Open Touro OER Initiative: Open Educational Resources

Open Touro is Touro University's Open Education Resources (OER) initiative. With this project, we aim to reduce the cost of textbooks for our students and increase student retention and success, raise awareness of OER, and assist faculty in selecting, adopting, adapting, and creating open textbooks for their courses. 

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

These interactive modules from SUNY will introduce you to the basics of open educational resources, including finding OER for your courses and understanding copyright and licensing relevant to OER.

August 2022

OER support from the White House

The Biden Administration has signaled, in the most direct terms yet, that it believes open science is a key enabler of scientific progress and equity. Earlier this month, in a joint memorandum, the White House Office of Management & Budget and the Office of Science & Technology Policy directed all agency heads to make open science and equity explicit priorities in agency budgets for fiscal year 2024. The memo marks the first time a U.S. administration has shown support for open science in its budget policy priorities. The memo specifically notes that public access to research outputs — including both research data and publications — can address critical inequities, specifically in underrepresented or underserved communities. 

-Heather Joseph, Executive Director, SPARC.

from Member Update, August 2022

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