New Incentives & Programs Coming for Open Educational Resources (OERs)

Posted April 30, 2018 in JMU Libraries News, Open Education News

Open Educational Resources are:

• any educational resources such as textbooks, tutorials, handouts, quizzes, videos, etc.
• openly licensed items, which allow users to reuse, redistribute, revise, remix, and retain resources
• a great way to help students save money (who wouldn’t want to save $100+ per class?)

 To help jumpstart wider creation and use of these resources, Congress  recently approved a $5 million new, competitive federal grant program to “create new open textbooks or expand their use.” The Virginia General Assembly also just passed a law requiring public institutions of higher education in Virginia to “implement guidelines for the adoption and use of low-cost and no-cost open educational resources in courses.”

Liz Thompson, our Instruction and Educational Resources Coordinator, is tracking these important changes about OERs and working to keep JMU faculty, staff, and students up to date on the new opportunities coming from these policy changes.

Want to explore existing OER resources or want to create your own? Check out our Open Educational Resources guide or contact to talk more about OERs (thomp3ea@jmu.edu).

Stay tuned for JMU Libraries workshops about OERs this Fall!