Tag Archives: Open Educational Resources

Ames Library Open Access Week Events

Posted by on October 11, 2021 No comments

Open Access Week (Oct. 25-31) is an opportunity for academic and research communities to continue to learn about the benefits of Open Access and Open Educational Resources. The Ames Library faculty are offering multiple educational opportunities during Open Access Week. These events are targeted towards faculty and staff, but interested students are also welcome! If you want to learn more about Open Access and Open Educational Resources in general, please visit the Ames Library’s Scholarly Communication Guide.

Exploring Open Educational Resources Faculty Panel
Following a brief introduction to OER, faculty members from Educational Studies, Psychology, Political Science, and Theatre Arts will briefly describe their experiences with exploring OER options to replace traditional course materials. Panelists will then take questions from the audience. This work was funded by small OER grants from the Ames Library.

Monday Oct. 25, 4:15-5:15PM
In-person in the Beckman Auditorium, Ames Library
or Zoom livestream:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86897572137?pwd=MmloMXY3MHRPZ0ZKRTFudUxteDU0UT09

Copyright Basics/Q&A
Stephanie Davis-Kahl, University Librarian & Copyright Officer, will review our Copyright guide with a focus on teaching and learning.  

Tuesday, October 26, 4:30–5PM
Zoom only: https://us02web.zoom.us/my/stephaniedk

Extending the Reach of Scholarly and Creative Works
DigitalCommons@IWU is one component of IWU’s own contribution to Open Access. In this session, Meg Miner will provide an overview of the ways DC@IWU and its companion platform Selected Works help expand the audiences for student and faculty work.

Wednesday Oct. 27, 12:10-12:40PM
Zoom only: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82079824716?pwd=WmJobDV2djBRc2FmRm00Y25GSU5GZz09

Beyond the Book: OER Learning Objects
While textbooks may be the first open educational application that springs to mind, much of the OER movement has focused on open educational objects: discrete pieces of information that can be used in various contexts and combinations. This presentation will introduce you to several library-produced objects centering around fake news and plagiarism and allow you to have a voice in what other objects would best serve the IWU community. Presented by Abby Mann, Online Learning Librarian

Thursday, Oct 28, 4-430PM
Zoom only: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4822493204?pwd=TGpialgxR1hRZFc1NUNMYjFhL3M5Zz09

For any questions about these events or OA / OER, please contact Chris Sweet, Scholarly Communications Librarian at csweet@iwu.edu

The Ames Library Announces Open Educational Resources (OER) Exploratory Grants

Posted by on March 3, 2021 No comments

The Ames Library OER Exploration Grants

The Ames Library will fund five, two-hundred dollar grants for faculty to explore Open Educational resources (OER) for their class(es). OER are defined as learning resources, teaching practices, and  education policies that use the flexibility of OER to provide learners with high quality educational experiences. OER are either in the public domain or licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities – retaining, remixing, revising, reusing and redistributing the resources. There is increasing OER interest for higher education because they help to reduce educational inequality by removing (or reducing) student costs to access course materials. Large scale studies of OER show lower course drop rates, improved student grades, and better retention. For this grant, materials that are not strictly OER, but are “free” to students, such as library-owned articles, videos, digital archives, and open access materials are also acceptable.

OER can include any of the following:

  • Open textbooks
  • Public domain materials
  • Videos
  • Tutorials / modules / simulations
  • Quizzes / ancillary materials

Our goal with the OER grant is for faculty to explore OER resources, selecting and critically assessing specific materials for inclusion in their courses, and ultimately, to encourage faculty to adopt OERs. We also hope faculty will be able to use the results of these exploration grants to later propose CD grants focused on revising courses or assignments to incorporate OERs.

Requirements

Faculty will be asked to select and review several OERs and/or materials that are free to students that have the potential for integration into a current or future course. OER repositories and search engines can be found on the Ames Library OER LibGuide and the CARLI Open Illinois Initiative site. Your liaison librarian is happy to assist as well. 

At the conclusion of the project, grant recipients agree to participate in a campus panel discussion about materials you discovered and how you plan to incorporate them into an assignment/course. In addition, the faculty member will submit a 2-3 page (single spaced) written report which will include the following:

  • Summary and evaluation of specific OER or free-to-students resources that you discovered 
  • How these materials support your pedagogical goals
  • The class or classes these materials could be incorporated into
  • Reflection on the evolving role of OER in higher education and/or your discipline

Grants are awarded on a first-come, first-served, basis and the grant disbursements will occur after the receipt of your written report. Reports are due within five months from initial approval.

If you would like to secure one of these grants, or have any questions, please contact Chris Sweet in the Ames Library (csweet@iwu.edu, x3984).

Open Access Week (October 21 – 27)

Posted by on October 22, 2019 4 comments

The Ames Library joins libraries, museums, scholars, and scientists in celebrating efforts to provide open and equitable access to scholarship and scientific research during Open Access Week 2019.

“Open Access,” according to SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), of which Illinois Wesleyan University is a member, refers to “the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment.” While early discussions of open access focused on access to research-based articles, the movement now encompasses open access to scholarly monographs, textbooks, and data sets through related work around “open data” and “open educational resources.” The Ames Library has made a long-term commitment to promoting open access as part of its core commitments to equity, educational affordability, pedagogical innovation, and promotion of our students’ education as content creators and managers of their own intellectual property rights. In the contemporary information environment, an understanding of the commercial environment surrounding one’s own intellectual work, as well as one’s right to manage one’s own copyrights and personal data, is an essential component of a liberal education.

Students and faculty wishing to learn more about open access, to employ open access resources in their classrooms, to share their work through open channels, or to integrate education about open access into their student learning goals, can find resources through the library’s guides to open access resources and open educational resources. You can also make your own work “OA” by contributing it to our digital repository, Digital Commons, which houses the work of IWU faculty, as well as undergraduate research projects, journals and other peer-reviewed work, and more. If you would like to integrate education about copyright, scholarly communications, or the movement toward “open” in science and scholarship into your courses, please contact Stephanie Davis-Kahl, Collections and Scholarly Communications Librarian, or your liaison librarian.