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Initiatives: Open Educational Resources

ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø Open Source Textbook Initiative

With the passage of The Textbook Cost Savings Act of 2017, the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø General Assembly charged the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø’s Kirwan Center with supporting and scaling the adoption of "openly licensed, fully accessible" instructional materials across ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø public higher education institutions through the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø Open Source Textbook (M.O.S.T.) initiative.

M.O.S.T. began in 2013 to provide a statewide opportunity for faculty and institutions to explore the promise of open educational resources (OERs) to reduce students' cost of attendance while maintaining, or perhaps even improving, learning outcomes.  OERs are any openly licensed instructional materials that are also typically available at little or no cost. The term can include textbooks, course readings, and other learning content; simulations, games, and other learning applications; syllabi, quizzes, and assessment tools; and virtually any other material that can be used for instructional purposes.

The M.O.S.T. initiative has saved students over $14.2 million in textbook costs from Spring 2014 through Fall 2020. 

Our Work in Open Educational Resources

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October 13, 2017

Advancing Postsecondary Student Success Through OER: A Statewide Symposium on Open Educational Resources was a day-long summit that brought together faculty, instructional designers, librarians, and administrators from across ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø’s higher education institutions to explore the promise of using open educational resources (OER) to replace costly textbooks with affordable, high-quality learning materials while giving instructors the opportunity to repurpose content to meet their students’ needs.

October 12, 2017

Are you passionate about the use of OER and interested in engaging others in adopting OER by sharing your experiences – both what has worked and what hasn’t? Have you created new open content within your field or discipline? Do you have OER content adoption strategies to share? Have you seen significant savings with respect to student course costs? Has the use of OER led to broader redesigns of courses? Greater student engagement or student learning?

August 1, 2017

In Spring 2017, the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø's William E. Kirwan Center launched the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø Open Source Textbook (M.O.S.T.) initiative High-impact OER Mini-Grant program to target high-enrollment general education courses with existing high-quality OER.  In Fall 2017, the Mini-Grant program has the potential to impact over 8,000 students in two- and four-year ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø public higher education institutions with over $1.3 million in textbook savings. To document the development process of the High-impact OER Mini-Grant program, the Kirwan Center has released a guide to support the creation of institutional and system-wide OER mini-grant programs.

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