Top Stories in OER News

February 2023

Call for cohort 1 of the Mellon Foundation grant “Civic Engagement & Voting Rights Teacher Scholars ” with Clemson University & Humanities. Applications due March 15, 2023. Contact Dr. James Burns

October 2022

The blog editors for OER & Beyond, the official blog for the Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education, are looking for a Contributing Editor for a one-year appointment in 2023.

August 2022

The San Diego Community College District plans to adapt 20 courses in high-demand areas to feature free textbooks for students, thanks to a new $975,000 federal grant. Officials say it will help up to 60,000 students attending San Diego City, Mesa and Miramar Colleges. “For many, a $200 to $300 textbook can be the difference between whether a student has enough to eat, can gas up their car, or even pay the rent. Multiply that by four, five or even six classes each semester, and those costs really compound.” said Edward Borek, who was the Associated Student Government president last school year at Miramar College. Read more about the news.

July 2022

A Best-Selling Textbook Is Now Free. A popular chemistry book's jump from a publishing titan to an OER pioneer could be pivotal for the open access movement. For the author, it's also a fitting tribute to his late son. Read about it in Liam Knox's article.

March 2022

Members of congres reintroduced the Affordable College Textbook Act and authorize spending $11 million for the successful Open Textbook Pilot grant program.  Read the SPARC article. 

July 2021

 Governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law  an unprecedented $115 million investment to develop Zero Textbook Cost degrees and open educational resources at the California Community Colleges. This marks the single largest state investment in OER to date, and it is thanks to tireless work by the #ZTC4CA  coalition and grassroots advocates across California.

May 2021

OpenNR Project is now available to all. For information please visit the website at OPEN-RN.

March 2021

Open Music Theory by Bryn Hughes, Brian Moseley, Kris Shaffer, Mark Gotham, Kyle Gullings, Chelsey Hamm, Brian Jarvis, Megan Lavengood, and John Peterson was released.

February 2021

The Online Teaching conference (OTC) will take place vitually from June21-23, 2021. 

January 2021

The 2021 Cascadia Open Education Summit, is being held April 27–29, 2021, at 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM Pacific Time. For more information, please visit the Cascadia website.

November 2020

Five Microlearning Trends to Watch Out for in 2021, by Pragnan Chakraborty.

October 2020

VoiceThread holds slow-paced interactive workshops. Check out their free VT offerings.

June 2020

The Online Teaching conference (OTC) will take place vitually from June17-20, 2020. 

April 2020

Learning Everywhere: Open Educational Resources in the COVID-19 Era by Hazel Kelly

December 2019

$7 Million funding for 2020,  Congress to Renew Open Textbook Pilot Grant Program with $7 Million Appropriation.

June 12, 2019

Amy Chen, PhD from University of Iowa runs an OER game lab called Human Games. In the site there are two games, for students in high school or higher education that Amy wants to share. Codex Conquest is an hour to 90 minute card game that teaches European Book history while Mark (still under development) is a deck of cards made up of printer’s devices that helps players identify aspects of early modern visual culture.

May 8, 2019

Rice University Course Workload Estimator (CWE) can help determine how much reading is adequate for a giving class. The CWE also computes writing assignments and exams to estimate the workload in hours per week.

April 5, 2019

The Affordable College Textbook Act aimed to reduce the cost of textbooks in higher education, was re-introduced on April 4 to the Congress. The bill seeks to expand the use of open textbooks, saving students thousands of dollars, and increasing awarnerss of Open Educational Resources (OER).

January 23, 2019

Creative Commons worked with the Cleveland Museum of Art to dedicate 30,000 high resolution images into the public domain using CC0.

January 9, 2019

OER is beginng to gain recognition among faculty and department heads. According to a survey by Babson Research group, the use of OER had duplicated in the last two years. You can read the 2019 National Higher Eduction Report for more details.

December 4, 2018

Lumen had published the OER Champion Playbook to help faculty members expand their use of OER.

November 6, 2018

OAPEN is an online library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of humanities and social sciences.

October 3, 2018

LiveLingua is a project which objective i to offer the means to lear a new language for free.

September 5, 2018

SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library just launched an OER search tool called OASIS that can access more than 150,000 open educational resources.

July 18, 2018

Open educational resources have saved students millions of dollars, but can they also improve students’ grades? Read all about it in the article by Lindsay McKenzie, Free Digital Textbooks vs. Purchased Commercial Textbooks.

July 11, 2018

OpenCon is a conference focused on Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data, it takes place in Toronto Canada. 

July 5, 2018

Rebus is looking one more time for peir reviewers. This time help is needed for the final review  for the Media, Society, Culture and You open textbook. They are looking preferably for a subject expert in traditional advertising. Parties interested should contact Rebus.

May 25, 2018

Rebus is looking for faculty or doctoral students to write introductions for sections of: Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature. Interested faculty members can contact Rebus.

May 8, 2018

Congress designated $5 million in the fiscal 2018 budget to support the creation or expansion of open-educational resources: peer-reviewed academic material released under an intellectual property license that permits free use. Read: Free textbooks? Federal Government is on Track with a Pilot Program by  Danielle Douglas-Gabriel.

March 30, 2018

The latest OpenStax blog post describes the process from author recruitment, to review, to publication, on the article "How OpenStax Books are Made" by Anthony Palmiotto.

March 22, 2018

Big win! Congress Funds $5 Million Open Textbook Grant Program in 2018 Spending Bill to make college more affordable for students.

March 15, 2018

A new open book Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science  edited by Rajiv S. Jhangiani and Robert Biswas-Diener is available. This book compiled a series of articles related to Open Access. It is a well-informed resource for researches and user of OER. 

March 14, 2018

MERLOT has a new simplified home page, interface, search tools, and a mobile-ready faster speed! Start your search for OER today!

March 10, 2018

Faculty members interested in learning more about low and no-cost quality options for course materials, Open Educational Resources, the Titan Direct Access Program or the ALS Ambassadors Program were invited to attend the Free and Affordable Learning Solutions event on March 14 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Portola Pavilion at the Titan Student Union. Fall ALS/OER Ambassadors were honored at 11:30 am.

March 5, 2018

Digital-focused education tools can help lower the cost of education for students and also can spread access to knowledge. Read all about it in How OER can help overcome the higher education equity barrier by Jake Williams.

February 22, 2018

The Creative Commons Open Education Platform invites you to submit your ideas for an open education webinar(s) during our 24-hour web-a-thon celebrating Open Education Week!

February 20, 2018

Interested in publishing your own OER book? The BCcampus Open Education Self-Publishing Guide is a practical reference for writing and publishing an open textbook.  

February 13, 2018

OER, the first major conference on Open Educational Resources in the UK, will take place on April every year, at Bristol, UK.  

February 6, 2018

Teachonline.ca has a great article about the unprecedented contributions of COOL4Ed to the OER movement. Read The California Open Online Library for Education (COOL4Ed) at California State University, California Community Colleges and the University of California to learn more.

 January 24, 2018

Edward Watson, University of Georgia, was interviewed about his research on the subject of OER and equity. Listen to the podcast Assessing the Impact of Open Educational Resources  at Teaching in Higher Ed.

 January 16, 2018

Results in a research conducted by Ervin James III, full-time faculty member at Paul Quinn College in Dallas, Texas, concludes that faculty members are empowered to select their course material without being bound to traditional textbook publisher course content. He also unveiled that faculty members are also able to keep course content relevant from one semester to the next by using frequently modified and updated open educational resources. The study Using Open Educational Resources to Lower Student Cost of Attendance at Minority Serving Institutions  is available.

December 21, 2017

The California State University is committed to seeking new ways to provide equity in access to free learning materials and remove financial barriers to student success as part of the CSU’s Graduation Initiative 2025. Read the article:  CSU's Affordable Learning Solutions Encourages Use of Open Educational Resources by Alisia Ruble.

December 1, 2017

CSUF Ambassadors serve to create affordable learning solutions. The second cohort of faculty members is on their way to become pioneers in the use of OER and low-cost-educational-materials alternatives at Cal State Fullerton. 

 November 28, 2017

OpenStax Creator Fest is scheduled for April 5-6, 2018 in Houston, Texas. At the Fest, OpenStax will leverage the diverse experiences, talents, and perspectives of more than 13,000 OpenStax adopters to collaboratively create the next series of learning resources that classrooms need. OpenStax is inviting biology, physics, math, and chemistry instructors to collaborate with their peers, put their knowledge into practice, and join in creating the future of education – together. Registration is FREE.

November 7, 2017

Beginning in January, students at Cal State Fullerton have another choice when they select their college courses: to pick classes that offer free digital materials or low-cost print versions. Read all about it in the Campus Expands Effort to Make Course Materials Affordable article.

 June 14, 2016

Thirty eight community colleges in 13 states will join a national OER initiative to cut costs, while improving degree, certificate completion. Read all about it in Major OER initiative targets new degree programs by Laura Ascione.