OER Digest - December 6, 2019
From Bilan Jama (CCUSA) | Volume 95 | December 6th, 2019
THE OER DIGEST
Your bi-weekly newsletter for open education updates, opportunities, and reminders
UNESCO UPDATE: It’s official! UNESCO’s General Conference adopted a recommendation on OER. The recommendation (which underwent a few last minute changes) will support the development and sharing of openly licensed learning and teaching materials, which benefits students, teachers and researchers worldwide. UNESCO’s assistant director for communication and information, Moez Chakchouk announced the launch of a Dynamic Coalition to expand and consolidate commitments and strategies in the area of OER. OPEN AUTHOR: OER Commons launched a new authoring tool called Open Author. Open Author helps build and publish Open Educational Resources for the benefit of educators and learners everywhere. It can be used to create resources with both instructor and student facing views, which means that instructors can view the resource that is customized for instruction, and students can view the resource that is customized for their learning needs. OER Commons is asking for feedback from users for the next few weeks. LGBTQ-INCLUSIVE OER: Sabia Prescott, a senior program associate for the New America Foundation has released a new report examining the possibilities inherent in LGBTQ-inclusive materials for training classroom teachers. She explores the biggest challenges to creating, implementing, and scaling up this kind of PreK–12 teacher professional learning. "A lot of schools are using ten, fifteen, twenty-year old textbooks...and for talking about queer and trans identities, our understanding of these identities evolves. And our language for understanding these identities evolves," said Prescott. MERGER OPPOSITION GROWS: This week, the National Association of College Stores became the latest major organization to oppose the proposed merger between textbook publishing giants Cengage and McGraw-Hill. NACS, which represents college bookstores, announced its opposition in a letter to Cengage in response to a change in the company’s pricing practices on access codes.
OPEN CONNECTIONS
Conferences, jobs, and other OER-related opportunities
#OPENED20: An open letter was circulated to the community calling for those interested in helping to organize an Open Education Conference in 2020 to step forward by completing this form. HIRING NOW: Texas Department of Motor Vehicles is hiring an Open Education Resources Curriculum Lead. Click here to read more about the position and apply.JOB OPENING: Paradise Valley Community College is hiring an Academic Engagement and Open Education Librarian. Check out the job description and apply here by this Friday, December 6, 2019 to be considered.SAVE THE DATE: The next Open Education Southern Symposium will be held July 16 – 17, 2020 on the North Carolina State University campus in Raleigh. Learn more and check in for further updates here.
STORIES FROM THE FIELD
Quick snapshots of those making change on the ground level, and those impacted
FROM TEXAS: The Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Sam Houston State University has promoted the usage of OER for more than a decade. Individual efforts by professors have developed into a new departmental initiative in 2019. The department has adopted the textbook “Math in Society” by David Lippman as the standard textbook used for the popular college mathematics course, Math 1332. All 17 sections of Math 1332 in fall 2019 have utilized this free book, replacing the textbook formerly adopted for the course that cost students close to $120 per copy. This saved the 888 students registered for the course a total of approximately $106,000 this semester. Read More >FROM CALIFORNIA: Through the Pierce Open Pathways (POP) program offered at Pierce College, students have saved more than $2 million in textbook costs since 2015. Students in the POP program can earn an entire university transfer degree without ever paying for a traditional textbook. According to Pierce College at JBLM Executive Director Mark Haskins, “This program is a powerful example of what we try to do to reduce barriers for our military-affiliated students. While military tuition assistance (TA) provides an excellent educational benefit for service members, it cannot be used to pay for textbooks, which can be a significant expense. Students in our OER classes have little to no out-of-pocket costs, further making us one of the most accessible schools and best values in education for the military.” Read More >FROM BRITISH COLUMBIA: The Bachelor of Arts Degree in General Studies program at KPU is the first four-year program to introduce the new ZTC framework, due to its use of open educational resources. KPU’s Zero Textbook Cost programs now include an entire arts degree in which students won’t have to pay anything for their textbooks. The degree accreditation is based on the completion of 120 credits of coursework, or approximately 40 courses, completely free of textbook costs. Read More >
HOT OFF THE PRESS
Each edition, we highlight an interesting, new, openly-licensed resource
Anna A. Berardi and Brenda M. Morton released “Trauma-Informed School Practices.” The book’s primary focus is on identifying and applying trauma-informed educator competencies needed to transform districts, schools, educators, classrooms, and the field of education itself, while also including community members such as parents and board members in these processes.
WEIGH IN
Great reads to repost or share and interesting discussions to consider
Great to Share >>
- When digitizing your curriculum, think coordination | EdScoop
- What Can We Learn from the Open Education Movement About Attaining Educational SDG in the Digital Age? | InfoJustice.org
Interesting to Consider >>
- Librarians leading for free textbooks | The Observer
- A look into some resources that have helped save students money on textbooks | The Spectrum
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. You can join the open Google Group or check out the distribution list here.