 All right. Hello, everybody. I know that courseware is sort of a flashback to the early 2000s, but what I want to do here today is share with you some reflections based on a decade of my own experience working in the U.S., primarily U.S., but also more broadly North American, earlier context and higher education. We're at this sort of interesting critical turning point right now in the way that the narrative is evolving, and I've decided to structure it through a series of dog jeffs, so be prepared for that. I also want to be transparent about the fact that I have 15 minutes and 66 slides, so I promise to move quickly. I have posted the slides online. I'm going to show a lot of articles and statistics, all of the links and citations are in there. I tweeted it, and it's also on my slideshare. So, we're running back to the beginning of where the OER movement, at least in sort of North American mainstream higher ed started in the mid-2000s when the high cost of textbooks became part of the national narrative around higher education affordability. And as one of the group of advocates that were really trying to help drive that movement and get it started, it really did feel a little bit like this. We were up against these gargantuan companies that made billions of dollars every year, and charged students hugely high prices, and we wanted to solve that through free and affordable materials. And any Game of Thrones fans here, by the way, yeah, looking forward to Sunday. So, the movement that started around making college textbooks more affordable through higher education was a little bit like this. It was very clear where we were headed, the dog tasting the car. It was very clear what the goal was. There was this huge problem of high textbook cost students were struggling to afford their materials. We had a really strong narrative and a clear mission to replace expensive textbooks with open materials that students could afford, that they could have on day one of their courses and were better. And we had all sorts of compelling statistics behind it, you know, graphs like this, showing that textbook prices rose three times faster than inflation. You know, examples like your friendly $400 economics textbook. That's an actual screenshot of one of the most popular economics textbooks used in the U.S. You know, the fact that five major companies control the vast majority of the U.S. textbook market, and they all engage in the same sort of pricing practices. And it leads to really negative impacts on students, two in every three students, according to a number of studies in the U.S., so that they don't buy all of their course materials because the cost is too high. So it has a really negative impact. The OEM movement was really successful in getting this into the public narrative, using the broader crisis around college affordability and the university affordability that we face. You know, basically every major news outlet in the U.S. has covered this issue. And, you know, these articles go back to, you know, 2008, where our national media was talking about this idea of free online textbooks that students could use in place of these really expensive books. And students also played a critical role in driving this narrative. And those of you who know my background, I started as a student advocate myself when I was in university and also worked with students for the first half of my career in driving this. So students reaching out to their colleagues on campus, helping to illustrate the high cost of textbooks by, you know, holding visibility events, by holding rallies, and raising awareness of open educational resources. And we're starting to make a lot of progress. So it's part of the national narrative, universities are paying attention, and it feels a little bit like the dogs have finally caught the car, right? So it's slowing down. People are paying attention, we're making progress. And, you know, there's just a study put out by the Babson Survey Research Group looking at the adoption of early on US higher ed. It found that 13% of faculty, so more than one in ten faculty, say that they use open educational resources as a required material in at least one of their courses. That's really significant. Ten years ago it was basically zero, functionally zero. And if you look at high and limit courses, that's even greater. And you can see over the years, that has increased. Similarly, awareness is on the rise. There's, you know, fantastic examples of students saving huge amounts of money through OER. And, you know, these kinds of metrics that show the impact of switching from expensive textbooks to open educational resources are highly influential with policy makers and decision makers. So open stocks materials have been widely adopted. You can look at the institutional level, you know, campuses are putting out press releases talking about how their OER initiatives are saving students money. We have champions in the US Congress that are supporting this. Actually, just last week, Bill was introduced in the US Congress to provide support for open educational resources. We got our first ever federal funding last year for an OER grant program working to renew that again this year. Group of us were actually up on Capitol Hill during Open Education Week and had sit-down meetings with members of Congress and their staff to talk about these issues and their paying attention. And there's even faster progress happening at the state level. All of the states that are highlighted in red in this picture have some kind of OER policy or major initiative in their state related to open educational resources at the higher ed or state or K-12 level. So OER has sort of made its way into the mainstream in higher education. And it's actually really interesting because it's made its way into the mainstream in the publishing industry too. So we've started to see the major textbook publishing companies that perpetrated the problem, the car that we were chasing, starting to get in on the affordability and OER narrative. So this is a press release from the Association of American Publishers, which lobbied against virtually every textbook affordability policy that we pushed for over the last decade. And now they're putting out press releases talking about how they're making textbooks affordable. McGraw Hill, one of the major companies, put out press releases talking about how they save students more than $55 million through an initiative where they're charging students for textbooks, but somehow saving them money. Not sure about that. Same. Another major company that saves students more than $60 million through their subscription services. This is a fact sheet put out by Cengage, one of the major textbook publishers with all of these statistics about how students can't afford their textbooks. And people are eating this up. News outlets that are covering studies put out by major textbook publishers talking about how expensive textbooks are and how that's having a negative impact on students. And on the one hand it's like, we're winning, right? We got the publishers to admit that this is a problem and they're talking about it and they're saying how their pricing practices are bad and it's hurting students. We caught the car and that's winning, right? Nope. So, there are a number of challenges that we're now facing that we've reached this sort of pivotal turning point. You know, OER got to the point where we changed the narrative. We won the affordability narrative. And now we need to grapple with that fact. So one way that we're having to grapple with this is that the textbook publishing industry is starting to co-opt the open narrative. So just to clarify, you know, when we say open what we mean is free plus permission. So free, meaning free of cost, free of barriers, making these material available to everyone, everywhere, with as few barriers as possible. And then with the legal permission to use those resources is defined by the five bars. We're starting to see textbook publishers launch OER programs. This one from Cengage Learning called Open Now. They've taken a bunch of OER content and put it behind a paper so students can get access to the open educational resources if they pay for access to a platform. This is how it's described with courses starting at just $30. It's all openly licensed content that it's not free. And in the wise words of Amigo Montoya. Other major publishers are doing this. This is McMillan, another one. It's actually hilarious, you know, for a hot minute they were promoting this one. And now if you go to their website, it's like, free open courses. Are you a student? Purchase here. Not sure about that either. Also, we start to see like new vendors entering the space. This is one top hat. They actually put this press release out. Think about that for a second. So there's that whole narrative that's happening. And I think to some extent it's publishers just wanting to get in on the next hottest thing, which is open educational resources. But it's, you know, also wanting to undermine the efficacy of our argument, pushing for affordable materials. But the more challenging issue that we're facing is that we are coming full circle in terms of facing a new kind of challenge. And is that not the cutest dog? I think it's quite cute. So the model that's starting to take off in North America, and I'm actually really interested to hear if this is starting to be a thing in Europe too. But the term that the industry has used is inclusive access. And I'm just going to go with that for now, even though I reject their use of the word inclusive. It's used in the sense of an all-inclusive vacation, not an inclusive meaning nobody is excluded. The idea behind this is where all of the students who enroll in a course are automatically billed for the cost of access to a digital subscription. So all of the materials are digital and it's subscription access. So students don't actually buy the materials themselves. They're given access and billed directly for it. And it basically amounts to auto-charging students for textbooks, changing the model. And it's interesting when you hear arguments in favor of inclusive access, they often break down to students aren't buying their textbooks anymore. So let's take that option away from them and charge them for the materials directly. What could go wrong? And these subscription models are really scary from the student perspective. And these are just a couple of examples of what students have tweeted about experiences they've run into. I love when my online textbook decides access is expired before my final. That's not okay. Yeah, she, at the bottom, she says, oh, I'm done. Good night. She, I wonder how her grade turned out, another student, my free temporary access code expired today. Of course, her friend has a helpful suggestion to just screenshot everything. But these aren't solutions to problems. It's creating more problems. And it's not just students who are facing it, it's faculty too. This is a quote from the faculty member in a survey. The only thing worse than an expensive textbook is one that expires. But we're starting to see major universities start to sign contracts with publishers and adopt these sort of deals that allow more students to be auto-charged for their textbooks. You know, Ohio, the state of Ohio, one of our larger states, just set up this huge statewide deal with all of the public universities and all of the major publishers that makes it much easier. Last week, the state of Texas was considering legislation that would actually encourage all of the public institutions in the state to adopt inclusive access programs. And believe it or not, it's sponsored by a legislator who's actually an OER champion. In her case was, there isn't enough OER. So while we're waiting for OER to really take off, let's push for inclusive access instead. So there are critiques of us. So there's a lawsuit that's been filed in the state of South Carolina that looks specifically at some of the practices in terms of allowing students to opt out of this kind of model. There are also real questions around the contracts and deals that publishers are signing with institutions. For example, quotas for the number of students who must enroll in inclusive access courses in order to secure the discount. So institutions don't know the price for the materials that they're actually ultimately going to end up paying at the time they're signing the contract. And they're also agreeing to a quota that pits the financial interest of the university against the students and against the academic freedom of faculty because it's in their interest to promote the greater use of whatever publishers' materials. So we're also seeing these sort of broader subscription deals. Cengage was the first publisher to offer an all-inclusive subscription package to all of the textbooks where for a certain amount, for one semester, you can access every single material in their catalog. And those of you in the room who are librarians probably recognize this model, it's something that libraries have been struggling with over the last decade in terms of full catalog subscriptions to journals and big deals. That libraries are only starting to find their way out of. The recent University of California cancellation of the Elsevier subscription is a huge example of that happening. And Spark actually tracks big deals on our website. And then there are all sorts of other issues that are arising as well. Big questions about student data privacy and Billy's presentation in this room earlier today discussed a little bit. This is a great piece by him. I encourage you to read it. Questions about how is student data being collected and used? And what protections are there to make sure that universities aren't losing control of that? Publishers acquiring key components of infrastructure that we use for teaching and learning. And the use of algorithms that may someday take control away from universities and making decisions about their core operations and turning that over to black box algorithms that make decisions according to unknown criteria and are owned by commercial interests where the values aren't aligned with the institution. So where we're back to is this place of needing to hold the line. And I think this really connects back to the theme of this conference in terms of re-centering open and thinking about ways that open can be a solution to some of these broader problems that we're facing. And as the landscape around us and the materials we use evolve, how can we make sure that we're putting students first and making sure that our practices are aligned with our values? And then at the end of the day, that we just keep true to our missions, which is to help empower students to be productive citizens and not allow that to be taken away from us from evolutions in the marketplace. So I'm getting the stop signal, so I will stop. Thank you. So thank you. Thank you very much, Nicole. We've got time for one question, and I'm going to give it to Granny at the back who was waiting to ask a question earlier as well, so. I just want to make him run up and down the stairs. Thank you for that. That was really interesting. Can you say a little bit more about why you think publishers are wanting to get into this space? So I think there are two reasons. So one is that they see an advantage in being part of the OER narrative just because it has become so popular and so visible. And then two, that if they get in on this space, they can help change the narrative and help dilute the sort of power of openness. And when we talk about open, it means more than just free and affordable. And it's about benefiting students, enabling new forms of pedagogy, allowing more participation from marginalized communities. And they want to shift their narrative away from the other benefits, and if they're part of it, they can. So that's where we need to hold the line. Thank you very much, Nicole. I'll have to stop you there, but it was really interesting. Thank you. Sorry. Let's figure out how to...