Radiation Safety (NDT 130) is the first in a series of Industrial Radiographic Testing classes taught at Linn Benton Community College (LBCC) in Albany, Oregon. 40 hours of Radiation Safety training is required of any individual working with x-ray and Gamma radiation sources in industrial radiographic testing, including industrial radiographic inspection students. NDT 130 is part of LBCC’s two-year Associate of Applied Science program in Non-Destructive Testing (NDT). The purpose of this OER is to provide students with a comprehensive textbook aligned with the NDT 130 course as taught at LBCC. NDT 130 is taught in accordance with ASNT, SNT TC-1A recommended practice and topical outline following ANSI/ASNT CP-105 2016 guidelines (page 63) for Basic Radiographic Physics Course and Appendix A (pages 113-114) for Radiation Safety topical outline.
In this action research project, the benefits and challenges of using Open Educational
Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) were examined for the CS120 Digital
Literacy course at the LinnBenton Community College (LBCC) in Albany, Oregon. Two types of
research data were gathered, quantitative and qualitative.
The quantitative data were based on the end-of-quarter metrics for the six established
CS120 course outcomes (see appendix A). The participants for the quantitative data are the
students from the eighteen CS120 sections which were taught during the 2016 calendar year
(winter, spring, and fall). While the ten winter and spring CS120 sections used a publisher
textbook and companion website material, the eight fall CS120 sections used OER material.
For the qualitative data, a student questionnaire was used (see appendix B). The
participants of the qualitative data are the twenty-eight students in my two fall CS120 sections
which read and signed the Student Consent Form (See appendix D).
The findings of this study indicated:
1) The quantitative data, based on course outcomes, were very positive. The data revealed
that all six course outcomes improved in the fall quarter and each student saved $162 on
textbooks.
2) The qualitative data, based on a questionnaire, were also positive. The majority of the
students stated that the OER-based course is well structured, accessible, easy to use, and
the content covers all six course outcomes. One concern is that 57% of the students stated
they missed having a physical textbook.