Thanks to dozens of collaborators across the University of Hawaiʻi System, an online, zero-cost textbook for two popular anatomy and physiology courses—Physiology 141 and 142—will replace the textbook that was used by almost 4,700 students during the last academic year for an estimated total savings of more than $433,000. The various textbooks currently used for these courses range in cost from $160 to $210. The new textbook is anticipated to be ready for fall 2023.
Friday, September 30, 2022
Thursday, September 29, 2022
Non-OER Strategies to Get Free Access to Textbooks: How to get your textbooks for less - Madeline Suindah, Columbia University
The start of a new semester marks a new chapter in your college career and a need for new books for your classes. Textbooks are often very expensive, but this doesn’t have to hurt your wallet. Here are some resources that you can use to get the textbooks you need without breaking the bank.
Wednesday, September 28, 2022
Textbooks at Bucks: Hidden Fee or Free? Photo+courtesy+of+Unsplash Photo courtesy of Unsplash - Grace Levy, the Centurian
Bucks currently offers free textbooks through its Open Education Resources (OER) program, which provides students with online textbooks that are free. The Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) Initiative at Bucks allows students to select courses that use OER textbooks, including 23 courses that purposefully have redesigned their content to include OER textbooks. OpenStax, one of the OERs that Bucks uses, is a website that contains over 40 different textbooks that are free for students, faculty, and colleges to use. OpenStax continues to work on its accessibility to fit the needs of all students, no matter their location in the world.
Tuesday, September 27, 2022
Textbook troubles: University of Calgary students want help paying for course materials - Kevin Green, CTV News
Third-year student Elizabeth Buckley, who aims to become a veterinarian, says the cost of books is tough to bear. “I think the most expensive one I bought for $250. And I think it was a chemistry textbook,” said Buckley. “It's a barrier for some people. I know that, like myself, I take out student loans, and I have to take out more student loans than what I would want to, because I don't have my own financial ability to pay for my own textbooks.” That means eventually, she will be paying interest on the loans used to buy, in part, her textbooks. A group of students at the University of Calgary is pushing for something to be done about the immense price they have to pay for textbooks and other required course materials.
Monday, September 26, 2022
CTV Calgary report on OER in Alberta
Video of students and faculty at the University of Calgary speaking about the importance of OER for keeping costs down for students.
Sunday, September 25, 2022
Call for Proposals: Open Educational Resources Course Materials Conversion Program - University of Arkansas
Each semester, the University of Arkansas Libraries and Global Campus offer faculty compensation to reduce the cost of textbooks for their students by using Open Educational Resources. The Fall 2022 call for proposals is now open, and an information session will be offered for those wanting to learn more. Faculty can apply to the Course Materials Conversion Program to receive extra compensation. Successful applicants can receive $3,000 for adopting open educational resources, $4,500 for adapting existing open educational resources or $7,500 for creating their own.
Saturday, September 24, 2022
ReportReview:ICDE OERAC: Open Science, Open Educational Resources, and Open Innovation - Review by Melissa Ashman, IRRODL
In the digital age, resources and information are increasingly available in formats other than published books, such aswhite papers and grey literature. This evolving landscape—particularly in open education where more traditional publication routes are often circumvented—has created opportunities for reviews of emergent resources in alternative formats. Therefore, this review seeks to describe a recently published report by the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE).
Friday, September 23, 2022
An Interview with Holly Gabriel and Larry Shrewsbury on Open Educational Resources at SOU - the Siskiyou
The Siskiyou recently had the opportunity to speak with Open Educational Resources advocates Holly Gabriel and Professor Larry Shrewsbury about what this program has to offer at SOU. Both faculty members at the university, The Siskiyou asked what OER means to them, and how it can help SOU and its students.
Thursday, September 22, 2022
McMurry makes bestselling chemistry text free in memory of son - Kate Blackwood, Cornell
The kindness of his deceased son Peter inspired John McMurry, chemistry professor emeritus in the College of Arts and Sciences, to offer the 10th edition of his bestselling organic chemistry textbook as a free open educational resource (OER) through OpenStax, an educational technology initiative of Rice University. “If Peter were still alive, I have no doubt that he would want me to work on this 10th edition with a publisher that made the book free to students,” McMurry said. “Our family has therefore decided to honor Peter in a unique way: by changing the way textbooks are created and distributed, potentially reducing textbook costs for everyone.”
Wednesday, September 21, 2022
Inflation impacting education: The rapidly rising cost of textbooks - Jordanna Garland, the Review
Many professors at University of Georgia have opted to use the open education resource (OER) website, OpenStax, which offers multiple free online textbooks for higher education. OpenStax textbooks are being used in 60% of colleges and universities across the country and more than 100 countries worldwide.
Tuesday, September 20, 2022
KPU’s Zero Textbook Cost program is growing - Abbie Luciano, the Runner
The cost of textbooks for post-secondary classes can be expensive, ranging up to $1,000 per year in Canada. But for students at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, many don’t have to worry about buying books for their courses. KPU’s Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) initiative is expanding with 353 courses being offered this fall semester without the requirement to purchase textbooks. This makes up 21 per cent of all courses this semester, and an increase from 333 courses last year. Courses part of the ZTC program use library and open educational resources. The initiative was the first of its kind in Canada when it launched in spring 2018 and has seen increased use during the pandemic.
Monday, September 19, 2022
Applications for Affordable Content Grants: OER@UNO are now open
UNO Libraries is excited to announce the next round of Affordable Content Grants @ UNO. This is a great opportunity to undertake a project that will help students while also allowing for increased customization of teaching materials for your course or courses. Dozens of UNO faculty have taken advantage of this program over the past three years. You can read about faculty experiences with these grants via our 2020 Textbook Mavericks honorees, Steffi Jesseau and Zac Suriano, and our 2021 honorees Cameron Logsdon, Stephanie Larsen, and Abbie Syrek.
Sunday, September 18, 2022
Libraries offering Open Access and Open Educational Resources workshops - Mountaineer e-News
Open Access and Open Educational Resources have become more and more popular in the area of academic and scholarly settings. The WVU Research Commons has put together a series of workshops to provide faculty and students training in publishing in Open Access resources and using Open Educational Resources in the classroom.
Saturday, September 17, 2022
Busting 4 Common Myths About Open Educational Resources - Webinar Oct 4
Today’s educator knows that immersive education involves far more than just sticking to a textbook or other off-the-shelf curriculum. It’s about engaging students through different mediums and types of relevant learning materials that create meaningful connections. Yet finding quality supplemental content can be a challenge — especially when added to an instructor's already full plate.
Friday, September 16, 2022
MICHIGAN OER VIRTUAL SUMMIT - September 29-30, 2022
The mission of Michigan OER Network is to support institutions and organizations in the fair and equitable use of open educational resources (OER) for all learners in the state. Funding is provided in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library of Michigan and by the Midwestern Higher Education Compact.
Thursday, September 15, 2022
University Educators Are Leaders in Fostering Open Pedagogy - Rene Chmiel, University of New Haven
The University’s Open Pedagogy Project offers faculty and students exciting opportunities to collaborate to create meaningful educational experiences. The program and the grant-funded projects that several faculty and staff members are a part of also foster the creation of open educational resources, which provide important learning tools while reducing textbook costs.
Wednesday, September 14, 2022
Mary Ann Cullen - ALA Store
Mary Ann Cullen is an associate professor and Associate Department Head at Georgia State University’s Alpharetta Campus. She has been involved in the open and affordable educational resources movement since 2013, when she participated in the adaptation of an OER text for an introductory English composition course. Since then, she has assisted faculty with OER adoption and grants, and presented about librarians’ roles in OER at ACRL, the Distance Library Services Conference, and a Carterette Series webinar. She has been recognized as an Affordable Learning Georgia Featured Advocate and co-edited the Fall 2020 special edition of the academic journal, Library Trends, “OER and the Academic Library,” with Elizabeth Dill.
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
WVU Libraries to Offer Teaching and Pedagogy workshop series
The Teaching and Pedagogy series of workshops are designed to develop participants’ familiarity with access and application of affordable education resources, technologies used for instruction and techniques for active learning.
Introduction to Open Education
Attend this introductory workshop to learn more about open education and its associated practices that can provide you with more strategies and approaches to remove barriers to student learning. This workshop will use a social justice lens approach to open education.
Register for the 1-2 p.m. Monday, Oct. 24, workshop.
Finding Open Educational Resources
Amidst efforts to lower the expenses of higher education, open educational resources are a set of no-cost open access learning tools in various formats used by instructors to augment student learning. Learn how to locate and evaluate OER for use in your courses.
Register for the 10-11:30 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 25, workshop.
Monday, September 12, 2022
Open Educational Resources - University of Illinois System
The University of Illinois System universities (Urbana-Champaign, Chicago, Springfield) strive to address the widely recognized problem that the costs of textbooks and associated learning materials have challenged college affordability for many students and their families. One way the UI System universities address the problem is through exploring ways to design, create, and implement open-source materials for use in college courses. Open educational resources are freely accessible, openly licensed text, media, and other digital materials that are useful for teaching, learning and assessing as well as for research purposes. The efforts build on the universities' quality faculty and rich history in the utilization of technology in teaching, research and dissemination of knowledge.
Sunday, September 11, 2022
The OER Creator Workshop - OER Schweitz
We are passionate about open educational resources. For 8 weeks, we create and share learning resources under an open licence, so others can retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute them. Join us to meet and collaborate with like-minded. Work on your project and share it with others. We are from the OER Team, ZHAW, the Educational Development and Technology (LET), ETH Zurich and Swiss Federal Institute of Sport Magglingen SFISM. We are passionate about creating, developing and publishing Open Educational Resources (OER).
Saturday, September 10, 2022
Lake Land College instructor releases OER math textbook - Clint Walker, JG-TC
Lake Land College math instructor Sarah Harley recently released an open educational resource math textbook called “Math in General Education.” Harley teaches general education math, and she said she noticed a need in this area and compiled an updated resource for her students. “We had been using the same textbook for several years and it was time for an update,” Harley said. “Many times when math textbooks are updated, the changes are more cosmetic than beneficial to the content. I knew there were tons of free online resources, so I started to collect the information my students would need into one resource.”
Friday, September 9, 2022
Free Resources to Help with Remote Learning in 2022 - Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
If you're looking for software and services to augment online and blended instruction, start here. While hundreds of education companies, nonprofits and other organizations made their software and services free during the immediate switch to remote learning, many have become more thoughtful about how they help educators master online and blended instruction. We've sifted through their offerings to bring you this updated set of free resources to help with online, hybrid and face-to-face learning in 2022.
Thursday, September 8, 2022
An AI Model Named BLOOM, Larger than OpenAI’s GPT-3 and MetaAI’s OPT, Will Be Open Sourced - IBL News
A large language model (LLM) named BLOOM will be available for free as open source software. These models are used to write essays, generate code, and translate languages. Its openness can democratize access to AI technologies, making a deep impact on society, according to experts talking at TheNextWeb.com. It’d free AI from big tech labs that have spent millions of dollars developing systems such as LaMDA (Google) and GPT-3 (OpenAI).
Wednesday, September 7, 2022
Licensing and sharing your own Open Educational Resources - University of Gronigen
Once you’ve adapted a resource or created a new one from scratch (alone, or together with students or colleagues), you can share it online as an Open Educational Resource (OER). Before doing so, you need to license your resource with an open license. On this page, we provide a guide detailing how to pick and apply an open Creative Commons license to your work, and how and where you can subsequently your own open educational resource online. There are two steps to licensing your work: determining what type of license you need, and actually getting the license. As OER are open materials, you will need to get a Creative Commons license for your work (or make it part of the public domain). In essence, this means that people can freely, and legally, retain, reuse, alter and reshare your materials or derivatives made from them.
Tuesday, September 6, 2022
Open Educational Resources for Teachers - University of Gronigen
Searching and evaluating Open Educational Resources: The first step to working with Open Educational Resources (OER) is finding appropriate ones to use. On this page, we outline a general searching strategy, list a number of quality criteria you can use to judge the appropriateness of any found OER, and provide links to a number of webpages where you can find different types of OER.
Monday, September 5, 2022
Teaching German as a Foreign Language with Open Educational Resources (OER) Implementation in and Experiences from an Indonesian University-Primardiana H. Wijayat, et al; i-Jet
From the implementation in university classes with about 19-21 years old, our interviews with five lecturers and their answers in an online questionnaire showed that the OER material in learning did provide many benefits for lecturers and students, including the variety of materials, the forms, and the economic aspect. However, the existing OER still have some downsides, like their suitability to the needs of lecturers and students, in terms of their themes, the technical requirements and levels of difficulty.
Sunday, September 4, 2022
Education Arm of The Buck Institute – PBLWorks – Receives a $2.9 Million Grant from the Bezos Family Foundation - eSchool News
The Buck Institute for Education (dba PBLWorks) was awarded a $2.9 million grant from the Bezos Family Foundation to design an innovative social studies and civics curriculum that uses a Project Based Learning (PBL) model. The new PBL units are being designed for teachers of grades 4-12 and will be available free as Open Educational Resources (OER).
Saturday, September 3, 2022
Free online anatomy textbook to save students more than $400K - University of Hawaii News
Thanks to dozens of collaborators across the University of Hawaiʻi System, an online, zero-cost textbook for two popular anatomy and physiology courses—Physiology 141 and 142—will replace the textbook that was used by almost 4,700 students during the last academic year for an estimated total savings of more than $433,000. The various textbooks currently used for these courses range in cost from $160 to $210. The new textbook is anticipated to be ready for fall 2023.
Friday, September 2, 2022
The Metro Vancouver university where you can learn with zero textbook costs - Daily Hive
Imagine going to a school where you didn’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on heavy, out of date textbooks. The Zero Textbook Cost initiative makes this dream a reality at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU). Zero Textbook Cost courses at KPU use publicly available and often digital materials rather than traditional textbooks. Known as Open Education Resources (OERs), these interactive textbooks, worksheets, videos, and more mean learning is no longer limited to reading. It also allows access to a larger variety of interesting content that makes learning more approachable.
Thursday, September 1, 2022
No Paywall for Taxpayer-Funded Research, U.S. Declares - Susan D'Agostino and Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed
White House mandates free, immediate public access to government-funded research. Many open-access advocates celebrate the decision, but some scholars wonder who will fund the policy. Any research based on federally funded studies must be made freely available to the public without an embargo under a policy announced Thursday by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The new requirement, which is due to take effect by the end of 2025, updates an existing policy that allowed a 12-month embargo for making research freely available.
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