OER Core Elements Spring 2023

A question about the production of material and the accountablility that goes with the production of that material.  Varies from campus to campus. 

Questions:

1. Still think that this is an early discussion in our society/industry. Even though the (many) repositories are full, the topics are not vast. Literature does not provide many open licenses. 
   1. To this point, in areas such as religion, theology, and psychology, the niche topics are not 
2. How can we deal with the "quality check" for resources we find in the areas in which we are interested? 
   1. Similarly, how could we create assignments that use a rubric for quality control in an effort to create OERs ("renewable assignments") that address our deficit in quality resources? 
3. How can we connect with an author to correct OERs that we find have mistakes? 

Patricia, Rey, Kristen, and I had a conversation about publishers and their response to the Open movement - what barriers will they come up with to make it harder to get to open resources? 

Also, there are certain subjects that don't have good quality, updated resources. How do we navigate that?

Our group discussed the difficulty of implementing Open Education Resources in fields where there are sparse resources. We discussed potential alternatives:

(1) authoring your own publications (can be very time consuming)

(2) pulling a series of small articles/resources

(3) creating an open pedagogy class in which students work together to author OERs

Do you have other suggestions or thoughts? 

My group members include Cindy Sanches and Jamie Quinn, and we discussed the following questions: 

1. Given the restrictions surrounding the use and combination of open education resources, what are the guidelines about what we can use, what we can mix

2. How can each party involved in utilizing open education resources - such as instructors, librarians, and instructional designers etc. - best fulfill their roles?

3. What are the most effective methods for determining the quality of open education resources and assessing their usability for educational purposes?

This group was mostly new to OER, so we are all still learning. We did not have specific questions at this time. 

We had a discussion about how some disciplines are harder to start with OER like the sciences, while others like history that use primary sources are easier. We learned from Mary today about what she thinks about using OpenStax for Introduction to Biology Majors. She's been using it since 2019.