The Student and the Price Tag: Why the future of Higher Education Could Hinge on Students Becoming OER Content Creators.

Logan Cupp

“College is expensive”. If I earned a penny every time I’ve personally heard this, I’d be able to retire. There is no shortage of people willing to complain about this without providing any sort of tangible explanation or solution to the matter. I could go on a tangent about this but alas, this is not exactly why I am writing this article. College and university education is indeed an expensive undertaking. While I cannot offer an explanation in the brevity of this article, what I do aim to do is discuss one way in which higher ed expenses are being addressed.

?? ?OER content, otherwise known as Open Educational Resources, is an umbrella term for wide range of materials from textbooks to quizzes and assignments with many stops in between. Their particular licensing in the creative commons combined with their highly modular nature makes them an excellent resource that can drastically reduce the costs associated with college education for students. Often, the digital version of a given OER material is completely free for students, and physical copies can be acquired for drastically reduced prices. Consider OpenStax and their range of textbooks as a prime example of this.

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…it’s a matter of survival in the realm of higher education.

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?? ?It may be tempting to think that there is some horrid catch to all this. Frankly, no, many governmental bodies are willing to throw funding into OER content creation, and there are countless faculty members ready to offer their time to make this content happen. Why? Because these governments and faculty members both see the big picture. If students can’t afford a class or its materials, they won’t take a course. If they’re not taking any courses, then they are certainly not completing their programs and graduating. It’s a matter of retention rates then, moreover, it’s a matter of survival in the realm of higher education. If the students aren’t showing up, then we employees of the college and university are out of work, simple as that.

?? I’ve been working with OER content for about 9 months now, give or take a bit. In my short time, I’ve worked primarily with the faculty who are tasked with content creation. My role has been to help manage content creation and in my time I have been impressed with how many faculty member will jump onboard with OER materials. I have even seen a few faculty members, like myself who are more than happy to offer assistance in content creation, editing, etc.

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? …we have got to stop looking at students as passive recipients of education and start considering them as active participants in the process of education...

?? However, the one group who is easily the most important set of people on campus, has been sadly absent in the assembly line of OER content creation, the student. Without students, we have no college or university. The students are the ones who are most immediately impacted by the skyrocketing prices of higher education. So, it would seem to make sense then that they are the ones who have the most to gain by OER content creation. Wouldn’t it make sense then to insert them into a prime position within the genesis of OER content? If higher ed is to survive the coming turmoil, we have got to stop looking at students as passive recipients of education and start considering them as active participants in the process of education.

?? The trick is to get students into the process of content creation in ways that are best suited for them. The two big ways that this can be accomplished are inserting them in the creation pipeline as a feedback element, or if one feels so inclined, have them be content creators themselves. To that end, one could feasibly do both. In the first instance, the faculty member would construct portions of OER content, whether be a textbook, syllabus, or what have you, and the student would simulate its usage in a classroom setting. They would then provide the faculty member with feedback as to the usefulness of that particular OER content. Otherwise, they could also create content themselves. I am sure that the students wouldn’t be able to create entire OER materials themselves, they wouldn’t need to be in class if they did.

??? Students can also work with faculty by doing the sort of “busy work” that often bottlenecks faculty work in OER. As proposed by Lori Lysiak at the 2024 OEN conference, students could do this by the following means:

1.???? Creating digital content.

2.???? Editing and/or contributing to online articles.

3.???? Helping to create class materials such as syllabi alongside faculty.

4.???? Assisting in the creation of supplementary materials.

5.???? Social Annotations of shared readings

(Lysiak, 2024).

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?? The next big way is to make them advocates for the proliferation of OER content. The student population is a great vehicle for the advocation of change. Here, this can be harnessed for spreading awareness of the benefits of OER to staff, faculty, and especially other students. The social momentum would then hopefully be sufficient for OER content to gain critical mass over more traditional, and more expensive materials.

?? The last big push here is education. It’s not a totally revolutionary suggestion for me to say we should educate our students so bear with me. There are two major elements within the OER sphere that are tricky to navigate but indispensable in the OER creation pipeline. Creative Commons licensing, and the creative commons repository sites.

?? ?The licensing is tricky, there are 6 different variations to creative commons licensing that can be mixed and matched to different effects. I’ve seen faculty struggle with this initially, so if students are to be brought into the fold, then they should for certain be trained on CC licenses.

?? The other major element is creative common repository sites such as the LOUIS Commons for those of us in Louisiana. Personally, I like to think of them as OER libraries. Perhaps that’s because that definition is not too far off the mark. An OER repository is simply a site, frequently affiliated with a governmental department or academic institution, that holds onto OER submissions which can be accessed by other faculty and students for their own purposes. Students that would be involved in OER content creation need to know how to navigate these sites.

?? I hope that what I have written here today is of benefit. I truly believe in what can be accomplished through OER. I implore the reader to go and challenge why college must be so pricey. As for me, I will continue to be a vocal advocate for OER content. Not necessarily for my own sake, but for the sake of our students and the future of higher education.

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References

Lysiak, L. (2024, October). Empower Your Students as Open Course Content Creators. OEN Conference. Providence; Rhode Island.

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