Open textbooks are digital educational textbooks made freely and legally available for anyone to reuse, revise, remix and redistribute to meet their course needs. Studies investigating student success – as determined by factors such as course completion, course grades, GPA,
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Looking forward
The last day of Open Education Week 2022 is a great time to look forward to more open education support and opportunities! In Washington, members of Congress have reintroduced the Affordable College Textbook Act, a bill to expand the use and
OER and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
WPI is justly proud of its exemplary teaching and its path-breaking recognition through tenure and promotion paths of faculty whose primary role at WPI is teaching. In our new tenure and promotion guidelines, WPI defines SoTL as: “…the development and
OER and open pedagogy
How are OER and open pedagogy related? A great place to begin thinking about this question is through Robin DeRosa’s work. Robin is currently Director of the Open Learning & Teaching Collaborative (Open CoLab) at Plymouth State University, where they
Massachusetts Colleges Collaborate to Create Culturally Relevant Open Textbooks
During Open Education week you don’t have to look far to find exciting initiatives that are building new open education resources that also help create more inclusive learning experiences for all students. In September 2021 a consortium of six
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Happy Open Education Week!
Want to explore open education and open educational resources? Curious what it’s all about? You’ve picked the perfect time, Open Education Week 2022, when teachers and universities around the world are sharing how they are taking action to reduce the
OER Petting Zoo: reasonably priced print editions of OERs
Good news for those who prefer print: an Oregon OER organization has compiled an online list of OERs available as print editions for reasonable prices from self-publishing (Lulu) and institutional (Stanford University, SUNY) platforms. In a 2019 story announcing the
Read More OER Petting Zoo: reasonably priced print editions of OERs
WPI faculty share what course materials they require and how they use OERs
Over 50 WPI faculty from 20 departments and programs responded to survey questions in B Term about how they choose course materials, what kinds of access their students have to these materials, and their awareness and interest in learning more
Read More WPI faculty share what course materials they require and how they use OERs
WPI students avoid buying textbooks
In fall 2021 WPI students were invited to respond to an informal survey to tell us whether they buy required textbooks, how they feel about textbook costs, and other ways they get access to course materials. Of the 207 students
Textbook affordability in the pandemic: impacts and PIRG recommendations
One of the compelling arguments for OER is that open course materials reduce inequalities and increase access to learning materials. One organization that tracks affordability impacts closely is PIRG. in February 2021 they issued the third edition of their report
Read More Textbook affordability in the pandemic: impacts and PIRG recommendations