Faculty Resources

Open educational resource (OER) offerings have grown significantly over the last several years, and choosing the right materials can be a challenge. There is a growing number of open textbooks available online for faculty to use.

One of the true benefits of using an open textbook is the ability to adapt the material to meet specific course needs. As well, student feedback on the information can facilitate instant and continual improvement.

The Open Education Learning Community Fellowship

To support faculty developing open content in their courses, SCC offers a 9-month scaffolded professional development experience. Over the course of the academic year, faculty participants identify a limited, need-based open education project in their discipline, attend a series of collaborative training and support sessions, conduct peer review, pilot their developed materials, and showcase their work.

Examples of projects include:

• Authoring new OER course modules (not entire courses)
• Overhauling/updating existing OER, including revision and/or remix
• Designing renewable assignments (“open pedagogy”)
• Building open, interactive learning experiences using H5P in MOD Press

Getting Started with OER

Start with the OER Faculty Workshop created in 2013 by Maricopa faculty member Matthew Bloom. The course provides an overview of open educational resources, including what they are, how the licenses work, where to find them, how to create and share them yourself, and how to design assignments that leverage the permissions afforded by open licensing.

More than 30 full courses have been developed through the Maricopa Millions project, and most are available for you to remix, reuse, and redistribute. Search Canvas Commons using the tag "MMOER" to access these OER courses. Similarly, most OER textbooks published by OpenStax/Rice University are already available through course shells on Canvas Commons and ready to import into your course (search for “OpenStax”). For information about Canvas Commons, course development, and how to import content into your own Canvas shell, contact the SCC Center for Teaching and Learning.

The following links are resources for finding and learning about OER.

Discovery

• Creative Commons Image Search
• Libretexts
• Mason OER Metafinder
• MERLOT
• MIT Open Courseware
• Oasis OER Metafinder
• OER Commons
• OpenStax
• Open Textbook Library
• Openverse
• Open Yale Courses
• WikiBooks

Information

• Center for Open Science
• Community College Consortium for OER
• Creative Commons
• MIT Faculty Scholarly Articles
• Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science

The OERizona Network, a statewide organization connecting all of Arizona's institutions of higher education, hosts a community repository, professional development, and learning community spaces at its OER Commons hub. You can also find out information about how to get involved with OERizona or learn about the annual OERizona Conference at the OERizona website.