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On the Relationship Between Adopting OER and Improving Student Outcomes

Iterating Toward Openness

I’ve been writing this article 30 minutes here and 60 minutes there for several months (WordPress tells me I saved the first bits in March). 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.’

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Why We Should Expand Our OER Advocacy to Commercial Publishers

Iterating Toward Openness

The data in the [Linux Foundation’s] Kernel Development report shatter this illusion. The report goes on to explain that contributions to the open source Linux kernel were accepted at a rate of 8.5 contributions per hour over the 400 days covered by the report. Why Commercial Publishers Should Switch to an OER Model.

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OER-based Degrees: Momentum

Iterating Toward Openness

Of critical importance is the fact that neither MIT nor any of the hundreds of other schools that launched OCW initiatives has ever reported suffering a decrease in enrollments because of its program of open sharing. And there are many reasons to believe that their efforts in creating and sharing OER actually advanced their core missions.

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Open Educational Practice: Unleashing the Potential of OER

Edsurge

It’s been a good year for open educational resources (OER). made commitments this year to establish entire degree programs based solely on OER. Governor Jerry Brown set aside $5 million for OER degree programs in California community colleges. But “free” is not the only important characteristic of OER.

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OER: Some Questions and Answers

Iterating Toward Openness

Earlier this week I read an op-ed – sponsored by Pearson – titled “If OER is the answer, what is the question?” ” The article poses three questions and answers them. Below I share some thoughts prompted by the article. How do we deliver better learning experiences to more students?

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From here to there: Musings about the path to having good OER for every course on campus

Iterating Toward Openness

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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Pearson, Efficacy, Credibility, and OER

Iterating Toward Openness

As page 3 of the report states, this platform is “the first product at Pearson to have an efficacy framework built in from the very beginning,” and the report seems to have been enabled by this integration. Despite claims in the report that the research team includes “PhD-level statisticians” (p.

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