"Open Educational Resources are 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 repurposing by others. OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge." - William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
OHIO'S OER INITIATIVE!
Affordable Learning Ohio is OhioLINK's series of initiatives to lower the cost of college for Ohio higher education students by assisting our member libraries and campuses in identifying strategies for Open and Affordable Learning textbook and course material adoption, and helping locate statewide shareable library materials as well as open educational resources that are no cost or lower cost to students. Check out the following links to learn more: https://affordablelearning.ohiolink.edu/Guide https://ohiolink.oercommons.org/ - at this website you can register and join hubs that are specific to your discipline. Once registered, the Ohio Open Ed Collaborative allows you to create, adopt, share, and recommend open materials for higher ed courses that generally have the highest enrollment. |
Go to this video playlist on YouTube OR watch all 10 videos straight through below.
Inside Higher Ed article from July, 2016
Opening the Textbook: Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2015-16
Study by the Babson Survey Research Group examined the discovery, evaluation, and adoption process for required course materials by U.S. higher education faculty
Open Textbooks Could Help Students
As the price of college textbooks continues to increase, more students are opting to skip the books even if their grades suffer, a survey conducted by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group has found. In a report released on Monday, the group said open textbooks—written by faculty members, peer-reviewed, and available free online—could help make textbooks affordable again.
The Cost and Quality of Open Textbooks:
The Cost and Quality of Open Textbooks: Perceptions of community college faculty and students. by TJ Bliss, John Hilton, David Wiley and Kim Thanos.
David Wiley's Blog, Iterating Toward Openness
Dr. David Wiley is Chief Academic Officer of Lumen Learning. He is also currently the Education Fellow at Creative Commons and adjunct faculty in Brigham Young University's graduate program in Instructional Psychology and Technology, where he leads the Open Education Group. His blog is insightful and provides current information on the OER world.
more...7 Things You Should Know about OER
This link takes you to an EDUCAUSE webpage where you can download this article.
Blogpost by David Wiley
Report: Make Textbooks Affordable
As publishers keep costs high by pumping out new editions and selling books bundled with software, students are forced to forgo book purchases or otherwise undermine their academic progress.
What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?
OER are educational materials that are specifically designed by their creator/s to be openly available, and are often licensed to be re-used, re-mixed, and re-distributed. Open is not just about low cost (though that is an important benefit of using OER) but about the ability to take what others have created, customize it for your specific educational needs, and then share your creation with others.
OER come in a variety of forms:
The open resource movement has been around for a while, starting with static learning objects (about 2000), and transitioning to OER that allowed for revision and reuse. It is the ever increasing cost of textbooks and materials for students that is now pushing the OER movement forward. Textbooks and learning materials cost students approximately $1,200 per year. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 in 10 students didn't purchase a textbook because it was too expensive. Through OER the cost of student materials can be drastically reduced. OER also give instructors the ability to customize the materials, creating the "perfect" textbook instead of being bound to traditional print resources.
The first step is finding OER, and that is what this guide is designed to do, so check out
PLEASE NOTE: While this guide is specifically designed to introduce OER to the Defiance College community, don't forget numerous electronic resources are available to you through the Pilgrim Library. Through Ohiolink and OPAL, Defiance College has licensed journals, databases, primary content, and an ever increasing number of ebooks. Though these are not "open" to everyone since these resources are restricted to DC faculty, staff and students (you have to have a DC id number to log-in to access) and they do not allow for customization and re-use in the same way as other OER, they are resources that you can definitely make available at no cost for your students.
Material in this LibGuide is adapted from:
Lansing Community College (LCC) Library Research Guide on Open Educational Resources (OER) by Regina Gong licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The University of Oklahoma Libraries Research Guild on Open Educational Resources by Jen Waller and Cody Taylor licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. All linked-to content adheres to its respective license.
