UW Libraries Blog

March 1, 2021

Top 5 OER tips for Huskies – Celebrating Open Education Week

Melanie Smith, UW Libraries Open Education Intern, UW iSchool MLIS Candidate ‘22

This week, March 1-5, 2021, is Open Education Week, an annual global celebration of open education efforts, including open courses, open textbooks, and other open educational resources (OER). 

OER and textbook affordability go hand in hand. OER are free or extremely low cost by definition. When courses are taught using open textbooks and other OER, students save money. That’s even more important now because COVID-19 has taken a heavy economic toll on students, as U.S. PIRG reported last week in a new report on Fixing the Broken Textbook Market. The UW Libraries and the University Book Store have worked to address this issue through increased access to e-resources and the Student Choice program. Creating and adopting OER is another way instructors can help students save money.

UW faculty and students have worked together to produce innovative open publications through open pedagogical practices over the past few years. The UW Libraries have a growing catalog of OER written and published right here at the Seattle, Bothell, and Tacoma campuses.

Here are some things you might not know yet about OER—but definitely should.

1. Open education ≠ Open access

Open education and open access (OA) share many of their goals and methods, but they aren’t the same. 

What’s the difference? For one thing, OER are focused on teaching while OA literature is focused on research. OER are also a bit more open than OA materials. Here’s what that means:

 

As you can see, true OER can be reused, remixed, and incorporated into new projects. So instructors can freely adapt and customize course materials to suit their teaching style. 

Let’s say you find a book in the Open Textbook Library and have a brilliant idea to riff on one of the chapters. You can do that! With Pressbooks, it’s easy to clone a copy and make it your own—while giving credit to the original creator, of course.

Check out this explanation of copyright and Creative Commons open licensing if you’re interested in learning more.

2. OER Subject Guides at UW Libraries: Start here

For UW instructors looking to switch out required reading or enrich their courses, OER Subject Guides are the place to start. 

These guides highlight some of the best free and openly licensed materials that have been created for each discipline. Consult your subject librarian for additional support.

3. OER frees knowledge from the ivory tower

One way UW researchers are sharing their expertise beyond the bounds of campus is by producing OER. 

  • Climate Science for the Classroom by the Program on Climate Change Community: This evolving toolkit is set up to help middle school and high school teachers use data to explore global, regional, and societal issues related to climate change. The contributors are mostly UW graduate students and faculty members.
  • Designing Tech Policy by David Hendry: This collection of instructional case studies from University of Washington Tech Policy Lab is designed to enhance tech policy capacity and fluency in a wide variety of settings, from preparing policymakers to educating undergraduate students. 
  • Virtual REACH Program 2020: Exploring Neuroscience and Neurotechnologies at Home by Dr. Kristen Clapper Bergsman and Dr. Eric H. Chudler: This interactive digital book was produced for a high school summer camp through the Center for Neurotechnology, which went fully online because of the pandemic. Anyone can explore and adapt these readings, videos, images, quizzes, and activities on cutting-edge research.

4. Students can—and do—publish OER

An important aspect of open education is open pedagogy—when students are involved in developing, adapting, or using OER in their coursework. At the UW, groups of students have published volumes of essays, research, and original artwork. Here’s a sample:

The Creative Process, by the Fall 2020 ART 480 Honors class in Seattle showcases 20 visual artists in conversation about why they make, how they work, and how the creative process unfolds.

Students always hold the copyright to their own work, but publishing with an open license lays the groundwork for a living, growing collaboration as each new class builds on the work of previous classes.

Instructors who want to start using OER and open pedagogy in their courses can contact Lauren Ray, Open Education Librarian, to learn more.

5. There’s more

Want to stay informed? Join our UW OER Interest Group  and UW Pressbooks email lists. 

Explore more UW-authored OER in the UW Pressbooks catalog, and discover hundreds of other openly published books in the Pressbooks Directory and Open Textbook Library.