OER Digest - January 9, 2020

From Bilan Jama and Torrey Feldman (CCUSA)  | Volume 97 | January 9, 2020

THE OER DIGEST

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

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

OPEN OREGON STUDY: Open Oregon Educational Resources has released a new draft on the cost of course materials for transfer degrees in Oregon. Over the four years that Oregon has invested statewide funding in textbook affordability, community colleges across the state have succeeded in reducing the cost of course materials for transfer degrees. Commercial textbook prices are dropping in response to market pressures, but the cost of course materials for transfer degrees in Oregon is falling much more steeply, highlighting the impact of faculty and staff efforts to redesign courses around no-cost and low-cost materials. A key finding of the study is that 112,462 students in the 10 highest-enrolled courses statewide saved over $1M compared to materials costs in 2017. NONCOMMERCIAL LICENSE: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reaffirmed Creative Commons’ interpretation of activities that are permissible under the NonCommercial (NC) licenses, which allow bona fide noncommercial reusers to hire out the making of copies of NC-licensed content, even to profit-making businesses such as Office Depot and FedEx Office. An excerpt of the decision states, “under the License, a non-commercial licensee may hire a third-party contractor including those working for commercial gain, to help implement the License at the direction of the licensee and in furtherance of the licensee’s own licensed rights. The License extends to all employees of the schools and school districts and shelters Office Depot’s commercial copying of Eureka Math on their behalf.”NEW YEAR, NEW BILLS: With the start of the new year comes the start of state legislative sessions. As always, the OER Digest will bring you coverage of major updates in state OER policy throughout the spring. For more frequent updates, you can also check out SPARC’s State Policy Tracker and newly-released 2020 State Policy Playbook. NEW AUTHOR: Hello! I’m Torrey Feldman, and I’m excited to be joining the OER Digest team as a Dean’s Fellow with Creative Commons USA. I am a 3L at American University Washington College of Law, and I have teamed up with CCUSA to work toward understanding the licensing of creative materials.  I’m personally not on twitter, but you can follow along with my work at @cc_unitedstates. 

OPEN CONNECTIONS

Conferences, jobs, and other OER-related opportunities

APPLY NOW: Alamo Colleges District is hiring an OER Librarian. Check out the job description and apply here by Sunday, January 26, 2020 to be considered.DEADLINE EXTENDED: York University Libraries is seeking an experienced leader for the Associate Dean, Research & Open Scholarship position. Deadline has been extended to January 31, 2020.JOB OPPORTUNITY: Penn State is hiring a Learning Design and Open Education Engagement Librarian. Click here to read more about the position and apply.REGISTER NOW: Registration is now open for the 2020 Arizona Regional OER Conference on February 28-29, 2020 in Mesa, Arizona. The deadline to register is February 25, 2020. REGISTER NOW: Registration for the Open Education Conference sponsored by the North Dakota University System is now open. The deadline to register is Tuesday, February 25th, 2020.REGISTER NOW: Registration is now open for the Open Education Southern Symposium (#OESS2020) on July 16 & 17, 2020 at  North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. The deadline to register is May 16, 2020 as a student and June 16, 2020 for standard registration. The 2018 OESS sold out, so we encourage you to register early. 

STORIES FROM THE FIELD

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

FROM CANADA: For the past five years, the Government of Saskatchewan has given grants to the universities of Regina and Saskatchewan as well as Sask Polytechnic to develop open education resources. Nilgun Onder of the University of Regina said because the textbooks are open, they can also be used by others.“That’s the beauty of these open education resources: They can be revised to better suit an instructor’s teaching and also the needs of their students,” Onder said. Read More>>>FROM HAWAII: A program at the University of Hawaii's community colleges has saved students more than $3.4 million on textbooks since 2015. The UH Open Educational Resources initiative allows colleges to share and use information to teach for little to no cost. “Rather than relying on a textbook that was written by someone elsewhere and having examples that may not necessarily relate directly to our students, a faculty member could maybe swap out the examples, make it more related to what their experiences are,” said Wayne Oshiro, Lewis Community College head librarian. Within that program is a “TXT0” designation in the course catalogue, which shows class sections that require no payment from students. Read More>>> 

HOT OFF THE PRESS

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

Virginia Tech Publishing has released “Electromagnetics, Volume 2” by Steven W. Ellingson. It is a 216-page peer-reviewed open textbook designed for electrical engineering students in the third year of a bachelor of science degree program. The textbook is intended to follow “Electromagnetics, Volume 1” as the primary textbook for the second semester of a two-semester undergraduate engineering electromagnetics sequence. 

WEIGH IN

Great reads to repost or share and interesting discussions to consider

Great to Share >> 

• How UO libraries plan to continue growing in a digital world | Daily Emerald
• Ruszkowski: In Our 21st Century World, It’s Time to Invest in 21st Century Teaching Materials — & Train Educators to Use Them | The 74

Interesting to Consider >> 

• Free Textbooks for Law Students | Inside Higher Ed
• How community colleges are supporting low-income black, Latino students | Daily Herald
• Is there a way to make learning materials, textbooks more affordable for students? | NewmarketToday

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.