Open Educational Resources

Background

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.

These freely accessible text, media, and other digital assets are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposesؙ—this collaboration offers direct benefits to faculty and students at the 28 public higher education institutions in the Commonwealth.

OER Final Report & Statewide OER Advisory Council

On October 22, 2019, the Board of Higher Education accepted the Final OER Report & Recommendations, Fall 2019 from the Commissioner’s OER Work Group and endorsed implementation of its recommendations. The OER Work Group, co-chaired by Marilyn Billings, Head, Office for Scholarly Research Communications, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Susan Tashjian, Coordinator of Instructional Technology, Northern Essex Community College, led a team of 21 individuals from the University of Massachusetts System, state universities, and community colleges— comprised of librarians, faculty, administrators, students, and external representatives—who worked assiduously over four months to convene, study, evaluate, and make recommendations to address: a) the growing legislative interest in lowering the cost of educational resources, b) the issues of achieving equity for under-served, low-income, and first-generation students, and c) the enhancement of instructional effectiveness. The recommendations from this working group, were time-based, i.e., short-term, mid-term, and long-term. This effort was accomplished due to the strong and consistent advocacy of the Student Advisory Council.

As a result of the October vote, Dr. Robert J. Awkward from the DHE was designated the statewide OER coordinator and the statewide advisory council will soon be convened. This will be comprised of one representative from each of the 28 undergraduate-serving public institutions. The advisory council will serve to expand OER use on campuses and to provide advice and counsel for statewide OER implementation. The statewide OER advisory council and the statewide OER coordinator will be responsible for implementing the short-term recommendations and developing plans, after conducting additional research, for how to implement the mid and long-term recommendations.

Massachusetts Open Education: Achieving Access for All

Massachusetts Open Education: Achieving Access for All was a specific collaborative project from 2018-2019 that helped to build OER capacity across the state. This project was led by an open education advocate representative from UMass Amherst, Worcester State University, Holyoke Community College, and Northern Essex Community College and was funded by a Higher Education Innovation Fund (formerly known as the Performance Incentive Fund) grant.

An important outcome of this project was to assess the OER landscape at all public higher education institutions in Massachusetts. By gathering data and information from each college about current OER usage, we were able to analyze the results to determine regional training needs, assist the project in achieving its goal of lowering overall costs for students, increase student and faculty engagement, and ultimately improve college completion rates.

OER Advisory Council Members

The following are the members of the OER Advisory Council, recommended by their respective chancellor or president to serve to advance OER statewide and within their own campuses. There is one representative from each of the 28 undergraduate-serving institutions.

*Names in bold are from the OER Working Group

Open Textbook Network

Other benefits include attendance at the OTN Summer Institute for statewide OER leaders, participation in their Google group, access to their Open Textbook Library, discounted institutional membership, and their data dashboard. We are excited about this new partnership for all our public institutions.

Advisory Council Meeting Materials