Open Educational Resources

By Veronica J. Howard

Cost and access are significant barriers to recruiting diverse future behavior analysts. For example, up to 60% of undergraduate students skip purchasing textbooks due to cost (Florida Virtual Campus, 2018), jeopardizing their ability to learn the material and be successful in classes. Students also report that the cost of educational materials is a significant barrier to success, requiring them to choose between basic living expenses like rent and food or their course materials (The Hope Center, 2021), which has only been exacerbated since the COVID-19 pandemic (US PIRG, 2021). Free and openly licensed educational resources improve student success and retention, particularly among groups historically underrepresented in college (e.g., Fischer et al., 2015, Colvard et al., 2018).

Our volunteer-led community seeks to promote educational affordability by promoting the use of Open Access (zero cost) and openly licensed Open Educational Resources (OER) to better support students and promote diversity and inclusion in the field of behavior analysis.

Mission
The Open Educational Resources SIG aims to promote the adoption, creation, and dissemination of open educational resources in behavior analysis. We do this by providing educational events and opportunities to teach about the value of low-cost educational, training, and research resources. We also build community, providing a forum for OER creators to collaborate on new projects and highlight amazing new resources, reducing the individual workload required to create and manage OERs. We also work to disseminate news about OER and the empirical benefits of these resources within and beyond our membership.

Governance
Our community is currently led by Brian Middleton (Mindful Behavior, Bearded Behaviorist). Our board includes Ryan Sain (Mary Baldwin University/PsychCore), Tara Fahmie (University of Nebraska, Munroe-Meyer Institute), and Jennifer Haddock (University of Kansas). Our Scribe is Veronica Howard (Mary Baldwin University).

Events & Activities
The SIG offered eight new continuing education events during the 2023 calendar year:

January 26, 2023—Solving Today’s Ethical Dilemmas: A Values-Focused Approach featuring Kate Fox, BCBA & Barbara Kaminski, BCBA-D
February 20, 2023—Going Beyond the Code featuring Christy Evanko, BCBA & Kathy Matthews, BCBA-D • March 23, 2023—Affirming Practice in the Context of the LGBTQ+ Community: Professional and Ethical Considerations featuring Rose Froelich, MS & Rachel Potter, BCBA-D
March 30, 2023—Uncovering the Open Educational Resource: Behavioral Pedagogies and Online Learning featuring Adam Brewer, BCBA-D, Mirari Elcoro, BCBA-D, & Aura Lippencott
April 13, 2023—Relational Frame Theory and Acceptance and Commitment Training—The Basics and Connections featuring Scott Herbst, PhD, BCBA-D
May 11, 2023—”Wait, That Counts as Supervision?!” featuring Shauna Costello, MA, BCBA
September 28, 2023—Dissemination Dilemmas in the Pursuit to Post: Ethical Considerations in Content Creation featuring Jennifer Klapatch Totsch, PhD BCBA-D
November 8, 2023—Cultivating an Assent-Based Practice: Perspectives and Considerations featuring Janani Vaidya, MS, BCBA, IBA CE credit for all events generously sponsored by the Mary Baldwin University Department of Applied Behavior Analysis & Autism Studies. All of these sessions were recorded and are available for free for our members to access through our OER SIG member forum. SIG leadership also shared resources to the community, including links to related groups’ conferences, free-to-access webinars, and openly-published resources within and beyond the field.

2024 Goals
The community is gearing up for another year of timely CE opportunities. We are eager to recruit new leadership interested in developing and disseminating free-to-access and openly licensed resources to better serve our field.

Get Involved!
The OER SIG is open to any behavior analysts working in research, teaching, and practice who are interested in promoting the free and open dissemination of behavior analytic materials using open licenses. Students are very much welcome. More information about our free membership can be found at the SIG’s website:
www.openbehaviorsig.org/.