Happy Open Education Week! Coordinated by The Open Education Consortium, Open Education Week raises awareness about the movement and its impact on teaching and learning. Institutions worldwide are joining in the celebration by offering local and online events to promote free and open educational opportunities.
At the foundation of education is the concept of sharing - sharing information, insights, knowledge, and ideas. The Open Education Consortium describes Open Education as a combination of the, “traditions of knowledge sharing and creation with 21st century technology to create a vast pool of openly shared educational resources.” Terms like open access, open pedagogy, and open educational resources are each resources, tools, and practices which make up the larger movement of open education.
An evolving aspect of the open education movement is the increase in the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education. OER are freely available learning materials that can be downloaded, edited, and shared to better serve all students. OER also provide a broad range of high quality resources, allow for greater academic freedom (faculty can revise and modify the content to better meet their learning outcomes and course structure), and lower cost for students (zero cost to access required course materials vs. $100 or more for a required course textbook). OER allow for the 5Rs - retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute.
At the foundation of education is the concept of sharing - sharing information, insights, knowledge, and ideas. The Open Education Consortium describes Open Education as a combination of the, “traditions of knowledge sharing and creation with 21st century technology to create a vast pool of openly shared educational resources.” Terms like open access, open pedagogy, and open educational resources are each resources, tools, and practices which make up the larger movement of open education.
An evolving aspect of the open education movement is the increase in the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education. OER are freely available learning materials that can be downloaded, edited, and shared to better serve all students. OER also provide a broad range of high quality resources, allow for greater academic freedom (faculty can revise and modify the content to better meet their learning outcomes and course structure), and lower cost for students (zero cost to access required course materials vs. $100 or more for a required course textbook). OER allow for the 5Rs - retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute.
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| "5Rs image" by David Wiley, Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 4.0 |
ACC joined the OER movement this year by participating in the Achieving the Dream OER Degree Initiative Grant. The goal is to provide students the opportunity to earn an A.A. or A.S. in General Studies by taking courses which use OER in place of an expensive proprietary textbook. In other words, an ACC student could earn their degree with zero textbook costs. This Spring 2017 semester ACC launched 11 OER courses (29 sections). By Spring 2019 students will be able to complete their General Studies degree by taking courses using only OER. Courses using OER are being offered at HLC, RRC, and RVS. OER courses are listed in the course schedule with the following language:
This class utilizes free “open educational resources” (OER) materials in lieu of required textbooks. Access to these online materials will be provided on the first day of class. Students have the option to print copies of all materials, but will be responsible for printing costs.
ACC Library Services is making it easier for faculty to discover, evaluate, adopt, and share OER in their discipline. Our online OER LibGuide is a comprehensive look at OER. It includes access to everything from finding and evaluating OER, empirical research studies on the impact of OER on student success, tools for building openly licensed materials, tools for providing attribution for materials used, in-depth information on creative commons licensing, resources for learning more about OER and how best to use them to enhance pedagogy.
Celebrate Open Education Week by perusing the OER guide to learn more!
#oer #openeducationwk #textbookbroke
