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Library Observations

Resources for various library celebrations and observances.

Welcome to Open Education Week

An annual celebration, Open Education Week (OE Week) is an opportunity for actively sharing and learning about the latest achievements in Open Education worldwide.

Started in 2012 by the Open Education Global as a collaborative, community-built open forum, Open Education Week seeks to raise awareness and highlight open education efforts worldwide. OE Week provides students with an opportunity to gain a greater understanding of open educational practices and be inspired by the work being developed by the community around the world.

OE Week 2022 is March 7-11. 

Multi-Day Events

All About Open Educational Resources (OER)

"Why Open Education Matters" by Ope Bukola is licensed under CC by 2.0

OER stands for Open Educational Resources. Open Educational Resources are "...course materials that can be used and reused freely at no cost... The premise of OER is to provide "free and unfettered access, and perpetual, irrevocable 5R permissions" that allow instructors and students to "retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute" the course material." (Dr. David Wiley, October 2016).

How does this benefit students? Rather than spending hundreds of dollars on textbooks, online homework sets, or other course materials, instructors work with librarians to create or find existing free or low-cost options instead. 

Learn More about OER

Creative Commons is what allows textbooks to be openly licensed and free. There is a set of six licenses that allow creators to put special designations on their work stating how it can be used. However, all the licenses allow the work to be used for free. By using these licenses, faculty and students can use textbooks and other course materials for free free.

Find Creative Commons Media

For digital media resources, see the links below. These resources can be used for lectures, assignments, and various scholarly applications. Each site has a licensing page with information about how to correctly use the images or videos under Creative Commons.

  • Noun Project 
    Noun Project is building a global visual language that unites us - a language that allows quick and easy communication no matter who you are or where you are.
  • Old Book Illustrations
    Offers a wide range of public domain, royalty-free images scanned from old books.
  • Pixabay
    Over 2.5 million high quality stock images, videos, and music.
  • TED Talks
    Influential videos from expert speakers on education, business, science, tech, and creativity, with subtitles in 100+ languages. Ideas free to stream and download.
  • Unsplash CC
    The internet's source of freely-usable images. Powered by creators everywhere.
  • Vimeo - Creative Commons
    Browse the Creative Commons licensed videos on Vimeo. Learn about what you can and can't do with other people's videos on Vimeo to help you share, rework, and reuse legally.
  • YouTube - Creative Commons
    YouTube's Creative Commons help page, with links to videos.

Learn More about Creative Commons

Open textbooks are the most common form of OER and exist in a variety of disciplines. An open textbook is a textbook licensed under an open copyright license, and made available online to be freely used by students, instructors, and members of the public. Many open textbooks are distributed in either print, ebook, or audio formats that may be downloaded or purchased at little or no cost.

While some disciplines make up the majority of the open textbooks, more disciplines are being added. Here's a list of open textbook repositories:

  • LOUIS OER Commons
    LOUIS OER Commons is a repository of open education resources aligned with the Louisiana Statewide Common Course Catalog.
  • OER Commons
    OER Commons is a public digital library of open educational resources. Explore, create, and collaborate with educators around the world to improve curriculum.
  • Open Textbook Library
    Open textbooks are licensed by authors and publishers to be freely used and adapted. Download, edit, and distribute them at no cost.
  • OpenStax
    Free and flexible textbooks and resources for instructors and students.
  • SkillsCommons
    SkillsCommons mission is to accelerate the democratization of education for all through open educational services and resources enabling individuals, communities, educational institutions, organizations, and businesses to prepare people for successful employment in the 21st Century.
     

Affordable Learning LOUISiana - The Affordable Learning LOUISiana initiative was established by LOUIS with support from the Louisiana Board of Regents. The purpose is to promote affordable learning resources in the state to help reduce students' costs for required materials.

Using the Louisiana Statewide Common Course Catalog, the LOUIS library consortium created and maintains a list of potential open education resources (OERs) in the OER Commons that faculty may choose to adopt in their courses. The primary source of OER content for this project and content from other OER repositories will be included on an ongoing basis.

For more information:

Affordable Learning Outcomes - Dashboard showing the impact of Affordable Educational Resources (AER) and Open Educational Resources (OER) on students at Louisiana's colleges and universities.

Affordable Learning Programs - List of AER and OER programs for faculty and students.

 

For more information about OER, visit: https://cltcclibrary.cltcc.edu/Open_Educational_Resources 

 

The Central Louisiana Technical Community College Library would like to thank you for joining us for Open Education Week 2022! We hope you found the webinars, videos, podcasts, and other links helpful and informative. If you have any questions regarding Open Education, OER, or anything else featured in Open Ed Week, please contact the library at [email protected] or 318.487.5443 x1137.

 

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