Recap of Open Education Week in SUNY
Open Education Week may be over, but you can still catch up and tune in to Open initiatives happening in SUNY. Numerous OER initiatives, activities and events are being implemented and promoted throughout SUNY.
OER is Created in SUNY:
Open SUNY Textbooks offers 14 published textbooks with 12 more in process.
Open SUNY MOOCs has 19 SUNY MOOCs in Coursera and more planned.
The SUNY Office of Applied Learning recently released two open courses: SUNY Professional Skills Career Launch for All Majors and SUNY Professional Skills Career Launch for Engineers.
OER is Happening in SUNY:
Starting in 2011, Tompkins Cortland Community College (TC3) was the first SUNY campus to adopt open textbooks and implement OER in Math and Psychology courses. To date, they have saved students hundreds of thousands of dollars in the cost of textbooks and learning materials. Student success in OER courses has also increased, for example: in an introductory Psychology course the percentage of students earning passing grades has increased 20% since 2011. OER courses are now flagged in their course catalog and the number of courses offering OER is increasing yearly.
Monroe Community College has introduced OER into all their First Year Experience (FYE) courses. These courses enroll an average of 2500 students per year. Before adopting OER, the cost for learning resources was $140 per student. As of Fall 2015, students pay between $18 & $25 for the required print materials for each class. The savings total is nearly $300,000.
Fulton Montgomery Community College has four instructors in eight sections of three courses using open textbooks. In fall 2015, 185 students saved $26,000.
Since Fall 2013, Dr. David Usinski at Erie County Community College has used open textbooks, Open Learning Initiative’s Concepts in Statistics, and MyOpenMath in two courses to save 440 students $120 on textbook costs, totaling $52,800.
Multiple SUNY campuses are participating in an Innovative Instructional Technology Grant (IITG) project out of Monroe Community College to design and deploy a library service model to increase faculty participation in OER and improve OER adoption system- wide. Campuses participating in the project are: The University at Buffalo, Geneseo, Brockport, Buffalo State, Environmental Science and Forestry, Suffolk CC, Fulton-Montgomery CC, Tompkins-Cortland CC, Herkimer CC, Clinton CC, and Corning CC.
Open SUNY COTE recorded the five Open Education Week COTEbyte webinars offered as part of Open Education Week in an effort to celebrate and showcase Open activities and initiatives across SUNY.
SAVE THE DATE!
A one day event on OER is Happening at CUNY and SUNY on April 25th, as a day of sharing OER experiences, best practices, and lessons learned. Plans for the day include a keynote speaker and panels of CUNY and SUNY faculty and librarians who work collaboratively on OER projects. Also invited are faculty from CUNY who have experienced positive results using OER to improve student success, engagement, and retention.
Don’t forget you can always tune in to what is happening with OER through Open SUNY Affordable Learning Solutions!