7 Texas
Michelle Reed
Course Marking Drivers
I’ve worked at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) for the last three years as Open Education Librarian and was recently promoted to the leadership team as Director of Open Educational Resources following a half-million-dollar investment in OER from university administration. It was in my first year as Open Education Librarian that the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 810 (SB810), which requires institutions of higher education across the state to provide searchable information to students about OER-only courses. A strong definition of OER was provided:
“teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that allows for free use, reuse, modification, and sharing with others, including full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.”
However, Texas was not given a very long implementation window. The bill passed in June 2017, effective immediately, with a compliance deadline of Spring 2018. We in higher education know a change of this scope, and impacting as many stakeholders as course marking does, takes longer. A recent survey commissioned by the Digital Higher Education Consortium of Texas (DigiTex) and administered in May 2019 shows only 59 respondents of the 158 two-and four-year institutions that received the statewide survey have a course marking solution in place. The findings were presented in Open Educational Resources (OER) in Texas Higher Education, 2019.[1]
Implementation
Locally, we implemented a quick and free solution that reflects the constraints of system capabilities, no financial support, and a local directive to vet every course to be tagged. Based on what was feasible in the short term and conversations with key stakeholders (i.e., registrar, early OER adopters, curriculum coordinators, student representatives, and the campus store), we incorporated an “educational resources cost” option into an existing “course attribute” drop-down menu under the system’s advanced search options.
The attribute is associated with one of two “values” (“free” or “low-cost”). The low-cost threshold was set at $25 for all required course materials based on informal student feedback and market information.
These filters are not easy to find when searching the schedule of classes, though placement in the course planner, which many students use, is more visible. Additionally, fliers distributed to students and advisors provide information about locating courses tagged as free and low-cost.
Still, the quality of this search feature hinges on the quality and timeliness of reported data. Due to limitations and inaccuracies in the campus store’s platform for course material submissions, Follett Discover, a separate form was created using Qualtrics and is maintained by libraries staff. Both unit