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/