Open Educational Resources (OER): Free the Textbook - FLITE Research Guides

OER Textbooks (Open Access Textbook Collections) Your subject librarian may be able to help you find open access texts beyond those found in these collections.

https://ferris.libguides.com/research/free-the-textbook/oer-textbooks

7 Questions with Lumen Learning Founders Kim Thanos and David Wiley - Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

Digital courseware provider Lumen Learning recently announced a Gates Foundation-funded initiative to create and implement equitable course materials for gateway courses, with the goal of eliminating race and income as predictors of student success. The company is partnering with minority-serving institutions to co-design and pilot the courseware, starting with a reinvention of Introduction to Statistics. We sat down with Lumen founders Kim Thanos and David Wiley to find out more about their work. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.  

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2023/01/05/7-questions-with-lumen-learning-founders-kim-thanos-and-david-wiley.aspx

Open access publishing deal for low-, middle-income countries - Munyaradzi Makoni and Wagdy Sawahel, University World News

Academics based in 70 low- and middle-income countries, including those in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, will be able to have their primary research published Gold Open Access by Nature – at no cost – thus enabling their scientific work to be permanently and freely available online for anyone to read. Academics in the regions that are set to benefit from the announcement have welcomed the development, but some have also raised questions about the longer-term impact on the development of the publishing industries in low- and medium-income countries and diversity in the industry.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20230118190925833

Coordinating Board Awards Tarleton Grant to Support Student Success - J Horleton, Tarleton State News

Tarleton State University has received a $172,139 Student Success Acceleration Implementation Grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund to develop or expand initiatives that positively impact workforce transitions. Tarleton’s grant program, “Developing University Infrastructure to Increase the Use of Open Educational Resources and Affordable Course Materials,” ties into the university’s strategic plan to have at least 90 percent of core curriculum lecture/lab courses utilize open educational resources by 2025.

https://theflashtoday.com/2023/01/20/coordinating-board-awards-tarleton-grant-to-support-student-success/

NEMCC named an Apple Distinguished School for second term in a row - New Albany Gazette

Northeast focused its efforts on its technology initiative for its second Apple Distinguished School honor including lowering the cost of textbooks for students, saving students over $7 million, increased student success, increased student satisfaction and positive pandemic enrollment trends. "Many years ago, we started on this journey with iPads and to partner with Apple," said Northeast vice president of instruction Dr. Michelle Baragona. "We also started a process of bringing in Open Educational Resources for our students and the purpose of that was to make college relevant, equitable and affordable and that's what we've been able to do with our Apple Distinguished School recognition." Through its use of Open Educational Resources (OER), Northeast has been able to save its students more than $7 million through not only faculty grants but the Mississippi Z-degree program.

https://www.djournal.com/new-albany/nemcc-named-an-apple-distinguished-school-for-second-term-in-a-row/article_d643fb8e-d318-585d-807c-3cbc57cc90a6.html

Librarians receive international award for excellence in open education - Penn State University

Two Penn State University Libraries employees received Open Education (OE) Global’s 2022 Open Education Award for Excellence in Open Pedagogy. Christina Riehman-Murphy, open and affordable educational resources librarian and Sally W. Kalin Librarian for Learning Innovations, and Bryan McGeary, learning design and open education engagement librarian, received the award for their Open Pedagogy Project Roadmap. Open pedagogy is a reflective, high-impact practice that engages with students as creators of knowledge, rather than solely consumers of it, by leveraging situated, renewable assignments that emphasize collaboration, authentic audiences, and student agency.

https://www.psu.edu/news/academics/story/librarians-receive-international-award-excellence-open-education/

University of Sheffield Commits to ‘Open Access’ for Research and Scholarship - Mirage

The University of Sheffield has affirmed its commitment to an open research and scholarship culture, by approving new policies that will ensure its research is accessible to as many people as possible, and encouraging the use and creation of open educational resources throughout its teaching programmes. The University’s aspiration is to embrace an open research culture, which is fundamental in order for its research to be of maximum benefit to society, and to enable students to engage effectively with educational resources.  This aspiration is a vital pillar of University’s Vision and governs how the University’s distinctive and innovative research will continue to drive intellectual advances and address global challenges.

https://www.miragenews.com/university-of-sheffield-commits-to-open-access-930008/

Everyday Instructional Design: A Practical Resource for Educators and Instructional Designers - Rob Power, PressBooks

Everyday Instructional Design works through the online course or module development process, exploring the rationale and pragmatics of all of the steps involved with determining what needs to be developed, creating design plans, developing a prototype, pilot testing with a “live” student audience, reflecting on feedback, and determining how we can tweak our designs to create the best possible online teaching and learning experience.  

Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial

https://pressbooks.pub/everydayid/

Open Educational Resources (OER) - EDUCAUSE

Explore this resource site—a collection of all EDUCAUSE resources related to open educational resources (OER) in higher education.  

https://library.educause.edu/topics/teaching-and-learning/open-educational-resources-oer

7 Things You Should Know About Open Education: Practices - EDUCAUSE

Building on open educational resources (OER), open educational practices seek to fully use the potential inherent in OER to support learning and to help students both contribute to knowledge and construct their own learning pathways. Such open practices provide the architecture and philosophical underpinning for fulfilling the promise of using OER to expand collaborative, inclusive, accessible, and active learning and related pedagogy. Open educational practices also give agency to students by giving them more control over the structure, content, and outcomes of their learning and by creating opportunities for them to create learning materials. This publication is one in a three-part series designed to provide a point of departure for conversations about all aspects of open education.

https://library.educause.edu/resources/2018/7/7-things-you-should-know-about-open-education-practices

Open Educational Resources (OER): Tools for Affordable Learning - Washington State University

This guide describes high-quality educational resources that can be used to decrease material costs for courses at WSU and in higher education more broadly.  Open textbooks can be defined as "textbooks that have been funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed." Typically open textbooks are available as a pdf, epub, or set of html pages that are available at no cost to students and instructors. True open textbooks are licensed so that they can be freely printed, distributed, and even adapted with correct attribution. Vendors like Amazon and Lulu may be able to provide print copies of open texts, and they can be printed locally as well.

https://libguides.libraries.wsu.edu/affordablelearning/opentextbooks

Free the Textbook - Ferris Library Guides for OER

A very useful compendium of sources for OER materials.

https://ferris.libguides.com/research/free-the-textbook/oer-textbooks

The 5 Rs of designing an OER course - eCampus News

“Use of open educational resources in U.S. classrooms is entering the mainstream,” said David Wiley, a professor and longtime advocate of open education as well as chief academic officer of Lumen Learning. “At the same time, the education community still has much to learn about designing effective courses and educational experiences using OER. The 5R Open Course Design Framework will provide a foundation for consistent quality assurance and best practices.”

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2014/11/19/oer-course-design-475/

CC Publishes Global Open Culture Call to Action to Policymakers - Brigitte Vézina, Creative Commons

CC has announced the publication of Towards better sharing of cultural heritage — A Creative Commons Call to Action to Policymakers, a simple, concise, and accessible resource that aims to support policymakers with key arguments to reform policy — in particular copyright — to achieve better sharing of cultural heritage in the public interest. 

https://creativecommons.org/2022/12/19/cc-publishes-global-open-culture-call-to-action-to-policymakers/

Open Access is dead: Long live Open Access - Coalition-S

We should now be referring merely to ‘access’ rather than preceding it with ‘open.’ We should be highlighting works that have barriers to access and use, rather than the other way round. My local council doesn’t bother telling me when a road is open and I am able to drive down it. They only bother to erect a sign when it’s a dead end, a cul de sac, or no entry. Surely the world should by now have shifted to expecting OA without it having to be specifically labelled?  Similarly, given that most people involved in scholarly communications and research dissemination would agree the OA die is cast, we should have no need to talk about an ‘OA movement’ and ‘OA advocates.’ That ship has sailed. We have yet to reach 100% implemented OA to all published works, but I would argue that we have reached the tipping point in terms of user attitudes towards OA for some time.

https://www.coalition-s.org/blog/open-access-is-dead-long-live-open-access/

Durbin, King, Smith, And Sinema Secure $12 Million For Open Textbook Pilot Program In Senate Appropriations Committee Annual Spending Bill - Office of Senator Dick Durbin

The Open Textbooks Pilot, based on Durbin’s Affordable College Textbook Act, is a competitive grant program to support the creation and expand the use of open college textbooks—textbooks that are freely available under an open license, allowing professors, students, researchers, and others to freely access the materials.  In addition to the $12 million included in this bill, Durbin has helped secure $35 million for the Open Textbooks Pilot Program over the last five years.  These projects are estimated to result in more than $220 million in eventual savings to students. 

https://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/durbin-king-smith-and-sinema-secure-12-million-for-open-textbook-pilot-program-in-senate-appropriations-committee-annual-spending-bill

What makes a good open educational resource on MoodleNet: Essential Content - Paul Hodgson, Moodle

MoodleNet, our platform to share and curate open educational resources, has been live for just over a year and the community has added thousands of educational resources in that time.  We’ve had a look at the first year of educational content to give some guidance on having your resource found, engaged with, and then used by others in their teaching and learning.  If you follow this guide when adding your resources, not only will your resources be found more easily, at MoodleNet we will look out for these when selecting resources to be featured on our front page.

https://moodle.com/news/create-a-good-open-educational-resource-on-moodlenet/

“Twenty Years of Creative Commons (in Sixty Seconds)”

“Twenty Years of Creative Commons (in Sixty Seconds)” by Ryan Junell (junell.net/) and Glenn Otis Brown (linkedin.com/in/gotisbrown/) for Creative Commons (creativecommons.org/) is licensed via CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and includes adaptations of many open and public domain works. See the same video shared on Flickr (flickr.com/photos/creativecommons/52543574218/) for a complete list of attributions.

https://vimeo.com/777912896

University partnership will produce low-cost learning materials with focus on diversity - Local News Matters

Librarians at Loyola Marymount University, Saint Mary’s College, Santa Clara University, and the University of San Francisco will use the funds to train and prepare up to twelve faculty teams. The teams will create, modify and publish OER that can integrate diverse, inclusive and anti-racist resources into high-enrollment courses in numerous disciplines. The initiative is meant to reduce costs for students in these courses, encourage faculty to promote OER and add more OER content focused on diversity, equity and inclusion.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careers/university-partnership-will-produce-low-cost-learning-materials-with-focus-on-diversity/ar-AA16PAwy

An OER curriculum brings my students’ lives into our classroom - Megan Euler, eSchool News

An OER science curriculum has completely revolutionized the way I teach and has transformed the way my students relate to their learning. In fact, some of the most powerful learning in my middle school science classroom has happened when I’ve pretended to NOT know the “right answer.” That’s when students take the lead and start to offer up their own ideas, share their experiences, and make powerful connections—sometimes amazing ones that I would never have thought of. Teaching in this way requires a good deal of flexibility—including in your curriculum. A traditional science textbook doesn’t always provide educators the freedom to delve into topics that students bring up from their own lives or questions they have about the world around them. That’s why I’ve turned to open educational resources (OER).

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2022/12/23/an-oer-curriculum-brings-my-students-lives-into-our-classroom/

'Giving New Meaning to 'Open Book': Free textbooks, materials expanding accessibility for students - Mack Burke, OK State

Who would write a book and then give it away for free? Turns out, a lot of people would, and it’s part of a movement that’s having a growing impact at Oklahoma State University. Open Educational Resources, or OER, are research and classroom materials that are free for students to use. OER can include library resources, online articles and videos or open textbooks, which are published with a license that makes them free to use, distribute or adapt. The library is the heart of the open movement on campus. 

https://news.okstate.edu/magazines/state-magazine/articles/2022/winter/giving_new_meaning_to_open_book_free_textbooks_materials_expanding_accessibility_for_students.html

How to search for images you can (legally) use for free / Use these methods to find free images online - EMMA ROTH, the Verge

Here, we’ll go over different places where you can search for free images on the web. It’s worth noting that when searching for free images, you’ll often come across the Creative Commons (CC) license that lets you use an image for free. But depending on the type of CC license an image has, there may be some limitations that require you to credit the original artist or prevent you from making modifications to the image.

https://www.theverge.com/23308003/image-search-free-legal-use-how-to-wikimedia-creative-commons

How the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) NFT Can Help You Protect Your Artwork - OLUWADEMILADE AFOLABI, Make Use Of

In fact, when a CC0 license is used on an NFT in a collection, it is not limited or restricted to that unique NFT but others in the collection as well. How well a CC0 works depends on the legal technicalities in the production region of the work. However, the license is designed to remove all rights, even in areas where copyright laws are stringent. In some cases, the waiver the license offers may not operate as intended, but the CC0 license contains a non-assertion clause. This clause prevents the owner of the NFT from taking any action that would prevent third-party usage of said NFT or others in that collection. Any NFT project with a CC0 license can be remade, reused, and reproduced, even going as far as branding and marketing any creation that was obtained from the original.

https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-creative-commons-zero-cc0-nft/

Worth the Time: Exploring the Faculty Experience of OER Initiatives - Stacy Katz & Shawna M. Brandle, JITP CUNY

Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives, organized efforts to facilitate the adoption of OER, are increasing in popularity throughout the United States as a means of encouraging faculty to teach with these materials. Faculty participate in these initiatives despite other demands on their time and the lack of recognition for OER usage in the tenure and promotion process. To better understand this phenomenon, the authors conducted in-depth interviews with full-time faculty at senior colleges of the City University of New York (CUNY) and thematically analyzed the transcripts. Faculty were interviewed across colleges, teaching disciplines, and tenure status, yet their experiences with OER were remarkably similar. 

https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/read/worth-the-time-exploring-the-faculty-experience-of-oer-initiatives/section/7f74cd71-ae67-4337-847d-a19389e98783

Don’t Judge a Book—But What about the Professor Who Assigned the Book? - Randi Shedlosky-Shoemaker, JITP CUNY

With the cost of higher education becoming increasingly scrutinized, and specifically, attention being paid to non-tuition costs like textbooks, digital open-educational resources (OER) offer a potential pathway to no- and low-cost course materials. While professors might encounter several concerns related to adopting any OER in their class, less is known about how students perceive the professor’s decision to opt for OER. Limited existing research suggests that assigning open-source textbooks should afford professors positive evaluations from students. The current study aims to replicate and extend upon previous experimental research comparing students’ perceptions of professors based on their textbook choices—specifically, whether they use a low-cost OER or a high-cost traditional textbook, and whether they choose to modify that book or use it as is. 

https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/read/don-t-judge-a-book-but-what-about-the-professor-who-assigned-the-book/section/472ea586-23a6-4c35-9afa-b4d655d70cd9

Campus Efforts Save NU System Students $13 Million in Textbook Costs - Melissa Lee, University of Nebraska Omaha

University of Nebraska (NU) System students have saved more than $13 million in textbook costs in recent years thanks to collective efforts of faculty and staff across the four campuses to expand access to more affordable digital course materials. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Nebraska at Omaha, University of Nebraska at Kearney and University of Nebraska Medical Center all have launched programs to reduce textbook costs for students – part of a broad goal across the NU System to ensure affordable access to quality education for all students.

https://www.unomaha.edu/news/2022/12/system-campus-efforts-save-university-of-nebraska-students-13-million-in-textbook-costs.php

MERLOT is an international community of educators, learners, and researchers

The MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.  Browse the site that holds more than 100,000 resources.

http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm

College Open Textbooks: Celebrating 15 years of open innovation

Through partnerships with hundreds of partner universities and programs, the simple nonprofit website fuelled what (over the next 15 years) became a revolution of open education, saving students billions, and eventually retooling the entire for-profit textbook industry. The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (the precursor to the current 501(c)(3) nonprofit, COT Education, received $1.5 million in funding from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in August 2009, to support a campaign to raise awareness about open textbooks among community college instructors and students and increase the number of free, high-quality digital textbooks available online for community college courses with the highest enrollments.

https://collegeopentextbooks.org/

Twenty years of CC

Creative Commons empowers people, institutions, and governments to openly share content to advance knowledge, equity, and creativity for everyone, everywhere. Throughout modern history, access to knowledge has been deliberately and unjustly denied to many, limiting our collective ability to solve the world’s most pressing challenges.  That’s why, in 2001, we came up with a simple yet radical idea: to save the internet from “failed sharing” and create a world where everyone has access to knowledge and creativity.

https://creativecommons.org/20-years/

Open Verse

Explore more than 600 million creative works.  

An extensive library of free stock photos, images, and audio, available for free use.

https://wordpress.org/openverse/

What are OER and how do they differ from Open Access, Library-Licensed and Affordable Course Content? - University of Mary Washington

OER are freely and publicly available teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. For example, instructors may download the material, tailor it to one’s course, save a copy locally to share with one’s students and share it back out with attribution. OER can include textbooks, course materials and full courses, modules, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.  An open source (or open) textbook is a textbook which is OER.

https://provost.umw.edu/oer/what-are-oer/