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Can a For-Profit, Venture-Backed Company Keep OER Free—and Be Financially Sustainable?

Edsurge

From 2006 to 2016, the cost of textbooks increased by 88 percent, more than than nearly any other college student expense—including tuition and fees (63 percent) or on-campus housing (51 percent)—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But some providers of OER still ask for fees in return, and that has advocates concerned.

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38 Community Colleges Share What It Takes to Launch an OER Degree Program

Edsurge

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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Lumen Scores $3.75M — and OER Gets a Foot in the Traditional Publishing Door

Edsurge

Open Educational Resources (OER) have yet to cozy up with the more orthodox academics and pushy print publishers of the world. The most recent example occurred this week, when OER company Lumen Learning announced a partnership with one of the country’s largest textbook distributors, Follet Corporation.

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Heard, Overheard and Announced at ISTE 2016

Edsurge

It brings together K-12 educators, companies, reporters, university professors, and students to talk about product announcements, implementation strategies and edtech trends. Matty Fox (@what2foxsay) June 28, 2016. The ISTE conference isn’t the biggest edtech conference in the world by sheer luck. Full EdSurge coverage on Google here.)

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OERwashing: Beyond the Elephant Test

Doug Levin

Doug Levin (@douglevin) May 3, 2016. I said my piece in the updated article that spurred my original comment (including that the service the company in question provides looks “interesting and valuable,” especially in the context of the K-12 assessment market). The Pro-OER Elephant Test. notOER https://t.co/q3CzWFNmJz.

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How an OER Rookie Dove Deep Into a Zero-Cost Textbook Degree Program

Edsurge

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. College of the Canyons’ history with OER starts before Anagnonson’s dabble, however. Those professors’ individual efforts got a boost in 2016, when Gov.

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Are K-12 Curriculum Tools a Smart Investment? What Investors and Our Data Say

Edsurge

In conversations with edtech investors, some reported that the K-12 market has seen an influx of instructional content, particularly in the form of open educational resources (OERs). OERs are openly-licensed educational materials that can be downloaded, modified and shared with others to help support student learning.

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