[Open-education] OER Digest - September 21st, 2017

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>From Kaitlyn Vitez and Saman Azimi (USPIRG) | Volume 40 | September 21st,
2017

With updates from Ethan Senack, Manuela Ekowo, and Brady Yano

THE OER DIGEST

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

SECOND WORLD OER CONGRESS: Earlier this week, UNESCO and the Slovenian
Ministry of Education, Science, and Sport brought together 550 registered
participants from 111 countries for the 2nd World OER Congress
<http://www.oercongress.org/>. The event marked the 15th anniversary of the
term “OER,” initially coined at a UNESCO meeting in 2002. Outputs from the
Congress included the Ljubljana OER Action Plan
<http://en.unesco.org/news/ljubljana-oer-action-plan-2017-adopted-support-quality-open-licensed-educational-resources?platform=hootsuite>,
which presents 41 recommendations to mainstream OER in effort to achieve
the 2030 UNESCO Sustainable Development Goal 4 on “quality and lifelong
education.” Suggested actions include:



   -

   Provide capacity building for teachers, teacher trainers, learners,
   parents, educational policy makers, librarians and other stakeholders as
   needed to raise awareness on how OER can increase access to effective
   educational resources, improve learner outcomes and significantly reduce
   costs, and empower learners to become co-creators of knowledge.
   -

   Empower educators and learners to develop gender-sensitive, culturally
   and linguistically relevant OER appropriate to local cultures and to create
   local language OER, particularly languages which are less used,
   under-resourced and endangered as well as indigenous languages.
   -

   Support for public investments in bandwidth infrastructure to provide
   increased access to mobile learning, particularly for rural and remote
   communities.
   -

   Develop national and institutional standards, benchmarks and related
   criteria for the quality assurance of OER.


CAPE TOWN +10: In recognition of the 10 year anniversary of the Cape Town
Open Education Declaration <http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/>, Centrum
Cyfrowe, Educadigital Institute, and SPARC co-organized a satellite event
at the 2nd World OER Congress which explored 10 directions to move open
education forward for the next decade. Featuring speakers from around the
world, this session also included the launch of a new community resource
<http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/cpt10/> building on the Cape Town Open
Education Declaration. Catch up on the conversation at #CPT10
<https://twitter.com/search?q=%23CPT10&src=typd&lang=en>.

NEW RESEARCH: Babson Survey Research Group released a new report
<https://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/oer.html>, entitled “What We Teach,”
on K-12 curriculum choices and the extent to which OER factor into those
choices. Some key findings from the report, which surveyed a national
sample of over 500 K-12 decision makers, include:



   -

   Awareness and adoption of specific OER materials is higher than
   awareness of the term itself; two-thirds of all districts are aware of at
   least one open full-course curriculum alternative and over a third have
   actively considered at least one, while one-third of districts are aware of
   both the term “OER” and its licensing.
   -

   Open licensed full-course curricula materials have been adopted by 16%
   of all districts.


HILL BRIEFING: Achieving the Dream held a congressional briefing earlier
this month on the performance and lessons learned from their first year of
OER degree grants. Speakers included the presidents of the Odessa College
and Bunker Hill Community College, two of the 37 grant recipients. A copy
of the report can be found here
<http://achievingthedream.org/resource/16746/launching-oer-degree-pathways-an-early-snapshot-of-achieving-the-dream-s-oer-degree-initiative-and-emerging-lessons>
.

OPENSTAX EXPANDS: OpenStax, based at Rice University, is working with Open
University's UK Open Textbooks program to bring free OpenStax's textbooks
to the UK <https://openstax.org/blog/openstax-partners-uk-open-textbooks>.
"International expansion is an exciting and intuitive next step for us,"
said OpenStax managing director, Daniel Williamson. OpenStax also announced
a partnership with Katalyst Education
<https://news.rice.edu/2017/09/20/openstax-partners-with-katalyst-to-deliver-free-textbooks-to-poland/>
to bring OER to Poland.

PLATFORM LAUNCH: HP announced the the launch of the new HP School Cloud
featuring the HP Open Learning Platform
<http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=2514794#.WcPTZLKGPIW>,
aimed at providing access to educational materials for students, teachers,
and adult learners in rural and poor communities around the world to
support the company’s commitment to improving learning outcomes for 100
million people by 2025. The platform will leverage a range of free
resources from OpenStax, with more OER partners to be announced soon.

OPEN DATA NEWS: The Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary (OPEN)
Government Data Act passed the Senate
<https://www.datacoalition.org/press-releases/update-senate-passes-open-government-data-act/>
this week. The bill, which is part of the National Defense Authorization
Act and thus expected to be passed by the House and signed into law, would
require all federal agencies to publish their information in open,
machine-readable formats.


OPEN CONNECTIONS

Conferences, jobs, and other OER-related opportunities

EVENT: Join CCCOER for a webinar Wednesday, September 27th 2pm EST to hear
from librarians and faculty who are working together to support the
selection and adoption of high-quality OER. Register for the webinar here
<https://www.cccoer.org/webinar/faculty-librarians-selecting-high-quality-oer-together/>
.

EVENT: The Rebus Community and Open Textbook Network are hosting their
September Office Hour event on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in OER. The
call will be taking place on September 26th at 12pm EST. Click here
<https://forum.rebus.community/topic/208/office-hours-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-in-oer-tuesday-sept-26-12-p-m-est?utm_source=Rebus+Community+Newsletter&utm_campaign=9bf913425d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_08_30&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c42869f96a-9bf913425d-77335437>
to RSVP.

EVENT: The Lumen Learning team is holding regular weekday office hours from
4:30-5:30 EST for anyone that needs help with Lumen Candela and Waymaker
courses and Open Educational Resources (OER). Click here
<http://lumenlearning.com/office-hours/> to learn more.

EVENT: Registration is open for the Open Educational Global Conference 2018
in Delft, The Netherlands, on April 24-26, 2018. Learn more, register, and
submit a proposal here <https://conference.oeconsortium.org/2018/>.

JOB: Forsyth Tech Community College in Winston-Salem, NC is looking for an OER
Research Fellow (part-time
<https://careers.forsythtech.edu/postings/3025?utm_source=Indeed&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=Indeed>)
to assist with resource management, data collection, and tracking. This
position is grant-funded and will remain open until filled.

JOB: Reading Area Community College in Reading, PA is seeking an Instructional
Technology Specialist
<https://www.racc.edu/about-racc/career-opportunities/id-2695> to provide
Learning Management System support, assistance in use of educational
technology, and training to staff and faculty, both full and part
time.Review of applications began in August but the position is still open.

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 ARKANSAS: “It is a point of pride that UA Cossatot was the very first
college in the state to offer this type of [OER] program for students,”
said Chancellor Steve Cole. Read more >>>
<https://txktoday.com/news/ua-cossatot-saves-students-500000-textbook-costs/>

FROM UTAH: "I had a student who was like 'I'm living out of my car. I can't
buy a textbook.' You're so happy that they're there and they're trying to
better their lives. You want to remove every financial burden from their
lives you can possibly remove. I think we're ahead of the pack on that,
moving more and more to open educational resources where we can," said
Brenda Gardner, associate professor of math at Salt Lake Community
College. Read
more >>>
<https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865688821/Free-or-low-cost-college-textbooks-SLCC-program-makes-it-possible.html>

FROM MICHIGAN: The UM Flint “Textbook Affordability Initiative” is now in
its second year as a pilot project. This fall, five math courses will use
free OpenStax digital textbooks. It is anticipated that about 900 students
will enroll in these five courses, and they will save an average of $200
per student in avoided textbook costs. Read more >>>
<https://news.umflint.edu/2017/09/08/um-flint-librarians-on-a-mission-to-save-students-money-on-textbooks/>


TWEET OF THE WEEK

World OER Congress @OERcongress

Discover the Ljubljana Action Plan 2017 here: ow.ly/9TjJ30fjZLA
<http://en.unesco.org/news/ljubljana-oer-action-plan-2017-adopted-support-quality-open-licensed-educational-resources?platform=hootsuite>
#SDG4 <https://twitter.com/search?q=%23sdg4&src=typd> #OER
<https://twitter.com/search?q=%23oer&src=typd> #Education
<https://twitter.com/search?q=%23education&src=typd>


SYLLABUS

Interesting Reads Relating to Education and Open

A New Way to Learn Economics | the New Yorker

https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/a-new-way-to-learn-economics

The Dilemma of Fair Use and Expressive Machine Learning | Intellectual
Property Watch

https://www.ip-watch.org/2017/08/23/dilemma-fair-use-expressive-machine-learning-interview-ben-sobel/?utm_content=bufferfbc3e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

College Textbooks are Going the Way of Netflix | Quartz

https://qz.com/1039404/end-of-textbooks/

Teachers Can Now Use IBM’s Watson to Search for Free Lesson Plans | EdSurge

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-09-13-teachers-can-now-use-ibm-s-watson-to-search-for-free-lesson-plans

A Question of Marginal Utility | Harvard Crimson

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/9/21/ec10-mankiw-royalties/

Students are Opting Out of Purchasing Textbooks Because of Cost |
EducationDIVE

http://www.educationdive.com/news/students-are-opting-out-of-purchasing-textbooks-because-of-cost-how-oers/505242/


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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