[Open-education] OER Digest - April 18, 2019

Thu Apr 18 22:02:26 UTC 2019

>From Mo Nyamweya | Volume 79 | April 18th, 2019

THE OER DIGEST

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

POLICY UPDATE: Meanwhile, the Illinois Senate passed SB 2096
<http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?DocNum=2096&GAID=15&DocTypeID=SB&LegID=120180&SessionID=108&GA=101&SpecSess=0>,
which would prohibit publishers from offering any institution instructional
materials for adoption, sale or exchange until certain requirements are
met. Oregon’s HB 2213
<https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2019R1/Measures/Overview/HB2213> passed
the House and would require each community college and public university to
establish textbook affordability plans with measurable goals. HB 839
<http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2019/00839/?Tab=BillText> was amended
in Florida to authorize the adoption of innovative pricing options, a term
associated with inclusive access programs. SB 6
<http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2019/00006> was also signed by their
governor, deleting an expired requirement that the Florida College System
board of trustees examines the cost of materials.

NEW Z DEGREES: Orange Coast College in California and Austin Community
College in Texas have both recently made the news for their new Z-degree
programs, which will slash textbook costs for participating students. OCC’s
Z-degree program
<http://www.coastreportonline.com/campus_news/campus/article_bc393548-55a6-11e9-8931-3bd74023e6bf.html>,
which uses OER to replace traditional publisher materials, was funded by a
grant from the State of California. ACC launched their Z-degree program in
spring 2017 and has since expanded
<https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/get-a-degree-without-paying-for-textbooks-acc-says-it-s-possible/1917735278>
to include more than 400 classes. In total as of spring 2019, more than
31,000 students have benefited from ACC’s Z-degree class offerings and
they’re now working on developing a zero textbook cost Business degree.

NEW OER CONSORTIUM: Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers
College <https://education.asu.edu/> is working with three of the largest
community college systems in the U.S. to increase adoption of interactive
OER through the creation
<https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/04/04/arizona-state-working-with-community-colleges-in-interactive-oer-pilot.aspx>
of the Consortium for Open Active Pathways. Funded by a $2.5 million grant
<https://www2.ed.gov/programs/otp/abstractotp2019v2.pdf> from the U.S.
Department of Education, the Consortium will use technology to increase the
availability of higher education materials. The project also includes a
research element focusing on how the use of active OER might improve degree
attainment.

NEW RESEARCH: Two new research articles on the efficacy of open educational
resources in the classroom looked at student outcomes for various K-12
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14794802.2019.1573150> and
university <http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3892/4959>
mathematics courses. The research found that OER can be used in place of
traditional materials with little to no difference in student performance,
while also reducing costs and allowing for local modification.

LUMEN PARTNERSHIP: Carnegie Mellon University’s Simon Initiative announced
a partnership
<https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2019/april/simon-initiative-partnershp.html>
with Lumen Learning <https://lumenlearning.com/> to share tools for
developing, evaluating and improving evidence-based learning materials.
Together, they’ve collaborated to integrate the RISE Framework
<http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2952> into a new
educational effectiveness toolkit, which will be released soon. Lumen and
Carnegie Mellon also have plans to build on established relationships with
higher ed institutions focused on teaching and learning innovation with the
goal of improving student outcomes.

OPEN CONNECTIONS

Conferences, jobs, and other OER-related opportunities

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Session proposals
<https://openedconference.org/2019/call-for-proposals/> for the 2019 Open
Education Conference close this Friday, May 19th at midnight. The
conference takes place October 30 - November 1 in Phoenix, AZ.

REGISTER NOW: Registration
<https://summit.creativecommons.org/register2019/> is now open for the 2019
Creative Commons Global Summit, taking place May 9 - 11 in Lisbon, Portugal.

WEBCAST: Registration
<https://sparcopen.memberzone.com/eventregistration/register/49> is now
open for SPARC’s webcast “Expanding the Scope: Illustrating the Impact of
OER”. The webcast, happening May 1, is open to anyone who wants to join and
you can find more details here
<https://sparcopen.org/event/expanding-the-scope-webcast/>.

STORIES FROM THE FIELD

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

FROM CALIFORNIA: Grossmont Community College’s OER program is expanding,
with a total of about 100 teachers using OER in spring 2019 compared to
only six teachers using OER in 2016. They also now offer two full
Associate’s degrees in Geography and Sociology using OER. "We realized
students were making decisions like, 'Do I want to buy food today or do I
want to purchase my textbook?'" says Professor Dave Dillon, who has
championed the program at Grossmont. Read more >>
<https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/free-textbook-program-saves-grossmont-college-students-thousands-each-semester>

FROM WEST VIRGINIA: Marshall University’s student body president Hunter
Barclay and vice president Hannah Petracca recently held an OER training
for faculty members. During the training, Barclay and Petracca discussed
affordable options for education materials and how to find them. “The
purpose of this training was to make the whole process that Hunter
(Barclay) and I have been through together simpler and less daunting for
faculty, because we have done the research, and we have done a lot of the
number crunching, and we understand that it can be a daunting task,”
Petracca said. Read more >>
<https://marshallparthenon.com/20712/news/student-body-president-vice-president-host-educational-material-training/>

FROM TEXAS: The University of Texas system recently formed the UT System
Task Force with the goal of brainstorming and implementing new ways to make
learning materials as affordable as possible. “We want to speed up,
accelerate, build up the momentum we have to really lower the cost of
higher (education) for students to make learning more affordable,” said
Rebecca Karoff, co-chair of the Affordable Learning Accelerator Task Force
and UT System associate vice chancellor for academic affairs. Read more >>
<https://www.dailytexanonline.com/2019/04/10/new-ut-system-task-force-tackles-college-affordability>

HOT OFF THE PRESS

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

Affordable Learning Georgia published Becoming America: An Exploration of
American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution
<https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/english-textbooks/19/>, an open anthology
representing the diverse voices in early American literature, including
reading and review questions.

WEIGH IN

Interesting Discussions and Strategic Reads to Repost or Share

Great to Share >>

Getting around overpriced textbooks
<https://www.dailyemerald.com/opinion/mann-getting-around-overpriced-textbooks/article_e01e05ba-5f9c-11e9-b0da-27b0eeed9989.html>
|
Daily Emerald

Letter to the Editor: Open Source Textbooks
<http://www.theonlinebeacon.com/letter-to-the-editor-open-source-textbooks/> |
The Online Beacon

Interesting to Consider >>

Is Anyone Happy about the College Textbook Market?
<https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty-and-research/anderson-review/college-textbooks>
|
UCLA Anderson Review

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>.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-education/attachments/20190418/ef635c6c/attachment-0001.html>