Success Stories at SAIT

Watch this Saitsa produced video in which SAIT instructors share why OER is important to them and their students. Think about the extent that these examples might be applicable to your practices.

Attribution: “Textbook Broke” [YouTube] is posted with permission from the creator, the SAIT Students’ Association.

SAIT instructors have found many new and creative ways to incorporate OER use into their practices.  Open licenses have been applied to a range of materials, from textbooks to learning simulations.  Open projects have been used in the classroom, and for materials to support community and nonprofit activities. Overall, more than 52 SAIT faculty have engaged in open educational practices, improving the learning conditions of more than 20,000 students.

Dealing with Challenges

As we previously discussed in the Introduction section, faculty can face challenges when adopting OER for use in a classroom. Research^[1][2][3] has shown that instructors consistently report the following issues or concerns. Similar results were seen in a 2017 survey of SAIT faculty.  However, SAIT faculty feedback has indicated that some of these barriers have been reduced through changes to institutional culture, procedures, and practices.

Lack of Time

While faculty are often concerned with the time needed to locate and modify OER, there can be supports available.  At SAIT, we suggest that OER development work be incorporated into any ongoing curriculum maintenance or development projects, rather than as an external project. Additionally, faculty can contact their liaison librarian for help locating OER, or reach out to the OER librarian to identify supports for larger projects.

Lack of Expertise

Some faculty refrain from using OER due to fears of copyright infringement.  Others may not feel qualified to interpret the open licensing used with OER and therefore choose to avoid them all together.  However, these concerns tend to disappear when an individual or program has access to training and education. Activities such as OER workshops reduce these barrier and can make faculty more comfortable in considering OER use. Faculty can also contact the OER Librarian or Copyright Officer for assistance with these activities.

Lack of Compensation

It’s important to acknowledge that instructor time has value, and OER work should not be done for free.  Adjunct faculty are especially at a disadvantage as they are usually paid by the course and have no additional compensation for time it would take to locate or create OER.  Institutions should develop processes to include compensation in OER work, either in the form of time (release time for faculty or support staff time) or money (grants or contracts).  At SAIT, we suggest that interested faculty speak to their Academic Chair or Manager about incorporating OER work into their annual professional duties.  The OER Librarian can also help identify any external grants or funding opportunities that might be available. SAIT also recognizes the time and effort that faculty exert on these projects through awards such as the Athena Award from the student association.

Concerns related to Course Design or Content

OER availability can vary widely by topic.  Instructors in high enrollment programs and introductory core courses are more likely to find applicable OER resources than faculty that teach highly advanced technical concepts.  Additional challenges include committee-level adoption decisions, use of master course templates, a reliance on commercial online platforms (e.g., for homework) tied to new commercial textbooks, and the unavailability of ancillary resources such as question banks.  The solution to some of these issues may be time; one of the benefits of the grass-roots nature of OER development is that multiple organizations can work on filling gaps once they are identified.  For example, the development for open licensed homework platforms has been identified by multiple OER organizations as a high priority, with several new systems launching in 2024^[4][5]. For other issues related to institutional practices, such as centralized decision making for adoption decisions and course design, the solution is incorporation of OER into these practices.

Solving the challenges associated with OER is not a one size fits all approach.  Not all solutions will work for every program or course. While many of the issues presented here directly impact faculty, administrators must be fully engaged in implementing solutions in order for the institution to reap the benefits of OER use. Faculty, Academic Chairs, and administrators will need to work together to understand the unique challenges for their area and develop potential solutions.