By Charlie Cecil

More college students are getting their education online in a new, hybrid learning experience.

UK hosted a series of guest speakers from across the country Wednesday in the William T. Young Library auditorium informing UK professors about making college a more digital learning experience.

Cable Green, director of eLearning and Open Education for the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, spoke about many issues concerning college students across the globe, not just at UK.

Green is pushing for schools to start making learning material for classes more open. He wants professors to be constantly sharing information they have to the rest of the world.

“We are developing a culture of sharing and receiving open educational resources,” Green said.

Green said the benefit of open education will be professors using more online journals to pass around and share information.

He said this could help put an end to the stress college students face when purchasing books each semester.

Most of the course content will be downloadable for what’s viewed as a more affordable price for students.

Green found in his research that textbooks account for about 25 percent of school expenses.

Green has served as the director of Educational Technology for the Ohio State University College of Pharmacy.

He said students at Ohio State are begging to organize boycotts against certain classes that require certain textbooks. If there are five math classes and three don’t require an expensive text but the other two do, those classes are being boycotted.

“By the time the book gets published it is out of date,” Dr. C. Darrell Jennings of UK College of Medicine said at the series.

Chris Huff, the senior vice president of worldwide sales at Echo 360, said the 21st century classroom is changing the way college students learn in the classroom all together.

Some college professors are pushing for classroom teaching to a hybrid learning experience. Students have a choice between strictly learning from a teacher online or in a physical class environment.

Online teaching could have the benefit of a new feature being tested right now called Lecture Capture. Lecture Capture is when audio is posted in addition to the slides.

“The use of this tool has reduced Ds and Fs by 20 percent,” Huff said.