Inclusive Access for All

Abstract

Inclusive Access provides a framework for digital course material delivered via the learning management system (LMS) day-one to students. This platform assists instructors with selecting current, quality, affordable material, and supports learning analytics by providing engagement data in Canvas. The University of Nebraska Provost office has funded an initial series of grants to support open educational resources (OER) initiatives at the Lincoln, Kearney, and Omaha campuses for several years. The vast majority of these dollars went to incentivize faculty in the adoption of OER. The OER and Inclusive Access pilots are ready to mature into a service supported by Academic Technologies in ITS at the University of Nebraska. As the launch of the 2019-20 academic year, the services that began as pilots were ready for prime time, which was critical for scaling these services during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the Fall 2020 semester completes in a hybrid, de-densified environment, we have even more data to show the successful adoption of OER and Inclusive Access platform made a difference for both our students and instructors as courses moved online. Initially there was excitement about using inclusive access platforms to help save students money and provide content the first day of the semester. Now our faculty across the NU system are using OER in innovative ways to connect with their students. The Academic Technologies teams at the University of Nebraska will continue to gather feedback from the faculty and students we support, tweaking the services as need be. The initiatives have been successful, and we look forward to hearing from more faculty members who report: “it just works!”