Advocacy Organizations
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SPARC - Open EducationOpen Education is a key issue for SPARC - includes lots of resources and information about open education initiatives.
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Open Education Consortium (OEC)A global network of educational institutions, individuals and organizations that support an approach to education based on openness, including collaboration, innovation and collective development and use of open educational materials. Arizona State University became a member of the OEC in 2016.
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Creative CommonsThe Open Education program at Creative Commons works to minimize barriers, supporting the CC mission through education, advocacy and outreach on using the right licenses and open policies to maximize the benefits of open educational resources (OER) and the return on investment in publicly funded education resources.
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Open Policy NetworkThe mission of the Open Policy Network is to foster the creation, adoption and implementation of open policies and practices that advance the public good by supporting open policy advocates, organizations and policy makers, connecting open policy opportunities with assistance, and sharing open policy information.
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Open Education Working GroupThe Open Education Working Group is an international community of educators, researchers, students, policy makers and advocates that promotes, fosters, supports and collaborates with projects and initiatives related to the advancement of Open Education in different fields.
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OER Policy Development ToolThe tool has been created specifically for college and university governance officials, as well as individuals who have responsibility for developing institutional policy, to promote the utilization of OER and scale efforts to full OER programs.
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Rebus FoundationThe Rebus Foundation builds new models and technology for open book publishing and reading on the web, to encourage deeper engagement, and to enable people (and machines) to use and build on books and reading in new and meaningful ways.
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William + Flora Hewlett FoundationOur grantmaking supports mainstream adoption and effective use of openly licensed educational resources that provide students around the world greater access to a world class education.
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Community College Consoritum for Open Educational ResourcesA growing consortium of community and technical colleges committed to expanding access to education and increasing student success through adoption of open educational policy, practices, and resources.
Federal Initiatives
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#GoOpen Campaign
The U.S. Department of Education’s #GoOpen campaign encourages states, school districts and educators to use openly licensed educational materials to transform teaching and learning. Statewide #GoOpen initiatives are committed to supporting school districts and educators as they transition to the use of high-quality, openly-licensed educational resources in their schools. -
S.2176 - Affordable College Textbook ActThe Affordable College Textbook Act seeks to proliferate the most successful open textbook efforts to date: local programs at colleges and universities that provide support for creating and adopting open textbooks and other OERs. The bill was introduced in the 114th Congress as S. 2176/H.R. 3721 and did not advance.
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U.S. Department of Labor's Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant programThe curriculum and other learning materials developed by TAACCCT grantees are being made widely available to all types of training providers on SkillsCommons.org
State/Local Initiatives
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Maricopa Millions OER ProjectThe goal of the Maricopa Millions project is to radically decrease student costs by offering LOW COST or NO COST options for course materials.
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Scottsdale Community College to introduce textbook-free programScottsdale Community College is the first college in Maricopa County to launch a “textbook-free degree” program, using open educational resources designed to save students as much as $3,700 in textbook costs.
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OER State Policy TrackerThis page is updated weekly, and tracks the latest state-by-state policy activity relevant to the SPARC community, along with policies enacted in past years. SPARC’s state policy tracking is done in conjunction with Foresight Law + Policy, and a full dataset of legislation tracked since 2015 is published in GitHub.
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Open WashingtonThis website is dedicated to providing easy pathways for Washington State Community and Technical College faculty to learn, find, use and apply OER, though it is applicable to all faculty.
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Center for Open Educational Resources and Language LearningThe Center for Open Educational Resources & Language Learning (COERLL) is one of 16 National Foreign Language Resource Centers (LRC's) funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The overall mission of these federally-funded centers is to improve the teaching and learning of foreign languages by producing resources (materials and best practices) that can be profitably employed in a variety of settings.
Getting Involved
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Subscribe to the OER DigestThe OER Digest is a bi-weekly newsletter for open education updates, opportunities, and reminders. The primary audience is the OER community in the United States and Canada, although subscribers come from all around the world. New editions are published every other Thursday.
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School of OpenWe 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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OER Champion PlaybookThis playbook from Lumen Learning equips you with great plays, strategies, and tools to help you achieve a significant impact on teaching and learning using open educational resources (OER).
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OER: A Field Guide for Academic LibrariansThis book is intended as a guide writ large for would-be champions of OER, that anyone might serve as guides themselves. The book includes the experience of practitioners who represent a meaningful cross section of higher education institutions in North America. It is our hope that the examples and discussions presented by our authors will facilitate connections among practitioners, foster the development of best practices for OER adoption and creation, and more importantly, lay a foundation for novel, educational excellence.
Institutional and Other Initiatives
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List of North American OER Policies & ProjectsThis resource provides examples of how institutions, companies, organizations and state governments across North America are working to expand the use, creation and improvement of Open Educational Resources. The list is not comprehensive but seeks to showcase successful projects, diverse approaches, and library involvement.
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OER World MapThe OER World Map collects and visualizes data on the growing number of actors and activities in the field of open education worldwide.
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Affordable Course Content and Open Educational ResourcesWhat libraries are doing - an ARL SPEC Kit which explores the degree to which ARL member institutions advocate, support, and develop affordable course content and open educational resources.
