 Welcome, everyone, to today's workshop with the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources. The topic today is the Cultureship to Academic Freedom, where we will be discussing the connections between academic freedom, open educational resources, and publisher offerings such as inclusive access, among other things. And so I'm very excited to get started with all this. Before we do, I just wanted to tell everybody that we are testing out a captioning service for this day. So if you're interested in turning that on, then down at the bottom of the Zoom screen, one of the options should say either close captioning or we'll save more and you can click on that and then you'll see the captioning as an option if that is of interest. So first we'll do some introductions and go through a little bit about CCAC OER, and then we have a number of guests on a panel today who are going to talk a little bit about their experiences with OER, their institutions. And then after that we have a set of questions to guide the discussion and we will be eventually moving forward to a Q&A at the end. So if you're in the audience, please feel free to enter questions in the chat if you want and we will kind of try to monitor that and then at the end we'll try to make sure that we leave a few minutes open so that we can address those questions. And then at the very, very end we have a couple of upcoming events to let you know about as well. And as I said, we have a panel of speakers today, a range of folks from faculty, students and administrators here. And they will all have the opportunity to introduce themselves in a moment. And myself, if you don't know as you might have heard me before, there's been a couple of these webinars with CCAC OER, but I'm Matthew Bloom, I'm English faculty at that's a community college and I'm the open educational resources coordinator for the Maricopa County Community College and so I'm very excited. I'm one of the executive council members for CCOER. So before we get to actually introducing formally, I'm giving the panelists the opportunity to introduce themselves. I just wanted to say a couple of words about what CCOER is. We are an organization of community colleges in North America who strives to support faculty and raise awareness about open educational resources and bring, you know, various community members together in collaboration and try to, as it says here, foster that OER leadership. And obviously the end goal of all of this is higher student success rates, right, it's supporting students and so that's what CCOER is all about. And we actually have pretty broad membership across the United States and as you can see, if you go to the URL there you can see more details, but we have pretty much membership from coast to coast there. And in those states we have yet to get into, but maybe that'll happen in the future. So one of the themes of today is, does have to do with choices about, you know, how do you make those choices about moving to a low cost alternative to a traditional textbook or, you know, what is the reasoning for going to completely free. And, you know, what are some of the benefits and potential consequences of those kinds of decisions. And of course wrapped up in all of that are these new publisher offerings, relatively new offerings that are called inclusive access or some people I've heard called it automatic billing. And so one of the things that has happened recently is that a number of organizations as you can see down at the bottom here for CCOER to open stacks and global Creative Commons, student perks, all the others there. They have all come together to start this initiative called Free the Textbook. And if you go to this URL right here, you have the opportunity to sign up and get involved, they have toolkits for student activism and also for those who are interested in supporting students. And it's a really great resource for learning about the issues related to inclusive access into low-media resources generally. And I strongly encourage everyone to check it out because there are some great resources on that site. So without further ado, I would like to turn this over to the first of our panelists here to take a few minutes to introduce yourself. So Lisa Cooper, who's English faculty at Glendale Community College, which is right here in Maricopa, which is in the Phoenix, Arizona area. So, Alisa, do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself? Yeah, thank you, Matthew. So Matthew and I work together. As you said, I'm at Glendale, which is one of the 10 community colleges in our district. We are the second largest. Before one semester, we were the largest and we really like to brag about that. But so we've been involved in the OER movement since 2013. And before Matthew took over three years ago as our leader of OER, I was part of a tri-chair committee team that organized all the things, all the great things that he's doing now. I like to feel like Maricopa has been one of the major players in the OER. And whenever we go to different conferences, we would always share what we were doing and trying to advocate for others to get involved. You know, we had an initial goal to save students $5 million in five years. And I think after five years, we had saved students over 11 million. And I'm not even sure if we're still counting since I haven't been directly involved in three years. But I think that's a great achievement for us. One thing that's unique about our initiative is that instead of just saying no cost, trying to encourage faculty to be no cost, ours was a no-cost low-cost. And we set that low-cost number at 40. So anything under $40, we included it in our count for our OER numbers. So one of the things that we do well in our district is that we have the initiative that creates dialogue days. You know, we're involved in conferences. We've had online training. We even have a grant program that encourages faculty to either create or adopt OER materials. And I think that's pretty much it. I know Matthew knows a lot more than I do. So if he wants to jump back in, he can. But anyway, that's me. Welcome. Thank you, Lisa. And I just wanted to say publicly, thank you so much for all the work that you and the other tri-chairs did at the beginning of the Miracle of Knowledge project to get all of that moving. I have just done my best not to ruin it. You did a great job. All right, next we have Barbara Goode. She's a student at volunteer state community college and an OpenStacks intern. And Barbara, would you like to talk a little bit about your experience and your role? Sure. Yes, I am an OpenStacks national intern. They invited me to come back for the next year, which I'm very excited about. The first year that I was there, it was really a campus advocacy project to try to promote OER. And let me clarify, we got to choose our campus advocacy project. And I went ahead and stayed with the OER and tried to introduce OER more to those professors that haven't chosen or were still reluctant. And unfortunately, right when I was really hammering it down, we had a tornado in our area and then of course COVID hit. So I'm actually excited that I was extended so that maybe I can continue that work, which I had actually, I had planned on doing anyways. But this year, my role is also to work with the institutional partners that is with OpenStacks. So I'm really excited to see where my role takes me this time and how much more I can learn about OER. Maybe be on the flip side with you guys one day instead of just a student. But I appreciate you allowing me to be here. And I thank the Community College Consortium for also inviting me to be in here. Thank you, Barbara, so much. And we've included on this slide here a number of blog posts that you're open stacks. Do you want to say anything about any of these in particular? And all the community colleges have some money coming in terms of a OER grant. And so we really kicked off an initiative then. And it's grown ever since. And what makes me really, really happy is this fall, about 70% of our classes are completely OER. So we went from having zero in 2016 to almost 70% now. And so that's really a great number. If you could just go to the next slide. Next one. There we go. So I come from a Roxbury community, which is in Boston. We were funded or founded just like everyone else in the late 60s, early 70s. We were a small school, a little over 2,000 students. So we're much more traditional than what Community College I've turned into now. So we're much more traditional at Community College. So we're primarily a female, we are, you know, primary minority based students of color. And we are average ages, you can take a look at the slide, he's 32 years old. So, you know, the trend is to have more high school students coming to Community College, but that's not the case here. And so, you know, we're much more of a traditional Community College, you know, that was in the past of working parents trying to get a degree. You just go to the next slide. And so we're an urban college and our demographics, our students are, you know, in the more economic sphere of things. And, you know, at least 45% of our students are parents, and at least have two children. So, you know, they got a lot of other things going on in their lives to just, you know, college. And so that's why, you know, certainly where it became really, really important and the affordability issue here at RCC. And I'm very happy to join you today. Thank you very much, Bill, for coming. We are happy to have you. And last one on our panel today is Veronica Howard. She is Professor of Psychology at University of Alaska Anchorage. So Veronica, you want to go ahead and introduce yourself and let us know what your work at University of Alaska. Hey everyone, good morning. I'm joining you from Anchorage, Alaska. I'm Veronica Howard. I live and work on the land of the Denina, El Nena. And so I'm so pleased to be here today to be included in the conversation. I did also include a little bit of information about our institution on the next slide and the University of Alaska Anchorage is a little bit unique where a large open enrollment institution. We're built on the land of the Denina, El Nena, and we're considered within the University of Alaska system to be the metropolitan campus and we have a really strong kind of professional credentialing and workforce development focus. But what's really interesting about the University of Alaska system is that there are no community colleges in Alaska. All of our institutions are within the same system. So at UAA we serve students who might outside or in the lower 48 be considered a community college student, but we also are a PhD granting institution. So we're pretty unique. We have a very diverse range of students and preparation levels coming in. We also serve students who, you know, are quite diverse, demographically and socioeconomically. So we have been focusing on improving the financial accessibility of our institutions since about 2015, and I'm privileged to be part of the group that is promoting textbook affordability on our campus. I'm really pleased to be able to join you today. Thank you so much, Veronica. So today, you know, one of the, when we first began thinking about what this webinar was going to be like, you know, we wanted to address some of these sometimes somewhat tricky topics related to places, learning materials choices, how institutional this can not only empower faculty, but also potentially limit faculty. I mean, we wanted to have some of those hard decisions about or hard discussions about, you know, the kind of impact all the different ways in which the choice to go to a zero cost or to an open source alternative to the traditional text or to really look at how that resonates in all kinds of different ways. And so the way we framed it basically is in three different topics and we're going to have some guiding questions, and I'm just going to probably do my best to be quiet and let all of the brilliant folks on our panel respond to those questions and foster that discussion. So first, we'll talk a little bit about teaching practices and how that is have that's been impacted by this shipboards, academic freedom, which goes along with the adoption of open materials, my is be retained and all of that. So thinking about institutional pressures, whether it is, you know, an initiative, or whether or not it is kind of like, you know, departmental or institutional culture that kind of impact that can have on the choice of learning materials and then of course the topic of many days recently and a lot of open education discussions is. So moving going ahead and moving straight into it. I'm what I'd like to do is just kind of read the questions out. And then I'm going to open it up to the panel and see, you know, what responses and kind of, you know, what folks have to say about it. So, first of all, when it comes to teaching practices, how is it that open educational resources impact faculty freedom to engage with students. What, and who does it empower. And how is it limiting. What's really kind of in this suite of questions is how does this shift in teaching practices prompted by open education impact educators who are comfortable and arguably with their use of publisher materials. You know, I will just say as a faculty member myself I know that it can sometimes be challenging to have a discussion with the faculty member right across the hallway from you more difficult than it is to have a discussion, potentially with somebody from a totally different more open minded right so those are some of the questions and I would just like to go ahead and hand it over who wants to take a step. Hi Matt. It's bill. I'll ho wing it first. So, you know, I think, in terms of. We are in terms of academic freedom or faculty freedom. It's certainly what I think it does is it creates flexibility for both so in other words, certainly the instructor has the ability to present and to create and to, you know, put out quality materials, based on what they want to do so certainly that empowers the instructor to, you know, to engage students and in terms of the students. You know, again, is flexibility they're not tied down to a textbook they can. They're involved in gauge in the classes that have we are. So I think it's a kind of a win-win for both, you know, certainly in terms of limits. You know, we are has its barriers, particularly, you know, at my institution before this semester. Big barrier was certainly technology and access to we are. And so many students didn't have computers at home that they could access the we are. So there's always barriers to it, but, you know, overall, I think it's been a positive impact. Yeah, I would add to that, that, you know, we are became really important to me when I started doing more online teaching. And one of the things that really what I felt prohibited me from doing a good job was that, you know, how do I engage these students in the online environment when all I have is this textbook. And so I started looking at different ways to add media, you know, just programs that you could use to create something that's more than just read chapter five. And so I think that really gave me OER gave me the freedom to be able to not just have to sit down and spend hours creating my own content, but to actually go out and be able to look and find things that were were already available and open to use. And so then I could take that content and put it in a more engaging format where students are not just reading a textbook. They can watch videos that I've created or, you know, slides with audio and different things where I can actually ask questions as they are going through the material. So I really felt like that was the biggest freedom for me and in helping engage students in that online environment. And to build off what Elisa is describing, I think I came to OER for some similar reasons but my primary recollection of the switch was just a deep dissatisfaction with the lack of freedom that I had with publishers material. We know that there's been kind of a transition into greater emphasis on homework systems and interactive textbook materials for students. And as a new faculty member, I went through three or four semesters adopting a different textbook in each subsequent semester because of just frustration dissatisfaction students had trouble getting into and accessing the homework system. And it wasn't actually until after I just threw up my hands and said, I don't even care which textbook I use, but I'm going to go with that open psych textbook and just be done with it. That I started to reflect on the relationship that I had previously had with my textbook materials and I had been tightly and uncomfortably tethered to the material as it was presented in the book. I didn't want to assign material outside of the book, especially not out of the homework system because it would have been very difficult and cumbersome to explain to students how to get access to that material. Non publisher material doesn't always jive well it doesn't mesh together with publisher homework platforms. And once I made the decision to switch, I have not gone back and I will not go back because just like Alisa was saying, the material that I create is very purposeful. It's very careful and strategic to meet my learning outcomes, and I'm not beholden to material that presents concepts incorrectly, inadequately, or in a way that I don't want the material to be presented so that it fits better within my larger alignment within the larger spirit of my course. Oh, but I didn't speak to how is it limiting. Oh, my Lord, does it take so much time, but I think we all know that I think we know that the process of course redesign takes a lot of time and it's really only through having a community of very interested and passionate partners who can lighten that load you know many hands make light work that the process will get easier. I do have a follow up question but I'm also just curious to know if Barbara would be willing to kind of let us know your thoughts from the students perspective. The administrator talk about about the impact that this might have on on giving faculty freedom, and the faculty members talking about how the ability to kind of own and customize those materials has really been empowering. And I'm just wondering from the students perspective, if that is something that you feel as as the learner at the center of this whole thing. It is empowering to allow your professors to customize it to the students that you know if they're seeing that they're struggling within something to maybe say, you know I'm going to break from what this textbook says, and revise it to where the students may be getting more out of it later. I did want to add something to Veronica's point. I've had professors that have used pretty much primarily we are that you can tell that they did not that they pretty much designed it themselves and like right now I'm taking a social media for for entertainment class and just to learn a little bit more about social media aspects, and he has several different outside sources and articles that we go to. And I think as long as you really plug it in to the course design we have d2l desired to learn is our platform. And I think as long as you really set it up well I think parents or students can go ahead and follow those outside sources, you know well it's it's a matter for me it's a matter of clicking it and going to it. So within that aspect I actually dropped another class that was $70 for basically almost the same course and went ahead and kept this one because it was we are understanding that I would be having a lot of links and stuff like that so he you know he really customized it to his needs and what he felt like would really help us in the long run to gain that knowledge and I do appreciate it. Limiting may be that it's not set up for you that you do have to put that work into it. But I do I think that overall also that we just appreciate that the teachers or professors are noticing that we might be struggling with something or not as interested or something like that that we can plug in something else to help us gain that perspective better. Yeah, no that's fantastic and I appreciate everyone's willingness to open this conversation up this way again no pun intended. I don't use that word in this context without feeling like you did it on purpose but the follow up question that I had and this is kind of rephrasing in a sense the second question here. But one thing that I did pick up in some of the discussion so far is that there is a kind of sensitivity regarding the regarding an educators kind of sense of identity and the choice of materials they use and the pedagogy that they use and I'm just wondering if you know thinking about it from the perspective of a faculty or an educator who may be reluctant to you know abandon the materials that they feel have been effective for them despite the cost of the students. I'm just wondering, you know, do you do you feel that those kinds of reluctant, those who are reluctant to shift over. Do they feel a really close connection is it is it kind of interpreted potentially as an attack on their identity, when we do almost demand, especially if it's an institutional demand and I don't want to get ahead of ourselves because there's a whole slide about that but I'm just wondering if anyone has any thoughts about, you know, that choice right there because I do think that sometimes you know the selling of the we are in terms of telling it and waiting someone to be open to using free and open resources. And sometimes that is a pressure from other faculty members and even from students that that can be the rat and I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on that. You know, I think, I think when I talk to faculty that have not adopted we are and they're still using their textbook. It's really a different teaching philosophy that they have you know these are a lot of face to face instructors who do a lot of really creative things in their classroom that really revolve around that textbook but I sort of see it as it's sort of their safety blanket you know here's this chapter. And I'm making them read this chapter, but then when they come into the classroom they're doing a lot of creative things so they don't really look at it as I'm not I'm missing out on something. And I think the part that they don't see is that you know you just charged your students that $7080 for that textbook that you're really not using. You know, I mean they're using it in the sense that they're expecting the students to read it. But I imagine that what they're doing in their classroom is probably good enough that they don't even need that. So, you know, it's hard to convince people to spend all that time that Veronica mentioned in that effort to use something different when they can just say, Well, I'm just going to use that but you know I still have a great engaging face to face classroom. Well, and I want to defer to others and make room for other perspectives but they're honestly there's no better time to be talking about this issue in our institution our student government actually just passed a resolution resolution 2015 about concerns with course delivery as we've transitioned to alternate delivery so most of our courses are delivered remotely now due to the coven 19 pandemic. And it's really emphasizing the weak points in course delivery, you know building on what Lisa said, you can have a course where you use a commercial textbook but then you come in and you enrich the environment and you have a really beautiful wonderful dynamic dialogue with your students. But when you don't have that space anymore, all of the emphasis tends to kind of get pushed on to the course material that you're using. I think that's been supported by some some research by Virginia Clinton that the emphasis on the material the textbook in an online course. The student government's resolution was a push for faculty to be more involved in their courses to create more materials to rely less on publisher homework system publisher platforms publisher materials, and to have more engagement with students really want to have that engagement. But as much as students at our institution are hearing that and going yeah that yeah that captures the spirit of some of the things that I that I've been feeling but maybe didn't have words to give the reaction has been very painful from the instructors who are reading that resolution because it is a global pandemic and and most of us were not prepared for delivering our courses online. We certainly are not adequately compensated for transitioning so quickly to online delivery and so many folks bless them just to get through and to get by have potentially switch to free publishers homework system to get them through to students in the best way that they know how in the words of a colleague recently, she was sort of commiserating on the fact that she wants to do more she wants to support her students but even adapting one of her slide presentations into an online material into a narrated PowerPoint presentation for her takes 10 hours and that's 10 hours for one lecture not including the building of the course or the scoring of any assessments or or any of that so I think that yes that the push for OER has really highlighted a lot of places institutionally and culturally where we have begun to weaken in higher education, the compensation and the honoring of high quality teaching practices. The time involved in developing and delivering courses we're not thinking about that as much anymore because we've we've sort of become inured and used to all of these time saving devices and metrics. And I can't speak from the administrative perspective so I hope that William will speak to that perspective, but it can be really easy to forget just how much time goes into good teaching. So I really agree and you know it's a fine line when we're talking about, you know, trying to develop the OER culture. And what happens is, and now talk to not just, you know, instructors who are constantly using their, you know, their print textbook. But what happens is, when I approach people or even promote things, there's a fine line between, you know, kind of hitting people with a head with a hammer, and then kind of laying off and knowing when it's time to back off a little bit. And so a lot of one of my work is trying to establish a culture and so that the pressure isn't so great on the individual instructors as it is kind of it's the way things are done. And we certainly don't put pressure on instructors don't use OER. Again, you know, this is an academic freedom shop here. But I think we look at it we try to educate them and we try to talk to about, you know, what OER, what the advantages of OER are, you know, particularly when it comes to, you know, cost savings, obviously, and trying to get them off the, you know, the $400 textbook when we can say, oh, we have something that's just good. Well, thank you so much for everyone. This discussion already has been has been fantastic has already in some senses, I think, moved into a little bit this idea of institutional pressures and especially some of the stuff that Bronco is talking about like some of the, you know, underlying things that are going on, you know, when it comes to changing the way that we think about teaching and this this kind of suite of questions here is designed to spark a discussion about institutional policies related to the adoption of open resources and how those pressures can both benefit and potentially harm the work that we all try to do in open education. So the first question is traditionally costly publishing textbooks have been the default why not make OER to default would be the implications for this at the department or division level. And then second question, what should institutional we are initiatives due to avoid the perception that they are infringing on faculty freedom specifically, you know faculty who are resistant. I'm not sure I would. I mean, I don't know what default but I don't know if textbooks are the default I guess is what I'm saying. I mean I've always felt like we've had the option to either choose the textbook that and we're at my colleges to that I've been at we chose books as a as a committee. So we would have that option and there was always to there, but we also also always had the option to not use those two we couldn't use. I mean, we could use whatever we wanted we have that academic freedom but in our minds we knew that we would either choose those two or we would do something on our own. And so I don't know for us if making one the default over the other. And I think what that does by making sort of this switch that's not necessarily needed. It sort of does put pressure on people to do something that maybe are not going to do a good job with it. I mean, I think that with anything it's almost like, you know, saying we're all going to teach online, which is kind of funny because we are all now doing it but, you know, a lot of people don't want to do that and so they don't do a really good job of it. And so the same thing with with we are, you really want for the motivating factor to be that they really want to save students money but they also want to be able to teach a course that's designed around their own style. So I think that I wouldn't I wouldn't necessarily agree with an initiative that said, we should all do this. I mean, I like the initiative that says this is available and look you may not know about it. And you should try it when you have time and we'll help you and we'll train you and we'll even give you grant money to do it. But just to sort of put it out there. I mean, people get a little freaked out about things like that and it changes their behaviors and how they do things. So I'd be cautious of that. Yeah, I think this is exactly right is is, you know, you tread on them. You have actually lost academic freedom there. And although it'd be great in my eyes to have a department. You know, adapt one only after the holy it's not, you know, in the end, it's just kind of not realistic least from my point of view. And nor do nor do I know if I want that to tell you the truth but I do. You know, the implications of the department are pretty big. So if you did have, let's say, you know, the biology biology one picked one only our textbook, or I decided to go in and make you know and create a textbook. That is trust amount of time. And so, you know, when we're thinking about how it impacts departments or, you know, or division level, we're talking about time, we're talking about money in terms of training, and, you know, stipends. And so, you know, when we talk about, you know, let's say 100% OER to campus, you know, there's a lot of other things that go underneath them again like I said time and money and training and things like that. Absolutely. And I think that, you know, both William and Elisa have highlighted some of the challenges that come with an overt push for OER. Like Jeff Golan and affordable learning Georgia have also highlighted some of this in their recent work where faculty push back on the perception that they're being forced in a particular direction. The same is absolutely true in our system, you know, Alaska is a fiercely independent culture. There's a lot of emphasis on freedom and individual choice. So instead of, I should say instead of coming in like the Kool-Aid man but that's an absolute lie I come into every conversation are like, Hey, have you heard about OER can we get you into an OER. It's a little bit disingenuous because I actually can't do that in my own field behavior analysis because the resources don't exist in my field. So it's not that OER can be a default yet because the materials aren't yet there. However, I can be very careful and very mindful of some of the institutional levers some of the way the system is designed to support. So, like looking for instance at the course management system that our university uses the metadata that's collected about textbook choices emphasizes a traditional publishing model. So perhaps I can put a little pressure there to change that system slightly so maybe it prompts a course designer to say, Hey, are any of these textbook options open? Or I can look at some of the other systems that surround the faculty decision like promotion and tenure guidelines. Do we highlight the adoption of OER as innovative teaching practices or a practice that promotes diversity and equity and inclusion for our students. Can we explicitly include the creation of an openly licensed material as a preferred form or a desirable form of research or creative activity. Rather than, you know, just coming in full stop you have to do OER. It might be better to consider some of the subtle ways in which we can change the system to promote that choice. Oh, great. Thank you everyone and I see that there's been a little bit of action in the chat over here, specifically with respect to this topic of course versus mandate and obviously that's a big deal and just, you know, speaking as a faculty member and in my experience, my relatively limited experience as a faculty member. The fact is, is that there is kind of an implicit tension between administrative initiatives and individual faculty choice. And, you know, when it comes to academic freedom and it comes to not just the choice of learning materials but a whole number of things. And so I'm just, I think that we've touched upon it already. But I'm wondering if anyone here has anything to say in addition, like, to go into a little bit more about, you know, why it is problematic or what experiences have you had in specifically in in trying to engage with those faculty. If you do have an institutional initiative without actually, you know, making it seem like a mandate. I know that some like a rambly question but I guess just to kind of contextualize it you know I know that one of the reasons why the Maricopa Millions project was seemed to work well was because the fact that it was, it was primarily a grassroots initiative it just happened to have a good amount of administrative support, and it was the it was like the synergy of those things that made it work, because we had funding from the top, but the people who were driving it were the faculty. Obviously, Lisa, you know you were part of that that project but I'm wondering if the others here on the panel has seen that to be the case. And then I of course would always love to hear from the student side of things whether or not this entire discussion is even relevant to the I think that that might be an interesting take on. I think it is relevant to us in the decisions that obviously the faculty makes what I was going to touch on and it might go a little bit off base on student perspective is the faculty freedom as far as in the state of Tennessee is actually within law that those the staff members should have academic freedom however within research that I did what's happening is of course like the department head is actually deciding the books for everyone. And so therefore staff really doesn't seem to have as much academic freedom perhaps they don't realize they have that academic freedom that it is actually in law that they are allowed to choose something else, or maybe it's just well they reviewed it for us therefore we're going to take it. The other thing is is I've noticed one time a department had actually made a whole course and this was actually in a college experience so one credit class, and they made the course, but now they're charging $50 a student to take that as a textbook. And I actually said hey there are free alternatives out there for students, you know that actually you know with my involvement in open stacks there's a college success book that I was aware of I'm actually in it, and said you know why don't you guys consider this and they're like well we already did this and I get their time and their effort, but we're talking $50 and for one credit class and I know that might not sound a lot but when you think let's pretend like it's 10 hours or $10 an hour that a student works that's five hours they're having to work for that one textbook when there's a free copy out there that they really wouldn't even look at and so what I ended up doing was actually contacting a few of the individual teachers and said hey there's this alternative would you take a look at it and there it's almost it's a weird thing like even if they know they have academic freedom they're scared to go against it I've seen you know more it seems like they're scared versus some yeah I had one professor last year that I've actually trying to help him switch to you know open ed or whatever and he was like you know what guys biology is biology I don't care what book you get it's all the same topic whatever his problem is is and I noticed someone had put this in the chat is the other resources that are needed for instance the labs and so we're trying to come up with components for him to possibly replace those labs especially now that we're online and stuff but yeah it's kind of you know where does academic freedom where does that really stand with teachers to be able to go ahead and pick what they want thank you so much I mean that I think that that really helps to put this into perspective and and I did want to before we move on to the the final kind of topic here as we approach the end of our webinar today. I did notice a question from James Guapa gross flag in the chat that I wanted to share with the panelists and see if anyone had any thoughts about that because it's directly related to this question of why not the default. So he says changing the institutional or cultural perspective is hard but necessary. We provide free Wi-Fi and free athletic equipment many schools now provide free mental health support and all good but if we can do all that and why not instructional material. Well and I think maybe that's not 100% accurate we we provide those things to students for free but they're not free you know somebody is paying for them somewhere and it's just a question of whether we have connected the fee structure the resources on the institution you know in the environment with supporting that as something that is important. So shifting that culture really I think is about connecting the dots between this is supporting student success not only as a supporting student success and retention in the course and keeping students engaged in completing their coursework but it's doing so disproportionately for students who are traditionally minoritized and underrepresented in higher education. But that's a hard sell because you're also working against a culture where the person who is making the decision about what material to adopt came up in that culture right. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard a colleague say well when I was a student fill in the blank. That's a hard thing to shift. And I just want to add it's different to in that you can't just say we're going to provide the OER for the courses because in an English department like my department there's 40 of us well English reading journalism all that there's 40 of us. And you know whereas OER it there's more benefits than just here's a free resource for students the benefits are to us too. So if I'm going to use OER I don't want someone to give it to me. You know I want to be able to customize it and make it myself so just saying that we can provide that that there's still a lot of challenges in that. And I was right back to that connection between you know identity and pedagogy and choice of materials and the desire to be able to customize and kind of personalize it a little bit. And you know that's one thing I know that a lot of faculty who who I've worked with who who may even not want to use their textbook but they don't want to use OER because they say that they are the tech. I've actually heard the faculty say that like I don't use a textbook because I am the tech. Whether or not we agree with that with that attitude that is a kind of thing that I think you also find that desire to really be have that personal connection with the materials that you're using. So, because of time, I know that this concept of automatic billing, which, which is the term that I've heard used by like us birds and some other folks who who really wanted to make transparent I think like the fact that inclusive access is kind of Orwellian term. So it's like inclusive access, we can maybe interpret it as neither inclusive nor really promoting access. And so the questions here I know could take up, we could do a whole webinar and inclusive access but we're not really thinking about that but just specifically the impacts on this, this choice to transition to a different kind of teaching and to exercise academic freedom. So how is it that that these are symptoms right that this kind of, of course, you know materials offerings from the publishers. So how is it that we might be able to see that symptoms of larger institutional issues may relate to academic freedom and the way that that teaching and learning is changing. And then what are the long term implications of adopting something like that in order to solve what are potentially short term problems, especially in life of the pandemic. And then finally, how do these offerings impact. So guys don't mind I'll take this one. First, because I am very knowledgeable about this just from pretty much experience I guess you can say, and I guess I want to touch on the second one. What are the long term implications of adoption to short term problem I think short. Well it had been a long term problem. But what it was trying to solve was obviously the cost of publishing textbooks, you know to have students to do that and stuff. And so they came up with hey let's offer these digital textbooks with homework platforms that will help faculty but also give it less to students. However, that has not been my experience, what has happened and the symptom, you know that ended up creating was it actually cost us more. I'm not the only one right now in college. Actually, all six of us are in college so that's for kids and my husband and myself and my daughter, for instance my daughter my husband are both taken econ right now. One of them had to pay $75 a person for inclusive access. Now, there was no way around it they had to get to do the course and to do the homework they had to have this. So what we would normally do for instance we me and my husband took history together we share the textbook, we found it cheap, we found it free and we're able to get it that way so sometimes. And actually every time inclusive inclusive access or access codes have been involved. I'm trying to pay more than I would have had I found a publisher's textbook. And so I think what it's doing is it's, it's stripping away the rights to share a book to buy it used to look for other, you know, books, you know compare them to and stuff because what the state of Tennessee has done again from the research is they made a contract with one of the inclusive access to in hopes of lowering the price. You know and then all these you know and they had a digital engagement initiative and everything to get these teachers on board and stuff. And so but they have to sell so many to get that price. Well in doing that, they have created special codes just for that campus. And so therefore even if we were to have found inclusive access somewhere else for cheaper, we can't use it we have to buy it from the campus so we are locked into purchasing that particular one from that campus. And what does that also create if they didn't pay for that, they're either dropping the course, or they're making pretty much an F because everything is behind that paywall. And so they can't even the pretty much they're they failed, even before they get begin you know they cannot complete that course. The longer, you know, implications of this is you're locking a lot of students out that can afford it. I mean where they might have been able to borrow a friend or get it from the library, or even, you know, skip it just not even have it they can't you can't even do the homework anymore and I think that's the huge takeaway that professors need to take with it I get that it might be more time on your hand. But we're there to empower students. And I think that we need to remember that the students need to be focused and sometimes inclusive access is not including everybody. And we're locking people out, you know, we've worked so hard you guys have worked so hard to break a lot of barriers and instead this is just the larger implication of something, you know, more and then the other thing I'd like to bring up is you know we live in rural areas. And I know Matthew even said, hey, you know, we're getting ready to have three people on the internet at one time. You know, there are students here that didn't even have the internet. And it really showed its head, of course, during COVID, you know, when everybody went online and stuff. And we need to think about, you know, if we're doing this, you know, homework behind the paywall. Who are we affecting? Where are those students that might have been able to take courses that weren't online or didn't have those online implications? Who are we knocking those out? And it's probably a lot of lower income students. So I apologize that was long, but this is my baby right here. So I think I couldn't have said it any better. Good job. So I think you used a key word there. He said it locks us into something. Because, you know, just like you were saying, you know, talking now as a librarian is the people didn't have their textbooks and we can get a copy and put it on reserve. We could, you know, we could get it from another library or whatever it may be. We can't do this with these kind of materials. You know, we can't resell them. And so you're getting locked into a resource that doesn't cost any less than what, you know, a print textbook would. And they say it's less. It's not. You can read tons and tons of literature on it. It's not less expensive than, than, than a regular textbook. So I think the biggest word for this to me is choice. It reduces the choice that you have as both as an instructor and as a student in terms of your learning resources. I think that's the biggest takeaway I get from all this. So, you know, I think you did a great job explaining. Well, and I hope there might just be a moment to build off something William just said, which was to, when you're talking about systems to recognize that the reason that all of this is possible the reason why inclusive access is allowed to do what it does is because of the disparity in copyright law between technology and print media. So because technology, you can permit subscription models, you cannot have a secondhand market for subscriptions materials like that in the same way that you do print bound textbooks. The publishers are building a system where they generate their own revenue by shifting from being publishers to being technology corporations. And it's just fascinating to think about, and I had no idea of how that worked until I actually took the Harvard Copyright X program. But to look at the way in which the law permits different different access to these materials. I just wanted to put it a plug in for the copyright X program we have a couple of nominations if anyone wanted to learn more participate in that program. You know, please let me know because I'd love to nominate someone to do that program, but looking at not only the institution but the country, the law, the way we support different modes of access the way our system support or exclude is important too. The last word Lisa, or I can just jump right in it's up to you. Yeah, you go ahead jump right in because I have a whole different perspective and I don't have time so you go right ahead. That's why we should have been quicker earlier. Alright, well then I'm going to have to interview you or something. Anyway, we thank you so much we're at the end of things today I'm going to do like this. We're going to have to skip the questions obviously, but a couple of webinars coming up, obviously October 14 today, but we have the virtual open conferences which is going to be I think a really great experience but a new experience for everyone. So our November 4 webinar is focused on that. And then you can also see that tracking key programming indicators for we are programs that's focused on number nine webinar. Just as a reminder to everyone oh a global one of the conferences that is referenced in the previous slide is happening soon and you want to make sure that you register before October 30. And then last but not least, please be sure to stay in the loop with the OER. There's all kinds of opportunities check out our website and all that stuff. And with that I will say thank you to our panelists. I think that this was a very engaging discussion. I hope that everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. And we hope to see you at future webinars and other events and hopefully physically someday once again. Thank you.