Open Educational Resource Providers End Fight Over Attribution - Sean Cavanagh, EdWeek

A group of open educational resource providers have resolved a dispute over the proper sourcing and credit for the curriculum materials they’re creating for schools around the county.
https://marketbrief.edweek.org/marketplace-k-12/open-educational-resource-companies-end-fight-attribution/

COERLL OER Hangout April 2019 - University of Texas

Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning online orientation to OER and discussion.

http://www.coerll.utexas.edu/coerll/file/coerll-oer-hangout-april-2019

Open-source textbooks offer free alternative for UC Clermont students - Clermont Sun

Some UC Clermont College students are avoiding paying hundreds of dollars for textbooks — and getting the content for free — thanks to online open-source textbooks, a growing trend among faculty at the college and throughout higher education. UC Clermont Dean Jeff Bauer, who is also a professor of business, said the benefits of open textbooks are many. “All students have the book on the first day of class, it saves them a lot of money, and the information can be accessed anywhere, anytime, without carrying around a heavy textbook,” Bauer said. “They don’t need to visit the bookstore before or after each semester to buy or sell back books, either.”

https://www.clermontsun.com/2019/06/21/open-source-textbooks-offer-free-alternative-for-uc-clermont-students/

Excellence, Rigor, & Equity: How OER Fits into Montgomery College’s New Strategic Plan - Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources

Montgomery College is embarking on a new strategic plan to guide the College over the next five years. Titled MC 2025, the plan will serve as the overarching plan for other master plans at the College, including the Academic Master Plan and the Achieving the Dream (ATD) student success work. Specific strategies are identified to support each of the six different goals approved by the Board of Trustees:

• Empower students to start smart and succeed
• Enhance transformational teaching practices and learning environments
• Fuel the economy and drive economic mobility
• Build, engage, and strengthen community partnerships
• Invest in our employees
• Protect affordability

https://www.cccoer.org/2019/06/21/excellence-rigor-equity-how-oer-fits-into-montgomery-colleges-new-strategic-plan/

COLUMN: Thank you for investing in our students, campuses and communities - Barbara McDonald, Home Town Source

One-time funding of $500,000 will support funding for textbook affordability, specifically for developing and offering courses to implement the Z-Degree (zero-textbook-cost degree). The leveraged equipment acquisition program will receive an additional $500,000 in funds to support the acquisition of state-of-the-art instructional equipment for credit-based academic programs that produce graduates in areas of high-demand occupations. An equipment acquisition may be made using the appropriation only if matched by cash or in-kind contributions from non-state sources.

https://www.hometownsource.com/sun_post/free/column-thank-you-for-investing-in-our-students-campuses-and/article_19de871e-91ea-11e9-ab90-afe5c41ac731.html

Neguse adds textbook relief to Democrats' education bill Joey Bunch, Colorado Politics

Freshman U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse scored $5 million to help college kids avoid some of the high costs of textbooks. The money for an open-access textbooks pilot program was in an appropriations bill that passed the U.S. House floor Wednesday. Neguse's office said he also helped secure $1 billion for a federal grant program that supports students with disabilities. The $1 billion is included in the $13.36 billion Democrats hope to allocate the Individuals with Disabilities Act.

https://www.coloradopolitics.com/quick-hits/neguse-adds-textbook-relief-to-democrats-education-bill/article_d844e81e-92d6-11e9-bba8-4b11f76bc4de.html

Survey: Majority of Faculty Acknowledge that Textbook Affordability Is an Issue on Their Campus - Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

In a recent survey, 90 percent of faculty reported that textbook affordability is a concern for their institution. Yet just 40 percent said their school has a program focused on reducing textbook costs. That's according to the second annual FlatWorld Textbook Affordability Study, in which the learning materials publisher polled 786 faculty members at two- and four-year institutions across the country about their attitudes toward textbook costs. 

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/06/20/survey-majority-of-faculty-acknowledge-that-textbook-affordability-is-an-issue-on-their-campus.aspx

2019-20 Alternative Textbook Grant Recipients Named - Autumn Miller, University of Kentucky

The Alternative Textbook Grant Program provides UK instructors with assistance in finding or creating educational material that best suits their pedagogical needs and effectively reduces their students’ financial burdens. In past years, the program has saved over 5,500 enrolled students around $790,935 or about $143 per student.

http://uknow.uky.edu/professional-news/2019-20-alternative-textbook-grant-recipients-named

Commission on Higher Education focuses on making college more affordable - Evan Mealins, Alabama Political Reporter

The Commission is taking steps to lower textbook costs for Alabama students by holding workshops on campuses aimed at educating faculty members on the use of Open Educational Resources (OER). An OER grant program is in place to help colleges and universities replace print textbooks with online digital resources in high-enrollment, entry-level courses. The program, coordinated by the Commission and the Alabama Community College System, is expected to affect 18,000 students with savings over $2 million this year.
https://www.alreporter.com/2019/06/10/commission-on-higher-education-focuses-on-making-college-more-affordable-at-recent-meeting/

A road paved with open learning - Suzanne Day, MIT News

After graduating from college in India, Samip Jain spent three years of evenings learning online, taking courses on web development, data analysis, music theory — anything that sated his appetite to learn ... all while working full-time as a software developer for a health care startup. “Every night, I would learn something new,” he says. “I never want to stop learning and thinking beyond my limits.”

https://news.mit.edu/2019/road-to-mit-paved-open-learning-0614

Research on MOOCs: Current trends and taking into account of content - Babori, A., Fassi H. F., & Zaid A.; Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Networking, Information Systems & Security - NISS19

This study explores the research trends of MOOCs to gain a deeper understanding of the MOOC phenomenon. It also aims to question whether or not content is taken into account in these studies, especially those produced between 2012 and 2018. The analysis reveals that multiple frameworks were adopted to address research questions that essentially focused on learning processes, predictors of retention, learning experiences and course design. Our study also shows that content was little considered as a research object.

https://oerknowledgecloud.org/content/research-moocs-current-trends-and-taking-account-content

OER at the Enterprise Level - Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed

The State University of New York system has, with its sister City University of New York, become in many ways the center of the open educational resources universe, thanks in part to its size and in (larger) part to the state Legislature's recent multimillion-dollar investments in OER. On Wednesday SUNY took another step toward solidifying that role with an agreement extending and expanding its current relationship with Lumen Learning, one of the companies that has embedded itself in the open educational resources space to try to improve the quality and increase the usage of OER-based digital courseware.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/06/13/new-partnership-between-suny-and-lumen-aims-take-open?mc_cid=c877f98ba9&mc_eid=879d6835e3

EBSCO Faculty Select™ to Support Textbook Affordability and Student Success

Faculty Select makes it easier for faculty to search for OER content and streamlines OER discovery while providing access in one place. Faculty Select also allows faculty to search and request access to more than 150,000 DRM-free EBSCO eBooks™, in addition to DRM-free e-books from top academic publishers delivered on the publisher platform. Faculty Select enables faculty to communicate their curriculum needs to the library, allowing librarians to incorporate those needs into their e-book collection development process via GOBI® or EBSCOhost® Collection Manager (ECM).

https://www.benzinga.com/pressreleases/19/06/p13909616/ebsco-information-services-introduces-ebsco-faculty-select-to-support-textbook-affordability-and-s

Morgan State University has chosen panOpen, a learning platform that supports institutional use of open educational resources, to enable its faculty members to adopt and use OER, the company announced.


https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/deals/2019/06/12/morgan-state-use-panopen-open-educational-resources

A Guide to Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) - Michael Edison Hayden, Columbia Journalism Review

Open source intelligence, which researchers and security services style OSINT, is one of the most valuable tools to a contemporary reporter, because of the vast amount of publicly available online information. Reporters conducting OSINT-based research should aspire to use the information they gather online to peer behind the superficial mask of the internet—the anonymous avatars on Twitter, for example, or the filtered photographs on Instagram—and tell the story of the real, flesh-and-blood human beings on the other side of our screens. Every time we go online, we give up part of our identity. Sometimes, it comes in the form of an email used to make a Twitter account. Other times, it’s a phone number for two-factor authentication, or days’ and weeks’ worth of timestamps suggesting when a user is awake and asleep. Journalists can piece together clues like this and use them to tell stories which are of interest to the public. https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/guide-to-osint-and-hostile-communities.php

Open Video Repositories for College Instruction: A Guide to the Social Sciences - Michael V. Miller and A. S. CohenMiller, Online Journal

Key features of open video repositories (OVRs) are outlined, followed by brief descriptions of specific websites relevant to the social sciences. Although most were created by instructors over the past 10 years to facilitate teaching and learning, significant variation in kind, quality, and number per discipline were discovered. Economics and psychology have the most extensive sets of repositories, while political science has the least development. Among original-content  websites, economics has the strongest collection in terms of production values, given substantial support from wealthy donors to advance political and economic agendas. Economics also provides virtually all edited-content OVRs. Sociology stands out in having the most developed website in which found video is applied to teaching and learning. Numerous multidisciplinary sites of quality have also emerged in recent years. https://olj.onlinelearningconsortium.org/index.php/olj/article/view/1492/827

BC to bring several Career and Technical Education programs fully online next year - EMA SASIC, Bakersfield.com

Courses that will be offered online will also be available on campus. Additionally, each program will leverage Open Educational Resources to reduce the cost of textbooks and course materials to students. "Instead of paying $150 or $200 for a textbook, the textbook will be provided to students at little to no cost," he said. "This makes these programs even more available to students who have financial difficulties." https://www.bakersfield.com/news/bc-to-bring-several-career-and-technical-education-programs-fully/article_59794836-8714-11e9-a997-5726bb6f2004.html

How colleges are bringing back stopped-out students - Natalie Schwartz, Education Dive

Several headwinds — including sagging enrollment, diminished state support and a greater focus on student outcomes — are pushing colleges to bring back their stopped-out students instead of focusing solely on replacing them with new recruits.   At CUNY, officials have looked to ReUp Education for help bringing back some of its lost students. Through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the company selected the 25-campus system as the winner of a nationwide competition to receive its services for free. In exchange, the company gets to hone its reenrollment methods on some 20,000 former CUNY students who never finished their degrees. The results of the test, CUNY officials say, will be used to determine which strategies are best at bringing students across the finish line.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/how-colleges-are-bringing-back-stopped-out-students/556706/

MOOC Market Investigation Reveals Enhanced Growth during the forecast Period, 2018-2028 - Open PR

he Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) market is accelerating rapidly owing to the burgeoning need for highly economical and scalable open education to enable learners’ access education platforms across the globe. MOOCs have been witnessing immense adoption owing to the tighter embrace of virtual living by millennial coupled with cheaper Internet, which is likely to fuel growth in MOOC market in forthcoming years. However, the low completion rate of MOOC is expected to hinder the growth of MOOC Market. https://www.openpr.com/news/1768153/MOOC-Market-Investigation-Reveals-Enhanced-Growth-during-the-forecast-Period-2018-2028-Major-key-Players-Kadenze-Edmodo-Instructure-Inc-FutureLearn-Jigsaw-Academy-Udacity-Inc-Intellipaat.html

BNED and OpenStax Partner to Expand OpenStax Catalogue of Open Educational Resources - Business Wire

Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. (NYSE: BNED), a leading provider of educational products and services solutions for higher education and K-12 institutions, today announced a deeper partnership with OpenStax ™, the Rice University-based publisher of open educational resources (“OER”). Beginning Fall 2019, OpenStax will include the Business Law textbook from BNC OER+ (formerly known as LoudCloud Courseware) in its catalog of open educational resources, which are available to all educators at no cost. The expanded partnership between the companies for such content collaboration will further drive affordability and accessibility for students nationwide. https://www.argus-press.com/news/national/article_9f3671b2-74e5-56ce-86bd-7c24a5ae318b.html

Faculty members win UI Libraries OpenHawks grants - University of Iowa

The University of Iowa Libraries has awarded 15 grants for Open Educational Resource (OER) projects for the 2019-2020 academic year. OpenHawks is a campus-wide grant program that funds faculty efforts to replace current textbooks with OERs for enhanced student success. OpenHawks is one of five innovative, interdisciplinary initiatives funded by the annual Provost Investment Fund (PIF) from the UI Office of the Provost. https://now.uiowa.edu/2019/06/faculty-members-win-ui-libraries-openhawks-grants

UNESCO OER RECOMMENDATION: ONE STEP CLOSER TO ADOPTION, Cable Green, Creative Commons

On May 28, 2019, UNESCO member state representatives took an important step for open education by adopting the 2019 UNESCO OER Recommendation, providing unanimous approval to bring it to the next General Assembly. Member states and observer organizations, including CC, provided multiple edits including: improved OER and open license definitions; calling on member states to support the linguistic translation of open licenses; adopting high standards for privacy in OER, platforms, and services; and a call to facilitate open procurement. The final text of the document, with all of the approved edits, will now be created by UNESCO and will be published (TBD) prior to the UNESCO 40th General Conference in November. We expect the OER Recommendation to be approved and adopted by UNESCO member states at that time. http://infojustice.org/archives/41153

College Dropout Crisis Hits Mountain West By TENNESSEE JANE WATSON, KUNC

There’s a college dropout crisis in America. That’s according to a recent report from the New York Times and the Urban Institute’s Center on Education Data and Policy. They found that roughly one in three students who enroll in college never earn a degree. Lane said Wyoming and Idaho are working to better integrate K-12 and college curriculums, and Colorado is looking at ways to reduce the cost of textbooks and materials to make college more affordable. https://www.kunc.org/post/college-dropout-crisis-hits-mountain-west#stream/0

The soul-crushing cost of college in California, explained - Felicia Mello, Cal Matters

It’s not your grandparents’—or even your parents’—higher-ed system. A young Californian of the Baby Boomer generation, bolstered by the post-war economic boom and the state’s investment in public higher education, could often emerge from college with little to no debt and a clear path to a living wage and homeownership. Today’s California students, by contrast, graduate with an average of more than $20,000 in student debt. California offers more generous financial aid than most other states, but gone are the days of taking free college for granted. Studies show many students struggle even to afford food and housing. Some Cal Grants come with a stipend for books and living expenses, but at $1,672, it’s just higher than the average per-year textbook cost, leaving little left over for food and rent. https://calmatters.org/articles/california-cost-of-college-explained/

SUNY System Will Focus on Increasing its Online Presence - John G. Paul, IBL News

Brian Digman, new CIO of SUNY, whose keynote was titled “Disruptive technology arrives”, insisted on the importance of data to predict the future. “Data is the new oil, but data wisdom is yet to be revealed,” said during his remarks at CIT 2019. In addition, Tod A. Laursen highlighted the growth of OERs (Open Educational Resources) on SUNY, saving $16 million in course material costs. https://iblnews.org/2019/05/30/suny/

University of Colorado, FRCC exploring open educational resources for students - MADELINE ST. AMOUR , Daily Camera

Studies have shown that access to open educational resources— learning materials that are free and easy to access — can improve student outcomes in classes. As the new trend in higher education catches on, faculty and administrators gathered Friday at a statewide conference on open educational resources, or OERs, hosted by the Colorado Department of Higher Education at the Colorado Community College System campus in Denver. Speakers included University of Colorado system administrators and students. https://www.dailycamera.com/2019/05/31/cu-frcc-exploring-open-educational-resources-for-students/

Open-Access Monographs: New Tools, More Access - Monica McCormick, EDUCAUSE Review

Beyond the multiple options for creating and disseminating open-access books in new forms, OA monograph publishing projects are driven by the value of releasing scholarship in forms that are free and available to anyone. We are in an era of significant change in the United States and Canada for publishing open-access (OA) scholarly monographs. The bulk of OA titles are older or out-of-print works, many funded by the Mellon/NEH Humanities Open Book (HOB) program, which enabled free access to backlist scholarly works. Under that program, about 2,500 books from 28 publishers are now OA. Meanwhile, new OA-only book publishers are, together with traditional scholarly presses and libraries, exploring innovative business models and technologies. Precise numbers of new OA books are hard to calculate. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2019/5/open-access-monographs-new-tools-more-access

Best Sources for Free Digital Textbooks and More - Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

"Open" has become a definite thing. According to the latest public accounting, there were nearly 1.5 billion Creative Commons-licensed works in the world available for use in teaching and learning, including whole courses, textbooks, images, videos, quizzes, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, labs, games and simulations. Given that abundance of materials, it would be no surprise if you were to feel overwhelmed and unsure about where to start your search for free curriculum to use in the courses under your care. To help out, Campus Technology has developed this list of the best sites for obtaining free (and low-cost) digital textbooks. https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/03/25/best-sources-for-free-digital-textbooks-and-more.aspx

First Wave of Carnegie Mellon Learning Tools Now Available - Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

Carnegie Mellon University has moved forward in its efforts to release education tools into the world. Last week, the institution officially introduced OpenSimon, a community and collection of tools dedicated to "[catalyzing] a revolution in learning and teaching" for higher education and K-12. According to the university, the software that will eventually be made available under open source licenses represents an investment of $100 million in research and development. OpenSimon includes tools for multiple audiences: those teaching as well as those doing research or developing educational technology products. https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/05/15/first-wave-of-carnegie-mellon-learning-tools-now-available.aspx

Strategies for Improving Student Success - Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed

Certainly not all students can take a full course load. But facilitating earlier graduation can greatly cut the total cost of enrollment. Various curricular hurdles can block the path to graduation. Steps toward removing these roadblocks include: ▪ Awarding credit for relevant work and training experiences. ▪ Encouraging adoption of open educational resources and development of interactive courseware to reduce or eliminate textbook costs. https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/strategies-improving-student-success