Computers are reserved for GVSU students, faculty, and staff on December 1 to 11 as students prepare for exams.
Accelerating Open Educational Resources at GVSU
How to Get Involved
Discover OER in the Open Textbook Library, GVSU's OER subject guide, or OER Commons. Or contact the OER Curator to receive a customized list of potential OER for your course.
Jump into OER Authoring with Grand Valley Pressbooks, a new, library-supported platform for creating and sharing OER.
Consider sharing any learning materials you've created for online teaching, so other educators and learners can benefit from your expertise.
Talk to a liaison librarian to discuss OER possibilities, and let us know if you're already using OER or zero-cost materials in your teaching.
The Benefits of Open Educational Resources
Benefits for Students
Traditional, commercial textbooks are a problem for educational access and student success. In national surveys more than two thirds of undergraduates report skipping required course materials due to cost, even though they anticipate lower grades as a result.
OER are freely available online, removing this barrier, and studies indicate equal or better educational outcomes when courses use OER.
Learn more about the role of OER for affordability in reports from the Student PIRGs.
Benefits for Educators
OER enables innovative approaches to teaching and sharing expertise, by removing uncertainty about copyright and permissions. The licenses on OER allow faculty to remix multiple OER together, customize material for a specific context or learning objective, or engage students as co-creators. Additionally, faculty using OER can count on students having access to their learning materials from the first day of class and can teach accordingly.
Learn more about the possibilities of OER in teaching from the Open Pedagogy Notebook or A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students.
About the Accelerating OER Initiative
The University Libraries are leading the Accelerating OER Initiative to expand Grand Valley's support for the use and creation of Open Educational Resources through new programs, funding opportunities for faculty, and building capacity for library publishing.
The Accelerating OER Initiative is made possible by a grant from the GVSU Innovation Fund, support from the University Libraries, and the sustained advocacy of faculty and students across Grand Valley. This initiative builds on a 2018-2019 University Academic Senate and Student Senate task force, as well as ongoing OER collaborations among university partners.
OER = Free + Permission
Open Educational Resources (OER) are textbooks and other course materials which are freely available online to use, share, modify, and reuse.
The OER combination of "free (to access) plus permission (to reuse and adapt)" reduces costs for students, enables innovative teaching, and empowers educators to share their expertise.
Questions?
For more information about the Accelerating OER initiative, or about OER in general, email [email protected].