Contributed by Jaci Lindburg, PhD

The use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) helps campuses meet a variety of goals.  For many campuses, student affordability is a top institutional priority, and a mission-centric practice for all units in the organization.  As of late 2018, leveraging OER in courses had reportedly saved students worldwide over $1B according to SPARC.  For other campuses, critical goals have been established around enhancing access and working diligently to level the playing field for all students.  Using OER certainly helps institutions meet these objectives, as these free- and reduced-cost digital course materials are made readily available to students on the first day of a course, which has been found to increase the quantity of A and A- course results by 5.5% and 7.73% respectively in a large study recently conducted in the State of Georgia.  And finally, institutions have also begun setting goals around digital transformation, interoperability, and enhanced transparency for students and their families.  Clever, collaborative teams including librarians, registrars, online learning staff, IT, bookstores, and student billing offices have come together and done exciting work to seamlessly bring OERs into the learning management system, and have begun marking courses that are utilizing free- and reduced-cost digital course materials so that students can make informed decisions at the point of course registration.

But OER strategies are also about much more than savings, access, and digital transformation.  They also are a key ingredient to amplifying a campus culture of care.  Institutions who have committed to supporting the increased use of OER are also sending a clear message to students that they belong, they matter, they are cared for, and that the campus is doing everything possible to support their wellbeing.

Student development theory about traditional college-age students provides a rich context for understanding how powerful these environmental “cultures of care” can be for students.  The college experience is marked with higher-than-usual degrees of transition for students.  College students transition where they live, sometimes multiple times each year.  College students have evolving friend groups, where high school and hometown friendships can become distanced and new groups of friends are established through university coursework, campus involvement, or social encounters.  College students sometimes stop-out of school for periods of time to work or care for family, and then return to school again months or years later.  And finally, college students are under a great deal of intellectual developmental transitions, with many moving from what theorist William Perry describes as a state of dualism (everything is right/wrong, yes/no, good/evil) to multiplicity (all knowledge is contextual) to relativism (individuals feel that all beliefs are equally valid).  This transition in how someone navigates the world around them and one’s experience in understanding others is a foundational shift frequently experienced during a student’s college experience.

Theorist Nancy Schlossberg further illustrates the value of building campus cultures of care and the powerful experience it is for college students to understand that they truly matter during their many transitions.  Schlossberg’s Theory of Marginality and Mattering notes the harm of marginality and the value of mattering when considering the dynamic impact of the college experience in terms of student development.  Feeling marginalized occurs when students enter new roles, particularly when these new roles are ambiguous and uncertain.  This feeling can lead students to feel like they do not fit in, which can also lead to insecurity, depression, and extreme self-consciousness.  Schlossberg goes on to emphasize the important role colleges and universities play in helping students feel like they matter, which she defines as “the feeling, right or wrong, that we matter to someone else.”  In order to effectively cope with transitions, Schlossberg notes that students typically utilize skills that fall into “the four S’s,” which are situation, self, support, and strategies.  An institution emphasizing student success and affordability very directly through clear OER strategies falls into the “support” category of Schlossberg’s theory, and could certainly be considered a positive factor in helping students successfully navigate college transitions while feeling like they matter to the institution in which they attend.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has now created a very challenging two years for college students, families, and institutions, every penny matters more than before.  As a number of governmental relief efforts rolled out in 2020 that helped students with housing and other costs, some institutions doubled-down on increasing their OER adoption strategies.  These efforts clearly helped students and their families by saving money on their college expenses.  The pandemic comes on the heels of a decade of sharp increases in the cost of college textbooks.  From 2006-2016, consumer prices for textbooks increased 88% according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The high cost of textbooks has become a financial burden, so much so that studies estimate that 90% of undergraduates do not have a text on the first day of class, and two-thirds of students never end up purchasing required texts due to cost.  Some physical book strategies – such as library textbook check-out “reserves” or students sharing a textbook with their roommate – quickly became a challenge as institutions pivoted to fully remote learning in Spring of 2020 and many students were left without the materials they needed to be successful.

From my role as Associate Vice President of Digital Education and IT Strategy at the University of Nebraska, I am thrilled to celebrate that our collaborative OER efforts – which we call “Open Nebraska” – have now saved NU students over $9M.  I’m impressed by the dedicated effort by a cross-sector team to tackle course marking in order to better inform students of the courses participating in Open Nebraska.  I’m encouraged that we are not only seeing adoption of OER at the individual course and faculty level, but that we have now had full programs at Nebraska adopt OER for an entire degree pathway, ensuring that students will never pay more than $40 for course materials and saving them up to $5000 as they earn their undergraduate degree.  I’m inspired that our faculty senate and student government groups have thrown their full support behind these efforts.  I’m delighted to be a part of an interdisciplinary research team, where we are studying the impact of OER use on student success and degree completion.  And I’m thankful to local philanthropic groups like Women Investing in Nebraska who have generously supported our efforts to expand OER through generous external funding.  But more than anything, I am so proud of the strong message we are sending students through this program:  we care about you…you matter to us.

For additional readings referenced in this blog, please visit:

SPARC savings:  https://sparcopen.org/news/2018/estimating-oer-student-savings/

Georgia study:  https://www.thetechedvocate.org/the-impact-of-oer-at-the-university/

Perry:  Perry’s Scheme of Ethical and Intellectual Development

Schlossberg:  Schlossberg’s Transition Theory

Open Nebraska initiative:  https://its.nebraska.edu/innovation-hub/open-nebraska 

Women Investing in Nebraska grant funding:  https://its.nebraska.edu/news-and-events/news/2020/10/its-awarded-grant-to-help-reduce-cost-of-textbooks 

Dr. Jaci Lindburg serves as Associate Vice President for Digital Education and IT Strategy at the University of Nebraska.  In this role, she partners with the four University of Nebraska campuses to shape and advance the University of Nebraska’s systemwide digital education framework and champions the quality growth and agile development of online courses, programs and innovative initiatives that meet market demand and support the university’s top goals of providing accessible, affordable, inclusive and lifelong learning to the residents of Nebraska and beyond.  She oversees creative projects including the NU Innovation Hub, Open Nebraska, and NU’s COLE (Council for Online Learning Excellence).  Bringing fifteen years of experience in higher education including key leadership roles in digital learning and student affairs, she is also an affiliate faculty member in the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s College of Education, Health and Human Sciences Counseling Department, where she regularly teaches graduate coursework in the areas of student development theory, the student in postsecondary education, and digital learning policy/practice.  She lives in Omaha Nebraska with her husband and their two children.  Dr. Lindburg can be found on social media via Twitter (@jacijlindburg) and LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/jacilindburg). 

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