Kingsborough Community College, an urban community college is developing a faculty-driven OER program funded by the $8 million New York State OER grant. To increase adoption of OERs on campus, while maintaining the utmost respect for academic freedom and compassion for our more technologically challenged colleagues, we have focused on making the financial case to faculty. We present faculty members with data on student finances, which puts the cost of textbooks in stark relief. Once most individual faculty members become aware of the existence high quality alternatives to costly textbooks, they are committed, and we begin the work of converting their course to one that uses OERs. Yet there is one important perspective that has so far been missing from the discussion- that of the students- do they like the OERs that are being adapted for their classrooms, or would they prefer the traditional textbook approach, or something else? We have depended on the growing body of literature that says students using OERs perform as well or better as students using traditional course materials, and that students believe that the OERs are just as good or better than traditional course materials, but these studies for the most part have been conducted at institutions with very different student profiles than Kingsborough. Therefore, as we seek to expand the adoption of OERs and move the campus towards a culture of open education, it is imperative to consider how Kingsborough students are doing with these materials and how they feel about them, and to consider this feedback as crucial to any assessment, revision, or institutionalization of OERs at Kingsborough. This presentation will describe the program as we’ve built it across disciplines, and the results of our first round of student evaluations, including grade analysis, surveys, and focus groups.
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