On a Purely Personal Manner

My son Julius completed kindergarten. He is in a dual immersion program in which half of the kids are native Spanish speakers and half are native English speakers. This year, 90% of instruction was in Spanish.

The school put on a little completion ceremony. Each kid's name was read. They shook the hand of the principal, stood for photos, then all kindergarten classes together sang about 6 songs. Very nice. I will let you figure out which of the kids in this close up shot is my son Julius.

Summer 2019

This summer I've decided to go 100% OER in all of my classes. A relatively easy task for my US history courses, but slightly more difficult for my Mexican American history classes in large measure because I have only collected one OER textbook for Mexican American history and I prefer to use several in order to present a more balanced look for my students.

Nevertheless, I dug deep into the net and discovered a plethora of ancillaries, articles and essay collections that will dovetail nicely with the OER textbook A History of the Mexican American People by Julian Samora. The semester has not started and already I've received feedback from one of my Mexican American history students: "Thank you for not making us pay." 

This semester I had my students purchase just one book, an anthology put together by our department. The book is a quality piece of scholarship. And as the book is only available in an electronic format, the price is right (about $32).

But study after study, article after article, presentation after presentation hammers home the reality that food and insecurity and homelessness are two major issues affecting our students. Click the image to read a 2019 article on food insecurity.

However, $32 to someone who is struggling with food or housing insecurity is $32 that could be used elsewhere. So, I have decided to beta test going 100% OER in all of my courses through both summer sessions. US History to 1877, US History since 1877, Mexican American History to 1900, and Mexican American History since 1900. I found identifying sufficient scholarship for the first part of Mexican American history to be particularly challenging.

Towards the end of the this (Spring 2019) semester, one of students who had been struggling with housing issues (I introduced him to the Dean of Student Services earlier in the semester) launched a GoFundMe site in order to collect enough money so that he would not have to live in his car. He is an example of someone who needs $32 for other things besides a book that I probably can recreate with some time and thought. I already have collected the articles, essays and documents. All I need to do now is to write introductions to each. That is one of my summertime projects. Therefore, by this Fall I will have my own OER anthology. This was a project I had wanted to do. This homeless student of mine was the impetus to finally do it. Click the image to read a report on homelessness among college students.

$32 is not much, but its a start. If I can save every student $32 maybe I can get my colleagues to do the same. OER is spreading like wildfire across college and university campuses. It's about time that others adopt this method for a variety of reasons to include helping those who have to deal with food insecurity and possible homelessness.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.