our next speaker is someone who um contributedto shattering a stereo type that i have uh and that is i�ve spent uh some unpleasantperiod of my career fighting with um chemical abstracts. uh over their desire to sort of lock up chemistryliterature and out of that experience i came to thinkthat there�s a revolution going on in open access, and then somewhere over here there�sa chemist. and and that�s the way i thought the worldwas wired. i was delighted to come to the university of oklahoma and to have an opportunity to meet a colleaguemark morvant. mark is the executive director
of the center for teaching excellence he is also an associate professorof chemistry and biochemistry here at the university of oklahoma and he�s one of the leaders of the one university digitalinitiative on the ou campus. he has been i would say quite passionate um and aggressive in the best way in terms of lookingat questions about how can we think as a university? how can we think about trying to lower thecosts of textbooks and getting faculty involved and engaged in that process and what�s neededin order to make that happen? so i am very delighted that mark has uh beenable to make some time and join us today.
mark thanks. alright, so i appreciate the invitation beingloose to come out and talk to you. there are lots of things going on in stemwith open access as uh heather talked about right we�ve got thisthis proclamation from the president and that�s going to affect nsf and nih and all the waydown the road. i�m coming from this from a teaching standpointso i can address a little bit but i am not the expert on what�s going to be happeningto stem as far as research publications, but when i thinkwhen we are thinking about teaching one of the things that i think about when i wheni look at that is i look at my examples.
and i look at what i think about as far asopen when we are talking about instruction. and if you look at any instructor they areopenly adopting anything they�ve seen because the first thing they do when they go in theclassroom is they model the behavior they�ve seen of their instructor. so the idea of open access or adopting anadaptation that you would see in an open access format is just the nature of instruction. my dad was a faculty member and his adagewas teaching should be fun. after teaching my first two years i addedto his uh you know proclamation my little corollary uh if it isn�t fun you�ve gottachange something.
my first institution was at the texas a&muniversity of corpus christi. at texas a&m university of corpus christi we�re in southtexas. it was an island university. it was a beautiful place, but we had studentswho were coming from very poor background as far as their math and even reading. our sat scores were to say the least pathetic.but, because we were a sixty five percent hispanic university the goal was that everystudent was going to be able to graduate. general chemistry as rick pointed out is abig stopper right? and if we think about what needs to happen in stem we need diversityin stem. that means we need access in stem. it didnot work that only sixty five percent my students
were making it through chemistry their firstsemester. that means right off the bat we�ve caughtwe�ve [inaudible] thirty five percent of a pool of sixty five percent diverse population. so we�re looking at innovations one of thethings that drives innovative faculty nuts is that we�re often limited by the availabletext books and the resources there. the time commitment it takes to create thesefrom scratch is overwhelming. if we look at general chemistry at the timethis occurred when i was looking at making an innovation in 1998 there were really onemajor model. the one model was the classic model. why?that�s what everybody wanted to buy. if
you looked at the market at that time fortextbooks almost everybody taught in a classic model. now did that make and pedagogical sense? well let�s think about the classical model.the classical model started with thermodynamics, then you went to reactions and then afterabout five weeks they told you what an atom was. why classical? that�s how chemistrywas discovered. first they were able to figure out the thermodynamicshow much heat this gave off how much it took to freeze that this measurement that measurement and thenthey were able to go oh if i put a with b
it becomes c. it wasn�t until the 1930�s and 40�sthat they really figured out the whole bonding theory of a molecule. so if you look at a classic textbook whichwas the predominant text book in the nineties it was not based off of a pedagogically soundfashion but what everybody wanted. and it was based off of a historical modelof how chemistry was discovered. a new model was just coming out at the time which wasatom first. luckily atom first is now the predominantmodel of textbooks. there you start with an atom. if we�re going to build a house dowe want to start with a roof or foundation?
foundation, you start with the atom and youbuild on it. it is a very good system and it also incorporates mathematics right upfront. at corpus christi with the students we hadi had a population of students that did not have mathematical ability to excel in thatcourse. that didn�t mean they couldn�t learn chemistry.that just mean meant that i needed more time to teach in the mathematics. so i started thinking if we could separatethe concepts and calculations. if i could teach them the concepts of chemistrywithout having them do the calculations of chemistry then we could do it.
i could get them into their first math classwhen they hit me in the spring we could get them through this we�re gonna succeed. uhoh no text book. nothing out there to support this. try todo this with a regular textbook and tell the students ignore the mathematics until we gettheir next math semester. it�s going to work. well luckily there wasone maverick text book that was custom published right? enabled me to then try this. they did it for a whole different reason. what they were looking for was a way at northcarolina state so they could have not multiple formats of their course but they could havethe concepts,
and then if you were going in engineeringyou would take this semester. if you were going into health sciences you would go hereif you were going to chemistry you would go there right. so they made they used it for a whole differentsystem but it was out there and it was available and it was custom published. right? simple black and white cost twenty seven dollarsuh each one. i say one maverick text book but there was actually two one maverick authordecided to do this and create this. that enabled me to change to a concept calculation.went from about sixty percent success rate from gen chem one to gen chem two to eightyfive percent.
so innovative curriculum that could have onlybeen enabled with the course materials there without those course materials i would havehad to have stayed in one of the other two formats. this is the first thing that really openedmy eye my eyes to open access publishing and the power that open access publishing canhave. the next one is the multiplication affectand i better hit the second button so you can see this quickly um the goal here reallywas to enhance the students learning by giving them my lectures on podcasts. podcasts were just becoming popular 2005 iwanted to podcast all my lectures so that
students could have that. so if they missed something they could goback and review um it didn�t help with my handwriting i still wrote freehand and that�swhy i�m not free handing it today. and i wanted to do this for three hundredstudents. alright, so for my class of three hundred students we�re going to put allthe all of my lectures as pod casts. they can download them at any time. okay whathappens when you do that? you put something out there for anybody to use. in eleven monthsi had 4507 subscribers and 22,000 views. in the next two years the views were over65,000. i started to see links to podcasts posted on university course sites all acrossthe us and in other countries.
from the analytics were able to see that peoplewere using this across the country. the analytics in 2008 were not as advancedas they are now so i couldn�t really see how much time they were spending on the videos. but i could see how much time that ip addresswas linked on. and what i saw was they were on there three four five six seven minutes. these students were watching the whole watchingparts of these videos right. and then this one shocked some of my colleagues. i�ve got all these analytics if we lookat the normal index rate for publications it may be sited for or five times in science.
that means you have have had hundreds of peoplereading it and you had four or five people that sited it. but the analytics of theseopen access are significant. we�re talking tens of thousands of studentsthat i had a direct impact. not including those students that reached out and contactedme to say thank you professor x was not doing the job and you�re the onlyway i passed this class. alright, so there�s a multiplication affectwhen we look at open access. what i spend my time and effort on does notonly impact my three hundred students or my six hundred students or my thousand students,but can impact tens of thousands of students. the next one is kind of a sad story and reallyled to the passion that i have now for it.
but a two hundred fifty-two dollar textbooki adopted a new textbook. my colleagues got together on the committee we looked at itwe discussed it it had the most innovative problem solvingstrategy we had seen in about twelve years in publishing. of the textbooks out therealmost all of them were the same they all followed the same pattern but thisone had something innovative about it. it was going to change the way our students couldlearn. our students couldn�t afford it. the bookstore was telling us nobody is buyingthe book we�ve got all these books. what�s your enrollment? it was two hundred fifty-two dollars wellthere were other options you know they tell
you when they come to your office. they tell you there�s all kind of options.what were the options? two hundred fifty-two dollars for the newbook a bargain at hundred eighty nine dollars and if you want the digital ninety dollarsand that�s a rental and sadly its only two semesters worth. it�s not only three hundred sixty days itstwo semesters you may not know but most people don�t pass organic chemistry their firsttime. okay, it was almost useless to get it we sawalmost no adoptions of the digital because the students found no value in it.
they found value in the other copies but theprice was so high most of them had to pull together. i had students that had one copythey had to share. this is not access to learning this is notwhat stem needs to move that forward so what can we do about that? well, i�ve already pointed out here thatsome of the reasons for faculty adopt open educational resources or at least my experiencewith that increasing cost text books the two hundred fifty two dollar text bookis the one that did it for me. before that the text book was one hundred eighty dollars. it went from one hundred eighty dollars oneyear to two hundred fifty-two dollars the
next year. turns out that most of the organicchemistry text books are in the range now the two hundred fifty range. they went from when i started to being abouta hundred dollars to being a hundred and thirty to a hundred and fifty to a hundred and eighty and then the seventy dollar jump makes nosense to me but their all in that mid two hundred range. so we see a huge increase inthese costs and 8.1 increase textbook now what does thatcompare to what the university of oklahoma is trying to do to increase access? we�redoing everything we can to keep tuition rates low.
last year we tried we did everything we couldto keep the tuition rates at three percent. we�re trying to make access to studentsopen. what are the textbook publishers doing anddoing to my stem students that need access? they�re decreasing the chance that theycan actually afford that resource that will enable them to succeed. but theirs also other advantages right integrationto media interactive in courses. talked to a publisher last week sadly a publisher thathad worked here for years. six years ago i said it would be great ifyou had interactive videos or at least videos that we could put in our content or we couldsend our students to.
in our conversation when i was telling themsorry i�ve digitized my book we�re going open access but they were like we can do xyz.i said when, and they said next fall. i said sorry you�re six years too late.you know some of the things that can really enhance education we can put into our coursematerials to help our students right? what i saw from the publishers and again idon�t from a faculty member standpoint they weren�t giving me what was going to be beneficialstudents. what they were doing was what was best fortheir business and some of these things with their amount of resources they could havebeen doing, where a single faculty member at one universitycould not. ability to customize the course
materials to the curriculum, i looked out and i found one innovative textbookthat allowed me to do something that made the difference in the lives of students insouth texas. a population that needed it, first generationhispanic student. with open access education resource materialespecially the innovation that have come around in the last couple of years we have thingsthat faculty can adopt and adapt to meet their idea of what the pedagogicalgoals are. they don�t have to start from scratch right and they don�t have to justget lucky. i got lucky, we now are getting to the pointwhere there is enough materials out there
where faculty can actually create the coursesthat they think will make their students succeed. update the material when necessary not basedon a three year edition cycle. every three years i had to change things. one of the textbooks i used four out of its six editions. they kept splitting the chapters. they takechapter twelve and thirteen and make it thirteen fourteen fifteen. and then the next editionback to twelve and thirteen and thirteen fourteen fifteen. all that did was cause me hours and hoursof work every time a new edition came out. no educational value nothing i could do forthe students to help them right it was just irritating.
alright, the truth is in the time period andit went over fifteen years there were two major changes two reactions i could have handedout a piece of paper that had those two reactions in it. now that�s my field right organic chemistrydoes change these two reactions were very important i would have included them if icould have included them but there are other fields right where threeyear rotation cycles isn�t enough. right you need to get it out when it changes youchange the nutrition pyramid guess what when do you need that? now. not tomorrow not the next edition youknow it changes on friday i need it on monday
for the class right? and with some of the things we are able todo now as faculty with open access those things are now enabled. now when we look at innovation open accessof course we have the long established open educational resources merlot and uh connectionslots of great resource. i heard colleagues call this they called itoer 1.0 right? these are hard to find. there�s lots of resources in there but asfar as an r1 faculty member being able to utilize these resources it�s very time dependent. you have to go through and sift through thousandsand thousands of potentially great activities,
resources, print, video before you find what�sgood. what we look with the turnkey solution andthis one came out released two of their books in the last summer was open stacks. open stacks is actually part of connectionsand what they�re doing there is trying to produce turnkey solutions to faculty. so for faculty its creating a textbook ina format that they�re normally used to seeing a textbook. not multiple sections, not all black and whitewithout print it looks like a textbook and the quality of it is the same or better thanwhat you�re seeing from the publishers.
but that�s not the only thing, if i�mteaching three hundred students i not only need a textbook i need the support. and one of the things that they�re doingthat is very beneficial especially for large adoptions at universities. is that they arepartnering with the providers of online resources. alright, so if i�m in my class and i havethree hundred, four hundred, five hundred i need an online homework system. the publishershave locked that up. in fact, some of the most innovative onlineproviders of homework and other resources for faculty were brought up last summer okay. so, but open stacks is working with them tellingthem look the faculty are adopting these open
access textbooks if you still want a portionof that profit that you use to gain work with us and help us provide the online resources thatthe faculty need. the other thing that you need and those ofyou that are not working one on one with faculty may not know it for those of us that workwith faculty all the time or are faculty. um you better have the power points; openstacks has the power points right, and you better have a solution manual for the studentsbecause if you don�t have a solution manual for the students your evaluations at the endof the semester will drop through the floor. so they had both of those right? there�salso a couple of innovators and this one i�ll
point up here, but i really should point out that they arebeing sued by almost all major publishers uh which is boundless. i think the only reason they are really beingpublished is because they say they can create materials the same as the text book. well what they�re doing is if you tell themtheir text book the go out there wikipedia, merlot, connections they go to the open educationalresources and aggregate everything to match that textbook content. so for a student, a student can put in a publishersa textbook with the author's name and they
will aggregate all the materials in the samesubject areas. now, the student won�t be reading the bookwhat the student will do is i need to read the uh you know molecular bonding theory boomit�s on wikipedia. boom, it�s from merlot right it�s an aggregator.this way it just kind of brings everything together. the last two is really a creationand assembly. we�re getting to the point now where technologysoftware base is really pretty easy. and i know both of these are apple, and i know forthose of you that are real open sources as well as open access you know that apple is nota real open source type of people. but, they
are disruptive what did they do to the musicindustry? what have they done to laptops? i mean i�m not using one right. what willthey be able to do as far as this? if we look at open the ibook author, it�s an easy tolearn platform so faculty can create materials not only in the customized fashion that theywant to teach their class but easily embed interactives, quizzes, mapping, those typesof things that add educational value. with the itunes u there from what itunes uhas gone from just a repository to a repository with a structure. so in the itunes u it�s based around a pedagogicalstructure that we would see with concepts and um and again do not hit the button orit will there we go okay.
alright, so when we look at these these aspectsright we�ve got a changed environment for open access. it�s to the point now that you do not haveto be a front runner drastic innovator to develop your own open educational resources. we are now getting to the point where openaccess materials and open educational resources are to the point where faculty can actuallyadopt them without a lot of extra effort. it does take extra effort because again thepublishers still control the aspects and still have all of the really nice features, but as we see more groups like open stackscoming online we�ll see more of the type
of innovative true open access solutions thatfaculty can adopt quickly and if we look at aggregators just the factthat they are saying we can replicate what you have by going and getting it off of freesites that also has a disrupter. so i would actually say on the innovatorsi might should have put disrupters because although i ibook author and itunes u is whatwe�re using right now i wouldn�t be surprised in two or three years that there�s all typesof formats that will enable faculty to really be able to create these materials. as [inaudible]pointed out, this is not in a total vacuum. i took over in october as the executive directorfor center for teaching excellence so what
i kind of told you was the passion as an instructorwhat led me to this. nice that i came into the position wheneverwe had just had a new dean of the university libraries that was very pro open access. that enabled us in my center for teachingexcellence and the one university to look at how do we really engage our students learningand how can we embed open access to that. so, if we look at increased value of educationthat�s what the one university digital initiative at the university of oklahoma is about. we�re going to enhance the in class experienceby engaging students in high impact learning activities. well, high impact learning activitiesusually take more time.
you take more time how do i cover all thecontent? we do that by enhancing the out of class experience by creating high qualitydigital content presented in a pedagogically sound fashion. open access is helping us do this. right,we don�t have to create forty five independent videos to replace your lectures in class.we�ll use some of the ones from duke. we�ll use some of the ones from ohio stateand whatever you don�t like we�ll create those. and then lower the cost for studentsremember in stem access is important. if we have students seven out of ten studentschoose not to buy a textbook based on cost. so therefore even though i select the besttextbook the best pedagogically sound textbook
the likelihood is that my students don�thave it, and the only students that have it are the students that can afford it. so thereforelet�s lower those cost by replacing high costs with engaging digital content. what we saw oftenwith the digital content and even the ninety dollar book it�s still a flat flat pdf stylebook. there�s no interactives there�s no feedbackto the student even if the assessment doesn�t ever get to the faculty having a little quizsystem built into an ebook enables that student to read a passage taketwo or three real quick questions and see if they understood that passage.
or as many of my students do with the ipadthat we created for our organic lab manual uh the ibook that we created for the organiclab manual is that they actually try the quiz and then see if they need to read.but then again doing the real quick quiz tells them you need to read and need to know isa very high motivating factor as we know from cognitive science motivation is one of thelargest impacts on student learning. the last part, and this is very important for an r1infuse the curriculum with research being performedat the university of oklahoma by our faculty. that�s where the cooperation of the openaccess initiatives with the journals with the library repository and with what we�retrying to do with course materials really
comes together. now you want to show the students the relevance.you create course material, and you put a link somewhere that takes them directly intothe library to that primary source so they can read it so that you can talk about it in class. howcan you talk about it in class? you find a video that covers that basic so you createthe video you put that online so they can get it outside of line. they do that you come to class we talk aboutthe primary literature. alright, the advantage of coming to a research university shouldbe the fact that you are touching the research
coming on. what we are doing at the university of oklahomawill be in the educational resources in the future alright. so one of the things aboutthe digital initiative we�re trying to push is this now where is the center of teaching excellence play?it really plays a part in lowering that cost, and for faculty what that cost means is time. for years the textbook publishers know exactlyhow to lower that cost you send somebody to their office you give them a textbook youwalk them through all the reasons that textbook is the best textbook right? you give themthe power points you give them the ancillaries
you make an online homework system for themyou make it easy daisy right? you just make it easy for them. one of the roles for the center of teachingexcellence is going to try to do to try and help faculty to adopt open access materialsor adopt low cost materials is to try and lower this cost. first open access publishers, open stacksdoes not have an army of book reps that are going to try and go sell out. boundless does not they have a website they�renot going to have somebody come to your office and to tell you and your students about theirservices so therefore we�re working with
the university libraries to locate and selectopen education resource for faculty. provide training on methods to adapt, assemble andcreate course materials, and increase the faculty awareness to open accessmaterials and benefits of open access for research and teaching. rick wanted to makesure i left plenty of time for talk so that�s what i had to present. me as a faculty member through my career inthe classroom being able to find resources that made allowed me to reach my studentsand give students access to learning that would help them change their lives andfor my students in south texas, their families lives was very important . being able to multiplymy effort by making open access materials
and that and then helping students across the us and the worldis important and lowering the burden on our students. the cost burden on our students specificallywhen the cost burden is so high the student has to make a choice whether they should buythat resource or not buy that resource when faculty know that not having that resourceis going to decrease their chances of of success in our classes. going with low cost and open access is essentialto the future of higher education. with that, i�ll step back and take any questions. thankyou.
[clapping]yes ma�am. you seem like a fairly innovative creativeteacher would you say there are a lot of faculty like you who are willing uh to spend the timelearning how to find and use open access materials or are you still pretty much in the minority? i�m a very early adopter so what i did withthe creative materials back in 98 with general chemistry was very early. i did podcasts in2006 which wasn�t the first year they really hit but that�s pretty early on. um and againi am always looking at technology and how technology can increase our students learningso i would say i�m an early adopter.
what i�ve seen since we�ve done this pushwith the one university initiative is lots of faculty are open to the idea and i thinkwhat�s going to make the difference is that cost right? if let�s say there was an open access materialthat�s quality was similar right or the better than what the publisher�s printingout the faculty would be interested in it. if that material also came or we could findall of the ancillaries that make that an easy adoption for the faculty. they�re moving in that direction we hada call for training in ibook�s and itunes u training so that student faculty could createtheir own ibook or create their own itunes
u courses. we had thirty six proposals and i only gavethem a week. so, i�ve been moving very fast and the faculty in here knows this like heputs out a thing and he asks i want your feedback in a week. that�s pretty good we�re at an r1 youknow we�re thirty six we�re not just hitting those that would consider themselves teachingemphasis faculty on our campus. we�re hitting research faculty and so andthat�s really at an early stage in us educating the faculty on open access. so i think that as the bar gets lowered bysome of the innovations as providers like
open stacks come online i think you�re goingto see the faculty wanting to move that way. because faculty wants their students to havethe educational resources they need to succeed. okay the difference is is the price. publishers make it really easy so again chemistryenergy [inaudible] on the open educational resources let�s say through merlot and throughconnections the the energy [inaudible] is very high. what some of the new innovations in softwareand these open access publishers are doing is actually decreasing that so that the facultycan adopt it without that much effort. but right not it�s still a lot of effort.but there are faculty moving in that direction.
thank you very much that was very inspiring.as from a perspective from a publisher although we do not publish textbooks in the event thatsay a faculty member wants to come together and create their own textbookand pull journal articles direct primary research articles um my question to you is how do welower your costs or you as in anybody who is interested in it? so what type of data formats would be mostreadily accepted to with the tools that you�re using online and perhaps as a question betterdirected to some of the service providers that you pointed out but in the event that even say a faculty memberum or a researcher has their own webpage just
their own webpage for the class and they wantto put up educational resources up there. what types of um how can we better provideour content so that it can easily be pulled in.are you talking formats or are you talking? yeah. um the nice thing about most of theseopen access that�s coming out recently is the xml based, and that makes it very accessible again sincewe have to be very careful on uh you know drc issues and to be accessible, but it alsomakes it really easy for faculty to get a hold of and understand. it also if it�s fully open and a cc by typelicense that enables us to be able to take
it directly into several different formatsfor the faculty to translate it. now if we�re talking about primary literaturethat is copyrighted and that needs to be behind a firewall. you know that�s an issue thatwe�re working with the university of ivory is on to where that can be a seamless thingwhere on our lms they could put in a thing go put in their 4x4 and go directly to thataccess. but i think currently the practices that most publishers are doing most of what you areseeing from the open access is they�re doing exactly the same thing. yeah and what we see with a lot of what willprobably be coming out in the next year or
two i�d say is far as enabling faculty tocustomize these things are based around those publishing tools. um joy nelson school of music at the universityof oklahoma. uh much of the reference has been uh to science and that�s fascinating,but i wonder it think we have professors in the arts who would be very excited to get on boardwith this. is there plans to include us and how can we become involved. yes ma�am actually our first ibooks itunestraining program and we�re going to have several of these the feedback was just awesome.
from the interest in the faculty started todayand we have two faculty from art and art history in there, and we also have an adoption wealso have a proposal for music and they had a conflict with our training so we�regonna get them involved in in this. i think when we talk about arts music and some ofthose things there�s going to be some copyright issues and again that�s why i�m glad that rick ismy friend because we are going to be working with him on that to try and solve some ofthose questions. but as far as getting you involved it�sthe same thing i mean if you look at the cost then, in fact, understanding music is in ourtop twenty cost to students and so getting
something like that to more of an open access formatyou know when you aggregate this that course understanding music is i believe i am tryingto go rough numbers, but i think it is over $150,000 potential costto our students a year. where the stem are usually the ones, and againi�m stem faculty member and i am talking from that standpoint but for the center forteaching excellence we�re there to help provide some supportand again lower that energy of activation so you can adopt these open access materialsor create those open access materials or aggregate in the case of music right.
aggregate those open educational materialsbut yes we already have some of the fine arts faculty involved and and we�re welcome this is not a stem only initiative i justhappen to be a stem faculty member talking from a stem perspective today so.