Open Educational Resources & Open Education Week 2021

"Open Education Week 2021 Logo" by Open Education Global is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Get ready for Open Education Week, coming up on March 1-5, 2021! Coordinated by Open Education Global, 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.

 

ACC Library Services will be celebrating Open Education Week. Here’s what we will be offering!:

• Padlet: "Let's Celebrate Zero Textbook Costs (ZTC) and Open Educational Resources (OER)!"
• Workshop #1: OER: OER Myth Busting 101 (3/3/21, 1-2pm)
  
• Workshop #2: OER: OERTX & The ACC Hub (3/5/21, 1-2pm) 
• Faculty, we need to hear from you! The goal of the OER ACC Hub is to showcase and share the wealth of OER that ACC faculty are already using. We need your help to identify OER you're using, have created, or find useful for your ACC courses. Click here to complete a short survey.

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.

"5Rs image" by David Wiley, Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Since 2017 and the large scale expansion in the use of OER at ACC, the college has saved students over $8.5 million in textbooks costs!  ACC Library Services is supporting faculty in their ability to discover, evaluate, adopt, and share OER in their discipline. Our online OER LibGuide is a comprehensive look at OER and a great place to start. It is also a place to celebrate our Textbook Heroes and Ambassadors! Faculty and staff who want to learn more about OER are encouraged to take the ACC Learn OER online course. This 10 module self-paced course (2 hours of PD credit) serves as an introduction to open educational resources and as an opportunity for further exploration and discovery of open education practices. 

Additional Resources:

• ACC OERTX Hub - OER used at ACC featured in the statewide OER repository
• Open Texas 2021 Conference - coming up on March 11-12, 2021, this free conference will convene librarians, faculty, administrators, and other open education practitioners and advocates in Texas.

Celebrate Open Education Week by exploring the resources highlighted in this article or perusing the OE Week list of activities to see what is happening worldwide!

#OEWeek