Iterating Toward Openness

AUGUST 31, 2022

This article started out with my being bothered by the fact that ‘OER adoption reliably saves students money but does not reliably improve their outcomes.’ ’ For many years OER advocates have told faculty, “When you adopt OER your students save money and get the same or better outcomes!”

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OER Outcomes Comparison Study 152

Iterating Toward Openness

MARCH 4, 2024

Many institutions charge students a fee associated with their OER courses as a way of funding the institutions’ OER efforts. For example, Kansas State University’s Open/Alternative Textbook Initiative course fee is a $10 fee that is payed by students in courses that use OER and other free, traditionally copyrighted resources.

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OER Advocacy Policies Course 91

Iterating Toward Openness

MARCH 21, 2023

At some point over the last decade, open educational resources (OER) advocacy in US higher education became zero textbook costs (ZTC) advocacy. This is why I refer to this line of advocacy as “free no matter the cost.” Is there a role for OER in this emerging learning materials landscape? We can hope.

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OER Advocacy Outcomes Instructional Materials 109

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 120

Iterating Toward Openness

JULY 7, 2016

Take an all-too-typical example: Faculty member assigns student to write a two page compare and contrast essay. This example assumes physical paper, but the principles are exactly the same in the context of assessments submitted, graded, and returned electronically.). Student writes the paper and submits it to faculty.

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Assessment OER Outcomes Examples 100

Iterating Toward Openness

MAY 8, 2019

The most recent issue of IRRODL included an article titled Effectiveness of OER Use in First-Year Higher Education Students’ Mathematical Course Performance: A Case Study , by Juan I. This was justified by the fact that there is a lack of empirical evidence to support expanding the use of OER. Venegas-Muggli and Werner Westermann.

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Khan Academy OER Case Study System 106

Iterating Toward Openness

OCTOBER 30, 2017

There was a lot of discussion at OpenEd17 about the relationship between OER and value-added services like platforms. Examples of Value-Added Services in the Context of Open. They do not have the technical expertise, the time, or the institutional support to engage meaningfully with OER. The first has to do with capacity.

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OER LMS Learning Moodle 60