Jessica Kirschner (Virginia Commonwealth University), Rebel Cummings-Sauls (The Florida Academic Library Services Cooperative), and Nathan Smith (Houston Community College) discussed their work related to course markings for OER, both at the institutional and state level.

You can watch the webinar on YouTube or read the summary below:

Course markings have become a big talking point in the open education community over the past few years. These markings, also known as course designators or tags, allow students to see what courses in their schedule of classes offer OER or other no-cost options for course materials. The draw of these types of markings is the transparency that they lend, enabling students to see costs that are often “hidden” and to make more informed choices about the classes they sign up for in a given semester.

Getting Started

Our first guest speaker was Jessica Kirschner (Virginia Commonwealth University). Most of her experience with no- and low-cost course markings comes from her work editing the book Marking Open and Affordable Courses: Best Practices and Case Studies, which contains tips and examples for those jumping into course markings for the first time, from mechanics for configuring markings to marketing and explaining markings on campus.

Her section of the presentation focused on preparing for marking courses. How do you get started and what considerations should you keep in mind? Rather than copy all of her points here, we’ve listed the general sections listed on her slides:

• What will the markings be?
• How will they be implemented?
• What workflows will be put in place to manage the markings?
• What are the requirements needed to mark a course?
• How will these markings be communicated to your community?

Often, course markings for OER are motivated by a local or state mandate, which colors the type of markings used. For example, if a state Legislature calls for all courses with “no course material costs” to be marked in a course catalog or schedule of classes, then the schools implementing markings would need to ensure that there is a “no-cost” marking used. In contrast, if schools were asked to mark courses using OER, that might necessitate a different marking for OER specifically, in addition to or instead of a no-cost course marking.

In addition to the style and kind of markings used, Jessica also brought to the discussion the idea of technical ability: based on your school’s Student Information System (SIS), is it feasible to implement course markings at all? This may be a difficult addition to a course schedule built on an older or more locked down system.

Potential Hiccups

After this, Jessica ended by reviewing potential problems that may crop up in a course marking initiative. These were:

• A variety of processes: Who reports course material adoptions and how?
• Timely reporting of course materials: Will courses be marked in time for students signing up for courses to use them?
• Course changes: Will the course materials or instructor for a course change after course sign-ups are complete?
• Misreporting: Do faculty and departments understand the markings and whether their course applies? For example, if you are using a low-cost designation, the requirements and “limit” for low-cost course materials should be clearly explained and outlined for faculty or staff reporting course material adoptions.
• Mixed messaging and student confusion: Can students actually use and understand the markings as they are implemented? For example, “no-cost” may be a more impactful course marking than “OER” if your OER program has not had time to spread awareness of what OER are on campus.

Course Markings at Houston Community College

Our second guest speaker was Nathan Smith (Houston Community College), who discussed his experience with course markings at his institution and the process they followed.

One of the things that shaped the way Houston Community College’s course markings were made was the college’s Z-Degree Program (a degree program with zero course material costs in at least one section of each course required for the degree). This encouraged the program’s coordinators to use a more general “zero-cost” designator which includes e-books available through the university library, open access course materials, and OER.

HCC also labels courses that are “low-cost,” which means that the total course materials for the course are less than $40 when purchased new in the campus bookstore.

To promote these markings at HCC, Nathan and his team work with advisers, enrollment officers, class coordinators, and other staff who talk to students and faculty about course materials. Additionally, they run social media campaigns and other marketing programs each semester to ensure that the Z-Degree program and course markings are all clear and transparent for students and staff. As Nathan explains,

“I think it’s a process and it’s kind of something that you need to teach everyone about because everyone is interacting with students. And so, the more people become aware and accustomed to this as a feature of course searching, the more that is going to filter down to students.”

Course Markings at Kansas State University

Finally, our third speaker, Rebel Cummings-Sauls (The Florida Academic Library Services Cooperative) rounded out our webinar with a discussion of the course markings at Kansas State University and Open Florida, providing an overview of her work for our attendees.

Rebel began by emphasizing the importance of clarity for course markings. At Kansas State, this was particularly important, since open/alternative textbook courses had a $10 fee attached to them to help subsidize the department and provide incentives for more courses to flip to no-cost. Making sure that students understand what the marking is when they see it should be a program’s first priority, then, not the design or look of the icon/designator your program will be using.

Following up on her time at Kansas State, Rebel shared the ongoing work in Florida to develop a shared zero-textbook-cost course marking. Open Florida’s state-wide OER group developed this designation first since “zero-cost” is the simplest type of marking to implement and explain. Their team will begin considering a low-cost marking later, though that has been put off for now while they work on the no-cost marking. As Rebel explained, working at a state level like this is much more complex since it takes time and input form multiple stakeholders, but it will hopefully make the final course markings and their implementation clearer and easier to explain for students across the state of Florida. In fact, their team ran a survey for students when developing their zero-textbook-cost icon, in order to flesh out the final design and ensure that it is clear.

Each of these guest speakers brought great experience and insight to their talks, and wonderful responses to our attendee’s questions. We hope you enjoyed their talk and this accompanying summary!