[Open-education] OER Digest - April 5th, 2018

Thu May 3 21:18:07 UTC 2018

*Volume 56 From Camille Thomas (SPARC) | Volume 56 | May 3rd, 2018 THE OER
DIGESTYour bi-weekly newsletter for open education updates, opportunities,
and remindersNEW CO-AUTHOR: Hi! This is Camille Thomas. I am very excited
to be SPARC’s first Open Education Fellow! I am the Scholarly Publishing
Librarian at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. For the next few
months, my work will include working on the digest, LibOER calls, etc. as
well as building relationships with new community partners to grow
awareness and support for Open Educational Resources. You can contact me at
camille at sparcopen.org <camille at sparcopen.org>.$1 TRILLION AND COUNTING:
Student debt in the United States has been a $1 trillion problem for at
least six years. Currently, the total debt is $1.5 trillion and financial
aid expenditures for textbooks is $3 billion per year. Several articles
<https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/312205> and opinion pieces
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/opinion/student-debt-inequality.html>
have surfaced covering the need for affordable education and how growing
costs affect life after higher education. These pieces provide important
context for OER advocates working in higher education.ETEXTBOOK PRICE DROP?
Inside Higher Ed reports
<https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/05/01/publishers-race-reduce-costs-digital-textbooks>
that while new print textbooks are still costly, the price of etextbooks is
falling, according to data from etextbook distribution platforms which work
with major publishers. Since 2016, the average price of etextbooks on
VitalSource has fallen by 31 percent, from $56.36 in 2016 to $38.65 in
2018. OER advocates questioned the significance of these numbers, noting
that it reflects a shift to renting versus buying access to content, and
that discounts are likely temporary.IN THE STATES: Governor Hickenlooper of
Colorado signed into law HB18-1331
<http://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb18-1331>, creating an OER council and
appropriating $660K for OER grants and other activities. Edison State
Community College is teaming up
<http://www.tdn-net.com/news/40436/initiative-to-reduce-textbook-costs>
with the Ohio Association of Community Colleges (OACC) as well as
universities from around Ohio to reduce the cost of student textbooks. The
initiative, named Open Educational Resources (OER), is supported by a $1.3
million Innovation Grant from the Ohio Department of Higher Education.
 SAVINGS AND MORE: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced an $8 million
investment in open educational resources in 2017. Ann Fiddler, Open
Education Librarian at the City University of New York, wrote an op-ed
<https://www.the74million.org/article/opinion-open-educational-resources-bring-huge-cost-savings-here-are-4-more-ways-they-benefit-students-and-teachers/>
about bringing OER to scale for CUNY’s 500,000 students over the past year
and how open education means so much more than financial savings.OPEN
CONFERENCESUpcoming Events, Proposal and Registration Deadlines,
Report-Backs  REGISTER: The Open Education Southern Symposium is being
hosted by the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville on October 1st-2nd.
Register here <https://openedss.uark.edu/registration.php>. Proposals are
still being accepted <https://openedss.uark.edu/call-for-proposals.php>
until May 31st.CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Proposals to host the 2019 Open
Education Global Conference is re-opened.  Traditionally, the Conference is
held in the spring but starting in 2019, the conference is moving to the
Fall with preference for the month of November. More information here
<http://www.oeconsortium.org/2018/04/call-for-proposals-to-host-the-open-education-global-2019-conference-is-re-opened/>.
WRAP UPS: In case you missed any of these great conferences, report-backs
are available from the San Diego GoOpen Summit
<http://sandiegocue.blogspot.com/2018/04/goopen-summit_17.html> and the
Creative Commons Summit <https://creativecommons.org/2018/05/01/summit/>.
Also, check out the blog post roundup
<https://oer18.oerconf.org/news/blog-post-round-up-oer18/#gref>for OER18,
which includes multimedia and Twitter coverage of the event. The archive of
livestreamed sessions at OE Global is available here
<https://conference.oeconsortium.org/2018/live/>.LAST CALL:  May 11th is
the priority application deadline for SPARC’s Open Educational Leadership
Program for library professionals. Apply here
<https://sparcopen.org/our-work/open-education-leadership-program/#enroll>.STORIES
FROM THE FIELDQuick snapshots of those making change on the ground level,
and those impactedFROM WYOMING: “The innovation and creativity of UW
instructors in this round of grants were amazing. Faculty from three
colleges will create new open textbooks and course materials to better meet
student needs while saving thousands of dollars in the process,” said Cass
Kvenild, interim associate dean of University of Wyoming Libraries. Read
more >
<http://www.uwyo.edu/uw/news/2018/04/uw-libraries-selects-open-textbook-grant-recipients.html>FROM
ILLINOIS: “It’s time DePaul University began incentivizing professors to
switch to Open Educational Resources, which are 100 percent free online
textbooks,” said Josh Kaufman, Student Government Association candidate, in
his platform statement at DePaul University in Chicago. Read more >
<http://depauliaonline.com/34718/opinions/the-sga-candidates-want-your-vote-depaul-for-all-and-we-are-depaul-make-statements/>
HOT OFF THE PRESSEach edition, we’ll highlight an interesting, new,
openly-licensed resourceThe University of Michigan has published a new High
Performance Computing open textbook, updating an out of print text to have
more practical information for scientists who need to write and run their
programs as part of their research. The textbook can be found in MERLOT
<https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1186924> and is
available for print-on-demand.WEIGH INInteresting Discussions and Strategic
Reads to Repost or Share Great to Share >> Opening a New Path to Success –
A Journey with Open Textbooks |
WCEThttps://wcetfrontiers.org/2018/04/26/opening-a-new-path-to-success-a-journey-with-open-textbooks/
<https://wcetfrontiers.org/2018/04/26/opening-a-new-path-to-success-a-journey-with-open-textbooks/>
A New Study Found OER to Match and Even Outperform a Commercial Textbook |
eLearning
Insidehttps://news.elearninginside.com/new-study-suggests-oer-matches-even-outperforms-commercial-textbooks/
<https://news.elearninginside.com/new-study-suggests-oer-matches-even-outperforms-commercial-textbooks/>
Interesting to Consider >>Williamson Schools to develop open source social
studies curriculum | The
Tennesseanhttps://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/williamson/2018/04/19/williamson-schools-develop-open-source-social-studies-curriculum/524207002/
<https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/williamson/2018/04/19/williamson-schools-develop-open-source-social-studies-curriculum/524207002/>
Have suggestions for the next edition? Let us know at oerdigest at gmail.com
<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>.*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-education/attachments/20180503/bee4a5bf/attachment-0002.html>