Story Through Word and Image

Purpose: to help other instructors teaching the same course

Common Course ID: Theater Arts 104
CSU Instructor Open Textbook Adoption Portrait

Abstract: This open textbook is being utilized in a theater arts course for undergraduate students by Troy Lescher, PhD. at Humboldt State University. The open textbook provides a thorough look into every aspect of making a low- or no-budget documentary. The main motivation to adopt an open textbook was to save students money. Most students access the open textbook in Canvas as a .pdf download.

Course Title and Number - TA 104 (4) Story Through Word & Image. Course Catalog.
Brief Description of course highlights:  Give description of course utilizing the course catalog at the educational institution if available.

Student population:  The class is for Theater Arts majors, but it also meets the lower-division GE Area C requirement, so not every student may be a Theater Arts major. It’s an entry-level course for both TA majors/minors as well as for people taking it for their GEs.
Learning or student outcomes:  

1. Discover the place and power of narratives in life, culture, and society
2. Construct narratives in theatre and film and Differentiate storytelling tools among these two artistic forms

3. Analyze and Evaluate narratives including their inherent elements (and function), affect and artistic excellence
4. Demonstrate skills including critical-thinking, creative-thinking, problem-solving, and teamwork.

Key challenges faced and how resolved: A lot of faculty members have to face the question, one with unique answers across each discipline is “how do I stay current?” and Lescher tackles this by supplementing his class materials with free New York Times articles at no cost to the students. In other words, if OER textbooks haven’t caught up to the conversation yet, there are other free ways to supplement the students’ education.

Textbook or OER/Low cost Title: Visual Storytelling: The Digital Video Documentary

Brief Description:  The textbook explores how to create documentary films without a budget, going into not only what to do from a practical standpoint but also what to do from an ethical standpoint. 

Authors:  Nancy Kalow
Student access:  It’s available on Canvas and MERLOT as a .pdf.

Supplemental resources:  I supplement the textbooks and OER materials with free news articles that I put on Canvas. I also invite students to do the same.

Cost Savings:  Most of the textbooks required before switching to OER cost between $20-50 for his students.
License: Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported License

OER/Low Cost Adoption Process

Provide an explanation or what motivated you to use this textbook or OER/Low Cost option. I started adopting OER after attending an OER workshop. I assign a lot of older plays and texts for my students, and the OER workshop helped me question the practice of charging students for texts thousands of years old.

How did you find and select the open textbook for this course? ? I searched through all sorts of OER repositories like MERLOT and HathiTrust. I also went through the HSU ecatalog.

Sharing Best Practices: "If you know someone else who is using OER in their class, they might be willing to direct you to where they found their resources—nothing wrong with asking your help/working with your peers."

Share any curricular or pedagogical changes that you made: Because I have access to all of these free textbooks, it now gives my students more choices. I may assign two different readings for homework but give each student the choice between which one they’ll read.

Troy Lescher, Ph.D. 
Humboldt State University

TA 104 grading aims to be a student-centered process. Typically, students will determine point values of assignments in advance and develop grading rubrics for major projects.  Students will also assess and self-score their assignment submissions by reflecting on: their ability to follow assignment instructions, their overall commitment to the assignment, and the quality of their submission.