Open Touro, a project of Touro Libraries, is Touro University's Open Education Resources (OER) initiative. With this project, we aim to reduce the cost of textbooks for our students while increasing student retention and success, by promoting the use of free OER at Touro University.
The Touro University OER Initiative is an effort by Touro Libraries to support faculty across the Touro system in adopting, adapting, and authoring open educational resources for their teaching. Touro’s OER Initiative is tied directly to the University’s mission to operate “In the service of knowledge, compassion, and social justice.”
Faculty will be supported through workshops, one-on-one consultations, technical support, and instructional support.
This initiative is committed to:
Expanding awareness of OER and the benefits of OER
Improving student performance and retention at Touro University
Lowering the cost of a quality secondary education by lowering the cost of materials for students
Supporting faculty as they engage in meaningful and sustainable pedagogical practices
Empowering Touro University members to collaborate in the service of student success
With this statement, the Touro Libraries affirm the importance of equity in education and commit to helping faculty utilize free and low cost open educational resources through the Touro University OER Initiative.
According to OER Commons, "Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others." An OER gives you the five rights below:
image by Kirk Snyder CC BY 4.0
FREE OPEN TEXTBOOKS & OTHER OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES GAIN POPULARITY
In a new Physics Today article, OpenStax founder Richard Baraniuk and others in the education field weigh in on the growth of open educational resources. Baraniuk estimates that the nonprofit’s books have helped save students nearly $2 billion.
Read the full article here.
For archived OER in the News posts, see: https://bit.ly/oernews
Myth #1: Open simply means free. Fact: Open means the permission to freely download, edit, and share materials to better serve all students
Myth #2: All OER are digital. Fact: OER take many formats, including print, digital, audio, and more
Myth #3: “You get what you pay for.” Fact: OER can be produced to the same quality standards as traditional textbooks
Myth #4: Copyright for OER is complicated. Fact: Open licensing makes OER easy to freely and legally use
Myth #5: OER are not sustainable. Fact: Models are evolving to support the sustainability and continuous improvement of OER
Myth #6: Open textbooks lack ancillaries. Fact: Open textbooks often come with ancillaries, and when they do not, existing OER can provide additional support
Myth #7: My institution is not ready for OER. Fact: Any institution can start with small steps toward OER that make an impact for students
Source: OER Mythbusting from SPARC
This guide was created by librarians at Touro University and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If you re-use, remix or link to this guide, it would be appreciated if you could notify our staff.
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