Item Detail
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Brigham Young University-Hawaii
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Located in Laie, HI
Urban
Serves a large group of Asian and Pacific Islander students
Private religious-based (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) -
3176
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0
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Governing/managing body: Library
Program partners
• Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT) -
Focus on course affordability
Leveraging library materials
• Physical course reserve
• eBook purchases
Focus on OER-enabled pedagogy in the CLT -
For BYUH “over the last three or four years rather than focusing on OER, I have moved to focusing on essentially material that can be lower cost.” This takes the form of the campus community asking what the library can provide through already existing means, and they “try to get as much as possible.” It is a matter of the librarians knowing what is out there for the faculty and connecting them to those resources. In addition, they use a physical course reserve and purchase eBooks for course texts whenever possible.
A new librarian with OER responsibility also partners with the CLT to work with faculty members in identifying and creating OER suited to their curricula. Training meetings and follow-up with interested faculty members were implemented this semester. This is part of a semester-long pilot study to determine what seems to work best with our constituency.
Though there is strong support from the library administration, there is currently no overt campus administrative support of OER or affordability. This includes no incentives nor discussions at that administrative level. Needed support also includes time and resources to develop (adapt or create) OER that is more “culturally responsive to the students that we teach.” BYUH supports a high number of Asian and Pacific Islander students and developing course content that speaks to those cultures is important.
Unfortunately, the issue of quality comes up on this campus. Said one interviewee, “The perception of OER is not the same quality as what you'd get from an established publisher.” But it also goes the other way. One participant commented on a textbook he used that “had a little thing right there [on the page] that said, ‘Press here to watch the video.’”
Ideally OER needs to be recognized on campus as a valid resource for course materials. That the faculty will have “the information and knowledge to make a better decision than they might have made otherwise.” Being such a small institution, it is reasonable to think of having collaborations that will facilitate OER use.