As a minority-serving institute, our goal is to increase student retention in the Biology major by creating an open educational resource (OER) lab manual. The Basic Biological Sciences II Lab is the 2nd semester in a series of required intro lab courses and is challenging because it covers topics on animal and plant anatomy and physiology. The previously paid manual was not well received by students, where many of the modules and experiments were not consistent with the curriculum. We created an OER manual that was specific to our curriculum. The primary goals for this project were to: 1. Create an OER lab manual; 2. Determine pedagogical evidence that the OER manual was similar to learning outcomes compared to the paid manual; 3. Increase the passing rate of students; and 4. Determine student perception of the lab manual. The results show similar or improved grades when using the new OER lab manual in comparison to the paid manual, with positive student perception of the new manual.
Attendees of this session will be able to:- Access the OER lab manual
- Learn about student perception of the OER manual vs a paid manual
- Learn about the unique demographics at our institution
- See grade comparisons from the OER manual to prior semesters
