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"Hersh believes there is another major factor driving the gap between retention rates in face-to-face programs and those in the rapidly growing world of distance education: the lack of a human touch."

"Open educational resources rate as one popular strategy, with 92 percent of faculty members and 97 percent of administrators saying instructors should assign more of them. Still, past research has suggested many faculty members haven't heard of OER or don't know where to discover open content. David Wiley, chief academic officer of Lumen Learning, said the report builds on previous findings about OER."

"with no existing online programs and a culture unaccustomed to rapid transformation, they weren't prepared for the challenge, Coleman admitted during a session last month at the University Professional, Continuing and Online Education Association's annual meeting. "Wellesley had no understanding of this market," Coleman said. "I'm not really sure that they had a full understanding of what this could be or what they wanted it to be.""

"However, it is individual faculty, not CAOs and CIOs, who make the decisions about course materials - and by extension, the use of OER materials in their classes.   And there is evidence that faculty are far less enthusiastic about OER than CAOs and CIOs. Drawing again from the 2018 Campus Computing Survey, just two-fifths (38 percent) of CIOs report that faculty at their institution "believe that the quality of OER course materials is about the same as comparable commercial products.""