Editors Note: Amy B. Smoyer reflects on the process of reviewing existing OER content in order to find suitable course materials, and the role of the CT OER Grant in this process.
Author:
Amy B. Smoyer, PhD, Associate Professor, Southern CT State University
Open Educational Resource (OER) textbooks are still rare in the field of social work, and so it is exciting to find a book that aligns with an existing course. However, it is entirely possible that, upon review, the OER does not merit adoption. So then what happens? As a community, we want to encourage this type of resource development and share accolades with our colleagues who volunteer to write OER books. Harsh open criticism may discourage people from creating new resources. However, for some OERs, the points of weakness outweigh the strengths. Learning how to give and receive constructive criticism is a trial for all academics, and the process of reviewing OERs is no exception. Utilization of review criteria produced by OER scholars can help to navigate the review process. In this post, I will share two experiences considering OERs for adoption into our social work curriculum at Southern Connecticut State University’s Department of Social Work.
I first learned about OERs at the 2019 annual conference of the Association of Baccalaureate Social Work Program Directors (BPD) Conference. Dr. Matthew DeCarlo, author of Scientific Inquiry in Social Work, organized a panel about OER resources and shared his experience developing the text. The book was designed for use in the social work undergraduate research methods course, which I had been teaching since 2015. After hearing about DeCarlo’s project, I visited the website, read the book, and quickly decided to adopt the text. During the COVID epidemic, I learned about Perusall, when searching for tools to facilitate virtual learning. This is an excellent platform for sharing OER texts that allows students to engage in collaborative reading. The DeCarlo book, delivered via Perusall, continues to be a central element of my research methods class that is consistently appreciated by students and hailed as instrumental to their learning.
In considering this book for adoption into my class, I did not conduct a systematic review of the book. My process was simply to read the book and then decide to adopt it. This was an easy decision for me – the book was excellently written, super organized, relevant to social work practice, infused with social justice, and comprehensive. The positive feedback I received from students on course evaluation surveys further endorsed this decision. At the time that I was reviewing the book, I was unaware of the evaluation rubrics that had been developed within the OER community. A colleague and I shared our experiences with DeCarlo’s OER at the 2021 BPD Conference and we wrote an article for a peer-reviewed journal to share our practice more broadly. We created a website that offers course plans and classroom activities that can accompany the DeCarlo book. In short, this OER endorsement focused on our lived experiences teaching with book, rather than specific evaluation of its contents.
Buoyed by this positive experience, I became interested in identifying other OER texts for the courses that I teach. Specifically, I searched for a book that could be used for our Introduction to Social Work course. The textbook that was used for this course was expensive and unpopular among the students. Many students did not purchase the book, which complicated the teaching process as students’ preparation for the class varied. Our department wanted to increase enrollment in this course and had also begun to offer the course at a local high school through our university’s pre-college program. It seemed like eliminating the costly textbook would improve the course’s accessibility.
At the time, there was only one existing OER text for this content.1 Our undergraduate social work faculty submitted a Review Grant to the Connecticut Open Educational Resources Grant Program and received support to evaluate the OER’s suitability for adoption. This grant required that we provide a written review of the book that would be posted on the GoOpenCT website and referred us to the Open Textbooks Review Criteria written by the BCcampus. This rubric was extremely helpful in structuring this review, especially given that we were working as a team. Each faculty member was assigned 1-2 chapters for which they prepared a summary review using the ten criteria recommended by BCcampus. We then met as a group to discuss the chapters. Our summaries of the strengths and challenges of the book’s content were very consistent. Most chapters met only four of the ten criteria. We quickly reached a group decision to not adopt the book.
Utilization of the BCcampus rubric during this group review process allowed us to specifically identify the positive features of the book and where the authors had fallen short. This team-based articulation of the book’s strengths and weaknesses was helpful in several important ways. First, I used the team’s feedback to write a book review that reflected the group’s deliberations, rather than writing from only my perspective. By incorporating the feedback of multiple people, the review has greater validity. Second, our feedback may better inform improvements to the text because it reflects the priorities of a rubric which was developed by the OER community. Third, our group conversation allowed us to better understand what features we should be looking for when identifying resources for the course. We decided to remove the required textbook from the syllabus and replaced it with peer-reviewed journal articles, website, podcasts, and online videos, all of which are available to our students at no cost through our University’s library or public websites.
This post describes two ways to review an OER textbook: an individual practice-based endorsement and rubric-based group review process. Peer review is essential as constructive criticism and praise can help to improve all our work. An individual endorsement based on practice experience is an enthusiastic, albeit vague, tool for sharing feedback about an OER. Alternatively, a rubric-informed group analysis produces information about the OER that can be used to improve the text and inform the deliberations of other instructors who are considering the OER for their courses. Rubrics can be particularly useful in justifying critical feedback, by aligning input with generally accepted criteria, and they can also help with positive reviews by allowing audiences to fully understand the strengths of a resource and determine if the OER will meet their needs. As social scientists and scholars, we are constantly seeking to share ideas, build knowledge, and improve our practice. Honest and specific inputs are a key part of the scientific process and the development of OER materials.
1. In the last year, another OER text for this class has been released (Cullen & Cullen, 2022).
Amy B. Smoyer, MSW, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Southern Connecticut State University who teaches research methods and macro social work. Her program of research examines women’s lived experience of incarceration and the impact of this experience on health outcomes related to HIV care and prevention, food justice, bladder health, housing stability, and psychosocial wellness. Current projects include SHAWN, a NIH funded project about the impact of criminal legal changes during COVID-19 on the HIV risk behaviors of justice-involved women who use drugs.(NIDA/NIH 1R15DA056285-01, PI Smoyer). For more information about her practice, please visit: www.amysmoyer.com
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