The Open Education Resources (OER) initiative at UMass Lowell began in 2016 according to Dr. Julie Nash, Vice Provost for Academics Affairs, when she came into the Provost Office. When the initiative began, a couple of faculty members from different departments were early leaders in using OER in their courses. “We worked with faculty on a case by case basis and worked with the library to find research materials or course materials for faculty. We’ve got some great allies in the library who are really committed to this and we were making progress kind of one class at a time and it was a little bit slow but steady” said Dr. Nash. “Faculty kind of saw that this is actually kind of interesting how you can put together your own materials and actually create a text that’s better than one that you would find that someone else writes for you”.
