Open Up!

In August of 2009 Academic Policy 1406.30 , Textbooks and Course Materials policy was enacted for the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville campus.  This policy was created to help the university meet the requirements of Arkansas state textbook legislation.  This policy regulates adoption deadlines, bookstore notification, and sets guidelines and expectations for faculty inducements and royalties.  And while this policy sets important standards, an additional policy focused on Open Educational Resources (OER) is needed. We need a new policy encouraging the consideration, adoption, adaptation, and development of OER.   Fast forward to 2017, availability and access to OER has skyrocketed.  OER confronts the primary issue that spurred the state legislature to pass a 2007 textbook bill aimed at combating the high cost of textbooks.  The legislation reads as follows:    SECTION 2. EMERGENCY CLAUSE. It is found and determined by the General Assembly of the State of Arkansas that tex

Image by Christy Sheffield, Flickr Today’s post offers some tips for starting your OER creation.The first piece of advice is don’t get overwhelmed by what may seem to be a monumental task.  Try not to think of your content in terms of the traditional textbook.  Think about your course, your learning objectives, and the content you want  the students to learn. This will help you focus on the most important elements of the course and create a resource that efficiently and effectively meets student needs.   Next, decide how you will create and publish the OER. What creation tool will you use?  Where will you publish your creation? Basic, widely available word processing programs are a great place to begin.  Theses include Microsoft Word and Google Docs.  Both are familiar and easy to use.  With the right forethought, either can be a useful creation tool.  Publishing platforms range from simply providing links to documents inside a Google Docs folder to uploading content onto pla

Today’s post was written to encourage you as a faculty member to go out bravely into the landscape of OER and fight the fears you may have of open licensing , fair use, and public domain resources.  I know these issues can be confusing.  These five tips will help you begin to get up to speed on the issues and fight those fears of the unknown!  Don’t stay in the dark!  Face your fears! #1 Open Licensing is a good thing!  It doesn’t have to be complicated.  You make educational resources, you share them with your students at no cost.  You share them with the world.  Plain and simple.  Well, not really. But truthfully, open licensing is not that hard. Simply licensing your work as fully open (CC by)  gives anyone in the world the rights to retain, revise, reuse, remix, and redistribute it.  However, you can limit the level of openness if you choose.   #2 Creative Commons (CC) licensing helps simplify the sharing of educational resources .  You as a creator (or adapter/remixer)