Call for Applications: Open Educational Resources (OER) Adoption Cohort

The call for applications is live for UMassD faculty who are considering making the switch from traditional (and often costly teaching materials) to OER. The Office of Faculty Development (OFD), in collaboration with the Office of the Provost and the Claire T. Carney Library, invite participation in an Open Educational Resources (OER) faculty cohort which will meet during Spring 2025,and will provide participants with resources, tools, and guidance for selecting and remixing OER textbooks and ancillary material. Sessions will cover Creative Commons licenses, copyright, OER repositories, and OER best practices. The aim of the initiative is for participants to commit to replacing at least one required core textbook for a single course with an OER option in the Fall 2025 semester.

The price of textbooks has risen significantly over the past few decades, and many students report that they do not purchase textbooks due to cost. Access codes are a newer model from publishers where students pay a fee for access to digital course materials, and sometimes the cost is lower than print textbooks, but students do not have the option of the used textbook market, library materials, or keeping their resources beyond the term of the class. A great alternative to these options is to search for OER in your discipline.Consider applying for the cohort to explore your OER options.

For the full program description or to ask questions, please contact Emma Wood.

Photo by Artem Podrez: https://www.pexels.com/photo/laptop-on-a-table-4884118/

LibreTexts Jumpstart Training

Have you ever considered creating your own openly licensed textbook?

LibreTexts is an Open Educational Resources (OER) platform for creating, customizing, and sharing accessible, interactive textbooks, adaptive homework, and ancillary materials. The Claire T. Carney Library is now a member of LibreNet which gives us extra training and support for creating resources with LibreTexts.

There will be an online session from 2:30pm – 4:30pm on November 20th which will provide an overview of LibreTexts. Please bring your questions about the platform and how you can use it to create high quality course materials. Contact Emma Wood for the Zoom link or to access the recording after the session.

OER Commons 101 Session

The fall semester is officially here! And the good news is there is still time to adopt Open Educational Resources for your courses. If you are interested in how to get started locating OERs, register for an OER Commons 101 session – Thursday September 12th at 11am. 

Register Here!

To get started, take a look at some of the resources that can be found in the platform for sharing open educational resources created and adopted by faculty from Massachusetts Public Higher Education Institutions – Open Massachusetts: A Public Higher Education Repository

A New System for Submitting Book Adoptions (And Finding OER Too!)

by Emma Wood

Gone are the days of emailing a list of your required course materials to the bookstore staff, traversing COIN to submit course material requests, or both. New this semester, our campus store has implemented a system called Follett Discover which enables faculty to search for material, manage their course adoptions, and make changes as needed all in one virtual location.

Here are some of the key features of this new system:

  • Follett Discover is integrated with COIN, and it personalizes your dashboard by automatically populating the information about the courses you teach.
  • There is a “re-adopt” option through which you can efficiently declare the same materials that you have used in past semesters.
  • Use the search tool to discover publications by title, ISBN, or topic.
  • The “create content” option allows you to curate a course with a collection of articles or other material.
  • Add course supplies like kits, lab materials, and barcharts.
  • Click the “OER” tab to find Open Educational Resources (OER) related to your course. This is a great option for lowering the cost of course materials for your students An example of an OER search for business law is shown below:

For an overview of the Follett Discover system, check out this brief video: https://follett.com/video/follett-discover-the-faculty-experience/