Digital learning platform Nearpod has expanded its partnership with Next Gen Personal Finance in order to provide free access to the nonprofit's personal finance curriculum, according to a news release. Next Gen Personal Finance, a nonprofit whose mission is instilling personal finance skills in all high school students before they graduate, will provide the curriculum, covering everything from taxes to investing. The content will be accessible at no cost on Nearpod’s platform, Nearpod said.
Saturday, May 21, 2022
Friday, May 20, 2022
Blockchain and its applications in education - Ravi Kumar, Hinustan Times
The most important dimension of using blockchain is that it helps to overcome the stumbling block of many quality open educational resources that are hard to find on the web. To date, there is still no efficient method of disseminating open educational resources that offer maximum accessibility. Blockchain can effectively support accessibility to open educational resources in publicly available and distributed global knowledge databases.
Thursday, May 19, 2022
UND recognized for efforts to improve access and affordability of educational materials - Adam Kurtz, Grand Forks Herald
“This recognition of the work that UND has done to advance the growth, development, and implementation of OER efforts across campus is the result of years of dedicated work by faculty and staff across the institution,” said Eric Link, UND’s provost. “I’m particularly proud of this award because it speaks directly to our collective commitment to student access and success at UND, and it has truly impacted in positive ways the financial pressures felt by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of students on our campus.”
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
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
Tuesday, May 17, 2022
Open in a Time of Crisis Published - Lindsey Rae Downs, WCET
As an ongoing part of WCET’s efforts to help faculty and staff respond to the pandemic, today Dr. Tanya Spilovoy, our resident Open Educational Resources (OER) expert, takes a look at the role openness and OER can play as institutions move away from rushing to deliver remote instruction to more deliberately designed online courses for the summer term and beyond. As Tanya discusses, OER can play a critical role in making education more affordable for students in these increasingly difficult economic times. Just as importantly, though, she discusses how the philosophy of openness can help build collaborations that will result in everything from more educational opportunities for students to better teaching resources to perhaps even a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.
https://wcet.wiche.edu/frontiers/2020/04/16/open-in-a-time-of-crisis/
Monday, May 16, 2022
The UMass Amherst Libraries announce the publication of a new open textbook, Radical Social Theory: An Appraisal, a Critique, and an Overcoming - UMass Amherst
The text was written by Graciela Monteagudo, professor and associate director of the Social Thought and Political Economy Program (STPEC), and Aaron McBryar ’18, lecturer Shemon Salam, Swati Birla ’06,’22Ph.D., Doug Hornstein ’18, Matthew Hewett ’20, Ashley Everson ’19, Manuel García ’18, Eli Bondar ’21, Arno Noack ’18, Alex Coats ’24, Chris Kennedy ’21, Artemis Duffy ’21, Ella Khorov ’20, Nellie Marshall-Torres ’21, Emily Parker ’20, Emily Van Regenmorter ’21, Leritza Ruiz ’21 and Lucia Solorzano ’20. The book was written thanks to support from the University Libraries Open Education Initiative, which is intended to help faculty transition to open educational resources (OER). OER are learning, teaching, and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license and permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation, and redistribution by others.
Sunday, May 15, 2022
Answering the call for OER - Tabitha Whissimore, Community College Daily
When the state began to push back against college textbook prices, Ohio colleges and universities got innovative. In 2017, “We were seeing in Ohio an atmosphere where the public was attacking higher ed textbook costs,” said Jack Hershey, president and CEO of the Ohio Association of Community Colleges (OACC) during a session at the AACC Annual. Hershey presented with North Central State College President Dorey Diab and OACC’s Success Center Executive Director Laura Rittner.
Saturday, May 14, 2022
Yavapai College President, Leadership Team to Present at National Conference- Yavapai College News
College President, Dr. Lisa B. Rhine will join her Executive Leadership Team to lead three separate presentations to the conference attendees about successful initiatives that have been implemented at Yavapai College. The three presentation topics are:
Outward Mindset and Creating a Strong Workplace Culture
Saving Students Money Through Open Educational Resources
Enhancing Student Completion Through the YC Promise Program
Friday, May 13, 2022
Intimidations with integrations - Brooke Litten, Community College Daily
While the open education resources (OER) movement continues to pick up speed at many institutions, one of the main criticisms is that OER does not contain equivalent interactive elements as some mainstream publisher content, such as Pearson’s MyLab product or Cengage’s Mindtap.
Publishers are even combatting the low-cost to no-cost movement by offering more cost-effective options for students, like the Netflix of textbook options Cengage Unlimited, or Barnes and Noble’s First Day, which provides discounts and immediate access to required materials. Instructors and administrators will vouch for the quality of publisher integrations and products, but there are several other considerations that should be taken in consideration when adopting new digital materials: substantive instructor interaction, onsite support for faculty and students, and data sharing.
Thursday, May 12, 2022
Expensive Textbooks Are Still A Problem. Will Higher Quality OER Help? - Daniel Mollenkamp, EdSurge
High textbook costs continue to prove a barrier to college for some students, with some studies showing that many students skip textbook purchases even if they worry it’ll harm their grades because of the price tag. These days low-cost add-ons to freely available, openly licensed alternatives known as Open Educational Resources, or OER, are getting a boost as a potential solution. Last week, for example, Lumen Learning, a company that sells OER-based courseware, announced it received a $5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Wednesday, May 11, 2022
Lumen Learning Grant Challenges Applicants to Improve OER - Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology
Open education company Lumen Learning has introduced the Improve It Challenge, a new grant program inviting applicants to improve existing open educational resources for particularly difficult learning outcomes. The goal: to tackle areas that students most struggle with and revise, remix or create new openly licensed learning activities that help them succeed.
Tuesday, May 10, 2022
A New Model for OER Sustainability and Continuous Improvement - David Wiley, Good Men Project
I’ve been interested in sustainability models for OER for decades. (Longtime readers may recall that the research group I founded at Utah State University in 2003, the Open Sustainable Learning Opportunities group, became The Center for Open and Sustainable Learning in 2005, which I directed until I moved to BYU.) And for just as long, I’ve believed that there are useful lessons for us to learn on this topic from open source software – OER’s far more popular and influential sibling.
Monday, May 9, 2022
White Paper on OER: Seven Recommendations to Improve OER Uptake in Higher Education Institutions - UW Space, University of Waterloo
A qualitative study conducted with 13 faculty instructors at Waterloo on their interest, motivation, and use of OER informed seven recommendations made in this white paper. Recommendations are grouped in three categories: new framings for the OER conversation, new practices for institutions, and new supports for institutions. Each recommendation represents a concrete direction for higher education institutions looking to improve local OER uptake.
Sunday, May 8, 2022
Are You Falling for These 4 OER Myths? - XanEdu
A recent survey by XanEdu and Higher Ed Dive’s studioID reveals 89% of higher ed leaders believe open education resources (OER) initiatives will increase or remain the same this academic year. That’s a rousing endorsement that’s somewhat muted by four persistent myths over content quality, curricula customization, free access and transition challenges. What do these myths say about OER acceptance and effectiveness?
Myth 1: OER forces compromises on content quality.
Myth 2: OER is too hard to customize.
Myth 3: OER should be free.
Myth 4: OER takes too much time to transition new material.
Saturday, May 7, 2022
Open to change? How higher ed can save millions, reach more students - Chris Burt, University Business
A new report from Achieving The Dream shows the immense power of open educational resources, beyond just cost. Cost savings and accessibility have been two of the signature drivers behind the adoption of open educational resources. But in a two-year-long study done by Achieving the Dream and SRI International, researchers found that their implementation has done quite a bit more. Among 38 of the community colleges that ATD serves, the further embrace of OERs has helped boost student agency and engagement, delivered them more relevant course material and helped them collaborate more frequently with other students and instructors.
https://universitybusiness.com/open-to-change-how-higher-ed-can-save-millions-reach-more-students/
Friday, May 6, 2022
Finding the 'recipe' for calculating OER benefits - Emily Bamforth, EdScoop
The report lays out a framework for calculating savings for students, as well as a method for approaching cost-benefit analysis. It recommends that when considering the costs and challenges of OER implementation, universities consider the impacts on specific groups — like students, professors and department chairs — in addition to the institution as a whole. Besides monetary costs, those impacts could include the time needed to pick new materials and redesign lesson plans.
Thursday, May 5, 2022
Taking OER beyond just cost savings - Matthew Dembicki, Community College Daily
The use of open education resources (OER) — freely available course materials that educators can use, adapt and redistribute online at little or no cost to students — can reduce the expenses of books and supplies for students. But a national organization focused on helping community colleges advance equity and improve student success is studying if OER also can help to boost students’ learning experiences and improve teaching approaches.
https://www.ccdaily.com/2022/04/taking-oer-beyond-just-cost-savings/
Wednesday, May 4, 2022
Expensive Textbooks Are Still A Problem. Will Higher Quality OER Help? - Daniel Mollenkamp, EdSurge
These days low-cost alternatives known as Open Educational Resources, or OER, are getting a boost as a potential solution. Last week, for example, Lumen Learning, a company that sells low-cost OER textbooks and courseware, announced it received a $5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant will help Lumen bring together the company’s three separate platforms for humanities, professional development and online homework management, executives from the company say. Officials plan to make an OER Statistics 101 course available by 2023.
Tuesday, May 3, 2022
Embracing OER Institutionwide - David Steele, Inside Higher Ed
A new study finds that open educational resources are a big hit with some community college students and faculty, but that these textbook alternatives won't reach their full potential until administrators embrace them. The report concluded that the adoption of OER gave both teachers and students far more freedom in what they learned and how they learned, and it made students feel more in control of their education, safer in their classroom environments and more culturally connected to the material. What needs marked improvement, said Karen Stout, president and CEO of Achieving the Dream, is institutional awareness, understanding and support for OER.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/04/20/teachers-students-love-oer-officials-not-all-board
Monday, May 2, 2022
Wartburg social work professors secure grants to develop open educational resources - Community Newspaper Group
Two Wartburg College social work professors have secured grants totaling $5,500 to develop open-resource instructional materials for two undergraduate social work courses. Tammy Faux, chair of the Department of Social Work, received a $2,500 grant to develop content for an interviewing and assessing course. Tricia Coleman-Waterbury, assistant professor of social work, will use her $3,000 grant to develop resources for an existing open-resource book for an introductory-level social welfare course. “I am creating presentations, reading guides, chapter quizzes, exams and other activities for each chapter, which will make it easier for other professors and students to utilize the materials in the future,” Coleman-Waterbury said.
Sunday, May 1, 2022
Online Learning Consortium Announces 2022 OLC Innovate Award Winners [this post is noting those recipients with OER]
Dr. Carolyn Stevenson and Dr. Michele Riley, Purdue University Global, "The Alternative Credit Center at Purdue Global: Open Degree Programs, Portfolios, and Assessment." The Purdue Global Alternative Credit Center provides opportunities for both degree-seeking and nondegree-seeking students. It accepts eligible credits through portfolio development, open learning courses, course assessments, and work/life experience.
E-Learning Deanship, King Khiled University, "Electronic Laboratory Platform E-Lab." The Deanship of E-Learning at KKU developed E-Lab, which is an open platform, with the primary goal of explaining scientific concepts in a simplified, enjoyable form. The platform provided students access to equal learning opportunities by delivering learning resources electronically to access at anytime from anywhere.
Dr. Kim Grewe is an instructional designer, professor, and OER lead at Northern Virginia Community College's distance learning center, NOVA Online; a curriculum developer and online course facilitator for the Online Learning Consortium; a program developer for the Regional Leaders of Open Education (RLOE) network; and a curriculum developer and online course facilitator for Open for Antiracism [a project led by the Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER) and College of the Canyons].
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