Temple University Libraries is celebrating Open Education Week from March 7-11, 2022. Open Education Week is an annual celebration designed to raise awareness about open educational resources and practices.

What are 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, images, lab activities, homework assignments, and textbooks. Open educational practices — also known as open pedagogy — use OER to support learning and invite students to be active participants in the teaching and learning environment, engaging in knowledge creation and sharing.

Faculty across Temple’s schools and colleges are using OER in their classes. Faculty often assign OER in order to make their course materials more affordable for students. By choosing an open textbook instead of a commercial textbook, faculty can 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 created by others, customizing the material to meet the needs of their particular class. This can aid in bringing about a more culturally responsive teaching and learning experience.

There are many tools available to help identify OER, like the Open Textbook Library and OER Commons. Temple faculty can also use Temple’s Open and Affordable Learning Materials Inventory to see which faculty members are already using OER and other zero-cost learning materials in place of traditional commercial textbooks as well as obtain suggestions for affordable learning materials to adopt. Only Temple faculty/staff can view the Inventory; it is not available to the general public.

Open Education Week Events & Activities

To mark Open Education Week, Temple University Libraries will be offering the following virtual activities:

Contest

• Tell Your Affordable Textbook Story
  Submit a story about a time when a professor saved you money in a course. You can win a day’s reservation to a study room in Charles Library or Ginsburg Library during final exams! Deadline to submit: March 18, 2022.

Workshops 

• Transform Your Information Literacy Assignments with Open Educational Practices
  Monday, March 7, 12:00PM
• How to Become an Open Scholar
  Tuesday, March 8, 12:00PM
• Using Open Textbooks in the Classroom
  Wednesday, March 9, 1:00PM
• Organize Your Research Photos Using Tropy
  Thursday, March 10, 12:00PM

Accepting Applications for the Textbook Affordability Project Grant!

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 $1,500 to faculty for adopting, adapting, or creating free alternatives to commercial educational resources, in addition to exploring open educational practices. Applications are being accepted until April 8, 2022.

We hope you will join us for our Open Education Week events!