Our goal is to help faculty develop or convert courses to open (read: free) materials in order to help students pass courses, graduate, and get a job! This can be seen as an issue of retention but we prefer to see is as a service we owe our students! DEFINITIONOpen Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation. (Source: UNESCO) Short Essay: Defining the "Open" in Open Content and Open Educational Resources EXAMPLEAn English professor can replace an expensive text with lecture notes, videos from courses the Literature from MIT OpenCourseWare PREMISEThe cost of textbooks constrains education by discouraging purchase, resulting in less class participation and lower grades, Using open educational resources faculty can lift the financial burden from students and reinvigorate the classroom learning experience. The literature suggests that benefits include more engaged students who perform better and finish more quickly. At William Paterson members of the Center for Teaching with Technology and the Cheng Library will work to help faculty adopt open educational resources or convert entire courses. For more information on how you can take advantage of this opportunity please contact the WPUNJ OER Interest Team.
