Full Paper: Positive Effects of a Small Grant for Creation of Open Education Resources

Cherian Mathews

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Conference: Proceedings of the 2020 ASEE PSW Section Conference, canceled
Location: Davis, California
Publication Date: April 30, 2020
Start Date: April 30, 2020
End Date: October 10, 2020
Page Count: 8
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/36029
Download Count: 186

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Cherian Mathews University of the Pacific

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Cherian P. Mathews is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of the Pacific. He received a B.E. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Anna University, Chennai, India, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. Prior to joining the University of the Pacific in 2005, he held a faculty position at the University of Florida / University of West Florida Joint Program in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has also held visiting faculty positions at Purdue University and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

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Abstract

Open educational resources have been shown to have the potential to improve student learning outcomes while lowering student costs associated with curricular materials. ___________ University competitively awarded small grants of $2500 to encourage faculty to create or adopt Open Educational Resources (OER) to help reduce student costs or enhance the student learning experience. This paper outlines how the grant award was used to create open tutorial resources and lab materials that helped students independently learn to use the simulation software Simulink in conjunction with a Digital Signal Processing course. Students were required to review the OER materials and complete the lab experiments on their own, outside of class time. Having these tutorial resources available online freed up class time that previously had been used to demonstrate use of the software and to assist students as they completed lab exercises in class. The class time saved has been used for active in-class problem solving and for review sessions prior to examinations. The additional time available to work with students actively in class has had the salutary effect of improving student performance in the course (the class GPA has shown increasing trends after incorporation of the OER materials). Other positive effects of the OER grant are: (1) Student competence with Simulink is just as good when students learn and use the tool independently without consuming class time. (2) Student satisfaction with respect to the availability and effectiveness of the OER materials as measured by a survey is high.

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Mathews, C. (2020, April), Full Paper: Positive Effects of a Small Grant for Creation of Open Education Resources Paper presented at Proceedings of the 2020 ASEE PSW Section Conference, canceled, Davis, California. https://peer.asee.org/36029