From Bilan Jama (CC USA)  | Volume 137 | September 16, 2021

THE OER DIGEST

Your bi-weekly newsletter for open education updates, opportunities, and reminders

OPEN FOR ANTI-RACISM: Open Education Global has announced that the Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER), jointly with College of the Canyons, has received an additional two-year grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, to expand and extend the Open for Anti-Racism (OFAR) program supporting faculty in California Community Colleges. In the OFAR program, first piloted in spring 2021,. participating faculty learned about anti-racism, open educational resources, and open pedagogy in a course entitled Open for Anti-Racism. Ninety percent of participants indicated that their teaching practice improved. Faculty employed three key strategies: incorporating student  voices to include non-mainstream perspectives and points of view; co-create materials with students for an anti-racism module; integrating inclusive media (images, data, videos, podcasts, etc.) to illustrate and explicitly discuss racism, oppression, privilege, and healing.

 

UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA REPORT: The University of Ottawa Open and Affordable Learning Materials Working Group, sponsored by the University Librarian and Vice-Provost, Knowledge Systems, the Vice-Provost of Academic Affairs, and the Associate Vice-President of Student Affairs, has published the Report and Recommendations for Open Educational Resources (OER) Initiatives and Affordable Alternatives at uOttawa. Created in late 2019, the working group has promoted the use of affordable course content; recommended strategies  in which the creation and adoption of OER is encouraged and rewarded at uOttawa; and coordinated efforts among key campus stakeholders who lead and support open education initiatives on campus. The report concludes twelve months of work and presents four categories of recommendations to guide open education and textbook affordability activities at uOttawa for the next five years. 

 

OPEN CONNECTIONS

Conferences, jobs, and other OER-related opportunities

APPLY NOW: The Michelson 20 Million Minds Foundation is offering a set of attendance scholarships for the Open Education Conference. Students, educators, nonprofit staff, and others working in the open space are encouraged to apply. Deadline for applications is September 27th. Learn more and apply here. 

SAVE THE DATE: COERLL (UT Austin) and OLRC (University of Kansas) will be hosting OER office hours this semester for language educators. These are recurring, informal, drop-in sessions taking place on Zoom, and the first one is on September 17th. COERLL and OLRC staff and OER experts will be available to answer questions about OER and talk about your open education projects and teaching. Learn more here.

SAVE THE DATE: Join the Southern Regional Education Board this February in Atlanta for the Open Educational Resources and Dual Enrollment: Making a Case for Student Success conference on the promise of OER in dual enrollment to increase equity, access and affordability for U.S. students in high school and college. Learn more here. 

 

STORIES FROM THE FIELD

Quick snapshots of those making change on the ground level, and those impacted

 

FROM ARKANSAS: Five new open educational resources created by University of Arkansas faculty are being used this semester in U of A courses. These projects were funded by the Open Educational Resources Course Materials Conversion Program, a joint effort between the University Libraries and the Global Campus. “The University Libraries’ ongoing partnership with the Global Campus is essential to supporting these faculty-produced open educational resources,” said Jason Battles, dean of University Libraries. “These resources provide a valuable cost savings to our students, so it’s important that we continue to encourage OER creation and usage on campus.” Read More >>

FROM MASSACHUSETTS: A $440,000 federal grant is helping Northern Essex Community College in its efforts to make classes more affordable and inclusive by encouraging the use of OER. “This grant is focused on creating and adapting OER for high-enrollment programs that are both free to students and culturally relevant,” says Sue Tashjian, the college’s coordinator of instructional technology and co-chair of the Massachusetts OER Advisory Council. The college is part of a consortium of Massachusetts colleges that received a three-year federal grant. Called Remixing Open Textbooks through an Equity Lens, the grant helps faculty and librarians create and adapt OER materials that are accessible, intentionally inclusive and representative of the student population. Read More >>

FROM NORTH CAROLINA: UNC’s chapter of The North Carolina Public Interest Research Group (NCPIRG), a nonpartisan student activist group, is working to decrease the textbook financial burden on students. In the spring, NCPIRG’s campaign gained around 300 teacher signatories in support of a textbook affordability statement. Over the summer, NCPIRG concentrated on encouraging all professors to employ a tool on ConnectCarolina that allows them to note the costs of textbooks and materials for their courses. This feature was added for spring course registration along with other features detailing modes of instruction and other course information. “The use of this feature is up to the discretion of each professor,” UNC Media Relations Manager Pace Sagester said in an email statement. “Students with questions regarding a course are encouraged to contact their professor.” NCPIRG plans to educate professors on how to update their course information to include the tool. Read More >>

 

HOT OFF THE PRESS

Each edition, we highlight an interesting, new, openly-licensed resource

Iowa State University Digital Press has released Teaching Math for Emergent Bilinguals: Building on Culture, Language, and Identity by Ji-Yeong I and Ricardo Martinez. This book is designed for pre-service/in-service teachers and others who will work or work with K–12 students who have linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds, especially students of other languages (English language learners/Emergent bilingual/multilingual). 

WEIGH IN

Great reads to repost or share and interesting discussions to consider

 

Great to Share >> 

5 Websites to Download Free Textbooks | MakeUseOf

Bay View Analytics to Present at Multiple Upcoming Conferences on Online Learning Research | Yahoo Finance 

What UM is doing to support open educational resource uptake | UM Today

 

Interesting to Consider >> 

High-impact practices help community, technical college students excel | The Tennessean

Updated COVID-19 vaccination rates and enrollment figures shared with UofL’s Faculty Senate | UofL News 

Welcome to the Open Education Leadership Program 2021-2022 Fellows! | SPARC

 

Have suggestions for the next edition? Let us know at oerdigest@gmail.com, or tweet us @OERdigest.

 

The OER Digest is a public newsletter distributed to a broad group of stakeholders across the higher education community. Subscribe here.