‘An Enriching Experience’ – The adoption of OER websites to introductory Art His
‘An Enriching Experience’ – The adoption of OER websites to introductory Art History classes
Dr. Anne Dymond; Dr. Ken Allan; and Joerdis Weilandt
The Teaching Centre (TC) in a conversation with the Chair of the Department of Art, Dr. Kenneth Allan and the Board of Government Teaching Chair, Dr. Anne Dymond on their decision to adopt Open Educational Resources as assigned materials in introductory Art History courses. December 2018
TC: Thank you for taking the time to meet with the Teaching Centre today to talk about your approach to Open Education. As part of a campus-wide initiative, which started about two years ago and intends to raise awareness for the benefits of sharing pedagogical practices and openly licensed materials, we’ve identified educators who’ve championed open work on our campus. The interview today will fit in with the series of promotion of OER efforts because it’ll allow people to learn what changes you’ve brought to the Department of Art.
Ken: Before we start off to talk about OER in our Department of Arts, I would like to catch up with the campus-wide OER developments in the last two years.
TC: A direct result of the Open Education Working group efforts is the Open Access Learning Resource Fund, which became available to U of L educators at the end of 2017. 20 project applications went in so far and some of the projects results have already been put to good use in introductory courses across several departments. While the majority of those projects intend to replace for-purchase online homework question banks, some proposals also describe the motivation to create open websites and textbooks. Textbooks have generally been a concern to the open educators on our campus, who chose to adapt or create high-quality alternatives for their own courses as a response to ever increasing textbook prices and inconsistent matches of the materials with course outcomes. The impact of open textbooks on our campus is significant considering that students in multiple departments now use materials that are free to them and that have high overlap with what is being taught in their courses. We are currently running a survey to further measure that impact.
Anne: I am also curious to know how students in those departments access the open textbooks they use.
TC: The open textbooks are digital resources that can be accessed both online and in print, depending on student preference. Our bookstore offers assistance in the printing process if students wish to work with paper copies instead.
TC: What motivated you to adopt OER for your courses?
Ken: A while back, we ran into a problem with our Art History 1000 class, for which we had previously been using a textbook that had met most of our demands. This book, however, suddenly got discontinued a month or so before classes started, which forced us to look for an alternative. Trying to figure out what to use for a substitute wasn’t an easy matter, because there was no book that covered the specific time pe