OER DIGEST - April 21, 2022
From Bilan Jama (CC USA) | Volume 151 | April 21, 2022
THE OER DIGEST
Your bi-weekly newsletter for open education updates, opportunities, and reminders
BENEFITS AND COSTS OF OER REPORT: Midwestern Higher Education Compact (MHEC) released a new report entitled Toward Convergence: Creating Clarity to Drive More Consistency in Understanding the Benefits and Costs of OER. The report describes six principles to help define efforts to identify savings and returns from OER investments and offers two frameworks for making those calculations. Funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the report is part of a series of projects designed to increase access, affordability and equity using OER and produced by National Consortium for Open Educational Resources (NCOER) which is a partnership between the regional compacts including MHEC, the New England Board of Higher Education, the Southern Regional Education Board, and the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.
TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH OER REPORT: Teaching and Learning With Open Educational Resources, conducted by SRI Education, is based on course observations and interviews with faculty members, students and administrators at eight community colleges that use OER. The aim of the study, which was conducted for Achieving the Dream, was to examine “whether the use of OER is leading to instructional transformation, what OEP [open educational practices] look like in the classroom, and how the use of these practices affects students,” according to the report. A particular focus was placed on “historically marginalized student populations'' served by community colleges nationwide.
OPEN CONNECTIONS
Conferences, jobs, and other OER-related opportunities
REGISTER NOW: Join PIJIP and New America for the Creating Culturally Responsive Materials with Open Educational Resources: Beyond Commercial Publishing webinar on April 28th at 3 pm ET. Learn more and register here.
REGISTER NOW: Join the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) on May 18th for Open Licensing with Creative Commons, a webinar part of SREB’s OER Summer Webinar Series. Learn more here.
CALL FOR PROPOSALS: The call for proposals for the 2022 Open Education Conference is now open. Details on submission requirements, session types, and how to submit a proposal are outlined in the call for proposals. The deadline to submit is May 27, 2022.
JOB OPPORTUNITY: Prince George’s Community College is looking to hire a Director of Library and Learning Resources. Learn more and apply here.
JOB OPPORTUNITY: The University of Minnesota - Twin Cities is hiring an Open Education and Affordable Content Librarian. This position will help lead and shape the University Libraries' efforts in developing strategies and services that facilitate the discovery, adoption, creation, and adaptation of open educational resources (OER), open textbooks, and affordable content. Learn more and apply here.
SAVE THE DATE: The Cal OER Organizing Committee invites you to save the date for the second annual Cal OER Conference, held virtually on August 3 – 5, 2022. This event is open to everyone, and the call for proposals will be released soon.
STORIES FROM THE FIELD
Quick snapshots of those making change on the ground level, and those impacted
FROM IOWA: Two Wartburg College social work professors have secured grants totaling $5,500 to develop open-resource instructional materials for two undergraduate social work courses. Tammy Faux, chair of the Department of Social Work, received a $2,500 grant to develop content for an interviewing and assessing course. Tricia Coleman-Waterbury, assistant professor of social work, will use her $3,000 grant to develop resources for an existing open-resource book for an introductory-level social welfare course.“I am creating presentations, reading guides, chapter quizzes, exams and other activities for each chapter, which will make it easier for other professors and students to utilize the materials in the future,” Coleman-Waterbury said. “I did a midterm evaluation with my students to see if it was easy to use or if there were barriers to using the resources, and it was unanimous that they loved it.” Read More >>
HOT OFF THE PRESS
Each edition, we highlight an interesting, new, openly-licensed resource
The Office of Digital Learning & Inquiry at Middlebury College is pleased to announce the publication of The Asynchronous Cookbook. The activities in this cookbook draw on research and good practice in online course design to provide recipes - concise and specific instructions and examples - for adding asynchronous activities to a course.
WEIGH IN
Great reads to repost or share and interesting discussions to consider
Great to Share >>
Embracing OER Institutionwide | Inside Higher Ed
MIT OpenCourseWare launches NextGen platform | MIT News
Interesting to Consider >>
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