Digital Commons Network^™

Baby Steps To Big Impacts: The Evolution Of Library Involvement In The Textbook System, Amie D. Freeman, Tucker Taylor

Amie Freeman

This article will discuss how textbook support and open educational resources (OER) have become critical considerations in the evolving library landscape. For years, textbooks have been the purview of the teaching staff at our colleges and universities, but libraries can no longer ignore the high costs, both societal and financial, of the current textbook environment. Library involvement in the textbook dilemma has come in three phases: chosen ignorance, meeting the immediate need, and striving for sustainable solutions. We will discuss each of these phases and will detail the University of South Carolina Libraries’ involvement in the textbook system. We will …

Textbooks In Academic Libraries, Christine L. Ferguson

Cris Ferguson

Open Educational Resources For All? Comparing User Motivations And Characteristics Across The Open University’Situnes U Channel And Openlearn Platform, Ugur Demiray

Ugur Demiray

The conference programme reflects something of the sense of disruption that is steadily seeping into the pores of the higher education institutions of Europe. With that not terribly attractive acronym ‘MOOCs’ ringing in our ears (I much prefer the Spanish equivalent COMA, which rolls of the tongue with rather more grace), we might just be on the cusp of a period that will challenge ways of being and doing in universities that have remained remarkably stable for so long. And if we are at the beginning of a period of disruption, what does that mean for the special concerns of …

An Assessment Of Utah Resident Incentives And Disincentives For Use Of Opencourseware (Ocw), Anne Arendt

Anne M Arendt

This dissertation examines Utah resident views of incentives and disincentives for use of OpenCourseWare (OCW) and how they fit into the theoretical framework of perceived innovation attributes established by Rogers. Rogers identified five categories of perceived innovation attributes, which include relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability.

A survey instrument was developed using attributes that emerged from a Delphi technique with input from experts in the OCW field. The survey instrument was sent to 753 (n = 753) random individuals between 18 and 64 years of age throughout Utah based on information obtained from Alseco Data Group, LLC.

Results indicated …