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Open Access: Assessment

Guides for Jax State faculty and students: Awareness, Adoption, Adaption, and Assessment of open access resources.

Overview

Awareness
Open Access (OA), Open Educational Resources (OER), & Open Textbooks
Definitions
Copyright & Open Licenses
Re-Use Permissions
Adoption
Benefits & Challenges
Evaluating Procedures & Criteria
Where to Find OER
Featured Open Textbooks
Adaptation
Adaptation Guidelines
Adaptation of Materials Under a CC License

Citing OER in APA/MLA
Assessment
Tracking Adoptions
Accessing the Outcomes
Tracking Cost Savings

Tools You May Use

Public Domain Slider: a tool to help determine the copyright status of a work.

License Chooser: follow the steps to select the appropriate  Creative Commons license for your work.

OER Adoption Impact Calculator: Users can adjust inputs using a sliding scale to calculate the impact for their unique institutional setting.

Tracking Adoptions

Each institution and each individual develops its own process for tracking open textbook adoptions. The following table provides an overview of the tracking process:

Institutional Individual
  • Provide workshops, grants about open education, open textbooks, and open educational resources (OER). 
  • Check the repositories/databases, on how many times your resource page was viewed and how many times your OER was downloaded, where those views and downloads originated from, so you can demonstrate that your resource has global impact.
  • Share potential open textbooks and other OER with faculty that might be used in their courses. Celebrate faculty who have contributed to or are using OER, and allow adopting instructors to share why and how they took this step with their colleagues.
  • Ask instructors to share when they've adopted the text. While this does require relying on others to self-report, most in the OER community are happy to take the small steps to share their usage. 
  • Mark course sections that use an open textbook or other OER in the course schedule or catalogue. Post an open textbook adoption form. 
  • Consider enrolling in external metrics-tracking services like Google Analytics or Altmetric.
  • Consider OER during course design and redesign with the help of the institution’s instructional designers. Publish contact information for instructors to report adoptions. 
  • Include the request with an email address or perhaps a short form on the homepage of the website and/or in the front matter of the work.

Assessing the Outcomes

Before beginning the assessment of your OER (Open Educational Resources), consider which factors you wish to study and what data collection methods will be necessary to assess those factors. Most research on OER impact uses the COUP (Cost, Outcome, Usage, Perceptions) Framework, developed by the Open Education Group. This framework evaluates OER based on four key areas: cost of education, student success outcomes, patterns of usage, and perceptions of OER.

The COUP Framework:

Cost: Student savings can be a persuasive factor in encouraging faculty to adopt open textbooks.

Outcomes: Research on open textbooks often focuses on student academic outcomes, such as changes in grade percentages, completion rates, and withdrawal rates.

Usage: Usage is typically measured by how instructors edit, supplement, and delete material in open course materials. It can also include an in-depth look at how students use the open textbooks, focusing on usability and readability.

Perceptions: Perceptions of open textbooks are usually gauged by asking students to rate the effectiveness of the text on factors like credibility, quality, and alignment with the course. Surveys and focus groups are the most common methods used for this inquiry.

Further Assessment Resources:

Guidebook to Research on OER Adoption: A guide to assessment of OER adoption from the Open Education Group, including its impact on cost, student outcomes, use of resources, and perceptions of OER.

OER HUB Research Pack: provides a set of useful resources for anyone conducting research in open educational resources. 

OER Research: The OER Research page from MHEC's (Midwestern Higher Education Compact) listing OER related research.

 

Tracking Cost Savings

The OER Adoption Impact Calculator helps users understand some of the impacts of adopting OER instead of commercial textbooks. Users can adjust inputs using a sliding scale to calculate the impact for their unique institutional setting.

Tracking Cost Savings: from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Calculating and Reporting Student Savings: By Jeff Gallant, chapter 22 of the book entitled The OER Starter Kit for Program Managers.