Building the Future of OER through Pre-service Teachers

According to recent literature and research, in-service teacher awareness of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Creative Commons licenses continues to be uneven and relatively low. Providing OER education while teachers are focused on learning in their degree-granting programs could be a sustainable long-term strategy to build awareness of OER with PK-12 instructors. A small research team, consisting of two Librarians, an Instructional Designer, and an Assistant Professor in the College of Education at two higher education institutions, designed a survey and intervention for pre-service teachers to measure and increase their levels of OER awareness. The purpose of the survey is to explore the overall level of OER awareness and understanding of copyright and licensing which pre-service teachers have attained through their university courses, external practicums, and student teaching placements. The survey results showed a lack of awareness, knowledge, and exposure to OER and copyright. These results prompted the creation of focused programming designed to expand student and faculty exposure to OER concepts. The focused programming involved creating a lesson plan for upper-level education courses on copyright, licensing, and open education resources that are available for PK-12 teachers. This is a continuation of a long-term study to explore the idea that providing focused OER education to pre-service teachers can be a sustainable strategy to increase diffusion of open education awareness throughout the PK-12 community. Attendees will be able to examine the results of our survey, explore our focused interventions, and use these as models for their own programming. This topic has broad applicability to librarianship and teaching as the majority of colleges and universities have teacher training programs. Due to the national climate of school funding, creative means for procuring instructional materials will be an asset for these future educators. While previous research largely focused on in-service teachers, this novel study is the first to measure awareness of teachers in training. We hope that this study’s population and format will become more ubiquitous across institutions that educate teachers

Off to a Roaring Start: Successes and Lessons from year One of OER and Textbook Affordability Initiatives

In 2018, the state higher education commission offered a series of informational programs to increase awareness and adoption of OER in colleges and universities. This spurred our university to include OER as part of the current strategic plan and to form a working group to create a sustainable program of OER education and adoption on campus. At the same time, the library was prioritizing the purchase of textbooks and other course material to increase both physical and electronic course reserves to help ease the burden of textbook costs for students.In this session, the presenters, one a librarian who is a member of the OER working group and the other the University Librarian who made TAI a priority, will discuss how they combined their efforts to support the launch of a faculty stipend program that includes money not just for traditional OER but also leverages library resources and fair use guidelines to support textbook affordability.This program, launched in May of 2020 has funded 15 projects to date, some using adoption/adaption/creation of OER, some using course reserves and e-resources, and some using a combination of OER and library resources.Though this first year has exceeded our expectations, we also learned lessons and adapted the program as we went along to better meet the needs of the students, faculty, and administration. We will discuss these lessons learned and how we plan to continue to refine and improve our program over the course of the next year.https://ir.una.edu/libfacpresentation/1046/thumbnail.jp

Clemson Libraries Newsletter, Spring 2019

Welcome to our inaugural newsletter! This semester Clemson Libraries has made many improvements that will benefit our Clemson community for years to come. While we have hope that this newsletter provides our faculty with information about the changes, we also strive to portray the progress that we made this semester, as well as highlight the resources we continue to provide for our community.https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/lib_newsletter/1000/thumbnail.jp

From Soup to Nuts: Expanding Liaison and Technical Services for OER Development

This case study highlights an ongoing library collaboration with faculty recipients of a statewide Wikipedia Image Open educational resources (OER) are free and openly licensed educational materials that can be used for teaching, learning, research, and other purposes. OER textbook grant at a rural public research university in the southeast. It emphasizes the evolving needs of teaching faculty open to OER grant writing and development, and the necessity of librarians to be creative in delivering this support. The authors describe how they expanded liaison and technical service roles to educate faculty about the meaning and benefits of OERs, guided selection of appropriately licensed and pedagogically aligned materials, supported development of the grant proposal, and supported development and maintenance of the OER product itself. Central to this study is how liaison and technical services librarians collaborated with faculty to open up the LibGuides CMS platform to host OER materials. This paper provides a comprehensive case study encompassing service development in support of the grant funding process, development of the content management infrastructure for hosting and developing the OER product, next steps, and recommendations of best practices. Throughout, the authors argue for the importance of intra-library collaboration and expanding liaison and technical services roles for effective OER support

Librarians Opening Up Open Education: A University, Community College, and Public Library Partnership to Increase OER Usage in Texas

Full book available for free download at https://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/publications/booksanddigitalresources/digital/9780838936566_OA.pdfUT Librarie

Review of Using Open Educational Resources to Promote Social Justice

Review of Ivory, C.J. & Pashia, A. (Eds.). (2022). Using open educational resources to promote social justice. Association of College and Research Libraries

SDG Progress Report 2023

The SDGs provide a universal and ambitious framework for addressing the world’s most urgent challenges. The SDGs aim to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure peace and prosperity for all global citizens by 2030 and they require significant traction in the next seven years to meet their targets. As institutions at the forefront of knowledge access, dissemination and mobilization, academic libraries are uniquely positioned to support and advance sustainable development through their collections, services, and programming, as well as through their operational practices at the heart of campus. In 2021, Sheridan became Ontario’s first institution to sign the SDG Accord, the postsecondary sector’s collective international response to the SDGs. In support of the Accord, Sheridan library has committed resources over the past two years to support Sheridan in meeting its commitment. This report examines the ways in which Sheridan library is specifically taking action on the SDGs and includes a roadmap on how the library will continue its SDG work moving forward. We recognize that the challenges being addressed by the SDGs are interconnected and complex and require a holistic approach. In recognition of this, a collective effort is necessary in addressing this shared global responsibility. Sheridan library is leveraging existing partnerships and continuously building new collaborations in support of the goals. We invite readers of this report to identify potential points of collaboration with our library team. Be assured that our team is ready, capable and willing to work with you to design and implement creative and impactful solutions for SDG challenges. Together, we can achieve the goals and ensure a better future for current and future generations

New frontiers in ocean exploration: the E/V Nautilus, NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, and R/V Falkor 2019 field season

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Raineault, N.A., and J. Flanders, eds. (2020). New frontiers in ocean exploration: The E/V Nautilus, NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, and R/V Falkor 2019 field season. Oceanography 33(1), supplement, 122 pp., https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2020.supplement.01.New Frontiers in Ocean Exploration: The E/V Nautilus, NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, and R/V Falkor 2019 Field Season is the tenth consecutive supplement on ocean exploration to accompany Oceanography. These booklets provide details about the innovative technologies deployed to investigate the seafloor and water column and explain how telepresence can both convey the excitement of ocean exploration to global audiences and allow scientists as well as the public on shore to participate in expeditions in real time. The supplements also describe the variety of educational programs the Ocean Exploration Trust, the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, and the Schmidt Ocean Institute support in conjunction with schools, museums, visitors centers, and aquariums, as well as internships that bring high school students, undergraduates, graduate students, teachers, and artists on board ships. Through these supplements, we have explored the geology, chemistry, biology, and archaeology of parts of the global ocean and seas. We hope you enjoy this booklet and share it widely.Support for this publication is provided by the Ocean Exploration Trust, the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, and the Schmidt Ocean Institute

OER as a Tool for Sustainable Development : The Ukrainian - Latvian Experience of Forensic Science Experts

One of the important factors influencing the quality of modern education is Open Educational Resources. The new form of education was recognised by UNESCO and become an important element in achieving the main goals of Sustainable Development in the field of Education. Open Educational Resources play transformative role in the cases of supporting both regular and specific fields of education. The paper examines the role of Open Educational Resources in the field of such a specific industry/occupation as forensic experts. Forensic experts’ learning process has several levels that start from the access to higher education. The requirements to receive forensic expert’s certificate stems from the national law. And these requirements could vary from country to country. Open Educational Resources represent an opportunity for a great number of learners in various study fields. Nevertheless, those resources are not used in forensic expert education. To clarify the possibility to use Open Educational Resources in specific forensic expert education field, a research on forensic expert education in Latvia and Ukraine has been conducted. Open Educational Resources can improve the quality of education on at least two levels. The first one is the quality of teaching content and the second is the modern learning environment, providing access to all necessary researches that are necessary to pass the forensic expert examination. Authors found out that nowadays Open Educational Resources are not applied in forensic experts’ education. As the research reveals, the main resources are legal documents and practical knowledge provided by academic staff. From the authors perspective it is suggested to create an Open Educational Resource that could provide forensic experts with the information necessary to pass the examination and to improve both practical and theoretical skills. Nevertheless, Open Educational Resources in such a specific field can met several challenges.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Baby Steps to Big Impacts: The Evolution of Library Involvement in the Textbook System

This article will discuss how textbook support and open educational resources (OER) have become critical considerations in the evolving library landscape. For years, textbooks have been the purview of the teaching staff at our colleges and universities, but libraries can no longer ignore the high costs, both societal and financial, of the current textbook environment. Library involvement in the textbook dilemma has come in three phases: chosen ignorance, meeting the immediate need, and striving for sustainable solutions. We will discuss each of these phases and will detail the University of South Carolina Libraries’ involvement in the textbook system. We will provide suggestions for other libraries interested in growing an OER program, focusing on development, implementation, and assessment for schools operating with limited resources. Finally, we will share our predictions for the future of library involvement in responding to the demand for affordable course materials