Every year in October we celebrate Open Access Week, an international celebration of everything open. If this doesn’t sound familiar, read up on the topic through the (brief!) blog posts we published in previous years:
- What is Open Access
- Impact of Open Access
- Local to Global Open Access
- Is Your Work Still Yours?
- Teaching Open Access
This year we are focused on advocating for the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) on our campus. Many staff and faculty colleagues have been thinking about ways to decrease the total cost of a Connecticut College education by replacing traditional textbooks with OER. During Open Access week this year, we will conduct a whiteboard survey in Shain Library asking students questions about how students use, acquire, and pay for textbooks. In following weeks we will collect and share the results of the survey.
We also invite you to attend and participate in a hands-on workshop to explore and discover OER for your courses, learn about and help shape future grant opportunities for OER implementation. Details are below – feel free to register or stop by as your schedule allows. As always, coffee and snacks will be provided!
OER and Your Course: Integrating Open Content into the Curriculum – Register
Monday, October 22 | 3:00-4:00pm | Advanced Technology Lab, Shain Library
Open educational resources (OER) are educational materials that are distributed at no cost and have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and other materials. Much work has been done at the College to integrate OER into classes. We will share what OER programming is developing and how to integrate these resources and practices into your own courses.