OER

Open Educational Resources Workshop—October 18, 2017

Workshop on Open Educational Materials, October 18, 2017
Discovering and Developing Open Educational Resources for Your Courses

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

2:00 pm – 3:30 pm, Fenwick Library, Room 1009.

Open Educational Resources (OERs) include materials for teaching, learning, and research that may be freely used and repurposed by others, because they reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license (such as Creative Commons) that permits their use and reuse. The high costs of textbooks have led universities including Mason to advance OER adoption to reduce the cost of instruction for students, improve teaching and learning outcomes, and enable better opportunities for students through open access to quality educational resources.

Mason 4-VA, in collaboration with Mason Publishing in the University Libraries and the Office of Digital Learning in the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning, has announced a call for proposals to encourage the use of OERs in innovative course redesign.

Competitive grants will be awarded ranging from $1000-$5000, depending on the nature of the work and the level of team collaboration. Larger amounts will be considered for projects that develop original materials. Courses targeted for the pilot include those with high enrollment numbers, are required courses for majors, count in the Mason Core, or carry high textbook costs. As part of this pilot project, Mason Publishing is assisting instructors in developing open textbooks and other open access materials.

RFP Open Educational Resources 2017

Attendees will learn from teams who have successfully incorporated OERs in online and face-to-face classrooms. Participants will also learn about opportunities to develop textbooks and other materials with Mason Publishing, and how to identify and quality open textbooks as a replacement to higher cost textbooks.

Open and Affordable Educational Resources (OER)

At Mason, we want to make your courses accessible to all students.  One way to do that is to reduce the costs of the textbooks and other educational materials you use—and University Libraries can help. We offer support for reducing the cost of textbooks  and for making library-licensed e-content available to your students.  We’re also ready to help you discover, use or even develop and publish your own open educational resources.

So there are several ways to make educational resources affordable for your students:

  • Choose a standard textbook, put a physical copy on reserve, then let your students know how to access it.
  • Choose a textbook or articles where the library already offers free digital access.  Place the item on ‘e-reserve‘ and then link to the item on your Blackboard site or include a link in your syllabus.
  • Choose an existing Open Educational Resource (see Finding OERs below).
  • Work with us to develop and publish an OER for your course(s). Contact Aaron McCollough at amccollo at gmu.edu to get started.

What are Open Educational Resources?

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are freely-accessible teaching, educational, and research materials that either exist in the public domain or are available to users via an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing. These resources include complete online courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, assessment tools, and software. They provide people worldwide with access to quality education and the opportunity to share, use, and reuse knowledge.

Finding OERs

Mason’s Open Educational Resource Metafinder

In conjunction with Deep Web Technologies, University Libraries has developed a search engine that simultaneously queries a number of open educational resource sites.   In addition to well-known OER repositories like OpenStax or Merlot II, our Metafinder also searches HathiTrust, DPLA, Internet Archive and other sites where valuable open educational materials may be found.

We’re still adding search targets but today our OER Metafinder searches sixteen sites in real time, returning the top 250 or so hits from each site–in seconds!  Additional matches continue to trickle in as you begin examining your results.

Search: Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)

 
Advanced Search

RFP for Open Educational Resources at Mason

The high costs of textbooks have led universities including Mason to advance OER adoption to reduce the cost of instruction for students, improve teaching and learning outcomes, and enable better opportunities for students through open access to quality educational resources.

Mason 4-VA, in collaboration with Mason Publishing in the University Libraries and the Office of Digital Learning in the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning, has announced a call for proposals to encourage the use of OERs in innovative course redesign.

Competitive grants will be awarded ranging from $1000-$5000, depending on the nature of the work and the level of team collaboration. Larger amounts will be considered for projects that develop original materials. Courses targeted for the pilot include those with high enrollment numbers, are required courses for majors, count in the Mason Core, or carry high textbook costs. As part of this pilot project, Mason Publishing is assisting instructors in developing open textbooks and other open access materials.

RFP Open Educational Resources 2017-18

Additional Resources

Explore the links below for additional information  on this OERs:

Course Content and Textbooks

Open Courses and MOOCs

Grants and Advocacy

K-12 Resources

Articles and Research on OERs

web2rights Creative Commons License Compatibility Wizard.

OER Part 1: Course Content and Textbooks

The following Open Educational Resources (OER) collections include course content and textbooks you may use, re-purpose, and distribute for your teaching and learning needs. Learn more about high-quality open courses, educational resources, and OER advocacy by checking out the rest of the series below:

Part 2: Open Courses and MOOCs | Part 3: Grants and Advocacy | Part 4: K-12 Resources | Part 5: Articles and Research

Return to OER overview

Read moreOER Part 1: Course Content and Textbooks

OER Part 2: Open Courses and MOOCs

The following Open Educational Resources (OER) collections include open courses and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) that you can take to supplement your curriculum or simply explore new subjects. Learn more about high-quality open educational resources and OER advocacy by checking out the rest of the series below:

Part 1: Course Content and Textbooks | Part 3: Grants and Advocacy | Part 4: K-12 Resources | Part 5: Articles and Research

Return to OER overview

Read moreOER Part 2: Open Courses and MOOCs

OER Part 4: K-12 Resources

While most of the energy around Open Educational Resources is in higher education, affordable and open educational resources are important to K-12 educators as well.

Part 1: Course Content and Textbooks | Part 2: Open Courses and MOOCs | Part 3: Grants and Advocacy | Part 5: Articles and Research

Return to OER overview

Curriki (http://www.curriki.org/)

Curriki is a nonprofit global community that offers free K-12 learning resources for teachers, students, and parents. The resources on Curriki cover a wide range of subjects in the arts and sciences. Curriki offers over 55,000 Open Educational Resources and its 400,000 members represent nearly 200 countries.

Khan Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org/)

Not-for-profit Khan Academy is an organization dedicated to providing a “free world-class education for anyone anywhere.” Content includes interactive challenges, assessments, and video in an array of topics for kindergartners through adult learners. Create an account to practice standardized tests and keep statistics on assignments and coursework you’ve completed, noting your progress as you learn.

Lumen Learning (http://lumenlearning.com/)

http://lumenlearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/LumenLogo200x70.png

Lumen is dedicated to facilitating broad, successful adoption of OER at higher education and K-12 institutions. Lumen provides training and support for faculty members to teach open courses and also publishes open courses in over 30 high-demand subjects. Lumen’s catalog of open courseware includes courses in mathematics, general education, business, and science and technology.

Student Senate Support for the Open Textbook Initiative at George Mason University

The University Libraries is excited to report that the Student Government Senate has issued a resolution in support of open textbook adoption at Mason. This resolution encourages faculty to consider replacing expensive textbooks with open access materials and is a huge step on the path toward making college more affordable to Mason students.

What is an open textbook? It is a freely available digital book to which the author(s) has assigned a license permitting others, such as instructors, to use and adapt the content to suit their specific course learning objectives. That is, instructors can download, modify, remix, and share the item at no cost to themselves, their students, or their colleagues.

What do open textbooks offer students? Course material that is relevant, up to date, and varied in format, as well as accessible to all students as soon as a course begins. Concerns about the cost of pursuing a particular degree are diminished when textbook costs become immaterial. Not least of all, money that would have been spent on textbooks becomes available to help pay for rent, food, transportation, or even another course,.

What do open textbooks offer faculty? Some powerful incentives are:

  • the option to tailor course material selections to fit personal pedagogy,
  • the opportunity to work collaboratively with other disciplinary experts to select or create content that may be used and modified by colleagues around the globe, and
  • the ability to support students in a way that is deeply meaningful and purposeful, both inside and outside of the classroom.

The University Libraries invites your queries, discussion, and concerns about open textbooks. We are available to help you find these textbooks and other openly licensed materials to work with and integrate into your course(s). We are also experts in subscription content that may be appropriate for your course needs.

Please contact John Warren in the Mason Publishing Group about the open textbook initiative when curiosity overcomes you or you need assistance with existing open projects. As the expert in research materials specific to your discipline (both open and proprietary), your Subject Librarian is also available for consultation and assistance.

OER Part 5: Articles and Research

The following Open Educational Resources (OER) collection includes scholarly articles and other research on the benefits, uses, development, and adaptation of OER. Given the rapid growth of the OER movement, both in terms of the academic credibility and attention of policy makers it has gained, it is important for us to monitor the OER landscape as it continues to evolve. To learn more about open educational resources in higher education and how you can get involved in the OER movement, check out the rest of the series:

Part 1: Course Content and Textbooks | Part 2: Open Courses and MOOCs | Part 3: Grants and Advocacy | Part 4: K-12 Resources

Return to OER overview

Read moreOER Part 5: Articles and Research

Faculty Support to Explore Open Ed Resources

How can you, as an educator, have increased control over your teaching materials, be more creative in the classroom, AND lower student costs? Use existing open educational resources (OER) or create your own materials!

Mason 4-VA, in collaboration with the University Libraries and Mason Online, invites you to submit a proposal for innovative redesign of a course that integrates digital (and accessible) materials. That is, you supplant expensive textbooks either with digital works that you create, or with existing digital content that is in the public domain, licensed Creative Commons, or available in databases to which the University Libraries subscribes. To that end, you are reducing the cost of instruction to students and improving learning outcomes.

Courses of particular interest are those that:

  • have high enrollment,
  • are required for majors,
  • count in the Mason Core, or
  • carry high textbook costs.

This initiative is a Mason 4-VA pilot project. Any Mason full-time instructional faculty who teach high demand, heavily populated courses are eligible to apply, as are adjunct faculty who are part of a team proposal.

Depending on the nature of the proposed project and the level of team collaboration, you may receive a competitive grant ranging from $1,500 to $5,000. Funds will be distributed in Summer 2016.

The library is ready to support your use of OER content or answer your questions related to copyright and the Creative Commons licensing of your own materials. Mason Publishing Group, a department of the University Libraries, is available to aid faculty in developing OER textbooks or workbooks as a part of this pilot project. Let us know how we may help you! Contact your subject librarian or John Warren (jwarre13@gmu.edu), Head, Mason Publishing.

For more information and cover sheet, see: Course Redesign: Using Open Educational Resources

Proposals due: March 18, 2016 EXTENDED to March 21, 2016!

Award notification: April 4, 2016

Submit your proposal electronically to:

Linda Sheridan,

Deputy Coordinator, Mason 4-VA

lsherid1@gmu.edu

 

OER Part 3: Grants, Advocacy, and Guidelines

Learn more about how you can support the adoption and development of high-quality open courses and educational resources by checking out the following resources on grants, OER advocacy, and other OER guidelines. The rest of our series on Open Educational Resources (OER) features collections of open courses, textbooks, and course content that you may use, re-purpose, and distribute for your teaching and learning needs.

Part 1: Course Content and Textbooks | Part 2: Open Courses and MOOCs | Part 4: K-12 Resources | Part 5: Articles and Research

Return to OER overview

Read moreOER Part 3: Grants, Advocacy, and Guidelines