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Highlights and Key Takeaways

See the Q&A below for key takeaways from Guy, Karen, and Andrew’s roundtable conversation:

Q. As you were looking to transition to OER, what drew you to Lumen’s Waymaker courseware, and what problems were you trying to address?

University of Mississippi, like all universities, has a unique local situation, and so creating something that was really made for specific students and teachers was a priority. The flexibility and adaptability of OER content was a way to address the needs of the local, educational community without the barriers of copyrighted or license-heavy textbook materials.

Waymaker’s overall approach to adaptive learning was attractive because it took a minimalist approach and what it did well, it did really well. It just doesn’t overburden you with unnecessary data and technological hurdles.

Q. How did setting up the course and working with Lumen go?

The goal of setting up the Writing courses at Ole Miss was to “level-out” the playing field for students and bridge the gap between students who are coming into a course well-prepared and  underprepared. This means incorporating content that is essential to both groups of students. The beauty of working with Lumen’s tools compared to using a traditional textbook is that many exercises are embedded into short readings: so students are able to practice the concepts as they are reading through them.

Q. How is this [Waymaker] compared to what you have used previously and how are your students responding?

The experience using Waymaker has been very positive [anecdotally], and provides faculty and students with information that they need to stay well-informed in their courses. In the past, it wasn’t possible for students to access all materials within one LMS, and now that they are able to do so, it makes the learning process more streamlined.

Q. Do you have any advice for faculty who are considering adopting OER materials?

Take time to consider your local situation when adopting OER and don’t invent problems that don’t exist. Think through where there are actual gaps that need to be filled. It’s helpful to talk with faculty members outside of your own discipline to see how what they are doing with OER might or might not fit into what you would like to achieve with adaptive learning. Finally, getting faculty and students together to identify trouble spots and ensuring that whomever you are partnering with understands your needs, will guide you in the right direction. For us, we’ve had a lot of great support from the people at Lumen.

“…I love [OHM] and I hope I never have to use anything else again!”

Libby Watts, Professor of Mathematics, Tidewater Community College

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Highlights and Key Takeaways

See the Q&A below for key takeaways from Matthew and Libby’s roundtable conversation.

Q: What issues were you looking to address when deciding to adopt OER?

Beyond increasing access and affordability to high-quality course materials for students, there is a need to empower faculty with the freedom to customize their courses to best fit the student learning process.

Q: What are some of your favorite tools in OHM?

Lumen-supported OHM courseware allows faculty flexibility of design and the ability to integrate course content into a single LMS platform. Faculty can organize, customize, and delete modules where appropriate, add as many assignments as they would like, and ensure that there is minimal confusion between what students see on homework versus what they see on quizzes and exams.  Furthermore, its user-friendly and easy to create and edit questions within the platform.

Q: How’s it going, and how have students responded to the courseware?

Overwhelmingly, students say that they enjoy the platform and over 90% would recommend it to other students due to ease of navigation and low cost.

Q: How does it compare to what you were using previously?

Using a large publisher’s LMS in the past provided students access to help and grading papers became automated, but this alternative was expensive and faculty still needed to use a separate LMS platform to upload certain course materials, such as syllabi.

Q: What advice do you have for faculty who are considering adopting Lumen-supported courses such as OHM?

Start as soon as possible. If you’re not sure where or how to begin, start with one course and see what you think.

“…I’ve had students say, ‘I wish all of my classes were like this!’ and how easy and affordable it is…”

Julie Lazzara, Professor of Psychology, Maricopa Community College

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Highlights and Key Takeaways

See the Q&A below for key takeaways from Katherine and Julie’s roundtable conversation:

Q. What are some of the issues you were wanting to address when deciding to adopt OER resources?

For many institutions, access and affordability remain prevalent issues for students.  By addressing problems such as high textbook costs and saving students money, students are more readily able to engage in the learning process.

Q. What are your favorite aspects about the Waymaker courseware?

Lumen’s Waymaker courses foster great student learning through clear learning objectives and “try-it” sections, pre-tests and post-tests before and after each learning goal, and short, engaging content with embedded videos and audio. The email communication tools allow for positive student/instructor interactions, and all grades are stored directly in the the LMS gradebook. Moreover, courses are seamless and easy to deploy. They are also customizable to fit specific needs.

Q. How does this compare to other materials that you’ve used in the past?

Waymaker brings in the engagement piece that many faculty members are seeking when looking to redesign their courses. It provides all of the materials students need from the beginning, with interactive content that’s fully integrated into the LMS with no technical issues.  With other publishers, technical issues were a regular problem, content was not fully integrated, and students needed to a lot of instruction on how to use the system.

Q. What advice do you have for faculty members who are considering adopting Lumen-supported courses such as Waymaker?

For faculty who are considering Lumen-supported courses such as Waymaker, getting the word out and having others understand what it is and how it works can help further adoption.  It’s best to just jump in and see how it goes.  You really don’t have much to lose because of the low cost and, for the price, you get a wide range of resources available to both the instructor and the student.

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Highlights and Key Takeaways

See the Q&A below for key takeaways from Dave’s roundtable conversation:

Q. What are some of your favorite learning tools in the Waymaker Statistics course?

The Waymaker tools allow students access to interactive assignment modules to better understand course concepts. The interactive structure encourages students to go back and study areas that they may be struggling in. The content also tries to address how well students are doing by having them self-test and provide their level of confidence in their responses. What’s more, all of the statistical data provided in the course is based on real life situations and is regularly updated. Automated messaging tools are also pushing students to improve their grades and do better on quizzes.  

Q. How has working with Lumen been compared to other publishers?

It’s been great, and my experiences with Lumen have been remarkable.  Errors or problems that happen to come up are immediately addressed in a quick and timely manner.  

Q. What are you getting back from students in terms of how they are liking the courseware?

Student success rates and affordability have improved immensely.  In analyzing a sample of 522 students, students saved from $62,000 to $114,000 in textbook costs and success rates in Introduction to Statistics has gone up 13% since switching from paid textbooks to OER materials.

Q. Do you find that the courseware improves students’ conceptual understanding of statistical content?

The courseware does engage students’ understanding of statistical concepts by applying real-life data from Gallop surveys, Census data, etc., and making it interesting and applicable. This is one of the reasons students are reading more of the materials and interacting with the content on a regular basis.

“…[Lumen] has been fantastic, I had a Waymaker-related question this morning and by the time I got out of class an hour and a half later, I had a response.”

Wendy Wright, Professor of Business, Cerritos College

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Highlights and Key Takeaways

See the Q&A below for key takeaways from Wendy’s roundtable conversation:

Q. What problems were you wanting to address when switching to Lumen’s OER materials?

For Cerritos, the Business Department had already made the decision to shift to OER to improve affordability and ensure all students have access to the text. With that in mind, the biggest problem to address was the need to find OER materials that were updated regularly and stayed relevant. In the past, OER books were becoming outdated because they weren’t maintained really well by publishers. No one was making consistent updates to the text.

Q. Since switching to Lumen’s Waymaker courseware, how has the experience been going for you and your students?

Lumen course materials are much more robust than traditional e-textbooks, display a high-quality format, and are updated regularly.  The Waymaker courseware is seamlessly integrated into your local Learning Management System (LMS) and the personalized messaging tools allow instructors to automatically reach out to students throughout the course. Because of this, students who are being introduced to the courseware for the first time find it easy to navigate.

Q. How has your experience been when working with Lumen compared to other publishers?

It’s been fantastic. Lumen is great about responding quickly to any questions you may have about the course and they are a helpful resource. It can often be difficult to receive that level of response from other publishers.

Q. What advice would you give to faculty considering adopting Lumen-supported courses such as Waymaker for Business?

For faculty who are considering Lumen-supported OER courses such as Waymaker, understanding the tools and resources available in the courseware, such as the ability to customize content and the automated messaging tools, can enhance the student learning experience and promote a strong instructor/student relationship.

“…We have seen an increase in overall student success, with 10% less students dropping and a 6% increase in students finishing a course with a C or better…”

Linda Williams, Professor of Business, Tidewater Community College

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Highlights and Key Takeaways

See the Q&A below for key takeaways from Linda’s roundtable conversation:

Q. What are some problems you wanted to address when deciding to adopt OER resources?

While considering the needs that students have for affordable textbooks and course materials, there is also an emphasis on addressing issues of “Day 1 Access,” or in other words, enabling students to have full access to all materials they need to succeed in a course by the first day of classes. In addition to this, an ever-growing concern is how to acknowledge this idea of a “stale” textbook, and replace it with content that truly engages students.

Q. What do you really like about the Waymaker business courses and why should faculty consider them?

One of the benefits of Lumen-supported Waymaker courses is that full-time and adjunct faculty can easily go into pre-populated courses with discussion boards, quizzes, assignments, etc. ready to go, while having the ability to customize and select aspects of the course that best suit their needs.  This creates consistency across all sections, yet allows faculty the freedom to make the course their own. The faculty messaging tools also allows instructors to send students automated, customized messages to congratulate them on a job well done (such as a good score on a quiz) or to nudge them to study a bit more.

Q.Do you have any advice for faculty who are looking at adopting this course or other Lumen materials?

Students have everything built into the courseware: formative/summative assessments, textbook, videos, exercises, etc. Take time to look at the amount of interactive content that is provided in the course and really examine the functionality of the faculty messaging tools when developing your student engagement plan. In addition, the interactive content contains high-quality, professional videos. Really consider looking at where those videos can support student learning.