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Open Educational Resources: Advocacy and Communities

Advocacy

Mass PIRG (UMass Dartmouth - MASSPIRG Students)

  • The Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group is a student-run organization with a chapter at UMass Dartmouth.  They seek solutions for real problems faced by students and the public. They run an affordable textbook campaign.

BCcampus (BCOpen Community Email – BCcampus OpenEd Resources)

  • The BCOpen listserv is a community of practice email group for open education in British Columbia. Anyone in the British Columbia post-secondary sector whose work involves open educational resources, open pedagogy, or open education in general is invited to join. Members can ask questions about open education, promote OER projects, post opportunities and events, and ask for ideas about resources and pedagogy. 

Rebus Community (Rebus Community | Collaboration and Creation for OER)

  • Rebus Community is the open education and professional development arm of The Rebus Foundation, a global non-profit and Canadian registered charity working to make knowledge freely available in the pursuit of equity, understanding, and the common good. With our work, Rebus Community seeks to build a movement of leaders leveraging OER to transform higher education. Rebus’ focus on collaboration and equity within the higher education community is in service of developing an inclusive field that is responsive to diverse educators and learners.

College Open Textbooks (http://collegeopentextbooks.org/)

  • A collection of colleges, governmental agencies, education non-profits, and other education-related organizations that are focused on the mission of driving the awareness and advocacy for open textbooks.
  • Provides training for instructors seeking to utilize open educational resources.

Make Textbooks Affordable (http://Maketextbooksaffordable.org)

  • Aims to develop a textbook market with both a vibrant used book market and a plethora of learning content that is priced and sold fairly.
  • Provides latest news, studies and solutions on cost of college textbooks; advocacy opportunities for professors and students.

Cape Town Open Education Declaration (http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/read-the-declaration)

  • A statement of principle, a statement of strategy and a statement of commitment
  • To spark dialogue, to inspire action and to help the open education movement grow
  • To develop further strategies, especially around open technology and teaching practices

Open Education Community (https://creativecommons.org/tag/open-education-community/​)

  • Gateway to information about the open education movement and Open Educational Resources
  • Intended for anyone interested in open education, the site provides links to resources, organizations, events, people, and more

OER Support from SPARC  (Open Education - SPARC (sparcopen.org)

  • SPARC®, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system.  
  • This page highlights SPARC's work in supporting OER work.

Open Knowledge Foundation  (http://www.okfn.org/)

  • Promoting Open Knowledge in a Digital Age. 
  • Working on open knowledge projects, such as http://www.openeconomics.net/
  • Providing infrastructure, and potentially a home, for open knowledge projects, communities and resources. 
  • Acting at UK, European and international levels on open knowledge issues.
  • Running open knowledge events.

 

Why OER?

Events!

Northeast OER Summit

Hosted virtually each year by UMass Amherst

neoer.umasscreate.net

Open Access Workshops and Conferences
This list includes events around the world.
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Events

Open Education Week
This usually happens in March.

https://www.openeducationweek.org/​

Open Access Week
This usually happens in October.
http://www.openaccessweek.org/

2019 Northeast OER Summit Keynote: Robin Derosa & Rajiv Jhangiani

MA OER Initiatives