Open Education 2017

Sharing is a key attribute of Open Education practice. Instructors who have chosen to adopt open textbooks for their college courses understand the value of sharing and sought a venue for offering the valuable resources they created to support their teaching.

To support this need and to further the creation of OER, Rice University's OpenStax and ISKME's OER Commons partnered to provide an online community hub where instructors can freely share and modify syllabuses, homework, study guides, and other open-copyright course materials that are made specifically for each of the free textbooks in OpenStax's growing catalog.

This community hub brings educators together in a new way, emphasizing their communities of practice though collaborative working groups. Educators are encouraged to share, discuss, and curate OER using this community hub, creating a dynamic environment for open education practice.

The OpenStax community hub on OER Commons launched in Fall 2016. Since that launch OpenStax and ISKME have partnered on several well attended webinars and continue to see the interest and engagement in the hub grow.

In a recent lit review of over 300 articles published between 2011-2017 focusing on identifying challenges and promises with OER, it was found that a majority of the current research centers on survey data and student and instructor perceptions. The key topics covered were around awareness and discovery, determining quality, utilization, cost and delivery.  This panel discussion will focus on these key topics and the realities of OER from 3 unique perspectives: a curated content and adaptive technology provider, an open education content provider, and an instructor who has realized the benefits and challenges of both.