COC Receives Grant to Support Anti-Racism Through Open Educational Resources - College of the Canyons, SVC

In partnership with the Community College Consortium for OER, College of the Canyons has received a second grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to expand and extend the Open for Anti-Racism program supporting faculty in California Community Colleges. The two-year $900,000 grant will extend the OFAR program over two semesters, enabling more faculty members to plan, strategize, and engage with more students.

https://scvnews.com/coc-receives-grant-to-support-anti-racism-through-open-educational-resources/

No More Barriers In Education | Anthony Palmiotto, OpenStax On The Elearning Podcast With Stephen Ladek - Stephen Ladek, LMSpulse

 Not only does OER eliminate the barrier of cost for underserved groups, but how an institution like OpenStax can also promote diversity by actively working to fix biases and onesided or Euro-centric perspectives in the resources they provide Finally, we talk about the challenges OER currently faces to gain wider appeal, and what Anthony and OpenStax are doing to help teachers bring OER into their lessons.

https://www.lmspulse.com/2021/elp-054-anthony-palmiotto-openstax-oer/

“Design on a Dime”: SkillsCommons OER Makeover Strategy with SoftChalk - Gerry Hanley, Sue Evans & Rick Lumadue, SkillsCommons

Session 2 of our 4-part webinar series: Drive superior learning outcomes with OER by lowering costs and increasing success for students. This interactive presentation will demonstrate how to quickly and easily reuse Open Educational Resources (OER) found in SkillsCommons using the tools of SoftChalk. Participants will be guided in a step-by-step process on how to freely download packaged presentations from SkillsCommons and successfully upload them to a new lesson wrapped in SoftChalk.

https://softchalk.com/webinar/tackling-textbook-affordability-save-students-78k-using-oers-2-2-2

Workforce Development - SillsCommons (OER)

Solutions Now! Workforce Pipeline Solutions Powered by the World’s Largest OPEN Library of Workforce Training Materials Designed for 21st Century Employment. Browse by industry, credentials & material type with advanced search.

https://www.skillscommons.org/

REVISE & REMIX OER Resources - MERLOT

Open Educational Practices (OEP) and Strategies for Revising and Remixing OER: Sharing strategies for using different technologies to revise and remix OER is a critical component of OEP.  The capabilities to create derivative works with OER is one of OER's defining features.

https://oep.merlot.org/revise_remix.html

Open source matters, and it's about more than just free software - Daphne Leprince-Ringuet, ZD Net

Open-source software is not only a global pool of free code available for creative programmers to build upon: take it to the geo-political level, and it is also a tool that countries can leverage to achieve independence from the growing monopoly of foreign tech giants.  That's according to a new report commissioned by the EU and carried out by non-profit organization OpenForum Europe, which found that the impact that open source could have on the bloc's digital independence is such that the technology can be seen as a "public good". 

https://www.zdnet.com/article/open-source-software-is-it-about-free-or-is-it-about-freedom/

Bay View Analytics to Present at Multiple Upcoming Conferences on Online Learning Research - Yahoo Finance

Bay View Analytics will participate in five upcoming education research and online learning conferences. Our presentations will cover our most current research on distance learning and open educational resources in US K-12 and higher education and offer an overview of trends over the last decade. The presentations reflect work with multiple partners, including the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Online Learning Consortium, Cengage, Pearson, and the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), among others. "We're happy to be able to share our OER research, compiling over a decade of survey results, at these upcoming Fall conferences. Our results show the growing role of OER in K-12 and higher education over the years and into the future, as well as the impact of the transition to online teaching during the pandemic," noted Dr. Julia Seaman, Research Director.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bay-view-analytics-present-multiple-210800103.html

REVISE & REMIX OER - Merlot

Open Educational Practices (OEP) and Strategies for Revising and Remixing OER: Sharing strategies for using different technologies to revise and remix OER is a critical component of OEP.  The capabilities to create derivative works with OER is one of OER's defining features.  The SkillsCommons' Makeover Strategy has been implemented across many institutions during and after the U.S. Department of Labor's TAACCCT program since 2015.  The CC BY Creative Commons license on SkillsCommons materials provides opportunities for others to makeover, revise, remix, and/or reuse the materials in a variety of ways to create "derivative works" that could better serve the needs of different learners in different contexts with different technologies.

https://oep.merlot.org/revise_remix.html

Open Education Global's CCCOER Awarded Second, Two-Year Grant To Support Anti-Racism Through OER

 Open Education Global is pleased to announce that the Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER), jointly with College of the Canyons, has received an additional two-year grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, to expand and extend the Open for Anti-Racism (OFAR) program supporting faculty in California Community Colleges.

https://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/open-education-globals-cccoer-awarded-second-two-year-grant-to-support-anti-racism-through-oer

UNC student organization works to address textbook affordability - Sylvia Salvatierra, Daily Tar Heel

The start of any semester at UNC is often hampered by one thing: the relentless expense of textbooks. UNC's chapter of The North Carolina Public Interest Research Group (NCPIRG), a nonpartisan student activist group, is working to decrease this financial burden on students. Katie Craig, state director for NCPIRG,  said that their textbook affordability campaign has been around since the establishment of the campus chapter, but has gained some recent momentum. The current work on this campaign is carried over from last academic year. NCPIRG also previously worked on campaigns concerning voter registration, single-use plastic and hunger and homelessness.

https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2021/09/university-ncpirg-connect-carolina-cost

Faculty Create New Open Educational Resources - University of Arkansas

Five new open educational resources created by U of A faculty are being used this semester in U of A courses. These projects were funded by the Open Educational Resources Course Materials Conversion Program, a joint effort between the University Libraries and the Global Campus. "The University Libraries' ongoing partnership with the Global Campus is essential to supporting these faculty-produced open educational resources," said Jason Battles, dean of University Libraries. "These resources provide a valuable cost savings to our students, so it's important that we continue to encourage OER creation and usage on campus."

https://news.uark.edu/articles/57545/faculty-create-new-open-educational-resources

Northern Essex Community College Shares in Grant to Help Students Access Free Learning Materials -WHAV

A $440,000 federal grant is helping Northern Essex Community College in its efforts to make classes more affordable and inclusive by encouraging the use of free Open Educational Resources. Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium—digital or otherwise—that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. “This grant is focused on creating and adapting OER for high-enrollment programs that are both free to students and culturally relevant,” says Sue Tashjian, the college’s coordinator of instructional technology and co-chair of the Massachusetts OER Advisory Council.

https://whav.net/2021/09/06/northern-essex-community-college-shares-in-grant-to-help-students-access-free-learning-materials/

Students frustrated with textbook and access costs - The Dmon LIne

 Students at the University of Mississippi have expressed frustration over the hundreds of dollars in textbook and access code fees required for their classes each year. They are bombarded with an accumulation of class-related fees that, combined with an already steep tuition bill, adds a tremendous amount of stress to their financial anxiety. 

https://thedmonline.com/students-frustrated-with-textbook-and-access-costs/

NKU Joins Program to Make Educational Resources More Accessible - River City News

 Northern Kentucky University has been selected to participate in the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Institute on Open Educational Resources. NKU is the only university in the Commonwealth joining the year-long program designed to help institutions adopt accessible and affordable instructional materials. Open educational resources are classroom materials such as textbooks or single lessons that are free for the campus community to use. NKU will spend the next year scaling the project so that all learners will have access to the same course material on the first day of class next fall.

https://www.rcnky.com/articles/2021/09/02/nku-joins-program-make-educational-resources-more-accessible

We need to help students overcome their textbook troubles - Raj Kaji, Times Higher Ed

As the pandemic has created greater financial hardship for students and families across the country, 65 per cent of students reported not buying a textbook because of the cost – even as 90 per cent said they believed doing so would negatively impact their grades. Even worse, this phenomenon is not entirely new, with 63 per cent of students forgoing textbooks in 2019. As an entrepreneur who leads a company in the e-textbook and digital course materials space, this is a challenge I’ve seen up close. 

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/we-need-help-students-overcome-their-textbook-troubles

TBR grant helps Universiy College faculty, staff create free open resource textbook for students - HUNTER PATTERSON, MTSU News

Faculty and staff at MTSU’s University College are making it easier and more affordable for students to succeed in the classroom. Kim Godwin, MA Higgs and Mike Boyle recently collaborated in publishing a textbook that will be used for two MTSU courses at no cost to students. The book can be accessed for free at any time thanks to the James E. Walker Library’s licensing of Pressbooks, an online platform that allows self-publishing of textbooks, articles and other documents that could be used in the classroom.

https://mtsunews.com/university-college-oer-tbr-textbook/

GRANT BOOSTS OER - Holyoke Community College

With the help of a federal grant, Holyoke Community College is continuing its efforts to make college more affordable and inclusive by increasing the use of free Open Educational Resources (OER) in place of costly textbooks in its classrooms. HCC is part of a consortium of six state colleges, along with the state Dept. of Higher Education, sharing a $441,367 grant from the U.S. Department of Education (DOE). The three-year grant project aims to boost the number of college courses that make use of Open Educational Resources. 

https://www.hcc.edu/about/news-events-and-media/news-stories/oer-grant

Textbook Mavericks Honorees Fall 2021 - University of Nebraska Omaha

The UNO Libraries are pleased to announce the second cohort of our Textbook Mavericks initiative. The Fall 2021 honorees are Cameron Logsdon, Stephanie Larsen, and Abbie Syrek of the School of Communication. Logsdon is the coordinator of the Public Speaking course at UNO, of which Larsen and Syrek are instructors. Their project, a Fall 2020 Affordable Content Grant, oversaw the transition of all sections of Public Speaking at UNO into a fully Open Educational Resources course. This means the courses have incorporated materials that are freely available and incur no additional cost to the students. The project marks the single largest adoption of open resources by a course in the history of the UNO Libraries ACG program.

https://www.unomaha.edu/criss-library/news/2021/09/textbook-mavericks-honorees-fall-2021.php

These Colleges Are Betting That Culturally Relevant Textbooks Will Improve Student Outcomes - Nadia Tamez-Robledo, EdSurge

Millie González and her colleagues aren’t here to argue about whether open educational resources are on par with traditional textbooks一she says research has borne that out. González and Framingham State University, where she is interim director of Whittemore Library, are part of a consortium in Massachusetts looking to answer different questions. Like: What would happen if students had access to a catalog of free and一this is important here一culturally relevant textbooks? What if faculty of color were engaged in the process of creating books tailored to their classes?

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-09-01-these-colleges-are-betting-that-culturally-relevant-textbooks-will-improve-student-outcomes

NSF-funded, Husker-led project to evaluate open-access educational resources - Scott Schrage, Nebraska Today

As both a biology instructor and an award-winning researcher of biology instruction, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Brian Couch understands the magnitude of asking someone to reconsider what they teach and how they teach. With the support of a nearly $2 million grant from the NSF, Couch is now leading a five-year, multi-institutional effort to gauge the creation, evolution and implementation of those open educational resources.

https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/today/article/nsf-funded-husker-led-project-to-evaluate-open-access-educational-resources/

Equity inspires 66 colleges to expand the reach of open educational resources, Mark Zalaznick, University Business

Excitement has been building around open educational resources at Framingham State University as a handful of faculty are creating their own textbooks with instructional designers enhancing the final product. Now administrators are working to entrench them across the Massachusetts institution by joining a new national network, the Institute on Open Educational Resources, launched by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. “The use of open textbooks at Framingham State is pretty much siloed,” says Millie González, the interim library dean. “Some departments are using them and there’s a lot of buzz. But in terms of any structures in place to know how many faculty are using them, that’s something we’re striving toward.”

https://universitybusiness.com/equity-inspires-66-colleges-expand-open-educational-resources-free-textbooks-oer/

Minnesota State - OER Projects

A Z-degree is an associate degree or bachelor's degree that have zero-cost course resources for students. It consists of courses that exclusively use zero-cost course resources, such as: 

open educational resources (OER)

open textbooks  

library-curated materials

To be considered as Z-degree course, the instructor cannot require students to purchase any course resources. Optional or supplemental resources that are a cost to students may be recommended.

https://www.minnstate.edu/admissions/oer/oer-projects/index.html

Lehigh Carbon Community College Receives Funding To Support Emergency Relief - LCCC

Through the grant, the college will provide emergency student scholarships for educational supplies. The grant will also support developing Open Education Resources (OER) for general education courses to reduce textbook costs for students. An instructional designer will be hired to train faculty in all modalities of online learning. And, classroom technology will be installed to cultivate natural, engaging hybrid learning environments, supporting both online and in-person teaching.

https://patch.com/pennsylvania/lowermacungie/lehigh-carbon-community-college-receives-funding-support-emergency-relief

CVTC TURNS THE PAGE FOR AFFORDABLE LEARNING - Morgan McCarthy, 715 Newsroom

 Many instructors and courses have switched to using free textbooks called open educational resources, or OER, instead of traditional, commercially-published textbooks that are often high cost. Last school year, more than 4,000 CVTC students experienced at least one course with no textbook cost for an average student savings of approximately $246. “We know that parts of Eau Claire and Chippewa counties are experiencing disproportionately higher poverty rates than the rest of Wisconsin. Using OER instead of high-cost textbooks has been a big win for our students who are often hit hardest,” said Vince Mussehl, director of library services and executive member of Community for Open Wisconsin. 

https://715newsroom.com/2021/08/26/cvtc-turns-the-page-for-affordable-learning/

Grant Aims To Reduce Textbook Costs For HCC Students - BusinessWest

 With the help of a federal grant, Holyoke Community College is continuing its efforts to make college more affordable and inclusive by increasing the use of free Open Educational Resources (OER) in place of costly textbooks in its classrooms.  HCC is part of a consortium of six state colleges, along with the state Dept. of Higher Education, sharing a $441,367 grant from the U.S. Department of Education (DOE). The three-year grant project aims to boost the number of college courses that make use of Open Educational Resources. 

https://businesswest.com/blog/grant-aims-to-reduce-textbook-costs-for-hcc-students/

SREB hosts final webinar in series on OER in dual enrollment - SREB

Join us the final webinar in our series on #OER in dual enrollment to learn about how integrating open educational resources in dual enrollment and CTE can lead to student success in #k12 and #highered.  Sept 22 at 11 AM.  Register: http://ow.ly/tmOJ50FUsqd

https://twitter.com/srebeducation/status/1428728541504540677

San Antonio College Increases OER Courses by 300% - CCCOER

Winner of the 2021 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, San Antonio College, is one of five distinct colleges in the Alamo College District. It is the oldest two-year public college in Texas with an annual credit enrollment of nearly 20,000 students. In addition to its academic and professional programs, it also offers occupational and technical courses through its county-wide continuing education program. The prestigious Aspen Prize aims to celebrate excellence, advance a focus on equitable student success, and stimulate replication of effective culture and practice. San Antonio College’s support for, and implementation of, open education is one inspiring example of their excellence. 

https://www.cccoer.org/2021/08/19/san-antonio-college-increases-oer-courses-by-300/

Great news from California: The Right Time for ZTC and OER - CCCOER

In late July, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a budget bill that included a monumental $115M allocated to create Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) degree pathways for students enrolled in California Community Colleges. This historic investment builds on the ZTC grant program from 2016 with the aim of removing cost barriers for students and accelerating their time to completion. College grantees estimate that the original $5M in state funding generated $42 million in savings across the 23 colleges that received implementation grants. This is more than an 800% return on investment.

https://www.cccoer.org/2021/08/20/great-news-from-california/

Latinx OER Hack-a-thon - Bunker Hill Community College

 

Professional Development Opportunity  |  Thursday, September 16 - Friday, October 8, 2021  The Latinx OER Hack-a-thon, a collaborative event brought together by the Academic Innovation and Distance Education office (AIDE), the Department of Global Languages and the Latinx Student Success Initiative (LSSI) is a hybrid professional development opportunity for faculty and staff wishing to broaden their Open Educational Resources (OER) knowledge and have it informed through a Latinx perspective.

https://www.bhcc.edu/oer/latinxoerhack-a-thon/

As institutions re-examine the costs of attending university, the affordability of course materials is again moving to the centre of the conversation - Raj Kaji, Times Higher Education

As the pandemic has created greater financial hardship for students and families across the country, 65 per cent of students reported not buying a textbook because of the cost – even as 90 per cent said they believed doing so would negatively impact their grades. Even worse, this phenomenon is not entirely new, with 63 per cent of students forgoing textbooks in 2019. As an entrepreneur who leads a company in the e-textbook and digital course materials space, this is a challenge I’ve seen up close. I first noticed these trends 15 years ago when I worked at Walden University, one of the largest providers of online and continuing education for adult learners. Leading business and engineering programmes comprising about 6,000 students, I saw that much more could be done to address this connection between course materials and student outcomes.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/we-need-help-students-overcome-their-textbook-troubles