Doug Levin

JUNE 17, 2015

If technology doesn’t disrupt the very notion of the textbook first, its future is surely digital. OER remains a recent invention and the relatively large technology investments required to successfully implement a digital content strategy in schools just hadn’t been made in very many places. Image credits.

Instructional Materials 387

Instructional Materials OER Student Data Privacy Broadband 387

Doug Levin

FEBRUARY 21, 2016

K-12 education system by open educational resources (OER) since 2009, although my first exposure to the ideas and leaders of the movement stretch back to the launch of the MIT OpenCourseWare initiative. This is where context matters most for the OER movement. Even within the U.S.

OER 170

OER Instructional Materials Meeting Advocacy 170

Edsurge

NOVEMBER 15, 2021

For some folks in higher ed, the very idea of using open educational resources (OER) sparks dread. The right OER provides professors opportunities to teach the latest research and even make areas like math and science more inclusive. EdSurge: Why are you such a proponent of OER in higher ed? Here’s how I look at it.

OER 166

OER STEM Course Libraries 166

Edsurge

OCTOBER 11, 2018

Regardless of where you stand on the debate over open educational resources, you’re probably wondering: Does OER actually improve learning outcomes? At least, that was one of the main takeaways from a short session led by Phillip Grimaldi, director of research at OpenStax, a nonprofit OER initiative out of Rice University.

OER 141

OER Learning Outcomes Comparison 141

Hapara

AUGUST 17, 2022

Has your school district started to use open educational resources (OER) yet? But has your school district considered K-12 OER textbooks? Printed textbooks have been used for centuries, and while they still work, there are many reasons why school districts are transitioning to OER versions. .

OER 162

OER Differentiated Instruction Hapara Resources 162

Edsurge

JANUARY 4, 2018

But who makes the pitch for free or low-cost alternatives to textbooks known as OER, or open educational resources? One project she led this year involved creating a series of videos promoting “Textbook Heroes,”professors who have replaced commercial textbooks in their courses with OER. And it kind of hinders everything.”

OER 167

OER Libraries lynda.com E-rate 167

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 153

Edsurge

OCTOBER 30, 2018

The number of colleges running efforts to help professors shift from published textbooks to low-cost online materials known as OER is growing rapidly. That was one key finding in the latest Campus Computing Survey , one of the largest annual surveys of college technology leaders in the U.S., which was released today.

OER 142

OER Survey Data Course 142

Edsurge

DECEMBER 28, 2017

Open educational resources (OER) have long been touted as “the next big thing” in higher education, but the drawn-out hype has led many educators and administrators to wonder if it would ever live up to its expectations. Those days are over: 2017 was OER’s breakthrough year. That happened in 2017. Ohio University is doing the same.

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OER Tools Industry LMS 153

Iterating Toward Openness

MARCH 7, 2018

tl ;dr – If a resource is licensed in a way that grants you permission to engage in the 5R activities, and grants you those permissions for free, it’s an open educational resource (OER) – no matter where you find it or how it’s being used. I have an obsession with definitions. It’s been true for decades.

OER 125

OER LMS Laptops Accessibility 125

Edsurge

JANUARY 15, 2019

But fans of OER are increasingly facing a problem. While OER started off as free online textbooks, it still costs money to produce these materials, and professors often need guidance finding which ones are high quality. So OER advocates are realizing they need to change their pitch.

OER 154

OER Course Resources Libraries 154

Iterating Toward Openness

DECEMBER 2, 2019

I recently wrote a brief essay about the wonderful new UNESCO OER Recommendation. For those of you who don’t want to read the full analysis below, here’s the key takeaway: Imagine what would happen if making copies of OER was illegal. Under the definition of OER now adopted unanimously by UNESCO member states, it can be.

OER 146

OER Accessibility Examples Resources 146

Edsurge

MARCH 3, 2020

So says the new Educause Horizon report , which identifies technologies and trends that are changing higher education. OER was one of six “emerging technologies and practices” the panelists highlighted as most likely to significantly influence postsecondary teaching and learning in the future. “It In the U.S.,

OER 213

OER Resources Education Report 213

Iterating Toward Openness

OCTOBER 9, 2018

Recently I’ve been doing both more thinking and more roll-up-your-sleeves working on continuous improvement of OER. Some have research, grant writing, and publication responsibilities in addition to teaching their courses. Some teach five or six courses per semester. Simon , 1986). Beginning the cycle again.

OER 122

OER Outcomes Analysis Assessment 122

Edsurge

JUNE 22, 2017

And that’s been the driver behind nonprofit Achieving the Dream ’s (ATD) OER Degree Initiative , where 38 U.S. community colleges are creating full degree programs that utilize open educational resources (OER) from start to finish. We are hoping to use those courses as a foundation to build on other degrees.”

OER 139

OER Course Outcomes Report 139

Iterating Toward Openness

JANUARY 24, 2019

Among other things, the post discusses her role in my decision to abandon the phrase “open pedagogy” and adopt the phrase “OER-enabled pedagogy.” So when people tell the story of how the term “OER-enabled pedagogy” came to be they should absolutely include Maha in it.

OER 113

OER Technology Exercises Online Learning 113

Edsurge

OCTOBER 30, 2018

It’s not uncommon to stumble upon headlines about students spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on course materials. In response, open educational materials, or OER, have emerged as an alternative to expensive textbooks that disproportionately affect low-income students. What’s the role of technology in all of this?

OER 143

OER Policies Accessibility Outcomes 143

Edsurge

FEBRUARY 20, 2020

Students who took multiple community college courses that used only free or low-cost OER materials earned more credits over time than their peers who took classes that used traditional course materials such as textbooks, according to a new study. Free Isn’t Free For students, OER texts are typically free, or nearly free.

OER 187

OER Resources Course Education 187

Doug Levin

JANUARY 15, 2016

The Layers of ESSA: Educational Technology in Title IV – 21st Century Schools, Part A. While most people surely love a good layer cake, the layers of provisions governing the new educational technology program in Title IV, Part A of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) are nothing if not overly complicated.

Policies 258

Policies Technology Education OER 258

Edsurge

JUNE 16, 2020

Lumen Learning, a company that sells low-cost OER textbooks and courseware, plans to start offering professional development services for faculty that can be bundled with its titles. In other words, some of its textbooks are now sold with coaching on how to teach with OER more effectively.

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OER Company Learning Course 125

Edsurge

JUNE 9, 2017

With course materials averaging around $1,200 per year , many colleges over the past decade have adopted open educational resources (OER) to cut costs for students. One review offers evidence that students using OER as their primary course material sometimes perform better.) Jared Robinson and David A.

OER 114

OER Data Outcomes Study 114

Edsurge

OCTOBER 24, 2018

One popular draw to open educational resources is that these openly-licensed learning materials can—and are often encouraged to—be tailored for a particular professor or course. Communications librarian Kristen Hoffman oversees much of the OER work at Seattle Pacific University, a Christian university in Washington.

OER 115

OER Libraries Course Study 115

Edsurge

JULY 25, 2019

Use of free course materials among college students is up, with 22 percent downloading at least one such resource during the spring 2019 semester, according to research published Wednesday by the National Association of College Stores. The percent of students who reported downloading free materials has increased each semester since.

Course 166

Course OER Pearson Survey 166

Iterating Toward Openness

AUGUST 13, 2019

Sadly, as Audrey Watters has frequently noted, it might be impossible to find a field of endeavor outside educational technology where more of the participants are so utterly ignorant of its history. (I Or correspondence courses (snail mail)? I hope you’re aware of and looking forward to her upcoming book on Teaching Machines.)

OER 129

OER System Exercises Course 129

Edsurge

MARCH 28, 2018

But it wasn’t until her current gig, serving as an instructor for a course on water supply and demand in California, that she got her feet wet with open educational resources. Today, Anagnoson’s online course is embedded into a Water Systems Technology zero-cost textbook degree program, or Z-degree. Now it’s my job.”

OER 114

OER Industry Course Guidelines 114

Edsurge

OCTOBER 18, 2018

But OER is not free, since it costs money to develop the materials, takes time for professors to evaluate and adopt them, and typically involves other campus-support services as well. A report released last week gives perhaps the most detailed accounting of the pricetag to colleges looking to make signiciant moves to OER.

OER 162

OER Study Report Course 162

Edsurge

AUGUST 4, 2022

In May, the homework-help site that relies on student-generated content, Course Hero, dipped its toes into freely available, openly licensed alternatives known as Open Educational Resources, or OER, course materials. Course Hero officials say that the negative reaction came as a surprise.

OER 158

OER Resources Education Course 158

Edsurge

AUGUST 24, 2020

As countless educators around the world have scrambled to figure out how to deliver lessons remotely with whisker-thin budgets, many turned to open education resources (OER). CK-12 is at the forefront of OER by doing adaptive and personalized learning. And the technology. More people should be doing it the way they are.”

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OER EdTech Exercises Resources 211

Edsurge

JANUARY 12, 2018

Can open educational resources, or OER, truly create more equity and access? That was the question at the heart of our #DLNchat on January 9, which centered around OER in Higher Education. To me OER is also about the democratization of access to education, and the pursuit and sharing of knowledge.

OER 101

OER Resources Education Digital Learning 101

Edsurge

APRIL 20, 2017

Open Educational Resources (OER) have yet to cozy up with the more orthodox academics and pushy print publishers of the world. But skeptics hold that the quality of digital course materials don’t stand up to that of the Pearson’s and McGraw Hill’s of the world. On its own, the OER company partners with nearly 150 campuses.

OER 107

OER LMS Company Course 107

Iterating Toward Openness

JUNE 28, 2016

Inspired by MIT’s example, hundreds of other institutions around the world began openly publishing the resources they created in support of their courses. Creating and sharing OER did not harm their ability to succeed in accomplishing their core missions – the education of their students.

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OER Instructional Materials Course Resources 84

Iterating Toward Openness

APRIL 25, 2019

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.

OER 84

OER Course Company Smartphone 84

Doug Levin

MAY 16, 2016

What I do want to comment on (in greater than 140 characters) is the practice of ‘openwashing:’ what it is, why I believe not being able to go beyond a pro-OER elephant test for organizations and service providers is untenable in practice, and some thoughts on what we can do about it. The Pro-OER Elephant Test.

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OER Software Company Twitter 170

The Hechinger Report

MARCH 13, 2018

These OER – open educational resources – may be good, bad or indifferent. There’s more bad OER out there than good; that’s a fact,” said Rebecca Kockler, assistant superintendent of academic instruction for the state of Louisiana, at the annual SXSWedu conference last week in Austin, Texas. How can school districts or teachers know?

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OER How To Common Core Instructional Materials 98

Edsurge

JULY 8, 2020

It considered all adoption types, from traditional publishers, to local curriculum creation, to open educational resources (OER). The survey respondents who use one of the big three publishers, versus a smaller publisher, OER or a home-grown curriculum all reported similar levels of satisfaction and effectiveness.

Survey 174

Survey OER Training Pearson 174

EdTech4Beginners

APRIL 2, 2017

The amount of new acronyms in the educational technology world is staggering… and often overwhelming for educators. BYOT – Bring Your Own Technology. CREATE – Collaboartion, Resources, Educate, Apps, Technology, Enriching. ICT – Information Communications Technology. STEAM – Science, Technology, Art, Engineering, Maths.

EdTech 189

EdTech VLE CMS OER 189

Edsurge

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

The funds will cover financial support and mentorship for faculty who create new open educational resources (OER for short) or adapt existing open textbooks. We’re trying to encourage a model of deliberately constructing or reconstructing OER to fit the needs of your learners and not necessarily just to create a textbook.”

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OER Outcomes Course Social Media 177