Original article from Surrey CC >
Imagine how it feels to take a college class and not be able to afford or even find the textbook for the class. The alternatives are to share a textbook or do without. This is just the situation that Surry Community College is working to prevent.
As part of annual professional development offered to employees, Surry Community College recently conducted a session on Open Educational Resources, or OER, to help educate and inform faculty about resources available and their benefits.
OER are materials developed and used for teaching and learning that are either available through public domain or are released for free and open use through special licensing agreements. OER examples may be as simple as a single video or as complex as a complete course curriculum, with many variations in-between.
Joanna Schimizzi, from the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) presented a recent professional development session for SCC. Schimizzi is a national board-certified teacher who has worked in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System since 2013 and holds a master of education degree from Northeastern University with a focus on Classroom Culture and Adult Learning. With ISKME, Schimizzi works to support educators in finding, using, and adapting OER for the needs of their students.
Although already in practice in some classes at SCC, college administrators are interested in expanding the use of OER. Benefits of using OER include those directly related to students, especially those that break down a monetary barrier to higher-level learning. Since there are no textbooks to buy when using OER materials, all students can obtain class materials regardless of their financial status. As an added benefit, faculty members know that all students in their classes can access needed materials on a timely schedule, making the classes run more smoothly with a higher level of understanding from the whole class, rather than just from those who are able to afford or find the materials by the first day of instruction.
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