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OER | Open Educational Resources

This guide is intended to help faculty and students at Lane Community College learn about OER, re-purpose existing content, and create new resources to share. OER includes free textbooks, online tutorials, and open media that is free of cost or low cost.

Promoting OER

The Affordable College Textbook Act (S.1704/H.R.3538)

  • Congressional bill would reduce the cost of textbooks at U.S. colleges and universities by expanding the use of open educational resources (OER). The bill was introduced in November 2013 by Senators Dick Durbin and Al Franken in the Senate and Representatives Rubén Hinojosa and George Miller in the House. As of 2015, it has not moved forward.

Make Textbooks Affordable | http://maketextbooksaffordable.org

  • Aims to develop a textbook market with both a vibrant used book market and a plethora of learning content that is priced and sold fairly.
  • Provides latest news, studies and solutions on cost of college textbooks; advocacy opportunities for professors (Open Textbooks Statement) and students (Actions for Students).

Open Education Community | http://opened.creativecommons.org

  • Gateway to information about the open education movement and OER
  • Provides links to resources, organizations, events, people, and more.

The Hewlett Foundation | http://www.hewlett.org/oer

  • Funds grants for OER since 2006.
  • Provides resources and also makes their funded OER proposals publicly available.

OER Support from SPARC | http://sparc.arl.org/issues/oer

  • SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system.  
  • This page highlights SPARC's work in supporting OER work.

Open Knowledge Foundation | http://www.okfn.org

  • "Promoting Open Knowledge in a Digital Age"
  • Working on open knowledge projects, such as Open Economics and Open Shakespeare
  • Providing infrastructure for open knowledge projects, communities, and resources, including the Knowledge Forge service and Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network.

Events

Open Access Workshops and Conferences | http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Events

  • List of activities around the world.

Open Education Week  | http://www.openeducationweek.org

  • This usually happens in March.

Open Access Week | http://www.openaccessweek.org

  • This usually happens in October.

Open Education Conference | http://openedconference.org

  • Conference includes keynote speakers, sessions, networking, and discussion of best practices.