Tag: open educational resources

SPARC Open Education 101 Series

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July 14, 2025

6:37 pm

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SPARC is a nonprofit advocacy organization that supports open systems for research and education that enable everyone to benefit from shared knowledge. SPARC advocates for Open Educational Resources (OER) and will host an informative webinar series on OER this summer. The sessions are geared toward a broad audience of librarians, teachers, instructional designers, and anyone else interested in learning more about free teaching materials. More details and contact information can be found on the SPARC website, and a list of the sessions and their descriptions is included below:

Session 1: Open Education Foundations

August 13 from 2–3 p.m. EDT / 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PDT [register here]

This session will provide a broad introduction to open education, including its core principles, key terms, and historical development. We’ll discuss how open education connects to related movements such as open access and open science, and highlight its potential to remove barriers and expand opportunities for both students and educators. Participants will leave with a strong foundational understanding to support further learning, along with awareness of key tools and resources.

Session 2: Open Education in Practice

August 28 from 2–3 p.m. EDT / 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PDT [register here]

This session will introduce key aspects of putting open education into practice. Topics will include how to find, create, and adapt open educational resources (OER), the foundations of open pedagogy, and how various colleges and universities are supporting open education through campus programs. Participants will leave with practical examples and starting points to apply in their own teaching, library work, or institutional setting.

Session 3: Open Education in the Current Moment

September 10 from 2–3 p.m. EDT / 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PDT [register here]

This session will explore how open education intersects with major trends shaping higher education today. Topics will include shifts in course material billing models (e.g., “Inclusive Access”), the rise of artificial intelligence, and growing areas such as microcredentials and workforce readiness. Participants will leave with ideas for situating open education within these broader conversations and advancing it more strategically on campus.

Session 4: FAQs: Answering Common Questions about Open Education

September 25 from 2–3 p.m. EDT / 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PDT [register here]

This session will take on the real-world questions that come up when open education is introduced on campus. Where do I find OER? How do I know if it’s high quality? We address these and other practical concerns raised by faculty, students, and administrators, including those submitted by participants in earlier sessions. Participants will leave with effective answers to common questions, evidence to back it up, and advocacy tips to apply in their own context.

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Open Education Week 2025

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March 3, 2025

7:53 pm

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Cross-posted from the Claire T. Carney Library News Blog

March 3 – 7 is Open Education Week, an annual celebration designed to raise awareness and acknowledge successes in open education worldwide. Open Education is a movement that seeks to make learning more accessible and free from financial barriers. Examples of Open Education practices include adopting free, openly licensed textbooks from Openstax or OER Commons. Here are a few ways you can explore Open Education and get involved in OER this week and beyond:

  • Libretexts is offering a full schedule of events this week, from a four-part series designed to get faculty started in the ADAPT open homework and assessment platform, to presentations on creating, remixing, editing, adapting, an adopting OER with LibreTexts.
  • Accessibility in OER Commons, Thursday, March 6th, 10:00am with Rachel Oleaga, Open Massachusetts Hub Coordinator – “Open Massachusetts” is a platform for sharing open educational resources created and adopted by faculty from Massachusetts Public Higher Education Institutions. Attend this webinar to learn about accessibility features of the platform.
  • Open Educational Resources: Pro Search Tips, Friday, March 7th, 10:00am – 10:45am with Rebecca Dowgiert of Framingham State University – “There’s no OER out there for my program/course.” You may be right… but you also just might be surprised at what’s out there these days. Literally – new OERs are coming out every month. Come learn OER pro searching tips (including the easiest tip of all).

For questions about the hub in OER Commons or about Open Educational Resources (OER) please contact our Scholarly Communication Librarian.

LibreTexts Jumpstart Training

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November 19, 2024

10:01 pm

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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

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September 4, 2024

5:34 pm

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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

Roll Out the Red Carpet for OER

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May 10, 2024

1:24 pm

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By Emma Wood

MASSPIRG’s UMass Dartmouth Chapter hosted UMD’s first ever Oscars-themed awards ceremony to recognize faculty members who use free or low-cost teaching materials in their classes. MASSPIRG sought nominations from students throughout the year at tabling events, and they honored the nominees at their inaugural event one April evening with refreshments and statuettes for the winners of each category. MASSPIRG students Lily Pendergast, Topanga Pottier, and other volunteers, dedicated their time and ingenuity to planning this event to shine a spotlight on the OER work of faculty. Oscars were awarded by discipline. For example, Dr. Olubanwo took the STEM category. He uses an Openstax textbook which is available digitally at no cost to students. He recently completed the OER Adoption cohort that I lead as part of UMD’s OER initiatives. The student choice award went to Dr. Walker Downey who teaches Art Education, Art History & Media Studies.

Photo shows golden statuettes
The OER Oscars statuettes

Similar events have been held by UMass Lowell and UMass Amherst with the shared goal of recognizing professors who incorporate free and low-cost materials into their syllabi. It can take added effort for professors to locate and adopt openly licensed materials and structure their courses around them, and some faculty go even further to author their own textbooks. The benefits are well-established and worth the time. OER has shown to increase student success indicators, provide equitable access to materials, and of course, save students a financial burden. Open Educational resources are a positive option for faculty who appreciate the flexibility and potential for tailoring of content that comes with some Creative Commons licenses. The classroom experience is improved for both students and educators when course materials are easy to access and navigate from day one of class.

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Faculty attendees of the OER Oscars

MASSPIRG pulled in over 80 faculty nominations for their OER Oscars event so even though only some walked away with a shiny gold statuette, it’s clear that students appreciate the OER work that faculty undertake. Some faculty resources may not fit the definition of Open Educational Materials, but still, students notice when they are paying less for their books. This might come in the form of library subscriptions or using portions of traditionally copyrighted works under Fair Use, but the impact of removing high cost from the equation is still significant. Congratulations to all the nominee on their well-deserved recognition

There was a red carpet, of course, for photo opportunities.
Consistent with the Oscars theme, there was a red carpet photo opp available.

Learn more about Open Educational Resources here: https://guides.lib.umassd.edu/oer

Northeast OER Summit 2024

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March 26, 2024

1:38 pm

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The Northeast OER Summit is a gathering of Open Educational Resources (OER) practitioners from the Northeast region of the United States. It offers the opportunity to learn and share effective practices in OER awareness building, implementation, collaboration, strategy, and research.

This year’s virtual summit will take place on April 4th and 5th, and the schedule is available here: 2024 Northeast OER Summit: A World Beyond Affordability. There’s still time to register at the early bird price of $35! Registration is always free for undergraduate students, and scholarships are available for attendees for whom the registration fee is a prohibitive barrier. Please contact any member of the steering committee for scholarship information.

More information can be found on the summit website.

Women’s History Month: OER Commons Collection

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March 18, 2024

3:34 pm

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 by Megan Fletcher

The Open Educational Resources (OER) Commons offers a variety of useful resources for educators and researchers. If you’re celebrating Women’s History Month in your classroom, or exploring women’s history through research the OER Commons has a “Women’s History Month” collection with over 350 resources available for your needs.

Navigating the collection is easy! You can filter the available resources by subject area, education level, material type, language, and more. There are a variety of videos, downloadable documents, graphics/photos, audio files, and eBooks to choose from.

The National Women’s History Museum is one of the prominently featured authors within the collection offering a variety of biographies of women who have made a significant impact in US history. In addition to these biographies, there are multiple lesson plans available to support classroom learning. Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute offers a unit analyzing case studies on women’s narratives for high school students. For college level students interested in learning more about key feminist concepts and feminist analytical frameworks, this Introduction to Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies textbook may be useful!

Visit the Women’s History Month collection on OER Commons to find more valuable resources!

Image Source: https://www.clipsafari.com/clips/o311154-women-world

Open Education Events This Week

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March 4, 2024

2:21 pm

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Cross-posted from the Claire T. Carney Library News Blog.

Every year, in the month of March, there is a week-long global recognition of the importance of Open Education. Its goal is to raise awareness about the impact of open education on teaching and learning worldwide. Open Education Global promotes events on an international scale to increase knowledge of Open Educational Resources (OER) and other topics within Open Education. Hopefully you will have a chance to participate in some of these opportunities, and you may consider the following events offered by Massachusetts state colleges and universities, including a panel to be held here at UMass Dartmouth.

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Virtual Panel to Showcase the OER Work of UMassD Faculty

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February 12, 2024

8:23 pm

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Open Education Week is March 4th – 8th, and one excellent way to celebrate is by attending this virtual panel. This is an opportunity for faculty to learn about OER Commons, a repository for Open Educational Materials (OER) and 3 exciting textbook projects at UMass Dartmouth. Open Educational Materials are teaching and learning tools such as textbooks, tests/quizzes, and classroom activities that are available free of charge. At UMass Dartmouth we have an OER Creators program through which 3 open textbooks were created in 2023. The textbook projects are E-Commerce and E-Business by Shouhong Wang, A Guide to Analyzing Arguments in an Academic Setting by Jackie O’Dell, Joshua Botvin, and Yuan Zhang, and Women’s & Gender Studies by Catherine Gardner. Each author will give an overview of the book they created. This panel will also include a demo of OER Commons by Repository Coordinator Rachel Oleaga. We welcome faculty who are curious about OER, open publishing, digital texbooks, open repositories, or who are just interested in the topics covered by these free textbooks. Register here: https://schedule.lib.umassd.edu/event/12057953?hs=a

Mark Your Calendar for These Professional Development Opportunities in OER

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January 23, 2024

8:48 pm

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The ROTEL Grant Project Team has partnered with Rebus Community to offer five (5) online webinars of approximately 1 hour each per year on topics related to Open Educational Resources (OER). The following professional development opportunities are available courtesy of the ROTEL federally funded open textbook project and the OER Professional Development Committee. Please share these monthly virtual sessions broadly with your OER community and others you wish to have join your OER community. These virtual sessions are intended to enhance the skills and knowledge of those who are currently adopting/adapting/creating OER resources. However, these sessions will also be useful for those who wish to adopt/adapt OER materials. All sessions will be recorded.

Reserve your spot today by filling out the registration form!

Once you have registered, you will receive a Zoom link one week prior to the workshop. 

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Open Publishing

Friday, February 23, 2024 | 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM ET

In this session, we’ll discuss how Rebus’ open publishing differs from traditional models by keeping diversity, equity, and inclusion in mind throughout the production cycle. Working with the principles of DEI is critical to creating valuable resources, and can have impacts beyond improving the quality of the OER. We’ll highlight how creators in Massachusetts have adopted this approach in their projects.

OER & Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

Friday, March 8, 2024 (Open Education Week) | 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM ET

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an approach to teaching that asks us to make our classrooms accessible from the start. While doing so can be fairly time intensive, the rewards make it worthwhile. UDL is a key approach to help us achieve the goal of greater inclusion in our teaching, especially with OER. At this session, we will explore the basics of UDL and how OER can help us make strides towards inclusive, innovative teaching and learning experiences.

Interactive OER with H5P

Friday, March 29, 2024 | 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM ET

With the shift to digital learning in online classrooms, we are reminded about the potential OER can provide to better engage with our students. This session will introduce H5P, a free tool that lets you create interactive content for your textbooks. We’ll look at the range of content types in H5P, see examples from published textbooks, and highlight other tools you can use to make dynamic OER.

Accessibility and OER

Friday, April 19, 2024  | 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM ET

One of the major goals of the open education movement is to ensure that learning materials are available and usable widely. Accessibility can be a barrier to widespread OER use and adoption, and is often an afterthought to many textbook publishers. In this session, we’ll explain what we mean by accessibility, remediation, and the work this entails. We’ll provide a set of small but simple ways for you to ensure that your learning materials meet accessibility standards

Creating OER with Students

Friday, May 17, 2024 | 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM ET

Student voices need to be central in OER projects, especially considering that they are the final users of these materials. In this session, we will showcase a range of OER that have been co-created with students. We will consider the following questions: Where can students join the publishing process? What conversations around ownership, copyright, licensing need to be had? How can this experience be enriching for students?

Photo by Simon Abrams on Unsplash