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Faculty Services: Learn About OER

Why Open Education Matters

WSU Open Educational Resources Initiative

In 2016, the Library was awarded a $10,000 grant from Reach out for Schools to support the WSU Open Educational Resources Initiative. This initial grant enabled us to fund ten $1,000 mini-grants supporting faculty for the first time in redesigning a course based around open educational resources, as opposed to higher-priced, conventionally published textbooks. Fortunately we continued to receive the funding supports from the WSU Academic Affairs and Reach out for Schools afterwards to make this initiative going further. So far, we have funded more than 30 classes and saved students thousands of dollars.

For more information, please go here. 

What are Open Education Resources?

Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and research resources released under an open license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. OER can be full courses, course materials, lesson plans, open textbooks, learning objects, videos, games, tests, software, or any other tool, material, or technique that supports access to knowledge.  

Open Educational Resources are broadly considered to meet the “5Rs Framework,” meaning that users are free to:

  • Retain: Users have the right to make, archive, and "own" copies of the content;
  • Reuse: Content can be reused in its unaltered form;
  • Revise: Content can be adapted, adjusted, modified or altered;
  • Remix: The original or revised content can be combined with other content to create something new;
  • Redistribute: Copies of the content can be shared with others in its original, revised or remixed form.

From http://www.sparc.arl.org/about. SPARC® is the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.

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