More and more faculty now use interactive homework and study sites as required add-ons to their textbooks. At the Library service desk in Iowa City (and I’m sure at the computer lab help desk at the Cedar Rapids campus) we help students daily to troubleshoot problems with sites like MyPearson and other similar sites from the major textbook publishers, so I know that they are heavily used. So it was only a matter of time before some clever and creative people got together and created a comparable service for OER or Open Textbooks.
David Wiley, OER pioneer and avid supporter, and his people at Lumen Learning have created just such a set of services, called Waymaker, Candela, or OHM, (depending on the type that works with your discipline or course). I was curious to see just how these worked so I scheduled a Zoom meeting demo of them last week with one of their reps. These have the same kinds of functions you’d expect in online courseware: easy access to textbooks chapters, assignments, study support, quizzes, videos, and much more. I know faculty will each have their own unique questions about it, but here are some Q’s & A’s to get you started:
What textbooks or courses are available in this system?
The complete Lumen Learning course catalog is here. Some textbooks have only Candela available, and some have Waymaker too.
What is the difference between the three different services?
- Candela is the most basic, with the textbook, interactive content, video, and the like. The cost is $10 per student, per semester.
- Waymaker is the next step up, with everything Candela offers, plus personalized study plans, easier communication and connection, and more faculty tools for assessment. The cost is $25 per student, per semester.
- OHM is courseware specifically for courses in mathematics and other quantitative courses. It’s a complete homework system with lots of feedback for students, plus faculty tools. The cost is $25 per student, per semester.
If this is an OER, why is there a cost?
All the courses listed in the Lumen Learning catalog are indeed open — they are free to use, to adapt, and to print or otherwise distribute to students. I encourage you to take a look, you may find that the free text is all you need for your students. (Yay!) It is the added online interactive courseware that has a charge, simply due to the extensive work and technical and educational design specialty needed to produce and upkeep the system. But like OER, most content of the system is customizable by faculty adopters.
Is it compatible with D2L/Brightspace (Talon)?
Yes! You’ll need to get the demo to see it in action, but it’s very slick. The whole content of the textbook as well as all the added features of the the site actually embed into the Talon environment, so it is a very seamless experience for students. Again, I was very impressed, especially after seeing so many students struggle with going to outside sites for their courseware assignments.
I encourage any faculty interested in this system to contact Lumen Learning for a demo, or check out their site for faculty where they outline the support they provide. The rep I talked with was very knowledgeable, and happy to answer all my questions. (And no, they aren’t paying me to promote this, I just think it’s wonderful!)
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