[Open-education] OER Digest - June 29th, 2017

Thu Jun 29 19:47:38 UTC 2017

>From Ethan Senack (Creative Commons USA) | Volume 34 | June 29th, 2017

With updates from Katie Steen, Brady Yano, Jennifer Wolfe, Richard
Sebastian, David Wiley, Nicole Finkbeiner, and Erika Aparaka

THE OER DIGEST

Your bi-weekly newsletter for open education updates, opportunities, and
reminders

ACHIEVING THE DREAM: Achieving the Dream released preliminary results from
its 38-campus OER Degree Initiative in the report Launching OER Degree
Pathways
<http://achievingthedream.org/press_release/16735/after-one-year-largest-initiative-to-promote-the-use-of-open-educational-resources-for-degree-completion-finds-robust-course-development-strong-faculty-support-and-broad-based-leadership-for-oer-use>:
An Early Snapshot of Achieving the Dream's OER Degree Initiative and
Emerging Lessons. Per their press release, key findings include:

   -

   84% of faculty members said that students in the new OER courses had the
   same or a higher level of engagement with the learning materials as
   compared to courses they have taught using traditional course materials.
   -

   More than 7 in 10 instructors say that they are very or somewhat likely
   to promote use of OER to colleagues.
   -

   Early research also indicates that students saved, on average, about
   $134 per course or between 5 to 22 percent of annual student textbook costs
   in those colleges (with caveats).

UNIV OF MISSOURI: Last week, the University of Missouri System (Digest
author Katie Steen’s alma mater) announced an initiative to drive OER
development on four campuses serving 77,000 students. A working group of
students, faculty, and staff across the System will implement and oversee
the initiative with input from stakeholders at each campus. UM System
President Choi - formerly an OER champion as provost at the University of
Connecticut (Digest author Ethan Senack’s alma mater) - will offer
incentives ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 to adapt and create OER.

STATE LEGISLATION: Texas SB810 <https://legiscan.com/TX/bill/SB810/2017>, which
creates a state OER grant program, establishes protocols for OER course
designations in course catalogs, and orders a statewide feasibility study -
has been signed into law by the Governor. The Governor also signed a bill
<http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/BillLookup/Text.aspx?LegSess=85R&Bill=SB1784>relating
to use of OER in K-12 public schools. A substantial bill
<https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2017/0374> reorganizing community
colleges in Florida that included a small provision around open textbooks
was vetoed by the Governor. In Washington, their Governor signed legislation
<http://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1375&Year=2017> requiring
schools to list textbook prices and inform students about OER use in
classrooms during course registration.

ANNOUNCING: The Open Education Group - the interdisciplinary group of OER
researchers - is launching a “Designing with OER” Fellow Programs with
funding from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The DOER Fellows
Program invites instructional designers to partner with subject matter
experts to apply for grants, supporting the creation of renewable
assignments based on the principles of OER-Enabled Pedagogy
<http://openedgroup.org/oer-enabled-pedagogy> and designed to be used with
specific open educational resources. For more information, join the DOER
Network listserv <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/doer-network>.

SNAPSHOT: From the Learning Accelerator comes a new report - TLA Snapshot:
<http://learningaccelerator.org/media/ca19fd09/TLASnapshot_OER.pdf> A New
Tool to Personalize Learning with Open Educational Resources: The
Middletown Learning Path. In their words: “The prevalence of high-cost,
low-quality, and often out-of-date textbooks is a problem across U.S.
school districts. This Snapshot highlights one strong example of how a
district in New York is solving this problem by creating a new tool to
facilitate the use Open Educational Resources, by making it easy for
educators to adopt materials approved for both quality and copyright.”

SCI-HUB: A US court ruled that the widely-used research-sharing site,
Sci-Hub, violated US copyright law, and has awarded publishing giant
Elsevier $15 million in damages. Owners of the site, which hosts over 62
million academic papers, said that they see more than 200,000 requests per
day. Questions remain, however, on whether or not the ruling will impact
the site, which has no assets in the US.

OPENSTAX NEWS: On the heels of announcing their new list of OER
Institutional Partners, OpenStax is now announcing that their 2016
Institutional Partners are expected to save students over $8 million in
textbook costs. That announcement and the list of 2016 partners here
<http://news.rice.edu/2017/06/27/openstaxs-2016-partner-schools-expected-to-save-students-8-2m-2/>,
along with the list of their new 2017 partners
<https://openstax.org/blog/2017-2018-openstax-institutional-partners-announced>.

Flashback: One interesting name on the list - Cal State Fullerton, which
made headlines
<http://www.ocweekly.com/news/cal-state-fullertons-math-department-has-more-problems-than-overpriced-mandatory-textbooks-7550408>
last year after a professor’s unapproved use of OER resulted in his censure.

ALSO INTERESTING: Three of these topics (Sci-Hub, OpenStax’ Institutional
Partnership Program, and Cal-State Fullerton) appeared together in the OER
Digest on May 12th, 2016.
<https://oerdigest.org/2016/05/12/oer-digest-may-12th-2016/>

OPEN CONNECTIONS

Conferences, jobs, and other OER-related opportunities

EVENT: Apply now to attend OpenCon
<https://apply.opencon2017.org/referral/oerdigest> Nov 11-13 in Berlin,
Germany. Travel scholarships are available. OpenCon is the conference to
empower the next generation to advance Open Access, Open Education and Open
Data.

EVENT: Registration for #OpenEd17
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/OpenEd17?src=hash> is now OPEN! The conference
will be taking place Oct 11-13 in Anaheim, CA. Click here
<https://openedconference.org/2017/registration/> to register.

EVENT: Registration for the iNACOL Summit on October 23-25th closes in just
over two weeks. Click here <https://www.inacol.org/symposium/> to register.

SUBSCRIBE: If you haven’t already - subscribe to the OER Digest here
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdsVwP-hgmvxYey_D1QbsKGAitjHhobvW6cX1vHGxSVWuq_sA/viewform>
!

STORIES FROM THE FIELD

A brief snapshot of those making change on the ground level, and those most
impacted

FROM WASHINGTON: “Stambaugh, a prime sponsor of Open Education Resource
Legislation for the past three years said she is a fierce advocate of
expanding open education resources. She said she has been communicating
with Pierce College and other two- and four-year institutions to learn of
their current open education resource options, how they are being
implemented and where they can expand. “The first two years, the model that
I used was based off the University of Massachusetts Amherst that funded
faculty grants for them to develop open education resource,” she said about
the bill she sponsored.” Read more >
<http://piercepioneernews.com/11407/campus/student-government-hosts-q-a/>

FROM CALIFORNIA: “At COC, 75 percent of students stated that the cost of
books and supplies are the top barrier to them achieving their educational
goals, according to the agenda item. The college also found that 70 percent
of students said the cost of textbooks and supplies influences their
enrollment choices and 67 percent of students said they were concerned
their grades would suffer if they do not buy textbooks.” Read more >
<https://signalscv.com/2017/06/27/coc-participate-zero-textbook-cost-degree-program/>

TWEET OF THE WEEK

Barbara Illowsky‏ @DrBSI
<https://twitter.com/DrBSI/status/876920969985613825>: See the latest
research on how #OER help #students learn in this special issue of
#IRRODL: http://bit.ly/2rJtskF
 @johnhiltoniii @cccoer

SYLLABUS

Interesting Reads Relating to Education and Open

Collaborating to Scale OER | Inside Higher Ed

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2017/06/28/maricopa-millions-scales-oer-across-11-arizona-community

Free textbooks for first-year university students could help improve
retention rate | The Conversation AU

http://theconversation.com/free-textbooks-for-first-year-university-students-could-help-improve-retention-rates-77786

Textbooks in the Digital World | The Conversation US

http://theconversation.com/textbooks-in-the-digital-world-78299

What Happened to Amazon Inspire, the Tech Giant’s Education Marketplace? |
EdSurge

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-06-26-what-happened-to-amazon-inspire-the-tech-giant-s-education-marketplace

Districts Work to Close Digital Equity Gap | Ed Tech Magazine

https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2017/06/iste-2017-districts-work-close-digital-equity-gap

Have suggestions for the next edition? Let us know at oerdigest at gmail.com,
or tweet us @OERdigest <https://twitter.com/oerdigest>.

The OER Digest is a public newsletter distributed to a broad group of
stakeholders across the higher education community. You can join the open
Google Group or check out the distribution list here
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/oerdigest>.
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