Tag: open educational resources

Q&A: Open Educational Resources as a New High-Impact Practice

This project has major implications for the future of open education in the U.S.

If you follow open education news, you probably heard over the summer that AAC&U recognized Open Educational Resources (OER) as a High-Impact Practice (HIP). OER’s addition to the roster of 12 teaching and learning practices means AAC&U has deemed there to be “…significant educational benefits for students who participate in them—including and especially those from demographic groups historically underserved by higher education.” To achieve the requisite degree of evidence, AAC&U commissioned what it describes as “the largest examination of OER to date.” Over two years, their research team examined around 700,000 student records along with qualitative responses from over 200 instructors who had implemented OER in their courses, drawn from 15 institutions across six Carnegie classifications.

This project has major implications for the future of open education in the U.S., not only as the path to OER’s recognition as a HIP, but also via rich, multifaceted data that requires so much labor to collect and analyze at scale. The insights from this study are valuable both as rationale for institutional support of OER and as practical considerations for open education advocates and instructors. Whether you consider open education a passion, a moral obligation, or a job responsibility, the full report is worth a deep dive. (And a quick unsolicited plug for Open Education Conference, where the AAC&U team shared early results from this study last year). My institution has an office dedicated to promoting HIPs on campus, as I imagine is true at many other colleges and universities. The opportunity to embed support for open education beyond traditional advocacy units (e.g. libraries, teaching centers) may be truly game-changing at institutions where that hasn’t yet happened.

Heather Miceli, Assistant Director of the Institute on Open Educational Resources and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at AAC&U, kindly answered a few questions about their study and High-Impact Practices for ACRLog.

I’m sure there are many possible practices that could be studied as potential high-impact practices. Why OER? In other words, what led to the initiation of this study, including but also beyond the guiding research questions?

Open Education, as we know it currently, is celebrating a milestone anniversary this year. Twenty-five years, a quarter of a century. And yet, the practice is still fairly siloed, sometimes completely unknown to faculty and instructors whose students would benefit from even just the affordability argument. However, we knew from multiple smaller scale studies that the potential to impact student success was there. But we also knew that there were small sample sizes, confounding variables, and conflicting results. So, we decided to take a shot at trying to gather as much data as possible, from as many different types of institutions as possible, to push forward the conversation on how OER impact student success. At the same time, one of the foundation pieces of high-impact practices (HIPs) is that they are most impactful “when done well.” We wanted to capture the instructor experience and connect it as much as we could with what we were seeing in the quantitative data.

The report describes some differences in instructors’ experiences between those who adopted an OER without revision vs. those who revised, remixed, or created OERs. How would you summarize/synthesize some those differences and what they might mean for librarians who support instructors making course material decisions?

We found considerable evidence across multiple contexts that when instructors choose to revise, remix, or create their own OER (high-level implementation), the withdrawal rates in the course are significantly lower than those who chose to simply adopt (low-level implementation). We attribute this to the fact that higher-level implementation of OER allows instructors to customize the texts specifically for their students, courses, and context – which has been shown in the literature to have a positive impact on student belonging and success.

We also found some interesting correlation in the instructor survey around high- vs. low-level implementation. 52% of instructors that simply adopted their OER as is were externally motivated, meaning that they were required to adopt the text by the institution or the department, as opposed to only 12% that revised/remixed/created their OER. Of those that adopted because they were externally motivated, 34% perceived their first implementation went poorly. We also found that 31% of those who adopted and had no support also perceived their first implementation as poor. These results did not surprise us—we know that support and internal motivation are going to be key variables in the quality of implementation. However, when we looked at instructors who adopted and who perceived their first OER implementation to be poor, we found that they overwhelmingly did not engage in any other teaching practice changes as a result of using OER.

Could you highlight a few other takeaways from the study that might be especially relevant to librarians and other open education advocates?

One of the most significant findings was that at doctoral institutions, withdrawal rates decreased at much higher rates than any of the other institutions when OER was implemented. It was especially impactful for students with a high intersectionality of historically minoritized characteristics. Doctoral institutions are likely the most heterogenous institutions in our study, and this result suggests that OER, on its own, could be a compelling retention strategy for students in their first year courses (the majority of courses in our sample from doctoral institutions were lower-level courses).

In terms of grades, we found that A grades increased across the board, with a small increase also in F grades—we attribute the increase in F grades to students finishing a course when without OER, they might have withdrawn from the course, putting their enrollment in jeopardy.

A frankly jaw-dropping finding at community colleges was that when students who had been enrolled for 4 or more years took 6 or more OER courses, their time-to-completion dropped by over a calendar year. This finding shows that institutionalized OER could be a monumental strategy in shortening time-to-completion for nontraditional students.

With the understanding that their operationalization might look different campus-to-campus, why does it matter for something to be recognized as a high-impact practice by AAC&U? What opportunities can that recognition present?

Since their inception almost twenty years ago, high impact practices (HIPs) have shaped the experiences of millions of students in the US and abroad. We know that when students participate in HIPs, especially those from historically minoritized groups in higher education, they report positive cumulative, additive effects on student success. However, when you look at the list of HIPs, a lot of the experiences require time and resources that aren’t available to all students. For example, not all internships are paid, and there are many students who can’t afford to give their free labor to companies to advance their education; study abroad programs are inaccessible to students that have familial or parenting responsibilities. So, we are starting to look to the future of HIPs knowing that a practice that is included on this list is valued highly by administrators and curriculum developers, so much so that some institutions require participation in HIPs for graduation. We hope that in adding OER to the list, with substantial evidence to support their use in many contexts, we can begin to see a shift towards further institutionalization of OER on campuses, including the necessary instructor support to ensure optimal implementation.

Thank you to Heather for her responses, and thank you to Heather and her research team for this study. We may not understand the full scope of this work’s impact on the field for a while, but I expect it will be significant.

OER Legislation Update

Editor’s note: We welcome a guest blog post from Emma Wood, Scholarly Communication Librarian at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Library.

I contributed a guest post to ACRLog in 2023 about the expansion of state legislation related to Open Educational Resources (OER). With the importance of administrative support to expand OER, it seems useful to revisit this topic as budgetary concerns have rocked academia in the time since 2023. OER initiatives usually require some financial investment: have shaky budgets caused disruption to OER support and progress?

First, on the state level, OER legislation has stayed steady, at least in number, with new bills being introduced and progressing. SPARC has an OER State Policy tracker that updates weekly during the legislative session. In my prior post I noted that there were 11 states with OER-related bills in the current legislative session and 28 states with enacted OER policies in some form based on the SPARC map. At present, there are 13 relevant bills in the current legislative session and 32 states have enacted OER policies. This shows progress or at least stability in OER legislation for the past few years.

OER have caught the attention of state legislatures for a few reasons including their cost-savings to students, potential for higher performance indicators from students, and equity and fairness considerations. Here are some of the types of bills related to OER that are being considered or have been signed into law:

Course Marking/Flagging – Requires institutions of higher education to indicate the cost of course materials for students in course listings for the sake of transparency. One example is AB 607 which requires that institutions prominently display the estimated course materials costs for no less than 75 percent of the classes listed in their online course schedule.

Appropriation of Funding – These bills typically allot financial support to a state Open Educational Resource related initiatives or programs. California Senate Bill 101 appropriated $3M to the California Community Colleges to provide textbooks or digital course content to incarcerated students and encouraged the use OER when possible.

Establishes a committee, program, or study – These bills create and task a group of people with a goal or purpose relevant to OER. Washington HB 1946 (passed in 2009) was an early example of such a bill, and it directed a task force to investigate open licensing options for sharing digital content with the goal of using common online learning technologies for all institutions of higher education.

Restrictions or directives for publishers – These bills are currently less common than the aforementioned categories. They require publishers to make textbook pricing transparent or direct publishers to offer the components of textbook “bundles” for sale separately. HB 33 is an example from Texas. Among other things, it requires that publishers provide written information relating to textbook prices, copyright dates for the current and three preceding textbook editions, any substantial revisions made since the most recent preceding edition, and any alternative formats available to institutions.

With legislative effort to expand textbook affordability staying the course, is there an impact to OER programs at the institutional level based upon recent budget cuts? Many institutions of higher education are facing staff reduction and program cuts so it is reasonable to assume so. For example, Oregon’s academic library community is concerned that proposed changes to accreditation language could lead to a reduction in library staff and consequently OER efforts. “Reductions of library staff in Oregon colleges and universities is already an increasingly troubling trend as Oregon’s higher education institutions continue to grapple with budget cuts.” As another example, Dartmouth College will reportedly have over a million dollars in cuts to their libraries budget in the next two years. Textbook cost-savings efforts are often led by libraries, so these budget and staff cuts may hinder OER.

Readers may be asking the question of why do we need to invest money in OER when the goal of OER is cost-savings and the resulting materials are free? The answer is mostly time, infrastructure, and staff. OER requires humans for creation, editing, and upkeep. Digital products and services like publishing platforms are also needed in that process. Staff are needed to educate others about OER, administer course flagging systems, and develop outreach plans. Incentive programs with mini grants are an effective way to fill in some of the gaps for faculty who invest time and effort into OER adoption or creation.

Financial support for OER that comes from outside an institution’s primary funding is important because university budgets are currently shrinking. However, relying on one-off and finite grant opportunities to propel OER on the campus level is unsustainable. Thus, OER has to be considered and prioritized in administrative decisions, especially because it involves return on investment when states that conduct annual OER data collection are reporting millions of dollars in cost-savings to students.

The attention that OER advocates have earned from federal, state, and campus leadership is an undeniable victory.  Top-down support, whether it is monetary or other affirming actions, has been a goal and key to OER success. However, we are dealing with deficits in the support system in the field. Do we have enough staff and librarians to continue the efforts? Will administrators making tough decisions about limited funds prioritize OER? The shared understanding of the power and the importance of OER is stronger than ever, but the funding ping-pong ball is still in play.

A few takeaways from Open Education 2025

In an age of corporate techno-solutionism, open education can help academia fulfill its responsibilities to the public good. But we have to institutionalize and preserve open principles to do so.

One of these days, Open Education Conference, I’ll attend you in person. In the meantime: thank you for providing a well-coordinated (and affordable) option for virtual attendance. This is my second year attending the Open Education Conference from afar and both occasions were well worth my time. I attended 20+ of the virtually available sessions, which isn’t close to half, but still gave me plenty to ponder. Below, I’ve organized a few thematic takeaways I’ll be thinking more about and what they mean for the future of my library and my institution. If you attended OpenEd2025 and came away with something different, please share in the comments!

The tightening walls of EdTech

Han Solo has a bad feeling about standing in a trash compactor. Gif by JuniorCor84, retrieved from tenor.com.

There is a growing sense among open education advocates of the ways proprietary educational technology (EdTech) restricts and undermines the goals of the open education movement. In several sessions[1], presenters identified the pressing issue of platformitization: EdTech providers are inking long-term deals with administrators at the institutional, system, and even state levels that reduce faculty freedom in using different educational tools, such as homework software and learning management systems. Ostensibly, these agreements are being negotiated without much input from their institutions’ foremost experts in material and tool licensing. Librarians have traditionally leveraged our expertise in collections and licensing to lead negotiations that center access, equity, and sustainability, but we’re lacking a seat at these EdTech tables. That needs to change quickly as commercial providers—who tend to profit off student data—continue to more deeply embed their products into the basic functions of higher education.

  • The issue of platformitization overlaps substantially with automatic billing textbook schemes. If you’ve been following that saga, you might recall that automatic textbook billing programs’ ethical dubiousness was enough to draw the Biden administration’s attention, who had planned to outlaw the practice. Instead, such so-called “inclusive access” programs persist, in which students (sometimes all students, sometimes students enrolled in certain courses) are automatically opted-in to pay either a flat course material fee or the first-sale cost of their course materials.[2] Many textbooks are now accompanied by proprietary homework software that are understandably appealing to instructors of large-enrollment courses. Together, these factors reduce the rationale for instructors to use open educational resources (OER), especially at schools that charge students a flat fee regardless of whether their course materials are free. In turn, these factors continue to undermine efforts for student affordability. In a presentation on measuring and communicating the value of OER, Virginia Clinton-Lisell[3] cited results of her recent student survey, in which “29.4% [of students] reported their grade was hurt because they could not afford an [homework system] access code,” and in which first generation students reported higher rates of having to pay for homework access, and experienced more subsequent negative effects. To make matters worse, access to homework systems is generally restricted to a single semester, and one-time access codes don’t allow students to recoup any cost through resale like they might with physical textbooks.

  • One bright spot in response to these issues is the work of librarians in the Big Ten Academic Alliance, who collaborated to pilot library support for open homework systems.[4] In pilot courses, 49% of students found the open systems more relevant/helpful than proprietary systems in other courses, and the other 50% of students felt open homework systems were about the same as proprietary systems. All pilot faculty said they planned to continue using their piloted systems and would recommend those systems to their colleagues. This seems like a promising way for librarians, with help from supportive instructional designers and IT departments, to promote open alternatives in the age of Big EdTech.

  • Robert Farrow shared a cogent philosophical argument on openness as critical perspective that couples nicely with this practical example from the Big Ten. Openness creates conditions for innovation that are transparent, participatory, and grounded in public values via practices like open-source development frameworks and open licensing.[5] We need to identify and support the new forms of EdTech that demonstrate these traits, and in turn, we must question who benefits from certain technologies, whose voices are marginalized, and what pedagogical assumptions are embedded in design of each EdTech option. Many of us in higher ed have the privilege and cultural capital to speak out about issues like EdTech corporate capture at our institutions. In particular, Farrow argued that part of our goal should be to shift the narrative away from market hype and techno-solutionism toward values of transparency, pluralism, ethics, and equity. And speaking of techno-solutionism…

AI is a bummer and we have to contend with it

Luke Skywalker expresses disbelief and displeasure in a single word. Gif by Sephirock38, retrieved from tenor.com.

Generative AI was predictably a well-trodden topic at OpenEd2025. I fall toward the skeptical/morally opposed end of the spectrum when it comes to AI but am always interested to hear what smart people think about it and how to deal with it. A few quotes continue to ring in my mind weeks after the conference.

“AI is a very seductive digital eugenics infrastructure.”

Jutta Treviranus, Director of the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University, referencing how AI leads us toward discursively normative ways of thinking via its core function: searching for probable (read: dominant) patterns in human data.[6]

“[Quoting Simon Wardley] ‘LLMs are a non-kinetic form of warfare. By controlling the language, medium and tools then they influence how we reason about any space.’ I believe this, and I also believe this second thing, which is: If your institution is not graduating students who are fluent and critical users of AI, your institution is criminally negligent.”

Hugh McGuire, Founder of Pressbooks, describing the tension we face as AI malcontents in a world hurtling toward an AI future.[7]

“When you see unexpected use of AI, that should often be understood as a signal for unmet need rather than as a moral failing by an individual.”

Will Cross, Director of the Open Knowledge Center and Head of Information Policy at NC State University Libraries, explaining why AI policies should be grounded in clear pedagogical goals as one principle of the DO3RS Policy Priorities for Generative AI and Open Education.

Reasons for hope

Han Solo believing in himself despite the difficulties of the situation. Gif by JuniorCor84, retrieved from tenor.com.

For me, the most valuable takeaway from this conference is the solidarity and inspiration that radiates when fellow advocates get together and share ideas, even in an increasingly difficult environment for open education’s goals. Challenges present opportunities for creativity and re-commitment to our values. I found much-appreciated reasons for hope in a number of sessions.

  • Folks from the American Association of Colleges & Universities presented data from their multi-institutional study into the impact of open education on student success.[8] Although the evidence itself is compelling, the most exciting part of this study is that preliminary data analysis suggests there may be rationale to add OER adoption to AAC&U’s list of High-Impact Practices (HIPs). I’m aware of HIPs mostly because they’ve received attention and investment at my university—maybe they’re of interest to administration at your college or university too. In either case, the institutionalization of OER adoption by influential organizations like AAC&U would put open education “in another conversation,” as Eddie Watson put it, for many institutions that value HIPs but have yet to invest heavily in open ed.

  • In “A Positive Agenda for Open Education as a Public Good,” presenters pitched four principles we could bring to our work in libraries (and academia at large) moving forward, so as to orient toward a vision of higher education as a public good rather than a site of corporate control: a) Whenever we build or pay for something at libraries, it needs to be open; b) Push for the absolute most you can get in electronic licensing agreements and then share those agreements publicly, thereby building up community norms and standards; c) Understand and rely on fair use to take full advantage of our legal rights as libraries; and d) Record and share the stories of when the corporate-influenced system fails us.[9]

  • “Connect the opens” was a chorus heard in multiple sessions, and was highlighted by the work of SPARC Europe in their capacity as a resource and network hub for institutions across the continent who want to interweave different open efforts.[10] I like their focus on an explicit connection between open science and open education, which has resonated with lab instructors at my own institution.

  • Finally, in Right to Learn Afghanistan’s presentation on their online education program, I was reminded of a core reason why we work to make knowledge more open and accessible and remixable for whoever needs it, and the impact OER have already made in the world. Relying on their library of over 8,000 OER—the first initiative of its kind available in Afghanistan—the Darakht-e Danesh Academi provides an online secondary school to over 600 currently enrolled students as they pursue internationally recognized high school diplomas in a country where such education is difficult to access. And in turn, these OERs adapted or created for the Afghan context can be resources for our institutions as well. When we talk about student success and impact metrics related to open education, we can’t forget how OER might impact people beyond our institutions, even though we might never see it.

Lastly, here are a few resources and examples I was excited to learn about, some of which were mentioned above:

Stay as open as possible, as closed as necessary, everyone!

[1] Cross, W., Allen, N., McCullough, H., & Cook, E. (2025). Rewiring EdTech Licensing: Bringing Open Values to the Platforms that Shape our Learning; Buckley, A., Williamson, D., Allen, N., Elder, A., Shoemate, J., Abdullah, A., Diaz, L, & Goller, C. (2025). Navigating Open Education’s Path Forward in the U.S. Political Landscape.

[2] Students generally have the opportunity to opt-out of these programs, but this process tends to be unintuitive and poorly communicated to students, despite the opposition’s best efforts.

[3]  Bliss, T. J., Elder, A., Wagstaff, S., Clinton-Lisell, V., & Buck, S. (2025). What Difference Does It Make? Measuring & Communicating the Impact of OER Initiatives.

[4] McGeary, B., Gjeltema, M., Nackerud, S., Wetherington, C., & Yu, S.(2025) Piloting a Library-Led Support Model for Open Homework Systems: Outcomes, Lessons, & Recommendations.

[5] Farrow, R. (2025). Openness as critical perspective.

[6] Treviranus, J., Bali, M., Santos, S., & Scott, A. M. (2025). AI on Our Terms: Designing Open, Inclusive, and Responsible AI.

[7] Cross, W., Jacob, M., Gallant, J., McGuire, H., & Hoye, A. (2025). Connecting the Dots on AI: Developing a Policy Response Grounded in the Experience of Open Educators.

[8] Micelli, H., Watson, C. E., Chittum, J., Schneider, H., & Perkins, B. (2025). Beyond Affordability: Early Insights from a Multi-Institutional Study on OER and Student Success.

[9] Cross, W., Jacob, M., & Hansen, D. (2025). A Positive Agenda for Open Education as a Public Good.

[10] Proudman, V., Corti, P., & Stacey, P. (2025). Connecting the Opens.

Reflecting on Open Access Week as a First-Year Academic Librarian

As an Affordability & Digital Initiatives Librarian, planning, hosting, and executing events and workshops on campus for Open Access Week is an essential part of my position. For those unfamiliar with Open Access Week, Open Access Week is a designated week, typically towards the end of October, to celebrate and spread awareness of the open access movement. This year’s theme was “Community over Commercialization.” I did not incorporate the theme into the programming primarily because I want to center our events around the university’s Affordability Initiative.

Monday

We started the week off with a celebration of affordability and open access on our campus. The purpose of the event was to highlight accomplishments made throughout the past year, such as increased use of Open Educational Resources (OER) and submissions to our Institutional Repository (IR). Next, I hosted a workshop on OER adoption, adaptation, and creation with my new faculty cohort. During the workshop, we discussed the impact OER has on equity as well as resources for finding and creating OER. New faculty were intrigued by OER and expressed interest in exploring what is available in their field. I hosted the same workshop for all faculty in the afternoon. Interestingly, this workshop sparked more of a discussion regarding Creative Commons and self-publishing.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, my colleague and I hosted two launch parties for our new sponsored affordability development opportunities, one in-person and one virtual.  We were promoting the launch of the textbook affordability self-paced course we created on D2L Brightspace (our LMS).  The course was designed for faculty to strengthen their knowledge about the open movement, pathways to open authoring, and research related to textbook affordability and OER.  Additionally, we were promoting our new program in which faculty could apply and receive sponsorship to adopt, adapt, or create OER.

Wednesday

Wednesday was dedicated to the Institutional Repository.  My colleague hosted an event regarding the role of the IR on campus.  He also encouraged faculty to bring their CVs to see how they could contribute to the IR.

Thursday

On Thursday, I hosted a small panel event about the power of self-publishing your expertise.  The panelists were faculty with experience creating OER and had all authored at least one textbook.  The panelist offered great insight into the process of self-publishing in varying disciplines.

Friday

To conclude the week, I hosted affordability and faculty collaboration hours.  These hours give faculty a chance to meet with me directly and discuss where to search for OER, how to navigate Creative Commons, how to make textbook selections for the bookstore, etc.

Reflection

Unfortunately, attendance for almost every event was lower than I had hoped.  Most of the events were held in-person in the library.  Next year, I would try doing more virtual events that could be recorded and sent to those interested.  I also wondered if the time of day was a factor in the low attendance.  We varied the times in hopes of reaching as many people as possible, but the inconsistency in time might have been a deterrent. 

An idea for next year would be to incorporate events or activities for students.  Our library’s student advisory board did hand out snacks to students on Wednesday and told them about our Textbooks on Reserve program and textbook donation drive; however, I think we could do more.  An opportunity to connect with students and amplify their voice on the topic of textbook affordability and open access would be beneficial to our Affordability Initiative.

Lastly, not having experience coordinating a week full of campus events, I was thankful to have the support of the University Library’s Dean’s Office.  They scheduled rooms, ordered refreshments, organized swag (pens, stickers, water bottles, keychains, etc.), and coordinated social media posts throughout the week advertising events, highlighting campus affordability champions, and listing resources to adopt, adapt, and create OER.  I could not have survived the week without their help.

Building OER Momentum with a Mini-Grant Program

At my institution, we’ve been talking more about open education in the past year. Open access has long been on our agenda, but open education is such a large umbrella. We’ve begun to bring other open education-related work to the fore.

I wrote about open pedagogy in the context of information literacy in a blog post this past fall, while reflecting on Jim Groom’s visit to our campus for our Domain of One’s Own launch. Earlier this semester, Robin DeRosa came to campus to help us grow the conversation around open pedagogy and open educational resources (OER). My colleague, Lora Taub-Pervizpour, shared some curated articles and videos in two great posts (here and here) as our community prepared for Robin’s visit. These conversations have helped us focus in on our motivations for deepening our OER work. Helping to reduce financial burdens/barriers for our students by lowering textbook/course materials costs is a significant motivator for our OER interest, as is often the case. But the pedagogical opportunities OER can help to create are particularly energizing for our community, so deeply invested in teaching. (Check out David Wiley’s recent posts “How is Open Pedagogy Different?” and “When Opens Collide” for some interesting discussion on open pedagogy.)

As open education efforts on our campus continue, my colleagues and I are planning to launch a small grant initiative to help build momentum. We are imagining these stipends as a way to support faculty/instructors interested in adopting, adapting, and creating OER for their courses. We are also excited about the pedagogical possibilities that OER work might offer, so I’m particularly enthusiastic about the option we’re including to support the development of assignments in which students collaborate in the OER work of the course.

We’re developing the application guidelines and evaluation criteria for this grant initiative now. A few searches easily turn up helpful examples of such initiatives at a range of institution types: American University, Bucknell University, College of William & Mary, Davidson College, Old Dominion University, University of Kansas, and Utah State University, to name a few. These have been helpful in informing how we’re shaping and framing our application and outreach process. But I’m particularly eager to hear reflections on the successes, challenges, and outcomes of the work from those who have already taken a lap around this track. I recently revisited Sarah Crissinger’s thoughtful and helpful reflections on her OER work with faculty (part 1, part 2, part 3). Yet I’m eager for more and find myself wondering about your thoughts. I expect many of you have experience administering OER-related initiatives with similar goals. If so, how have you framed your program? What have you found to be important to your success? What barriers have you encountered? Or perhaps you are someone who has participated in this kind of initiative (or would like to). If so, what kinds of guidelines or support were (or would be) most useful? I would love to hear about your experiences and thoughts in the comments.