Abstract
Relevance
One significant barrier to student success in courses across the curriculum is the rising cost of access to course materials (Colvard et al., 2018.) While Open Educational Resources and other free materials have seen increased use in recent years, not all faculty and students are entirely comfortable or familiar with their use (Anderson & Cuttler, 2020; Hilton, 2019). Yet there is at least some evidence suggesting that turning to open materials not only improves access to education by removing cost as a barrier, but also contributes to the improvement of student learning (Hilton, 2020; Colvard et al. 2018). This poster presents an example of a service course deliberately designed to use OER and Open Access texts and other free tools in a flipped classroom model, built with accessibility (very broadly understood) in mind: Introduction to Ethics, taught in the Spring 2022 term at [redacted for anonymous review]. This presentation also offers some reflections on how the class worked in practice and some considerations for designing future open-valued courses. Of particular note here is the pervasiveness of the open ethos – while affordability is an important part of improving access, it may be most powerful as a part of a broader emphasis on accessibility relative to the possibilities inherent in universal design and different kinds of assessment practice.
Presentation Purpose & Takeaways
The primary drive behind sharing and reflecting on this course design is twofold:
- To suggest/model an approach to using open resources that improves access in a way that makes the process of designing an “open” class itself a bit more accessible (in several senses) for both faculty and students
- To actively promote Open Educational Resources, Open Access materials, and other access- promoting tools and
References/Resources
Anderson, T., & Cuttler, C. (2020). Open to open? An exploration of textbook preferences and strategies to offset textbook costs for online versus on-campus students. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 21(1), 40–60. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v20i5.4141
Colvard, N. B., Watson, C. E., & Park, H. (2018). The impact of Open Educational Resources on various student success metrics. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 30(2), 262-276.
Hilton, J. (2020). Open educational resources, student efficacy, and user perceptions: A synthesis of research published between 2015 and 2018. Educational Technology Research and Development, 68(3), 853–876. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-019-09700-4