 I've been an educator teaching 12 years in the mainland, Japan, China, and now right here in Hawaii. As a former teacher of the year, I have collaborated with families, educators, politicians, and community stakeholders to develop moral and inclusive citizens, create critical thinkers, preparation for workforce, enhance independent living for all learners. My special guest today is Dr. Sunny Pai. She is a digital initiatives librarian at University of Hawaii's Kapiolani Community College. She has degrees from Brandis University, Massachusetts, University of Southern California, and her PhD from University of Hawaii at Manoa. Thank you for being here, Dr. Pai. Oh, please, you can just call me Sunny. Oh, thank you for being here, Sunny. It is my pleasure to have you. So I want to jump right into our discussion for today. As you know, the cost of college education has increased over the decades. Oh, just astronomically, and we have students now who are paying a huge amount of money for student loans, and that is not simply covering tuition, room, and board. There are other expenses that our students have to pay. Why don't you talk to us about textbooks? Okay. Well, textbooks have been significant costs for students, both K to 12 and in higher education. And since the 1970s textbooks, the cost of textbooks has a much higher inflation rate than anything else that's been measured from the Bureau of Labor statistics. It shows that the inflationary rate of textbooks has been over 1,000% from the 1970s up to 1,000%. That's not 100%. That's not even 500%. That is 1,000% increase in the cost of textbooks. Can you tell me what that looks like in dollars and cents for the average book? Well, you're right. Well, these, I mean, like a few years ago, I was doing a workshop and one of our faculty members who's sending her students to school was saying that at Hawaii Community College, the cost of a textbook was up to $400. And this was already a couple years ago. So we're way over the $400 mark for, you know, textbooks that aren't necessarily law books or highly specialized books. Well, that's incredible that it has increased by that much. I understand that this is affecting students because of the cost, but you initially said that 55% of students were not buying textbooks. Can you talk to me about that? And where did that come from? All right. That's a statistic that was drawn from a student survey that Leeward Community College did a couple of years ago. They were modeling their survey after a nationwide survey put together by the U.S. Public Information Research Group that was showing that actually 65% of the students across the country were not purchasing their textbooks. Fortunately for Leeward, it was a little bit lower, but you can imagine what a significant disadvantage that is if students are not getting access to their learning materials right away or even at all. And these are students who acknowledge that they need the books in order to do well in the class, but they simply can't afford it. So they find other ways to get around it, or they just try to get through the class. So I've spoken with some... Go ahead. Go ahead. I've spoken with some faculty who've come up to me and they've said, I've always wondered why at the beginning of the semester, students come to me and ask me if they really need to buy the textbook. And the faculty member said, now I understand better what's going on. Yeah, you know, I think sometimes educators are a little bit detached from the actual cost that students have to pay. So it's unfortunate that they didn't know that prior to that. So you're saying that 52% of the students felt textbook cost affected, whether or not they would actually stay in school. Right. Yes. So that's... Right. Yeah, that's directly related to student success, as we say here in the higher education field. The University of Hawaii has made a really strong commitment to try and get students to their certificates and degrees. They want to increase the rate of graduation as much as possible. You can see it in our strategic plans. So if students are, you know, really having a difficult time affording their textbooks, that's really a problem. And textbook affordability... What about financial aid? What about financial aid? Doesn't that help? Yes, financial aid helps in many ways. The irony that I find with financial aid, first of all, students have said to me that it takes the ability to purchase textbooks with financial aid sometimes kicks in like one or two weeks or maybe even three weeks before they can start purchasing their textbooks. I'm not exactly sure what the procedures are, but it seems to be a common problem. And so those students are already one or two weeks behind the ball and that's a serious loss in terms of keeping up with the other students because there's only really 16 weeks to do your course. And the other thing that's ironic in my view of things is that the students who can lease afford expensive textbooks end up relying on loans to be able to pay for those textbooks. Of course, these loans sometimes don't get, or a lot of times, don't get paid off over many years. And if you think about the interest rate, they've actually paid more for that textbook than the student who can pay up front. So I think that's, you know, that's an unfortunate irony. I think we would call that an affordability disadvantage. They cannot afford books and therefore they suffer in school. And that two week delay that happens when they are under financial aid can be critical at the beginning of any semester. Absolutely. Yeah. Especially for students who might be the first in their family. I work at a community college, so we're always concerned about that. And we have a high percentage. If they're first in their family, they're still getting used to functioning in a higher education environment. It's not quite the same as high school. And so that's, and some of them are married, have kids, are raising a family, they're working part-time. This is a lot of stress for them. Yeah. So now tell us about OER, the Open Educational Resources. What is that? Okay. Well, Open Educational Resources, the term first came about, I'm referring to my notes. In 2002, and it was basically put forth by United Nations, UNESCO. And they basically put out a Paris Declaration in 2012 where they're encouraging countries around the world to really look at reducing the costs of textbooks in order to support developing countries. And working class and middle class students helping them to advance in their higher education. So this was a concept that was first coined, again, by the United Nations way back in 2002. So the United States has been working on this. I became familiar with it in 2014, but they've been working on it for at least a few decades now on the mainland. The concept of... When you mentioned the United Nations, that lets us know that this is not just a United States problem. This is not just a Hawaii problem, but this is a nationwide, worldwide problem. Exactly, right. And so what they were calling for was for faculty and administrators to support them to create teaching, learning and research materials. They could be digital, it could be hard copy that are in the public domain or are released under an open license that permits no cost access. So what that means is that students have access to free materials that have been vetted and created by scholars. They encourage, there's a lot of material that goes into public domain because of it's either released public domain or it falls into public domain from a copyright status. They encourage instructors to use free materials to use as examples for their classes or create an openly license. And by openly licensing, if I, for example, if I make a textbook, if I write a textbook or I do a fantastic learning website, I give permission to anybody in the world to use that website, to use those materials so that they can adapt it for their own students. So, another example is, I suppose, I know we have hymns that are very old, centuries old, and they go into the public domain, but that's a hymn. What about other materials, photographs and things like that? Can you give us an example of those resources? Okay, well, there are, there are, there's a ton of photographs and even, you know, films that are long out of copyright at this point. And they are, there are sites where you can go where you can look for these kinds of materials. And you can check on the licensing and if it's out of copyright and it's in public domain, then you're free to use it, especially if it's public domain, then you can also alter it. So, you'll see a lot of works in open educational resources where works that are out of copyright are incorporated in learning materials or even altered in order to support the learning process. Wonderful. Now, are materials created by scholars and available for you? Yes. So these are, these are instructors at higher ed, higher education institutions, two year, four year graduate school. And also, I think there's, there's a growing movement in the K to 12 kindergarten to high school educational community and they're creating materials and sharing it out and helping their, their colleagues. Perfect. Now, we have one minute to break and I kind of want to review where we are right now. What we said is that open educational resources are free resources available to students both on the college level, as well as K 12. Yes, there, there are places that you can go to search for materials that have been released for K to 12 also. Wonderful. When we come back from our break, we're going to talk to Dr. Pi, honey, just a little bit more. We're going to touch bases about open ended resource, open educational resources and how we are working with that right here in Hawaii, as well as nationwide. You're watching at the crossroads. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. My show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that's just going to scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on ThinkTechHawaii.com 1 p.m. on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up and please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keeping you safe. Aloha. And welcome back to At the Crossroads. We're discussing Open Educational Resources, or OER. We've been chatting with my guest, Dr. Sunny Pye of the University of Hawaii Capiolani Community College. And Sunny, welcome back. Thank you. So now I need to ask you, how did OER come to Hawaii? Okay. Well, my understanding is that, hey, Okimoto, one of our senior academic administrators, found out about the movement on the mainland. She's the associate vice president for student affairs and director of academic technologies. And she arranged for Cable Green of Creative Commons to come to the University of Hawaii and do several presentations to all the chancellors and administrators here throughout the 10 campuses. And in 2014, Outreach College at Manoa started a position where they would, they were encouraging the adoption of open educational resource practice. And that just kind of spread from there to all the other campuses. I see. And so now at this point, go ahead. Sorry. At this point, we have instructional designers and librarians on all the campuses and also instructional faculty, the ones who teach. We're all collaborating with each other, kind of a grassroots effort too. So it kind of, it kind of came in from administration, but it was quickly adopted at a grassroots level throughout all campuses. And they're finding the materials that are already out there on the web and putting it together and basically modifying it for their classes and for their students. Wonderful. So now instructors are modifying it for them. It went throughout the university system, but is this just right now for community colleges? Or can someone get this at UH Manoa? Oh, yes. We have people, we have materials at UH Manoa. If you go to oar.hoi.edu, you'll see some of the materials that are being published. And each, many of the campuses are already, the community colleges are already teaching classes with OER. Or we also call it textbook cost zero. There's a slightly different definition to textbook cost zero. So, and also West Oahu is coming on board very quickly. And I think Hilo is coming on board. I'm referring to the four years of course. Okay, terrific. That sounds really good. So now with all of that being said, this textbook zero strategy is also known as TXTO. Correct. Now is that system wide as well? Yes, that's system wide. If a student goes to register for classes in Banner, that's the online, I mean, that's the registration process where students can sign up for courses. They're going to see in the left hand margin a code TXT zero. And what that means is for that particular class, you can take that class and not have to pay for a textbook. Usually what that means is the faculty member has other has either found a wonderful textbook or materials that they can use to teach the course without the students having to pay for it. Or in many cases, the faculty member has actually created the materials, which is, which is tremendous work on their part and they, they really deserve a lot of credit for the kind of work and dedication they put into that. Now, as an aside, I need to ask you on the one hand, if they are creating the materials, that's wonderful. But if they are getting materials that are free and open to the public, and they may be from many years ago, how well is the education that is or the information that is being presented? How up to date is that? Well, if the material is, is dated, then of course what they'll do the beautiful thing about open educational resources is that you can take the material and you can freely update it. When the, when the author releases it as open, I mean the author still has copyright over the material, but the author will say, through a system of through a declaration system, which is managed by an organization called Creative Commons. You basically are saying you're free to take this material and update it. So a lot of faculty will find, for example, the textbook that was perhaps last written 10 years ago, and then they can go and they can, they can update the material. They can add chapters that they want to add. They can take out anything that they don't want to have. What, what we also do is we encourage faculty to make it relevant to your local context. So we have textbooks that have examples that draw from, you know, history or biology or Hawaiian culture to what we call localize it so that the material is more relevant directly to our students here. Okay. So I can imagine that the educators feel as though they have are having a great effect on students because they allow them the opportunity to afford college because they can afford these resources. And I suppose you can tell me a little bit about the effect this is having on the students. All right. So, yeah, I mean, the students, it's a tremendous benefit to the students I've I've been to meetings at student Congress, our, you know, student meetings, and they they've given such positive feedback at being able to afford to go to go to classes. The costs of textbooks can can run into and run anywhere from 500 to 1000 or even more dollars a semester. And that's a tremendous burden for them. Yeah. The other advantage for faculty is when they actually work with the content or, I mean, of course they always work with the content but when they're altering the content to make it open for their students or they're creating it from scratch. They really get to to customize it for their particular students. So class an English 100 class at Leeward Community College, you know, a faculty member might have a certain kind of approach. The same class at Capulani, the faculty member may choose to have a different kind of approach depending on the students. So, yeah, they can really customize image because there is something happening at Leeward College that I want to mention. And we have that image coming up now. 40% of the classes there are textbook costs, zero. And then at Capulani College, we have 30% of the instructors are teaching textbook costs, zero classes. So that those are really, really good numbers. That's a really good sign. I want to ask you, Sunny, what are the immediate future trends for the university? Okay. Well, we are West Oahu and Hilo are coming on board. I mean, they've been basically starting up for the last year or two, more so West Oahu at this point, but I'm sure Hilo is right behind. What's happening on March 6? So that means our 10 campuses will be, yeah, March 6, we're going to have, we're having the, let's see, the strategic Hawaii Strategic Institute at, which is going to take place at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel. Basically, the entire community college system is going to gather and they're going to do a system-wide conference on student success. And so we'll have nationally known speakers, Amanda Coolidge and Delmar Larson. They'll be coming to do workshops and presentations on the latest development in OER. I appreciate you so much. Go ahead. Okay. I'm sorry. The other developments are we're going to be getting, we're generating more textbooks from all campuses. And we have what we're called, what we're calling OER sprints, where the University of Hawaii system is gathering faculty from multiple campuses to tackle a given subject like recently there was an English 100 OER sprint. And there's been an OER sprint in economics. So the idea is the community colleges and the four years they get together, they create a textbook that they know is going to work for as many students as possible. That's terrific. So we've covered a lot. We've explained what OER is. We noted that Cable Green came in to UH at 2014 that this is a really grassroots effort that's taking place with the faculty, including librarians and instructional designers such as yourself. And then thanks to the innovation and funding from UHCC system and support from the outreach college and UH information technology service. Almost all of the campuses have developed their own programs. So that made it possible for a lot of students to attend school with textbook zero costs. And that community colleges have helped saved about $5.6 million as of spring 2019. I'm going to show our last image, because if you want to find out more information, you can simply visit the newly updated. OER.Hawaii.edu system wide news. And you can go to open capiolani.Hawaii.edu for news from Capiolani Community College. Sunny, thank you so much for sharing this information with us today. You are an excellent guest. And the subject matter expert. Thank you so much. And I look forward to hearing more about how you can and your system can help students save so much money attending college. I think that this really solidifies what we're trying to do here on this show. So once again, thank you, Sunny. And thank you all for watching at the crossroads. As always, we want to make sure that we are making college and all forms of education affordable to all. We are hoping that you will join us again for our next discussion right here on Think Tech Hawaii. I have been your host, Keisha King, and I'll see you next time. Aloha.