Wichita State's OER Goals

  • Use the Open/Alternative Textbook initiative to encourage campus adoption of homegrown solutions.
    • Our goal is to grow the grant fund from $5,000 in the Summer of 2020 to $10,000 in Fall of 2020 and then $20,000 in the Spring of 2021.
    • As grant funds grow, our OAT-designated courses will grow too from 17 in Fall of 2020 to a goal of 50 in Spring 2021 and 75 in academic year 2021-22.
  • Continue to build awareness, expertise, and excitement within the faculty through campus support, training, and recognition
  • Work to build partnerships with other KBOR schools to create, share, and use Kansas-grown materials across the Regents System.

How Does OAT Work?

To understand how the Open/Alternative Textbook initiative works, consider this example:

A typical class of 40 students currently has a textbook that costs $100.  Right now, this class has a $4,000 cost to students. After alternative materials have been created and/or located, the course receives OAT designation and students are asked to pay a $10 fee but have no textbook cost. This leads to $400 of income that is then split 60/40 between the department the class is in and the OAT Grant Fund.  Departments can use these monies as they see fit: for example, the Political Science Department uses the money to help fund student scholarships. The remaining 40%, which in this example is $160, goes back to help repay the OAT Grant Fund.

In addition to examples like the one above, the OAT Grant Fund also receives monies from other OAT designated courses, whether or not the faculty member was supported by the fund in the creation of materials.

  • The OAT initiative launched in the Spring of 2020 and was based on a similar and successful program at Kansas State University
  • The program targets classes where it can make the most difference: large classes, General Education classes, and classes with very expensive resources
  • Seventeen courses were offered OAT designation for Fall 2020
    • This leads to a potential for up to $30,000 in student dollars saved, assuming an average cost of $100 per textbook per student
    • There is a potential for over $3,000 to be added to the OAT Grant Fund

In addition to cost savings, the OAT program has additional possible advantages including:

  • Guaranteeing accessible content
  • Supporting the development of teaching
  • Ensuring relevant content in Wichita State courses
  • Encouraging innovation
  • Keeping Kansas dollars in Kansas
  • Maximizing academic freedom for WSU faculty

Sustainability for  Students

A sustainable model for affordable resources needs to rely on multiple sources of materials. One possible future is to aim for a resource breakdown that looks like this:

  • 30% of classroom resources from Wichita State created (OAT) sources
  • 10% of classroom resources coming from other Kansas sources through KBOR partnerships
  • 20% of classroom resources coming from University Libraries materials
  • 20% of classroom resources coming from Open Educational Resource (OER) online repositories like OpenStax and OER Commons
  • 20% of classroom resources coming from traditional textbook publishers

Campus Support

The OAT program and OER in general are supported by offices across campus including University Libraries who assist with OER identification and curation, provide an OER web guide, and work directly with faculty through Subject Matter Librarians.  

In addition, Instructional Design and Access (IDA) provides OER support with technical assistance with integrating OER into Wichita State's learning management system, Blackboard.  IDA also helps with piloting new content and researching innovative ideas for classroom content as well as curating existing OER resources for busy faculty.

Our Outstanding Faculty

None of this success would be possible without the active participation and support of our outstanding faculty at Wichita State.  In addition to Fall 2020 OAT designees, here is a list of some of faculty who use OER and other free resources in their classes. Do you know of someone who should be listed here but is not? Please send their name to John Jones so they are included and recognized here:

  • Ken Pitetti
  • Dasha Shamrova
  • Moriah Beck
  • Charles Martin
  • Neal Allen
  • Leigh Jackson
  • Alexandra Middlewood
  • Zach Gearhart
  • John Perry
  • Carolyn Speer
  • Martin Ratcliffe
  • Dinorah Azpuru
  • Andrew Bowman
  • Hongsheng He
  • Leila Ballout
  • Patricia Morriss
  • Douglass English
  • Kevin Aliston
  • Kari Schmidt

Innovation for the Future

As Wichita State works to lower the cost of student resources through existing models, we are also striving to innovate in this space. Two Wichita State initiatives, the Kansas Accessibility Resources Network (KSARN.org)  and WSUBridges.org both provide free, online, on-demand educational modules that can be incorporated into any class on campus or within the state. Many of these resources are already being used on our campus as well at other colleges and universities.