An animal physiology Pressbook (OER) creation process, a synergistic collaboration with undergraduates and faculty

Abstract

OERs or Open Educational Resources have shown to reduce financial barriers in undergraduates by providing low cost or no cost textbooks. However, the potential OER textbooks available for a three-hundred level Biological Sciences and Natural Sciences majors Animal Physiology course (BIOLA310) at UAA do not align with the foundation of this course’s structure of homeostasis and core concepts in physiology. Thus an OER Pressbook was created by a former BIOLA310 undergraduate student for future students that mapped the course outline, utilizing the essential core concepts of Homeostasis, Systems Integration, and Scientific reasoning. This study explores current attitudes regarding OER usage of undergraduates enrolled in BIOLA310 as compared to undergraduates that were enrolled in Fall 2021 BIOLA310, when there was not an official OER textbook. Anonymous demographic data, including first generation student and pell grant status will be collected for all participants to explore any potential differences in OER impression based on student resources. Data will also be collected regarding the informational component of the OER pressbook that students engage with the most. Hypothesis: Students connected more directly with the material of the undergraduate created Pressbook OER’s, as compared to a previous version of instructor curated OER materials in Fall 2021, due to low cost, the information presented from a near peer, and how the textbook was designed for the course. Data will be collected by an anonymous qualtrics survey to protect the identity of the volunteers. Pressbooks, the web host of the Animal Physiology OER gathers Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and tracks relevant metrics, to compare student perception of use to actual use of the materials. Data will be analyzed to assess usage evaluated by financial barriers and perceived inclination due to the OER being designed by a fellow student. Supporting student learning from diverse perspectives, OER’s created with content expert faculty and undergraduate student interpretation might increase OER availability. By lowering the barrier of OER creation, then potentially more curated resources are created that resonate with near peer learning that will increase the diversity of learning viewpoints to support undergraduate students. Research reported in this publication was supported by an Institutional Development Award (IDeA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under grant number P20GM103395. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.