Open Educational Resources | Library News and Much More!

September 11, 2017
by Wayde Oshiro
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$tudents $ave with OER & Textbook Cost: $0

" " Leeward continues to lead the system with OER and zero-textbook cost courses this Fall.

Total student enrollment in the 289 Textbook Cost: $0 courses is 5,371. Ninety-two instructors are teaching Textbook Cost: $0 courses this semester. Direct cost savings to students for Fall 2017 is $512,630. Average savings per enrolled student is $95.

Since 2014, Leeward faculty making the leap from commercial textbooks to OER and zero-cost have saved students an estimated $1,627,749!

Hats off to Leeward faculty for making the tough decision to opt out of the commercial textbook marketplace. Not only have you saved your students $$$, but your actions are having a direct impact on the for-profit textbook publishers and their heretofore unchallenged pricing strategies. This has led to lower price inflation in the textbook market. Competition is a good thing.

For many of you, the time and effort spent converting to OER were not inconsequential. However, your hard work has resulted in great benefits for both you and your students, including:

Freedom from high costs. OER is zero-cost to students.
No mandated edition changes. OER gives you full control over the content.
Materials are customizable according to your specific teaching needs. OER is openly-licensed for you to use.
No restrictions on access. OER is available to all students from day one and beyond. No time limits.

Want to learn more?

View a full list of Textbook Cost: $0 courses at https://sites.google.com/a/hawaii.edu/oer/zero-textbook-cost-adopters
What is OER and how do I get started? Go to http://guides.leeward.hawaii.edu/oer
What is the goal for OER at Leeward. Go to https://sites.google.com/a/hawaii.edu/oer/home
What is the OER Campus Committee? Go to https://sites.google.com/a/hawaii.edu/oer/oer-campus-committee

Textbook Cost: $0 infographic showing Fall 2017 figures: 289 Textbook Cost: $0 courses; 5300+ enrollment; 27% of total courses at Leeward are Textbook Cost: $0. Breakdown of courses by division. Leading divisions with OER courses are Social Sciences, Language Arts, Arts & Humanities & Math & Sciences

View this infographic online at https://magic.piktochart.com/output/24165646-textbook-cost-0-fall-2017-copy

9/12/17: Infographic updated to use the correct name for the Business division.

August 28, 2017
by Wayde Oshiro
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Notice: ScienceDirect Access Ends on December 31

Access to the ScienceDirect Freedom Collection with 2,298 journal titles published by Elsevier ends on December 31, 2017.

Our access to ScienceDirect is via a UH System Libraries consortial arrangement coordinated by UH-Manoa, Hamilton Library. Manoa has carried most of the costs over the years and we are grateful for their generosity to the other campuses. Unfortunately, due to budget constraints, they can no longer afford to maintain this resource under existing terms.

Elsevier journals are expensive and it would be difficult for Leeward to afford a journal package let alone a single journal title in many cases. Recently, a group of German universities canceled their Elsevier contracts en masse to put pressure on the Dutch publisher during contract negotiations. Universities in other countries such as Taiwan and Finland have made similar attempts to force the publisher to agree to more favorable pricing and to guarantee that publicly-funded research will remain open access. Will that pressure tactic work here? It’s possible but it will be difficult due to our relatively small size and Manoa’s need to cut costs.

Our EBSCOHost Academic Search Complete database includes many Elsevier titles. However, these titles are under a publisher (Elsevier) embargo. The embargo means that recently published articles are not available until 6-18 months after publication. Back issues are full text.

ScienceDirect will be available through the end of the year. After it ends, the library will still provide full-text article coverage to nearly 25,000 journal titles through Academic Search Complete. I am open to hearing your concerns about the loss of this resource and to discuss what options we have for access to scholarly resources. Contact me to schedule a meeting or send an email to waydeo@hawaii.edu.

Lastly, this is an issue important to higher education. The loss of the Elsevier titles is upsetting because these are prestige scholarly publications that are respected and relied upon for current research in your disciplines. Unfortunately, academic publishers have used this (prestige) to their advantage and employ practices that result in exorbitant costs and restricted access. It’s unbelievable to think that publications like Cell require authors to pay up to $5000 to publish an article on research that is often publicly funded. After paying that fee you would think that the authors would at least have access to their article, but no. The article is published behind a pay wall and is only available if the individual or institution, i.e. library, pays for it. In this instance, a one-year institutional subscription to Cell is $2020 per year. This is the major reason why open access (scholarly publishing) and open educational resources (teaching materials) are such important issues that we need to address.

9/5/17: This post was updated to remove confidential pricing information.
9/6/17: Updated to clarify that it is the current UH System Libraries consortial agreement with Elsevier that is ending.

June 6, 2017
by Wayde Oshiro
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UHM OER Grant Project: Open Physics Database

Mechanical engineering junior at the University of Hawaii Manoa, Ana, demonstrates conservation of angular momentum. (27 seconds)

Since 2015, the UH Mānoa Department of Physics and Astronomy has used the OpenStax College Physics textbook to teach introductory physics courses. Now, a faculty-led project funded by an Outreach College UHM OER Project grant is developing a database of physics problems that can be paired with the open textbook.

Learn more about this exciting project from project lead Christina Nelson at http://oer.hawaii.edu/an-open-physics-database-for-students-learning-with-oer/

Have questions about OER? Get in touch with your Leeward OER Team:

Junie Hayashi, Public Services Librarian
Wayde Oshiro, Head Librarian
Leanne Riseley, Educational Media Center Coordinator

February 7, 2017
by Wayde Oshiro
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Reusing, Revising, and Remixing OER

You’ve heard about the potential of OER to reduce educational costs for students, but what does it mean for you as an instructor besides a potentially longer to do list?

One of the greatest benefits that OER has to offer is the freedom to reuse, remix, revise, redistribute, and retain resources licensed as ‘open’ without worrying about copyright. How many times have you wondered whether you were violating copyright law?

Reusing OER involves taking available open materials and adopting them ‘as is.’ It’s similar process to selecting a publisher’s textbook. Moving up the ladder, revising and remixing requires a higher level of involvement and commitment because you are a modifying a resource (or resources) to better meet your teaching needs. Yes, there is work involved and it can be substantial but the end result promises better materials for your exact(ing) needs. Billy Meinke, UHM OER Technologist, has a fantastic post describing the revising and remixing process in a little more detail. (Say it like you mean it: Describing revision and remixing of OER)

Leeward’s seven-week Go Open, Go Free Using OER workshop series started today with a cohort of 9 faculty and lecturers ready to discover how they can incorporate open educational resources into their courses. You’ll be hearing more about their experiences in this workshop, what they’re learning and what they hope to do with OER in the future.

October 24, 2016
by Wayde Oshiro
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What is Open Access?

Open Access (OA) is a movement seeking to make scholarly research freely available to the widest possible audience. The goal of OA is to advance knowledge through communication and sharing. Sound familiar? Open Education and OER have roots in OA. All three share a common philosophy of democratizing access to knowledge through a structured framework which gives individuals flexible rights (e.g. Creative Commons) to use existing knowledge to accelerate new discoveries and innovation in the research lab, the classroom, and elsewhere. Learn more about OA by viewing this animation, Open Access Explained!

open access week t-shirt logo UH is celebrating Open Access Week, October 24-28th, by hosting a series of events throughout the week. View the complete schedule here. On Tuesday, October 25th, the Leeward OER Committee is hosting a live viewing of the panel discussion: Copyright, Intellectual Property, Creative Commons & Fair Use via HITS in LC 108B at 10:30 AM.

Topics include:

Key points to consider when using Open Access materials or creating your own;
Copyright maximalism in the information age;
Creative Commons licenses, including examples in our everyday lives; and
Four factors of the Fair Use doctrine and how to apply them.

Presenters:

Brian Huffman, Electronic Services Librarian and teaches Scholarly Research at William S. Richardson School of Law.

Debora Halbert, Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and the author of The State of Copyright, the co-edited Handbook of Intellectual Property.

Billy Meinke, OER Technologist for the UHM Outreach College; formerly at Creative Commons, specializing in education applications of their open licenses.

Peter Shirts, Music & Audiovisual Librarian, Acting Head of Sinclair Library & the Wong Audiovisual Center.

For more info about this panel, contact Junie Hayashi at junie@hawaii.edu

September 15, 2016
by Wayde Oshiro
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Textbook Prices Up 88 Percent

Textbook costs continue to rise faster than overall college costs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports

From January 2006 to July 2016, the Consumer Price Index for college tuition and fees increased 63 percent, compared with an increase of 21 percent for all items. Over that period, consumer prices for college textbooks increased 88 percent and housing at school (excluding board) increased 51 percent.

The student cost for an Open Educational Resources textbook? $0

An interactive graph is available at http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2016/college-tuition-and-fees-increase-63-percent-since-january-2006.htm

Bureau of Labor statistics chart showing 88 percent increase in college textbook costs since 2006

June 15, 2016
by Wayde Oshiro
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National OER Degree Initiative Announced

Achieving the Dream recently announced an initiative supporting the development of new degree programs using OER at 38 community colleges across the country. According to ATD, the “effort is intended to spark more rapid adoption of OER within higher education, beginning with community colleges.” At the completion of the initiative all OER courses will be available to non-participating institutions. Learn more about this initiative here.

Projects such as the ATD OER Degree Initiative are supporting the development of OER in many subject areas. Since there is no single place online to find OER, the Leeward Library maintains a guide to help faculty get started. Our OER LibGuide is available here.

Finally, the EMC and Library maintain the OER @ Leeward website where you can learn more about Leeward’s efforts to encourage and support faculty in using OER. You’ll find a lot of useful information here but please don’t hesitate to contact us with your questions.

April 12, 2016
by Soledad Lencinas
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Online resources about OER and Open Access

Do you wish to learn more about Open Access? The book “Open Access” by Peter Suber offers a concise yet comprehensive overview of the topic.

If you are thinking about using Open Educational Resources, you may wish to read “A Basic Guide to Open Educational Resources (OER)” prepared by Neil Butcher for the Commonwealth of Learning & UNESCO. The guide answers frequently asked questions about OER and it provides information about OER open licenses, online resources, policies and more.

To learn about recent studies and reports supporting OER, you can visit our Open Educational Resources (OER) guide and view links to resources available from our “Why OER?” page.

Also, you may visit the Creative Commons website if you haven’t done so yet to learn about Creative Commons, projects, licenses and licensing your work.

March 30, 2016
by Wayde Oshiro
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Are You Ready for Open?

Questions to ask yourself when considering Open Educational Resources (OER)

Do you want to improve student success?
Do you want to reduce/eliminate course material costs for students?
Do you have the required computer and Internet skills?
- Here are a few basic resources on Digital Skills, Computer Basics, and Using the Internet

If you answered yes to the above questions, you are ready to start exploring the materials that are available in your subject.

Learn more at Go Open, Go Free Using Open Educational Resources @ Leeward CC

Start looking for open textbooks from our Open Educational Resources Guide

March 29, 2016
by Soledad Lencinas
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Finding open textbooks

The use of open textbooks in the classroom can make a positive impact on students’ success as it enhances their access to course materials while reducing textbook expenses. A more widespread implementation of Open Educational Resources (OER) is contributing to a rapid increase in the number of available materials. This makes adopting quality educational resources a viable option to teach courses in a variety of subject areas.

Open textbooks can be used, reused and shared; and, depending on their license, many of them may also be modified, allowing you to tailor their content to the specific needs of your course. The Open Textbooks page in our library’s OER subject guide provides links to open textbooks available in many subject areas including: Math, Economics, Marketing, History, Biology, Botany, English, Psychology, Sociology, Speech, Anthropology, Anatomy & Physiology, Physics, Chemistry and Culinary Arts. Links to additional resources are regularly added to the guide but you may also let us know if you need help finding resources for a particular course.