The slides from this seminar are available at http://bit.ly/OERfacultyFellows.
What are Open Educational Resources?
Nearly forty percent of CUNY students come from households with annual incomes of less than $20,000. For many of our students, the cost of textbooks can be a steep barrier to academic success. Students often choose not to register for courses that require expensive textbooks, or fail courses simply because they cannot afford the materials. These patterns can lead to increased enrollment time and reduced rates of degree completion.
One way to reduce textbook costs is to offer zero-textbook-cost classes that use Open Educational Resources (OER). OER are teaching, learning, and research tools released under licenses permitting free use/modification while ensuring authors retain copyright to their work. They do more than just save students money: they provide a way for teachers to tailor educational materials to the specific needs of their class, and to ensure that the materials they use stay up-to-date with the current research.
The “open” in “Open Educational Resources” describes educational content that is either in the public domain or licensed to allow users to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute. David Wiley, the Chief Academic Officer of Lumen Learning, explains what these “5Rs of open content” mean:
- Retain: The right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
- Reuse: The right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
- Revise: The right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
- Remix: The right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
- Redistribute: The right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)
While many OERs are freely available online, to make the most of these materials teachers need to think creatively about all the ways that the “5R” rights open up new pedagogical possibilities.
Pre-reading
Before our seminar, please read two short articles about the purpose and possibility of open educational resources:
- Robin DeRosa and Scott Robinson, “From OER to Open Pedagogy: Harnessing the Power of Open.” In Open: The Philosophy and Practices that Are Revolutionizing Education and Science, edited by Rajiv S. Jhangiani and Robert Biswas-Diener. Ubiquity Press, 2017.
- Maura Smale, “‘To Be Honest I’m Not Sure If We Have a Textbook’: Undergraduate Access to Course Reading,” Hybrid Pedagogy, June 5, 2019.
Then, glance through these repositories of open educational resources developed by your CUNY colleagues and find 2-3 that you think are particularly well-designed. (Remember, this is only a small sample of the resources available!)
Bring links to the 2-3 resources that you have identified as well-designed to our first meeting. We will be examining and evaluating them together.
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