Open Educational Resources (OERs) are free, openly licensed course materials you can use in your courses instead of costly, tightly controlled textbooks. The fundamental philosophical perspective of Open Education is that learning materials should be freely accessible for students (Wiley, 2017). At UNF we support this philosophy by providing incentives for instructors to adopt OERs.
During OE Week (March 6-10) we will kick off the new UNF Open Educational Resources (OER) Initiative. Existing OER frameworks helped us reimagine our new initiative. The OER Life Cycle (WikiEducator, 2010) highlights the following steps an educator uses to adopt and/or create OERs: Find, Compose, Adapt, Use, and Share. Another OER model attributed to David Wiley applies the 5R activities: Retain, Revise, Remix, Reuse, and Redistribute. Our new faculty model is described below.
Level 1 - OE Textbook Review
Level 2 - Retain & Reuse
Level 3 - Revise & Remix
Level 4 - Author
Author your own textbook. We will guide you through the process of using Pressbooks to create a new openly licensed textbook.
Depending on engagement level and completion, you could receive a stipend ranging from an educational media kit reward to $2,000. More information about the initiative can be found on our UNF Open Educational Resources Initiative page.
To learn more about our new initiative and meet your colleagues who have paved the way, join us during OE week at the following events. CIRT and the Thomas G. Carpenter Library are excited to bring you multiple ways to develop and integrate OE Resources into your courses. We will provide novice-level OER development options all the way to authoring your own textbooks! For a more descriptive overview of each event, visit our OE Week page.
- OER Initiative Faculty Panel Discussion: Interact with a panel of UNF faculty who will share their experiences and tips for integrating OE materials into their courses. Register
- Pressbooks: learn about a tool that can be used to author your own custom course materials. Register
- Affordability Counts Initiative: find out how the UNF Affordability Counts Initiative can support low-cost instructional materials for students. Register
- OE Week Kickoff: in this overview session, you will learn more about Open Educational Resources and the OER Initiative, including new opportunities at UNF to author your own OE Resource. Register
- Open Textbook Review Workshop: the purpose of this workshop is to guide you through how to locate open textbooks that are freely available for you and your students within your field with the option to earn rewards. Register
We are looking forward to how you will Reimagine your classes using OERs!
References
Wiley, D. (2017). The evolving economics of educational materials and Open Educational Resources: Toward closer alignment with the core values of education. In R. A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology (4th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson Education.
Wiley, D. (nd). Defining the “open” in open content and Open Educational Resources. Improving Learning Blog. Retrieved February 13, 2023 from http://opencontent.org/definition/.
WikiEducator. (2010). OER handbook for educators. Retrieved February 13, 2023, from https://wikieducator.org/OER_Handbook/educator_version_one/Introduction/OER_life_cycle.
