Open Educational Resources (OER) Faculty Learning Community

Amid increasing concerns about rising textbook costs, many faculty are turning to Open Educational Resources (OER). Broadly defined as web-based educational content that is freely available without the need of license or payment, OER are typically placed in the public domain for free use or repurposing by others. Access to open materials can facilitate democratic access to information and by extension remove economic barriers to academic success.What still needs attention, however, are tangible strategies and procedures for the use of these Open Educational Resources. Those real, material procedures are the focus of this Faculty Learning Community. After covering foundational principles of OER, we’ll look at topics including:

Where might instructors find useful OER texts?
How can those materials be adapted and re-published?
How about engaging students: can teachers and students work together to create new, course-specific OER materials?
What are the procedures involved in writing and publishing an OER textbook?

Marshall’s Drinko Library has arranged for a limited number of free faculty trials for PressBooks, a clean and simple platform that distributes any completed OER text. We’ll look at the benefits, and challenges, of creating and publishing self-authored OER, and also will engage with the PressBooks platform.

This FLC’s goals are that participants better understand the affordances of OER and build a repository of materials/skills for future courses. The FLC will meet five times during Spring 2023 for 90 minutes each meeting. Remote access will be provided to allow faculty from all campuses to participate without traveling.

FLC facilitators are Margaret Sullivan, Scholarly Communication Specialist, and Megan Marshall, Assistant Professor of English. Please send any questions about the FLC to either sullivanm@marshall.edu or marshallme@marshall.edu.