- Okay, there we go.
- Is it recording?
- Camera recording.
- And I think it's rolling on both?
- My educational journey actually started in high school.
I guess you can say when my main goal was actually
just to graduate with a high school diploma.
However, that became an obstacle,
when I got pregnant in my junior year.
From there that ended up taking 27 years
to this point where I'm at.
- So here's my high school
that I attended when I was younger.
This is also where I met my husband.
I like to call him my high school sweetheart,
who is now my college sweetheart.
My son started in college
at the same time I started college.
It was pretty interesting because eventually all
of the kids were in college at the same time as me
and my husband.
I like to say we're all first generation students.
It becomes harder when there's four
of us, I'm having to pay for.
- In Arkansas, we have a good number
of first gen students at all our institutions
just because we are not necessarily
a bachelor degree state.
Finding ways to kind of elevate them
and help them be, you know
the first in their family to graduate college
which is a big deal and can really change generations.
Students who are not familiar with going to college
they may be unaware
that they need to pay for books and course resources.
And that is a huge shock to a lot of our students.
- If I had known what I know now as a freshman,
oh I would be looking at PDFs like nobody's business
because you know, the amount of times that you
don't actually need the textbook is insane.
Okay, yeah,
it's $300, but it's also $300 next semester,
and every semester for the rest of your college career.
I know that that's not a big amount of money
in the adult world
but when you're a college student that is like millions.
- Okay, so imagine you're a student from a low income family
and you're struggling to pay and you are stressed out.
Now you have additional responsibility to go and talk
to your professors saying, "Professor, I am poor,
I can't afford, and I need help."
- They've already kind of internalized that defeat
and that's a horrible way to introduce someone to college.
- So it's the late 1990's
and I'm teaching an electrical engineering course
at Rice and I'm looking out over my students
and I see they're super engaged students right at the front
but I'm also looking at the back, right?
And the students that, you know, tuning out
falling asleep, I needed some way
of having a much more flexible course,
and that just was impossible with a paper textbook
because a paper textbook was just like
off the rack learning.
In my research group we were switching
from proprietary software
to open source in particular to Linux,
and we became fascinated by how great it was.
How high quality it was and how it was free,
and then it was just a light bulb moment, right?
That, "Wait, why can't we do this for textbooks, for courses
for just learning in general?"
OpenStax is a non-profit educational publisher.
We're based at rice university.
And our mission is to improve educational access
and learning for everyone.
When students are deeply engaged with the material
in the course, they're more likely to learn.
And so what we're doing is infusing our digital versions
of our text with multimedia features, simulations, videos
and also machine learning analytics.
So that students don't just read about ideas on the page
but instead can interact with them
and receive continual feedback on their learning progress.
- The nice thing about open educational resources
is they really put the access front and center
and that drives the whole concept.
It kind of levels the playing field.
- You got it?
- If a professor can and are willing
to develop their course around
either a free textbook or even just a free resources
any way that they can,
you're essentially giving that student
in your class, every student in your class, a scholarship.
- By enlisting the help of village-authors, peer reviewers-
and then supporting folks to develop all the things
that you need for a high-quality textbook,
we found that we could develop really
fantastic materials and get them
into student hands relatively quickly.
And the main issue ever since we launched OpenStax
in 2012 has really been getting the word out.
- I reached out and talked to their news director who got us
in touch with whoever's in charge of scheduling interviews
which is awesome.
They're really excited about covering our campaign
which is awesome.
I'm really excited about that.
- I became aware of OER when I joined the textbooks campaign
because you know, a lot of people just don't really
understand what OER is
and what, why, how much that could benefit them.
- So that's like one
of our goals to raise more awareness.
We do something like a faculty canvassing
and we'd go and knock on the professor office and like,
"Hey if you have free time, we're happy to talk."
- We call them trailblazers at Uconn,
OER trailblazers.
If a professor uses an OER has created an OER
or has edited an OER
we think they're the best professor ever.
And we try and focus on them and highlighting them
so that students maybe will flock more to their classes
and incentivize those other professors to be like,
"Maybe I should be doing something along these lines too."
Utopia though?
All 1000 and 2000 level classes, OER.
We want students to not have to pay
for those gen ed courses.
If I could get those online for free?
Perfect.
- I do think that the more you know
about OER and what it can do
especially if you're in the student success business
you should be really interested in it.
You should be really exploring it
and figuring out how to make it work
for you because you're talking
about students that need that initial
win.
They need that initial, you know, you got this
you can do this.
You're here.
You got what you need.
Now let's get you goin'
and get you moving in the right direction
- It's been pretty neat going to school
because I've learned that I was very much more
capable of doing more than what I had envisioned.
It's amazing to think
that all these people are coming together
to try to help as best as they can, the students.
Their mission as an organization is what keeps me focused,
keeps me interested and keeps me wanting to learn more.
- The match between open source ideas
and education is perfect
because education is a fundamental human right.
Everyone should have access to knowledge
and the ability to learn that knowledge.
Moreover education is fundamentally a community enterprise.
Everyone has something to teach
and everyone has something to learn.