Margaret Adeogun

Revitalizing the Adoption of Open Educational Resources:

The James White Library Experience

https://doi.org/10.55668.jae0097

The James White Library (JWL) at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan, U.S.A., has for many years been a proponent of Open Educational Resources (OER), advocating for their adoption into learning and research to alleviate the rising cost of textbooks, reduce barriers to accessing resources, and improve student achievement and retention. The James White Library is used by students in undergraduate and graduate programs, the Seventh-say Adventist Theological Seminary, faculty and staff of the various academic programs, and the wider campus and community. To better serve patrons, library administration and staff have helped increase awareness of OER through many activities, including presentations about the importance of OER at the Andrews University Faculty Institute, designing an online library guide on OER, one-on-one dialogue with faculty, and highlighting the importance of Open Educational Resources during Open Access Week.

The numerous efforts at raising awareness bore fruit when the library received a one-year allocation of $25,000 in November 2023 after participating in the pitch competition (presenting the initiative to a panel of judges) to raise funds for its OER project. This substantial funding made it possible to provide a stipend and professional development to faculty who wished to adopt, adapt, and create OER materials, which significantly reduced the financial burden on students and expanded faculty members’ capacity to innovate as they use and create OER resources.1

JWL OER Grant Objectives

The James White Library administration proposed an OER grant to encourage, support, and incentivize OER adoption, adaptation, and creation. Library administration identified several objectives for the initiative:

  • Advance global access to quality Seventh-day Adventist higher education resources;
  • Expand the outreach of Adventist education;
  • Alleviate the increasing cost of textbooks, making higher education (HE) more accessible and affordable to students;
  • Deepen students’ education experience through customized resources; and
  • Encourage faculty experimentation and innovation in finding new, better, and lower-cost ways to deliver learning materials to their students through OER.

Through these small grants, participating faculty received funding to support the creation and adoption of OER for teaching and learning from an Adventist faith-based perspective. The grant covered three models:

  • Adopt an existing open resource (open textbook and other OER course components such as homework assignments, lab manuals, or other supplementary materials). Grant allocation: $1,000.
  • Adapt existing resources by mixing or revising open textbooks (see https://libguides.andrews.edu/oerguide) and other OER course components such as homework assignments, lab manuals, or other supplementary materials. Grant allocation: $1,500.
  • Create a new open resource and other supplementary course materials (particularly for courses with expensive textbooks). Grant allocation: $2,500.

The financial implications of this initiative led the JWL administration to submit an application to participate in a pitch competition for funds from the Andrews University Academic Partnership Grant, sponsored by the Office of the Provost. The Academic Partnership Grant (APG) supports new or emerging interdisciplinary collaborations to integrate and energize curricula. Its purpose is to foster creative thinking and planning to revitalize curricular ideas and strengthen existing programs through initiatives that enrich the academic community and enhance the student experience.2

This fund supported the work of the recipients of the JWL OER grants, workshops, Open Educational Resources memberships, OER promotion, preparing trainers, and other contingencies. Three awards were given in November 2023 (see Sidebar).

Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources include teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium—digital or otherwise—that exist in the public domain or have been released under a Creative Commons license (CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC-ND, or CC0)3 that permits users no-cost access and the permission to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute by others with no or limited restrictions.4 OER can include course materials, complete courses, data, streaming videos, laboratory manuals, textbooks, tests, tools, etc. The OER initiative represents global efforts to ensure equal access to knowledge and educational opportunities worldwide.5 The adoption of OER has revolutionized knowledge sharing and drastically reduced the cost of education.6 Like commercial textbooks, Open Educational Resources are written by academic experts and subjected to rigorous reviews to ensure the academic excellence of their content (see Box 1). They are primarily digital but can be printed on demand for a small fee. Licensing requirements determine whether these products can be sold for a profit. The most attractive feature of OER is its open-sharing attributes, as most materials offer the potential for teachers to collaborate in remixing and reusing content to produce learner-focused resources and promote best practices.7

The Academic Quality of Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources (OER) are not inferior to commercial textbooks. Emerging research on the quality of OER thus far has shown that students in classes that adopted OER are just as prepared or more so than those using commercial textbooks.8 Allen and Seaman,9 in their study on the efficacy and quality of OER on students and learning, reiterated that OER are comparable in quality to commercial textbooks, and that the use of OER did not negatively impact student learning. Another study by Fischer et al.10 on the impact of OER intervention in learning found that OER adoption did not reduce the quality of education. A later study on student perceptions of OER affirmed that students found open resources better and easier to use than commercial textbooks.11

Other researchers, such as Colvard et al.,12 have emphasized the enduring quality of OER and affirmed that adopting OER improved students’ grades, fostered retention, and lowered students’ withdrawal rates. Hendricks et al.13 examined the use of open textbooks in an introductory course in physics at a large research university in Canada. Student respondents found the customized OER textbook more relevant to their course and rated the quality to be the same or better than commercial textbooks used in other classes. Bovill14 concurred that OER resources guaranteed content relevance and promoted creativity. In addition to their academic rigor and adaptability, OER resources promote pedagogical innovation, enabling faculty to change their instructional practices as needed.15 Overall, research on the quality of OER found no significant difference between OER and commercial textbooks regarding student outcomes (see Box 2).

Higher Education and the Adoption of OER

The skyrocketing costs of textbooks are a growing concern in the higher education sector and are one of the causes of unequal access to tertiary education. This has generated interest in adopting OER to reduce the cost of textbooks for students. For example, in 2019, 56 percent of colleges and universities in the United States used free textbooks from OpenStax in at least one course.16 The idea is to find openly licensed and free resources comparable in quality to commercial textbooks. A survey conducted by the Florida Virtual Campus on the impact of the high cost of textbooks on students found that 47.6 percent of students took fewer courses, 45 percent didn’t register for a specific course, and 20.7 percent withdrew from a course because they could not afford the textbook. Approximately 37.6 percent of students earned poor grades because textbooks were not affordable.17 The barrier created by high cost denied students full participation in education. This economic gap between rich and poor students widens the information and knowledge divide among college and university students.18 OER initiatives include interventions designed to bridge economic and social barriers that have made higher education inequitable and inaccessible to many. Evidence suggests that OER can significantly lower the cost of education for students without reducing the quality of education.19 It serves as a tool for democratizing access to education at a reduced cost.20

Reducing the cost of textbooks is not the only need. Educators, students, and information-service professionals, such as librarians, must have access to the necessary technology and be able to use information technology to advance and spread knowledge. This requires training of all users and investment in technology-support systems such as high-speed internet, highly trained technology support staff, and up-to-date devices. The OER suite of learning tools can empower faculty to reach a higher proportion of students remotely, reduce geographical barriers to learning, and boost access to education. In the 21st century, knowledge is the core resource of the world economy. Colleges and universities are centers for generating and disseminating knowledge to support innovation and advancing the knowledge economy.21 Technology-enabled, open-learning resources can ensure that colleges and universities effectively expand knowledge, support research and innovation, and, notably, support equity in information and knowledge access.

OER adoption requires a marketing strategy. The radical shift in higher education to adapt to learner-focused pedagogy further justifies the need to adopt OER in teaching, learning, and research. The global higher education market has become fiercely competitive, with diminishing institutional, government, and denominational funding. Just as tertiary institutions must run their enterprises as businesses and compete aggressively for students, libraries, too, must adopt business practices that will help them compete in a saturated information-service market where there is solid competition from service providers seeking the attention of consumers.22 To remain competitive and relevant, higher education administrators must adopt approaches that attract students to their brand. Some of the reasons students select an institution include costs, the flexibility of access, and how well pedagogy is customized to help them develop creativity and other marketable skills. Faculty are expected to create exciting and engaging learner-focused pedagogy without compromising rigor and quality and, at the same time, meet or exceed learning goals.23 OER-enabled pedagogy, in the context of the 5R permissions,24 promotes open learning and fosters collaboration between students and faculty to develop content that meets the needs of the students. The more students engage in content creation, the more they acquire knowledge-building skills, self-directed learning abilities, and lifelong learning skills.

Open Educational Resources: Why Are We So Focused?

Open Educational Resources offer many gains for the collective Adventist educational system in this age of increased global demand for both public and private higher education.25

1. Expand the frontiers of Adventist education.

By its digital and open nature, OER can reach students in most geographical locations where access to high-speed internet is available. The campus-based pedagogical model in higher education is expensive and geographically inaccessible for many. However, the adoption of a learning paradigm that is technology-enabled and propelled by open-learning resources has led to tertiary institutions embracing more efficient and cost-effective models of delivering the curriculum. The brick-and-mortar campus model has been overtaken by more convenient and flexible models that are either entirely or partially virtual.26 For example, in 2021, 30.3 percent of higher education students in the United States took exclusively distance-learning courses.27 The National Center for Education Statistics reports that 21 percent of undergraduate students at private non-profit institutions enrolled in distance-education courses exclusively in 2021.28

Many institutions are embracing the potential of technology-enabled tools to deliver instruction, which can also lower the cost of textbooks. Several affordability initiatives have come to light, and most practices have focused on adopting an OER suite of learning tools designed to empower faculty to foster all forms of effective hybrid-learning models at a reduced cost to students, thereby bridging economic barriers to learning. These resources promise unhindered access to learning and guarantee educational opportunities.29

Adventist youth in several parts of the world who are eager for church-sponsored education but cannot afford the high cost of campus-based learning can benefit from initiatives that reduce the cost of education. OER initiatives can bridge this economic divide and open the door to Adventist higher education for new populations. Faculty can target courses with expensive textbooks and identify OER equivalents that demonstrate academic rigor and quality. Also, introductory courses can use OER to minimize students’ textbook expenses.

2. Expand cross-institutional sharing of learning resources across Adventist institutions.
One of the most valuable aspects of OER is their intellectual property rights, which allow content to be remixed and customized to suit local needs and meet local realities. Using advances in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), educators throughout the worldwide Adventist educational community can collaborate to develop and share OER teaching materials in different disciplines and add context to their content to meet the needs of students. This can result in an increased opportunity to share experiences and distribute knowledge. Cross-institutional collaborative efforts foster best practices and promote innovation in curriculum design.

Content-development collaboration can go beyond partnerships among faculty in a single institution or between institutions to include student participation. Because cohort programs serve mostly non-traditional students, faculty cohort programs can collaborate with these mature and highly experienced students to create content that meets their learning needs. Luo et al.30 concluded that this cross-institutional and cross-role resource sharing can bring learning to a higher level.

Student-teacher collaboration in content creation upgrades students’ roles from content consumers to content co-creators,31 allowing them to incorporate their lived experiences into their curriculum.

3. Facilitate language inclusion.

English is predominantly the international language of instruction, and most commercial textbooks are written in English. For cohort learning groups with non-English speaking backgrounds, this is a barrier. Finding suitable texts and interpreting existing texts is a challenge. An institutional approach that includes funding for recruiting and paying translators who can handle the technical concepts of academic and scientific material can alleviate this problem and transform the curriculum from the predominance of the English language. Textbooks in the students’ home language that integrate course content with local practices tend to engage students more and increase their comprehension and self-worth.

What Can Adventist Higher Institution Libraries Do?

While OER materials may not be the right solution for every course, as not every course has a viable OER option, there are still steps academic librarians at Adventist institutions can take. Academic library staff will need to work with faculty to explore the OER domain in their discipline and to find acceptable options for their courses. They may decide to create curricula (if none exists) or choose to adopt or adapt material if they find viable textbooks in the OER database. If faculty find such alternatives acceptable, this will save their students some expense.

Additionally, there are several things academic librarians at Adventist higher education libraries can do to advocate and promote the adoption of Open Educational Resources by their schools’ faculties:

1. Plan workshops to raise awareness. Education for all is a democratic right, and the library, as an independent agency on a college or university campus, should advocate for providing unhindered access to resources for learning and empowerment. One major hindrance to faculty embracing OER is their lack of knowledge about them, where to find them, and how to navigate the complex OER platforms. Modern library-management systems (LMS) have alleviated this problem; the discovery systems are equipped with open-access add-ons that enable access to vetted and peer-reviewed open-access content that complements instructor-assigned resources. Librarians can employ this feature to harvest OER for their faculty. It is the librarian’s responsibility to use effective strategies to promote awareness and ensure that the faculty can navigate OER resources and understand the dynamics of the OER community. This includes advocating for funding for training on how to use and develop OER materials. Entities such as the Association of Seventh-day Adventist Librarians (ASDAL) and the Open Education Network (https://open.umn.edu/oen/certificate-in-open-education-librarianship) are organizations that can help librarians develop knowledge, earn certification, and collaborate with other academic librarians.

Once librarians have acquired this specialized knowledge, they can conduct workshops to increase awareness for departments and individual faculty. They should focus on the transformative power of open learning and how adopting OER can help teachers achieve their learning objectives. Workshops should be contextualized to concentrate on OER resources supporting departmental course offerings. Librarians can encourage the faculty to join the Open Textbook Network (OTN), associate with colleagues on the network, and become better acquainted with the activities of the OER community. They will gradually embrace the spirit of “openness” and become ambassadors of open learning affordability in HE. Another way to generate awareness is to create libguides on OER. Libguides are content-management systems that allow the librarian to share information on a particular topic with students and faculty.

2. Pay attention to the quality of OER materials. Many faculty believe that OER curricular materials are inferior to commercial textbooks, lacking rigorous review, and not written by scholars. Librarians should equip themselves with the numerous studies that have proven these perceptions wrong and stay abreast of developments in adopting OER into higher education, both in private and public institutions. It’s important to walk faculty through the OER platforms and highlight the rich resources available in their disciplines. The librarian’s activities and strategies to generate awareness should provide faculty members with a deeper understanding of OER and help them acquire an objective understanding of OER and their transformative power. Several credible and world-class university presses with OER imprints have made a name from publishing scholarly OER, including the Open University, OpenStax at Rice University, the Commonwealth of Learning OAsis, and MIT’s Open Courseware program. Librarians can also showcase the OER assessment process, which is precisely the same as for commercial textbooks.

3. Start a textbook match service. Librarians can start a textbook match service, especially for courses that generally use expensive commercial textbooks. The way to do this is to collaborate with teaching faculty and instructional designers to search the OER platforms for textbooks that match high-cost commercial textbooks in content and academic rigor. Faculty may opt for full or partial adoption and integrate portions from OER that correspond with their course requirements. Open Educational Resources are available in most disciplines.

4. Catalog specific OER materials. Librarians may choose to list OER materials so they can be discovered through the library catalog. Subscriptions to OER search tools such as CloudSource OA and BNEDC powered by LoudCloud help locate OER materials.

5. Fund a program for faculty to create OER. In keeping with what the James White Library has done, librarians can offer incentives and monetary grants to support faculty wishing to adopt, adapt, or create OER materials. Whether through internal or external grant opportunities or fundraising through development offices, academic librarians can advocate for continued support of faculty in creating, adopting, and adapting resources to benefit students.

6. Celebrate Open Access Week. International Open Access Week (https://www.openaccessweek.org/), which occurs in October each year, provides an added opportunity for librarians to spread awareness of the international “Open” movement, which aims to empower people by promoting the open licensing of educational resources, data, and research output and encouraging academic institutions to share knowledge to achieve educational equity at reduced cost. It’s one of the ways to reiterate the benefits of Open Access and convince faculty to adopt Open Educational Practices (OEP). Institutional support is critical in adopting the OEP, and one way to get that is to make faculty aware of Open Access events.

In summary, Open Educational Resources are free to access. They can promote inclusive pedagogies, break the barriers to accessing relevant and quality learning resources, and open the door for more revolutionary approaches to tertiary education with a more robust learner-focused consideration. They can also reduce students’ financial burden and help to break the exclusion barrier from full access to post-secondary education.
Adventist educators and educational administrators worldwide can cooperate to employ the Open Source paradigm to lower costs and make higher education affordable and accessible, fostering learning opportunities for all. Such efforts can help to support student enrollment and retention initiatives in Adventist institutions. Librarians need to be proactive in driving discussions about affordable education on their campuses, promoting Open Educational Resources and leading the campus community to appreciate the gains of affordable learning.


This article has been peer reviewed.

Margaret Adeogun

Margaret Adeogun, PhD, is Professor of Library Science at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan, U.S.A., and currently serves as the Head of Patron Services and Marketing Librarian at the James White Library. Dr. Adeogun has more than 30 years of experience as a librarian, previously serving as Library Director at the University of Eastern Africa in Baraton, Kenya. She is the author of several articles in national and international peer-reviewed journals with presentations at many international conferences. She has also contributed chapters to international monographs on library science and has expertise in library management, Open Educational Resources, and public services in academic libraries.

Recommended citation:

Margaret Adeogun, “Revitalizing the Adoption of Open Educational Resources: The James White Library Experience,” The Journal of Adventist Education 86:4 (2024): 27-34.  https://doi.org/10.55668.jae0097

NOTES AND REFERENCES

  1. James White Library, “Open Educational Resources (OER): Introduction” (2019): https://libguides.andrews.edu/oerguide.
  2. Office of the Provost, “Academic Partnership Grant” (2024): https://www.andrews.edu/provost/academic-partnership-grant/index.html.
  3. Creative Commons, “About CC Licenses” (n.d.): https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/.
  4. UNESCO, “Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries: Final Report” (2002): https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000128515.
  5. Lubna Ali, Colette Knight, and Ulrik Schroeder, “Open Educational Resources in Higher Education: Two Approaches to Enhance the Utilization of OER,” International Journal of Innovative Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 3:1 (2022): 1-14. https://doi.org/10.4018/IJITLHE.313374.
  6. Jennifer Lantrip and Jacquelyn Ray, “Faculty Perceptions and Usage of OER at Oregon Community Colleges,” Community College Journal of Research and Practice 45:12 (2021): 896-910. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2020.1838967.
  7. UNESCO, “Guidelines for Open Educational Resources (OER) in Higher Education” (2011): https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000213605; Open Educational Resource Initiative, “OER Publishing and Printing” (2024): https://asccc-oeri.org/oer-publishing-and-printing/; Lisa Petrides, “The Selling of Open Educational Resources (OER),” Opensource.com (2013): https://opensource.com/education/13/7/oer-selling-metadata.
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  12. Nicholas B. Colvard, C. Edward Watson, and Hyojin Park, “The Impact of Open Educational Resources on Various Student Success Metrics,” International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 30:2 (2018): 262-276.
  13. Christina Hendricks, Stephan A. Reinsberg, and Georg Rieger, “The Adoption of an Open Textbook in a Large Physics Course: An Analysis of Cost, Outcomes, Use, and Perceptions,” International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning 18:4 (2017): 78-99: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1146231.pdf.
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  17. Florida Virtual Campus, 2016 Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey (2016):https://www.oerknowledgecloud.org/archive/2016%20Student%20Textbook%20Survey.pdf.
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  24. The 5 R’s of OER describe how materials can be used, adapted, and shared in an open-source environment. Users can revise, remix, reuse, retain, and redistribute materials. See https://open.ocolearnok.org/learnoer/chapter/chapter-1/.
  25. Mamta Murthi and Roberta Malee Bassett, “Higher Education: Understanding Demand and Redefining Values,” World Bank Blogs (2022): https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/education/higher-education-understanding-demand-and-redefining-values; Simon Marginson, “The Worldwide Trend to High Participation Higher Education: Dynamics of Social Stratification in Inclusive Systems,” Higher Education 72 (2016): 413-434. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0016-x; Grand View Research, Higher Education Market Size, Share and Trends Analysis Report by Learning Mode (Offline, Online), By Course (Master’s, PhD), By Revenue Source (Tuition Fees, Investment Returns), By Institution (Public, Private), and Segment Forecasts, 2024-2030 (2023): https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/higher-education-market#:~:text=The%20global%20higher%20education%20market,demand%20for%20higher%20education%20institutions.
  26. Tanya M. Tarbutton and Lori B. Doyle, “Higher Education Institutions: Education Programs to Acknowledge a New Learning Landscape,” International Journal of Education, Technology and Science 3:4 (2023): 1,195–1,203: https://globets.org/journal/index.php/IJETS/article/view/145/160.
  27. “Percentage of Students in the United States Taking Distance Learning Courses From 2012 to 2021,” Statista (2024): https://www.statista.com/statistics/944245/student-distance-learning-enrollment-usa/.
  28. National Center for Education Statistics, “Undergraduate Enrollment, 2023,” Condition of Education. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cha.
  29. Charlotte Nirmalani Gunawardena and Marina Stock McIsaac, “Distance Education.” In David H. Jonassen, ed., Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004), 355-395.
  30. Airong Luo, Dick Ng’ambi, and Ted Hanss, “Towards Building a Productive, Scalable and Sustainable Collaboration Model for Open Educational Resources.” In Proceedings of the 2010 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work (November 2010): 275-282. https://doi.org/10.1145/1880071.1880117.
  31. Ortrun Groblinger, Michael Kopp, and Claudia Zimmermann, “Students as Active Contributors in the Creation of Open Educational Resources.” In 12th International Technology, Education and Development Conference, 5-7, March 2018, Valencia, Spain: https://library.iated.org/view/GROBLINGER2018STU.