I teach a variety of writing classes–comp 105 and 106, Intro to Creative Writing, upper-level essay writing–but I haven’t used an official textbook in years. I tend to “curate” syllabi around whole-course themes and/or break the schedule into thematic sections. And then I assign a variety of readings, videos, and audio assignments that I’ve chosen and organized in ways that lend toward scaffolded writing assignments over the course of the semester. I started doing this some time ago in order to save students money on book costs–like other disciplines, writing textbooks can be very expensive–and found that I enjoy having more control and flexibility for this kind of thematic organizing.
But I’ve also often wondered about other kinds of classes that rely on the use of textbooks, in math and sciences, for example. I’ve dabbled in incorporating parts and pieces of various OER texts in my classes but have not relied on single, whole textbooks. So I reached out to my friend and colleague, Margaret Mikula, who teaches statistics classes, and asked her a few questions about how she’s been incorporating OER into her classes.
Margaret uses textbooks from OpenIntro.org, which offers a number of math and statistics texts. She’s adopted OpenIntro Statistics for Stat 263, and Introductory Statistics For Life And Biomedical Sciences for Stat (Biostats) 301. OpenIntro provides slides, labs, videos, and more that she can use in her teaching, though she also creates her own videos and adapts OpenIntro slides to better suit her teaching needs.
When asked about how or why she became interested in using OER in her classes, and what her experience has been like, she told me the main reason was to make sure the students would not have to pay more to take her classes, since so many are already burdened with tuition and other costs for their educations. And she added, “my daughter often spends hundreds of dollars on books.” As a lecturer and mom of a college student, textbooks were becoming an added financial burden on their family. Margaret believes “education should be affordable for all,” for her family and for her students.
Finding and incorporating OE texts takes time and effort though. With help from suggested OE resources on the Mathematics Association website and from Mardigian librarians, Margaret was able to locate relevant texts and resources. Sorting and evaluating took time, and she found that “many of the OER books would be lacking in an important topic or use notation that was different than the book that was currently being used,” and that “all of the current slides, lectures, and homework would have to be redone,” which became a large undertaking. And there are other challenges, like with many textbooks, in getting students to engage more with the texts on their own; so she continues to incorporate information from the OE texts into her lectures to help students practice class content further. She began the process of adopting these new texts two years ago and is still reworking course content in her classes. It’s a time consuming process, which is also a demonstration of her dedication to supporting her students and helping them to succeed.
Her students appreciate having free and accessible resources and “are happy that they do not have extra costs,” she says. And as an added bonus, they can continue to use and reference the OE texts even after they graduate, which is not true of rented texts or those that students sell back after semesters end.
So although finding, incorporating, and evaluating how OER are working in her classes is a continuous and sometimes labor intensive process, Margaret is dedicated to doing her part to reduce the cost of education for her students, and says she “will always try to find OER resources if possible.” Students sometimes have trouble doing the OE texts’ included online homework–for example when tiny details, like decimal points rounded up, result in the program marking homework wrong–and they get frustrated about whether or not they’re learning to do the work correctly; but because Margaret pays such close attention to challenges and needs of her students and has high goals for her students’ success, she works beyond these limitations to build stats classes that many students enjoy and come to feel confident in, which is not something one often hears about students’ experiences of statistics classes.
If you have not yet tried incorporating OER into your classes, it can seem daunting. But there are many resources to help you on the journey. You can reach out to a librarian and the OE Committee (oedearborn@umich) for help getting started, and there are a number of grants available to reimburse your time and effort all along the way.
Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash