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If We Talked About the Internet Like We Talk About OER: The Cost Trap and Inclusive Access

Iterating Toward Openness

Yesterday IHE published an article about the “ inclusive access ” programs offered by most major textbook publishers. ” What problem does the inclusive access model purport to solve? . And obviously, both inclusive access and OER are about solving the cost problem. Can you see it?

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Reducing Friction in OER Adoption

Iterating Toward Openness

Last week I promised I would write a few posts about reducing friction with regard to OER. In last week’s post I talked about how we’re making it ridiculously easy for students, faculty, and others to contribute to the maintenance and improvement of OER. This is still a very real risk for OER. ” you might ask.

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Thoughts on Continuous Improvement and OER

Iterating Toward Openness

Recently I’ve been doing both more thinking and more roll-up-your-sleeves working on continuous improvement of OER. Improvement in post secondary education will require converting teaching from a solo sport to a community-based research activity. Continuous improvement is an iterative cycle. Beginning the cycle again.

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10 of the best K-12 sources for digital textbooks online

Hapara

Digital textbooks are textbooks that teachers and learners can access online or download to their devices. In addition, educators and learners can access them on multiple devices at any time. . While some subjects cover higher education, you can browse the high school section to find math and science textbooks for secondary education.

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From here to there: Musings about the path to having good OER for every course on campus

Iterating Toward Openness

I spend most of my time doing fairly tactical thinking and working focused on moving OER adoption forward in the US higher education space. In this vision of the world, OER replace traditionally copyrighted, expensive textbooks for all primary, secondary, and post-secondary courses.

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OER: Some Questions and Answers

Iterating Toward Openness

Earlier this week I read an op-ed – sponsored by Pearson – titled “If OER is the answer, what is the question?” OER often shine in their variety and ability to deepen resources for niche topics. ” The article poses three questions and answers them. Below I share some thoughts prompted by the article.

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Some Lessons Learned Supporting OER Adoption

Iterating Toward Openness

The tl;dr: Supporting effective OER adoption at scale has its problems. If OER adoption were to become widespread among the majority of faculty, it became clear that someone would need to do something more than create OER, post it on a website, and give conference talks about it. Background and Some Problems.

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