Research on OERs

5th January 2017 | Category : Open Educational Resources

Research and presentations related to the benefits of including OERs in your repository.

Open Education Resources: Collecting, Promoting, and Managing OER in an Institutional Repository, Sarah Beaubien
Open Education Resources (OER) are digital materials used for educational purposes that are intentionally made available to the public. An increasing number of university faculty create and use such resources in their teaching. Partnering with the creators of OER is an excellent way to gather high-quality, unique content for the repository while helping to fulfill the goal of making OER widely available.

Coming in the Back Door: Leveraging Open Textbooks to Promote Scholarly Communications on Campus, Steven J. Bell
Author committed to a serious effort to raise awareness, build collective support, and contribute change to scholarly publishing practices at his institution.

7 Things You Should Know About Open Educational Resources, Educause
Open educational resources (OER) are any resources available at little or no cost that can be used for teaching, learning, or
research. The term can include textbooks, course readings, and other learning content; simulations, games, and other learning applications; syllabi, quizzes, and assessment tools; and virtually any other material that can be used for educational purposes.

Guidelines for Open Educational Resources (OER) in Higher Education, UNESCO
Open educational resources (OER) are materials used to support education that may be freely accessed, reused, modified, and shared. These Guidelines outline key issues and make suggestions for integrating OER into higher education.

Open Educational Resources as Learning Materials: Prospects and Strategies for University Libraries, Marilyn Billings, Sarah C. Hutton, Jay Schafer, Charles M. Schweik, Matt Sheridan
This article provides a good overview of the Open Educational Resources landscape and frames OER within the larger debate around open access. The second part of the article describes the Open Education Initiative at UMass Amherst, which provided grant funding to a group of faculty members tasked with developing OER materials (some through ScholarWorks). The program resulted in a $205,000 savings from a $27,000 investments as well as overall positive reviews from students and faculty.