Getting Started…
Open Educational Resources
Some Quick Facts
• 7 in 10 students have chosen not to
purchase a textbook because of cost.
• 78 percent of the students expected to
perform worse without that textbook,
but chose to not purchase regardless.
• http://chronicle.com/article/7-in-10Students-Have-Skipped/128785/
• College textbook prices have risen
1,041 percent since 1977.
• During that same period of time
overall inflation rose only 308 percent.
• http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/fre
shman-year/college-textbook-priceshave-risen-812-percent-1978-n399926
Open Education and OER
• “Open education is a philosophy about the way people
should produce, share, and build on knowledge.
Proponents of open education believe everyone in the
world should have access to high-quality educational
experiences and resources, and they work to eliminate
barriers to this goal. Such barriers might include high
monetary costs, outdated or obsolete materials, and legal
mechanisms that prevent collaboration among scholars
and educators. Promoting collaboration is central to
open education. As the Open Education Consortium
says: “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.”
• https://opensource.com/resources/what-openeducation
• “Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and
research resources released under an open license that
permits their free use and repurposing by others. OER
can be full courses, course materials, lesson plans, open
textbooks, learning objects, videos, games, tests, software,
or any other tool, material, or technique that supports
access to knowledge.”
• http://www.sparc.arl.org/issues/open-education
5Rs and OER Progression
• Open Educational Resources are broadly
• ADOPT (for some courses materials are
•
•
•
•
•
•
• ADAPT (for other courses you might want
considered to meet the “5Rs Framework,”
meaning that users are free to:
Retain
Reuse
Revise
Remix
Redistribute
http://www.sparc.arl.org/issues/openeducation
already completed and ready for you)
to change the order or add to existing OER
materials at your own leisure)
• CREATE (when you are ready, you can make
the perfect course material just for you, and
then share it with the world)
Two Places To Start
• OPEN TEXTBOOK LIBRARY
• http://open.umn.edu/opentextboo
ks/
• “The Open Textbook Library
provides a growing catalog of free,
peer-reviewed, and openlylicensed textbooks.”
• UTAH OER
• http://oerutah.org/
• Brings together eleven of the most
useful sources for open textbooks
and materials.
• http://oerutah.org/index.php/find
-oer/ (textbook page)
For More Information
• Dustin Fife
• dustin.fife@uvu.edu
• (801) 863-8751
• The Library will research some
options to help get you started.