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Higher levels of education are expensive. The books that are used are not cheap, either. However, open education resources (OERs) are starting to take hold. They are benefiting students, educationally and financially.
Via EDTECH@UTRGV
This project sought to study how much academic librarians who work with open educational resources (OERs) know about accessibility, as well as how they incorporate accessibility into the products of their work. A survey was sent out through email list services in spring 2020, and any librarian worldwide who works with OERs was invited to participate; 193 responded in full. Just under half of librarians said they always consider accessibility when working with faculty to create or adapt OERs, but fewer than a third said they consider accessibility a factor when adding OERs to their collections.
There has been little research into the impact of textbook costs on higher education in the United Kingdom. To better understand textbook use patterns and the issues faced by UK students an
Via Ana Cristina Pratas
The Internet Archive is temporarily eliminating waitlists for tons of ebooks to create a National Emergency Library open to anyone with an internet connection.
Digital resources to support online teaching This guide is put together to support those in UK universities moving to online teaching in light of the COVID-19 outbreak. This is work in progress so please feel free to add any additional resources to the list below, we are relying on librarians t
So it has happened – OER20 in London in April has been cancelled. This comes as no surprise but it’s still disappointing not to be meeting up with friends, hearing their ideas and, in my case, meet…
Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives remain high on the agenda across US campuses. A report released earlier this year by Ithaka S+R surveying faculty members in the United States includes a particularly interesting set of key findings. I strongly encourage exploring this report, as the data and analysis stretches across various aspects of higher education. One of the findings that I thought was particularly surprising is the percentage of faculty that expressed an interest in using OER in their courses, specifically,
This starter kit has been created to provide instructors with an introduction to the use and creation of open educational resources (OER). The text is broken into five sections: Getting Started, Copyright, Finding OER, Teaching with OER, and Creating OER. Although some chapters contain more advanced content, the starter kit is primarily intended for users who are entirely new to Open Education. [Version 1.1. Revised September 5th, 2019.]
This came out 6 months ago, but Esther Grassian just highlighted it - there is a useful introduction to Online Educational Resources (OERs) (with lots of links etc.) in the December 2018 issue of Library Instruction Round Table News: Tech Talk: Online Educational Resources by Billie Peterson-Lugo (on pages 5, 9-14)..
What is your tolerance for failure in education?
Jess Mitchell, senior manager of research and design at the Inclusive Design Research Centre, posed the question on Wednesday to a group of around 850 educators, librarians and other open-access enthusiasts at the OpenEd conference in Niagara Falls, N.Y.
Even as movements like open access gain momentum and increase access to learning materials for more students, Mitchell said, “the so-called playing field is not equal.” Determining where educators draw the line for failure, whether that’s with students of color, low-income students, immigrant students or some other group, determines educational outcomes and equity opportunities for the future.
M.A.—$20,000 dollars of student debt, 14 months, one thesis, two internships, $1,500 dollars worth of textbooks, and countless sleepless nights later and I finally earned those two little letters following my name. It wasn’t until three semesters into my degree, after spending $1,000 dollars merely renting my textbooks that I discovered my University’s ebook library. To be clear, I didn’t just stumble upon it either. After learning about open educational resources (OER) at the HEeD Think Tank last spring (now UPCEA’s eDesign Collaborative), I spent hours doing my own personal research on my university’s open access policy and scouring the library website. Eventually, I was able to find all but three of my 11 textbooks for my master’s degree in educational technology freely available on the library website, not to mention plenty of other materials (e.g., case studies and articles I had purchased over the years).
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Last week, I introduced the COUP framework, which is a great framework to start with OER research. However, some categories of the COUP framework have been researched more extensively than others. For example, one of the biggest “selling points” of OER is cost. But is a free resource always the better option if students don’t achieve good grades in the end?
COVID 19 has had a wide impact on education internationally and specifically in Canada, with nearly all institutions now transitioning to online education, with many learning for the first time about Open Educational Resources (OER). Understanding what is happening with OER in the different regions of our country is one step in creating awareness and promoting national networks for sharing resources, serving to address local educational needs. Educators can assemble, adopt, adapt, design, and develop OER-based courses that can cost-effectively address the needs of Canadian students. This paper describes OER-related initiatives and implementations across Canada that can serve as examples to educators and administrators, who because of COVID 19, are offering online courses for the first time.
"UNESCO coined the term ‘OER‘ back in 2002 to describe an initiative intended to bring about educational resources that were universally accessible. Open Educational Resources are described as ‘learning, teaching, and research materials in any media, digital or otherwise, that belong to the public domain, or have been released under an open license permitting free access, use, and adaptation, as well as redistribution by others without restriction.’"
Via EDTECH@UTRGV
What are the best dynamic, digital resources that can fit teachers’ unique instructional styles, align with district and state standards, and be personalized to meet students’ diverse learning needs? At Liberty Public Schools (LPS), we started asking this question over five years ago, and discovered an answer: open educational resources (OER). OER are openly licensed materials that are free for educators and students to use, customize, and share.
Teachers may sometimes feel overwhelmed by the multitude of resources available online. It might take one a tremendous amount of time to sift through and locate required materials to use in class, which is a taxing task for the already overburdened teacher. To this end, and to help teachers make better use of their time and resources we have curated for you some of the best free websites that provide a treasure trove of educational content most of which is created and shared by fellow teachers and educators. From ready-made lesson plans and study guides to practice exercises and EdTech tools, the websites below provide you with the resources you need to enhance your teaching/learning and grow professionally. This work is also available for free download in PDF format.
As the pivot to online gathers apace, some colleagues have been discussing if we have useful resources at the Open University to help. Lots of other people are doing excellent work online, so I won’t try and collate everything that is out there but rather just focus on OU resources. While we do know a lot about distance & online learning, it’s important to recognise that what is happening now is quite different in nature. This is an emergency, swift response in switching classes to online, which is not the same as a carefully planned 5 year strategy.
Open educational resources have gone global and may help make learning more accessible, equitable and inclusive around the world. So says the new Educause Horizon report, which identifies technologies and trends that are changing higher education. This year’s forecast was created by nearly five dozen higher education experts, a third of them from institutions outside of the U.S. OER was one of six “emerging technologies and practices” the panelists highlighted as most likely to significantly influence postsecondary teaching and learning in the future.
Welcome to our femedtech Open Space, find out more about us here. This web site was launched in conjunction with the OER19 Femedtech Open Space session. There is an archive of the details of the activity here and you can find the archived discussion under the subcategories of the Archive menu.
In the last few weeks we shared with you a number of interesting free resources from OER Commons that you can use in your class for a wide variety of instructional materials (see resources on game-based learning and resources for STEAM teachers). Today, we are sharing with you another excellent resource from OER Commons featuring a collection of curated educational materials for art integration in education. ‘Arts integration’,
In addition to being creative copyright and licensing clearing powerhouses, our two Open Content interns Ana McKellar and Andrew Ferguson have been working with our Geoscience teaching expert Kay Douglas to align our primary and secondary level open educational resources with the Scottish Qualifications Framework (SCQF) and make the resources easier for teachers to pick up and run in their classes.
Lorna M. Campbell, Senior Service Manager – Learning Technology within Education Design and Engagement – at the University of Edinburgh, blogs about her experience at the International Copyright-Literacy Event with Playful Opportunities for Practitioners and Scholars (Icepops) 2019 in this post. This was originally posted on her blog, and is available under CC-BY 3.0. Ok, confession time; I’m useless at playing games. Any kind of games – card games, board games, computer games, strategy games, discovery games, competitive games, for some reason they just don’t hold my attention. I’m not sure why that is, I just don’t seem to have that “hook” that engages people with game play. Although I’m not a natural game player, I do really enjoy playfulness and creativity (who doesn’t?!) and copyright literacy is definitely my thing so I really appreciated being able to go along to last week’s ICEPOPS Conference here at the University, not least because my inspirational OER Service colleague Stephanie (Charlie) Farley was giving her first ever keynote.
- We specialise in delivering effective learning experiences for adults which fit around their lives, whether it’s a busy mum in London working toward her degree, or a primary school teacher in a remote area in Kenya, improving her classroom practice. Over 70% of our students remain at work while studying.
- We use appropriate technology to break down barriers – for those with disabilities, isolated or economically challenged.
- We are open – we aim to remove all barriers to education and set no entry qualifications.
- We use a mixture of business models (free, fee, and donor support) to provide scalable and sustainable solutions.
- We deliver quality learning experiences on scale to over 170,000 students. Of the UK learners, 61,000 are eligible for financial support and 44% start undergraduate study without the entry qualifications they would need at a conventional university.
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