[Open-education] OER Digest: November 8th, 2018

Thu Nov 8 17:31:37 UTC 2018

>From Kaitlyn Vitez, USPIRG | Volume 69 | November 8th, 2018

With updates from Camille Thomas and Mo Nyamweya

THE OER DIGEST

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

ELECTION RESULTS: The midterm elections this past Tuesday offer new
opportunities
<https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/11/07/governors-races-and-higher-education>
to push for accessible and affordable education. One notable race was in
Colorado,  where former U.S. Representative Jared Polis, a sponsor of the
Affordable College Textbook Act, was elected governor.

TECH SUPPORT: The 2018 Campus Computing Survey
<https://www.campuscomputing.net/content/2018/10/31/the-2018-campus-computing-survey>
revealed that two-thirds of IT budgets have not recovered from cuts after
the Great Recession, but had good news for supporters of OER. 64% of
colleges had programs to encourage OER use, up 30% from 2014.

FACULTY-TO-FACULTY ADOPTION: Steven Bell of the Temple University Libraries
released a new survey of 1,400 undergraduate instructors,  “Course
Materials Adoption: A Faculty Survey and Outlook for the OER Landscape
<http://choice360.org/librarianship/whitepaper>.” The survey found that 38%
of faculty who made the choice to use OER got recommendations from their
peers, followed by 34% from a repository and less than 15% from a LibGuide.
On the whole, the survey found that librarians are the least-consulted
resource available to faculty, and that faculty relied overwhelming on the
largest OER sites like OpenStax and the Open Textbook Library to identify
high-quality resources quickly.

COMPARING COMMERCIAL “OER”: Abbey Elder of the Iowa State Library has
released a new tool
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xDGIKZ7T5fIho7yrTs8Lpu4zpqPbeqQn76aY6qEnAUg/edit#gid=1658891021>for
comparing commercial platforms that use open content.While there is still
heated debate within the open community about the role and impact of these
products, the spreadsheet provides helpful comparison of platforms on the
CARE criteria, the source of the base text, and more. The document is open
for members of the community to enter their own research and experiences
with these commercial products.

STUDENT REVIEWS: According to a new survey
<https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/11/06/report-textbook-pricing-affects-students-rating-of-profs.aspx>
by FlatWorld, 15% of students used student loans to pay for books; that
rose to 25% among students who spent more than $600 during the semester on
course materials. The survey also found that faculty members who assign
materials under $30 are 10 times more likely to get a positive review from
students in their classes.

CRITICAL OPENNESS: Participants of OpenCon 2018
<https://www.opencon2018.org/live> engaged in discussions about “critical
openness”. As the open movement evolves, advocates seek ways to ensure open
knowledge structures do not repeat historically exclusive and imposing
practices. Educator and researcher, Monica Brown, reflected on her
experience in a blog post
<https://thefutureisinclusion.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/open-reflections-opencon-2018/>.
Organized by SPARC and the Right to Research Coalition, OpenCon seeks to
bring together folks from diverse disciplines and backgrounds to inspire
and motivate the Open community through networking and action planning.

OPEN CONNECTIONS

Conferences, jobs, and other OER-related opportunities

SAVE THE DATE: OpenEd19 will be October 30th - November 1st, 2019 in
Phoenix, AZ.

REGISTER: Indiana is hosting a #GoOpen Summit in January 2019. Registration
is open here
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfALL6joHkLQ4WSe1w5DCp_AXltzAXVgoJa5YbpBEjyADrxVQ/viewform>
.

REGISTER: Illinois is hosting a Community College OER Summit on November
30th, 2018. Registration <https://www.codlrc.org/OERSummit#registration>closes
on November 16th.

REGISTER: Oregon is holding an OER Symposium on May 17th, 2019.
Registration is open here
<https://openoregon.org/events/event/open-educational-resources-symposium-2018/>
.

PROPOSALS: The call for proposals <https://librarypublishing.org/program/>
for sessions at the Library Publishing Forum in Vancouver closes on
November 30th. The conference will be held May 8-10th, 2019.

PROPOSALS: The call for proposals
<https://uwstout.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_7VBNG0aOdS9tANv> and registration
<https://effordabilitysummit2019.jimdo.com/>is open for the Wisconsin
E-ffordability Summit on March 27th-28th, 2019. Proposals are due on
December 3rd, 2018.

PROPOSALS: Organizers of the OER19 conference in Galway, Ireland on April
10-11th, 2019, have opened <https://oer19.oerconf.org/#gref> up their call
for proposals.

STORIES FROM THE FIELD

Quick snapshots of those making change on the ground level, and those
impacted

FROM PENNSYLVANIA: “Assistant Professor and Department Chair of Kemp
Library Megan P. Smith is currently working hard to convince professors to
provide OER for students. “[East Stroudsburg University] students come from
a variety of financial backgrounds and a lot of them are in places where
they cannot afford even cheaper textbooks of 20 or 30 dollars” she says.
“This is a part of financial aid that faculty can directly affect by easing
the debt of students.” Read more >
<http://thestroudcourier.com/2018/10/26/faculty-provides-textbooks-for-students-free-of-charge/>

FROM TEXAS: “These alternatives provide many benefits and incentives to
professors. Since everyone in a class can access them, it can improve
learning outcomes and allows classes to adapt. “Faculty appreciate the
opportunity to try something new,” Open Educational Resources Coordinator
Ariana Santiago said. “I see people pulling from multiple sources and open
textbooks.” Read more >
<http://thedailycougar.com/2018/10/31/textbook-alternatives/>

HOT OFF THE PRESS

Each edition, we’ll highlight an interesting, new, openly-licensed resource

Apurva Ashok and Zoe Wake Hyde have released The Rebus Guide to Publishing
Open Textbooks (So Far)
<https://press.rebus.community/the-rebus-guide-to-publishing-open-textbooks/>.
The “book-in-progress” is informed by, and based upon, their past two years
of work with the open community on publishing OER, and will be further
edited and expanded in the Rebus Community Forum
<https://forum.rebus.community/category/51/the-rebus-guide-to-publishing-open-textbooks-so-far>
.

WEIGH IN

Interesting Discussions and Strategic Reads to Repost or Share

Great to Share >>

The Academic Minute | WAMC
https://academicminute.org/2018/11/william-blick-queensborough-community-college-open-educational-resources-at-community-colleges/

Interesting to Consider >>

Could OER Help Queer Students? | New America
https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/oer-for-lgbtq/

The Need For An Open Assessment Platform | Medium
https://medium.com/@bodilyrobert/the-need-for-an-open-assessment-platform-in-higher-education-7a6d718fb0b9

What Textbook Companies Will Do To Get Professors to Buy Their Product |
The Daily Northwestern
https://dailynorthwestern.com/2018/10/25/campus/publishing-companies-try-pretty-hard-to-keep-nu-professors-business/

How Open Education Relates to Socioeconomics | The NYU Dispatch
https://wp.nyu.edu/dispatch/2018/10/29/how-open-education-relates-to-socioeconomics/

Is Open Content Enough? Where Open Advocactes Say the Movement Must Go Next |
EdSurge
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-10-30-is-open-content-enough-where-oer-advocates-say-the-movement-must-go-next

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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