Louis Mattar - S.H.A.P.E

1) What drove you to make the decision to switch to OERs?

I have yet to officially adopt an OER, but in many of my classes, I provide as much free and online supplemental material as possible. Students have numerous demands on their finances, and if I can reduce one of them, I will.

In a few classes I do not use a textbook, and instead have used freely available resources including government reports, published articles, videos, podcasts and other resources for course material. Over the past few years, one of the main courses I teach is Exercise Physiology. There isn’t currently an Open textbook available for this subject, but I have been using a custom textbook (still from the publisher) that strips out unnecessary chapters. Because I remove unnecessary material, it saves students a significant amount of money. Additionally, I have developed detailed notes for students and have curated numerous videos and playlists related to the material.

2) What was the biggest hurdle you overcame?

The front end prep is still one of the main obstacles. To replace a textbook means that you have to find, validate, curate and update material yourself. This can be very time consuming, but once you have done it, maintaining and adding to your repository becomes easier each year.

3) Where did you find the most support?

There are many online communities that share resources, I am not officially a member of any of them, but the internet is a powerful tool at our disposal. People who have positive attitudes towards OER generally like to share their thoughts and material. On campus, CIEL is a great resource and can help instructors or students locate resources. Finally, BC Campus is an excellent place to find available OER, Open textbooks, support and resources.

4) What would you say to other faculty about adopting open educational resources for their classes?

Take the plunge and do it. The benefits to the students are immense, and once you overcome the initial start-up work, you can have a really powerful set of resources at your fingertips. You could start small and adopt a custom text to reduce the unused content in the book. From there, you can collect material slowly over a few semesters, and before you know it, you can ditch your textbook and use OER’s instead.

5) What are your thoughts on using OERs since you made the switch?

I have yet to officially adopt an OER, but in many of my classes, I provide as much free and online supplemental material as possible.

I am a firm believer in OER and try to provide students with a variety of ways to consuming the course material. Videos, podcasts, government reports, published research and other online material can all be used to replace (or in my case, supplement) the traditional textbook. The quality of the material, and specifically the images, have improved recently, and I expect that this will continue in the future.

Original interview October 2018, updated October 2021.