time. To end today’s blog post, we have pulled out a few of the resources that Frank shared he has curated and created for his courses.
What Frank curated
- Lab reference B1231 Mt Hood Community College: A lab reference manual for Anatomy & Physiology. This resource was created by Laird Shendahl, and is licensed CC BY SA.
- Microbiology for Allied Health Students: This lab manual was created to support a microbiology course for allied health students at the University of Georgia.
- Busy Bones activities: Interactive activities from Arizona State University that discuss different aspects of bone anatomy with videos and interactive activities.
- PhETSims: Interactive simulations for courses of all kinds from the University of Colorado Boulder. PhETSims started by focusing on Physics simulations, but they also cover topics like Math, Chemistry, and Biology.
- OpenStax textbooks: OpenStax publishes peer-reviewed intro-level textbooks that are compiled by large collaborative teams of faculty and subject specialists. Their books are all openly licensed and absolutely free online, with softcover and hardcover options available as well.
What Frank created
Grow Grey Matter YouTube channel: a video library that will allow anyone to learn Microbiology and Anatomy & Physiology for free. Short (~5-10 minute) concept videos allow instructors to introduce ideas to their students in whatever order or heirarchy they need for their courses.
Online Teacher YOUniversity blog: Frank’s excellent blog discusses the ins and outs of online teaching. As he states, “I want to use this blog to:”
- Dispel myths about online teaching and learning
- Share proven online student engagement techniques
- Teach teachers how to incorporate video into their online courses
- Help new online teachers design epic courses
Iowa OER Recommendations
For those of you who enjoyed Frank’s talk and want to get more involved with curating and creating OER, we recommend checking out LibreTexts, an online library of OER where you can mix and match chapters from various open textbooks into a custom book for your class. In addition to their base texts, LibreTexts has also been building out some great interactive tools lately like Jupyter Notebooks and 3D models. Check out the PDF books available for download in their Download Center (they have one for each disciplinary library), chat with their team on Twitter, or try it out for yourself at https://libretexts.org/