This week, we hear from Agnes d’Entremont, Professor of Mechanical Engineering.
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What motivated you do adopt/adapt/create open educational resources in your work?
My first motivation was the high cost for students, particularly where multiple classes can require access codes and textbooks. Then I started considering the advantages for customizing course materials. In our program, we teach integrated courses where multiple subjects are combined in problems on tests. These types of integrated problems are just not available commercially, but we could create them on OER platforms.
Can you tell us about the open education projects you have been working on?
One major project I’ve been working on is developing WeBWorK online homework problems with faculty from across engineering. Practice problems are a key learning tool in many engineering subjects, and online homework systems (including paid systems) are popular because they let students get feedback right away. WeBWorK has a massive open problem bank for math, but had limited existing problems for engineering. So, we’ve built around 1400 problems across 7 engineering disciplines over the past three years that have been used in 18 classes. Relatedly, I’ve also been collaborating on an expansion to the MechanicsMap open online textbook (which I hope to adopt next year in my class), including adding WeBWorK interactive problems. And this year I started an open pedagogy textbook project in an upper year class. In open pedagogy, students complete coursework that builds up common resources (like an open textbook), rather than doing great academic work that only gets read by the instructor.
What benefits have you seen from using open educational resources in the classroom?
With WeBWorK, students get faster feedback, rather than a week+ to get marked homework returned, and they also re-attempt problems they got wrong. This kind of interactive practice is ideal for learning many engineering subjects. In my open pedagogy textbook project, the class produced by far the highest quality projects I’ve seen in five years of teaching the course. I think the students approached the task very professionally and very carefully precisely because their work was going to be part of a learning resource for others.
What was the biggest challenge you faced and how did you overcome it?
Limited faculty time and limited resources have been the biggest challenges. We’ve been able to obtain funding (TLEF, BCcampus) to hire some fantastic students who were instrumental in our WeBWorK project achievements. I’m hopeful that the new OER Grants at UBC will further help remove these barriers to developing and adopting OER.
Do you have any advice for other faculty developing OER?
I think the saying “perfect is the enemy of good” is apt – students can still learn a lot with materials that are not quite finished or not as polished as commercial versions, and I think they are willing to forgive much when instructors are trying to reduce costs and increase access.
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Thank you, Agnes, for taking the time to participate!
