During 2015-2016 eight campuses from the State University of New York (SUNY) collaborated on a SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grant (IITG) to trial a support model designed to allow librarians and instructional designers a framework with which to guide teaching faculty in accessing discovery tools through SUNY Affordable Learning Solutions, Lumen Learning while utilizing local talent in SUNY libraries and instructional design offices; modularizing and improving interoperability in the collection of existing Open SUNY textbooks; and embedding assessments in OER courses. The overarching goal of the service model was to:
- increase OER adoption - improve OER alignment with course learning outcomes and - increase student completion and success in OER courses
This model was tailored to take a specific next step forward for SUNY; by using the power and collective knowledge of established relationships on individual campuses, the aim was to further develop a systematic approach to SUNY's use and creation of OER.
In this presentation, teaching faculty, librarians and instructional support staff from Monroe Community College, Fulton-Montgomery Community College and Buffalo State College will discuss the first-year results of this model wrap-around service. Faculty will offer insights on the un/necessary presence and leveraging of OER-champions on their campus in fostering course-level and institutional changes. Librarians and instructional designers involved in the project will provide a ground-level view of how the service model operates on individual campuses and how collaborative partnerships with other SUNY campuses have developed. The course support teams that worked with faculty to adopt OER is a model that all campuses in SUNY are utilizing to scale OER using the Open SUNY Textbook as the SUNY OER Hub to build an OER community of practice in SUNY.
As a means of assessing both this service model for faculty and the impact of OER on student success, surveys were distributed to faculty and student participants during the Fall 2015 and Spring 2016 semesters. The results of those surveys indicated that:
- Students and faculty rated OER has being equal or better than publisher content
- Students overwhelming wanted printed versions of OER, but ranked the digital components of OER highly
- Faculty indicated the cost of course materials are a concern when selecting course content to teach from
In consideration of these findings and with the ending of IITG funding, the presenters will posit how this forward-thinking, success-orientated path potentially answers the challenges of sustaining and scaling this service model to positively impact SUNY's sixty-five campuses and 460,000 students.
