Things have been quiet this winter as our teachers have worked hard with their students and the BYU team has been working hard on several projects. We are nearing completion of a paper that addresses the cost portion of what we are studying. It has been interesting to dig into the literature and data about costs associated with OER textbooks and traditional textbooks. We’ve also learned a lot about the textbook adoption process, how school districts pay for their textbooks, and a lot of other good, nitty gritty information.
We’ve also become interested in teacher empowerment and how this project relates to the ongoing conversation about it. Teacher empowerment has been a significant part of educational reform discussions for a few decades and there have been some interesting conversations about curriculum development and teacher empowerment as well as how much an empowered teacher can strengthen a school and its students’ education.
When we’re finished with our analysis of the costs associated with printing textbooks in our OER pilot study, then we hope to delve a lot deeper into student learning and teacher empowerment as both topics are very interesting and relevant.