LibGuides: Open Educational Resources: OER Advocacy + Research

OER Research and Advocacy Resources

The links below include OER advocacy groups and sources to find research on all things OER and their impact. Amongst these websites you may find ways to get involved or useful sources to refer to in the promotion of open textbooks. Happy reading & exploring!

Opensourceway / CC BY-SA

Community College Consortium for OER
The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) promotes the awareness and adoption of open educational policies, practices, and resources. We believe that these practices will promote equitable access to education, particularly for underserved students while supporting academic freedom and faculty choice of openly licensed curriculum materials. Our membership includes hundreds of colleges across the United States and Canada.
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is an international nonprofit organization that empowers people to grow and sustain the thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture we need to address the world's most pressing challenges and create a brighter future for all.
OER Knowledge Cloud
The OER Knowledge Cloud is a curated database and repository to identify, collect, preserve and disseminate documents related to open educational resources
Open Education Group
The Open Education Group is an interdisciplinary research group that (1) conducts original, rigorous, empirical research on the impact of OER adoption on a range of educational outcomes and (2) designs and shares methodological and conceptual frameworks for studying the impact of OER adoption. We also teach courses in topics relating to open education. Our goal is to make the world a better place by increasing the affordability and effectiveness of education.
School of Open
We are a global community of volunteers providing free online courses, face-to-face workshops, and innovative training programs on the meaning, application, and impact of “openness” in the digital age. Learn how to add a Creative Commons license to your work, find free resources for classroom use, open up your research, remix a music video, and more!
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Stand-Alone online courses are available on the following topics: Get CC Savvy, How to use Open Educational Resources, Intro to Openness in Education and Teach someone something with open content.
SPARC
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication.
Student Public Interest Research Group - Open Textbooks Guide
This detailed guidebook explains the advantages of open textbooks and then lays out specific ways that your college can promote open books.
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This is an organization based in the United States, but is also relevant to students in Canada.
Students for Nova Scotia: A Postsecondary Pathway to Innovation
This report, authored by StudentsNS, outlines a vision for a more accessible future of postsecondary education in the province. It emphasizes the important role that OERs can play in textbook affordability.
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Published November 2023

OER Data Collection Toolkit - CARL Open Education Working Group

Data collection is an essential component of any successful open education program or initiative, and a key way to understand an institution’s context.

Collecting OER-related data can help you understand the landscape of your institution: are people aware of OER? What is their perception? This can help you determine attainable goals for furthering OER in your context.

When developing an OER initiative, data collection can allow you to measure the impact of your program by quantifying its achievements and capturing its qualities.

OER-related data is an exceptional tool for advocacy, championing its benefits for students, instructors, and institutions.

This toolkit is designed to help you begin or improve your process of OER data collection. The approaches described here are intended to be adapted to your own institutional context.