OER Update
There have been many developments in OER across institutions of higher education in the State of Louisiana. Your BRCC library have been following the trends and here are a few examples:
At UNO a first step was taken toward promoting OER last year during Open Education Week with the faculty-staff-student forum, in partnership with the Center for Teaching and Learning and the First Year Experience Office, titled "Reimagining Textbooks." Faculty who incorporated OER into their classes spoke about the pedagogical benefits and the student and staff person (from First Year Experience) discussed the impact that textbook costs have on students. The outcomes of this forum were that ideas were shared and partnerships were established around this issue with some other units on campus.
At LSU, interest in OER is just getting started. Much of this interest was spurred on the LOUIS project and the funding to host an Open Textbook Workshop, where faculty received $200 for attendance and review of an open textbook.
LSU Student Government has also gotten involved in OER adoption, and Student Government students are increasingly excited about OER's. In part, this is because some of LSU's Student Government leaders attended an SEC workshop in 2015 focused on advancing open access and OER's. SPARC was involved in coordinating that event. More recently, Student Government worked with the libraries to put together an OER week (occuring earlier in the semester).
These are just some examples of what is happening around the state. If you would like to partner with your BRCC librarians in a similar idea, please let us know. We are continuing to promote OER's where we can, and we are currently working on a revised workshop. More details to follow soon.
Not sure how to find OER and open textbooks to use for your courses? One new resource that can help is the LOUIS Find Textbooks tool, created by librarians from around the state, which matches courses from the state common course catalog with available OER and open textbooks: http://louislibraries.org/alearningla/find-textbooks/home. The Find Textbooks tool currently includes only resources from the Open Textbook Library and MERLOT, but is a good place to start if you are interested in finding OER to use for your courses.
Reach out to your librarian
Your BRCC librarians have been very active lately with all sorts of programming and educational opportunities. We participated in an open house event, partnered with Artsfest to bring in a children's book author, and in two weeks we will partnering with ALC in their LNAP event on May 2nd.
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| Dean Jones and Reference Librarian Peter Klubek set up the library table at the Open House 2017. |
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| Dean Jones meeting with prospective students at the Open House 2017. |
These opportunities are always the perfect time to meet with you librarian liaison, discuss ideas, and learn more about what your BRCC library can do for you and your classes. Got an idea? Reach out and share it! The librarians are always interested in new ways to help.
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| Author Julia Cook kicking off Artsfest at her book talk sponsored by BRCC Magnolia Library |
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| Reference Librarian Kathy Seidel, student Vanessa White Author Julia Cook, and Reference Librarian Peter Klubek at the Julia Cook Author Talk. |
