Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational materials that are licensed to allow others to reuse, revise, remix, redistribute, and retain them free of cost. Open textbooks are one kind of OER, allowing such activities with a published textbook. Beyond the significant cost savings to students and the ability to share knowledge widely, there are also enormous pedagogical benefits associated with using and creating OER and open textbooks. Open textbooks can improve learning outcomes, in part because the high cost of traditional textbooks has been shown to keep some students from accessing the course material (Hilton & Laman, 2012; Senack, 2014). Their adaptability also means that students are reading material tailor-made for their particular course context. Students can be involved in revising and improving open textbooks and other OER, an excellent learning opportunity that also empowers them to contribute to the curriculum of their own course and to the learning of many more people beyond (Yeung, 2014; Chemwiki Hyperlibrary Development). Such authentic assignments can encourage students to do their best work while connecting them with people outside the course doing work in that field. In this session participants will be introduced to several ways in which faculty are using and creating OER and open textbooks, and will brainstorm pedagogical benefits of doing so as well as potential drawbacks and how to address them. Participants can expect to gain ideas for how they might use and/or create OER in their own courses, for the benefit of their students as well as others.
Hilton III, J. & Laman, C. (2012). One college’s use of an open psychology textbook. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning 27 (3), 265-272. doi: 10.1080/02680513.2012.716657.
Senack, E. (2014). Fixing the broken textbook market: How students respond to high textbook costs and demand Alternatives. U.S. PIRG Reports. Retrieved from http://uspirg.org/reports/usp/fixing-broken-textbook-market
Yeung, L. (2014, August 21). Wikipedia’s medical errors and one’ doctor’s fight to correct them. CBC News British Columbia. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/wikipedia-s-medical-errors-and-one-doctor-s-fight-to-correct-them-1.2743268
Chemwiki Hyperlibrary Development. (n.d.). U.C. Davis Chemwiki. Retrieved from http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Development_Details/Hyperlibrary_Development
