Supporting OER Adoption
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Abbey K. Elder
OER programs tend to focus primarily on open textbooks and the cost of commercial textbooks in relation to open alternatives. However, ancillaries, also referred to as supplementary or supporting content, are also an important part of the course materials landscape. When a faculty member adopts a commercial textbook from a major publisher, the publisher often includes a range of supplementary materials, such as lecture slides, homework and test banks, notes, and other materials to help the instructor coordinate their course. In contrast, OER ancillaries may take many forms, from full courses pre-built with OER slide sets and test banks to freestanding materials that can supplement a course without an accompanying open textbook. In a study of barriers to OER use, Carson (2020) found that interest in creating and working with ancillary content was high:
“The most discussed barrier to using OER within the survey data was not being able to find suitable OER, making the creation of strategic high-quality OER with ancillary resources an obvious solution to the barriers faculty face. Faculty would like to create OER on topics that do not currently have quality OER available or add on to the material by developing ancillary resources such as slide decks and assessments” (60).
It’s important for OER program managers to have a good grasp on the ancillary content required in courses at their institution and how OER can meet instructors’ needs. In this chapter, we will discuss ways to find open ancillary content, some popular OER ancillary software, and low-cost commercial ancillaries that are available to supplement OER.
Types of Ancillaries
Ancillaries can take many forms, from static documents to interactive software. Below is a list of some ancillary types you will likely run into when talking about OER:
- Question banks: Banks of questions aligned to a course’s learning objectives that can be used to generate a quiz or exam for student assessment.
- Lesson plans: Pre-generated plans for guided labs, activities, or other interactive learning opportunities.
- Lecture notes and slides: Presentation slides and accompanying notes to guide and structure lectures around a specific module’s learning outcomes.
- Videos: Examples, animations, or lecture recordings that review one or more topics relevant to a course or module.
- Homework platforms: Automated systems for managing and grading practice exercises or other student assignments. These may be simple, grading against a basic answer key, or they may be more complex, and include adaptive learning tools. Adaptive learning tools provide multiple versions of the same type of question so students can get more experience practicing the concepts they struggle with while studying (Posner 2017).
- Workbooks and lab books: Text-based collections of lessons or labs that walk students through topics related to their course.
- Interactive content: Simulations, games, or other ac