Affordable & Open Educational Resources System Updates
- The UM system’s executive committee is hard at work revising the Affordable & Open Educational Resources grant program. The application process for the next round of grants will be updated by the end of the summer.
- The UM system was accepted into the OpenStax Institutional Partnership. OpenStax will act as a consultant in developing a strategic plan to encourage the use of OER on all four of our campuses. OpenStax will also provide accountability to follow through on our plan. The institutions who participated in the 2016-17 program increased OER on their campuses, on average, by 150% in one year.
As for the University Libraries and A&OER…
- The libraries across all four campuses will be working on adding OER collections to their institutional repositories and to the OER Commons. MOBIUS will be building a “hub” in the OER Commons—it will contain all of the OER created by and for Missouri higher education institutions.
- The system will be working on a data dashboard to track student savings. It will include data from the bookstore and from the libraries, mostly focusing on how we make course materials more affordable through course reserves (electronic and print). I will reach out to all of the folks handling course reserves data when I have more information. I know you all do incredible work for Mizzou students through course reserves, and I’m excited to show off what a difference you and the libraries make!
- Below is an updated list of the goals of the various system and campus A&OER groups, as well as a full list of library A&OER projects. If you have any questions or ideas about A&OER, don’t hesitate to reach out.
A&OER UM System Task Force
Goals
- Provide more affordable and open educational resources to enhance student learning and increase cost savings for students
- Engage faculty in converting existing and developing new courses into A/OER courses
- Increase sustainable support, resources, and tools for faculty using affordable/open resources.
- Develop a sustainable system-wide strategy to:
- Increase awareness of affordable and open resources
- Incentivize faculty to transition to those resources
- Encourage UM created materials to be shared as open resources
- Identify collaborative partnerships at each campus to ensure the sustainability and quality of the initiative
A&OER MU Campus Committee
Charge
- Increase A&OER awareness throughout campus by utilizing communication channels, coordinating outreach, and providing training/educational opportunities
- Identify new and existing tools, resources, and processes to sustain the initiative
- Provide recognition opportunities for faculty who participate in the A&OER initiative and share their success stories
A&OER MU Campus Operations Team (Disabilities Office, ET@MO, The Mizzou Store, University Libraries)
Tasks
- Ensure communication between support units
Consistent communication will help us avoid duplication of efforts and ensure a straightforward user experience for faculty. To the best of our ability, we will inform each other about all faculty adopting, adapting, creating A&OER materials. - Determine the best A&OER resources / preferred vendors to promote to faculty
- Invite colleagues to vendor demos
- Provide recommendations to campus and system
- Collaborate on OER marketing, promotional/informational events, workshops, etc.
- Create and maintain an A&OER informational website for faculty: oer.missouri.edu
- Update calendar and have open invitations for Operations Team members to all A&OER events
Operations Team is meeting this summer to discuss
- The role of support units in the grant application and evaluation process
- A review of how course materials are distributed/made accessible to students:
- the library’s e-reserves & print reserves
- the bookstore’s e-distribution (course packets, AutoAccess directly in Canvas, other ways inside and outside of the LMS)
- ET@MO’s facilitation of accessing course materials in Canvas
- the Disabilities Center’s process for making material accessible
This review is to gain an understanding of what we all offer so that we can discuss how services can be streamlined and cross-promoted.
University Libraries: A&OER Initiative Support
Projects
- Contribute data to system’s Student Savings data dashboard (dashboard for course materials savings)
- Curate a list of recommended OER platforms, hubs, collections, organizations, etc. for faculty
libraryguides.missouri.edu/oer
- Provide OER trainings and consultations for faculty interested in using or creating OER
- Lead Open Textbook Network faculty review workshops
- Increase MU-faculty-created OER submissions to University Libraries’ Institutional Repositories
- Curate an OER collection within the repository for faculty works created through A&OER grants
- Recruit faculty to submit their pre-A&OER-grant-created OER content to the repository’s OER collection
- Include library-created OER materials in the repository’s OER collection
- Build partnership with the OER Commons and MOBIUS to increase discoverability of our OER content
- Promote and/or rebrand current A&OER support services
- Build awareness of how libraries are the original affordability model of cost reduction through shared content.
- Feature “libraries & affordability” stories on the newshub: https://library.missouri.edu/news/
The more we can contribute, the more likely the libraries will be featured in campus stories:
“SHP and Mizzou Libraries work to Reduce Student Costs with AOER” - Promote course reserves and library-owned course materials, especially e-books and textbooks;
emphasize that “free to students” is not free to the libraries
- Participate in the OpenStax Institutional Partnership Program (more information soon)
- Participate in grant program revisions (insert libraries in the process as needed)
- Continue to advocate for increased system funding for the collection budget in the name of affordability