TY - JOUR
T1 - Bridges to affordability
T2 - adopting a university OAER mandate with local implementation
AU - Riehman-Murphy, Christina
AU - Raish, Victoria
AU - Mross, Emily
AU - Pritt, Andrea
AU - Nelson, Elizabeth
N1 - Funding Information:
Penn State Harrisburg Library is a case study in success for the Textbook Fund. In 2018, Harrisburg Library received a $3,000 grant from the Textbook Fund to purchase engineering and science textbooks for course reserves. STEM textbooks are very costly and teaching faculty generally require students use the most up-to-date editions, making student affordability a true concern. Grant funds provided fourteen new editions for the highly-enrolled science and engineering courses which are common pre-requisites for the most popular majors on campus. To highlight the gift of textbook funds from donors, each textbook purchased with endowment money bears a bookplate acknowledging the generous support of the Textbook Fund. Textbook Fund grants are extremely beneficial in assisting individual library efforts to reduce students’ high textbook costs while increasing each library’s ability to provide access to course materials.
Funding Information:
Beyond funding course reserves, Penn State offers a university-wide grant to support and fund faculty in the development of highly-customized affordability solutions that address unique programs, contexts and challenges for their course and campus. The affordable course transformation (ACT) program, a program funded by the provost-charged (OAER) Working Group is a competitive grant open to any Penn State faculty who want to transform a course by replacing traditional, high-cost course materials with affordable or free alternatives. The program is jointly sponsored by TLT and UL and is a core responsibility of the Open Education Librarian position. Selected faculty agree to three stipulations to receive their grant, portions of which are disbursed when each stipulation is met. These requirements include participation in the ACT faculty development program, completion of adapting or authoring open/affordable content, revising their course to accommodate the open/affordable content and delivering the revised course. In addition to funding, ACT grantees receive one-on-one support from the library, multimedia center and instructional designers, as well as assistance in production of open or affordable content. In two rounds of ACT, 22 courses on 15 campuses delivered by 36 faculties were selected to be transformed.
Funding Information:
In practice, ACT grants can lead to huge savings for students and flexibility for faculty. In ACT Round One, a Penn State Harrisburg School of Science, Engineering and Technology faculty member was awarded a grant to transform a physical geology course (). In traditional delivery of the course, each student had been required to purchase a brand-new, $146.65 rock kit from the campus bookstore for use throughout the semester. Using ACT funds and support, the faculty member and colleagues created 3 D scans of the rocks to ultimately replace the costly physical rock kits with the digital models. With the creation of the digital rock kits, the physical rock kit is now only a recommended material for the course. This amounts to a potential savings of $14,958.30 for the 102 students across four sections of the course in spring 2020, based on the cost of the previously required rock kit. Additionally, this same faculty member also replaced the traditional course textbook, which cost $300, with a free and open text. The changes supported by the ACT grant fueled student engagement in the course and provided customizable options for the rocks utilized in each assignment. Open copyright attributions allow instructors at Harrisburg, other campuses and institutions to also use these 3D models for instruction, thereby extending the educational and savings impact. Without the encouragement and support that the ACT grant provided, this course transformation may not have been possible, and these achievements and savings would not have been realized.
Funding Information:
In addition to the university-wide ACT grant, the broad administrative support for affordability initiatives has allowed library faculty and staff at commonwealth campuses to lead initiatives that fit their campus faculty needs. The Affordable Course Content Faculty Fellowship (ACCFF) at Penn State Abington campus is one such example (). Founded by two campus librarians in 2018, this incentivized OAER adoption program replicated other successful small faculty incentive library grants () and was funded through a competitive Abington Chancellor’s Grant to support innovative student success initiatives. ACCFF supports instructors as they explore, evaluate and adopt open, affordable or low-cost materials for pre-existing courses. Instructors receive one-on-one guidance in finding appropriate materials, adapting their courses to draw from new content and incorporating open and affordable materials into the organization used in their course management systems.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.
PY - 2020/11/25
Y1 - 2020/11/25
N2 - Purpose: This paper aims to describe a case study of the open and affordable educational resources (OAER) initiatives led by Penn State University Libraries (UL) and implemented at its many campuses which are designed to address the challenges students experience accessing and funding their course materials. Design/methodology/approach: This case study will show how a broad administrative mandate for high-level OAER initiatives created the environment for Penn State (PSU) to evolve from individual pioneering units into coordinated university-wide initiatives. This shift, spearheaded by administration with strong UL involvement, allowed for customized and targeted initiatives at its many campuses. By using UL’s centralized, but geographically dispersed, structure, library faculty and staff have been supported in their efforts to expand OAER from the ground up to meet individual contexts and campus needs. Findings: As a result of its many open and affordable initiatives, PSUL has been able to demonstrate both savings and increased access for students across PSU’s many campuses and World Campus. Broad administrative support has created an environment which enabled UL faculty and staff to lead various initiatives. Originality/value: UL has long been a leader and partner in open and affordability initiatives at PSU because of its core mission of providing access. By sharing the processes and logistics of how a large research institution with many campuses of various sizes implemented a wide variety of library-driven open and affordability initiatives through a centralized but geographically dispersed structure, academic libraries will be able to replicate similar initiatives in their unique contexts.
AB - Purpose: This paper aims to describe a case study of the open and affordable educational resources (OAER) initiatives led by Penn State University Libraries (UL) and implemented at its many campuses which are designed to address the challenges students experience accessing and funding their course materials. Design/methodology/approach: This case study will show how a broad administrative mandate for high-level OAER initiatives created the environment for Penn State (PSU) to evolve from individual pioneering units into coordinated university-wide initiatives. This shift, spearheaded by administration with strong UL involvement, allowed for customized and targeted initiatives at its many campuses. By using UL’s centralized, but geographically dispersed, structure, library faculty and staff have been supported in their efforts to expand OAER from the ground up to meet individual contexts and campus needs. Findings: As a result of its many open and affordable initiatives, PSUL has been able to demonstrate both savings and increased access for students across PSU’s many campuses and World Campus. Broad administrative support has created an environment which enabled UL faculty and staff to lead various initiatives. Originality/value: UL has long been a leader and partner in open and affordability initiatives at PSU because of its core mission of providing access. By sharing the processes and logistics of how a large research institution with many campuses of various sizes implemented a wide variety of library-driven open and affordability initiatives through a centralized but geographically dispersed structure, academic libraries will be able to replicate similar initiatives in their unique contexts.
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U2 - 10.1108/RSR-03-2020-0010
DO - 10.1108/RSR-03-2020-0010
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85087567745
SN - 0090-7324
VL - 48
SP - 339
EP - 352
JO - Reference Services Review
JF - Reference Services Review
IS - 3
ER -