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.

MARCH 2023

COLLEGE STUDENTS ARE STRUGGLING WITH THE COST OF TEXTBOOKS. THERE’S A PUSH IN CONGRESS TO MAKE THEM FREE. 

Open textbooks are one popular solution to the sharp increase in college textbook costs over the past decade, and one that’s been successfully implemented via local grants across the country. Every year since 2013, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois has introduced a federal grant program to expand open textbook usage at universities and plans to do so again in this session of Congress. While there's no timeline for the Affordable College Textbook Act to make it through Congress, federal legislators have granted $47 million in funds for open textbooks since 2018 as part of the Open Textbook Pilot Program.

Read the full article here: https://www.businessinsider.com/make-college-textbooks-free-congress-2023-3

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