Open Educational Resources (OER): Examples of OER Initiatives & Faculty Surveys

THE “Z-DEGREE”: Removing Textbook Costs as a Barrier to Student Success through an OER-Based Curriculum

Highlights 2016-2017 grants from Open Oregon to community college faculty to adopt or develop and implement OER (open educational resources).

In 2012, the California State Legislature directed the public higher education systems in the state to create an online library with open educational resources and textbooks in order to increase faculty adoption of high quality, affordable or free materials to save students money.

This survey of 3,288 faculty across the U.S., conducted by Babson Survey Research Group, shows "good news and bad news for the role of open educational resources (OER) in U.S. higher education. "

This survey elicited a total of 354 responses from faculty across the UH System. When searching for OER materials, it appears that many people are not aware of resources
such as MERLOT, OpenStax, Open Course Library, etc. Most respondents indicated that they
rely on colleagues or general Google searches to find materials.

Campus support for OER is growing according to the latest Campus Computing Survey, one of the largest annual surveys of college technology leaders in the U.S., which was released on October 31, 2018. Nearly two thirds of colleges in the survey—64 percent—reported campus programs to “encourage faculty to use OER content for their courses.” That was up from 34 percent in 2014. But only 38 percent agreed or strongly agreed that “faculty at my campus believe that the quality of OER course materials is about the same as comparable commercial products.”

Survey results include analysis of answers to 24 questions related to low cost alternatives to traditional textbooks, including utilization of library databases in addition to OER resources.