Open Educational Resources | Subject and Course Guides

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Subject:

What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?

Open Education encompasses resources, tools and practices that are free of legal, financial and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared and adapted in the digital environment. Open Education maximizes the power of the Internet to make education more affordable, accessible and effective.

NC LIVE Open Education Initiative

Open Education North Carolina is an initiative that aims to reduce the cost of higher education for North Carolina students by providing free, open e-textbooks for 30 of the most frequently-taught courses across North Carolina’s 2 and 4-year colleges and universities.

NC LIVE is holding workshops around the state to give faculty, instructors, and the library community an introduction to open education in general and the Open Education North Carolina initiative specifically.

Faculty, instructors, and librarians can register for workshops now.

NC LIVE is now accepting grant applications from faculty and instructors who are committed to adopting an open textbook for their course(s) in place of a commercial textbook.

OER Programs at North Carolina Institutions

OER Opportunity at UNCW's Randall Library

Randall Library has awarded 6 mini-grants with a cumulative savings to students of $24, 740.

Open Education Mini-grants ($1,000)

Randall Library will be accepting applications for mini-grants to change your required course textbook to a no-cost option for your students for the Fall 2020 or Spring 2021 semester. You can use an open textbook, other open access scholarly resources, or library-owned content that students can download. Funds go toward helping faculty with updating their syllabus by adoption, adaption or creation of open source textbooks and materials.

Applications for the 2020-2021 grant cycle are now closed. Check back in early spring 2021!

Randall Library Open Education Mini-Grants Workshop

Interested in exploring OER? Plan to apply for this year's mini-grants? View the slides from an information session that was held on March 4 in Randall Library 1039.

Open Education Awarded Grants

Congratulations to our 2019-2020 mini-grant award recipients!

Instructor	Course	Textbook	Semester(s) Taught
Lance Cummings	ENG 312	Business Communication for Success	Spring 2020
Kathy R. Fox	EDN 340, LIC 540	Steps to Success: Crossing the Bridge Between Literacy Research and Practice.	Summer 2019, Fall 2019
Huili Hao	EVS 518	Research Methods for Environmental Studies: A Social Science Approach, Social Science Research: Principles, Methods and Practices	Fall 2019
Tracy Y. Hargrove	EDN 322	Mathematics for elementary teachers, Teaching Children Mathematics, North Carolina Standard Course of Study	Fall 2019, Spring 2020
Colleen Reilly	ENG 393	A concise guide to communication in science and engineering, Explaining research: How to reach key audiences to advance your work, An introduction to social media for scientists, The Forgotten Tribe: Scientists as Writers. Perspectives on Writing	Fall 2019, Spring 2020
Ann Rotchford	CRM/SOC 300, CRM/SOC 301	Online Statistics Education: An Interactive Media Course of Study.	Fall 2019

Open Textbooks

Did You Know...

The high cost of some course materials can impede students’ academic success.
The College Board estimates that the average undergraduate can budget $1,220 - $1,420 for textbooks and supplies in 2017–18.
The cost of textbooks is rising at a rate of 4 times inflation.
Seven out of 10 students don’t purchase a required textbook during their academic career because of cost.

Open Textbooks

Open textbooks can help alleviate the burden of textbook costs for students and provide faculty with content that can be customized for their course. Open textbooks are full, real textbooks, used by many faculty across the country, and licensed to be freely used, edited, and distributed.

Open Textbook Library

The Open Textbook Library provides access to open textbooks that have been funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. These books have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality. These books can be downloaded for no cost, or printed at low cost. All textbooks are either used at multiple higher education institutions; or affiliated with an institution, scholarly society, or professional organization.

The Open Textbook Library provides a growing catalog of free, peer-reviewed, and openly-licensed textbooks. It is supported by the Center for Open Education and the Open Textbook Network.