Thinking About OERs Beyond Cost Savings

The adoption of quality OERs is reshaping HiEd classrooms, lowering the cost and furthering the democratization of learning. However, there is also a movement of disengagement with text-based learning that threatens to undermine the impact of open textbooks. Most learners are no longer reading for class or leisure (McCollum, 2018). When course content is summarized through lecture slides, learners express little incentive to read the textbook (Yonker & Cummins-Sebree, 2009). If no one is reading the course textbook, its democratization does not have the intended impact. In this session, I will share results from an iterative pedagogical redesign to motivate improved reading habits and familiarity with course terminology and communication styles (McCollum, 2016). I will discuss my experience participating in the OER community (Larsen et al., 2017), my strategies for re-engaging students with their textbook, and my research that shows it is peer relationships – more so than course content – that incentivizes good reading habits (McCollum & Morsch, submitted). Along the way, we will explore why experts in teaching and learning advocate for the continued inclusion of text-based learning in the modern classroom. We will also examine the purpose of the textbook in the learning experience and how OERs can benefit students in more ways than just their wallets.