Affordable & Open Educational Resources: OER Studio
OER Studio Overview
The OER Studio is an initiative developed by the UB Libraries to engage, educate, and train university faculty and instructors in adopting, adapting, or creating open content for their teaching. Studio librarians are available to consult with faculty and instructors about incorporating OER into their teaching, to advance general developments in OER use, and to promote the benefits of open education moving forward. The Studio also specializes in facilitating the production of OER research. Studio librarians consult with UB's Open Education Research Lab and with interested faculty who investigate efficacy, student and faculty perceptions, and other questions related to OER-based teaching.
In the spirit of the open education community, the Studio also serves as an OER model program for other institutions to replicate or to adopt and modify for their own purposes.
OER Programming
The OER Studio includes a variety of programming for individual faculty and academic departments, and it features a fellowship program—the OER Curriculum—for competitively selected faculty to develop OER-based courses. Studio programming focuses mainly on open education, open pedagogy, educational technology, accessibility, and instructional design, and on OER creation, licensing, and publishing. OER Curriculum programming focuses on the development of course content beyond traditional texts: for example, multimedia, virtual reality, integrated homework modules, and student response systems.
Initial programming will commence in the fall term of 2019. Studio librarians are organizing a workshop to be conducted by visiting faculty from the Open Textbook Network. In addition, the Studio is partnering with UB's Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion to provide workshops on accessibility as it pertains to the adoption, adaption, and creation of OER course materials.
OER Research
The Studio coordinates with the UB’s Open Education Research Lab on the development of relevant and useful research as it pertains to the activities of the OER Studio. Initially, the OER librarians are focused on investigating questions around the following themes:
- What type of professional development can be delivered by an OER studio model for enabling faculty to engage in sustainable OER practices?
- What factors influence faculty who participate in an OER studio to consume versus create or share OER materials?
- What are core features and supports necessary to create a sustainable OER studio model?
- What are differences in successful OER studio programming as they pertain to the different professional development needs of pre-tenure, tenured, clinical, or adjunct faculty?
The purpose of advancing OER research is to inform the ongoing development of the Studio and to contribute to the professional discourse and scholarly literature on the use of OER in higher education. The OER librarians contend that at present there is not a significant enough body of empirical research concerning the use of OER, and those who use or espouse the use of OER-based teaching need reproducible findings for any related claims of success or failure.
UB OER Faculty Heroes
The UB Libraries are pleased to acknowledge the following faculty heroes for their innovative use of OER-based teaching:
- Jennifer Austin, Department of Counseling, School, and Educational Psychology
- Heather Bennett, Singapore Institute of Management
- Marc Böhlen, Department of Art
- Patricia Doyle, Graduate School of Education
- Supradeep Dutta, School of Management
- Christina Heath, Experimental Learning Network
- Mathew Hertz, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
- Stuart Inglis, Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences
- Jessica Kruger, Department of Community Health and Health Behavior
- Yibin Liu, Department of Community Health and Health Behavior
- Monica Lupion, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
- Nicholas Mastronarde, Department of Electrical Engineering
- Paul McAfee, School of Management
- Kimberly Meehan, Department of Geology
- David Murray, School of Management
- Surajit Sen, Department of Physics
- Renee Strum, Department of Counseling, School, and Education Psychology
- Frank Zagare, Department of Political Science
- Shauna Zorich, Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health
OER Statistics
The UB Libraries track campus OER activity as part of its ongoing collaboration with SUNY OER Services. The figures below are a numeric representation of qualified OER activity* (see below), meaning that the course instructors met specific criteria to qualify for SUNY OER teaching stipends. The stipend program and the compilation of these figures started during the fall term of 2017.
| Courses using OER: 26 | Students impacted: 3,982 | Textbook cost savings: $367,200 |
*Criteria for qualified OER activity (all criteria must be met):
- Undergraduate level
- Greater than 50% of the course content is OER
- Greater than 25 enrolled students
- Instructor agrees to continue using OER course content for at least three academic years
(Figures last updated April 23, 2019)
Interim Head of Scholarly Communication
Assistant Librarian
OER Studio Partner
The UB Open Education Research Lab's core mission is to actively engage and support the study of SUNY’s open education efforts. Lab leaders provide consultation and research to the plethora of SUNY Open Educational efforts, with the aim of developing research that creates a better understanding and improvement of Open Education.
Copyright
This web guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
In the spirit of the open education community, this Studio serves as an OER program model for other institutions to replicate or to adopt and modify for their own purposes.