Join the Leeward CC OER Committee in celebrating Open Education Week, starting today, March 5th until March 9th! This week, you’ll receive a special daily email to inform you about topics in open education, particularly those related to our campus about Open Educational Resources (OER) and textbook cost $0.
Open education encompasses resources, tools and practices that employ a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness worldwide.
The idea of free and open sharing in education is not new. In fact, sharing is probably the most basic characteristic of education: education is sharing knowledge, insights and information with others, upon which new knowledge, skills, ideas and understanding can be built.
Open is key; open allows not just access, but the freedom to modify and use materials, information and networks so education can be personalized to individual users or woven together in new ways for diverse audiences, large and small.
– from Open Education Week at https://www.openeducationweek.org/page/what-is-open-education
To start the week off, we compiled a few articles and resources to introduce you to Open Educational Resources (OER).
OER Myths
These are some common myths about OER:
- OER are just free resources
- There’s no such thing as a free resource
- OER course labels punish faculty who haven’t adopted open resources
- Publishers are going to fight this
- The bookstore is going to fight this
Read why these are myths here.
OER Textbooks for Your Course
One way to start using OER is to find an OER textbook. Curious if there’s one for your course? Check out Leeward’s OER LibGuide for OER textbooks. On the OER LibGuide you’ll also find a lot of useful information and resources.
What are you waiting for?
In this funny short video, OpenStax, a non-profit company that creates peer-reviewed, openly licensed textbooks, shares reasons for why you should use OpenStax.