Open Educational Resources: Reducing Costs, Expanding Access, and Improving Efficacy

About This Session

The cost of college textbooks has grown to a point that virtually every campus is now seeking solutions. While many colleges and universities have successfully reduced costs through stop-gap measures such as rental programs and textbook reserves, the greatest potential for permanently solving the problem lies in Open Educational Resources (OER), which are academic materials that are freely available online for everyone to use, adapt, and share. Institutions across the country have begun to leverage OER to reduce textbook costs, expand access to information, and enable faculty to better tailor materials to their courses. This talk will provide an overview of the OER movement to date, how it is playing out on campus, and research showing the impact on students. It will also help frame opportunities in the open, digital environment to improve teaching, learning and research for the advancement of society.

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Moderator

photo of Kevin Hawkins

Kevin S. Hawkins

  • Assistant Dean for Scholarly Communication, University of North Texas Libraries
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Presenters

photo of Nicole Allen

Nicole Allen

  • Director of Open Education at SPARC

Nicole Allen is the Director of Open Education for SPARC. In this role she leads SPARC’s work on the issue area of Open Education, with a dual focus on public policy and engaging the library community to advance this issue on campus.

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Logistics

When:

Friday, May 20, 2016 - 3:30pm to 4:30pm

Where:

Track II: The Forum (on ground floor)

University of North Texas: Willis Library