OER Faculty Showcase: Success and Lessons Learned

Did you know UMBC faculty are exploring and adopting open educational resources (OER) in their courses to help reduce student textbook costs and improve access to quality content? Join us online March 5th for the first OER Faculty Showcase that highlights what some faculty are doing, and learning with OER adoption.  

As part of celebrating Open Education Week, (March 1-5) UMBC faculty Sarah Bass (CHEM101/102) and Maria Manni (SPAN 101/103) will be featured in this webinar. They will share their experiences using no-cost and low-cost course materials to replace traditional print textbooks and offer supplemental digital homework tools in their fall 2020 courses. 

The highlights of their OER experience have also been shared in this Voice Thread Box presentation, where they show-and-tell about OER content, successes, and lessons learned. 

In a survey of the more than 900 students who completed those CHEM and SPAN courses that utilized OER in the fall, students said they appreciated saving money on instructional materials and would recommend an OER course to others. Nearly 90% of students said the quality of the OER course materials was of similar or higher quality than non-OER course materials. 45% of students who completed the survey said they would be fairly likely or very likely to enroll in an OER course again, while 53% said they would recommend an OER course to others.

Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium (digital or otherwise) that are released under an open license that permits no-cost or low-cost access, use, adaptation, or redistribution (UNESCO, 2002). OER can include textbooks, syllabi, supplementary materials, quizzes, assessment rubrics, homework, or labs.

If you are unable to attend the webinar, please register so you may receive the recording afterwards. At any time, you may participate asynchronously by viewing and adding your own comment or question to the Voice Thread Box. Simply log in with your UMBC credentials. 

Want to know more? 

Explore how you can adopt OERs for your course:

• Follow the Open Educational Resources group on myUMBC 

• Check out the OER research guide

Attend upcoming virtual events:

• How to get started with Open Educational Resources - March 3, 12 noon - 1 p.m.

• M.O.S.T. State Summit, Using OER to Advance Equity and Inclusion - April 8-9

• Open Education Week- attend virtual events hosted at universities around the world

Webinar details: 

This webinar will take place in a Blackboard Collaborate virtual conference room. Use this link to enter the webinar up to 15 minutes before the start time. 

Prior to the session

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2. If this is your first time joining one of our webinars, please review the Bb Getting Started Guide or our Quick Start Guide for All Users. You will also find additional helpful information for using Blackboard Collaborate at our extensive FAQs.
   

3. After joining the session, please configure your audio. Having trouble accessing Collaborate? Please see our Troubleshooting Audio Problems or Networking Issues for Collaborate guides.

This session will be recorded.