Understanding Open Educational Resources

Events, Textbook Affordability Project, , ,

openeducation

“Open Education” by opensource.com is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

This week we’re celebrating Open Education Week at Temple University Libraries. The purpose of Open Education Week is to raise awareness about resources, tools, and practices that help increase access to education.

One way faculty can help make education more accessible is by using open educational resources (OER). What are OER? According to UNESCO, OER are “are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them.” In a recent study, only 15 percent of faculty respondents said they had used OER in their classes. 39 percent of respondents said that they had never even heard of OER!

This lack of faculty awareness is a real problem, because as students know all too well, class materials such as print textbooks can be very expensive. Some students might go further into debt to buy their textbooks, while others just won’t buy them at all. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are a growing number of high-quality open textbooks available in many different disciplines. One example is the American Yawp, a collaboratively-edited American history textbook created by leading academics from around the United States. You can find more open textbooks by searching the Open Textbook Library, OpenStax, and Open SUNY Textbooks.

If you can’t find the right open textbook for your class, consider creating an alternative textbook instead. Alternative textbooks are “textbooks” assembled from both library and open access resources. Unlike traditional textbooks, however, they are completely free for students. In 2011, Temple University Libraries started its Alternate Textbook Project. Each year, faculty can submit proposals for an alternative textbook. Faculty whose proposals are accepted will receive support from the Libraries and an award of $1,000. So far, 46 faculty members from across the University have participated in the project, saving Temple students over $300,000.

Interested in learning more about open and alternative textbooks? Come to our event, “Ditch the Textbook: Exploring Options for Textbook Affordability,” on Wednesday, March 9th @ 12:00 pm in the Paley Library Lecture Hall. Panelists include Temple University student Eitan Laurence, Associate Professor of Art Gerard Brown, Professor of Tourism and Hospitality Management Wesley Roehl, and Assistant Professor of Media Studies and Production Kristine Weatherston. The panel will be moderated by Annie Johnson, Library Publishing and Scholarly Communications Specialist.

Can’t make it to the event? Follow the conversation on Twitter: #openeducationwk.

Towards an Open Future for Books

Temple University Press, ,

unlatched

“Unlocked” by samstockton is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Knowledge Unlatched is a not-for-profit organization that makes scholarly books in the social sciences and the humanities free for anyone to read. By doing so, it helps excellent peer-reviewed scholarship reach new audiences. It works like this: publishers submit several titles to Knowledge Unlatched. Then, the organization’s Library Selection Task Force chooses the best books submitted. Once the titles are chosen, Knowledge Unlatched coordinates with publishers to come up with the basic cost of publishing the book. Libraries around the world pledge a certain amount of money to help reach that amount. The more libraries that contribute, the lower the cost for each library. When the total amount is reached, a Creative Commons licensed PDF of the book is made available open access through OAPEN and HathiTrust. This version does not carry any DRM restrictions, like many ebooks. Although the digital version is free, a print version can still be sold by the publisher.

Knowledge Unlatched launched in 2014 with twenty-eight books. Temple University Press was one of thirteen publishers who participated in the first round of the project, with the book, Constructing Muslims in France by Jennifer Fredett (2014). You can read the book here. This week, Knowledge Unlatched announced that they had received enough pledges from libraries to make seventy-eight new scholarly monographs open access. The list includes three titles from Temple University Press:

Peter O’Brian, The Muslim Question in Europe (2016)

Jennifer Riggan, The Struggling State: Nationalism, Militarism, and the Education of Eritrea (2016)

David Spener, We Shall Not Be Moved/No nos moverán (2016)

Although the benefits of Knowledge Unlatched to readers are clear, you may wonder why publishers are willing to participate in such a project. According to the Director of Temple University Press, Mary Rose Muccie, “The program is a win for us and for our authors.” She continues, “The Knowledge Unlatched model takes into account the current realities of our business and allows us to recoup many costs as well as to continue to sell print and electronic editions. Being chosen for inclusion in the program reflects the quality of the title, and because of broad access and use, we have the opportunity to get our name in front of a large group of people interested in what we publish. It’s been a great experience for the Press and we’re looking forward to continuing to partner with Knowledge Unlatched and to expanding our participation as the program grows.”