The No Cost Pathway: Supporting Faculty in Going OER

Concurrent Session 8
Streamed Session Equity and Inclusion

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Session Materials

Brief Abstract

A panel representing the Center for Faculty Excellence at California State University, Fresno (an OpenStax Institutional Partner) discusses methods for engaging faculty in adopting and creating open license and no cost course materials.

Presenters

Lead Presenter: David Drexler, Fresno State

David Drexler is Scholarly Communication Librarian at The Henry Madden Library at California State University, Fresno. He received his MLIS at the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Library & Information Studies in 2008 and served previously as Systems Librarian at Eastern Oregon University. He is the library liaison to Fresno State’s Music department and a member of the Interdisciplinary Water Cohort.

Co-presenter: Mario Banuelos, California State University-Fresno

Mario Banuelos is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at California State University, Fresno. He is from the small, agricultural town of Delano, California and a first-generation college student. He earned his B.A. in Mathematics from California State University, Fresno (Fresno State), and obtained a Ph.D. in Applied Math from the University of California, Merced. His research interests include mathematical biology, optimization, statistical models for genome evolution, and data science. He currently serves as the OER Faculty Fellow for the Center for Faculty Excellence at Fresno State.

Co-presenter: Bryan Berrett, Fresno State

Since 1997, Bryan Berrett has served as a faculty member at Fresno State. He began his career serving students as a part-time faculty teaching in the Deaf Studies undergraduate program. He has been an advocate for the academic, professional, and personal development of students and faculty. In 2011, he was awarded the Provost’s award for Technology in Education for his innovative use of teaching pedagogy while leveraging a variety of tech tools. Currently, Dr. Berrett serves as the Director of the Center for Faculty Excellence at Fresno State. The center is designed to provide faculty support with a team of instructional designers, faculty-driven learning communities and faculty fellows related to the Open Educational Resources (OER), DISCOVERe mobile learning program, universal design for learning (UDL), accessibility using Ally, and course redesign with technology.

Additional Authors

Vera Kennedy, CSU Fresno

Vera Kennedy is a tenured faculty at West Hills College Lemoore and Lecturer at California State University, Fresno. She received a B.A. in sociology and M.P.A. in political science with an emphasis in public administration from Fresno State and Ed.D. in education with an emphasis in teaching and learning from Argosy University. Her research publications include A Career in Sociology (2019), Beyond Race: Cultural Influences on Human Social Life (2018), OER Student Learning Assessment (2017), #THINK: Critical Thinking about Social Problems (2017), Improving Undergraduate Student Understanding of Social Research through Service Learning (2013), and The Influence of Cultural Capital on Hispanic Student College Graduation Rates (2012). She is currently on the MERLOT Sociology Editorial Board and served as an OER textbook reviewer for the California OER Council (Cool4Ed). She received the West Hills Community College District Innovation Award in 2015 and 2016 for designing tablet courses and OER curriculum and currently serves as the OER Faculty Fellow for the Center for Faculty Excellence at Fresno State.

Extended Abstract

Since the 1980s the costs of textbooks has risen twice the amount of inflation. In some cases, students who cannot afford the price of textbooks are not buying required materials and relying on lectures, class notes, and the Internet to learn course content increasing the achievement disparity between the students who have access to resources and those who do not. As a result, there is growing interest among university faculty to adopt and create open education resources. In this session, our team (Director, OER Faculty Fellow, Librarian, and Instructional Designer) from the Center for Faculty Excellence at California State University, Fresno (an OpenStax Institutional Partner) will share information about our OER grant programs, professional development model, technology training, and other support and technology activities for faculty going OER.