OER journey

 When I tell non-teaching friends that there is this concept of OER out there in which students can use a textbook for free the reaction is logical:  why don't you do this?

Well, it's a lot of work.  My husband is not on board with OER because his concern is that when something doesn't work who is the tech support?  Currently, when something at McGraw-Hill doesn't work there is a whole team that I can contact.  They are very good at fixing what isn't working.

I've begun searching for Spanish material to use and I'm overwhelmed.  There's a lot out there and how will I really know it's good until I jump completely in?

This semester I'm noticing that the worst "pinch points" in my classes (especially in my online sections) are tech issues due to the complexity of using my online curriculum.  I can't help but think if I could just simplify the tech of my they have to do life would be better.

It would be less stressful.  They have to do online chats for spoken assignment grades.  The tech embedded in the McGraw-Hill product is super frustrating for students.  Some do fine with it but about 75% email me telling me it doesn't work.  I tell them to find work arounds and it seems recording their chat over Zoom and emailing me the recording is the easiest but they have to have a level of tech skill to do that.

There would be fewer roadblocks for them.  They have to read the ebook book for reading assignments.  A student told me "it's too many clicks" to find the assignments.  Hmmm.  As I'm looking at OER I have that at the front of my mind--what is the easiest to navigate so students can focus on learning the content?

It would be easier for me.  This semester I have 5 different sections all taking proctored assessments 7 times.  That's lots of setting up on my end and lots of things that can go wrong with students using Honorlock.  This is a hassle on my end because I keep fielding emails that should be sent to the helpers at Honorlock.  I finally figured out (thanks to students) a list of steps for using Honorlock for my classes for students to follow, but it's so complicated that many students get lost and aren't successful.  Yuck.

Yesterday I began looking through Merlot and found 2 Spanish textbooks that I could use for my 1411 sections.  I'm not naive enough to think that switching to either of them would make the world filled with unicorns and rainbows but maybe, just maybe the new problems wouldn't be as irritating as the current ones?

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