Awareness of the value of OER has advanced successfully especially in North America through efforts to reduce the impact of expensive required course textbooks. What is the global picture?
A recent CCCOER post summarizes a survey of mostly North American higher education institutions on how options for OER Textbooks are communicated to students via campus bookstores.
Faculty should be able to communicate required textbook information to their students whether or not there is a cost for the book. Students should be able to know when signing up for a class if they have a required textbook and whether or not there is a cost for the book.
As we’ve seen in ongoing CCCOER conversations, institutions across the country have been struggling to ensure that OER textbook information is communicated effectively and course markings clearly indicate which courses use OER and have no book costs.
This focus on campus bookstores may be more relevant in North America. This week’s OEG Monday pulse aims to look for a global picture of the broader ways that use of OER materials are communicated to learners. Beyond this simple poll, though, we hope you can reply with details on how your institutions are trying to increase awareness of OER through institutional course information systems
- Via a bookstore or whatever means students purchase course textbooks
- Via a course catalog/course information system (are OER courses labeled?)
- Via course information instructors provide for students (syllabus, etc)
- Via other means
- This is not relevant in our institution
- We are trying to develop a means to do this
What do results from the CCCOER / Sparc OER/ Michigan OER survey indicate?
What challenges have you encountered in trying to make the course use of OER more visible? Reply here or in the discussion topic from the survey.\
Also-- do you have a topic or suggestion idea for a future pulse? Suggestions are more than welcome!