Doug Levin

MAY 12, 2015

and I am merely a fan – not a fanboy – of open educational resources (OER).** Others surely see me as some sort of OER fanatic. So, if these are the actions of someone who is an OER fan, what stops me short of claiming fanboy status? I work in K-12 education in the U.S., I beg to disagree. Image credits.

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OER Instructional Materials Khan Academy Outcomes 297

Iterating Toward Openness

JANUARY 24, 2019

Among other things, the post discusses her role in my decision to abandon the phrase “open pedagogy” and adopt the phrase “OER-enabled pedagogy.” So when people tell the story of how the term “OER-enabled pedagogy” came to be they should absolutely include Maha in it.

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OER Technology Exercises Online Learning 113

Edsurge

OCTOBER 11, 2018

Regardless of where you stand on the debate over open educational resources, you’re probably wondering: Does OER actually improve learning outcomes? At least, that was one of the main takeaways from a short session led by Phillip Grimaldi, director of research at OpenStax, a nonprofit OER initiative out of Rice University.

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OER Learning Outcomes Comparison 121

Iterating Toward Openness

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

There’s great news out of the recent UNESCO meeting in Paris, where member states unanimously adopted the draft Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER). This dramatically simplifies understanding what is and isn’t OER. Resources in the public domain or released under an open license are OER.

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OER Advocacy Resources Accessibility 119

Doug Levin

FEBRUARY 21, 2016

K-12 education system by open educational resources (OER) since 2009, although my first exposure to the ideas and leaders of the movement stretch back to the launch of the MIT OpenCourseWare initiative. This is where context matters most for the OER movement. Even within the U.S.

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OER Instructional Materials Advocacy Meeting 170

Iterating Toward Openness

FEBRUARY 10, 2020

Last week I promised I would write a few posts about reducing friction with regard to OER. In last week’s post I talked about how we’re making it ridiculously easy for students, faculty, and others to contribute to the maintenance and improvement of OER. This is still a very real risk for OER. ” you might ask.

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OER Secondary Software Outcomes 96

Edsurge

OCTOBER 30, 2018

The number of colleges running efforts to help professors shift from published textbooks to low-cost online materials known as OER is growing rapidly. That was one key finding in the latest Campus Computing Survey , one of the largest annual surveys of college technology leaders in the U.S., which was released today.

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OER Survey Data Course 119

Iterating Toward Openness

DECEMBER 2, 2019

I recently wrote a brief essay about the wonderful new UNESCO OER Recommendation. For those of you who don’t want to read the full analysis below, here’s the key takeaway: Imagine what would happen if making copies of OER was illegal. Under the definition of OER now adopted unanimously by UNESCO member states, it can be.

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OER Accessibility Examples Resources 106

Iterating Toward Openness

OCTOBER 9, 2018

Recently I’ve been doing both more thinking and more roll-up-your-sleeves working on continuous improvement of OER. And this process of making OER more effective every semester – also known as “continuous improvement” – is where we see some of the most exciting opportunities to collaborate with faculty.

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OER Outcomes Analysis Assessment 114

Iterating Toward Openness

MARCH 7, 2018

tl ;dr – If a resource is licensed in a way that grants you permission to engage in the 5R activities, and grants you those permissions for free, it’s an open educational resource (OER) – no matter where you find it or how it’s being used. I have an obsession with definitions. It’s been true for decades.

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OER LMS Laptops Accessibility 83

Edsurge

JUNE 16, 2020

Lumen Learning, a company that sells low-cost OER textbooks and courseware, plans to start offering professional development services for faculty that can be bundled with its titles. In other words, some of its textbooks are now sold with coaching on how to teach with OER more effectively.

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OER Company Learning Course 109

Iterating Toward Openness

MARCH 11, 2020

In the first installment on Monday, I explained how a fundamental failure to understand copyright makes the definition of OER in the new UNESCO recommendation nonsensical. In the second installment yesterday, I described how it appears that many in the OER community have taken their eye off the ball of student learning.

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OER Case Study System Strategy 78

Edsurge

JANUARY 4, 2018

But who makes the pitch for free or low-cost alternatives to textbooks known as OER, or open educational resources? One project she led this year involved creating a series of videos promoting “Textbook Heroes,”professors who have replaced commercial textbooks in their courses with OER. Increasingly, the answer is the campus library.

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OER Libraries lynda.com E-rate 155

Edsurge

JANUARY 15, 2019

But fans of OER are increasingly facing a problem. While OER started off as free online textbooks, it still costs money to produce these materials, and professors often need guidance finding which ones are high quality. So OER advocates are realizing they need to change their pitch.

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OER Course Resources Libraries 127

Edsurge

DECEMBER 28, 2017

Open educational resources (OER) have long been touted as “the next big thing” in higher education, but the drawn-out hype has led many educators and administrators to wonder if it would ever live up to its expectations. Those days are over: 2017 was OER’s breakthrough year. That happened in 2017. Ohio University is doing the same.

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OER Tools Industry LMS 121

Edsurge

OCTOBER 30, 2018

In response, open educational materials, or OER, have emerged as an alternative to expensive textbooks that disproportionately affect low-income students. But despite the excitement, there are obstacles to using OER. McGuire: The kinds of things that are being discussed [around using OER] are hard for many of institutions to access.

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OER Policies Accessibility Outcomes 121

Edsurge

OCTOBER 24, 2018

Communications librarian Kristen Hoffman oversees much of the OER work at Seattle Pacific University, a Christian university in Washington. Is there anything out there that faith-based institutions can have a place in this OER ecosystem to contribute to those kinds of resources?”

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OER Libraries Course Study 108

NeverEndingSearch

MAY 6, 2019

And what does it look like when the librarian, armed with a rich OER toolkit, regularly curates urgently needed, high-quality, flexible, no- or low-cost digital tools and content across the curriculum, expertly modeling that practice for the entire learning community?

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OER Future Ready Case Study Outcomes 80

Iterating Toward Openness

FEBRUARY 4, 2019

We have a similar problem in the open educational resources (OER) space. Many people are in the habit of referring to OER as a commons. OER are not like the shared resources at the center of traditional commons. However, OER are not CPRs. This principle fails to apply to OER in multiple ways. We could go on.

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OER Resources Groups Accessibility 97

Edsurge

NOVEMBER 19, 2017

As momentum for digital learning builds, some districts—80 percent according to the 2017 Consortium for School Networking’s (CoSN) K12 IT Leadership Survey Report —are using open educational resources (OER), which the U.S. But while many benefits of OER are visible on the surface, we must notice the fine print.

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OER CMS Guidelines Digital Learning 88

Iterating Toward Openness

FEBRUARY 5, 2024

To hear some OER advocates describe it today in 2024, the same format that was being used in the late 2000s – traditional-looking textbooks published under open licenses – is the state of the art when it comes to open educational resources. OER have also been used as part of personalized, interactive courseware systems, too.

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Strategy OER Education Policies 145

Iterating Toward Openness

AUGUST 13, 2019

Sadly, as Audrey Watters has frequently noted, it might be impossible to find a field of endeavor outside educational technology where more of the participants are so utterly ignorant of its history. (I Or (insert whatever comes next)… To my mind, the internet is an absolutely transformative technology (for better and for worse).

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OER System Exercises Course 93

Edsurge

JANUARY 12, 2018

Can open educational resources, or OER, truly create more equity and access? That was the question at the heart of our #DLNchat on January 9, which centered around OER in Higher Education. To me OER is also about the democratization of access to education, and the pursuit and sharing of knowledge.

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OER Resources Education Digital Learning 77

Edsurge

MAY 23, 2017

David Wiley, a pioneer of open education resources who co-founded Lumen Learning , a for-profit company that supports OER efforts, sees one place where textbooks could actually be vanquished by openly licensed alternatives: community colleges. I think that the biggest barrier is just that people don’t know that OER exists.

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OER Company Software Accessibility 133

Edsurge

AUGUST 4, 2022

In May, the homework-help site that relies on student-generated content, Course Hero, dipped its toes into freely available, openly licensed alternatives known as Open Educational Resources, or OER, course materials. This was the company’s “first foray” into OER, and it is still figuring out how the OER fits, Morris says. “I

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OER Resources Education Course 127

eSchool News

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

As schools and districts try to reduce textbook costs and digitize instructional resources, one of the struggles many teachers have is finding good repositories of open education resources (OER). The first step is to know how to access OER resources. Accessing OER. How to find OER.

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OER How To Assessment Instructional Materials 57

Edsurge

JUNE 22, 2017

And that’s been the driver behind nonprofit Achieving the Dream ’s (ATD) OER Degree Initiative , where 38 U.S. community colleges are creating full degree programs that utilize open educational resources (OER) from start to finish.

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OER Course Outcomes Report 105

Iterating Toward Openness

JUNE 28, 2016

Creating and sharing OER did not harm their ability to succeed in accomplishing their core missions – the education of their students. And there are many reasons to believe that their efforts in creating and sharing OER actually advanced their core missions. 18) for the creation of OER-based degrees (see SEC.

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OER Instructional Materials Course Resources 61

Edsurge

JUNE 9, 2017

With course materials averaging around $1,200 per year , many colleges over the past decade have adopted open educational resources (OER) to cut costs for students. One review offers evidence that students using OER as their primary course material sometimes perform better.) This isn’t uncommon.

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OER Data Outcomes Study 86

Edsurge

MARCH 28, 2018

Today, Anagnoson’s online course is embedded into a Water Systems Technology zero-cost textbook degree program, or Z-degree. The initiative intends to create degree pathways with courses that only use open educational resources, known as OER, so students don’t have to spend money on class materials. But small kinks have cropped up.

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OER Industry Course Guidelines 87

Iterating Toward Openness

AUGUST 10, 2016

Because I can’t stop thinking about open, I’ve been pondering the relationship between solar power and OER. ”, “How can you sell OER if they’re free? ”, “How can you sell OER if they’re free?”, ”, and “If OER are free, why would anyone pay you?”

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OER Company Learning Analytics Outcomes 60

Edsurge

MARCH 3, 2020

So says the new Educause Horizon report , which identifies technologies and trends that are changing higher education. OER was one of six “emerging technologies and practices” the panelists highlighted as most likely to significantly influence postsecondary teaching and learning in the future. “It In the U.S.,

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OER Resources Education Report 178

Iterating Toward Openness

APRIL 25, 2019

I spend most of my time doing fairly tactical thinking and working focused on moving OER adoption forward in the US higher education space. In this vision of the world, OER replace traditionally copyrighted, expensive textbooks for all primary, secondary, and post-secondary courses. My end goal isn’t to increase OER adoption.

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OER Course Company Smartphone 73

The Hechinger Report

MARCH 13, 2018

These OER – open educational resources – may be good, bad or indifferent. There’s more bad OER out there than good; that’s a fact,” said Rebecca Kockler, assistant superintendent of academic instruction for the state of Louisiana, at the annual SXSWedu conference last week in Austin, Texas. Using OER wasn’t our goal,” Kockler said.

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OER How To Common Core Instructional Materials 76

edWeb.net

MARCH 19, 2019

Keys to the OER shift: – Community buy-in: The community wasn’t satisfied with the achievement levels and graduation rates. – Vetted OER materials: For every subject, K-12 teachers have a stockbook of vetted OER lessons. The post Navigating the Shift to OER appeared first on edWeb. Join the Community.

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OER Instructional Materials Policies Broadband 40

Iterating Toward Openness

APRIL 29, 2016

Earlier this week I read an op-ed – sponsored by Pearson – titled “If OER is the answer, what is the question?” OER often shine in their variety and ability to deepen resources for niche topics. ” The article poses three questions and answers them. Below I share some thoughts prompted by the article.

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OER Instructional Materials Pearson Resources 60

Iterating Toward Openness

OCTOBER 12, 2015

He writes, “While to an OER advocate faculty are mere pawns to their agenda, to publishers, faculty are critical partners in academic success.” ” The overwhelming majority of OER advocates are faculty, and they have become OER advocates for two reasons.

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OER Course Examples Outcomes 60