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Professional Development

UTRGV's Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) provides collective conversations on teaching and learning as a public practice where faculty, staff, students, administrators, and community partners learn from each other to create more inclusive and equitable spaces of teaching and learning that transcend boundaries.

The University Library has partnered with CTE to provide conversations on various topics including Open Educational Resources, Open Educational Practices, and course implementation. If there are topics you would like presented at the Center for Teaching Excellence, or if you would like to submit a joint presentation of your work in OER please reach out to Gabby Hernandez at gabrielle.hernandez@utrgv.edu.

Texas Learn OER

Welcome to Texas Learn OER! Your learning includes a series of self-paced online learning modules. The first nine modules will serve as an introduction to open educational resources (OER) and as an opportunity for further exploration and discovery of open education practices. The tenth module serves as a final assessment of your learning. Throughout the modules, there are opportunities for you to test your knowledge and further explore a concept. The modules allow you to learn at your own pace.

The OER Starter Kit Workbook

The OER Starter Kit Workbook is a remix of the OER Starter Kit to include worksheets to help instructors practice the skills they need to confidently find, use, or even create open educational resources (OER). We welcome instructors, librarians, instructional designers, administrators, and anyone else interested in OER to explore the OER Starter Kit Workbook.

Adopting Open Educational Resources in the Classroom

This course provides faculty with an introduction to the laws that influence the use, re-use, and distribution of content they may want to use in a course. Activities include finding openly licensed content for use in a class and publishing openly licensed works created by faculty. At the end of the course, students will have openly licensed content that will be ready for use in a course.

Office Hours by Rebus Community and Open Education Network

Rebus Community and the Open Education Network bring you "Office Hours," a monthly webinar series that tackles complex questions in open textbook publishing and community engagement. Guest speakers share a range of experiences and insights, followed by a Q&A session in which participants can pose specific queries on the themes at hand.

CCCOER Webinars

The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) promotes the awareness and adoption of open educational policies, practices, and resources.

Open Oregon Webinars

Open Oregon Educational Resources promotes textbook affordability for community college and university students, and facilitates widespread adoption of open, low-cost, high-quality materials.

Open Education Network

We are an active community of higher education leaders that works together to build sustainable open education programs. The programs are designed to ignite, support, and sustain the needs of our community.

BC Campus Archives: Events

Bc Campus has a primary focus to support the post-secondary institutions of British Columbia as they adopt, adapt, and evolve their teaching and learning practices to create a better experience for students.

Reading about Open Education

Advancing an Ecosystem for Open Educational Resources: OER in Texas Higher Education

In 2019, DigiTex began partnering with the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to conduct a biennial survey on OER programs, policies, and practices at postsecondary institutions across the state. The second survey, conducted in 2021, informed our most recent report, Advancing an Ecosystem for Open Educational Resources. With 111 colleges and universities responding, analyses of the survey data — and a comparison to data from Open Educational Resources (OER) in Texas Higher Education (2019) — reveal an ever-expanding OER landscape in Texas and help inform future statewide activities to support Open Education.

Best Practices in Texas Digital Higher Education: Creating and Adopting Open Educational Resources at Colleges and Universities Across the State

This new resource showcases three excellent examples of OER usage across the state of Texas including two different textbook projects, one individually authored and one produced through group collaboration, and a new medical program that is incorporating OER into its curriculum from the ground up. As you seek to promote and adopt OER at your own institution, we hope that you will find this resource useful.

The Impact of Open Educational Resources on Various Student Success Metrics

A Comparison of Academic Outcomes in Courses Taught With Open Educational Resources and Publisher Content

Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education (JOERHE)

The Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education (JOERHE) is a Diamond Open Access journal. The journal features content concerned with OER, Open Pedagogy, Open Access, Open Data, and similar topics focusing specifically within the context of Higher Education in the United States and Canada.

The International Journal of Open Educational Resources

The aim of IJOER is to provide a venue for the publication of quality academic research with an emphasis on representing Open Educational Resources in teaching, learning, scholarship, and policy.

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.

DIGITEX Blog

The Digital Higher Education Consortium of Texas provides members with access to research and emerging best practices in technology-enhanced education. It also helps members identify and implement innovative solutions that will make higher education more affordable and accessible for all Texans.

Open Education Network Blog

The Open Education Network (OEN) is a vibrant and supportive community that advances the use of open educational resources and practices. Members benefit from and contribute to the global open education ecosystem.

 

Open at the Margins

This book represents a starting point towards curating and centering marginal voices and non-dominant epistemic stances in open education. It includes the work of 43 diverse authors whose perspectives challenge the dominant hegemony.

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Open Educational Resources

A Guide for Authors, Adapters & Adopters of Openly Licensed Teaching and Learning Materials.

An Open Education Reader

A collection of readings on open education with commentary. Created for IPT 515R Introduction to Open Education, a graduate course at Brigham Young University.

UTRGV is a member of SPARC, and as such, any employee can be added to their members-only listserv to keep informed on trends in the scholarly and textbook publishing landscape. These include regular landscape analyses, news on mergers and acquisitions, and relevant legislation that affect all faculty at UTRGV.

If you would like to be added to the listserv, simply email Scholarly Communications Librarian Justin White (justin.white@utrgv.edu)

SPARC Open Education Forum is a listserv that builds community for individuals passionate about open education.

To learn more and join this Google group, click here. 

This forum and email list was created to continue the conversation about Open Educational Resources in Texas that was started at the Statewide OER Summit. Anyone interested in OER issues related to higher education in Texas is welcome to join.

To join this email group, go to https://groups.google.com/d/forum/texas-oer-community-he and click “Apply to join.”
The CCCOER Community Email is a public discussion list intended for community college faculty, librarians, instructional designers, administrators, and other educators who are interested in open education policy, practices, and resources.

To join this email group, click here. 
OE Global Connect is an online community space for open educators everywhere. Join to create a welcoming space for the exchange of ideas, resources, and projects, but also to directly connect with practitioners and experts interested in advancing the value proposition of open education.

To join this community space, click here. You can make an account using the “sign up” button at the top of the page.
The OER Digest is a monthly newsletter for open education updates, opportunities, and reminders. 

To learn more and subscribe to this email list, click here. 

Conference Opportunities

Open Texas Conference

The second annual Open Texas conference will again convene librarians, faculty, administrators, and other open education practitioners and advocates in Texas and beyond. The 2024 conference will be held fully online from September 25 - 27, 2024.

​This year’s conference theme is "Global Horizons of Open Education: The View from Texas."

Previous Open Texas session recordings are available to view here!

Open Education Conference

The Open Education Conference is an annual convening for sharing and learning about open educational resources, open pedagogy, and open education initiatives. This dynamic gathering celebrates the core values of open education that strive to realize education ecosystems that are accessible, affordable, equitable and inclusive to everyone, regardless of their background.

Building on a seventeen-year history, the conference is in the process of redesigning itself through a community-driven planning process, guided by a Steering Committee and organizing partnership.

Previous Open Ed session recordings are available to view here!

Conference Presentations

The Textbook Affordability Project has presented at multiple conferences over the last few years. If you would like the opportunity to present your work in open education you can email Gabby Hernandez at gabrielle.hernandez@utrgv.edu