Temple University Libraries is celebrating Open Education Week March 1-5. Open Education Week is a yearly celebration designed to raise awareness about open educational resources and practices.
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are free to read and reuse. Examples of OER include videos, problem sets, slides, and textbooks. Open educational practices — also known as open pedagogy — use OER to support learning and invite students to be part of the teaching process, participating in the co-creation of knowledge.
At Temple, faculty across the schools and colleges are using OER in their classes. Faculty often assign OER in order to make their courses more affordable for students. By choosing an open textbook instead of a commercial textbook, for example, faculty can potentially save students hundreds of dollars a semester.
Another benefit for faculty is that OER are openly licensed, which means that faculty can revise, remix, and build upon the content, customizing the material to meet the needs of their particular class. There are many tools available to help identify OER, like the Open Textbook Library and OER Commons.
To mark Open Education Week, Temple University Libraries will be offering the following virtual activities:
Copyright and Creative Commons Licenses Workshop
- Tuesday, March 2, 12:00-12:30PM
- Join us as we cover the basics of Creative Commons licenses—what they are, how to find CC-licensed material, and how to license your own work. It’s simple and empowering.
- Register at https://charlesstudy.temple.edu/calendar/workshops/cc
Finding Video for Teaching & Learning Workshop
- Thursday, March 4, 12:00-12:30PM
- Educational videos have become a critical part of health education, providing an important content-delivery tool in flipped, blended, and online classes. Come learn what resources are available to you through the library to use in your classroom – online or onsite.
- Register at https://ginsburgstudy.temple.edu/event/7301667
Assignments that Live Beyond the Course: Student Success and Engagement through Open Pedagogy Workshop Series (co-sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Teaching)
- Thursday, March 4, 11:00AM- 12:30PM
- Thursday, March 11, 11:00AM-12:30PM
- Thursday, March 18, 11:00AM-12:30PM
- Join us for this three-part, interactive workshop where you will learn the theory of Open Pedagogy, get ideas for possible renewable activities/assignments, and put it into practice by revising one of your own assignments.
- Register at https://catbooking.temple.edu/event/7456527
Open Education Week is also a great time to learn more about Temple University Libraries’ Textbook Affordability Project which provides grants ranging from $500 to $1500 to faculty for adopting, adapting, or creating free alternatives to commercial educational resources, in addition to exploring open pedagogical practices. Applications will be accepted in Fall 2021.
We hope you will join us for our Open Education Week events!