Open Ed and OE Global Takeaways
by Shaune Pyle 4 years agoHi everyone,
I am still getting caught up with some OE Global presentations that I missed, but I would like to share my thoughts and hear what you all thought about these two conferences if any of you were able to attend.
I am fairly certain that both conferences have all the presentations posted on YouTube: here Open Educaiton Global and here OpenEd Conference, if you want to check them out.
My main takeaways were that Open Education is no longer just a fringe trend. It is on its way to becoming the standard for education materials. There is even more infrastructure for OER now, and more and more faculty are jumping on the OER train. That being said I still think faculty are the biggest barrier to OER adoption, as they are usually the ones that have to take on most of the work to adapt the materials. However, some librarians have gone all out to provide scaffolding and support for OER creation and adaptation, which can overcome the obstacle of faculty reticence. I think there are only good things on the horizon for OER on college campuses.
Correct, and learning how to not just use OER materials requires breaking the connection with for profit textbooks that provide such handy auxillary material. UB opted to pick up the publishing piece and simply ask faculty to make content which reduced the ask on faculty. That is still a big ask, and our faculty don't get the same "credit" in P&T for OER publications as they would publishing elsewhere.
Does anyone have an updated P&T policy for faculty that embraces OER content creation? If not, is there anything in the works?