Cultivating Textbook Alternatives From the Ground Up: One Public University’s Sustainable Model for Open and Alternative Educational Resource Proliferation

Authors

  • Jonathan Lashley Clemson University http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7713-4088
  • Rebel Cummings-Sauls Kansas State University
  • Andrew B. Bennett Kansas State University
  • Brian L. Lindshield Kansas State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i4.3010

Keywords:

higher education, sustainable initiatives, open educational resources, OER, Open/Alternative Resources, OAER, Kansas State University, K-State

Abstract

This note from the field reviews the sustainability of an institution-wide program for adopting and adapting open and alternative educational resources (OAER) at Kansas State University (K-State). Developed in consult of open textbook initiatives at other institutions and modified around the needs and expectations of K-State students and faculty, this initiative proposes a sustainable means of incentivizing faculty participation via institutional support, encouraging the creation and maintenance of OAER through recurring funding, promoting innovative realizations of “educational resources” beyond traditional textbooks, and rallying faculty participation in adopting increasingly open textbook alternatives. The history and resulting structure of the initiative raise certain recommendations for how public universities may sustainably offset student textbook costs while also empowering the pedagogies of educators via a more methodical approach to adopting open materials.

Author Biographies

Jonathan Lashley, Clemson University

Jonathan Lashley, M.A.P.C., is Director of Texts and Technologies for Clemson Online at Clemson University. He is currently working toward a Ph.D. in Learning Sciences with Clemson’s Eugene T. Moore School of Education and serves as an OER Research Fellow for the Open Education Group. 


Rebel Cummings-Sauls, Kansas State University

Rebel CummingsSauls, M.L.I.S., is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Center for the Advancement of Digital Scholarship at Kansas State University. She is a leader of the Kansas State University Open/Alternative Textbook Initiative.

Andrew B. Bennett, Kansas State University

Andrew B. Bennett, Ph.D., is a Professor and Head of the Department of Mathematics at Kansas State University. He is a developer and leader of the Kansas State University Open/Alternative Textbook Initiative. He received the 2014 Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching from the Mathematical Association of America.

Brian L. Lindshield, Kansas State University

Brian L. Lindshield, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Food, Nutrition, Dietetics and Health at Kansas State University. He is a developer and leader of the Kansas State University Open/Alternative Textbook Initiative. The OER he authored was a finalist for the 2012 Education-Portal.com People’s Choice Award for the Most Open Resource (note Education-Portal.com is now Study.com).

Published

2017-06-16

How to Cite

Lashley, J., Cummings-Sauls, R., Bennett, A. B., & Lindshield, B. L. (2017). Cultivating Textbook Alternatives From the Ground Up: One Public University’s Sustainable Model for Open and Alternative Educational Resource Proliferation. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(4). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i4.3010