The recently released report, Advancing an Ecosystem for Open Educational Resources: OER in Texas Higher Education Biennial Report 2021, sheds light on statewide efforts to build OER awareness and uptake across Texas higher education institutions.
This report, commissioned by the Digital Higher Education Consortium of Texas, in partnership with the the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and ISKME, builds on data from a 2019 landscape survey and analysis, and offers new insights around the continued growth in commitment to OER that occurred during in the past two years across the state.
Notably, 45% of institutions now have formal policies or programs in place to support OER, compared to 38% in 2019. Additionally, the availability of fully OER-based courses has increased, especially in two-year institutions, with 85% of institutions offering at least one fully OER-based undergraduate course, up from 71% in 2019.
The 2021 survey further revealed that those TX institutions leading the way in the implementation of OER-based courses, policies, and programs appear to be taking a systems-based approach to OER by engaging multiple offices and roles across campus. The institutions using a cross-campus approach are also demonstrating advanced OER practices, including, for example, allocating funding for OER, collecting OER impact data, and working to build student awareness of OER.
THECB and ISKME will continue to apply the findings of this research to the next phase of OER work going forward. Next steps include conducting a gap analysis of workforce and CTE OER, and developing professional learning workshops to support Texas higher education institutions to build out the Texas OER ecosystem.
It is hoped that this model in Texas can be replicated to other states to facilitate the process of gathering and analyzing data that can inform strategies for how to effectively implement their own open educational resources initiatives and Zero Textbook Cost Degrees (Zdegrees).
Contact: info@iskme.org for additional information.