FACULTY AWARDED GRANTS FOR OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE (OER) ADOPTIONS - Linda Hauck, Villanova

The Affordable Materials Project is pleased to announce the recipients of the OER Faculty Adoption Grant.  This pilot grant, generously funded by the Associate Vice Provost of Teaching and Learning, is designed to encourage faculty to select free, openly licensed textbooks as primary teaching materials. OER improve affordability and support flexible, open teaching practices, and accessibility, which has become critically important during the COVID-19 pandemic.
https://blog.library.villanova.edu/2020/08/17/oergrants/

Traction Around Open and Affordable Learning Materials Builds in Ontario - Sparc Open

Just why support for Open Educational Resources has taken off in Ontario is a matter of need, timing, and relationships. As Canada’s second largest province, Ontario has 45 universities and colleges that are diverse and geographically spread out.  OER appeals to educators who are looking for ways to be efficient, innovative and share resources. There, like everywhere, students are facing rising textbook costs and they are eager to save money using digital materials.

https://sparcopen.org/news/2020/traction-around-open-and-affordable-learning-materials-builds-in-ontario/

WHAT ARE OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES? - Pace University

Open Educational Resources, or OER, are an increasingly viable way of reducing textbook costs while providing course materials with the proper and necessary academic rigor. Learn more about the many positive benefits of OER, and how to implement OER resources into your course(s).https://www.pace.edu/mypace/what-are-open-educational-resources

OER Project (Facebook)

Passionate about teaching history? Awesome. OER Project is a family of free, online history courses for middle and high school classrooms everywhere. Students relive the past, rethink the present, and reimagine the future. History becomes usable.
https://www.facebook.com/OERProject/

Tarleton Joins OpenStax in Promoting Free, Flexible Textbooks - Tarleton State News

Tarleton State University announced it is one of 12 schools chosen to join the 2020-2021 OpenStax Institutional Partnership Network. As a participant Tarleton will work to encourage greater use of free, flexible textbooks among its faculty and students. Participants in the network’s first-year program will receive individualized consulting and join a cohort of colleges and universities advocating widespread use of OER. On average, institutions that join the network increase the number of students impacted by OER by 158 percent after completing the first year. The program says OER has generated over $20 million in student savings.
https://theflashtoday.com/2020/08/17/tarleton-joins-openstax-in-promoting-free-flexible-textbooks/

Commentary: A revolutionary alternative to expensive college textbooks - Rafael Castillo, the Express-News

A few years ago, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law SB 810, creating a statewide Open Educational Resources, or OER, grant. This gives Texas colleges and universities authority to establish protocols for OER course designations in college catalogs, schedules and registration.
https://www.expressnews.com/opinion/commentary/article/Commentary-A-revolutionary-alternative-to-15490105.php

Open and Affordable Textbooks Program Reduces Textbook Costs for Students - Matt Badessa, Rutgers Today

The program incentivizes Rutgers faculty to use free or low-cost learning materials that save students money. More faculty than ever before are participating in a program through the Rutgers University Libraries to provide open and affordable textbooks for the fall. The initiative is estimated to be able to save over 16,400 students a total of more than $2.1 million in the cost of textbooks and other course materials over the next year. The Open and Affordable Textbooks (OAT) program, administered by the libraries, provides $1,000 awards to Rutgers faculty who modify their courses to use free or low-cost learning materials instead of traditional textbooks. To date, it has brought an estimated savings of over $5.7 million to students universitywide.
https://www.rutgers.edu/news/open-and-affordable-textbooks-program-reduces-textbook-costs-students

Open-source textbooks - Joe Schwarcz, Carpinteria, Coastal View

As the elections pick up steam across the country, the phrase “free college” is making headlines. College tuition increased at 260 percent the rate of inflation since 1980, but what is more staggering is that textbook costs increased by 812 percent during the same period. At Occidental College, the $250 required textbook in one of my political science courses prompted my classmates to spend hours of their week printing out sections of the text from the few who had it.
http://www.coastalview.com/opinion/open-source-textbooks/article_8a54012e-d1e3-11ea-baac-5f88baea6335.html

The Impact of OER Initiatives on Faculty Selection of Classroom Materials - Tanya Spilovoy, Jeff Seaman, and Nate Ralph, WCET and Bay View Analytics

The adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) is on the rise, driven in part by increasing awareness of OER. But while faculty and institutions have shown increasing awareness and acceptance of OER, many remain unfamiliar with what they are, or how to utilize them.

http://onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/impactofoerinitiatives.pdf

Open RN names XanEdu as their print partner for print versions of their free digital nursing textbooks

XanEdu, a custom publishing company working with the higher education and K-12 school markets, has been selected by Open RN, provider of peer-reviewed, openly-licensed (OER) free nursing textbooks, to be their print and distribution partner. Working closely with Open RN, XanEdu now offers the first of five nursing textbooks to students in low cost print versions of these free digital textbooks, giving students access to more options that suit their budget and course needs.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/open-rn-names-xanedu-as-their-print-partner-for-print-versions-of-their-free-digital-nursing-textbooks-301112515.html

KPU Open Educational Resources Welcomes New Strategist Urooj Nazami will help bring OER textbooks to faculty and students - Esther Amankop Udoh, Runnerma

For the implementation of its OER program, KPU is listed as “Canada’s leading institutional adopter of Open Textbooks and other Open Educational Resources.” Open education textbooks provide an affordable alternative for students who need to buy textbooks for their courses. They are reportedly “available to students free of cost in digital formats and at relatively low cost in print format.”
https://runnermag.ca/2020/08/kpu-open-educational-resources-welcomes-new-strategist/

Why It’s So Hard to Lower the Cost of Textbooks - Jeffrey R. Young and Rebecca Koenig, EdSurge

These arrangements, often called “inclusive access” programs, tend to stir up controversy—and sometimes even lawsuits—when colleges adopt them. On this episode of the EdSurge Podcast, we examine why that is. We discuss the changing economics of textbook publishing, analyze who benefits most from bulk book deals, and take a closer look at a new textbook subscription program at the University of California at Davis, hearing from both an excited administrator and a skeptical student.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-07-28-why-it-s-so-hard-to-lower-the-cost-of-textbooks

Open and Affordable Textbooks Program Reduces Textbook Costs for Students - Rutgers

The program incentivizes Rutgers faculty to use free or low-cost learning materials that save students money. More faculty than ever before are participating in a program through the Rutgers University Libraries to provide open and affordable textbooks for the fall. The initiative is estimated to be able to save over 16,400 students a total of more than $2.1 million in the cost of textbooks and other course materials over the next year.
https://www.rutgers.edu/news/open-and-affordable-textbooks-program-reduces-textbook-costs-students

Will Online College Courses Help Reduce Textbook Prices? - Robert Farrington, Forbes

While the textbook industry would obviously hate for that to happen, the realities of pursuing higher education in the midst of a pandemic might bring this change regardless. Like it or not, students attending school virtually don’t have a lot of incentive to purchase a big, bulky textbook when most of their materials are presented online. With that in mind, maybe — just maybe — Covid-19 will actually have a positive impact in this tiny part of our lives. If online school could bring down textbook prices, it would be a huge win for college students who desperately need a break.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertfarrington/2020/08/07/will-online-college-courses-help-reduce-textbook-prices/#459ec1fc133c

COERLL OER Hangout April 2020: Activities for remote language teaching

The University of Texas recording of a discussion on among experts on using OER for remote language teaching and learning in K/12.

https://www.coerll.utexas.edu/coerll/file/coerll-oer-hangout-april-2020-activities-remote-language-teaching

Will Online College Courses Help Reduce Textbook Prices? - Robert Farrington, Forbes

 Chief Academic Officer for Varsity Tutors. Galvin says that the biggest lever colleges have to pull is the popularity of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, which has seen professors choose to teach courses using e-textbooks that are essentially "open-source" and made available by nonprofits that aim to reduce the cost of learning. “As classes move online and students attend from far from the campus bookstore, progressive professors may well see this as a great opportunity to shift to OERs and away from the traditional textbooks,” says Galvin.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertfarrington/2020/08/07/will-online-college-courses-help-reduce-textbook-prices/#47402237133c

Using OER to support inclusive education - Commonwealth of Learning

Faaida James is a Senior Special Education Instructor in the Student Support Services Division in the Ministry of Education in Trinidad and Tobago. Her work involves surveying and identifying at-risk and /or special needs students within a cluster of primary and secondary schools and having these learners referred to the Student Services Support Division for further assessments and the necessary interventions. Ms James recently completed the course Using Open Educational Resources: An Introduction. This short course was developed by COL to prepare teachers, teacher educators and other education leaders to use OER for components of online learning, as a response to the COVID-19 crisis.
https://www.col.org/programmes/open-schooling/using-oer-support-inclusive-education

ENCORE+ European Network for Catalysing Open Resources in Education

The European Network for Catalysing Open Resources in Education (ENCORE+) responds to the European priorities of opening up and modernising education and training through the creation of a network that supports innovation and entrepreneurship with OER. ENCORE+ starts from the insight that while there are viable, established strategies for OER there is no integrated European OER university-business ecosystem able to identify, catalyse and share best practices. ENCORE+ will support the uptake of OER through business and academia by sharpening value propositions and implementation strategies for OER in higher education and the world of work.
https://www.k4all.org/project/encore-european-network-for-catalysing-open-resources-in-education/

Northeast Iowa Community College administrator and faculty member receive top IACCT honors - Waucon Standard

IACCT selected Collins for his innovative contributions to college operations and leadership in addressing challenges at community colleges. Collins and his instructional design and innovation team launched the College’s “Z-Degree,” an online Associate of Arts degree in an eight-week format that utilizes free open educational resources (OERs). Through his leadership, the Z-Degree and individual Z-courses have gained cross-departmental faculty support. In its first year, Z-Degree students completed 790 courses with a 98 percent retention rate, and the savings to students using OERs, not textbooks, amounted to more than $139,000.
https://www.waukonstandard.com/articles/2020/08/05/northeast-iowa-community-college-administrator-and-faculty-member-receive-top

the projects developed - Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW)

The Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW) online mentoring program supports the development and implementation of open educational resources on topics with social impact according to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  All OE4BW projects follow the structure of addressing the problem (at least one or more SDGs), finding a solution with impact on society and insuring quality of the developed OER.
https://oe4bw.ijs.si/projects/

College aims to help students save on textbooks - Victoria Ritter, Our Midland

Mid Michigan College has expanded the availability of open educational resources (OER) to students even further for the fall semester. These resources replace traditional textbooks and can be used by students at no cost—leading to significant savings for Mid students. “Mid’s goal was to reduce the cost of textbooks for students, and OER provided a framework for us to achieve that,” noted Marisa Wier, associate dean of online and distance learning at Mid.
https://www.ourmidland.com/news/article/College-nbsp-aims-to-help-students-save-on-15448570.php

BC announces new funding to support post-secondary students this fall - Alisha Samnani, Capilano Courier

A further investment of $400,000 was put into developing BC’s open educational resources (OERs). These free teaching, learning and research materials are something students will benefit from this fall. OERs have been a call to action from many student groups, including the CSU.  “The CSU is currently running a campaign called Make The Switch which aims to encourage instructors at Capilano University to move away from expensive physical textbooks to free online materials,” said Bridge. “We also need CapU instructors to embrace open educational resources, and support students by making the switch.”
http://www.capilanocourier.com/2020/07/30/post-secondary-supports-and-online-resource-funding/

IMLS awards East Central University with grant- KOKH

East Central University in Ada was awarded a grant worth over $400,000 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The grant will support the university's three-year project and partnership with Oklahoma State University Libraries, Redlands Community College and the Oklahoma Council of Online Learning Excellence. The project focuses on developing a research method for evaluating the effectiveness of Open Educational Resources in increasing lifelong learning competencies.
https://okcfox.com/news/local/imls-awards-east-central-university-with-grant

COL’s course on OER for Online Learning to be offered to 18,000 teachers in Trinidad and Tobago - Commonwealth of Learning

Following the initial success of its online course on OER for Online Learning, COL will be offering the course for up to 18,000 teachers in Trinidad and Tobago at the request of the Ministry of Education. According to Ms Aneisa Singh, Teacher Development Specialist at the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Education, COL’s course “has proven both informative and beneficial” in light of fostering a blended approach to education and has been added as a pre-requisite for teacher training in preparation for the re-opening of school campuses later this year.
https://www.col.org/news/news/col%E2%80%99s-course-oer-online-learning-be-offered-18000-teachers-trinidad-and-tobago

Decolonise the curriculum, and diversify with Open Educational Resources - Diva Mukherji & Stephanie (Charlie) Farley, University of Edinburgh

As part of our participation in Open Education Week 2019, the OER Service ran a one-hour workshop to explore what it means to decolonise and diversify the curriculum with our EUSA VP of Education Diva Mukherji. It also provided a look at how creating, using, and sharing open educational resources (OER) can be one avenue towards diversifying and opening up curriculum materials with OER advisor Stephanie (Charlie) Farley.
https://open.ed.ac.uk/decolonising-and-diversifying-the-curriculum-with-oer/

Project aims to alleviate textbook costs for university students in Atlantic Canada - Brent Kelloway, CBC News

A $35,000 pilot project is being launched to bring open education resources to Atlantic Canada.  The Council of Atlantic University Libraries provided the initial investment with the hopes of creating a free online public domain for hosting and publishing open educational resources, meaning post-secondary students would have access to online textbooks, videos, digital images and supplemental materials.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/council-atlantic-university-libraries-pilot-open-education-1.5666090

Open education website connects teachers, learners with quality resources - Matthew Carroll, Penn State

They all turned to OPEN.ED, a website hosting high-quality learning materials written by faculty in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. The content, created though the Open Education Resources (OER) initiative launched in 2007 by the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) at Penn State, is free for educators and learners under a creative commons license.
https://news.psu.edu/story/626963/2020/07/28/open-education-website-connects-teachers-learners-quality-resources

Humboldt State U Receives $15,000 Grant for Open Educational Resources Program POSTED BY IRIDIAN CASAREZ, NorthCoast Journal

Humboldt State University has received a $15,000 grant for it's Open Educational Resources (OER) program which permits free reuse and repurposing of teaching and learning resources. The OER program has also saved students more than $1 million in textbooks and more than $1.3 million in academic materials.
https://www.northcoastjournal.com/NewsBlog/archives/2020/07/28/hsu-receives-15000-grant-for-open-educational-resources-program

EXPLORE THE PAST. MAKE SENSE OF THE PRESENT. LOOK TO THE FUTURE. - OER Project

Teach a standards-aligned world history course that connects the past to the present, with an eye to the future. Infinitely adaptable. Free, open, and online. For everyone.
https://www.oerproject.com/world-history/

Commonwealth of Laerning

The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government in 1987 to promote the development and sharing of open learning and distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. Hosted by the Government of Canada with headquarters in Burnaby, British Columbia, COL is the world’s only intergovernmental organisation solely concerned with the promotion and development of distance education and open learning.
https://www.col.org/

BINGHAMTON RECEIVES NEH CARES GRANT TO SUPPORT LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION DURING PANDEMIC - Jennifer Micale, SUNY Binghampton

All Binghamton students are required to take at least three semesters of foreign languages, the most rigorous general education requirement in the SUNY system.  Students, too, face challenges in digital learning, ranging from internet connectivity issues to distractions and interruptions in their home environment. Romance languages will use open educational resources in many introductory and intermediate language courses this fall as a way of helping students financially in difficult times, Ros Matturro said.

https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/2553/binghamton-receives-neh-cares-grant-to-support-language-instruction-during-pandemic